“Huh?” she asked, taking a bite.
“What happened to light this fire?” he asked, motioning toward the notes.
“Oh,” she said, swallowing her bite. “I woke up and I had this idea and I did a little digging.” As she spoke there was a strange inflection, like she was hiding something, but he didn’t press.
“About?”
“Well, last night we told the kidnappers the best formula was the one with the yellow lid from Costco. What if these guys actually listened and went there to get it?”
That seemed like a reach, but he didn’t dare say that to her when she was feeling empowered in their hunt.
“I’ve been pulling security camera video—I got access from some contacts I have. I figure they have to have stayed in the area and there is only one Costco. The way I see it, even if they didn’t get the formula there, at least it’s a place to start. They’re going to have to get baby food and diapers somewhere. Basically, everything. And we know we are looking for a man named Rico, could be short for Richard or Ricardo or Enrico. Or not.” She shrugged and waved the thought off like it was of no matter. “If we can nab a photo of these guys, we could get to them in a matter of hours. If we get lucky.”
If was the keyword in that statement. There were millions of things that could go wrong with her plan.
“Did you find anything on the video?” he asked, motioning to her computer as he took a long drink from his coffee.
“I have seen a few potential suspects. I’ve cleared about thirty individuals so far. We have three we are going to have to look into a little deeper.” She stuffed the rest of her pastry into her mouth and stood. She stuck out her hand like she wanted the keys to the car.
He handed them over and, finishing off his croissant, followed her out. He chewed fast, swallowing the last bite as he got into the car and buckled in. He had a feeling today was going to be a wild-goose chase, but it was a hell of a lot better than sitting around and playing the waiting game.
Summer headed south, well over the speed limit and barely slowing at the stop signs. “The first one on my list is a man named Cody. I found his picture and info in a search of public records—he was picked up for a DUI a year or so ago. He is in his midfifties and isn’t married. He lives alone and works for the power company. So far as I can tell, there is no reason that he would need formula and baby wipes.”
He could think of quite a few reasons the man would need something like that, but if this made her feel better, so be it.
“Did you hear anything from the kidnappers?” he asked, holding on to the “oh shit” handle above the passenger-side window as she nearly flew around a corner.
“No.” She shook her head. “But I did call the number they contacted us from. Of course, it came back as busy and didn’t go through. That was where I started when I couldn’t find you.” She glanced over at him and there was a strange guilty look in her eyes.
She was hiding something, but he had no idea what it could have been. Maybe she wasn’t hiding anything and he was just seeing things that weren’t really there. Maybe it was simply his own guilt for not being the man she needed that was leading him to read far too much into things with her. Or maybe he had lost some of his ability to look at her and know what she was thinking. It had been over a year since they had been this close.
“Anyhow, this Cody guy...” she continued, “he seems like the most promising of the leads I have so far. If we come up empty-handed, maybe our suspects just haven’t hit the stores yet. But these guys will and, when they do, I’ll be ready.”
That was, unless they had actually been prepared to kidnap the baby and had gotten all their supplies in advance of taking any action. Any good team would have had everything planned out long before they’d taken any real action, and they’d have been overly prepared. But then again, the man they had spoken to last night had seemed at a loss when it came to babies.
“What are we going to do about the coding? What if we just hand it over?”
She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “First of all, I don’t have the code. Sure, I had it, but I don’t keep that kind of information once I achieve my objective. I just pass it along to my team leader.”
“Given the circumstances, don’t you think they could work with us on this? Maybe give us some of the code and bury their own somewhere in it? We could use it to track them.”
Summer nodded. “There isn’t a chance. Besides, these guys are probably not the ones who want the code. In cases like these, when government secrets are involved, these kinds of ransom teams are normally only getting the information to sell it off to foreign governments or other bad guys. It would be stupid of them to use the codes for themselves.”
He knew it was likely she was right, but they still needed some sort of leverage when it came to negotiations. If they didn’t manage to get the drop on the men who held Joe, they needed to be ready to have something to trade. “What if we prepared some dummy code? Worst case, we don’t use it.”
She slowed the car, but only slightly. “Maybe I can get my team leader to help, but my crew would probably be starting from scratch. Who knows how long it would take.” She sounded dejected, as if she already knew the idea wouldn’t work.
He hated when she sounded like that, resigned to failing. “You never told me what the code was actually for.”
“Does it matter?” she countered.
He pursed his lips. “Yeah. It could. I have a team we can turn to, as well. You know Zoey is amazing with tech. My teams at STEALTH, if given the information, can set to work. That way we have all of our bases covered. Consider it our contingency plan.”
She nibbled at her bottom lip.
