by Cat Connor
“There a lot of details here of possible scenarios and how her main character will or does react to them.”
“She’s a writer so that would be normal?” Sam said.
I shook my head and regretted it. “Every scenario is one I’ve been in recently. Her main character’s name changes back and forth between my name and her character’s.”
Sam struggled to hide his smile. “She likes you, Chicky Babe.”
“It’s worse than that, Sam. She knew where the explosives were placed. There are sketches showing the placement of explosives in the buildings that exploded, and as far as I know, they’re correct.”
“What are you saying?” Kurt said, leaning forward.
“She’s a little bit too hands on with her research.”
Kurt leaned back again. “Anything that actually says she planted the bombs?”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing,” Lee said.
“It’s enough to hold her. We have reason to hold her on suspicion of terrorism,” Sam said.
Yeah, it is. “Except she’s Interpol and has a connection in our State Department, and could easily make this go away.” I threw Lee the flash drive. “Have a look, if the notebook matches a manuscript and we’ve got dates, it might be more useful.”
He plugged it into his laptop. Ten minutes later he’d copied then checked all the files.
“There is a file called IED, created three months ago. Last updated yesterday and looks to be the book based on the notebook.”
“And?”
“It looks like she wrote the bulk of this manuscript before the explosions.”
I sighed. “Any way of knowing what was written after?”
“No, she could’ve added stuff to any chapter at any time.”
Fuck! Nothing then.
I growled. “Okay, moving on. Let’s hope Iain finds something when he talks to the State Department guy.”
“Next?” Lee said.
“Danni Lane is out of commission. She’s no use to Kennedy’s team.” I wondered if she was ever any use. “I have a fancy wee program downloading all Kennedy’s emails. Well, copies of them.”
“Why?”
“Because I bugged him and we’ve seen him. They haven’t talked or met with anyone else apart from Danni. They must have a way of communicating with their employer and possibly the people who have the girl. Or at least of getting information that could lead to the people who have the girl. You know Kennedy. Whoever that idiot is, they’re not walking away from this.”
“Good thinking, Chicky.”
“Yeah. Think we all know information didn’t come from Danni Loopy Lane.”
Sam looked around the room.
“Where’s Misha? I haven’t seen him yet.”
He was right there with us earlier. Jeez. Freaking phantom in a long black leather coat.
“Gone with the wind,” I replied. “I imagine he’s gone to fill Kennedy in on the situation with Danni.” I looked at Kurt. “And you reckon she’s a good author?”
“One of the best thriller writers I’ve read—”
“Maybe it takes a special kind of insanity to write thrillers?”
“Maybe,” Kurt said. “We now know how she knew so much about you. Interpol is a handy organization when you want to stalk someone.”
The four of them barely contained their collective amusement.
“I still don’t remember meeting her,” I said.
“Sad. You made such an impression,” Kurt said. “She started writing about her FBI agent a few years back. Before your poetry book came out.”
“We must’ve met after that. She said a book signing. I didn’t know about her so it wasn’t hers.” The penny dropped. “What do ya bet she was on the guest list for our launch? It was extensive. Wonder if we can check?”
“Simon might still have records,” Mitch said.
“Does it matter?” Kurt asked.
“To me, yes,” I replied. “I like to know where I met these lunatics.”
Kurt’s merriment bubbled over. “I think she invented her character then fine-tuned her to be more like you, once she’d met you and started stalking in earnest.”
“Anyone else want to say stalking before we move on?”
Lee clamped his hand over his mouth and shook his head. Yeah, right. I saw Mitch shake with silent laughter.
“Moving on …” Kurt said. “Questioned Documents pulled two sets of prints off the surveillance order. Yours and Mitch’s.”
“That’s not even possible,” I said with a sigh.
“Also they confirmed your signature was forged.”
“Good. That’s something.”
Mitch spoke, “So our prints were on Ellie’s clothes, gun, etcetera and the paper. To what end?”
“We don’t know yet,” Kurt replied.
“Discounting everything to do with Danni.” I hated saying her name. “Someone has gone to a lot of trouble and effort to accomplish what?”
“The destruction of Delta A,” Mitch said.
“That’s what it looks like,” Sam agreed.
“Is this related to the missing Czech?” Lee asked. “Or overlapping by coincidence?”
“Really? You’re going to say the word coincidence around me?”
An eyebrow arched. “Could it be?”
“I dunno. See any flying pigs lately?”
From under the bed, I heard a weird noise. A muffled quack. Two little ducks popped out, shaking their feathers, water droplets flew around the room. A third duck followed. They lined up. Imagine that? Coincidence? The three ducks quacked.
“Okay I’ll bite. Imagine for a minute that the ducks are right and it’s a coincidence.”
The room froze.
Kurt leaned forward. “What ducks?”
Crap.
“Did I say ducks? Slip of the tongue.” I smiled. “No ducks.”
They quacked again. Dammit someone was going to hear them if they kept up that racket. Ducks shuffled all over the floor, dodging legs and quacking. Three were in a line. Just three. I took a stab at which three they were.
