In just over two hours he found himself on the road to St. Louis, half asleep, lost in thought. “Find the threat. Neutralize, or whatever you call it… don’t get dead.”
He’d almost forgotten Annie’s admonition. She’d consider me a fail on that second one. Overreaction.
Despite his dismissal, the pain radiating through his chest didn’t feel like an overreaction. And a double failure since I haven’t neutralized that threat. The fact that originally Flynne was the threat had no bearing on the case. Maybe.
The phone didn’t have internet, but his seatmate bolted down the aisle to the restrooms and left a smartphone laying in the seat. It took Keith half a minute to find Erika’s Twitter feed, read the hashtags, and clear the search history from the app. He set it on the floor and hoped the guy would think it fell at some point.
The tweets told an interesting story, but he focused on the latest. Cha-ching hinted at them getting a car. Leaving. Would they come home, or would they move on? Flynne would move. It’s how she thought. But what about Erika? Would she encourage her to work their way back toward Rockland, or would she try to keep them put?
His seatmate returned, almost frantic in an obvious search for the “missing” phone, and sank into the seat at the sight of it. “Thought I lost it.” the guy muttered as he snatched it off the floor.
Keith nodded and pretended to fall asleep. A hundred miles later, his phone buzzed. It would be Mark. No one else had the number. Well, except maybe Tyler.
You didn’t even bother to sign the AMA form.
Leaving without telling anyone meant that he didn’t have to listen to the “against medical advice” spiel. Keith shot back a quick, I think they got the message.
You okay?
A truthful answer was too complicated. The abbreviated version meant enough evasion to be deceptive. He tried for middle ground. I will be. The memory of a text he’d gotten before he left the hospital prompted him to add, If you want to know what God says about something, look it up in the Bible. Random verses taken out of context are almost meaningless.
Several minutes passed before the next text arrived, telling him to try not to get himself injured anymore, reminding him to purchase tiny wire cutters, and thanking him for not making something up to go with the verse. It ended with, So what DOES that verse mean?
Exhaustion slammed into him and bowled him over as he read those words. He shot back a reply about how it talked about the persecution of the church before saying goodnight. Need to sleep if I’m going to be any good to Erika and Flynne.
People could say what they wanted but putting his bunker in Texas had been a no-brainer. For one thing, being the only state on its own power grid made it essential. Using solar and wind power for most of his needs meant he rarely needed to access that grid. The dilapidated farmhouse surrounded by dirt and flatlands wouldn’t attract anyone—not with three German shepherds ready to take off a hand or half a face if someone came too close.
The downstairs—looked like it had only had a lick and a promise in the housekeeping department over the past… fifty or sixty years. However, go upstairs or down into the secure basement, and everything shifted into luxury and high tech respectively. Mark would sleep where he could hear what was going on and work where he could watch.
Dust flew up behind him as Mark rattled into the yard in a pickup that had seen better days… and years. He snatched his weekender from the seat beside him and climbed down. It never failed to amuse him to see the rickety, rusty windmill turning in the breeze.
A glance at the modern setup across the road—showed the place people would look if they came calling. There they’d find the computer setups, the solar and wind generators—everything that got rerouted to him in safe, storable bursts.
Thirty miles from the nearest town meant no one bothered him or the men who ran his cattle ranch. Just the way he liked it.
He wanted a bath—a long, hot, couldn’t-get-girlier-if-he-tried bath. The papers waiting for him in the printer tray when he keyed into the basement meant he wouldn’t. Ones and zeroes. Each double space cut off a word. Sure, anyone with half a brain could figure it out, but it would take time—time that the ones watching monitors needed to get in and neutralize the problem.
Not that they’d ever had to.
Deciphering took time, but the message was clear. Call Jehnson. Charles Jehnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security. He never knew what kind of news to expect from the man. It took ten minutes to set up the routing to make it look like it came from a cellphone in Rockland. The fact that it technically did helped.
