Trigger Warning

by Allan Leverone

  Mike shook his head. He’d been lost in his thoughts and had absolutely no idea how long he and the little girl had been parked outside the cottage sitting like idiots inside his stolen car.

  That sort of thing had been happening more and more, where he’d zone out and lose minutes or even hours of time, and while there was no question the situation was scary as hell, now was not the time to worry about it. All he had to do was keep his shit together for a week and the Chilcott gravy train would be back on the tracks.

  And once that train was rolling again and moving toward the White House, the real money would start pouring in. Bribes and kickbacks and graft, a pile of riches Bradley Chilcott would be forced to share with his top security man, if for no other reason than Mike Hargus knew where the bodies were buried.

  Literally, in some cases.

  And that mountain of cash would make the measly hundred grand Lauren had taken in the divorce look like the contents of a kid’s piggy bank. Like the contents of little Janie Tolliver’s piggy bank, Mike thought and snickered.

  Then he blinked several times and jumped in his seat.

  Christ, he’d zoned out again. Keep it together, you asshole.

  He turned toward his captive and saw the Tolliver girl eyeing him curiously. She’d fallen asleep at least an hour ago during the drive to Winnipesauke and the nap must have calmed her nerves, because there was no trace of the teary-eyed, “poor me” attitude she’d exhibited earlier.

  “What do you think you’re looking at?” he said gruffly. He was pissed off and embarrassed she’d witnessed his behavior but didn’t know why. She was a fucking seven-year-old; who gave a damn what she thought? It wasn’t like she was going to live to tell anyone she’d seen her kidnapper acting like a mental patient.

  “I’m not crying,” she said defiantly, as if announcing a major victory. Given her age and situation, Mike supposed it was.

  “Good,” he replied. “Make sure you don’t start. All that will happen is you’ll make me mad, and that’s not something you want to experience.”

  “I have to pee,” she said as if he’d never spoken.

  “Jesus Christ,” he grumbled to himself. “Why did it have to be a kid?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just hold it a little longer. We’ll be in the house in a minute and you can go in there, okay?” Mike sprang out of the car and hurried around to the passenger side. The stolen car was no prize—several years old and as anonymous a sedan as you were likely to find on the road—but it was all the wheels he was going to have for the next week and the prospect of driving to the liquor store in a car stinking of piss held no appeal whatsoever.

  He glanced quickly in all directions to reassure himself the area was deserted—of course it’s deserted; it’s always deserted around here—and then opened the passenger door. He threw the blanket off the kid and fumbled for the handcuff keys. Bent and uncuffed her ankles.

  Then he stood and yanked her out of the car by the elbow. She let out a little squeak of surprise and cringed.

  “Now you listen to me,” he said sternly, pointing to the cottage. “You’re going to walk straight into that house. You’re not going to run and you’re not going to scream and you’re not going to give me any kind of trouble, because if you do it will just make me mad, and that’s—”

  “I know,” she said, interrupting him mid-rant. “That’s something I don’t want to experience.”

  Mike’s initial reaction was to smack her. He hated being interrupted, especially by a smart-mouthed little bitch who didn’t even have the common sense to be frightened. Without thinking he lifted his right arm to backhand the brat right across the face.

  Then he remembered the importance of keeping the girl unharmed—for now—and stopped himself. He settled for growling, “Don’t be a wiseass, kid, it’s a good way to get hurt.”

  “You shouldn’t use bad language,” she said, meeting his gaze straight on. “Mommy says it makes you look ignorant.”

  “Oh, Mommy says that, does she?”

  “Yup.” The girl stood on tiptoes to peer curiously at the house over Mike’s shoulder. Her knees jiggled unconsciously. “Can we go inside now? I guess you forgot but I still have to pee.”

  I’m going to enjoy pulling the trigger on you, he thought. Maybe this week isn’t going to be quite as relaxed as I’d hoped. He grabbed the girl by the shoulder and shoved her in the direction of the front door.

  “Ignorant, my ass,” he mumbled. He turned and followed his captive up the steps, grumbling all the way.

  13

  Jack sat in front of his computer waiting impatiently for a program to load. The software was called Mole and it was highly classified. It was so secret, in fact, that as a civilian, Jack should not even have been aware of its existence, never mind having it installed on his computer.

  But he was aware.

  And it was installed.

  Years ago, while working in the Middle East, Jack had saved the life of a fellow operator named Bill Earl during a mission gone sideways. The pair had been tasked with eliminating an Afghani crime lord, a bloodthirsty man responsible for decades of child sex slavery, drug manufacturing and murder.

  The plan had been simple: break into the crime lord’s home while he was sleeping and put two silenced 9mm slugs into his skull. Unlike many of Jack’s missions, this one carried no requirement that the man’s death appear accidental or natural.

  The only reason the army had even become aware of this particular tribal leader was through a confidential Afghani source whose family lived in the area, and the mission’s only purpose was to eliminate the iron-fisted grip the crime lord had maintained over his village.

