“I need to go too,” Emily’s mom said. “I’ll follow at a distance and keep my head down.”
Too dangerous to be seen together. How many times had her mother’s and grandmother’s faces been shown on the news?
Grand allowed herself to be led. “Did you know Bad People are following us?” She fluttered her hand in the air. “We have to get to Raleigh. It’s very tiring.”
“Yes, Grand. I know.”
Emily’s gaze cut left and right as they crossed the parking lot. Was anyone following? Was her mom all right? Everything within Emily pulled to look over her shoulder, check on her mother. But she didn’t dare.
As they entered the hospital, her pulse skipped.
She asked for directions to the nearest bathroom, then hustled her grandmother along. Once they entered the restroom, panic clawed at Emily’s throat. What was her mom doing? Had anyone recognized her?
“Hurry, okay?” she whispered to Grand.
As they left the restroom, from her side vision Emily spotted her mom ready to go inside. Grand saw her too. “Hannah, what—?”
“Shh!” Emily squeezed her fingers.
“Ow!”
In the hallway, heads turned.
“Come on, Grand, let’s go.” Emily pulled her grandmother away, heartbeat in her throat. If anyone had heard the name Hannah . . .
They crossed the parking lot as fast as Grand could go, Emily praying for her mother. At the car she noticed it unlocked, keys still in the ignition. Her mom’s purse sat in the backseat. Woman wasn’t thinking very straight. Emily helped Grand into the front passenger seat, then slipped behind the wheel. She started the car.
“Where’s Hannah?” Grand sounded so scared. How had she made it through all this?
“She’s coming. We’ll go up and get her.”
“We can’t leave Hannah!”
“It’s okay, Grand. It’s okay.”
She drove toward the entrance and put the car in Park. Come on, where are you? Long seconds stretched by.
Her mother came out of the building. Emily could have cried. Her mom reached the car, opened the back door—
From nowhere a gray van surged in front of them and jerked to a stop. Its side door gaped open. A man jumped out, gun in hand. Emily gasped. The man grabbed her mother and dragged her toward the truck.
“No!” Emily leapt from the car.
A second man appeared in the van and pulled her mother inside. The first man flung open the Camry’s front passenger door and yanked out Grand.
“Ahhhh!”
He clamped a hand over her mouth. In no time she disappeared into the van. Emily ran toward her. “Nno—!”
An arm gripped around her neck. Then shoved her—hard. Other strong arms caught her at the van’s door and pulled her inside to dimness, a hard floor. A man climbed in after her.
Her knee hurt.
Was she dreaming? It happened so fast.
Someone slammed the door, plunging them into darkness.
The van took off.
Chapter 46
SPECIAL HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION INTO FREENOW TERRORIST ACTIVITY OF FEBRUARY 25, 2013
SEPTEMBER 16, 2013
TRANSCRIPT
Representative ELKIN MORSE (Chairman, Homeland Security Committee): Am I correct in assuming that, once you saw the messages on the video, you finally believed Hannah Shire?
Sergeant CHARLES WADE (Sheriff’s Department Coastside): I believed her words about the video. I still had four homicides to investigate, and her role in those deaths remained unclear.
MORSE: Did you not rethink your theories at this point? Those homicides could be linked to the video. Hannah Shire and her mother could be on the run from the people responsible, who were now trying to kill her.
WADE: All of that went through my mind. We still had many pieces of the puzzle to fit together. At that point things were happening so fast my theories could change from one minute to the next. However, if Hannah Shire believed she was in serious danger, why didn’t she call law enforcement? As I’ve mentioned before, she had my direct number. And even if she didn’t trust me, at any time she could have gone to the nearest police station. She could have called the FBI. Her refusal to reach out to any law enforcement did not fit with the theory that she was a mere victim.
MORSE: She clearly did not trust you.
WADE: So she claimed. Which was pure insanity. She’d made a very serious accusation against me to Homeland Security—that I, a veteran of law enforcement for twenty-eight years, was a terrorist plotting against the government. You say she didn’t trust me, Chairman Morse. At the time, I could not trust her.
