Shadows (Black Raven Book 1)

by Barcelona, Stella

  “You were right,” she answered. “It got better.”

  “Call Last Resort. Arrange a helicopter transport, fast, for Doctor Schilling and Spring to get to the hangar.”

  Skye’s hand was on his forearm. “I’m not sure that will work,” she said. “She won’t want to hear that from Agent Schilling. She’s probably only about halfway though decorating the cupcakes.”

  “If you call her, and talk to her, can you make it work? I need to talk to McCollum and I don’t want to leave you in Georgia while we do it. We don’t have time for a detour. If we get the chopper up in the air now, we’ll have Spring and the doctor at the airport just a matter of minutes after we land.”

  “I’ll try,” Skye gave him a slight smile. “She loves helicopter rides.”

  Of course she did. Wouldn’t any teenager who was fortunate enough to get in one? “Can you also work on having Candy stay at Last Resort?”

  Skye nodded.

  “Ragno. I’m taking the sisters to Washington. Mobilize one of our safe houses there. Figure out where McCollum’s going to be in say,” he glanced at his watch, figured out the logistics of how soon he could be paying McCollum a visit in person, assuming McCollum was in Washington. “In three hours. Don’t alert him that I’m coming.”

  “There’s no guarantee he’s in D.C. Congress isn’t in session.”

  Sebastian paused. “Well, make sure of it for me, but for now, assume that’s where we’re headed. I’ve known Bob for a long time, and I’ve never known a time when he wasn’t in D.C. in the middle of the workweek. The man breathes political fumes, like some of us breathe fresh air, and there’s no better place than D.C. for the fumes.”

  “You’re not taking Skye and Spring to see him, are you?”

  “No. They’ll be at our safe house there.”

  “So why risk transporting them to D.C.?”

  He swallowed. He didn’t want to tell Ragno that Spring had at least part of the code to whatever dead ends might be on Richard Barrows’ elusive backup. He might not have gotten Skye’s unspoken message earlier, if he hadn’t been so intrigued by Spring and what she was doing that morning. He had asked Spring enough questions and had glanced in the sketchbook. Then, he’d thought that it was gibberish. Now he believed that Barrows had taught Spring a coded language. A detailed, illogical, coded language.

  With her savant-like ability to memorize meaningless data streams, Spring was part of the key. Skye didn’t know her way around all of the prompts in the program. He’d bet that Spring could answer any prompt with the correct sequence of numbers.

  He doubted that Ragno had figured it out, and while there were usually never any secrets between himself and Ragno, he didn’t feel the need to broadcast the fact now that Spring was an integral part of Barrows’ plan. His gut told him that Spring’s importance to the project need never see the light of day.

  “Sebastian? Why risk Spring’s transport to D.C.?”

  “Because there’s something off here and,” he swallowed, hard, not wanting to say the next words but knowing he had to admit going to see the President was a possible outcome. “If we have to visit the Oval Office, I want Skye right there with me and I don’t want Spring to be a sitting duck, halfway across the country. I want them together.”

  “What should I tell our partners? The meeting is supposed to take place at three.”

  “Contact me by phone and see where I am. In the meantime, tell them anything you want,” he paused, “except the truth. We don’t need to tell them yet that I’m dabbling on the side of insanity.”

  Skye flinched, then visibly shrugged off his comment. She knew how crazy this sounded. He’d love for Ragno to be at his side in D.C., but that wasn’t an option. Ragno never left her floor of corporate headquarters.

  Never.

  “Have Zeus meet me in D.C. In the meantime, while you’re profiling Root, Young, and Whittaker, check for any contact any of them may have had with Senator McCollum, or for any commonality of contact.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Firefly Island on Hickory Lake had been a beautiful setting for Trask’s brand of fun. It was rare that he got to be outside, enjoying nature, as he gave his demons free reign. Barrows, of course, hadn’t given up the precise location of the backup or told him about the phone. Jack and Posie had been foolishly loyal and stubborn, even under the most rigorous persuasion. Their loyalty required his creativity, and he’d outdone himself. Trask’s aids had hung the woman from a tree. He’d enjoyed her thrashing and her screams that were muted through her gag. Sounds carried over water, and though Firefly Island was private, nearby islands were populated.

