The Kill Chain

by Nichole Christoff

But that turned out to be the wrong thing to say.

  Because Barrett’s face creased with worry.

  “Jamie, I can’t help you if you’re going to lie about this.”

  Chapter 7

  Pinned down by a gunman at the Capitol Columns, I’d told a lie to safeguard my life. But on principle, I avoided the practice. Moreover, I’d never lied to Barrett—and it hurt me that he thought I was lying to him now.

  But that’s when it dawned on me. The men—and particularly the women—behind the smoky glass pane downstairs hadn’t been there by happenstance. They certainly hadn’t been innocent bystanders to my questioning, either.

  When I thought about the various voices, manipulated to mask each speaker, I knew the women had been the ones to call the shots.

  Because they were human lie detectors.

  The Department of Homeland Security had hired scores of them in recent years. They monitored airports and major sporting events like marathons—and they sat in on interrogations. More often than not, these human lie detectors were women. Because a mechanical lie detector is easy to defeat if you know how. But thanks to nature or nurture, females have proven better than the other portion of the population at picking up on the subtle cues liars throw off.

  These experts had to be watching me now. They had to be watching me with Barrett, watching for changes in my body language and my facial expressions as he questioned me—and as he confronted me. They must’ve called him up from that army post along the Mississippi Gulf Coast where he was still making up for a bad decision he’d made last year, because they’d known about our relationship. And now they were taking advantage of our connection—they were taking advantage of him—to learn if I was lying.

  “Adam…” Saying his name calmed me. “I’ve never lied to you before, and I’m not lying to you now.”

  The corner of Barrett’s handsome mouth quirked. The elevator coasted to a stop. As the doors opened, he took hold of my upper arm—just like he was directing a prisoner—but there was nothing hard in his touch.

  I knew he believed me.

  Together, we walked along a corridor flush with showcases displaying milestones and mementoes of the US Army’s honor. A glass wall, incised with the seal of the army, met us halfway down. Its sliding doors parted for us.

  On this side of the glass, cherry paneling made the place look like a library. Tattered flags bearing the signs of hard-won historic battles were draped elegantly against the walls. Hand-drawn maps illustrating Pickett’s Charge and the Maginot Line gleamed in gilt frames.

  At the end of the hall, a single soldier stood at attention before a pair of double doors. As Barrett and I approached, he stepped aside, swept both doors wide. We crossed into an office antechamber, chock-full of good carpeting, a tufted-leather settee for those who had to wait, busy soldiers at heavy desks built of hardwood, and the hum of office equipment.

  Two more soldiers kept watch at another set of double doors.

  To Barrett, the one on the left said, “You can go straight in, sir. He’s expecting you.”

  And then we were through those doors, too, and in an office the size of a small suburban ranch home.

  Over a dozen suits and uniformed military officers sat on furniture clustered close to the biggest desk I’d ever seen. Their heads spun our way when we walked in, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the old soldier in the swivel chair behind that desk. He had a constellation of stars on his shoulders, and whatever had been happening to me tonight, I was sure he was in charge of it.

  “Ms. Sinclair.” He waved me to the center of the room. “You’ve caused a bit of a stir this evening.”

  “Well,” I replied, “it wasn’t intentional, General.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  He glanced at the suits collected on the long camelback sofa to his right. Three of them were women. They each had a clipboard on their lap—and they eyed me as if I were an exotic butterfly caught in their net.

  The general rose from his mammoth desk, rounded it, and hiked a leg to sit on the corner of it. Schneider, his name tag read. It was perfectly positioned on his Class A coat, right across from miles of ribbons pinned to his chest. Each ribbon represented a particular achievement performed in the service of our country. And he sure had a lot of them.

  “Do you know what this is, Ms. Sinclair?”

  He reached behind a row of framed photographs that blocked my line of sight, plucked an object from his desktop, and tossed it to me. I caught the thing against my midsection like a football. It was the pewter-toned cube Madeline Donahue had produced in the middle of the arboretum—or it was darn good facsimile.

  “This is a handful,” I told him. “But I don’t know what it is. It’s made of ceramic, I’d guess. As to the purpose of the sockets, I couldn’t say, but those look like fiber optics running through it.”

  “They are,” the general concurred. “Or, at least they’re fiber optics on the real deal. This is a dummy, Ms. Sinclair. Your client walked away with the working one.”

  “Sir, if you’re referring to Madeline Donahue, she drove away, leaving me high and dry in the National Arboretum’s Ellipse Meadow.”

  With all the animation of a robot, a slack-faced man in one of the armchairs piped up. “Can you confirm whether this Madeline Donahue had the CubeSat in her possession at that time?”

  CubeSat?

  I hefted the block the general had tossed at me. “If you mean this thing’s twin sister, I’m certain she didn’t. Because I threw it into the monument’s reflecting pool.”

  Gasps met my statement. Mr. Robot cursed me under his breath before he and three of his confederates filed from the room. And that ticked me off.