“With the women, Danni, and Troy in custody, we’ve narrowed the playing field,” I said. The three ducks quacked with joy.
“Yes, we have,” Kurt agreed. “Time to concentrate our efforts and find Anastazia.”
“That’s our brief,” I replied. “Well, our brief is not the explosions, so let’s take Anastazia.”
I leaned forward and ran my finger over the touchpad of my laptop, clearing the screensaver.
My sneaky little program was hard at work downloading copies of all Kennedy’s emails. It’s just not that hard deploying viruses onto specific laptops and phones. Kennedy checked his email on his phone. I loved him for that. My toys of choice lately have been programs to do my bidding, disguised as updates for various apps. My computer beeped. The latest email was ready for me to read.
I started with the most recent, working backward. The first four I came to were spam. The fifth contained a link but no information. I followed the link and discovered what appeared to be a live streaming video.
My hand reached out and beckoned the team. My eyes never left the screen.
“Who else has a laptop?”
“Me and Lee,” Kurt said, picking his up from the floor.
“Sending you both this link.”
“Lee, can you run a ping and trace on a website?”
“Sure, link me, Chicky.” An instant messenger window opened on my screen with Lee’s name at the top of it. I dropped the link into it. Kurt followed suit.
As I watched the images on my screen, a woman struggled with a much larger man. He succeeded in handcuffing one of her wrists to an upright metal frame. She kicked out. He caught her ankle and cuffed it to the bottom corner. Screaming, she thrashed around. I could see the metal handcuffs biting into her. She smacked him with her free elbow, connecting with his jaw. He yelped and stepped back. His hand reached for a dark object. He
r body jerked and head dropped. Guess he’d zapped her with a stun gun. He used the opportunity to secure her free hand and foot. Now splayed on the metal frame and at his mercy, he laughed. A printer sitting on a nearby desk spewed forth a piece of paper. He picked it up and read it. As the woman regained consciousness he said, “Knife.”
He took a small knife from a drawer and ran the tip of the blade up the woman’s exposed thigh. She sobbed as he traced the blade around the leg of her panties and began cutting the side seam in tiny increments.
I minimized the screen. “Jesus, Lee. This is real time. We need an address.”
Mitch breathed out long and slow behind me. “Don’t look. You can’t ever unsee this, so don’t look,” I whispered.
I felt him turn away. Sam handed him an iPad and in-ear phones. “Watch something on this, turn up the volume. Trust me, Ellie’s right. You don’t want to carry this shit.”
“Thanks,” Mitch said. I felt him put in the earbuds and thought, Bye, Mitch. His voice echoed in my head then was gone. I closed the figurative door.
Lee spoke, “I’m trying for an address. Can you see anything in the picture that gives us any clues?”
I pulled the screen back up, not looking at the woman or the man, but instead searching for something identifiable. A window. I snapped a screenshot and zoomed in on the window and discovered a green lawn and high stone fence. Nothing remarkable. My hopes of a street sign and house number disintegrated. From my speakers, I heard screams. I flicked back to the room.
The camera angle had changed. The knife moved across her belly leaving small bleeding cuts. The woman’s expression changed from terror to defiance. She had some inner strength she tapped into. I hoped she could hang on until we found her.
“It’s not a stationary camera, it moved.”
“Great, some other pervert is in the room.”
“Oh, for a glimpse in a window.” The idea hit like Christmas. I flicked back to my picture and zoomed out.
“Here, do something techy and show me the camera man in the windowpane.”
Lee took my laptop. He took another screen shot then twiddled with things within a program I never knew I had, bringing up a faded image of a male holding a camera. Oh, the joy of living in a digital age. He held the camera at chest height. We could see his ghostly face.
“Can you make that any clearer?”
“No, but I know someone who can.”
“Yeah, I used to as well. Bit hard to contact him these days.”
Lee clapped a large paw on my shoulder. “It really is but Sean is as good, maybe better than Mac was at this stuff.”
He dropped the pictures onto a flash drive.
“While the ping is running, I’ll see what I can do with this.” He stuck the drive in his pocket.
“I’ll be semi-watching this asshole and see if I can snap some more pics of the girl, and the men.”
“How much other email is there?” Lee asked from the doorway.
“I kinda stopped looking when I found this.”
“This is something I almost don’t want to ask, how’d you get his email address and get that app installed?”
“A little program Sean once gave me. I just sent it to Kennedy’s cell phone. It sends copies of every email at a specified email address to one of my anonymous accounts.” I saw the amused look on Lee’s face. “I’m becoming a geek, huh?”
Lee smiled and left. There was nothing to say. Back on my screen, the girl’s head lolled about as the man slapped her then tossed water in her face.
He held a piece of paper in his hand. He read it and said, “Not yet, be patient.”
He slapped her again. I felt sick. The urge to shoot the screen grew exponentially with each slap.
I got as many good pictures of her face as I could before the swelling disfigured her too much. Her bone structure and eyes looked familiar. As I studied the pictures carefully, a horrendous scream ripped through my speakers. My little finger hit the mute button on my keyboard. I pulled the video screen back up to view the live feed. The man was working something into her vagina. I couldn’t make out what it was in his hand. On one breath, I minimized the screen and unclipped my gun from my holster; it just felt better to have it on my lap.
