Black Tie: Book One of the Sparrow Archives
Page 15
“To the press,” hissed Ronnie, under her breath. She was feverishly typing on both the tablet and her laptop, apparently doing mass research on exactly what they were finding out. “About ten minutes ago. Nothing on any of their social media, on their website... he must’ve literally contacted specific press outlets directly, because all of their online crap is exploding.”
“He’s keeping his business and his personal life separate for the first time in what, ever?” Cabe whispered back, leaning over on the bed so that he wouldn’t risk irking Flint any further. The big vein in the side of their supervisor’s head was throbbing again. “Giving other outlets all the shares and likes and ad revenue... the hell?”
“No idea, buddy, you’re the one getting paid to figure him out.”
Cabe half-narrowed his eyes at her. “To help figure him out,” he corrected her, before returning his attention to the television screen.
It was hard to imagine that just hours ago, Elliot Wright had been bundled up shivering and bleeding in a wool coat somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. He looked sharp and smooth in a dark suit and no tie, the top button of his royal purple shirt flicked casually open. From what Cabe could tell he was standing in the flagship WrightTech store in downtown Portland, not seven blocks from their hotel, the large white hexagonal logo glowing softly in the background of the video clip.
“Mr. Wright, do you think a terrorist attack has been committed against you and your company?”
Elliot laughed openly, spreading his arms a little at the cameras with his eyes focused away. “Do I look terrorized?”
“Not visibly, sir –”
“Sir, the Canadian anti-Anomaly terrorist group Valkyries of the North have publicly taken responsibility for the attempt on your life, do you have any comments?”
Elliot’s handsome face screwed up a bit. “Canadian terrorists? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
The crowd laughed a little, and Cabe had to hand it to him, he had a way of charming an audience. Everyone in that room seemed to be in the palm of his hand, or was at least eating up most of what he had to say. Despite the fact that Ronnie had told him time and time again she could bring up any video they watched for him to scrutinize, Flint was making hand-written notes on a small pad of hotel paper.
“If you’re asking me if I feel victimized, or targeted, I don’t. If you’re asking me if I feel any feelings of vengeance or anger, I don’t.” Elliot’s smile was almost infectious, and regardless of his sour mood at finding out about these statements via Fox goddamn News, Cabe couldn’t help a brightness in the centre of his chest trying to tug the corners of his mouth up. “What happened to me may have happened to me because I came out and admitted to the world that I’m an Anomaly, living amongst you all. It may also have happened to me because I own and operate a Fortune 500 company supplying the world with electronics, and not everybody is technologically minded.
“The important thing we must take away from this is that we cannot hold an entire country or race or religion of people responsible for the actions of a small, violent minority. Even if that’s something we’ve always been tempted as a species to do.”
The show cut back to the hosts in front of their screen, but Cabe was still smarting from what Elliot had said. He’d been expecting something a little more... selfish, or at least a little less passionate and poetic. Perhaps the time he’d spent one-on-one with the man in the past twenty-four hours was casting a much more arrogant, self-centered light on the C.E.O. of WrightTech than most people got the chance to see.
“Aww, look, it’s Cabe!”
The Field Agent came to at the sound of his name, and saw footage of his and Elliot’s arrival at the WrightTech building playing behind the hosts’ conversation. The sleek, black car had been a substitute for the limousine that was usually ordered for Elliot in hopes that it would attract at least a little less attention. Wright’s name had been trending again since word had gotten out that his private flight had gone down in Canada.
“Look at you, holding the door for him,” Ronnie gushed, her voice topped with just a sprinkle of sarcasm. “You’re such a gent.”
“Ain’t many of us left, guys,” Cabe replied blandly, going for the forgotten pizza box again before Angus drooled all over his clean sweats.
“Does he make you wipe his ass, too?” asked Faraj.
“Only when he goes number two.”
“I think it’s cute,” said Ronnie, her large dark eyes flicking between the television and the two screens she was currently using to work. A slice of half-eaten Hawaiian pizza sat on the keyboard of the laptop. “Aww, Cabe, are you carrying his briefcase!?”