“Cho?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cho has left The Agency. Marco Mendina at your service.”
“Couldn’t you use a more original name than ‘Marco’?”
The complaint was a common one. “My parents named me what they did for a reason. I honor that.”
“Gotta say… you don’t even sound yourself. You’re good.”
It wouldn’t work. Why Jehnson thought it might made no sense to him. “You had something to discuss, I believe.”
“If you can get down to business, so can I. I’ve got three things for you. First. I looked into Langat’s tracker. It and the detail were paid for by an anonymous donor to the Somalian refugee relief work.”
Mark was too tired not to play the game. “And where does the money track to?”
“That’s the second thing. So far, it dead ends with a group that has ties to Anastas.”
His gut churned at the thought of what a trafficker would want with Somalian refugees. “You’ve got to find out who it is.”
The snarky, crass retort Jehnson threw at him rankled more than the implied stupidity of the statement. Jehnson laughed at his own joke before shifting to serious with the ease of a race car engine. “There’s rumblings in D.C. I don’t know why, but fingers are pointing in your direction. Watch yourself.”
The line went dead.
Shhhttt… chith. Shhhttt… chith. The Tic-Tac container shook with each slow pull back and each jerk forward. Shhhttt… chith. Shhhttt… chith.
With one elbow propped on the desk, and a hand shaking the container at regular, rhythmic intervals, the other hand scrolled and clicked from screen to screen, reading… watching… searching. Nothing anywhere. It was as if Shin Kim, the North Korean agent, had disappeared into the back hills of nowhere. If all evidence didn’t point to someone else looking too, it might be presumed that he, and maybe his whole family, had died.
The US Marshal Service wasn’t nearly as brilliant at keeping their witnesses alive and hidden as they liked to hope. That meant someone else had to be hiding him. Did Mark Cho do it before he gave up The Agency, or was it Mendina’s doing?
Shhhttt… chith.
Marco Mendina—was it his real name, or was Mark a name like “the dread pirate Roberts” in that princess movie? Just passed along from one person to the next? And will he be as eager to turn it over to someone?
Casualties spoke loudest. No one liked the idea of losing people, but one had to do what one had to do. Decision made. Shhhttt… chith.
A punched button or two made the call. “Do you have Erika?”
“I did. They got away at the mall.”
The box of Tic-Tacs flew across the room, and tiny orange candies sprinkled down on carpeting as the top popped off. “I want her dead.”
“How?”
“I don’t care. Kill Erika but leave Flynne.”
The hesitation prompted a search for another box of Tic-Tacs. Green this time. Shhhttt… chith. Shhhttt… chith.
“Okay.”
Twenty-One
Guilt wrapped tentacles around his neck—choking until Mark bolted upright in bed. No sounds, no alarms, no shadows lingered where there shouldn’t be any. Only guilt squeezing until he couldn’t breathe.
Time to get up.
Gray and greenish yellow streaked across the sky, hinting of impending dawn. Mark stood there, soaking up every bit of light
as it inched closer to the horizon. Something deep within nudged him, pressed him to pray.
There was a problem with that. Several, actually. He didn’t know if he believed that prayer was anything other than private venting, he didn’t know how to pray even if he did think it would do some good, and he didn’t know what or whom to pray for.
“Could we start with the basics? Could You show me what prayer is and what it does?”
It seemed a bit brief… abrupt. Mark tried again. And again. After the third reattempt, he realized he’d just said the same thing in three or four different ways. “I think an amen is in order, because I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
Never had Mark felt more ridiculous than standing there waiting for some inspiration that never came. The sun glowed golden and shot pink streaks across the sky as it rose above the horizon. Still, nothing.
Time to work.
He stopped in the kitchen to grab a frozen breakfast burrito from the fridge before opening the basement door. A string on a chain overhead lit the raw-wood steps that led down into the dank, dusty, cobweb-laden basement. At the bottom, he opened a pair of doors, shoved aside several leisure suits from the seventies, stepped through an old wardrobe, slid the back panel aside, and keyed in his access code.
