I suspected, as a start-up in an innovative industry, Stellar Unlimited could handle looking a little silly. But maybe the mastermind with the money, Niilo Järvinen, couldn’t. Or maybe Dr. Donahue was the one with the allergy to confronting the troublesome Robert Fraley face-to-face.
She reached across the intervening space between us and touched my arm.
“Please, Ms. Sinclair. The amount must be paid tonight, whether Robert’s behind the demand or not. Stellar Unlimited can’t afford another shutdown—or the sale of our data to someone else.”
Her gloved hand disappeared into the breast pocket of her trench coat, reemerged with a bulging white envelope. She offered the envelope to me. I knew what would be in it before I peeked beneath the flap. But the glimpse of all those Ben Franklins still gave me pause. Because Dr. Madeline Donahue hadn’t handed me chump change.
She’d just crossed my palm with $50,000.
“This is the ransom money?” I asked.
“This is for you.”
“It’s too much.”
And it was.
Unless she wanted me to do more than watch her back as she paid off Stellar Unlimited’s supposed hacker.
“Niilo wants you to be well paid,” she said, “for assisting me and for your silence. He takes this situation extremely seriously. He wants you to know that.”
I opened my mouth to demur.
Dr. Donahue didn’t let me.
“All you have to do is go with me,” she said.
“That won’t fix your problem,” I warned her. “And if you show up with a shadow, it might make things worse.”
“Whoever he is, he expects me to bring my lab assistant. He already said so.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“He texted me soon after I checked into the Nightingale Hotel this afternoon. He’ll text again, tonight. At eight thirty. He’ll send directions about delivering the money then.”
Clutching the envelope full of Franklins, I turned my wrist to glance at my Cartier Roadster. The watch’s luminescent dial pointed to half-past eight. And at that moment, deep in Dr. Madeline Donahue’s coat pocket, her cellphone chimed with an incoming message.
Chapter 2
Nine o’clock caught me pressing the pedal of Madeline Donahue’s rented Neon practically to the metal as I flew straight up New York Avenue Northeast. The broad thoroughfare cut like a blade through the heart of the District of Columbia before angling toward Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the Big Apple itself. Skinny brick townhomes that once had housed the hardworking builders of the nearby US Capitol crowded close to one another and the sidewalks here. These structures, the corner liquor stores with their neon beer lights and the mom-and-pop shops selling bread and milk, weren’t the kind of landmarks that attracted tourists, then or now. And maybe that’s why the text message that had set Dr. Donahue’s phone chiming had told us to come this way.
The avenue’s asphalt angled at a definite incline as we left the Potomac valley behind. Low-slung industrial buildings, built of 1960s poured concrete, housed today’s industrial designers and technology start-ups and took over where the improvements of the previous century stopped. Chain-link fencing, razor wire curling across the top, hemmed in the city school system’s big yellow buses. We were at the edge of the District now—and at the start of something else.
More chain-link rose on my right-hand side. Old and corroded, its interlocking links were no longer bright. The wash from the avenue’s streetlights couldn’t reach beyond the lacy barrier, but the angular shapes of trees not yet in the full leaf of spring speared the horizon’s inky sky.
Ahead, a gap in the fence appeared, wide enough to accommodate a steady stream of two-way traffic. But there was no such thing at this hour. A lonely driveway peeled away from the broad boulevard and led through the opening. I turned onto it because the message had told me to.
The driveway disappeared into the dark tangle of the trees. And if we weren’t careful, I suspected we’d end up doing the same. Beside me, Dr. Donahue strained against her seatbelt as she leaned forward to peer through the windshield.
She shook her head.
“This can’t be right.”
Except it was. This was the entrance to the United States National Arboretum. Its gate, which should’ve been locked tight for the night, had stood open to admit us.
And just like that, I drove into the middle of nowhere right next to the city.
Darkness swallowed the car. I hit the high beams, was rewarded with nothing more than the sight of mown lawn on either side of the ribbon of road, a glimpse of the squat Visitor Center, and the suggestion of trams parked under the cover of night. Dr. Donahue’s phone jiggled in her lap.
