by Tiffany Snow
Figured. Here he was trying to make me think he knew me oh so well when it was the damn car that had led him straight to me. Whatever. “Stupid or not, someone is killing everyone who worked on Vigilance.”
“You realize that includes you,” he shot back.
The lump in my throat grew like the Grinch’s heart inside that little measuring device, until speech was impossible. To my dismay, Jackson blurred in my vision. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear things.
I heard him mutter a curse, then he dragged me into his arms again. His lips pressed the top of my head, against my hair. My body gradually relaxed and I was able to regain my composure. I’d cried more in the past week than I had since Rose was trapped forever in that alternate universe apart from the Doctor. Or when they’d cancelled Firefly.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded. “It’s been a long week,” I managed, reluctantly extricating myself from his embrace.
He was scrutinizing me and I glanced away. I wasn’t a weak person—you didn’t get to where I was, doing what I did, by being weak—and I didn’t want Jackson to view me as incapable of handling whatever was thrown my way. My nervous breakdown could wait until later.
“I have to tell you about Clark,” I said. “You’re right, he’s not who he says he is. When I confronted him, he told me he was ex-military intelligence. That he contracts out to the CIA now for human intel.”
“He told you this?”
I nodded. “He’s particularly interested in you and what you’re doing.”
“That’s . . . not good, China,” Jackson said. His expression was grave, alarming me.
I frowned. “Why not? The CIA, those are the good guys. And if they’re watching you, it doesn’t matter. You’ve done nothing wrong, right?” He didn’t answer, his eyes on mine. “Right?”
The slamming of a door downstairs made us both turn in reaction. Oh God. Had they come for Lana?
Jackson must have thought the same thing because he gripped my arm and hauled me close, looking frantically around the room. He spied a closet door and dragged us inside, closing the door softly behind us.
It was cramped and we were pressed close together, back to front. His arm was around my midriff, holding me tight. If it were any other kind of circumstance, I might have enjoyed it. As it was, though, I was terrified, especially when I heard two men talking.
“Is she here?” one asked.
“Not yet,” was the response.
“Thought she was supposed to be here by now?”
“Well, she isn’t. So what do you want to do?”
They were close, right outside the room, and they were here to kill Lana. If they found Jackson and me, I had little doubt they’d kill us, too.
It was hard to breathe, the darkness felt stifling. Moving my hand, I held on to Jackson’s in a death grip. His hand felt strong and dry covering mine. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing. Passing out from terror would be a really embarrassing way to go.
“I’ll wait here, you go on ahead. That way we don’t lose any time.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“All right.”
I strained my ears, listening. I could hear footfalls on the stairs, growing more distant, but I couldn’t tell if it was one set or two.
“Don’t move.” Jackson’s whisper was barely audible and his lips were right by my ear. I gave the tiniest of nods so he knew I understood. Honestly, did he think I was going to launch myself out of the closet and yell “Surprise!”?
But it was a good thing I didn’t because I heard something from inside the room. Someone was still here, and they were moving around.
Jackson repositioned us, silently moving me to the side. When he withdrew his arm from around me, I panicked, latching on. Was he going to try to confront the man?
“It’s okay,” he whispered in my ear. I frantically shook my head no. He squeezed my hand, then pried it from his arm. “Trust me.”
I bit the inside of my lip so hard, I tasted the tang of blood. I felt, more than heard, him take a deep breath, then he opened the door.
14
In the movies, the good guys burst through closed doors in a flash of noise and overwhelm the bad guys. But Jackson didn’t do that. He opened the door in a slow, steady way that was nearly silent.
Peeking between his body and the doorway, I saw a man sitting at the desk. As the door opened, he glanced around curiously. But by that time, Jackson was nearly upon him and he had no time to react.
The crunch of bone against bone made me wince when Jackson’s fist met the guy’s jaw. He’d been reaching for the gun in his side holster, but Jackson grabbed his wrist and bent it backward. The guy yelled as the bone snapped. Another punch from Jackson and the guy slid to the floor. He didn’t move.
Holy shit. I’d never seen Jackson do anything like that before, and I wasn’t going to lie . . . it was pretty darn hot (as Mia would say).
“I had no clue you could do that,” I said.
“Being bullied as a kid means you learn how to fight,” Jackson replied. He bent down and took the gun from the man’s holster. Searching his pockets, he retrieved a cell phone as well.
“You were bullied?”
He glanced at me, frowning. “Of course I was. You told me you were, too.”
“Well, yeah, I just . . . hadn’t thought of you as being someone who was bullied.”
“I was little for my age, smarter than everyone else, and poor. What do you think?”
An image flashed in my head of a scrawny boy in hand-me-down clothes carrying a stack of books, then being knocked down by a crowd of bigger kids. It struck a pang of sympathy in me, and was so unlike what I’d imagined Jackson to be as a kid. Not that I’d spent a lot of time wondering about that, but if I had, it wouldn’t have been as a skinny, poor, picked-on kid.
“So you learned to fight?” I asked.