“You need to tell me the truth. If you want, it never has to leave this car, but I need to know why this is all so important to these people. If I don’t know what is motivating them, then I can’t know what they are willing to lose in order to get what they want. And the last thing I want is for them to get to a point in which they are so desperate that they are willing to hurt Joe. I would never be able to get over something like that.”
She sighed. “How much do you know about ConFlux?”
“All I know is what Zoey and my team at STEALTH have told me.”
Summer scowled as she looked at him. “You can trust me, Mike. I hope you know that.”
He hated the way she was making him feel right now. They both knew secrets weren’t something that could be shared between them, not really. If he gave her sensitive information, it could end up with both of them being killed—possibly even by their own teams. If they told secrets, they were a liability. Whatever they said to one another, no one could ever know. It would be the greatest exercise in trust that either of them could ever participate in with one another—was he willing to take the leap of faith?
If he opened up to Summer, he would not only be putting himself at risk, but also his team—a team that contained his siblings. As much as he loved Summer, he could never put one of his siblings in that kind of position.
“You know I can’t—”
She stopped him with a sideways glance. “I get it. But what I’m about to tell you could get me into a whole lot of trouble. I need you to be on the same page as me...and we need to get Joe back. No one outside of this car has to know what we say to one another. But you need to know some truths, and so do I. This is all about Joe.”
He squirmed in his seat. If she told him something, anything that put him in danger with his team... “I don’t think—”
“Stop. I know what you are going to say,” she said, her words coming out at a mile a minute. “But here’s the deal. If I don’t tell you who you are working for, and you continue on, you may find your guys get in deeper than you ever thought possible.” She nibbled at her lip, like she was pausing to weigh the ramifications of what she wanted to tell him.
“What in hell are you talking about, Summer?”
She slowed her speed a little more. “ConFlux and its late CEO were working for the DOD.”
He had known that the company had been taking military contracts, so her information wasn’t much of a surprise. Yet her opening up to him made him clench. Something felt off. “Summer, stop.”
“Don’t worry, I already scanned my car for bugs. My phone is in a Faraday bag. Put yours in, too.” She motioned toward the desert khaki bag between them. He did as she instructed. “Now, stop worrying. Just listen. You need to have an idea of what we are up against.”
He set the Faraday bag back on the console between them. Of course, she would think about their safety. She’d likely had this conversation all planned out long before he had even gotten back with their coffees.
“Okay, but I don’t want whatever it is you are going to tell me to—”
“Get you in trouble?” She finished his sentence, her words coming fast.
“That’s one way to put it,” he said.
“I’m trusting that whatever I tell you remains between us.” She locked eyes with him. “Can I trust you?”
He paused, thinking about all the implications that making such a promise would mean. If he agreed, he would be putting her before his family and before his team. “You know I care about you, that I want to know what you have to tell me, but you can’t ask this of me.”
“I am not asking you to compromise yourself, just to listen.”
He wasn’t sure she could have one without the other, but he didn’t bother to argue. When Summer had her mind set on something, there was nothing that was going to stop her. The last thing he wanted to do was to be the one who would delay them from getting their son back. If she needed him to be on this team for the good of their spontaneous family, then he needed to get on board. Joe first, consequences second.
Mike gave a slight nod, motioning for her to continue.
“ConFlux doesn’t just machine parts for the government. They also work in tech that is unknown by most of the public. In the early 2000s, they started working for the DOD, machining parts for fighter jets and then UAVs. But since then, those technology systems have started to take a back seat to other, more dynamic technologies.”
Working overseas, he’d witnessed more than his fair share of dynamic technologies. When he’d been on patrol, he had seen everything from old car batteries used as bombs to tech that could sense vibrations on house windows and tell him what the people inside were saying. What, exactly, Summer was talking about could have a million different definitions, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know specifics. At least, he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask and be drawn further into the web she was weaving.
He held his tongue.
She checked him, and her expression soured slightly as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. “The code that was taken was for some of these dynamic technologies.”
“What would the kidnappers within Rockwood want to do with it if they got their hands on the information?”
She looked away from him. “Well, that is where I’m a little foggy. I’m not sure whether or not this code would be kept by them or sold. And if it was to be sold, which I think is more likely, I don’t know if it would be to foreign governments or traded domestically.”
“Why would someone in the States want code for tech that was built for the US military?”
Summer smiled wickedly, like she was proud he had sniffed something out. “The DOD assigns governmental contracts to only a select handful of companies. These contracts can be extremely lucrative. In essence, this could be a case of corporate espionage—some other US company could be employing Rockwood to get the information so they can undercut ConFlux to gain control of the limited government contracts. But this is all just a hypothesis.”
Holy crap. He’d had no idea. This information could change everything.
And he couldn’t tell a single soul.
He dropped his head into his hands as he tried to make sense of everything she was saying. For now, the only certainty was that he had to know more about what Summer had gotten herself wrapped up in. “What kind of tech is this code actually for?” he asked, a sickening lump forming in his stomach.