“Are we done with this? What’s on the other side?” Cabe was searching around for the remote, even though he knew Ronnie was probably in more of a position of control with that WrightPad substitute. “That leftist liberal rag they’re always warning us about...”
“Nothing amazing,” replied Ronnie. “MSNBC are talking about that fire-breathing Anomaly who wasn’t allowed to board his Pacific Air flight to Dubai because he had the hiccups. And damn is their C.C.O. pissed, because he’s always prided himself on how his company treats Anomalies.”
“See, that sounds way more interesting than this shite,” said Cabe, using one hand to keep Angus in an eager ‘sit’ position while he balanced a pizza crust on the Rottie’s nose. He snapped his fingers and the dog gobbled it up, throwing saliva everywhere. “I say we watch that instead.”
Another can of root-beer smacked him in the bare gut, harder this time. “Flint’s trying to concentrate, Pigeon, shut your mouth for a minute.”
Flint didn’t glance up from whatever he was doing on his substitute cell phone. “Please don’t break him, I still need him for some things.”
“She’s getting out of hand, James,” Cabe grumbled, rubbing his stomach. “You saw that, didn’t you? Hak’? That was pure, unbridled aggression.”
“Well,” Flint addressed the room, which caused everybody to simultaneously raise their head at once regardless of what they were doing, “the good news is that his stocks are up, WrightTech sales in Canada are skyrocketing, and the international media for the most part seems to be loving it. I’m going to gauge we’ve got about an eighty per cent approval rating across both America and Canada from what I’ve seen online. Public perception of Mr. Wright is still overwhelmingly positive, despite pockets of aggression.”
“So I’m doing good?” Cabe asked with his mouth full of pizza.
“You’re doing good so far,” his supervisor replied, wrinkling his nose. “Either you’re keeping him under control, or he’s reigning it in.” He pulled an unimpressed face. “Eat with your mouth shut, you’re an animal.”
“He’s a good businessman,” mused Faraj aloud. “He knows how to handle a shit-storm.”
“Or use it to his advantage,” replied Dasilva with a little more suspicion. “Always great press to spread a message of peace and unity right before Christmas.”
“Either way, the sooner we can let him know who we are and that we want to work with him, the better,” Flint said, rubbing at The Vein with two fingers of his left hand. He hated surprises probably more than anyone else on the team – especially the unpleasant ones. “I’m going to make a call, I’ll be back. While I’m gone, Dasilva, fill him in. Sparrow, is the bathroom inhabitable?”
“Unless Hak’s destroyed it since I was in there.”
Flint wrinkled his nose and disappeared around the corner. Tossing Angus his crust again, Cabe retrieved a third slice of pizza from the box, which Faraj held open for him after claiming another for himself. “C’mon, Gab’, you heard the man. Fill me in good, baby.”
Dasilva rolled her eyes at him. “Word we’ve got is that Wright’s been developing something at his company. Some sort of... D.N.A. scanning and analyzing technology. We have no idea what it is or what it does, but we’re fairly sure it’s related to his recent announcement.”
“You mean the fact
that he can see the future?”
“Possibly, more so the Anomaly relations angle.”
Cabe sat back for a moment and just looked at his partner, sizing her up. “... you don’t believe he can do what he says he can, do you?”
The room went silent, save for the low volume of the television and the extremely quiet sound of Flint’s voice, muffled and totally incoherent through the bathroom wall. The tension was thicker than the greasy baked cheese the four of them had just been inhaling. Faraj chose that moment to slowly and quietly sink back down between the bed and the wall to continue the wiring work he’d been doing before hot food became an option.
“Honestly?” Dasilva said, in that tone she used when Cabe knew she was about to be heinously and brutally honest with him. “No. I don’t think he can ‘see the future’, Cabe. I think when a man with an ego the size of his sees one or two fortunate coincidences occur in front of him, his own narcissism can make him believe he has supernatural powers.”