MORSE: So once you saw the messages on the video, what did you do?
WADE: The FBI was now involved, as well as Homeland Security. We all needed to work together. First everyone needed to be brought up to speed on what had transpired. Homeland Security needed to tell the FBI task force what Hannah Shire had said on the phone. I needed to brief both parties regarding Mrs. Shire’s interview and the homicides.
MORSE: You had taped that interview. Did the task force view it?
WADE: There was no time. If that video was accurate, the power grid would be hit within hours. So I briefed them to the best of my ability.
MORSE: I understand you were interrupted during that briefing with another piece of information.
WADE: Actually, two. The first involved the tracking of Hannah Shire’s cell phone. That tracking was now in place. But it soon became clear that Mrs. Shire’s phone had been turned off. The second involved Emily Shire. A Santa Barbara police officer had just gone to her place of business. There he had an “odd” encounter with the office receptionist, who seemed terrified to talk to him. The woman claimed a “fake FBI agent” had already been there looking for Emily.
MORSE: So Miss Shire had also disappeared?
WADE: Yes. Apparently aided by a man in the office, Dave Raines, who’d left in a hurry soon after she did and had not returned. And it took some amount of questioning on the officer’s part to persuade the receptionist to say that much. The officer found Miss Shire’s vehicle in the back parking lot of the building, all four tires slashed. He obtained the plate number for Mr. Raines’s car and put out a BOLO—a Be On The Lookout.
MORSE: Did this disturbing news about Emily Shire lead you to now believe Hannah Shire’s story?
WADE: Yes, it did. Further, the receptionist was able to identify the man as matching the sketch we had drawn the previous night, after Mrs. Shire’s interview. The supposed FBI agent calling himself ‘Rutger.’ We already knew one of those men was dead, and now the other was after Emily Shire.
MORSE: Did you think that mother and daughter were together?
WADE: We didn’t know. We had to look for both of them. At the same time we had to put priority on the video. In her calls to Homeland Security, Hannah Shire had been insistent that the word “Raleigh” was crucial in finding the encryption key. We had to act on that theory—it was all we had.
MORSE: Did it occur to you that perhaps Hannah Shire had been attempting to track down this “Raleigh” on her own? That this is at least one of the reasons she’d been on the run? That in fact she had nothing but the best of intentions in trying to save her country?
WADE: On her own? While taking care of a mother suffering from dementia? And without the help of any law enforcement. In fact, while running from law enforcement. No. Frankly, Chairman Morse, it did not occur to me that any private citizen would attempt such a feat.
Chapter 47
Monday, February 25, 2013
What happened?
I lay in the dark, stunned, my head throbbing from having hit a hard floor. Somewhere nearby my mother moaned.
“Mom?” I leaned toward the sound.
“Shut up.” A man’s voice, c
old as ice.
“Haannnah.” Mom croaked out my name.
Panic rushed me. “I’m here—”
“I said shut-up.” A hand cracked across my face. My head reeled to one side, pain shooting through my cheekbone.
Someone gasped. “Mom!” Emily’s voice, calling for me.
“Emily?” I spoke her name weakly, my hand to my face. Was she here too? Last I remembered she’d been in the car with her Grand. I was getting in . . .
Rational thought surged through my mind. They’d found us. The Bad People. The terrorists. Thrown us into the back of a van.
Where were they taking us? How would I save my mother and daughter?
Somewhere on a different plane my heart managed to beat. I tried to pull in air, but so little found my lungs.
Beneath my body, an engine rumbled.
Time swayed. One moment terror squeezed my throat. The next I . . . what? Faded away? Then came to. And the cycle began again. I didn’t know how many minutes passed. Five? Thirty?
No one spoke. In time my eyes became accustomed to the darkness. I made out the forms of two men across from me. Emily, hunched in a corner. My mother, lying on the floor. Unmoving.
