Control: Out of the Box (The Girl in the Box Book 38)

by Robert J. Crane

  “We don't know that for sure, sir,” I said, after catching a glance from Chalke that said, You talk to him! “Bilson's been a political operator for a long time. Speaking as someone who's been on the receiving end of one of his smear campaigns, I'm guessing the man's made his share of enemies domestically.”

  Gondry paused, and the anger in his eyes faded a little. “That's...that's a reasonable point, Ms. Nealon. I hadn't really considered that.”

  “Surely Mr. Bilson had dealings outside of politics, too,” VP Barbour said, taking up where the other two of us had left off in talking the president down. “I mean, there must be a wealth of possibilities when it comes to motive.” She fixed a gaze on me. “Was Mr. Bilson romantically involved with anyone? I mean, isn't that usually the first line of an investigation?”

  “I don't know if he was or not,” I said, realizing – I really didn't know. I'd met him for the first time only a couple days prior, after all, and we hadn't exactly talked about significant others. Not that I'd share my secret boyfriend's identity with anyone, let alone a confirmed member of the Network. “If he was, I'm sure we'll turn it up in the course of the investigation, which we've had for...” I went to check my cell phone and realized the Secret Service had taken it. “...Uh...anyone have the time...?”

  Barbour gave me a pitying look and checked the tasteful watch on her wrist. “It's half past two.”

  “We've had the case for about an hour,” I said, looking President Gondry right in the eye. “And the DC police had nothing, really, to turn over to us other than the possible location the sniper used to make the shot.”

  “Give us some time to look into things, sir,” Chalke said. “We'll find out what happened.”

  “You're quarterbacking this, Agent Nealon?” Gondry asked, looking right at me.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, feeling my stomach drop. “I'm all over it.”

  “Then we know it'll be handled properly,” Gondry said, and slapped both hands on his knees before standing. “Unless you have anything else to report...?”

  “That's all for now, sir,” Chalke said, taking her cue and almost launching to her feet. “We'll be in touch when–”

  “There is one other development that might be applicable, sir,” I said, and felt the freezing look Chalke sent my way. If that was bad, though, I knew what was about to follow would be ten thousand times worse, as I slipped Bilson's diary from my pocket and brandished it.

  President Gondry peered at it. “What is that?”

  I could see Chalke peering at me without bothering to disguise her irritation. Since all eyes were on me, I was the only one that caught it. “This,” I said, “is Bilson's diary. I found it during the search of his apartment. I started to comb through it before I came here to make my report, and found something interesting.” I flipped to the applicable page and handed it to the president as Chalke's eyes widened. “It turns out that Mr. Bilson was a member of a professional group that he called 'The Network.'”

  “Not of the cable variety, I assume?” Gondry asked, looking in concentration at the pages.

  “Ah, no,” I said. “In fact, according to this,” and I pointed at the page I'd left open just for him, “it seems like their primary purpose was to shape US policy via influence on you – and others.”

  The president's eyes narrowed as he took that in, then read the passage in question. I'd found it while flipping through during a cursory reading while waiting for Chalke's driver in the lobby of Bilson's apartment. She'd been on the phone, but I hadn't bothered to hide what I was doing. Just didn't advertise it, and counted on her natural disdain for me and everything about me to keep her from asking.

  It worked, though, based on the somewhat frozen, furious look on her face, I had more than her interest now. I had her ire. Which was definitely a totes new experience for me.

  Gondry's face grew redder and redder as he parsed the section I'd offered him. “This is...it's...outrageous.”

  “What does it say?” VP Barbour asked coolly, the only person in the room at this point not emotionally invested in what was happening.

  The president's eyes came up, and they looked like they were on fire. He slammed the diary shut against his hand. “Blatant manipulation!”

  “What does it say?” Chalke asked, trying her best not to sound choked. She mostly succeeded, though she sounded like she had a frog in her throat. “About this Network? Do we have...names?”