“Absolutely.” He glanced up from where he was scrolling through the phone. “Didn’t you?”
“I learned how to throw knives.”
A sudden grin split his face. “That’s badass. Love it. Did it help?”
“Did it for the school’s talent contest. No one bothered me much after that.” One of my few good memories from school. The auditorium had gone absolutely silent when I’d thrown five knives at a human silhouette target, hitting the center of the head, the chest, each hand, and the last one landing right in the groin.
“What are we going to do with him?” I asked. The guy was still out cold.
“Grab his feet.”
Between the two of us we managed to get him into the closet, not being particularly careful about how many of his body parts we knocked against the door frame and wall. Jackson lodged a chair underneath the door handle, locking him in.
“Let’s go,” he said.
We were nearly to the front door when it swung open and Lana stepped inside.
“Thank God,” I breathed. My heart couldn’t take much more of this. For a split second, I’d thought it might be that guy coming back to check on his buddy.
Lana looked shocked to see us. “What are you doing here?”
Okay. Weird question. “You told me to come here,” I reminded her. “I went to John’s first, but they’d already killed him. I was afraid you were next.”
“And you would’ve been,” Jackson said. “The man they sent is locked in your office closet.”
“Locked in my closet,” she repeated, still looking stunned. “Wh-what are we supposed to do with him?”
“You should probably call nine one one,” I suggested.
“Yeah.” She looked dazed, but obediently dug her cell phone out of her pocket. Dialing, she walked into the living room.
“So what do we do now?” I asked Jackson. “Someone still has that software and the cops think I did it.”
“We’ll hide you until I can figure out who took it,” he said.
&nbs
p; “The cops are going to be watching your house.”
His lips twisted. “True. But they won’t be watching the cabin I have outside the city.”
“Cabin?”
He nodded. “Got sick of the paparazzi constantly knowing where I lived and driving by, taking photos whenever I’d leave or bring a . . . companion . . . back to the house.”
And by companion I knew he meant a woman to spend the night. Part of me was instantly and insanely jealous of all of the nameless, faceless women Jackson had been with. Which in and of itself was crazy. We weren’t an “item.” He was my boss. Although we had really good chemistry, at least from my point of view, and judging by that little scene at his house earlier. I hadn’t imagined the passion between us.
I stamped down on my rabid-girlfriend/stalker feelings and tried to focus. “No one knows where it is?”
“Nope. I bought it under Lance’s name. I don’t get there as often as I wish. Maybe someday.”
Lana walked back in before I could reply. “I’ve called them. They’re on their way. Did you find out who’d stolen the software?”
“I was sure it was John,” I said, “until they killed him. Which leaves George.” It was so unexpected. He was of an earlier generation where loyalty to your employer was paramount.
“Do you have access to the system?” Jackson asked her. She nodded. “Let me get on. I might be able to trace who touched the files, regardless of log-on ID.”
“Okay, follow me.”
I watched Jackson and Lana head back upstairs, then noticed he’d left his phone on the table. Just as I picked it up to take to him, it rang. Without thinking, I answered.
“Jackson Cooper’s phone.”
There was a pause. “China, is that you?’
Wow. Really weird. “Um, yeah. Who is this?”
“Don’t hang up,” the man said, which was never a good sign. “It’s Clark.”
“Asshat.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. My pet name for you. What do you want and why are you calling Jackson’s phone?”
“You planted that USB drive, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah, but not on Jackson’s system,” I said. “It’s on Lana’s. She works for Wyndemere.”
“No. No, she doesn’t. She’s a sleeper agent. She works for ISIS.”
I stared straight ahead, unseeing, my mouth agape. “Wh-what?”
“The program uploaded to her system and started sending us information right away,” he said. “She’s the one who stole the software from Wyndemere. Now she’s covering her tracks.”
My head tried to catch up with what I was hearing. Lana was an ISIS sleeper agent? But . . . why?
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How does this software help ISIS?”
“You said it yourself,” Clark replied. “It’s the perfect targeting software, collecting all that data. All it needs is an algorithm. With the right one, it’s the perfect recruiting tool. Their recruiting has increasingly come from social media: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, you name it. If they were able to pinpoint specific people who would be vulnerable to their message, they could increase their members by astronomical numbers.”
I could follow Clark’s logic, but still couldn’t reconcile Lana as being an ISIS agent, “But . . . she’s a woman,” I said at last. “ISIS hates women, treats them like chattel.”
“Which is why they’re the best to use,” he said grimly. “No one suspects them.”
Suddenly I realized . . . Jackson was upstairs with Lana. Alone. Panic flooded me.
“Oh my God,” I breathed into the phone. “You’ve got to help us. What if she tries to hurt Jackson? Or me?”
Clark said something, but I couldn’t hear because just then, the door opened and two men walked in. Both of them average height, dark olive skin, dark hair . . . and each holding a semiautomatic weapon.
I opened my mouth to scream, but one of them was on me in an instant.
“Don’t even try it, bitch,” he hissed.
