by Fiona Quinn
I paced again. “I think Sylanos is alive. The party was a whole big set-up, necessitated when somebody at CIA accidentally showed their hand. Sylanos staged his death, and now he’s free to act with impunity.”
Striker had scrunched down on the sofa with his head resting on the back cushion, his arms folded nonchalantly across his chest and his legs spread wide in front of him. “I can’t go back to Command with ‘Lynx has been dreaming about rats, so Sylanos must be alive.’”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Of course you can’t.” Then I stopped to consider the next step. “I’m sure that someone will make a mistake at some point. It’s not easy to pretend you’re dead for very long.”
Striker angled his head. “I have a feeling that sentence is leading us to a new topic.”
I smiled. “Very smart boy. Striker, when Frith approached Iniquus, what name did he call me?
“I don’t know, why?”
“Can you find out?” I asked.
Striker pulled out his phone and punched a number on quick dial. He asked whoever it was on the other line to send over the recording of the first Frith interview. I went back to the window to brood while Striker fetched his computer.
We waited. I tapped an impatient toe. I would lay money on the answer to my question, but I still needed proof. When the file popped into Striker’s e-mail, I sat down thigh to thigh with him to watch. I only needed to see the first thirty seconds.
“Striker, he calls me Lexi Sobado.”
“This means something to you?”
“Yes. When I solve the puzzle that saved him, I was working for Spyder. I was Alex, no last name. No one knew about me; you didn’t even know about me.”
“True.”
“When I signed on at Iniquus, I used my formal name with my maiden name in the middle. My contracted name is India Rueben Sobado. That’s the name on all of my IDs. In the field, my call name is Lynx. All of my bills and public records are India A. Rueben or India R. Sobado as well.”
“Yes. . .”
“I was only Lexi Sobado to my friends. Never professionally. Never publicly. How did he know to call me Lexi?”
I felt the electricity run through Striker. “Shit.”
“How he knew me, how he thought I had saved his life, so he owed me. That’s confused me since you mentioned it in Texas. I think I need to know more about Frith. He’s not feeling very much like a friend to me.” I shut the computer lid. “And I need to get back to headquarters. I’ll bet he laid that line about Omega surveillance to keep me away, and he wants me kept away for a reason. Did Iniquus find out how Omega could have real-time surveillance on the Iniquus compound?”
“No. And believe me, they used a fine-toothed comb trying to figure it out.” He stood up and helped me to my feet, starting me toward the couch.
I stopped and caught his arm. “I want to move to the barracks ASAP.”
“This house is safe, Chica. I can keep you safe here. You’re making remarkable progress with Laura’s help. I’m afraid of undoing that.”
“I think Frith wants me to stay away from headquarters. I believe it’s because Omega has zero chance of getting to me there. And that as long as I’m not sequestered on Iniquus grounds, I’m vulnerable.”
“Let me get this straight. You think Frith played at being your friend so he could gather intel about you from Iniquus? And keep you vulnerable? Why would he even give us a heads up, in that case?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. Striker, I want to go back to headquarters. I have a lot of puzzling to do. I want to know what Frith’s angle is. I’m dead certain he isn’t the good guy he makes himself out to be. I don’t feel safe here anymore. I have the heebie-jeebies.”
“From Omega?” he asked quietly.
“When I think of Omega, I feel greasy sick to my stomach. The heebie-jeebies belong to Frith.” As soon as that thought washed through my mind, a wave of nausea hit me, and I leaned forward to vomit. It landed in a puddle between Striker’s feet. I stooped with my hands on my knees, trying to regain my equilibrium. Striker pressed his hands to my shoulders to steady me.
I looked down at the mess. “Oh, god. I think that was the last peanut butter smoothie I’ll ever be able to drink.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and slowly stood up.
“Yeah. Me too,” Striker said.
Thirty-Two
Andy won the clean-up-the-puke prize. I had to go back to my room to wash myself off and brush my teeth. I was lying with a cold rag over my forehead, reading a file, when a knock sounded at my door and Striker stuck his head in. “Command wants to talk to you.”
