“Maybe they put it under a wife’s name,” Hayden suggested.
“I looked.”
“Maybe they’re just smarter than us.”
Julie shook her head. “You can hide a lot of things. It’s more difficult in the digital age, but it’s possible. However, money isn’t one of those things. It always leaves a trail of some sort.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll put my people on it, but I’d almost guarantee that these two men are not the ones running this thing. They might be involved, but they aren’t in charge.”
That didn’t make sense to me. Luke was so sure that this was how it worked. Garner was in charge. He was the one running the entire show.
If Garner wasn’t in charge, who was?
And there was something else bothering me. There was something about the software. Emily hadn’t done a lot of checking into it, but she had a few notes on it. And what she’d found bothered me. There was something missing somewhere.
“Did Luke ever look at these notes before Sam had a chance to go through them?”
“No,” Hayden told me.
It wasn’t a huge discrepancy. There was just something…I had suddenly had this terrible headache. I wanted out of there; I needed a little fresh air. I think Hayden saw it in the look on my face. He snatched a key card off of Julie’s dresser and took my arm, leading the way to the door.
“Don’t be gone long,” Julie said, clearly distracted, but not enough to not have seen what he’d done.
We went down the back stairs and out onto a delivery dock. I paced for a few minutes, trying to wrap my mind around all the things that weren’t making sense, but had to make sense.
“What is it, Megan?”
“Do you still have those photographs from Peter’s funeral?”
Hayden’s eyebrows rose. “Of course. Why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. There’s something about this whole thing… You know, Peter thought they were stealing that software to use it to communicate?”
“Yeah?”
“What if that wasn’t the only thing they were using it for? What if there was more to it than that?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if someone showed them how to use it to trace people’s movements? What if the software was given to these people with the idea that it would allow them to communicate without being traced, but it was actually not only tracing these people, but also keeping track of everything they were doing? What if it was being used to allow a person to make it look as if someone else was doing what he really was?”
“I’m not following you.”
“What if a terrorist knew that the CIA was on to him? What if he used a coincidental situation to his advantage to make it seem as though his crimes had been halted, and then he went underground and used his own crimes to convince others that he was on the right side all along.”
“Megan, I—”
“Look.” I grabbed his hands and forced him to concentrate on me. “Let’s put all this in a time line. Three years ago, Dominic and Emily were in France trying to infiltrate the terrorist cell that had developed with assistance from the CIA. They were unaware of the CIA’s help in building this terrorist cell, but they knew it went much deeper than the college kids they were instrumental in taking down. Their investigation was interrupted by Amy arriving unexpectedly, causing Emily’s handlers to call an end to the whole thing, right?”
“Yeah. But it was less than three years.”
“Slightly less. At the same time, Peter was helping me build Dragon, and Luke was wrapping up his work with the CIA so that we could get married.”
“Okay.”
“Emily came home and worked for a few months at a desk job, but then quit and began delving deeper into the case, convinced that there was something more to it than her handlers were telling her.”
“Dominic said she was obsessed with it, convinced that there were a few bad nuts in the agency.”
“And he stole documents for her and helped her as best as he could.”
Hayden squeezed my hands and pulled away, pacing a little as he worked it through in his head as I was doing
“Then, within a few months after he returned home, Luke was pulled back into the operation when Peter discovered that someone in his company was selling his software without a license, allowing it to be used as some sort of method to communicate between members of the cell.”
Hayden nodded. “He disappeared shortly after reporting the whole thing to his supervisors—”
“Because a friend told him that the supervisor he reported to was bad, and he was going to attack at our wedding and kill us all.”
“Just like that?” Hayden’s eyebrows rose. “Seems a little extreme to me.”
I shrugged. “You didn’t see the way they burst into his house. Or the five guys who came after us at my beach house.”
“But attack a wedding?”
“They might have made it look like an accident of some sort.”
“Okay,” he said, sort of waving his hand to move on from the subject. “Luke disappears, supposedly to go join this man’s group to make sure you weren’t hurt.”
“Then Peter was killed in a car accident. Things were quiet for a while. Luke said he was running down potential leaks during that time. He was in California checking something out when Amber appeared in my office. He told me that Garner told him to follow up on it, to find out why Amber would come to me.”
“Amber led us to Kurt Sanchez and John Fuller.”
“Luke says that Sanchez worked with the CIA, providing the phones for the software. He says that he went to Peter to try to get out from under the deal, but they arrested him anyway. And he says that John Fuller is really a CIA agent called Jack Forrester.”
Hayden studied my face for a moment. “Do you remember how Fuller thought his office was bugged?”
I nodded. “Who do you think he was afraid of? The bad guys or the good guys? Luke said he was one of the bad guys and that after his arrest, Garner arranged to free him and send him home. But I’m wondering…”
“Are you beginning to doubt Luke?”
