After an IED attack on a convoy of marines in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar killed one of his special ops buddies, Cormac had taken it upon himself to find some justice. Armed with a blowtorch and pair of pliers, he’d gotten the names and locations of those responsible. Late one night, he’d slipped out under the wire of the Al Asad Airbase where his 82nd Airborne Division was stationed. Went out into the town and attacked the Al-Qaida compound his sources had named.
Killed everyone inside.
To send a message.
That the message included the deaths of twenty-four unarmed Iraqis, half of them children, didn’t bother Cormac, but it did bother the brass. A special investigation ensued. Surveillance images were shown of Cormac behind the supply depot, slipping under the chain link fence. As far as the world knew, the incident was another senseless massacre by unknown forces. The media pegged it as a Shia-Sunni internal conflict, but everyone inside his unit knew who was responsible.
“That’s him,” Cormac said, pointing at Jake O’Connell walking across West End Avenue and stopping at the corner of 104th Street.
“Should we get out?” his partner asked.
“No. Wait.” Cormac looked at him again. “I better get changed.”
The truth was, the Middle East never confused Cormac. Death fascinated him, and that scared other people.
Which was good.
Fear was an effective weapon.
After a hushed discharge, Cormac did a rotation through the private security services, Academi and the rest, but he didn’t like to take orders. So he branched out on his own. Getting kicked out of Special Forces was an inconvenience, mostly because it removed his easy access to his favorite toys, but it opened a vista of new opportunities. In Special Forces, killing was just a part of the job, a reward for the low pay.
But on the outside, it was amazing how much you could get paid for murder.
▲▼▲
Jake fumbled with his keys, trying to open the apartment door.
Elle opened it. “Your brother is here.”
“What?” Jake replied, not understanding. It had been a long day at the office.
She swung the door in. Someone was on the couch. Eight years had passed since they last saw each other, but Eamon looked the same. He smiled at Jake.
Jake didn’t smile back.
“Why don’t you take Anna out to the park?” Jake whispered to Elle, striding in, throwing his suit jacket and briefcase on the entrance table. Under his breath he added, “Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did, but you weren’t—”
“Uncle Eamon is here!” Anna squealed from behind Elle, gripping the fabric of her mother’s skirt and glancing furtively at her uncle on the couch.
“I know, baby.” Jake stooped to catch his daughter and swung her off her feet. “And me and your uncle need to have a chat.” He brushed her blond hair back. “Is that okay? Do you think you could go for a walk in the park?”
Anna scrunched up her face in solemn deliberation. “Yes.”
“Good girl.” He put her down gently.
Jake waited until Elle and Anna were gone before walking into the living room. Rather than sit on the couch, he stood and faced his brother. He studied Eamon, that sledge of a nose broken in a schoolyard brawl but never fixed, the four-leaf clover tattooed on the side of his neck still proudly Irish. Now that he was closer, he saw Eamon’s eyes had aged and the confident mop of blond hair on his head was showing gray in the shaved sides.
“Didn’t know you were out.”
“Been a week already.” Eamon laughed. “Looks like we’re about to switch places.”
He must have heard about what was happening at Atlas. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“I bet that’s what that Donovan fella is saying, too.” The smile slid from Eamon’s face. “I spent a lot of time inside, and there’s one thing everyone in there has in common.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re all innocent.”
Jake rubbed his temples and sighed. “What do you want, Eamon? Come all this way to gloat?”
“That’s not nice, is it?” Eamon leaned forward on the couch, perched on the edge. “You don’t need to be an asshole. Never even invited me to your wedding. Never met your kid before.” He shrugged. “Beautiful girl, your Anna, and Elle is still the stunner.”
“What do you want?” Jake repeated.
His brother only ever showed up when he needed something, usually money, and trouble was never far behind. He must have gotten Jake’s address from their mother, but she hadn’t asked Jake for permission.
“Just wanted to say hello to my little brother, see if enough water had passed under the proverbial bridge.” Eamon held his hands wide. “Forgiveness and all that.”
“Give me a break.”
Jake stuck his hands in his pockets and rubbed his Silver Eagle coin with his right hand. With his left, he gripped the memory key Donovan had given him. Though he spent hours examining its contents on his computer, the only thing he understood offhand was a database with stacks of financial records connecting shell companies all over the world. That alone might be damaging, but there were directories of software as well. He didn’t trust any of the IT people at Atlas to have a look.
Eamon hung his head. “I’m here because I heard about Sean.” He looked up and stared Jake in the eye. “He was my friend, too.” Eamon stood and placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Jake called Sean’s Aunt Rita for details the day before. She said a bus killed him, a random traffic accident. It took two days for the police to identify him, from immigration cameras at Heathrow, because Sean hadn’t been carrying a wallet or any ID at the time of the accident.
Jake stood in silence, staring into space. He rubbed his face. “Yeah, I’m okay.” Having his brother there added to the surreal texture of the day.
“Want to get a drink?”
At least that was one thing they had in common. “Yeah, I do,” Jake replied.
