Wasp (Uncommon Enemies: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 1)

by Fiona Quinn

  She tried Lily’s other accounts, her to-do list at Evernote, her cloud files. Even her Picassa folders. All gone.

  To Zoe, it felt like Lily had slipped right between her fingers and disappeared into nothingness. Lily is dead. Zoe couldn’t make herself believe it. “Dead,” she said out loud, hammering the word into place, trying to pin it to a hard surface, so it wouldn’t keep floating away like a dandelion in the wind. Zoe pulled her knees to her chest and let the tears flow freely. What happened to you, Lily?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Zoe

  And books which told me everything about the wasp, except why.

  ~Dylan Thomas

  Zoe uncurled from the ball she had made on the couch. She’d needed to pull the plug and let off some of the grief in her chest drain away. She had allowed herself to moan and sob, trying to keep the decibel level within the confines of the safe house walls. She was glad no one was around. She wasn’t a woman who felt free exhibiting her emotions. She was publicly pragmatic and only very privately expressive. She had known Lily since they were in undergrad together. Lily was one of a handful of people that were in Zoe’s comfort zone. That she allowed to see her cry. Or laugh with abandon. Or be a bitchy, hormonal, ice-cream-eating mess.

  Was. Were. Lily would always be thought of in past tense now.

  Zoe moved to the bathroom and splashed cold water onto her face. As she slid her glasses back in place, Zoe saw her eyes were swollen and her face splotchy. She wondered if Lily was being autopsied now. If the medical examiner could say from the evidence how this had happened. She had to force her thoughts away from the visual of someone doing that to Lily’s body.

  Zoe’s thoughts turned to Lily’s mom. She’d have been given the news already. I bet she had other plans for this weekend. Something different than organizing her daughter’s funeral. Zoe shook her head. She wished she could be there for Lily’s mom. Lily’s mother, being Jewish, believed that autopsies weren’t to be performed. But as a questionable death, the authorities would have no choice. It seemed like salt in a wound. Zoe wondered if she’d be able to go to the funeral. She hoped so. Zoe moved into the kitchen to get a glass of water. These kinds of thoughts weren’t helpful. Helpful would be figuring out why someone would want to wipe all of those email.

  Zoe sniffed loudly, squared her shoulders, and sat back at the computer. She put Lily Winters’s name into Google to see if there was more information about the event available. “Event” was a nice, safe, scientific word. “Event” allowed Zoe to stay analytical. That was a better place for her to be. Especially holed up all alone in a safe house.

  Zoe clicked on the top article on the Google suggestions list, the “Breaking News” article from CNN. Odd that Lily would be mentioned on CNN. There was video of Senator Billings standing behind a podium. His wife, dressed in black, stood next to him. She looked like crap. Like she was still in shock from some horrible event, and Zoe wondered why she was torturing herself by appearing in public when she was obviously going through a private hell.

  The senator cleared his throat. “I stand before you today with a heavy heart. Last night, a wonderful person, an amazing person, lost her life in a terrible accident on the Metro line.”

  Zoe watched the senator’s wife. When the senator said “wonderful” and “amazing” Barbara Billings curved her stomach in as if she was being punched. Mrs. Billings struggled to hold her shoulders back, to keep her lips from quivering. It was horrible to watch, and Zoe wanted to turn her head and give this woman some privacy, but simply couldn’t.

  “Lily Ann Winters was working with me on a project of immense import to the United States—indeed, to the world’s security. Her research was invaluable to the American public.” He gripped the podium and rocked back on his heels then forward. His head dropped and he no longer stared defiantly into the camera lens. “Over the time that I worked with Miss Winters, I was moved by her patriotism, her strength of character, and her sunny personality. I grew to love her, very much. Lily and I developed an intimate relationship. It was improper of me to stray outside of my marriage of twenty-two years. It was improper for me to fall in love with a colleague. I have nothing more to say on the subject; other than that it was Lily who shined brightly at a time when I was surrounded by the darker forces of humanity. I deeply cared for her. She made me happy. Her death is a great loss to me and to the American public.”