She chewed on her bottom lip. “It is used in the making of IGS—Information Gathering Systems.”
“Such as?”
She switched on her blinker, slowing as she turned down a side road leading to their primary suspect’s residence. “They have been helping build nanotechnology the size of bugs and smaller, which can be deployed in a variety of mission settings from combat to civil unrest. Basically, it’s used in building the proverbial flies on the wall. This tech can also be used, however, with whatever chemical weaponry they deem necessary.”
He tried to control the shock that was undoubtedly marking his face. ConFlux had been profiting from the world of nano warfare. He’d heard whispers of tiny devices that were information collection bugs. There had been talks in Congress sometime in 2009 about such things, but he had yet to have heard of or seen them actually being built or deployed en masse.
The result of such devices being employed on the battlefield and in intelligence gathering was almost unimaginable. It was potentially as life-changing as bringing the internet to the public. Once this IGS technology was released, everything would change. There would no longer be any safe place. Everywhere and everyone could be compromised.
And now, the code to create the technology was at the center of their war to get their son back. They couldn’t allow anyone to get their hands on the code—not when it had such potentially cataclysmic ramifications for the world—but they also had to do something to save their baby.
Chapter Twelve
Though Summer had promised herself she wouldn’t compromise Mike by giving him information he shouldn’t be privy to, she had done exactly that. But the DTRA and Kevin were doing little to help Joe, and she needed answers and she needed them fast. As far as she could tell, she would only get them by bringing Mike into her inner circle. Sure, she could potentially lose her job if they found out she had divulged government secrets, but right now she trusted Mike far more than anyone else.
No one cared about Joe as much as they did. No one would fight as hard as they would. Kevin had proved just that by blowing her off and telling her to just sit still when her son’s life was at stake. If he found out about what she’d told Mike, he only had himself to blame.
She pulled her car to a stop about a half a block from their first suspect’s house. The man was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t inside with Joe, holed up like the criminal he potentially was while he waited for the ransom demands to be delivered. Well, he could keep waiting; she was done playing Rockwood’s games. Right now, she was the one in control, hunting down the people who wished her and her loved ones harm.
This was her game now.
She glanced over at Mike; he looked at odds with everything. She didn’t blame him.
He’d always had the power to bring her back to reality and make her feel like she was nineteen years old and completely adrift. Had she told him too much? Was he thinking she was a security liability to him? Was he thinking she was untrustworthy? Had she made a mistake in telling him anything?
Damn, she needed to get out of her head. But ever since she had dropped the info bomb, Mike had been silent. No doubt, he was thinking about all the things she’d said, piecing it all together with whatever his group already knew. He was also probably thinking about how he was going to tell Zoey and his teams at STEALTH about this newly acquired information.
She didn’t want him to go to them with the details, but at the same time, she was almost sure it would be exactly what he would do.
“The nanotech they are working on right now at ConFlux is called Mayfly.” She felt bad feeding him a fake code name, but
if she heard it from another outside source, she would know if Mike and the STEALTH team used it.
Here was hoping she never heard the code name Mayfly again.
She hadn’t wanted to bring Mike in this deep, but the people who had taken Joe had struck low and had left her with no other cards to play. She’d had to call him in; he was one of the only people she knew she could trust. At least with him, she could understand his motives and his driving forces. Understanding those meant she also understood his weaknesses—and his strengths. And right now, she needed every strength he bore as she was barely able to process a single thought. If he proved himself, she would tell him the whole truth. Maybe.
Though she understood that what was happening, and her inability to focus, was due to her emotional state, it didn’t mean she could control their effects on her mental state. She had been trained to be mentally resilient and deal with stress, but no one had prepared her for a situation like this. Was she strong enough to do what needed to be done? What if she failed? What if Joe ended up getting hurt—or worse?
Her breathing quickened.
One step at a time. One task at a time. That’s all she could focus on right now. Anything else and she would lose whatever ground she had managed to gain in her search.
Resilient. I have to be resilient.
This step was all about their suspect. If they got lucky, Joe would be inside the gray house with the white covered porch just down the street. Joe would be fine. He would be gurgling and cooing inside with this Cody guy and Rico, who would prove not to be monsters but merely instruments of the bosses who employed them to do their bidding.
Here was hoping. And here was hoping Mike didn’t figure out she was still keeping things from him. If he did, he would likely never trust her again.
“Let’s head over there, see if we can get a bead on Joe. If he is in there, we will bust down the door.” She ran her hands over her face as she thought about calling Kevin again and telling him where she was and what they were doing. No. He didn’t need to know she was going against orders. She was an agent for the DTRA and sometimes being an agent meant she had to go a little rogue.
Rescue Mission Page 10