  Giving his well-honed skills free rein, Trask had sliced Posie with his favorite skinning knife. Small, deep cuts. The pain was deferred as the nerves took time catching up. He had time. God only knew, he enjoyed his work. Sunlight glinting on the vivid red blood dripping from her multiple wounds gave him a high. Killing gave him a thrill he couldn’t explain. Torture was an indulgent bonus he didn’t always have time for.

  The husband he’d left till last. Intact. Aware. Secured at the base of the tree, his wife’s thrashing feet brushing the top of his head, as her life’s blood leaked over him in a delightful red tide of surrender.

  He’d given them the choice: Answer the question, I’ll make it quick, or take your time, and I’ll take mine.

  Their screams of pain and total nonsense told him their decision. Thank God. It had been some of his best work. Absolutely brilliant, if he did say so himself.

  Upon returning to headquarters at nine in the morning, as his experts worked on the backup, he’d retreated to his personal quarters, where he’d enjoyed the attention of a very young woman, who he’d specially ordered from Shanghai. She’d been trained to do things with a man that would have made most women cringe.

  At three in the afternoon, showered, fresh and flush with invigoration, he stepped into the computer lab to check on what his experts had managed to do with Barrows’ backup. Dunbar was there, on the central command stage with the lead analyst, elevated above a team of twenty. Each of the analysts on the floor worked with eight touch-sensitive screens and multiple keyboards. They remained focused on their screens, as he took to the podium. One stood, backed away from his screen, glanced at the podium, and shook his head. After a minute, another did the same thing.

  The lead analyst said, “Take a break for a few minutes, before taking a fresh crack at it.”

  It wasn’t quite the celebratory mood that he’d anticipated. Cold fury surged through him as the high of the killings, the adrenaline rush he’d sustained most of the day, shattered. He had to struggle for composure, biting the side of his mouth until he tasted the coppery slide of his own blood. When he was sure he could remain calm, he said, “Dunbar?”

  “So far, we’ve been able to confirm that the backup we obtained from the lake house and the Charlotte bank vault contain duplicate information. We also confirmed that we have more data than what was previously delivered to us.”

  “All encouraging,” he said. Imbecile. He didn’t care about what they had managed to confirm. He wanted results. “Are we anywhere near to lifting the LID that covers Shadow Technology? Are we in PRISM? Are we in any of the government’s databases?”

  “No.”

  What tiny speck of bliss that might have remained from his day disappeared in roiling fury, yet Trask managed to smile. “If we have Barrows’ backup, why not?”

  “Because even with his own backup, Barrows built dead ends into the code.” Dunbar gestured to the analysts. His dark hair was curling on his forehead, which was beady with sweat. Trask’s insides roiled with anger, as he watched Dunbar swipe his forehead with his goddamn handkerchief. At that moment, as he patiently waited for Dunbar to assume just a tiny bit of authority, Trask decided that when he had no more use for Dunbar, hopefully soon, he was going to peel the man’s forehead off of his fucking skull.

  The lead analyst was in his forties and
regarded in the industry as a brilliant mind. He smelled like stale, nervous perspiration. His horn-rimmed glasses were smudged. His thin red hair was damp with perspiration and sticking to his scalp. He glanced at Trask and said, “The two who stepped away just hit such a dead end.”

  “What do you mean by dead end?” Trask kept his tone deceptively moderate, but his people knew him, and he saw fear in the light brown eyes of the lead analyst, that matched the fear that Dunbar was trying, but failing, to conceal.

  “Words,” the analyst said, pushing the bridge of his glasses up his nose. “The programs stop at nonsensical words, and we don’t know the passwords that are required with each word. We suspect that each word requires us to input passwords, but we have no way of knowing the code that correlates with the words.”