  The camera panned to Senator Billings’s wife, whose face had turned ashen. She was swaying like a metronome, back and forth. A woman in a red trench coat stepped up behind Mrs. Billings, placed a folding chair behind her knees, guided her to sitting, and kept a steadying hand on her shoulder. Mrs. Billings kept staring forward, never looking to see who had saved her from a faint. What kind of jerk would put his wife through a press conference like this? It was inhuman. Zoe felt like a voyeur peeking through a window into someone’s very private pain, and felt ashamed to have in any way participated in it.

  “How could you have been involved with a married man, Lily?” Zoe muttered at the screen, her mind racing, searching for scraps of conversation that they had shared. “That was so antithetical to your values. Barbara Billings is obviously devastated. You’d never do that to anyone. Ever.” What the heck is going on?

  “As much as I would like to have some time to mourn Lily’s death and to work through this with my wife,” Senator Billings continued as he turned, and for the first time realized that Mrs. Billings was physically and emotionally collapsing on national TV. He stared at her for a moment, then looked at the person holding his wife upright, then moved back to the mic. “Our nation is in peril. I will be conducting the first day of senate hearings into the kinds of weaponry that Montrim Industries is developing and the—”

  There was a light knock on the safe house door. Zoe pitched herself out of the chair and away from the computer, her gaze swinging around the room for a place to hide.

  “Zoe? Titus Kane. Open the door.”

  Titus. Zoe felt a little foolish. Her nerves had been spiking since the night before. And maybe there was a tinge of guilt mixed in for having watched the CNN report. Zoe moved to open the door.

  ***

  The cupboard was filled with the copious amounts of food Titus brought in with him. He handed her a bag that must have contained a good five pounds of chocolate. Thank God, Zoe thought.

  “Let’s talk about your phone.”

  “Did you bring it back?”

  “No. You had an app on there to follow you via GPS. Another one that allowed people to see what numbers you called and who called you. And a keystroke app.”

  “Someone was tracking my texts?”

  He nodded. “Who would want to keep tabs on you?”

  Zoe shook her head.

  “Montrim?”

  “I don’t work for Montrim, I merely have lab space at Montrim. They shouldn’t care what I’m doing.”

  “The military?”

  Zoe shook her head again.

  “What about those operatives from the CIA?”

  Zoe rolled her lips. Yeah it could be them. It very well could.

  Titus’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his belt and checked the screen. “Gage is heading back and asking if you need anything. It can’t be anything from your condo. If it’s being watched, we don’t want to lead anyone to your location.”

  Zoe scratched at her head to stop the prickling sensation. She looked over at the bottle of wine Titus had put on the counter. She needed something to take the edge off. “I’m good.”

  “Pour yourself a glass if you think it will help. When Gage gets here we need to assemble what we’ve gathered and put it all on the table so we have a better idea what’s going on. I’m going to go get him.”

  “Get him? Why get him?”

  “His car hasn’t been swept yet, so we don’t know if someone planted a tracker.”

  Oh. Zoe moved toward the kitchen and put her hand on the bottle. Maybe two glasses. On second t
hought, Zoe actually had no intention of drinking any alcohol. She needed her thoughts to be sharp. Focused. Pragmatic. She didn’t have Titus and Gage’s Special Forces skillsets, but she did have a very good brain. Would that be enough to keep her safe?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Zoe

  Fire drives the wasp out of its nest.

  ~ Italian Proverb

  “Zoe.” Gage’s eyes were now green with swirls of blue. They seemed turbulent, like a storm kicking up waves of concern. “I need you to trust me. This isn’t going to work unless you do.”

  Titus leaned in. “Do you trust Gage?”

  Zoe twisted her fingers together in her lap. “With my life—obviously.”

  “Now I need you to trust me.” Titus was using his soft voice again. The one that forced her to lean forward and pay complete attention.

