by Nick Thacker
“No. Don’t you see? They want me to find it, whatever it is,” she said. “They gave me four days, Mark. Four days to figure out what the hell Elias was working on. They need me to get it for them, and if that’s the only way to get Reese back—”
Before she could finish the sentence, her voice cracked, and she began to choke up. Mark reached out his hand to comfort her, but she pulled away.
“I’m going to the lab, Mark. I’m going to figure out what they’re looking for, and I’m going to get Reese back. We can get in from the back of the lobby. The police aren’t going to watching that side of the building.”
Mark knew he couldn’t stop her. She was as stubborn as he was.
Chapter 5
LARSON’S LAPTOP DINGED AS SOON as he walked in the door.
The email was from Durand, sent through a secure address from his office in London. It was a forward of a short thread between Durand and his boss.
>>Subject: Fwd: Re: Larson
>>From: . Vertrund, Investigative Head, NETA
>>Get him on it. I’ve heard of him, and he’s probably got the connections through to the top that we need on this one, but keep it quiet. We need in, if it’s going to fall the way I think it is.
>>I looked at the file Diane sent over. If it’s related, it’s probably going to blow up. Make sure Larson stays out of the way.
He scrolled down through the remainder of the thread.
>Subject: Larson
>From: G. Durand, Assistant to the Investigative Head, NETA
>I need your approval on this one, boss. Craig Larson’s an old friend of mine, and I’d like to have him look into something for us. Last night a kidnapping coincided with the murder of a professor in Massachusetts.
>Diane got a flag on a name related to the case: Dr. Elias Storm, who’s got a brother in the system. The kidnapping victim is the son of a woman who worked for Dr. Storm, and I just want to cover all our bases here.
>Obviously we can’t make much noise, as it’s a little out of our area, and we don’t want to get the cops over there riled up. Larson moves under the radar, and he’s the ear we’ve got for this.
So the Brits wanted information too. Whatever this thing was, they wanted someone with connections helping them out.
Political connections.
Larson knew that could mean anything, but at the very least he understood that if the British intelligence community was interested in something that had happened on American soil, the Americans surely would be interested.
But Durand trusted him, and he had no reason to betray that trust.
He had no political enemies in England, and he didn’t have any loyalties to the current governing administration of his home country. He’d do exactly what Larson and Vertrund asked; he’d snoop around a bit and see what was going on. If there was anything interesting to find, he’d figure out what to do with it then.
Detective Craig Larson turned on the small 4-cup coffee pot in his kitchen. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 6
THE CAR WAS SILENT. NEITHER of the pair had spoken a word since they’d left the apartment.
Mark Adams knew better than to break the silence with his wife, too. Jen was on edge, terrified, and hadn’t slept in more than a day, and besides, he didn’t have anything useful to say.
It’s my fault Reese’s gone, he thought. He knew wasn’t really true; if he had been home, he might have been injured—or worse—and Reese would have been taken anyway.
He rubbed his eyes. He had taken a nap for a couple hours after work, before Reese had gotten home from school, but the events of the evening seemed to have erased any sleep he’d had and replaced it with anxiety and fatigue.
The car, Mark’s beat-up ’97 Ford pickup, sailed off of Main Street and onto Academy Drive, the main road leading through and around the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He circled the lot once, trying to find a secluded spot to park. Jen looked through the window out onto the well-manicured grounds, still smelling the faint scent of lawn clippings and light dew from the evening’s humidity.
The school, established in 1891, rested on a small peninsula on Cape Cod that jutted out into the bay, about an hour south of Boston and just under an hour east of Providence. Specializing in Marine Transportation and Marine Engineering, Mass Marine had been established to serve the merchant marine transportation industry as well as the United States Navy. To this day, the Academy worked closely with the Navy for the commissioning of officers for the nation’s marine vessels.
Jennifer Adams was brought on as an associate professor for the new Energy Systems Engineering program the school launched two years ago. Her job included teaching undergraduate and graduate courses and assisting the tenured professors in her department.
Mainly, however, her time was usually spent assisting Dr. Elias Storm in researching submarine geothermal energy production. During her own graduate years, Jen had been recognized—and recruited—by Dr. Storm for her breakthrough work designing a structurally sound prototype for energy extraction in high-pressure environments. A week after she had her diploma in hand, she found herself side-by-side with one of the world’s renowned and leading experts on underwater energy production. The two years at Mass Marine working in the labs with Dr. Storm were some of the most challenging, rewarding, and exciting years she’d ever spent, and she loved it.
Until now.
It felt unbelievable, knowing someone close to her had died, but she didn’t quite realize it yet. Walking into the building with Mark, she felt like Dr. Storm would be bustling about, hurrying through the halls like a doctor in an emergency room. He would stop, as if deep in thought, quirk his head sideways, and grin when he caught sight of his younger research assistant. “Jen! Hello, I’m glad you’re here—” he would say, and before she could hear the rest of his sentence, he’d be off to another corner of the building.