Immediately the feelings from last night crowded my thoughts, the way it had felt to face him in front of that altar, the way it had felt to be in his arms.
I shook my head. “I’m beginning to wonder if Luke was fooled by the bad guys.”
Hayden turned away, leaning over the edge of the dock for a brief second, like a man contemplating jumping from a bridge.
“The envelope Peter left Amber. There was nothing incriminating in it.”
“That always bothered me,” he said, glancing back at me.
“And the hard drive. It was corrupted, but the only thing on it was proof that Peter knew where Luke was after he disappeared.”
“Who would do that? What did they destroy to keep you from finding it?”
“Luke.”
Hayden nodded.
“Then, just a few weeks after Amber showed up, Emily was killed.”
“We still don’t know for sure why. We know it was that hitman that came after Dominic. But why? Why did he go after Dominic? Or was he after Amy?”
I shook my head. “He told Dominic it was him. I always assumed it was because he would have been the logical person for Emily to give her notes to. I mean, it’s pretty obvious the hitman set Dominic up for Emily’s murder. He intended to take him down one way or the other.”
“But what if it was more than that. Maybe Dominic knows something that even he doesn’t realize he knows.”
“What if we’re wrong, Hayden? What if the people we think are the bad guys are really just the ones trying to hunt the bad guy? What if the real bad guy is just playing us all against each other, playing a game of chess with real people? What if we’re all wrong here?”
“That’s exactly what I was beginning to think.”
The voice was new, a relatively high-pitched male voice. I turned to find m
yself looking into the dark, but friendly face of a stranger. Hayden immediately moved up beside me, reaching behind him for the gun that was normally stuffed in the back of his waistband. But it wasn’t there. Luke had insisted that we not bring guns to this meeting.
“Who are you?” Hayden demanded.
“Gerald Garner.” He studied the shock on our faces for a long second. “And you are Megan Bradford and Hayden Dubois.”
I closed my eyes briefly, hoping that my instincts were right. That what I’d seen in Emily’s files was really what I thought it was.
I stepped forward and held out my hand.
“Megan!” Hayden hissed, reaching out to stop me. But it was too late. Another man had appeared behind him and he quickly pulled Hayden’s arms back and slipped cuffs over his wrists.
“I think we have a lot to talk about, Mr. Garner,” I said.
His dark, wise eyes studied my face and he nodded.
“We do.”
Chapter 21
Luke
I pounded on Julie’s door, wondering what the hell was taking so long. I knew Emily’s notes were copious, but I’d not imagined it would take half the damn night to look through them.
Julie yanked her door open, the room behind her dark.
“Where are they?”
“Who?” Julie rubbed her eyes before looking me over, her eyes lingering on my surgically-altered face. “You’re Luke, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you realize that these notes make you look like an accomplice to all this bullshit?”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t know what kind of game Megan’s trying to pull, but I can’t publish these papers. It’s pretty obvious that someone is trying to make these CIA agents look like the bad guys—including you. But, as far as I can tell, they’re just doing their jobs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you bother to look through the notes before you had her bring them up? Did you even realize what the publication of these things would do to you personally? If you guys had bothered to do a little background check—”
“Where’s Megan?”
She shrugged. I pushed past her and marched into the room, searching for my wife. She wasn’t there. Neither was Hayden.
“Where are they?”
“They went out for air hours ago. I thought they’d be back, but with the stuff I saw, and what my people have sent back to me, I’m not surprised they didn’t return.”
“What are you talking about?”
I was getting angry now. She seemed to be talking in circles.
Julie went to her computer and booted it up. Then she turned to me, gesturing for me to look at the screen.
“There is no way this Garner fellow is running a terrorist cell. The man has a sick kid back in Washington. And he has, like, no money in his bank account.”
“People hide money.”
“Yeah, well, if Garner has hidden money somewhere, my people can’t find it. And my people are some of the best hackers in the world.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Besides, if he was running this terrorist cell, I doubt he would let his kid lie dying in a hospital bed when there’s an experimental treatment in Paris that could save his life.”
“Paris?”
“Ironic, huh?”
I grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the little desk.
“Make yourself at home,” Julie said. Then she went and threw herself back onto the bed.
I pulled up Emily’s notes and began going through them, page after page. The first twenty pages or so seemed to be going in a predictable direction. But then there was a subtle change as they continued. There was a change in Emily’s personal notes and something wrong with the documents she’d scanned into her files. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. But then I saw something—a tiny symbol. I saw it first on a page that had been scanned from an original. It was a handwritten symbol that almost looked like a little smudge from the original printing. But then I saw it again right in the center of a document Emily had created, made of letters from the keyboard.
“It’s been altered.”
“What has?”
I didn’t answer. I simply shut the thumb drive down and snatched it from Julie’s computer.
“Tell Megan I expect a very thorough explanation when all this is said and done,” Julie called after me as I left the room.