“China? What’s going on?” I could hear Clark in my ear, but couldn’t respond. My eyes were glued to the gunman’s. Dark and empty, his gaze sent a chill down my spine. And there was also the cold press of the gun’s barrel to my forehead.
I didn’t protest when he took the phone from me, dropping it to the floor before stomping his huge booted foot down on it. The glass and plastic shattered into a million pieces.
“She said they were upstairs,” he told the other guy, dragging me to a kitchen chair and forcing me to sit. “Go get them.”
Jackson. They were going to kill him. And he had no warning. And they were going to kill me anyway . . .
I screamed.
Blinding pain hit me as the butt of the gun hit my temple.
My head was going to fall off. Surely. There could be no other recourse for the massive ache that made me long to be unconscious again. Though perhaps I should be grateful I was waking up at all.
I pried my eyes open, my brain beginning to catalogue my surroundings and situation before my emotions could catch up.
I was somewhere dark and cold, and I could barely feel my fingers, though that wasn’t entirely because of the cold. My wrists were tied behind my back, likely with a zip tie if the pain cutting into my skin was any indication. The ground beneath me was concrete, as was the wall at my back.
A noise caused me to jump, and light flooded the room. Someone had opened a door and the sudden brightness blinded me. I barely had time to see the silhouette framed in the open rectangle before another person was shoved into the room. They stumbled and fell, the air whooshing from their lungs as they hit the floor. Their hands were tied, too, and I winced as their arm and ribs caught the brunt of the fall. Then the door slammed shut again.
I was frozen for a moment, unsure who was in here with me, then I heard a slight groan.
“Jackson?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
“Who else?” he rasped, grunting slightly.
I had to get out of the zip tie. Part of me was amazed that they’d actually used something so ridiculous to secure me. Everyone knew how to get out of a zip tie. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t know because I was a girl or something. Idiots.
Bending my knees, I swung my arms under my feet, moving them so my hands were in front of me. Using my teeth, I adjusted the zip tie so the little square fastener was right in between my wrists before getting to my feet. I settled my elbows on my hips, took a deep breath, and flung my arms down and apart with all my strength, using my hips for leverage. The plastic bit into my skin, stinging me, but the tie broke and I was free.
Easy peasy.
I hurried to Jackson, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Ambient light was coming from somewhere, enough for me to see that he wasn’t bound with zip ties, but with a thin nylon rope that wound around his wrists at least a half a dozen times. No way was he going to be able to do what I had done with the zip tie.
He sat up with some effort and that’s when I saw his shirt was dirty and torn. Grimacing, he worked his jaw for a minute, which was when I noticed the blood on his face.
“Jackson, what happened to you?” Putting a hand on his cheek, I gently turned him so I could see his face better. There was a cut by his eye, and his lip was split and bleeding. It was too dark to see bruises, though, and I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. My stomach churned at the thought.
“Let’s just say I didn’t come quietly,” he replied. “Especially when I heard you scream.”
I swallowed. “What happened?”
“Lana didn’t even react,” he said, “which was when I knew. Those men hadn’t been there to kill her. They were working for her, with her, whatever—not trying to kill her. In hindsight, I should’ve been more suspicious of her.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” I said. “She had me fooled, too.” My personal animosity toward John had gotten in the way of logically considering all members of the
team.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Did they hurt you?”
I shook my head, glancing away. “Not really.” Which was an understatement. My head was pounding like someone had set up a jackhammer behind my eyes that was intent on drilling through my forehead.
“You’re lying,” he said flatly.
Damn. I really needed to play poker more. “Did you see outside?” I asked, changing the subject. “Where are we?” It was too big of a space to be Lana’s basement, and it had an industrial feel to it.
“I don’t know. They blindfolded me for the ride here.”
“What do they want? Why didn’t they kill us?” Not that I wasn’t grateful to still be alive. “They have the software, but the algorithm hasn’t been written yet,” I said. “Do you think they’ll want us to write it for them?”
He said nothing.
“Jackson?”
“It’s written, China,” he said, finally looking at me. “I wrote it.”
My heart sank. “But . . . why? And why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was compelled to do the coding . . . by someone very powerful. I couldn’t say no.”
“Who compelled you?”
“The president.”
I stared, waiting for the punch line that never came. “You’re serious.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I wish I wasn’t.”
“How?”
“The NSA pulled the plug on Vigilance but the president reinstated the program under a presidential directive, which is a bit like an executive order, but not made public. In the name of national security, he can authorize expenditures, order actions, and more. Tom was supposed to write it, but couldn’t. He came to me. Once he told me what they wanted, I refused because I saw what you saw. In the wrong hands, this software would be a powerful weapon. Even in the supposed ‘right’ hands, it’s a vast overreach of domestic spying.”
“What happened when you told him?” I asked.
“Tom hadn’t realized, but he agreed with me. He refused to provide them with the algorithm, so they killed him. That’s when I knew I had no choice but to write it.”
My thoughts were spinning. “But . . . they killed people. That’s . . . that’s incomprehensible. Our own government wouldn’t murder its own citizens.”