“Turn right onto Hickey Lane. Proceed one half mile,” she read from its sickly green screen. “Cross onto Eagle Nest Road. Continue for another half mile.”
Making the first turn, I smelled a setup. Still, I didn’t say so. The text message—and its timely arrival—meant someone had been on the lookout for us. Now they certainly watched from some vantage point to be sure we followed their instructions to the letter.
I wondered why.
In my humble opinion, a dead drop would’ve had this business over in a heartbeat. That’s a spot where suckers—such as myself and Dr. Donahue—are directed to leave cash or other commodities without waiting around to meet the demand’s maker. The dead drop was a preferred method of Cold War spies as well as today’s industrial kind. And it was an extortionist’s best bet for a clean getaway. Any other arrangement meant revealing yourself to witnesses.
Witnesses, however, could be eliminated.
I kept that in mind as an undulating field, thick with shadow, fell away from my side of the car. On the other, Washington, DC, was now nothing more than a hazy halo crowning a hillock cupped by the roadway. And that’s when Dr. Donahue’s cellphone chirped again.
“Park the car,” she read. “Climb the hill.”
Nothing moved along either side of Eagle Nest Road. But everything past the bend ahead was hidden by the curve of the terraced hill. The hill was Mount Hamilton, one of the highest points in the national capital region. From past experience, I knew its peak offered a lovely view of the distant Capitol dome. It probably provided an excellent view of us in the Neon, too—and a direct line of fire.
I said, “We’re not stopping.”
“Please,” Dr. Donahue begged. “You’ve got to stop the car.”
But in my office safe, I had Dr. Donohue’s John Hancock on a contract and $50,000 that stated my first priority was to save her skin.
“If Fraley’s orchestrated this to get back at you, he won’t give up now,” I said. “He’ll text—and we’ll negotiate.”
Right on cue, the doctor’s cellphone chimed.
“Jamie,” she insisted. “Stop the car.”
“Tell him we’ll meet him in the open. In the city.”
Because in the arboretum, if we stopped on this remote stretch of road, we’d be nothing more than sitting ducks.
But then we rounded the bend and I saw what Mount Hamilton had hidden from us. Five ruby-red flares threw sparks across the asphalt. And a hulking Chevy Tahoe, parked broadside behind them, blocked the road.
Determined to avoid an ambush, I stomped on the brake, slammed the Neon into reverse.
Before I could punch the accelerator, Dr. Donahue bounded from our car.
She darted to the middle of the roadway—and held her ground as a man stepped from the ditch. Backlit by the wash of the Tahoe’s high beams, he wore jeans and a black leather jacket that had seen better days. Unruly hair tumbled across his brow. The flares’ crimson light flickered across his face, found every edge and angle. But the light never touched the hollows of his eyes.
Jamming the Neon into park, I climbed slowly from the car. The
man didn’t stray from the berm. Dr. Donahue didn’t move. But someone else could’ve been in the SUV, high on the hill, or just out of sight amid undergrowth that dotted the slope across the way. Someone could’ve had a rifle aimed at my head.
The man, however, carried no weapon. His hands were empty. He spread them wide, like a street magician about to do a card trick.
“Where’s Robert?” Dr. Donahue demanded.
“Where’s your contribution?” the man replied.
Dr. Donahue reached into the slash pocket of her trench coat. But she didn’t withdraw a familiar fat, white envelope full of cash. Instead, her gloved hand clutched a cube not much bigger than an apple. The cube gave off a metallic gleam. Except it couldn’t have been metallic, because the good doctor had carried it past Chester and the magnetometers on her way to my office.
“Give it,” the man ordered, “to your assistant.”
Dr. Donahue offered the thing to me. I stepped forward, let my eyes rove over the Tahoe, the line of the hill, and into the black void of the woods. Hidden beneath the navy-blue melton wool blazer I wore, my nine-millimeter weighed heavily on my hip.