  She wrinkled her nose. She didn’t like this particular tactic. Zoe wanted to be able to hear and let her mind churn at the same time.

  “I’m going to be truthful with you. Gage trusts me—of all the people he knows, I’m the one he called to help protect you.”

  Zoe frowned.

  “He turned to me because I’m the Commander of Panther Force—an elite group of former Special Forces who work for Iniquus.”

  Zoe nodded. She knew who Iniquus was. Not only had Gage interviewed with them recently, but they had been in the paper and on TV. She had never heard anything but glowing terms when it came to Iniquus. Sometimes the admiration seemed to tip into adoration, as if the men and women of Iniquus were superheroes. By all accounts, they were the good guys. The ones who fast-roped off helicopters and swam two miles in the dark of night to save families kidnapped by pirates off of Sudan. The ones who searched for a missing teammate through tropical storms in the Gulf, even though everyone knew there was no hope of survival. And they were as red, white and blue as the American flag. Titus was with Iniquus, and Gage had called him—Zoe had never for a moment doubted that she was safe in his hands.

  “Now, here’s the part that might have you changing your mind about who to trust. Iniquus is headquartered here in DC, and we work as a liaison between different government entities. Gage, can I see those business cards you’ve collected?”

  Gage reached into his pocket and handed them over.

  “The FBI, the CIA, the military.” As he spoke, he laid down a corresponding card from each. “The legislature, the police. We contract with all of them. They’re our bread and butter. We also do security for people who need us in the corporate world. Montrim is one of our customers.” He laid down the last card in his hand with the name Christopher S. Bilik beside the red foil Montrim logo. “We often go overseas with Montrim executives to provide security in hot spots, though I’ve never met Mr. Bilik. I have worked for all of these organizations. Knowing this, are you still okay with Iniquus protecting you?”

  Zoe pulled her gaze from Titus and let her eyes rest on Gage, looking for any sign that he was conflicted. She found only resolve on his face. “Yes, thank you,” she replied. “I appreciate your help.”

  Titus’s calloused palm gestured over the cards. “I know how they work. I know how they play. And right now, I know you’re a hot commodity for someone. All of them have the capacity to have gone after you last night. Or it could have been none of them. It could very well be some outside entity who hasn’t landed on our radar yet. That’s what we need to start working on now. I need a better handle on what you do and who you think might have targeted you.”

  Zoe looked between the two men. They both sat at the edge of their seats, their elbows balanced on their knees as they leaned in, closing the circle like a football huddle. Zoe didn’t know where to start.

  “You both think it was me that was the target and not Lily?” Zoe shut her eyes as she realized how much she had willed the opposite to be true. In her mind, she had decided that some bad men had come after Lily and for whatever reason Lily was the victim of a tragedy. But if Lily had been the target, it would mean that Zoe was not. That she could go home and feel sad, but safe.

  “Not after I found the spyware on your phone. You’re a person of enormous interest to someone. And we need to know why.” Titus hammered his words as if he were nailing a sign in place.

  She had allowed herself to lapse into wishful thinking. She had lined up what little information she had and written a story that fit her purposes. It was an unscientific approach, inconsistent with how her brain usually worked. But her brain was usually building and testing ideas in a laboratory, not facing off against bad men with criminal intent.

  Facts. Science. Logic. Even if Titus had asked her to be brave enough to experience her emotions and deal with them in the here and now, she thought that that was probably a bad strategy. First, she didn’t like to swim around in her emotions. And second, the emotions clouded her thought processes, entangled them in superfluous data, drove her down roads that were dead ends, like the one that went, “surely they were coming after Lily, and I’m safe.” Nope. Zoe needed to plant both feet in reality.

  She took a deep breath and imagined herself in front of her whiteboard working out a problem. But the faces of the dead men in her bedroom, and Gage’s war face when he’d dragged her out from under the bed formed a barrier between her and logic. Okay, shoving her emotions aside might not be possible, so she’d work to tuck her reactions away the best that she could. She cleared her throat and looked at Gage “Ready?”