If it were even possible, the tension in the room tripled in weight. Ronnie’s eyes were large and round over the top of her laptop, poised to dart back down if either Field Agent were to glance her way. Faraj had slowed his work to a standstill, sprawled like an awkward statue beneath the bed.
Cabe stared at her for a moment with an unreadable expression on his face before scoffing and turning his head away, breaking the fiery line of eye contact between them. “Well,” he eventually replied in a dusky undertone, “if I see anything I reckon confirms it, you’ll definitely be the first to know.”
A blond with a gun...
“So, this technology,” Cabe started, changing the subject and air out the room after their little disagreement, “are we after it?”
“No, but somebody is,” said Dasilva, clearly just as comfortable with moving right past their minor scuffle. Sometimes, she and Cabe had learned to just put their differences aside and agree to disagree. “A buyer on the black market. He’s made contact with someone at the company who’s working out a price and will likely make the drop personally.”
“Someone at the company who knows about this secretly-developed technology? Would have to be someone on the team, then?” Cabe guessed. “He seems the type to keep his cards close to his chest.”
“I’d agree with that,” his partner said with a nod. “From what we know, he’s keeping everything on site. Data, files, reports, and any hardware and software involved in the makeup of the technology itself. It’s all being stored in the WrightTech building.”
“Can Ronnie hack their local networks?”
“I’m... kinda hesitant to try?”
Cabe craned his neck to look at the young handler over his shoulder. She was peeking up at him over the top of the enormous laptop, her teeth sunken into her brightly-painted bottom lip.
“He’s good, Cabe. We’re talking about a guy who coded his first computer program at the same age I was reading like, Jane Austen, or something.”
Cabe flattened his brow at her. “Didn’t you read Pride and Prejudice in kindergarten?”
“Regardless, my point is, I don’t know how good he is.” Ronnie blinked and her eyes dropped for a moment. Perhaps out of shame, or embarrassment. “And I’m not... I’m not super confident I wouldn’t jeopardize the whole sting by getting caught without even knowing he was tracking me.”
Cabe chewed the inside of his cheek. Ouch. That must’ve really hurt for Ronnie to admit. Her quite honestly terrifying ability to hack just about any system placed in front of her without being detected by its security protocols was the reason Veronica Moss had first been approached by W.A.R.D.. There was nothing that girl couldn’t do with a computer system. It was a jarring reminder of exactly the type of client they were dealing with here.
“No worries,” he replied, offering her a casual half-smile so as not to make a big deal of her obvious discomfort. “So, suddenly it’s the fifties and we’re doing this spy thing the old fashioned way. I have to wear a suit most of the time right now anyway, so it works.”
“Flint’s thoughts are that if you can locate and identify whatever it is he’s working on that someone’s trying to steal, we can offer to aid with its protection,” Dasilva explained, flipping through the pizza boxes that were strewn across the bed Cabe was sitting on to tally up her options. “In addition to that, we’d have great blackmail material if he decides to be a little shit-bag.”
“Does Flint know you’re pretty much a bad guy?” Cabe asked her off-handedly, scratching behind his ear.
“Supervisory Special Agent Handbook, Section Kay, Paragraphs Seven through Fourteen,” Faraj was mumbling as he appeared the other side of Ronnie’s bed, emerging with a new extension cord and several others, one of which Cabe thought looked like a phone cable, but there was a reason he wasn’t on the Geek Squad. “In a nutshell, they talk about like, methods of dealing with difficult clients who are more likely to actually want to help deep down but are maybe coming up with reasons not to cooperate, all whilst keeping the general public safe and unaware. Psychology stuff.”
Cabe blinked at him. “What the... you shouldn’t even have access to that handbook, bro.”
Faraj shrugged innocently, a shifty look in his eyes. “I just wanted to study up,” was all he said before he went back to connecting his wires, crawling underneath the desk.
The blond man switched his accusatory gaze to the most senior agent in the room, but Dasilva just shrugged one lean shoulder carelessly. “I’m not ratting him out for showing initiative.”