I was in a near panic as I left the hotel. I climbed into the car and rushed out into the night, running all my options over in my head. I had no way of knowing who had Megan and Hayden. It could be the good guys. But it was just as likely not. If I texted her using the phone Edgar had given me…it wasn’t worth the risk. But if I was wrong…
I had to play this smart. I couldn’t take any chances.
I drove hard and fast, arriving at my destination in half the time it might have taken otherwise. I didn’t bother to pay attention to my parking job. I just rushed up to the door and pounded, forgetting that it was well after three in the morning.
“What the fuck?” Dominic mumbled as he opened the door.
“I need your help.”
I barged past him into his motel room, ignoring the fact that his wife was sound asleep in the double bed that dominated the room.
“What are you doing?” Dominic hissed. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“They have Megan. And Hayden.”
That caused Dominic a little pause. “Who?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean, you’re not sure?”
I looked at him, aware of the desperation on my face. He frowned, but then he grabbed his pants and hopped as he pulled them on. Then he gestured for me to follow him outside.
“You know Edgar Olsen,” I said to him as soon as we were alone outside in the cold February wind.
“I do. He was Emily’s handler when we were working that cell in Paris.”
My heart sank a little. I’d known that, but—
A piece of concrete suddenly shattered, bursting off the wall behind my head. I spun around as Dominic grabbed my arm and pulled me down behind the rail that offered a teeny bit of protection from the parking lot.
“Someone followed you here.”
I didn’t think it was possible. But, then again, I hadn’t thought what I now knew was possible.
I crouched low to the ground and made my way slowly down the narrow corridor outside the guest rooms. More concrete burst from the wall slightly above us. The shooter must be at some height, able to see us despite our position. Dominic grabbed my arm and pulled me into another corridor that ran along the side of the building to the backside. We stood and rushed for cover.
“You packing?” Dominic asked.
I shook my head. “It’s in the car.”
Dominic cursed, looking back the way we’d come. His wife was asleep, vulnerable, in their room.
“Vincent’s upstairs with Quinn and Olivia,” he said, gesturing to a room above us. “He’ll have a weapon.”
“I’ll go around the side and see if I can spot him.”
Dominic didn’t hesitate that time. He was more than happy to allow me to put myself in danger. He ran for the stairs, another bit of concrete coming up off the sidewalk in his wake.
I ran along the back of the building, staying low in case someone in one of the occupied rooms was awake. The last thing I needed was for some civic-minded person to step out at the wrong moment.
I reached the end of the building and peeked at the businesses across the street. There was a small restaurant and a gas station. It was dark—both businesses were closed at the moment. But then I saw a glint in the moonlight. There was a single shooter on top of the restaurant.
What I would have given for a gun right at that moment. If I was reading his position correctly, he was still focused on the corridor where he saw Dominic last. He wouldn’t see a shot coming from this direction. But if he was as well trained as I was, it w
ould soon occur to him that I might have come—
Yeah, there he was. The shooter’s position changed. He was looking for me here on the other end of the building now.
I backed up out of sight, leaning against the hard surface of the wall, slowing my breathing as I imagined what my next step would be.
“Dant—Luke,” Vincent said, rushing up beside me. He pressed a 9mm into my hand. It felt good there, familiar. I glanced at him, gesturing toward the restaurant, and then making a signal instructing him to draw the shooter’s attention off me. Vincent nodded and ran back toward the other side of the building.
I heard him fire. Vincent’s gun wasn’t equipped with a silencer like the rifle the shooter was using. But that was okay. I didn’t expect to have to fire at all.
I ran along the fence line that cut the parking lot of the motel off from the bank next door. There were trees and bushes there, enough shadow to keep my movement from drawing the shooter’s attention. Crossing the street was going to be a trick, but the shooter was busy with Vincent and Dominic. Dominic had gone back to his room, slipping through the door as Vincent fired three quick shots into the air.
I paused on the edge of the parking lot, glancing over at Vincent. He didn’t look directly at me, but he knew where I was and what I needed. He fired again, his bullets bouncing off the restaurant roof with little pings that vibrated through the night air.
There were no new lights on in the front of the motel. So far, the sound of Vincent’s reports hadn’t woken anyone.
I quickly ran across the street as his bullets continued to ping through the night. I could hear the hiss of the shooter’s gun firing. I wanted to look back, to make sure Vincent was good, but it would have been a dumb risk. I slipped around the side of the restaurant and found the ladder the shooter had used to get up there. Another dumb risk. He should have found a place to hide that would have been completely secure. That’s what I would have done.
I climbed as quietly as I could, taking the rungs two at a time. He had to have heard the creak of the ladder, but he was so focused on Vincent that he didn’t even turn when I slowly approached him.
I pressed the gun against the back of his head. He slowly lowered his weapon to the rooftop.
DRAGON SECURITY: The Complete 6 Books Series Page 89