“Kurt, is it her?”
He checked photos on his phone. He nodded. “Could be. If not, it’s someone similar.”
My left hand snatched up my phone from the floor while my right toyed with the grip of my pistol.
I called Kennedy.
“Kennedy, did you get your email?”
He replied calmly, “What business is it of yours?”
“You didn’t strike me as the torture or snuff type. We need to talk now.”
“You are?”
Your worst fuc’n nightmare if I find you are involved in this.
“You know who I am. We don’t have time for games.”
“Do I?” he replied coldly.
“Listen up, Kennedy, you need me. Your place or my temporary hotel home?”
I heard the email alert telling me Kennedy had more mail when I opened the screen I discovered a coded email. I’d seen the code before. Troy had an email just like it. Ah, crap! He was involved somehow. A participant? I ignored Kennedy on the phone for a moment.
“Sam, what do you think this is?” I spun my laptop to face him.
“A list of prices,” he said. “Down the side is probably a list of things the various amounts buy.”
I felt sick. It was a long list. “Can you have a go at cracking this code, please?”
“Sure, send it to Lee’s laptop. I’ll work on that.”
Another email arrived. It was a follow-up email regarding bidding. It wasn’t a fixed price thing. That suggested the girl would be alive for a while yet; they’d want to get as much money as possible.
Kennedy had a sudden change of heart and even remembered my name. I guessed he read the email too. “Conway, whoever is sending these could be watching me.”
I didn’t want to tell him I hadn’t picked up any other surveillance – didn’t want to spoil the surprise of my operation. Even so, I didn’t want him at the hotel. We needed middle ground. Ruby Tuesday’s would work.
“Meet at Ruby Tuesday’s in D.C. A-sap. I’ll make the booking now. Ask for the Iverson party.” I used Mitch’s name because it was not connected to anything we’d ever done.
“I’ll be there.”
My next call was to the restaurant reserving Mac’s favorite table in the far corner facing the door. Just like old times.
But unlike old times I wouldn’t be spending an hour in the nearby Bed, Bath & Beyond store first. Sometimes I hated the way everything twisted to remind me of Mac. The memory faded. New memories surfaced. Happy life-affirming memories.
In my mind’s eye, I saw me and Mitch going out for coffee, which inevitably led to wine. He loved going out even for something as simple as coffee. Hence, we didn’t spend a lot of time at home, which suited me.
Another email alert sounded. Notification of other bids.
“You’ve got mail, Chicky Babe,” Sam said. The chime sounded again. “That code wasn’t too hard once I got into it.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
I sent the email from Sam to my phone. He was right. It was a price list. It would take a lot of cash to keep her alive until we found her. Quarter of million dollars gave a bidder the right to choose her manner of death. Before that, varying increments of cash were required to bid on various forms of torture. Each and every option made me want to vomit. I called Caine.
“What have you got?” he asked without bothering with pleasantries.
“A streaming video of a young woman being tortured. I need authorization to bid to try to keep her alive while we find her.”
“Who is she?”
“Wait one …” I looked at Kurt. He glanced up. “Is it her, for sure?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Anastazia Dobrovolný. We believe she was abducte
d along with her sister Alexandra from Prague.”
“Do what you have to do.”
“I may have to bid over a quarter of a million.”
“Don’t lose that money … if you bid it, you better be sure of catching the freaks responsible and getting the money back.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Caine grumbled and the line went dead.
Kurt was watching me. “Okay?”
“Yeah. He doesn’t want me to lose the money.”
“Hard ask.”
I smiled. “Nah. This is why they pay us the big money.”
Sam and Kurt laughed. “You’re a smartass, Conway.”
With a painful shrug and half a smile, I said, “Time we put in for a substantial pay rise.”
I closed the link on my laptop. I had somewhere to be.
Time for a quick call to Lee. “We’re running out of time, the final decision on this girl’s life rests with the highest bidder.” I checked my watch with the computer clock. They were the same. “I want to make sure we are the highest bidder.”
“I’m working on it, Chicky. How’s the ping?” Lee replied.
A look at his laptop told me it was running, routing all over the world and giving us nothing. “Nothing much going on, we’re not getting any closer.”
We needed more powerful software or a specialist who could get the most out of ours.
“Not good. I’ll be back soon, hopefully with something we can use.”
“I’m meeting the United Nations at Ruby’s. Call me as soon as you have something.”
“Message understood.”
I set the timer on my phone at eighty-two minutes and made sure it was visible on the lock screen.
I looked at Kurt and pointed. “We have eighty-two minutes to stop a death. You’re with me. Sam and Mitch stay here.”
Mitch glanced up as I stood and moved past his legs. His hand touched mine. “All right?”
I pointed to the earbuds he was wearing. He took one out. “Kurt and I are going to meet some people. Sam is staying with you and working on something here.”
Kurt stopped me before I got to the door. From his medical backpack, he took another pulse oximeter.
“Again?” I asked.
“Humor me. Don’t lose this one, they’re not cheap.”