  But they’d been fed faulty intel, and instead of entering the Afghani’s bedroom when they infiltrated the house they had found themselves inside the room of the man’s teenage daughter. She’d woken up and begun screaming, and rather than killing her, the pair had elected to spare her, to backtrack and fight their way out of the house through the man’s now-awake and alert security team.

  Bill Earl had taken a bullet to the chest. The slug punctured a lung and fractured two ribs, and extreme blood loss rendered him unconscious within minutes. Jack refused to even consider leaving him. He’d dragged the bleeding, badly injured man through the house with his left hand while holding off the security team with the weapon in his right. He’d been certain he was going to die and even now, years later, wasn’t entirely sure how he survived.

  After putting down all three members of the Afghani’s security team, Jack had staggered eight miles to his unit’s secure location with Bill Earl slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, all while dodging an intense manhunt initiated by the still-breathing—and now severely pissed-off—Afghani.

  Six weeks later Jack returned to the house, alone, and completed the mission.

  To say Bill Earl’s family had been grateful would be an understatement. The mission had been classified, of course, so most of the relevant details he could never share with them. But they knew Jack had saved his partner through extraordinary effort and at extreme risk to himself.

  He’d earned an entire family of loyal friends for life.

  That family included a brother, Ron Earl, a computer genius and technology expert who earned a living writing computer code and software programs for the NSA.

  When Jack met Ron following Bill Earl’s return home for life-saving surgery, the two hit it off immediately, and Ron had made him a promise: “Anything you need, anytime or anywhere, you let me know and if it’s in my power to give, you’ll have it. No questions asked.”

  Jack shrugged off the offer, humbled by the man’s sincerity but unsure what a computer expert would ever have to offer someone like him, to whom just signing into his email account was an adventure.

  But that was before Jack’s entry into The Organization, and the civilian continuation of a career he’d begun when barely out of his teens and in service to the United Sta
tes government.

  And also before he began hearing rumors through his many contacts still active in the intelligence community of a super-secret computer program in development. A program so sophisticated it was capable of breaking through virtually any known electronic firewall and then tracking the movement of any piece of electronic data.

  The significance to the government of this kind of software—if it actually existed—was obvious. It would allow the United States to monitor terrorist activity and track the movement of weapons, troops and dangerous materials of entities hostile to the U.S. to a degree never before possible.

  The significance to someone like Jack Sheridan of this kind of software—if it actually existed—was equally obvious. It would allow him the potential to identify entities hostile to him in the event he or someone he cared about were to be targeted for blackmail or other mischief.

  Exactly as had happened today.

  Jack had given plenty of thought to the implications of acquiring such a program—if it even existed—before ever making a move. Were he to be apprehended with it loaded onto his computer’s hard drive he would certainly be jailed, maybe even charged with treason. There was no legitimate reason for any ordinary citizen to possess Mole and as far as anyone knew, Jack was just an ordinary citizen.

  And his fervent hope was that he would never need it or anything like it. He was cautious to a fault, and religiously observant of his personal rule never to get close to anyone who could become a target.

  But things had a way of going south in a hurry in his career field, and even the most cautious operators eventually make mistakes. So Jack had very discreetly contacted Ron Earl. After a delicate dance conducted over the course of several weeks, he’d verified that Mole did in fact exist, and that not only was the program real, Ron Earl himself had been one of its primary developers.

  Jack never even had to remind Ron of his years-earlier promise. He made a generous monetary offer to purchase a copy of the Mole program, and that offer was accepted without hesitation or negotiation.

  Ron knew Jack was still involved in some way in the field of covert ops, and Jack’s selfless actions in Afghanistan—when he could have abandoned Bill Earl to a horrific fate and no one would ever have known—were enough to convince Ron there was no risk to the transaction.

  Weeks later Jack had become the somewhat reluctant owner of one of the most powerful espionage/intelligence tools ever developed. He’d loaded Mole onto his computer—itself disguised and hidden under several layers of encryption designed to render it invisible to anyone but the program’s owner—and forgotten about it. He’d had no need for it so he’d never used it.

  Until now.

  The program loaded sluggishly and for a moment Jack feared his aging computer would not be powerful enough to run it. The delay was made more difficult by Edie’s presence in the chair across the room, her fear and desperation—and cold revulsion for Jack—making itself plain despite her lack of complaint.

  At last a muted ding indicated Mole had finished booting up and was ready for use. Jack wracked his brain trying to recall the instructions Ron Earl had given him regarding use of the program. He did remember Ron telling him the developers had constructed Mole to be as user-friendly as possible, with the understanding that the intelligence specialists who would be utilizing the program would in most cases not be computer experts.

  He began slowly, afraid of making a mistake that might shut down the program and force him to start over. As he worked he realized Edie had climbed out of his stuffed chair and was standing directly behind him, watching closely. He couldn’t see her but he didn’t have to. Simmering anger and frosty disapproval surrounded her like a force field.

  And he didn’t blame her a bit. She had every right to hate him.

  After a few minutes—and more than a few mistakes—Jack decided he was ready to load the email he’d received into Mole.