“What is it?” I asked.
Madeline Donahue smiled sweetly.
She didn’t say a thing.
Gingerly, I grasped the cube. It was cool to the touch. Its slick surface sheened like fine pewter.
It’s ceramic, I realized. Brittle and light.
The cube was punctured with rectangular sockets, offset here and there, and grooved with hundreds of threads. Each thread was a ridge so slight my fingertips almost couldn’t detect them at all. But then the spitting of a flare made one of the threads fire red as it caught the light. It had to be a strand of fiber optic cable, crafted of superfine glass and able to transmit data over vast distances in the blink of an eye.
“Bring the device to me,” the man called. “Keep your hands in plain sight.”
I did as he said. I took my time about it. He reached for the cube eagerly.
“Wait,” Dr. Donahue said. “Let’s see your money first.”
Money? Something was off. I halted in my tracks.
The man peeled the lapel of his coat away from his body so I could see he wasn’t reaching for a weapon. Tucked into the waistband of his jeans, he wore a thick sheaf of greenbacks. But that was all wrong. Because if he’d hacked Stellar Unlimited, if he’d demanded a ransom to unlock their network, or if he’d insisted on payment in the form of some doodad to keep their secrets safe, he wouldn’t be forking over cash for the cube Dr. Donahue had brought. He’d just take it and call it a done deal.
“Give me the device,” he said.
“Give her the cash,” Dr. Donahue countered.
The man grinned. He might’ve been handsome. But the glare from the flares lit him up like the Devil incarnate.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said. “I’ll just keep it all.”
The doors of the Tahoe blew open. Automatic gunfire burst from inside. I dove for the dark ditch at the side of the road, landed hard enough in the bottom of it to knock the wind out of me.
Dropping the cube, I rolled onto my side, drew my weapon, and risked raising my head. A glimpse of the action could keep me alive. And I certainly intended to stay that way.
The bushes bordering the woods to my right whipped as if a cyclone moved through them. Dr. Donahue must’ve run that way and the occupants of the Tahoe knew it. They sprayed the brush with a barrage of bullets.
But the man on the road had other ideas.
Now, with a 1911 pistol gripped in his hands, he stalked toward me.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
He couldn’t see me in the ditch, just past the garnet glow of the flares and the reach of the Tahoe’s headlights. But still, he came at me with that mammoth 1911. The rounds it carried could tear through me like cannonballs.
The Tahoe’s gunmen ceased fire. The truck’s engine revved. With the squeal of its tires, it cut a hard semicircle, its headlights racing along the berm. Their shine blotted out everything except the man’s silhouette—and then they spotlighted me.
I didn’t hesitate to defend myself. I braced my back against the far wall of the ditch and raised my nine. I squeezed off four shots at the man’s center mass.
The first round must’ve hit him square in the chest. His dark shape flew backward, arms and legs akimbo. I didn’t stick around to watch his shadow slam onto the asphalt.
Scooping up the cube, I scrambled out of the ditch, dashed for the dark line of the trees. My ears rang with the echo of my own gunfire. But I could still make out the heavy percussion of the Tahoe’s firing squad, this time aiming at me.
I fought past brambles and branches dotted with baby buds trying to unfurl. The smell of moss and last year’s leaves hung thick in the air. A mass of starry blossoms clustered at my feet. I saw them too late, tripped over them, and trampled through more.
Satsuki azaleas, I realized, growing low to the ground.
I must’ve stumbled into the Lee Garden and its endless array of the species. Except the arboretum’s prized collection grew on the sides on Mount Hamilton. That was behind me, across Eagle Nest Road. So this had to be where the fringe of forest thinned. And it did.
In another dozen steps, I reached the grassy, wide-open plain that could only be the Ellipse Meadow.
I drew up short, reluctant to leave the cover of the trees even though standing still wasn’t an option. Through the ringing in my ears, I could make out the sounds of crashing and thrashing behind me. I might’ve killed a man, but apparently, his buddies from the Tahoe intended to flush me from the brush like a partridge.