“Okay, so, my job now is to basically try and figure out what it is, where it is, and get enough proof of it that he can’t deny it if we have to shove it in his face later?” The blunted nails of Cabe’s fingers found the back of his head again. “Oy vey...”
“ABC Local!” came Flint’s shout from the bathroom, and Ronnie obediently hunted down the channel’s online stream.
“So, what are you up to tonight, Pigeon?”
Cabe laughed a bit at his partner. “Oh, are you mad? I faced my greatest fears today and lived to tell the tale. I won. I’m an electrified ball of masculine adrenaline and I’m gonna head the fuck out and paint Portland red. Seriously, I’m not gonna leave a single hipster pub unvisited, a single cocktail with a stupid funny name un-drunk...”
Dasilva pursed her lips at him. “You’re going to work, aren’t you?”
“Probably going to work, yep.”
The Latina sighed and shook her head. “Take a break, Pigeon. It’ll kill you.” She pat his knee before standing up and walking past him, heading for the secondary smaller room where she, Cabe, and Flint slept whenever they could. Angus whined, and Cabe gave him what was left of the pizza in his hand without even making him work for it.
The new stream was finished buffering – a local report on the incident. Ronnie bumped the volume up a few notches and placed the tablet back on the small beside chest with a sigh.
“Tired, Peanut?”
Ronnie nodded back at him, yawning either coincidentally or for effect.
“Wanna read your Gideon’s Bible and take a nap?”
She smiled a bit. “Can’t. Too much work to do.”
“You sound like me. Agent Dasilva will be the first to tell you that’s a really big mistake.”
The brunette chuckled in reply, but it wasn’t overly enthusiastic. In fact, he wondered if she even heard him at all, considering her attention seemed to be on the television. He followed her line of sight to the screen, where a longer version of the statement made by Elliot Wright in the WrightTech flagship storefront was being replayed.
“You know, he’s not actually that pretty in real life.”
“Shut up,” she snipped. She yawned again, this time remembering to cover her mouth. She turned to him, a suddenly sober look all over her face. “Hey,” she said, quietly enough that Faraj would really have to strain himself if he wanted to eavesdrop on them, “I heard about what happened today... dude, are you okay?”
Ronnie laughed. “Good... you had me pretty worried there. I imagined you, y’know, seriously freaking out out there.”
“I’m... I would say that I’m pleasantly surprised with my performance,” said Cabe quietly.
“Think you’re gonna have some whack nightmares?”
“I really hope not. I think I’ve honestly amassed enough issues at this point.”
She glanced over at him to assess his comfort level, and caught him watching Elliot on the television screen. It was a fairly decent opportunity to naturally change the flow of the conversation.
“So,” she said, leaning back against the wooden headboard, “you pretty much got this one all figured out?”
“Not yet,” Cabe replied evenly, rubbing the back of his neck. Apparently he’d sustained some whiplash during the rough landing, according to the medic who’d seen him. Elliot, of course, had refused any and all medical treatment until he could return to Portland and see his own personal physician, but W.A.R.D. hadn’t expected or planned much for anything on the contrary. “The ol’ internal Jury wants to spend some time reviewing the evidence, maybe hear some of the testimony again...”
“You think he’s a danger to himself?” she asked, her eyes moving between Cabe and the infamously handsome socialite on the news report.
“Oh, absolutely.”
“You think he’s a danger to anyone else?”
Cabe grit his teeth, watching his newest charge. He watched the way Elliot flaunted himself; the way he worked the crowd that had gathered to hear his story. They were enticed – hypnotized by his performance, whether it was in awe of his courageous survival, in gratitude that he had chosen not to react in a way that would reflect poorly on the more peaceful majority of the Anomaly community, or in annoyance and anger that he had ‘missed a valuable opportunity’ to ‘unite the country’.
And he knew it. He knew they were in the palm of his hand. He was peacocking, and they were eating it up, and Elliot knew it.