In a few minutes they were next door in the Colcannon. You couldn’t throw a stone in New York without hitting the window of an Irish pub. It was nearly empty, and Jake and Eamon seated themselves at the bar, ordering two pints of Guinness and two shots of Jameson whiskey.
Just like old times.
Only two other people were in the place, quietly talking in a dim corner, and another man, limping, came in behind them and seated himself further down the bar.
“You go home and see Mom and Dad yet?” Jake asked.
“Not yet. And neither of them came to see me inside the last two years. You?”
“I go and see Mom from time to time, but she doesn’t come out of her bubble.” Jake looked at the floor. “I give her money, but I’m pretty sure Dad gets it somehow.”
“I’m sure he does,” Eamon agreed. “Do you know when the funeral is?”
Jake shook his head. It would cost a lot of money to fly the body home. Sean’s aunt had no money, and Sean had few friends at home to help her. He hadn’t thought about that. Sean had money, lots of it, but Jake had no idea what would become of his fortune now that he was dead.
Jake now realized how little he knew about what his friend had been up to for the past few years. We only see two things in people, Jake’s dad used to say. What we want to see, and what they show us. Neither was the truth, and neither seemed to sum up Sean.
Eamon raised his shot glass. “A good funeral’s better than a bad wedding. We should give Sean a proper send off.”
“Yeah.”
Sean would have liked that. A good party. Jake raised his shot. “Cheers.” Downed it with his brother.
Eamon winced from the bite of the whiskey. “Are you going to come upstate, see the old boys?” He motioned to the bartender for two more.
Jake took a deep breath. “I have a family now, Eamon, and I don’t want all the bad stuff to come near us.” They grew
up rough, and while Jake had escaped that life, Eamon stayed close to the old gang, who still dabbled in petty crime—and sometimes more serious stuff, like the felony conviction that had landed Eamon behind bars.
“Can’t ignore where you come from, Jake.” Eamon took a deep drink from his Guinness. “Anyway, seems you’ve moved up the food chain. Whatever I did was small potatoes compared to that boss of yours.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Eamon finished his pint in two more gulps and dangled the empty glass in the air, asking for another. The bartender nodded as he brought their second round of shots. “You remember that place in the woods where we used to hide?”
Jake remembered. A treehouse he and Sean had built deep in the woods. In a rare act of camaraderie, Eamon had helped, stealing timber from local construction sites. Rough boards nailed together, hidden in the branches. At the time it seemed like a palace, a sanctuary they could escape to from their foster homes. They spent weeks hiding in the woods sometimes, living off the land in the summer, starting when Jake was barely ten years old, Sean eleven, and Eamon fourteen. Runaways.
“Those were some good times.” The second round of shots arrived, and Eamon picked up one and downed it.
They were. Jake remembered having fun, even with his brother. Days spent lounging in the sun, swimming in a nearby creek. Now that part of the forest was mostly new development, condos and strip malls, but the old farm was still there.
“He was my friend, too,” Eamon said again as he placed his shot glass down. “There’s something else I learned on the inside.”
Jake looked away. “And what’s that?” He didn’t reach for the other shot next to Eamon.
“There’s no such thing as coincidences.”
“Which means?”
“Your best friend getting killed in a random accident when all this stuff is going on with your boss,—”
“So what do you think happened?” Jake cut him off. The accident report from London was definitive. The bus driver swerved to avoid a bicyclist and jumped the curb, hitting and killing Sean.
“What was Sean involved in?” Eamon asked. “Tell me Sean wasn’t involved with Donovan in some way.” He leaned close and stared Jake dead in the eyes. “Tell me that, and I’ll go.”
Jake gripped the memory key from Donovan in his pocket. He knew Sean had done something for Donovan in return for a favor—a well-paying job for Jake so he could provide for his wife and new daughter. Jake wanted to shout and scream about it, but he didn’t trust his brother. The same way he didn’t trust his father. Hard-won wisdom. But not saying anything said a lot.
Eamon lifted one finger and pointed it at Jake. “I knew it. I feckin’ knew it. Who was Sean working for?”
Jake didn’t know all the details, but he knew a little. “He was doing a lot of work for Bluebridge, here in New York, out in Hong Kong, all over.”
“Bluebridge?” Eamon frowned, then his eyes widened. “Yeah, I heard of them. On TV all the time.” His eyes narrowed. “Are they connected to Donovan?”
The connection dawned on Jake just as Eamon said it. “Donovan said Bluebridge was setting him up, framing him for stuff he didn’t do,” Jake blurted before thinking.
Eamon pounded the bar with one fist. Everyone turned and looked at them. “You see, I knew it. Tell me what you know, Jakey. These bastards might think they’re above the law, but they’ll not get past me.”
It was all still a shock. Jake’s mind spun, connecting the dots. But there was one thing he did know. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
He didn’t want his brother involved, not in any way.
“What?”
Jake looked Eamon in the eye. “I don’t trust you. Plain and simple.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Go home, Eamon.” Jake picked up his Guinness and took a sip, then put it back down. “Wherever home is for you now.”
Eamon didn’t move. “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”
“Go home,” Jake repeated.