If they caught up with me, they’d murder me.
But I wasn’t about to let that happen.
Chapter 3
The broad bowl of the Ellipse Meadow brimmed with deep shadow, too far from the city for help to be on hand at this time of night. And on its far rim, the Capitol Columns, a marble forest salvaged from the Capitol’s East Portico during the dome’s reconstruction over a hundred years ago and planted here by a benefactor’s landscape designer in the 1980s, stood like ghostly sentinels. They were unearthly in the moonlight.
Behind them, however, ran an ordinary road. It swung toward the New York Avenue Gate—and civilization. And that was where I needed to be.
Slipping the contraband cube into the front of my snow-white shirt, I got ready to run. The thing tumbled south to stop where I’d tucked my shirttails into my trousers and made me look like a shoplifter smuggling a Rubik’s Cube. I buttoned my navy-blue blazer over the lump, flipped up the collar against my neck, and took one last look over my shoulder.
I saw no sign of Madeline Donahue. She might’ve been injured. Or she might’ve been dead. But under the cover of the trees, one of my pursuers whistled between his teeth. The sound was sharp over the ringing that had begun to fade from my ears and I knew it was a signal that they were onto something.
Maybe they were onto me.
I took off at a sprint, my feet pounding the uneven terrain of the meadow and the dew-wet spring grass. I did my best to avoid any hint of moonlight that had broken free of the clouds, but even though the night was more than black and white, I knew, even on the move, I’d be a vulnerable wisp of gray.
Ahead of me, on the north side of the meadow, movement drew my eye and almost stopped my heart. Another figure, thirty yards away, raced toward the columns. A female figure.
Dr. Donahue clambered onto the columns’ platform. She disappeared between their rows. I ran harder, my breath forming smoky puffs in the chilly air, my ears pricked for any sound of pursuit. When the columns loomed like giants, I poured on an extra ounce of speed. I leapt onto the terrace that rooted them.
Dropping flat with my back to cold, carved stone, I slipped my smartphone from my pa
nts pocket and began to dial 911—until the growl of an engine had me glancing toward the roadway. Running dark, the hulking Chevy Tahoe slid in and out of the shadows. It rounded the curve at the south end of the meadow and rolled slowly toward my hiding place deep within the monument.
“This is nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
“You’ve got multiple gunmen hunting two women in the National Arboretum,” I murmured, pressing my phone close to my mouth. “Advise responders to be on the lookout for a Chevy Tahoe and to watch themselves at the Capitol Columns.”
“Nice try!” a man shouted as I stuffed my phone in my coat. “You’ll be dead before they get here!”
“I wouldn’t count it on!” I hollered in reply. “That 1911 you’ve been toting will be hard to handle with those bruises on your chest!”
I’d shot this creep back on Eagle Nest Road. I was sure of it. But now, I was just as sure he’d worn a protective vest under his shirt.
Kevlar could stop most bullets. But the impact would dent the vest, leave a hell of a bruise, and maybe even break the skin beneath. As a result, this guy’s muscles wouldn’t be happy about trying to raise that monstrous 1911 to take a potshot at me. That could throw off his aim. And that could make him even more dangerous.
“Give me the object,” he shouted, “and maybe I’ll let you go!”
“It shattered,” I lied. “I left it in bits and pieces in the ditch!”
“You’d better hope that’s not true!”
I heard the scrape of shoe leather on concrete and knew he was coming for me.
I took a chance, peeped around my Corinthian column, but didn’t see him anywhere. Only towers of elegant marble, aligned like perfectly planted oak trees, marched away from me in every direction. I turned and darted into a row far from the heart of the monument. Above me, deeply incised acanthus leaves made a kind of canopy. Past the carvings, the night sky was thick with scudding clouds. Out front, a reflecting pool captured their eastward motion and offered up eternal stillness.
The Kill Chain Page 2