  “Only codenames,” I said, shaking my head. She slackened about ten percent, but I wouldn't have wanted to be a bug in her ass right now. She could have turned coal into a diamond, the pressure she was under. “Bilson seems to have been hiding his associates' real names for fear the diary might be discovered.” I kept my posture, my voice as loose as possible. I was dropping a bomb, but I didn't want Chalke to think it was aimed at her.

  Yet.

  Still, from under the mask of the calmest bearing I could manage, I had to keep myself from giggling at the fact I'd just exposed her little club to the president of the United States with her in the room. Lucky the Secret Service had confiscated my phone, because I would have been sorely tempted to film her reaction.

  “There seems to be discussion of you in this,” Gondry said, waving the diary, his anger getting the better of him.

  I nodded. “I noticed.”

  Chalke sat up a little straighter and smoothed out the lines of her pants. “What does it say about you, Agent Nealon?”

  I turned my attention to her, trying to keep as blessedly neutral as I could. “Mr. Bilson mentions going on TV to trash talk me during the passage in question. Apparently destroying me was a high priority for his cabal. Again, I haven't had a chance to sift through the entire diary, but I'll be doing so immediately once I'm back at the office.” I nodded with solemn resolve. “I'll be on it day and night, and I'll pass along anything else of interest.”

  Chalke faded further into the background. And here I thought she'd already paled as much as possible.

  “It seems we have a mutual interest in this,” Gondry said, nodding. “Very well, Agent Nealon. Keep me informed.”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  Gondry narrowed his eyes in concentration, exaggerating his crow's feet. “Good, good. I have a trip later today to Cincinnati, then Austin, Texas, and finally Greensboro, North Carolina, before I come home late tomorrow night. I probably won't be available for large sections of that time, while I'm on stage at the speeches.” He checked his own watch, then looked up at VP Barbour. “Why don't you run point on this for me, Sarah?”

  “It'd be my pleasure, sir,” VP Barbour said, already on her feet and nearly whisper quiet. She raised a hand to indicate we should leave, then followed us out into the secretary's office, letting the Secret Service close the door behind her. “Agent Nealon,” she murmured once we were out, stopping me before I could flee the scene.

  Damn. And here I thought my tough questions were over for the moment.

  “Do you think this could be a political assassination? Like that New Orleans business last year?” Barbour asked, staring at me with penetrating eyes. They were bright, yet cool, inquisitive. “Or is this an internal matter with this...Network?”

  “Well,” I said, trying to put together my thoughts so I didn't sound like a total idiot to the VP, well aware that my boss was staring over my shoulder and probably glaring. She did a lot of glaring. “While there is certainly a dearth of political assassinations in American politics, overall, in the last thirty years or so, especially outside of the Executive...” I hesitated, licking my lips. “...Usually, if a murder's personal, it's more up close and...well, personal. Sniping is generally a tool of assassination because it's got distance to it. As to the Network...we just don't know enough yet to be sure.”

  Barbour took it all on board, nodding slowly, eyes narrowed in careful thought. “I don't want to see us jump to any premature conclusions. The president's got a lot on his mind, and this China business is a lot to process.
I'd hate for us to make any hasty moves when due consideration might better prompt us to act in a more measured way.”

  “I totally understand and agree,” I said, forcing a smile. “We'll be reporting to you, so you can best decide what course to take with the smaller developments, I'm sure.” Which was my way of saying that everything I learned from now until the end of this was going to arrive in Barbour's lap with a hearty, HERE! Now it's YOUR problem!

  Barbour smiled almost imperceptibly. “Indeed. I can promise you, I take that responsibility very seriously, and anything important you pass along will be communicated to the president.”

  “Thank you, ma'am,” I said, because there wasn't much to add to that. With a nod, I moved on, out of the secretary's office and back down the hall. I could feel Chalke breathing just behind my elbow. After I'd had enough of it, I tossed her a look. “Any advice, boss?”