Stepping through the wardrobe as if into Narnia never got old—even for someone who looked as old as Mark did. The basement annex held everything he could need—food, recycled oxygen supply, and batteries to keep the place powered for weeks, all wrapped in a sleek, modern design that couldn’t have been more incongruous with the house it connected to.
His printer tray held three sheets of computerized Morse code. First up—the Todds. Liv Todd needed protection. For that matter, her parents probably did, too. Splitting them up in his mind was all it took to come up with a plan. He started a phone relay. It would take up to fifteen minutes for Tyler to pick up, but he could get it in motion before turning his attention to the next.
Otto Schmatloch.
The man wasn’t in danger. According to the message, Tyler had gotten their intel scrubbed by a professional. All of it had been fabricated—apparently for their benefit. Mona Detweiler wasn’t a threat to anyone or anything—except, perhaps, Bavarian pastries. That meant a threat existed, but they didn’t know where it originated. Schmatloch still needed protection, but from whom? And why the elaborate scheme to terrify an old man who hadn’t done anything worse than pummel a man for speaking crass to a lady back in ’62? He’d married that girl, too.
A smile formed. They’d honeymooned at Niagara Falls, Ontario. He could send Otto, Karen, and Brian there—or better yet, Paris and Henry. They were probably ready to get back to the west coast. This would keep them close. That message typed, he instigated another relay—a dozen messengers all over the world, back to home, and over to a designated server just for email coming from the bunker. Tyler had better check it and soon.
That left the last message. Longer than the others, it included a personal note from Corey. I can’t expect Mari to leave now—with a daughter and a husband missing. The things people are saying are vile, Mark! On the other hand, I don’t know how else to protect them but to get them out of there. Where is Brent? Where’s Alyssa? I don’t know how to find them. Help!
He knew where Brent was. It galled him to even think it, but he could thank Flynne for that. As far as he knew, it wasn’t possible for Brent to have taken his daughter without driving back from St. Louis and then returning again. Highly unlikely.
Just as the call to Tyler finally came through, the internet connected. As he typed in a search for any information on the missing Knupp girl, he greeted the kid and said, “Okay, the Todds.”
“I had an idea on that.”
Mark waited, but Tyler didn’t elaborate. “And that idea?”
“Oh, sorry. I thought maybe if they all went on a cruise or something—just far enough away that it gives one of the government agencies time to evaluate the threat and work out a plan to stop whoever it is. My aunt won a cruise once and didn’t know it until she got a call saying if she didn’t book and sail in the next week, she’d lose it. So, maybe…”
The idea worked with his—and didn’t. “Good idea—about the cruise. Put them on an Alaskan cruise asap. But not Liv. We need to go full detail on her. We will not fail her. So, Dan French has to die. Get an article in the paper about his suspicious death.”
Tyler’s low whistle filled his ears. “That’ll cost.”
“It’s worth it.” Considering the cost of a life, it was a bargain. “Get Karen and Brian on detail. We don’t have a job to worry about, but someone will have to do her finals and papers for the last couple of weeks of school.”
“She only has two in-person classes—large ones. So that should help.”
After considering a moment or two, Mark quadrupled the cost of the operation. “Get Suresh on the project. Have him find out who gave Liv Todd that information.”
“Ouch.”
Without waiting for further commentary, Mark moved onto his ideas about Otto Schmatloch and then moved to Corey. “Okay, this is what I want Corey to do. Give her access to the Wisconsin cabin and tell her to get the sister there. She’ll have to scare Mari Knupp into fearing for her other children’s lives, but it’s what it is.”
“I’ve been searching for any sign of the girl. Not one thing in her life points to runaway.”
“I didn’t think so. Something about this Brent Knupp thing is really weird. The daughter took it to new heights of weirdness that I almost wish I could hear Flynne’s description of.”