  He had not a single doubt that the communication had been routed through numerous secure servers designed to render it untraceable and ensure its originator remained anonymous. And in practically every case, that routing would have been successful.

  But this wasn’t every case. Jack had Mole on his side and he was certain whoever had written and sent the email was unaware of the program’s existence.

  He liked his chances of tracing it.

  He also had no idea how long it would take Mole to do its job.

  Maybe it would be nearly instantaneous.

  Maybe not.

  He waited in front of the computer screen as the program—hopefully—performed its magic. There was no way to know whether anything at all was happening, aside from some random-sounding clicking and whirring coming from deep inside Jack’s computer.

  After a few minutes with no results he decided his hopes for a quick resolution had been misguided. He stood and stretched and turned to see Edie Tolliver still watching him from behind hooded eyes.

  He averted his gaze and walked into the kitchen to make tea. All his hopes were resting on Ron Earl’s creation. If Mole didn’t perform as advertised, Jack had no idea what he was going to do next.

  It wasn’t a comforting feeling.

  When the tea had steeped, Jack picked up the two mugs and returned to the living room to wait. He handed one to Edie. She accepted it without comment and then turned and padded back to her chair.

  He wondered if she would ever speak to him again.

  He doubted it.

  There didn’t seem to be anything left to say.

  14

  The girl was secured.

  The wise-ass attitude she’d displayed when they arrived at the cottage disappeared when Mike chained her to an old, rusted radiator, and he felt a momentary rush of savage pleasure at putting the little bitch back in her place.

  But it was only momentary. He immediately wished for the previous incarnation of Janie Tolliver when she began crying again and asking—constantly—for her mommy. She seemed ready to launch into a fit of screaming hysterics but Mike put a stop to that shit by calmly informing her that if she uttered one single sound above the decibel level of a normal speaking voice she would be gagged and hog-tied to the foldup cot he’d provided her to sleep on for the next week.

  He wasn’t sure she understood what it meant to be hog-tied, but she seemed to have no problem comprehending the concept of the gag. The threat effectively staved off any hysterics, and when he left the room to walk into the cottage’s combination living/dining area the kid was sniffling into her pillow and refusing to look at him.

  Good.

  The hard part of the plan—at least from Mike’s perspective—had been kidnapping Janie Tolliver in broad daylight from almost directly in front of her house and getting away cleanly. With that accomplished, the remainder—again, from Mike’s perspective—should be a breeze.

  Byron Hunt would be arriving in a couple of hours to keep him company and help watch the captive, and while Sheridan was off doing the heavy lifting of assassinating Maryland Governor Jim Studds, Mike and Byron would be several hundred miles away playing whist, smoking cigars and monitoring news reports to find out when Studds bit the dust.

  Mike had agreed to call Bradley Chilcott the moment Phase One of their plan—kidnapping and stashing the little girl—was complete. He supposed he should do that now, although he was strongly tempted to wait a while before checking in, just to fuck with the controlling bastard.

  Maybe he’d celebrate completing Phase One with a gin and tonic or a beer before making the call.

  He mulled it over. Went back and forth on the matter. Chilcott wasn’t a bad guy, he supposed, for a power-hungry megalomaniac, but something about the prissy asshole’s sense of superiority went right up Mike’s ass. Sideways.

  Therefore, Mike enjoyed tweaking his boss whenever he could. Not enough to risk getting fired and losing his spot on the Chilcott Presidential Gravy Train, but enough to let the guy know that Mike wasn’t intimidated by a soft politician who�
�d probably never been in a fistfight since the last time his little sister beat him up in the backyard.

  Finally he sighed and picked up his cell phone. Might as well get the damned call over with. He wasn’t going to be able to truly relax until he’d hung up with Chilcott. That, more than anything else, ended up being the deciding factor.

  He punched the lieutenant governor’s speed dial number and waited, growing increasingly annoyed listening to the electronic buzzing that indicated the phone was ringing—but not being picked up—on the other end.

  Chilcott was fucking with him. He must be. There was no possible way the son of a bitch was doing anything other than waiting nervously by the phone for Mike to call. They’d gone over the plan dozens of times, so Chilcott was every bit as aware as Mike of the plan’s timing.

  From the arrival of the kids in Tolliver’s neighborhood, to the distance from that neighborhood to Mike’s cottage on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, everything had been meticulously plotted and timed out, right down to the minute.

  Mike had explained that there would be some slippage, that things in the field never went as smoothly as the operator expected them to, that the actual execution of Phase One would almost certainly take longer than expected. But even assuming Chilcott had understood Mike’s point, it was simply inconceivable to think the lieutenant governor was reviewing some stupid budget item, or doing anything other than sitting at his desk sweating his ass off awaiting Mike’s call.

  The phone rang several times and he knew it was about to go to voice mail. He couldn’t remember how many rings it took for that to happen, but he’d called Chilcott so damned many times over the course of his employment he could sense exactly when it was going to happen.

  If Chilcott didn’t pick up by the time the voice mail message came on Mike would hang up. He certainly wasn’t going to leave evidence of an incriminating nature in a goddamned electronic mailbox.