Fear for her pushed me to sit up. “Mom?” I slid toward her.
“Stop moving.” The man who’d hit me raised his hand again.
I jerked around to face him. “What a big man you are. Kidnapping an eighty-two-year-old woman.”
He hit me again.
“Stop it!” Emily choked.
The pain shook me, but I was beyond caring. My mother needed me. I began moving toward her again—and the van stopped.
Somewhere up front, a car door slammed. Behind us, a vague grinding sound.
The van’s side door slid back, powered by a short, muscular man with a shaved head, hard-edged goatee. He held a gun. Daylight filtered inside the vehicle. I turned toward Mom—but hands grabbed my arms and forced me out of the van. I spun around, seeking my daughter, my mother, seeing two other men pull them out. Emily first. She fell into my arms, and we hugged hard. I heard Mom’s cries, and let go of Emily to catch her as she was pushed from the van.
The two men inside the vehicle jumped out. One was Rutger, the young FBI agent with the Southern accent. Was he a real agent—or not? Emily saw his face, and her cheeks paled. He looked at her with shimmering, satisfied hatred. “Welcome to my house, Emily.”
The other man, older, dark-haired, I hadn’t seen before.
We stood in a garage. Its automatic door had shut.
“Inside.” Shaved Head pushed me toward a door at the back.
“Ohhhh,” my mother groaned. I looked back to see her stumble, her expression sheer confusion. I listed toward her.
“Go.” The man pushed me again.
“I have to hel—”
“Go.” He flung open the door and shoved me inside. I went down on my knees. He grasped my elbow and yanked me to my feet, his gun pointed at my head. Pulled me across a small kitchen into a half-furnished living room with a worn wooden floor. He sent me flying into a tattered brown couch. I hit it head first—spinning renewed pain across my face. I flipped around. He flattened a huge palm against my chest and pushed me to sit.
Rutger dragged Mom to the couch and shoved her down. She fell against me, crying.
“Whaaat is happening?”
I put my arm around her shoulders and tried to soothe her. What would this trauma do to her? Send her deeper into dementia?
Hatred for these men stiffened my limbs.
Emily hit the sofa next, on the other end. Her knee was bleeding. She leaned toward her grandmother, cheeks red with rage. “We’re here, Grand. It’ll be okay.”
“Where are we?” Tears ran down my mother’s face.
The three big, courageous heroes faced us, lined up in a row. Shaved Head put his gun on a nearby table. Then stood with legs wide and arms crossed, focused on me. He had to be the leader. The other two stood on his either side, mirroring his stance.
“You kept a copy of the video.” Shaved Head’s voice stuck to me like wet fingers on ice.
My insides trembled. I looked him in the eye, unblinking.
He stared back. “What do you know about a key to the encryption code?”
Mom lifted her head from my shoulder. Her chin trembled. I eased her head back down. “Code?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
“I don’t know anything about a code.”
My mind tripped over itself, hunting for logic. Hadn’t Harcroft or Wade told these men Morton Leringer’s words to me? Why did Shaved Head act like he didn’t know anything about Rawly?
“Is that so. Then why have you been on the run?”
I glared at him. “Maybe because you sent someone to kill me?”
He worked his jaw. “You shot my man?”
No words came to my lips.
“You killed him, you know.”
The words knifed me. “No,” I whispered. “I didn’t.”
I could feel the anger rolling off Emily. Her eyes shot darts at Rutger. He shot them right back. Please, God, make my daughter hold her tongue.
Shaved Head’s searing gaze moved from me to my mother. My pulse stilled. He looked back at me, and I read the thought on that evil face. He could get to me through her.
He stepped forward and poked Mom hard in the shoulder. She cried out and raised her head. Her cheeks were puffy and her eyes clouded. She took shallow, rapid breaths. I tightened my arm around her.
“Leave her alone!” Emily spat.
Shaved Head ignored her.
“Don’t!” Emily smacked his arm away from her grandmother.