A strangled sound reminded Mark that he’d been insensitive. “She’s doing well, Tyler. I was angry with her, but she’s kept Erika alive and kept us in the loop. That’s not easy.”
“True…” Tyler sighed. “Okay, better get off. I’ll take care of this.”
He couldn’t resist a bit of teasing. “Want me to order you a Burberry tie?”
Only the trace of a chuckle reached him before the line went dead. Mark smiled—or rather, he tried to. His lips just wouldn’t cooperate.
The ridged edge of the cellphone case provided a satisfying zthwit! with each pass of a thumbnail over the ridges. Zthwit!
“—caught an anomaly at Callum Motors. A guy from St. Louis came in and bought a 2004 Echo. Cash. Thirty-two hundred.”
Zthwit! “How did you get this information?”
“Monitoring the motor vehicles site. I’ve been watching every sale that could possibly be connected to your names or to St. Louis from there. Then I go check the dealerships. The salesman was chatty.”
“Send me everything you know about it. I want license plate, color, make, model, average MPG—everything.” Zthwit!
“There’s something interesting about this guy—it’s why I called. I looked him up on social media.”
Seconds passed with the Zthwit! Zthwit! Zthwit! of impatience.
“He’s posted a lot of pictures and talked about Air BnB a lot. So, I did some digging. He lives at this house as kind of a manager or something. There’s a cottage out back that they rent…”
“Have an addy for me?”
The street address and a picture of the place appeared on the monitor to the right. A smile formed. “What would I do without a dag like you?”
“I’m not delusional. You’d find someone else to do your tech work, and I’d be hacking for ransom again.”
“I’ll wire the funds to your account when we’re off.”
When the phone nestled in its cradle again, fingers flew across a keyboard and five thousand US dollars dropped into a Canadian account. Zthwit!
A few more calls followed before a controller appeared. A few clicks and the search began. Dragon’s Circle. A hack of her home firewall in previous weeks had shown a tendency to choose that one most.
It offered live streaming of games in progress, and the scrolling began. Some names made sense, but none stood out. That they hadn’t been able to crack—the
username. Without social media as the guide, it left a hole in understanding someone good at keeping herself hidden.
An hour passed. Two. A game with LordFly proved futile. Dorpleganger also futile. Comparing the names to what little they did know about Flynne Dortmann—time consuming.
Computer whiz, dating an agent—maybe. That hadn’t been confirmed, but there had been a guy… Teen emoji-speak. Annoying. Semi-earth conscious…
CircDLife proved incorrect.
A weakness for bread, pasta, and Burberry—not necessarily in that order.
Zthwit! Zthwit! Zthwit!
Why did that feel familiar? Back, forward, in and out of games so fast it required changing accounts almost as quickly to avoid annoying the other players. They’d forgive an internet drop, but not a repeat performance. Gamers talked.
Zthwit!
The name appeared again. PuffBerryDragon. Zthwit!
One click and in.
Let the games begin. Zthwit!
“Level up!”
Erika looked up from a stuffy-looking book and said in a flat, unenthusiastic monotone, “Yay.”
“I’ve never gotten this fa— Oooh! Cool. Look at that. That’s supes awesome sauce!”
“Please, Lord. Make it stop. Maybe I should find Brent Knupp and beg him to off me now.”
Flynne paused the game and eyed Erika with as malevolent a glare as she could manufacture while still awed by the new scenes on the screen. “I probably threw away like the most awesomesauce job for you. So, like, stop being totes annoyzballs!”
“Aaak! My ears bleed!” Erika stood and said, “But I appreciate that you tried not to let someone else kill me.”
“Whatevs.”
A huff followed that. At the door, Erika added, “I’m going to take a bath.”
Without taking her eyes from the screen, Flynne shot back, “Don’t drop that book in the tub. It’s probably priceless.”
Hashtag Rogue Page 17