  He reminded himself that there was going to be a cleansing when this project was over. He eyed Dunbar and the lead analyst, careful not to reveal how tired he was of all of the fucking morons that worked for him. “What about our code-cracking programs? The ones you insisted I pay two point five million for? The ones you said would be able to work around the most sophisticated encryption programs? And the technology department you both insisted I need? My overhead for this department, with the experts and programs, is twenty million a year. So far, all of it is a loss.”

  “We’re running the code-cracking programs. They’re not working. Randomness is problematic. We need to have some known inputs,” the analyst said, “and right now we don’t have that. We’re going to have an answer. It’s just going to take time.”

  “Time? An hour? A day?”

  Now both men had handkerchiefs in their hands. Dunbar swallowed a mouthful of nervous saliva, his Adam’s apple juggling up and down. “It could take months.”

  Not while Richard Barrows had one breath of life in his body.

  “And if Barrows cooperates, how much time?”

  The lead analyst shrugged. “A day. Or two. At most.”

  “Bring Miss Root in here,” Trask said, “and let my men know that the team that brings me Skye and Spring Barrows will have their annual salaries quadrupled.”

  After a few minutes, Jennifer Root was led onto the podium by three of his men. Her stride was powerful, and there was no reason why it shouldn’t be. Her injuries, up until he had hacked off the tips of her index and middle finger, had all been fake. Now, sparks flew from her wildly pissed-off dark brown eyes as he gave her a cool nod. Her black pants were neatly pressed and her loafers were on, but she had missed a button at the top of her blouse and her black cardigan was hanging on her shoulders, as though she hadn’t had time to fully put it on.

  “Hello, darling,” he said, glancing at her bandaged hand. “I hope the injury to your fingers won’t be too inconvenient for you.” His on-staff doctor had re-sewn the tips of her index and middle fingers onto her left hand.

  “My fingers,” she said. “My goddamn fingers. You sick, sadistic son of a bitch. How dare you!”

  Could anyone maintain any fucking composure? “Oh come on, Jennifer,” he said, “you really must take one for the team. I know what I’m doing. The cuts were clean,” he shrugged, “the doctor tells me that you’ll have full functioning. There will just be the faintest trace of a scar. Your next manicure’s on me.”

  “Fucking asshole.”

  “There’s no need to raise your voice, and your crude indignation is misplaced. We made progress, right?”

  “From the beginning, I’ve done every goddamn thing that you asked,” she paused. “I’m the one who brought you this deal.”

  He shook his head. “Now that’s not entirely true, and you know it. You’re giving yourself too much credit. The deal was rolling long before you and Young jumped on the bandwagon. What you and Young did was oversell what the two of you were capable of delivering.”

  She drew a deep breath. “I delivered exactly what I promised. We could never guarantee that your experts could make sense of Richard’s work, and we said that from the beginning. Richard purposefully leaves out code-”

  He shook his head, smiling at the sparks that flew from her eyes. “A fact that you and Young didn’t bother to tell me. A fact that I just learned, no thanks to you.”

  “You need me, because you’ll never break the LID without his cooperation,” she said, “and I can persuade him to do that. Don’t you forget it.”

  At Trask’s side, Dunbar tensed. The three assistants who had led Jennifer into the room also tensed. No one threatened him. No one at all. He drew a deep breath, stared at her, and calmed himself before saying, in as normal of a tone as he ever used, “Young thought I needed him as well, and look where that got him. The only person I need here is Richard Barrows. And if we can make sense of the backup that I acquired,” he said, “even that need no longer exists.”

  She jutted her chin out, defiant, despite his implicit admission to killing Young, something he had denied until that moment. “It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Richard doesn’t do complete data sets. Even with the data that you’ve secured, there will be dead ends. There will be prompts that only he knows. There will be code that he will have to give you,” she said, “and, unless you have his daughters-”

  “We’re close to the girls,” he said, calmly, speaking the truth. It paid to hire good people, and he had paid top dollar when he hired men who had been Black Raven agents. Now they were his. Former Black Raven agents who were now his men, who had spent time at Last Resort were strategizing now on how to secure the sisters. It was only a matter of time before he’d have Skye and Spring, and that time was growing shorter.