But not tonight.
Tonight, they were alone. The walls seemed to loom over them, the darkness pressing down. She felt smaller. Are we even in the right building? she thought. She’d never been in here this late at night, before even the cleaning crews arrived.
Rounding the first corner, they came to a long hallway. Storm’s office was on the right, the fourth door down. Before they reached it, Mark and Jen could see that this section of the hallway had been roped off with police tape.
“Someone’s already been here,” Mark said.
“The cops, I’d guess,” Jen said. “Maybe they just checked it out for evidence. They wouldn’t know to look for anything else, would they?”
“Probably not. But still, I don’t want to get caught with my pants down. If they come back—”
“They’re not coming back, Mark. At least not tonight. There’s no reason for the police to watch an empty office, especially since the murder’s already happened. Come on.”
She started away from the intersection of the two halls and continued toward the professor’s office. Reaching the police tape, she hesitated for a moment, then ducked underneath the line of plastic caution ribbon. Storm’s office door had been left open, and she could already see as she entered that the police had rummaged through the file cabinets, desk drawers, and shelving units lining one side of the large room.
“Looks like they didn’t clean up after themselves very well,” Mark said as he appeared by his wife’s side. “I wonder if we should have brought gloves or something. I don’t know if they’ll send forensics or not, but I definitely don’t want to be associated with this.”
Jen frowned, then dismissed the idea. It was so like Mark, she thought. Always afraid to get his hands dirty. He was more anxious of getting involved with things than he was in finding a solution to a problem. Maybe that was part of why his career had never really taken off.
Mark Adams was a good security expert. Great, even. He’d been in charge of a few projects for his current company that had brought them to the forefront of the computer security and intellige
nce world, and he’d been the man behind most of the research and development. His boss, however, had taken most of the credit, while Mark received a small bonus and a pat on the back from management.
It had seriously pissed Jen off. They had just finalized the separation, and tensions were high as they balanced their now-single lifestyles with their parenting duties. Jen remembered screaming at Mark—the frustratingly well-tempered man that he was—and accusing him of being a pushover. He’d argued, albeit weakly, that it “wasn’t his place,” and “he just wanted to be a good employee.”
And he’ll always remain just a “good employee,” Jen thought to herself that night. He was the same gentle, helpful man she’d fallen in love with thirteen years ago, but what she quickly discovered that what she’d originally labeled as carefree resolve was really a lack of willingness to make important decisions.
Jen had basically run the entire relationship, and the effect was a broken family.
Snapping her focus back into their current world, she took another few steps into the office and glanced around. For the most part, aside from a few empty styrofoam coffee cups and the caution tape left by the police, everything was as she remembered. Books lined the shelves to her right—chemistry, physics, and a few geology numbers. On the man’s desk, which was usually kept spotlessly clean and free from clutter, sat an amethyst geode and a trilobite fossil. Papers were strewn about. They were documents and reports that Jen recognized from her work with the man.
“I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” Jen said. She wasn’t sure what they’d find, or if they’d find anything at all.
“What kind of project were you working on?” Mark asked. Since they’d been separated for over a year, he hadn’t kept tabs on her career. “There has to be something important; something they’d do anything to find out,” he said.
“No. Nothing. I mean, we were just doing standard research. Underwater geologic mapping of thermal activities, that kind of stuff. We were working long hours, though, since it’s getting to be the end of the semester, and his course load was getting hectic.”
She reached toward a stack of papers on Dr. Storm’s desk. Storm was characteristically organized—unlike Jen—and the shuffled stack of loose documents was obviously left by a careless police officer from earlier that night. The top few pages were student assignments, ungraded, followed by a few internal office memos. She almost laughed at the sight of them. Storm was old-fashioned in every way. He would print out almost every email and memorandum and file it away in the long row of filing cabinets on the left side of the room.
Mark was rummaging through the top-left file cabinet now, being sure to use a pen he’d grabbed to slide through each document. “Mark, don’t. There’s nothing there. It’s all old stuff. Graded assignments, letters, stuff like that. I can’t imagine there’d be anything of value—”
She stopped short as her eyes stared down at the pile of papers she was shifting through.
“What’s up?” Mark looked up from his cabinet to see what Jen had found.
“It—it’s a letter. At least an envelope. It’s empty, but it’s addressed to Dr. Storm.”
“So? Who’s it from?” Mark asked.
“It’s also from Dr. Storm,” Jen said.
“You mean, like he sent a letter to himself?”
“I think so.” Jen opened the empty envelope further to take a peek inside. It was empty, but she ran a few fingers through the inside, just to be sure. “The return address, though, is from some town in Pennsylvania. It says ‘Dr. Storm, Aberdeen, Pennsylvania.’ That’s not where Dr. Storm lives—lived—though. He’s got a house just off the coast here.”
“Hmm, interesting. Well keep it, now that you’ve got your prints all over it. Let’s keep looking.”
Mark went back to rifling through the file cabinets, but stopped a few seconds later. “You hear that?”