  “Why didn't you tell me about the diary before we walked in?” She was clearly hot under the collar, though she was doing a fine job of pretending that she wasn't. It came off near-perfectly; she couldn't hide her anger entirely, so it seemed like she was just nettled that I'd surprised her with this revelation in front of the president.

  I had a different motive, of course. I wanted to get the diary out there in view of the only person who seemed to have power over the Network. While it didn't perfectly guarantee the safety of the thing, it certainly helped to have its presence known to the most powerful man on the planet. “Sorry,” I said, “you were on the phone pretty much the whole time, and I was sorta lost in thought about what I was going to tell him. I'd just found it before we walked out.” No need to mention the tech with the missing memory.

  She was walking alongside me now. “You need to get it to forensics ASAP.”

  I nodded. “I will. I just need to make copies of it first so I can analyze it.” I smiled tightly. “Procedure, you know.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Which part of procedure includes taking a piece of evidence from the scene without logging it or following the chain of custody?”

  Not a bad point, but of course I had an answer for it. “Oh, I've got it covered,” I said. Because I did. Procedural maneuvering wasn't going to stop me, though I doubted any part of this particular piece of evidence would ever be admitted into a court of law.

  “I hope so,” she said, and she couldn't hide the coldness in her voice. She raised her phone up and started to type into it.

  “Any other advice?” I asked, wondering why the Secret Service didn't take her phone but always grabbed mine. Seemed unfair.

  She didn't look up from whatever she was doing. “Don't screw it up,” she advised. So helpful.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Chapman

  CHALKE: THAT FOOT-HIGH LITTLE BITCH JUST DROPPED BILSON'S DIARY ON POTUS, AND IT DISCUSSES THE NETWORK!

  Chapman went from sleepy to fully awake in about two seconds once he read Chalke's opening missive. It was the middle of the night in California, he'd been in and out of sleep for hours leading up to this, but this news had catapulted him off the couch like he'd been fired out of a cannon.

  BYRD: wtf u guys

  JOHANNSEN: Oh, dear.

  CHAPMAN: What?!?!?!

  He barely stopped the exclamation point and question mark interrobang-fest there. This demanded answers. Fuller answers than Chalke's initial text had offered.

  CHALKE: I was in a meeting with POTUS, the VP, and Nealon, and she PULLS OUT THE DIARY OF BILSON, which includes references to us AS THE NETWORK...only saving grace is that no actual names were mentioned.

  FLANAGAN: Say what?

  CHAPMAN: How did he reference us, then? Some sort of code name?

  CHALKE: Yes. Code names.

  Chapman sat back in his seat. At least there was that. Still...

  FLANAGAN: What do we do now?

  That was the question, wasn't it? Bilson had been the informal head of their little group. Doubtless if he was still around, he'd have an idea.

  But then, this was all his fault. Who kept a diary in this day and age? Especially when you were trying to do something as important as they were?

  CHALKE: The president knows we exist, but he doesn't know who we are. Nealon showed him a passage that spelled out how we try to influence him. He's pissed. Nealon has the diary, and now she's going to be working on it. Bilson's codenames are not that clever. Tech-head for Chapman.

  KORY: What's mine?

  CHALKE: I don't even remember. It wasn't memorable. Not the point, anyway.

  JOHANNSEN: LOL

  KORY: That's such bullshit. I should have a cool code name.

  CHAPMAN: Who cares about the feelings and opinions of a dead man? We need to focus on the now. Look, Bilson may have said things in that diary that suggest criminal culpability for actions we've taken. That book needs to disappear.

  He waited. And waited. No one said anything. Damned ass-covering monkeys.

  CHALKE: That's not going to be possible. She's logging it into evidence after she makes copies.

  Chapman let loose a chuckle.

  CHAPMAN: Digital copies, am I right?

  CHALKE: ...Yes.

  CHAPMAN: You take care of the originals, I'll deal with the digital, okay?