“When?”
“Now. Spencer’s on Skype.”
“Okay, but afterwards, I need to show you some puzzle pieces I’ve put together.”
“Roger. Come on.” Striker put his hand on the small of my back and marshaled me down the hall. He had a computer set up on the eating table. On the screen, I saw Mr. Spencer swirling a whiskey glass and staring off in the distance.
“Good evening, sir.” I pulled his attention to the camera with my voice.
Mr. Spencer looked tired to me – like he’d had a long day that wasn’t over yet. He sat quietly for a moment peering into the screen, then tipped his bourbon down his throat. “I was prepared for worse,” he said. “I saw pictures of you when your team pulled you from that wreck of a plane down in East-by-god-Texas. Death warmed over. You almost look like you again.”
“Thank you, sir.” I sat stiffly at the end of the table in the great room, feeling small for the moment under the cathedral ceilings and Spencer’s gaze.
“Striker and I have been chatting about you. Congratulations, by the way, on getting your face taken off the post office walls. You’re no longer a wanted woman. By the law, that is. Someone wants you, though. Bad.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
Spencer waved his empty glass in the air. “You’re an asset, Lynx. We protect our assets. And now we’ve got someone footing the bills past and present, so we’re in it to win it, as my friend Hilary likes to say.” Spencer pulled a glass stopper from the cut crystal decanter to the right of him and poured another thumb of amber liquid into his glass. “Well, little lady, Striker told me what all you’re working on. Lots of choices, and no clear route. Striker says you’ve been picking up Assembly lines. That name’s casting through your various scenarios. The Assembly’s not a big fish. It’s a Moby Dick. If the Assembly is involved, this mess is going to take a long time to unknot.”
I rubbed my palms together under the table. Mr. Spencer didn’t usually make me feel nervous. Maybe I was afraid he was going to tell me to leave it alone. That was fine if the Assembly connection turned out to be coincidental. And so far, I hadn’t found them with their hands in a criminal cookie jar. Their members seemed to stand in the general area of the cookie jar, jiggling the change in their pockets, whistling a distracted tune while others reached in and took what they wanted. Especially when it came to policy making and signing government contracts. Extremely lucrative government contracts. On the other hand, leaving the Assembly alone was not so fine if they were the ones writing the script, for all of the bad that had been happening to me and mine. “I understand, sir.”
“I’m not sure you do. I need you to be discreet as you move forward and not step on any toes. Don’t get me wrong. If there are laws being broken, if America’s getting smacked around, it’s our duty to stop it. And stop it we will.” Mr. Spencer pointed at me with his bourbon in hand. “But Lynx, from what we know of you, you will not go gentle into that good night but will rage, rage against what has come against you.”
“Dylan Thomas. Very nice, sir.”
He nodded with pursed lips and slid his tongue over his teeth, making a sucking sound. “Yes, well, now you’ve got the Assembly sitting at the table. You’ve got Omega sitting across from them.”
“Perhaps companionably beside them, sir,” I said.
Spencer acknowledged that with a slight lift of his drink. “There’s a question mark at the end of the Frith sentence. And another one about Sylanos’s health and well-being, which is a shame. I liked the idea of Marcos Sylanos moldering in a grave somewhere. That case has been a thorn in my backside for over a decade now. We would have taken Sylanos into custody when you first solved the puzzle back when we had you tucked away in the safe house, but our client’s orders were to watch him and see where he led us.”
I leaned forward. “Do you know why, sir?”
“They were trying to implicate some heavy hitter at the Pentagon. My opinion is they should have skimmed the cream off the top, and watched the operation to see what happened with management gone. The cartel would have gotten sloppy and been easy pickings. This. . . it’s more complicated than it seemed. And to be honest, it always seemed like the damned Minotaur’s labyrinth to me. Soft treads, Lynx.”
“Yes, sir.”