  His eyebrows came down low and flat, and he nodded.

  “I’m a scientist.” She pushed her glasses up her nose into place. “I do research and development in micro robotics. I went to undergrad with a dual major in biomedical engineering and software engineering. Lily lived in the dorm room next door to me freshman year. We liked each other because we both kept our heads in our books. She was working on a degree in accounting. But I’ll get to that in a moment.” Already her thoughts were jumbled. She needed to untangle the knots to make this as simple and thorough as possible.

  Gage stalked over to the table and snapped up the pen and pad. He read over the two items Zoe had written there, then flipped that page over to a fresh sheet as he sat down beside her.

  Zoe rubbed sweaty palms over her thighs. “My senior year, I was working on my honor’s research project, investigating the usefulness of biomarkers that I’d discovered in human blood.”

  Titus raised a questioning brow. She held up a hand and said. “First things first. What are your clearance levels?”

  Titus put his hand on his chest. “I’m top secret and above.”

  Gage nodded. “I’m top secret.”

  Zoe nodded. Top secret. They were safe to read into some of the program. Certainly not all of it. Gage and Titus would need enough to know the who, what, and why of the people who had their business cards on the table. They didn’t need to understand the scientific minutiae. Zoe stared at the floor between her feet and was grateful that both of the men gave her time. She decided she needed to walk them through her timeline.

  “I was doing some research one night for an ethics paper, and I came across something called the Innocence Project. This project’s goal was to free those who had been imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. About seventy-five percent of those who were later exonerated had been convicted based on eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony depends on human memory, and we know without a scientific doubt that human memory is malleable. Memories can be seeded and otherwise changed by the passage of time, the lighting, the person’s mood, their profession or more insidiously, the choice of words in a police officer’s question. That’s what I ultimately wrote my paper about, the ethics of using information that we can scientifically prove is flawed to take away someone’s freedom.” Zoe pushed her hair behind her ears, then got up to pace. She wanted to move away from the intensity of the men’s scrutiny. It felt too heavy, and she needed to move her muscles and look at furniture rather than their faces.

  “DNA testing is newer than
some of the Innocence Project cases that I read about. DNA is costly. The labs are backed up sometimes by a year or more. A lot of people simply don’t have access to getting their DNA tested to substantiate their innocence.” Zoe looked up and the men nodded. “I had been doing experiments on blood biomarkers. For example, I developed a method to tell if blood came from a female or a male.”

  “These are hormones?” Gage asked.

  “No, hormones fluctuate and can be changed, for example, if a person is undergoing gender reassignment and is using hormone therapy, then that changes the blood levels outside of the norm for birth gender. The markers I identified are stable within the subject over time. They cannot be altered by manipulation.”

  “Would you be able to give me examples of some markers?” Gage asked.

  “Well, two that you might know about are blood types like A, B, or O and their corresponding Rh factors. That’s positive or negative. I’m A positive. Gage, you’re O positive.”

  Gage sent her a speculative look.

  “It’s on your dog tags. Those biomarkers are the ones that most people know about. I have more. Lots more.”

  “All right. Biomarkers. Go on,” Titus replied.

  “In grad school, my thesis was built around developing a presumptive field test for law enforcement, so they could rule out an individual who had come under scrutiny for a crime.”

  “Do blood biometric analysis in the field,” Gage said as he scribbled onto the pad.

  “My aim was to develop a field rule-in rule-out test. It’s meant to merely be a presumptive test.”

  Zoe had paced to the far side of the room, and Gage swiveled to look at her. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “In forensic science, they have the ability to do some testing at the scene of a crime. If, for example, they see something streaked on the floor that looks like blood, they can use a reagent to test it. The results are not definitive—they will simply tell the forensic tech that either the substance isn’t blood or that the substance possibly is blood. If they get a positive presumptive test result—mind you, it could be a false positive—then the tech knows that they should process the area as if it were blood and take the information back to the lab for further analysis.”