“What?” Jen wiped her balmy hands on her jeans—she didn’t even remember changing into jeans—and looked up. “I didn’t hear anyth—”
“Shh! Listen!” Mark crouched, and Jen copied the movement.
The sound of footsteps, light but quick, echoed down the hall and into the room. One set of footsteps or two? Jen found herself thinking.
The pair turned to face the door, and Mark reached out to shut off the office light.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “If someone’s coming, they’ll know we’re in here. Get behind the desk. It’s solid wood, and you can’t see underneath it,” she added.
Mark followed the order, and Jen tiptoed around to the backside of the shelving unit. It was a floor-to-ceiling model, no doubt from Ikea or another large big-box store. Storm wasn’t the vain kind of man who cared much for fancy furniture or expensive adornments. The shelving unit stood about a foot away from the back wall, and there was just enough room to wriggle her small frame into the space between the wall and the side of the shelf.
It’s not going to hide me for long, especially if they come into the room. Jen held her breath as the footsteps got louder.
The footfalls stopped just outside the office door, and she thought she could hear whispers. She couldn’t make out the words, nor place exactly where they came from.
She looked down at Mark. His head was poking out from under the massive desk. He’d pushed the rolling office chair back a bit and crouched into the space beneath the desk top. He wasn’t a large man—thin and just at six feet tall—but she was surprised at the amount of space left over under the desk. She wondered if it may have been a better idea to share his hiding spot.
Too late now.
The voice outside the door whispered again, and Jen heard someone stretching the police tape away from the door.
Again, the whispers.
“—night vision,” was the only word she could make out.
The lights in the office, as well as throughout the hallway, immediately flicked off.
Jen panicked. As the initial shock of darkness wore off, Jen noticed a light glow spilling into the office window from some outside source. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to maneuver through the room.
They’d cut the power to the building, and they were coming in! She dove forward, trying to get behind the sturdy desk. There wouldn’t be time to crawl underneath, but at least she’d be offered more protection.
Shouts, now. “Stop! Come on out. I know you’re in there!” she heard a man’s voice say. British? She couldn’t tell.
Mark grabbed her hand. Squeezing, he shook his head. “Don’t,” he whispered.
Jen ripped her hand out of his. What the hell am I supposed to do? she thought as her eyes caught his.
“Again—Ms. Adams, I need you to step out from behind the desk. I’m not here to harm you, but I need your full cooperation.”
A panicked expression came over Jen’s face as she mouthed silently to Mark. “The police?” He shrugged, and his eyes widened as Jen stretched an arm above her head.
“Jen, stop! Get down!” Mark whispered aloud.
She ignored him and raised another arm over her head and above the top of the desk. Slowly, she stood, her back to the door.
“That’s it, Ms. Adams. Turn around slowly and walk over here. We need to have a little chat,” the man behind her said. Definitely British, she thought again. Too refined to be Australian.
Jen turned around. Standing in front of her was no policeman. The man, dark-skinned, was dressed head-to-toe in black body armor, complete with an assault rifle pointed directly at her. His face was emotionless, though his eyes were covered by wraparound black goggles. Without speaking, he jerked his head and gun simultaneously, motioning for her to walk toward him.
She did. A second body appeared in the narrow doorway, this one leaner, like a woman’s. Sure enough, as Jen approached them, she could see that the second military officer was female. Her face was fair-skinned and smooth, with full lips, but that was all Jen could see of her. Like the first man, this woman’s face was
mostly covered by a large set of night-vision goggles.
“Come outside with us. We need to discuss something. You came alone?”
Jen thought for a second. They didn’t know Mark was here. Or did they? She didn’t have time to ponder the question.
“Y—yes. I’m alone.” She hoped Mark could hear her. She didn’t want him overreacting and getting them hurt. Whatever this was about, they obviously wanted to speak to her, not kill her. If Mark was his usual self, he’d stay under the desk until everyone had left, and then he’d sneak out and try to phone for help.
The woman spoke this time. “Good. Let’s go.” Her voice was as cold and hardened as a war criminal’s, and her grip around Jen’s arm matched. She yanked Jen through the door and began walking down the hall. The large black man followed behind them.
“Who are you? How did you find me here?” Jen asked.
The woman didn’t respond. She didn’t even glance in Jen’s direction.
“We didn’t want to get the police involved, Ms. Adams,” the man said. “Unfortunately, we believe there’s more to your son’s kidnapping than what you’re currently aware of.”
So they knew, she thought.
“You’re going to come with us. We have a secure facility just outside of town where we can debrief.”
As he finished his sentence, Jen heard a scuffle and a muffled shout from behind them. She whirled around to see a third soldier, this one a young man, blond, running toward Dr. Storm’s open office door from the other side of the hallway. Mark was also running—directly toward Jen.
“Jen! Let’s go!” he shouted, almost caught up to them. They were about twenty feet away from the intersection with the other hallway, and therefore about 100 feet from the exit.