He raised his glass to me. “And someday, I want you to tell me exactly how you managed to single-handedly escape from a Honduran fucking prison in a hurricane, steal a plane, and make it to Texas. You’re an amazing woman; you never cease to fascinate us.” He took a sip. “Yup. An awesome asset. We’ll do what we can to support you.”
“Thank you, sir. Good night.” My screen went black. “That was merry,” I said.
“He’s worried. I agree with Spencer; I don’t think you fully appreciate the power of the Assembly. I know you’ve got the idea on paper, but it feels different when you have to dance with them.”
“Speaking of which, there was that thing I wanted to show you.” I got up and headed back to the Puzzle Room. Striker followed along behind. After digging around in a drawer, I handed two photos to Striker. “That’s James Vega.”
“Remind me who he is?”
We moved over to sit at the table. “He’s the man Abuela Garcia told me inherited the Honduran prison delivery-and-torture job from Amando Sylanos when Amando took another job in the States.”
Striker nodded and looked at the photo again. “He doesn’t look Latino.”
“His family has been in America for generations. He lives in Miami. Guess what?”
“He’s an Assembly man,” Striker’s voice was dry and tight.
“Bingo. Guess what else?”
Striker looked at the next picture of two men in suits at a political dinner. “He knows Attorney General Noble,” he said under his breath. “This was a while ago. Vega looks considerably younger.”
“This picture was taken at a thousand-dollar a plate fundraising dinner for the 2000 Florida US Senate race. Dithers was on the ballot.” I pointed at the photo.
“Did Vega play a political role?”
“He was the attorney general for Florida at the time. Jim Noble was the assistant attorney general. They each gave a speech that night.”
Striker gave a low whistle.
“Not only that. Look here.” I moved my finger down the photograph to the right corner. There was an empty table. I picked up my magnifying glass and handed it to Striker. All of the tables in the picture were so crowded that people could barely get their knees under the cloth, and here was an empty table without so much as a fork out of place. In front of the plates were nametags. I pointed to the tags.
Striker read aloud. “Julio Rodriguez, and the next one you can see probably says Maria Rodriguez.”
“If these are all Sylanos’s people, that’s a twelve-thousand dollar donation.”
Striker looked at me. “There’s more?”
“Yes. On his federal taxes, Vega lists Omega as his employer.” I stopped to smile. “Hey, that rhymes.”
Striker looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Clarification. Vega was a politician turned torturer for Omega. He took his victims to Honduras, where he housed them in Alejandro’s prison, which we believe belongs to Sylanos.”
“Looks that way. Though maybe not in that order. Fact: Vega was attorney general for Florida in 2000. Fact: Abuela Garcia and Elicia both confirmed that this man brought prisoners down to Honduras on a private plane, and he’s the one who beat those prisoners. Abuela Garcia said that Vega started the job when Beth married Amando. Beth married Amando eighteen years ago. Vega’s two jobs overlapped.”
“No shit?” Striker’s hands were on his hips, his legs wide apart. Soldier boy. “And he was on the Assembly roll all that time?”
“From the time he won the election for Attorney General. More facts: Vega started listing Omega as his employer only three years ago. Before that time, Vega was a freelance political analyst, making seven figures on paper. Fact: Elicia said that the most recent time she saw Vega had been about a week before the storm, before the unidentified men showed up asking questions about the prison and an American woman.”
“That means those unidentified men, whom we assumed were looking for you, were someone other than Assembly, Sylanos Cartel, or Omega, or they would have had access to the prison, and would have known that you were there already.”
“It’s possible they were looking for someone else.”
Striker scratched a thumbnail between his eyes. “That doesn’t feel right.”
“I agree. Think back to when our team searched for my prison: is there any possibility at all that someone could have picked this up on surveillance prior to Randy and Axel’s first trip down to Honduras? Maybe someone sniffed a cell conversation?”