  He owned Nealon's computer and phone thanks to the Remote Access Trojans he'd infected them with. They also gave him full access to her cloud storage, and, through the miracle of keystroke logging, he had her password to access the entire FBI system. Anything she uploaded, he could delete from both her system and the Bureau's servers.

  CHALKE: I can get the original diary. If you can erase the digital record...yeah, we can make it disappear.

  Chapman smiled. This was how you did things.

  CHAPMAN: Let's make it disappear, then. Leave Nealon with suspicions and nothing to base them on. That'll have her looking like an idiot, and hopefully before she even gets enough to reveal the identity of even one of us.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sienna

  The office was deathly quiet when I got back to it, a little before four in the morning. No surprise there given one of my fellow agents had been suspended for a (justified) shooting pending investigation and the other had been murdered in the street outside only the day before. It was a terrible quiet that I found myself in, and I didn't break it even as I set about the task of making digital backups of Bilson's diary and began the process of logging them all into evidence.

  I still didn't hold much hope that anything in the diary itself was going to be criminally actionable. Bilson was corrupt as hell after his long career in politics, I figured, but he was smart enough not to put in writing the kind of things that would lead to his indictment, or that of his allies. Probably.

  Still, I photographed every page of the diary under a borrowed set of desk lamps, making sure I captured them on my phone's screen, no trace of blurry words or brightness washing out the legibility. This was going into my cloud backup, then I'd upload to the FBI servers, and finally, make a xerox of every single page.

  After all that, maybe I'd finally get around to reading the whole thing. If I didn't fall over from fatigue first.

  Resting my face one one hand as I snapped another photo of a diary page, I yawned. It had been a long few days since I'd been summoned out to Northern Virginia to start the Chinese kidnapping case. The fact that it had dovetailed right into this meant sleep was going to be for the weak, at least until this wrapped up, if my prior experiences were any guide.

  And dammit, I might have been a lot of things – succubus, superhero, pain in the ass – but I wasn't weak. I'd get lots of sleep once this was over. Or in those brief windows where I was knocked unconscious or badly wounded. Those were always restful.

  I'd gotten to the last few written-in pages of the diary when I heard the door open to the street. Peering out from behind my cubicle wall, I waited to see who was coming in. Only a very few people had access to this building, and the only people I'd seen here other than my co-workers were a
couple members of the General Services Administration, whose job it was to oversee this disused building and maintain it for the government.

  Oh, and the janitorial staff, but they only showed up once a week, and this wasn't their night.

  To my lack of surprise, the tousled black hair of Kerry Hilton, my last surviving fellow agent, appeared first from behind the wall separating me from the building's entry, followed by her yawning, caramel-colored face. She looked just as tired as I was, though probably for different reasons. Hilton was a millennial party girl; my guess was that she'd been out until the wee small hours, enjoying her suspension, and had to drag herself in when she got the call.

  “'Sup?” I called.

  She didn't have both eyes open as she weaved her way to her desk. “Dunno. You tell me. Someone revoked my suspension and told me get my ass in here at the order of the director.” She dumped her purse on her desk, then lifted her thin arms into the air, stretching. I half expected her to be wearing woolly pajama pants when she came around the cubicle corner to my desk, but she'd done the thing right and put on real ones, dress pants that had a couple visible cat hairs on them. “So...what is it? Meta attack?”

  “No,” I said, turning my attention back to my makeshift diary photo studio and snapping the next picture. “A murder with no provable indication of meta involvement. Yet.”

  Hilton stared at me blankly. “Then why the hell did they end my suspension and yank me back in? In the middle of the night, no less?” She emitted another yawn, and I felt like I was going to get sucked in, because she didn't bother covering her mouth.

  “It was the guy I got assigned last case,” I said, turning the diary page and snapping the next picture. My phone was connected via USB right to my computer, and each pic was immediately uploading to my hard drive. Every few pictures, I'd drag the copies to a flash drive attached to the computer, just to add a second layer of backups. “You know, Bilson?” She stared at me blankly. “The political operator? He was working it with me. I guess that was after your suspension.”