  “Close isn’t going to cut it,” she said, “and unless you show him his daughters, Richard Barrows isn’t going to give you a goddamn thing without my help. He’d rather die.”

  “You know, she’s younger than you. She also has far superior bone structure. But I think,” he let his eyes travel her body, “the two of you are similar body types. I think that with a hood on, Barrows will believe that you’re Skye. I might just be able to persuade him that I’m killing his daughter when I kill you.”

  ***

  2:45 p.m., Tuesday

  “Skye,” Sebastian said, from the front cabin of the jet. “Spring will be here in fifteen minutes.” His gaze was reassuring, but something had happened after they had sex. Instead of feeling like they’d gotten closer, he’d become more distant. It happened right after he almost kissed her. Almost, but didn’t.

  Then she’d said McCollum’s name, and he’d become all business.

  Skye nodded, smoothed her hair, and tried to collect herself. She didn’t want Spring to sense anything other than calmness. Raven One had landed ten minutes earlier. She’d stayed in the rear cabin, but when the wheels touched the ground, Sebastian had moved to the forward cabin. He’d left open the door that separated the two. Through it, she saw him talking on his phone, to his agents, and to the pilots, who had opened the door to the cockpit. One was in the main cabin, but the other stayed in his seat, clipboard in hand, checking controls. Sebastian seemed comfortable, the center of attention, having simultaneous and never-ending conversations.

  Through the window she could see the jet had taxied into the Black Raven hangar. She counted four agents, standing at attention at the large entry doors. Beyond the huge doors, which remained open, the day had turned gray. A sleek black helicopter sat on the far side of the hangar, about fifty yards from the jet. Four men worked in an area with desks and computers.

  She’d given up on wishing that they’d open the door to the jet, but she still wanted out. She braced herself for the awkward moment when the four men who made up the security team stared at her, but when she walked into the forward cabin, only one gave her a passing glance. They might have wondered what she and Sebastian had done behind that closed door, they might have even heard exactly what was happening, as it happened, but if they did, they gave no indication. The only eyes that held hers were Sebastian’s, and even though he was staring at he
r, he was focused more on his conversations than her.

  Feeling like a child who was being a nuisance—and not liking the feeling one bit—she placed her hand on his arm for attention and said, “Can I step outside the jet?”

  His eyes were unreadable as he gave her a slight headshake. “Best if you don’t.”

  “Please.”

  A flash of concern? Maybe. Or was it irritation? No. The irritation seemed to be gone, replaced with…something else. Something far gentler. Certainly she saw understanding there, because he had the knowledge that she hated confined spaces. “Okay, go stretch your legs for a few minutes. You’ve got to stay in the hangar, though. Okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at his agents. His nod of permission was almost imperceptible, but as his chin dipped, the four agents stood. Their fast action proved that while it looked like they weren’t paying attention to her, to Sebastian, to their soft-spoken words, and to the invisible undercurrents of their interaction, they obviously were.

  “Give them a minute.”

  The door opened. A gust of deliciously cold, fresh air blew through the jet. She shrugged into the leather jacket, zipping it as she waited for the signal that it was safe for her to step out of the plane. The precautions seemed over the top-theatrical to her, and she almost told Sebastian so. After all, they were in a guarded hangar.

  As she opened her mouth with a wisecrack, his eyes rested on hers. He was in work-mode, talking to Ragno, and the depth of worry she saw in his eyes was infectious. The wisecrack faded from her mind. He said, “Stay close to me.”

  Once down the stairs, the team allowed her to step a few feet from the jet, then stopped, becoming a human wall surrounding her and Sebastian. This was as good as it was going to get, and it was heavenly. Ice-cold wind blew her hair loose and made her cheeks tingle. Cold moisture enveloped her. She pulled the leather jacket closer as she inhaled the fresh air, saw that Sebastian’s blue eyes were on her, and said, “Thank you.”