Striker was silent, his fingers laced and resting on his head. Thinking mode. Engaged. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Chica I don’t remember. It could be that I took a cell call off campus. Why? What are your thoughts?”
“That someone else was looking for me, picked up on something along the way, and hired some goons to go check it out.”
“Which means Axel’s on a wild goose chase.”
“No. It would mean that Axel is a hero. He’s saving hundreds of lives. We won’t know until he gets back and can be debriefed whether he helped my situation or not.”
Thirty-three
The next day, Deep peeked into my room where I lay on the floor with my sock-covered feet up on the wall, thinking.
“Hey, Lynx? Can you come to the situation room for a minute?”
“What’s up?” I slowly swung myself to sitting position and adjusted my shirt into place.
“Rumblings down in Florida,” Deep’s eyes glittered with excitement.
“More info?” I asked, reaching for his outstretched hand, letting him pull me to my feet.
“Gater went down to try to lay his hands on Brody Covington.”
“Oh, wow.” Deep and I moved as quickly as I could manage back toward the Puzzle Room. I was excited about the possibility of having some more answers.
“B. Henry Covington was picked up last night,” Deep said.
I followed Deep into the room and over to the desk. “What have you got?”
“Tape from the arrest. Gater’s on line to talk to you.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Orlando. He got the phone call around oh-three-hundred.”
I looked at the wall clock as I pulled my chair under me and sat down. It was 10:30 Sunday morning. On the computer screen, there was a static page from a video. Gater was eating a sandwich in the box in the upper right corner.
“Hey, Gater. Do they have our man?”
“No,” Gater spoke past the bite he was chewing.
“No?” Disappointment pulled at the corners of my mouth. “Wrong guy?”
He swallowed and swiped the back of his hand over his lips. “Watch the tape, ma’am. See what you think. They had the guy’s ID – my buddy said it looked almost right, hair was different, weight was different. The police haven’t booked him, so they don’t have height or prints.”
I pressed play. The footage was from a police car camera. The time stamp at the bottom said 01:45 this morning. A man was hobbling down an empty city street, looking repeatedly over his shoulder. The police cruiser followed slow
ly behind him for several blocks. Then the guy stooped to pick up a rock, and hurled it towards the patrol car.
With the car’s headlights on him, I could see blood dripping from the guy’s nose. One eye was swollen shut, his clothes were ripped and dirty, and one arm dangled lifelessly at his side.
The officers got out of the car and moved towards him. The man picked up another rock and threw it. There was little power behind the throw, and the rock landed a few feet in front of him.
“Stay away. Stay away from me,” the guy screamed.
“Sir, you’re hurt. We’re police officers. We want to help.”
“Police? No. No. Don’t hurt me anymore.”
The officers were in view of the camera now. Both of them held up their hands to show they were unarmed. They were circling slowly towards the injured man.
“Sir, we’re the good guys. This is Officer Mulhainey. I’m Officer Orloff. We only want to help you. Get you medical attention.” The voice coming from the policeman on the left had a placating quality. It didn’t work.
“Good? No one is good. No one is safe.” The guy didn’t sound doped or drunk. He sounded terrified. “I did nothing illegal. You guys already beat me up once tonight. I don’t want to die. Don’t come any closer to me. HELP! HELP!” The guy’s screams were high-pitched. This was not the ranting of someone mentally impaired. This was panic —deep down, gut-wrenching fear. I sat further forward in my chair completely, taken in by the scene.
“Sir, something very bad has happened to you. What happened? Who hurt you?” Mullhainey asked.
“The police did this to me. I was watching TV, having a beer, getting ready to go to bed. BOOM. They broke down my door. They grabbed me.” The man was working his way slowly backwards with every step the officers made. They were moving farther and farther from their car. The policemen must have realized this. They stopped moving.
“I said, ‘Show me your warrant. Why are you here?’” he whimpered, his jaw quavering. “They beat me. ‘What’s the code? What’s the code?’ I don’t know the code. I don’t have the code. Julio’s dead. There are no more codes.”