Quick as lightning he backhanded her across the face. The sharp crack ripped at my stomach. Emily jerked to the arm of the couch and hung there, gasping.
“Ahhhhh!” Mom sat up. “Emily!” She reached for her granddaughter.
I could not do this. Not at the expense of my mother and daughter. Who was I to save the world? “Please.” The word snagged in my throat. “Stop. Let them go. Keep me. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
Shaved Head loomed over me, sneering. “Do I look like someone who needs to bargain?” He leaned closer. “Do I?”
I lowered my chin. A single tear fell and darkened my pants.
“Emily.” Mom’s voice shook.
“I’m okay, Grand, I’m okay.” With effort my daughter straightened and took her grandmother’s hand. She turned a defiant expression on the man who’d hit her.
Rutger laughed. He pointed at Emily and mouthed, Knew I’d get you.
Shaved Head turned on him. “What was that, Tex?”
Rutger/Tex shook his head. “Nothin’.”
“So shut up. She’s not here because you found her.”
Tex clamped his jaw shut.
Mom whooshed out a breath and faced the man above her. Her eyes cleared. “Who are you? What do you want?”
Mom, no.
Emily laid a hand on her arm.
Shaved Head glared at my mother, then placed a hand of mock gallantry on his chest. “Forgive me for not introducing myself. I’m Stone.”
“Stone? That’s your name?”
“Remember that car accident? Morton Leringer?”
Mom blinked, as if trying to catch up to Stone’s turn of subject. “He was my friend.”
“What did he tell you?”
Something flicked across my mother’s face. “You’re the Bad People, aren’t you?”
Tex and the third man chuckled. An evil sound.
Stone smirked. “Yeah, we’re bad, all right. Which is why you better listen to us, old lady.”
Mom gazed at him, puzzlement creasing her forehead. She swallowed hard. “Don’t hurt my girls.”
“He’s not, Grand
,” Emily whispered. “I’m fine.”
My head throbbed and my face burned.
The man looked at his watch. Mumbled to himself, “Four thirty.”
I didn’t react. Didn’t want to show them I knew what that meant. Two and a half hours. It didn’t matter what we did now. It was too late.
So why were we here?
Sudden clarity washed through me, leaving me cold and quivery. Even if it was too late to stop tonight’s blackout, that was only Phase 1. These men needed to make sure I hadn’t given someone the key. Someone who’d have the time to stop tomorrow night’s attack. And the one after that.
Stone would not stop until he got that information from me.
We were dead, all three of us. These men had shown us their faces. Once they learned what we knew . . .
They would not let us get out of here alive.
Chapter 48
SPECIAL HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION INTO FREENOW TERRORIST ACTIVITY OF FEBRUARY 25, 2013
SEPTEMBER 16, 2013
TRANSCRIPT
Representative ELKIN MORSE (Chairman, Homeland Security Committee): After you learned that you needed to look for Emily Shire as well as her mother, what were your next steps?
WADE: I knew the FBI task force and Homeland Security had begun checking computers that powered the western electrical grid generators. If these computers had been infected with a virus that was set to wreak its havoc at 7 p.m. Pacific Time, I hoped they would find it and be able to stop it.
MORSE: But there would be no stopping the virus without the key to unlock that encryption, correct? And you did not have that key.
WADE: Yes. Still, I hoped there was another way to stop the attack. The task force had informed me that, even if we were to locate the key within the next few hours, it would prove difficult to insert the code into infected computers in time.
MORSE: How convenient for the terrorists. So now in your recounting, we are up to what time?
WADE: Around 3:45. I had numerous deputies, including Deputy Harcroft, researching what connection “Raleigh” might have to Morton Leringer or Nathan Eddington. We weren’t sure which one of those men had hidden the key, so we needed to look at both of them. Leringer’s home was about to be searched a second time, as was Eddington’s office at StarrCom. Then at 4:15 I received two calls back-to-back.
Dark Justice Page 21