“Jesus Christ, Jake, we were kids. I’m sorry.”
Jake stared at his beer, an image forming in his mind of the frozen interior of a car. “Just go.”
8
Outskirts of Shenzhen
China
Jin rubbed her eyes. “Can I come in?” she asked.
Wutang blinked at her through the open door of his apartment, a mop of unruly black hair disheveled above his boyish face. “Jin?”
“Who do you think?” She rolled her eyes. She was right in front of him. “Can I come in?” she asked again.
“Uh, yeah.” Wutang nodded, rubbing his face. “Just a second.” He disappeared, but left the door ajar.
Jin heard him shuffling around. He had to be picking things up, trying to tidy. She’d dropped in without warning. “You don’t need to clean up for me,” she tried to tell him, but it was futile.
She knew he had a crush on her. They’d been working together on a Ministry of Public Security project for more than six months, on and off.
“I’m…” More noises from behind the door. “One second.”
Something crashed. Wutang swore under his breath. Jin felt nervous and exposed in the hallway. She couldn’t take it anymore, so she pushed the door open and stepped through.
Inside she found Wutang standing with an armful of clothes. A sock fell and he tried to grab it but missed. A flat plasma display covered one wall of the small apartment, a first person shooter game frozen mid-gunfire. Take-out containers covered the table in front of the couch.
“Sorry for appearing out of nowhere like this.” Jin bowed her head. “Go ahead. Finish cleaning, I’ll wait here, Wutang.” This wasn’t his real name. It was Liu Wei, but she knew that was what all his friends called him. “Can I call you that?”
Wutang nodded awkwardly and ran off with the pile of clothes. “It’s horrible what happened to Shen Shi, I’m so sorry…” He disappeared into his bedroom with the pile of clothes.
Of course everyone knew.
It was all over the news.
Jin was still trying to erase the image of the yawning abyss of the elevator shaft. She had almost stepped into it herself, reaching out to join Shen Shi before she managed to stop herself, her mind realizing something wasn’t right. The rest was a blur. The police seemed to arrive within seconds. There was confusion over what had happened. Did he force the doors open? No. Did he jump? No, it was an accident. Did you push him? What?
The terror in the back of her mind was that this wasn’t an accident. Nobody knew that Shen Shi was working for Yamamoto, not even her friends—except perhaps Sean, but he was dead. It was a secret project. Nobody knew he was there when Yamamoto died.
Except her.
But that wasn’t entirely true, she realized. The heads of the banks in that room had seen Shen Shi, as well as Yamamoto’s body guards. So some people knew Shen Shi was involved, or at least, had seen his face, which was much the same thing. That room had been packed with powerful people, and one of them might have killed Yamamoto to keep him quiet.
And they might have killed Shen Shi as well.
Their data mining company was registered under Shen Shi’s name—she didn’t have a Chinese passport—so somebody investigating might not know she was involved, and nobody knew that he’d shown her the data. At least, she didn’t think anyone knew.
Yet.
Miss, one of the policemen had said to her after Shen Shi’s accident, Miss Huang, we need you to come downstairs. We’re going to look at the footage on the closed circuit cameras. And that’s when the terror really blossomed in her mind. The cameras. They lined the hallway leading up to the elevator. It was a new building, completely wired.
Completely monitored.
As soon as the officers allowed her to leave, she ran to her apartment and grabbed a bag. She started up an app for the augmented reality glasses she and She
n Shi had been working on as a research project. It did real-time facial recognition of the people you looked at, comparing them to scrapes of social networking sites. Ninety percent of people in Shenzhen had social media accounts. It was a powerful way to view the people around you.
After grabbing some personal things, she retreated to a café and sat with her back to the wall, watching the names and details of people flash in her augmented reality glasses. By cross-correlating with other databases, it pulled not just their names, but their addresses and even their occupations, compiling the information on her display. Anyone it couldn’t identify was highlighted in red.
She’d spent a frightening day and night watching red haloed people come in and out of the café.
And she couldn’t stop thinking of Shen Shi’s laptop the whole time.
She had it.
The one with the data from Yamamoto.
Jin had picked it up from the table when they got up to leave, slipped it in her purse at the elevator. If somebody had been watching them, they might not have noticed, but now, after a day of investigating, it had to be obvious the laptop was missing.
There was only one other person who could have it.
Jin.
Was it a coincidence that Shen Shi fell into an empty elevator shaft two days after Yamamoto’s sudden death? Yamamoto had survived a previous heart attack; perhaps a second attack had simply been a matter of time. When she looked up elevator accidents in the café, she found out thousands of people died that way every year. The poka-yoke—the fail safes—should have kicked in, but it was a new building. They were already calling it a faulty systems installation in the social media feeds. But what about Sean Womack? Adding a random traffic accident to this cluster of deaths seemed beyond chance.
Jin had two choices. Either it was a coincidence, in which case she made herself look suspicious by running and hiding. Or it wasn’t, and some unknown forces were hunting down and killing people associated with the data Shen Shi dug up. It wasn’t hard to decide on the cautious approach.
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