  “Look”—I strode to the general’s desk, plunked the cube down on his blotter—“I wasn’t willing to die for a paperweight like this earlier this evening, and I’m not interested in it now. Unless, of course, you’d like to tell me why it’s so special.”

  But Schneider wasn’t willing to oblige me.

  He rose to his feet.

  “Thank you for meeting with me, Ms. Sinclair. Please give your father my kind regards.”

  I’d do nothing of the sort. Not that I got the chance to say so. One of the soldiers from the outer office appeared at my elbow. He was a sergeant major. The bags beneath his eyes suggested he’d already put in a full day and a full night’s work, and now he was going to do it again.

  He murmured, “This way, ma’am.”

  Apparently, I was dismissed. I received no apology for being dragged in there in the first place. And no explanation at all.

  Barrett’s eyes locked with mine as I passed him. I knew he’d contact me when he could. That might be after a long while, however—and I hated it.

  The sergeant major turned me loose at the Metro entrance. Built to accommodate multitudes of Pentagon commuters, the Blue and Yellow Lines stopped beneath a wide plaza past the building’s south side. I intended to hop aboard the first train that swung into the station, regardless of its ultimate destination, just to get away from Uncle Sam looking over my shoulder.

  In no mood to linger any longer, I threaded my way through the hordes arriving for work and along the stop’s steel-and-glass-enclosed walkway. Past the parking lot that was I-395, the sun rose over the sparkling structures of Crystal City. The dawn pushed pearl-pink clouds ahead of it, fat with the promise of rain. Still, it was a sweet sight, and the moment I allowed myself to admire it, I heard a familiar voice call my name.

  “Jamie!”

  I turned, saw Barrett jogging toward me at a purposeful pace. Pedestrians stepped hastily out of his way. The uniform of an army cop has that effect on our service personnel and the people who live and work alongside them.

  “You won’t get very far without the fare,” he said, catching up with me at last and offering my
slender wallet and mini notebook to me.

  I took them tentatively. “Is there some sort of tracker in the lining of these now?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “Probably,” he replied. “Eventually.”

  Barrett smiled and I fell in love with him all over again. Like a bonfire in the depths of a dark midwinter night, his smile was heat and light and warmth and warning all in one. From the get-go, that grin had always had the power to do me in.

  It had just taken me a long time to admit it.

  The last time we’d seen each other had been two weeks ago, after a concussion had bought me a bed in a Texas hospital. The last time we’d spoken had been late Wednesday. In whispered words and a cellphone call, we’d lamented the distance that kept us apart. We were sick of separation. Of long days filled with nothing but professional obligation—and even longer, lonely nights.

  Now here we were, finally in the same place at the same time.

  Except Barrett clearly hadn’t come to the nation’s capital to spend some quality time with me.

  I accepted my belongings from Barrett’s hand, slipped them into my jacket pocket alongside Nathan Rappaport’s note. Momentarily, I considered telling him about it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t say why.

  “Don’t think I’m not glad to see you,” I told him, “but what are you doing here?”

  “Offering to buy you a quick breakfast.”

  “No, I mean what are you doing in Washington?”

  “I got orders late last night. Temporary duty. TDY at the Pentagon. Special transport flight into Fort Belvoir and a helicopter ride into town. Of course, anytime temporary duty calls for that kind of speed, I know something serious has happened. I just didn’t know it had happened to you.”

  “It didn’t. Except the FBI is tossing my office even as we speak. I need to get over there.”

  “I’ll go with you,” he offered.

  I rolled my eyes. “General Schneider would love that.”

  “General Schneider doesn’t need to know.”

  I chucked my chin at the nearest surveillance camera, directed Barrett’s attention there. Sadly, a world capital like Washington, DC, needed closed-circuit cameras to capture crimes in progress and to prevent terror attacks. But they could pick up Barrett and me standing on the sidewalk to talk just the same.

  I said, “Now that you’re done questioning me, will they send you packing?”

  But the question didn’t come out right. I’d sounded accusatory, but really, I’d meant to ask whether Barrett would be in Washington for a while. Whether we could see each other.

  Whether we could make up for lost time.

  Barrett, however, heard what I hadn’t intended to say.

  He said, “In the elevator, I couldn’t tell you about their suspicions, honey. About why they brought you in, or why they wanted me to question you.”

  “Why did they bring me in?”

  Sure, I’d signed on to accompany the so-called Madeline Donahue on her little outing. And she’d pulled a fast one that had made it necessary for me to open fire on that man at the Eagle Nest Road rendezvous, not to mention almost got me killed. Understandably, her actions—and mine—could certainly pique the interest of the FBI and a few other law enforcement agencies, but I couldn’t see why the US Army would care.

  Except General Schneider and his collection of human lie detectors seemed to care very much about what had happened to that strange object they called a CubeSat.

  Barrett looked over his shoulder, glanced up at the cameras. Public displays of affection when in uniform were against regulation. But slowly, gently, he smoothed a fingertip along my scuffed wrist anyway.

  Oh, I’d missed him.

  “Walk with me,” he said.

  And I did.

  Chapter 8

  We didn’t have a lot of time to talk.

  But Columbia Island and Lady Bird Johnson Park were just a short stroll away.

  Across from the north face of the Pentagon’s river entrance, where its series of graceful terraces had been stacked into the lovely landscape, the Mount Vernon Trail wound away and onto the island, into the park, and through the peaceful Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove on the Potomac. And if anyone could’ve used a little peace that morning, it was me. Seeking it, I slipped my hand through the crook of Barrett’s strong arm, tried to get lost among the grove’s white pines, candy-colored azaleas, and sweet spring birdsong.

  On the river’s opposite bank, the Washington metropolis appeared pristine thanks to the distance, unspoiled by power struggles and political opinion. But that was an illusion and it always had been. From its advent, the nation’s capital had been a rough-and-tumble town, and this CubeSat business was just the latest incarnation of it.

  “So,” I said at last. “Why does everyone want to get their hands on this CubeSat thing?”

  “That’s an easy one,” Barrett replied. “CubeSats are cutting-edge satellite technology. They can be loaded up with all kinds of sensors, programmed to perform all kinds of tasks. Plus, they’re as light as a feather.”

  “That’s got to cut down on launch costs.”

  “It does. Significantly. Fifty years ago, the Soviets’ Sputnik weighed more than a hundred eighty pounds. They burned up an awful lot of rocket fuel to get it into orbit. Since then, satellites have been lighter, and some a good deal heavier, but they’ve all been expensive.”

  “I suppose that kind of expense is partly what made the Space Race a government’s game. I’d think CubeSats have got to be a game-changer.”

  “They are.”

  I could believe it. “Judging by the one I held in my hand—and the dummy in Schneider’s office—they weigh next to nothing. You could practically launch one from your own backyard.”

  “Not to mention your high school kid could probably write the code for it. NASA and a number of other space agencies have recently sponsored high school–level CubeSat competitions. Some are launched, just to watch what the students—and the technology—can do.”

  I tried to wrap my mind around that. When I was in high school, I was worried about flunking trigonometry and finding a date for the prom. Apparently, times had changed.

  “But what’s so special about Madeline Donahue’s CubeSat?” I asked.

  Barrett paused as a pair of runners sprinted by. He suggested we seek a park bench close to the water. And farther from the path.

  “For one thing,” Barrett said, wrapping an arm around me since we were screened by a luscious rhododendron, “that CubeSat was stolen.”

  “From?”

  “I can’t tell you, honey.”

  “From?” I said again.

  “Let’s just say it came from a certain organization adjacent to the Beltway.”

  Well, there were several of those to choose from. The CIA, the NSA, and an alphabet soup of other intelligence services kept campuses close to the District of Columbia. Some were based right across DC’s border in the great state of Virginia, but others called Maryland home.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Those human lie detectors asked if I’d been to Maryland recently because they thought I’d stolen the CubeSat from a particular government lab.”

  “It was a theory.”

  “Well, it was a thin one.”

  “Not really. The CubeSat supposedly got boxed up and quietly carried off to an independent contractor in California for launch. We know it was intercepted and stolen, but we don’t know when or by whom.”

  But I was still stuck on the phrase carried off to an independent contractor in California.

  “This independent contractor wouldn’t be Stellar Unlimited, would it?”

  Barrett froze.

  “Tell me how you know that, Jamie.”
r />   I smiled and snuggled into his broad, boxer’s chest. “For one thing, Madeline Donahue popped up on their website when I checked her out. For another, I can’t figure out why she—or anyone at Stellar Unlimited—wanted me along for the ride.”

  “Have you made any enemies lately?”

  “To know me is to love me.”

  Barrett didn’t smile. “I agree, but maybe this Madeline Donahue knew the deal was going to go bad. Maybe she wanted you left holding the bag. Maybe she stole the CubeSat for that purpose. So far, our intelligence suggests that it came up missing before it ever reached its program manager at Stellar.”

  “All I know for sure is that at the arboretum, Madeline—or whatever her name is—had that cube in her hot little hand.”

  “Your hands,” Barrett said, scooping up one of mine and carrying it to his lips, “are cold.”

  “I’ll warm up when I get to the office,” I told him, absolutely determined to ignore the flutter his touch set off after so many weeks apart. “I expect the FBI turned my place upside down looking for that doorstop and my client list.”

  “That’s possibly true. Finding that CubeSat and the person who took it is a pretty high national security priority right now.”

  “Then that means you have somewhere you need to be.”

  Barrett huffed out a sigh. “That’s definitely true.”

  “In that case, I’ll let you go.”

  I slipped my hands from his, patted his arm as if we were parting as nothing more than friends. In fact, we were already much more. And if we got our way, we could be more than that.

  The thought of more with Barrett brought a rush of heat to my cheeks—and other parts of my anatomy.

  “Will I, um, see you before you have to go back to Mississippi?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am.”

  Barrett leaned close. He nuzzled my temple. Without meaning to, I closed my eyes.

  I could’ve stayed like this, on this park bench, with Barrett, until the summer solstice came and went.

  But in spring’s early morning chill, he whispered against my skin.