“That works,” Seth says, glancing at me to ensure I don’t have an issue.
And I do. “If my father is alive and involved, he’d be the one at ground zero, not Casey.”
Nick is silent for several beats before he says, “I’m also aware of that fact, Amanda. I’ll be in touch.” He hangs up, and it’s not what he said that hits me like a bullet. It’s what he clearly didn’t want to say. Suddenly suffocating on the air in this tiny room, I stand up and start walking, my path carrying me through the suite to the stairwell leading to the higher floors. I hurry up the steps, and I don’t stop on the second level. I head to the third, and exit to the outdoor space there, the cool air washing over me, cooling the heat of emotions I don’t want to feel. Emotions solve nothing and I’ve had too many of them in the past twenty-four hours.
I cross the concrete patio to the wide concrete banister, and press my hands to the surface, staring out at the jagged skyline of downtown Dallas. It’s only a few beats later that Seth is behind me, his body cradling mine. His hands next to mine. “He believes my father is alive.”
“Yes,” Seth says. “I believe he does.”
“And he doesn’t think he’s just ghosting to stay alive.”
“Agreed again.”
I swallow hard, appreciating the fact that Seth didn’t candy coat his answers. My mind flickers to the past, to that same argument I’d overhead between my mother and father:
“What are you doing, Howard?”
I tiptoe closer, and flatten on the wall as my father replies, “Investing in our future.”
“Gambling away our money in dangerous investments.”
“Looking for an exit to the agency.”
“This isn’t the way.”
“I think he was dirty for a long time,” I say. “I think my mother knew, but felt trapped for some reason.” I think back to the day my father gave me the poison to kill myself and how my mother had come to me, how they had fought afterward. “Maybe he threatened me.”
Seth turns me to face him, the railing at my back. “You might not ever know, but if he is involved, with his skills, he’s more dangerous than Franklin. If someone has to kill him, I know you want it to be you, but trust me to know you and love you enough to say that it can’t be you.”
I want to argue. I want to avenge my mother and kill him, but I am self-aware enough to know that while little affects me, this does. “You’re asking permission to kill him?”
“Yes,” he says. “I am.”
I inhale and breathe out the most difficult words of my life. “You have it.”
Chapter Seven
Bear produces two MacBooks and the three of us spend the rest of the afternoon sitting at the table, with Seth and Bear going through every warehouse surrounding the bottled water company, researching names and employees. Nick’s people offer support, looking for any problem that might surprise us tonight. I, on the other hand, focus on the lab Casey works at, searching names, and making sure there is no one else I know that Nick’s searches have missed.
Nick’s team arrives at six, as expected, and Bear immediately joins them, eager to find a comfort level with them. By seven, they’ve set up in the room they’ve rented that just happens to be on our floor, and their tech guy has taken over the hotel cameras. Per Nick, our floor and the back door are on a looped feed, which plays in rotation, over and over, and doesn’t show what is really happening. It’s a tool that allows us to communicate with their team and get in and out of the hotel tonight, without notice.
Seth and I are about to go join that team, and start working through the plan for the night, when Nick calls again. Seth and I pause in the kitchen at the island and Seth places Nick on speakerphone. “Amanda and I are both here,” Seth tells him, setting the phone on the counter between us.
“Good,” Nick says. “This is about Amanda.”
I grab the sides of the island, preparing myself for what comes next. “I have a contact in the CIA,” he says. “Seth knows this. But she’s a bitch and I can’t call her unless I know I can back up what I’m talking about. When you were missing, Amanda, I couldn’t make that call. And damn, woman, you were just too good at hiding.”
My gaze goes to Seth’s, and I realize now how very hard he tried to find me. “Thank you,” I whisper, and then realize I owe the same to Nick. “Thank you for trying. I mean that.”
“Well, things happen for a reason,” he says. “I couldn’t have helped much then. But now that we have this monster hacker kid, I have something to share. So, back to my contact. She’s high-up and a bitch, but fair. And I just happened to have saved her brother’s ass a few weeks back. The timing on this is right, but I had to know that I had the facts before I called her.”
“And?” I ask.
“The charge against you was selling government secrets you obtained from your parents to someone named Fai Ming.”
My gaze rockets to Seth’s. “That was the case Seth and I were working on when the kill order was issued.”
“And that is absolute bullshit,” Seth says. “We hadn’t even met Ming. In fact, that kill order was the sole reason we didn’t infiltrate his resources on our own. We made a misstep. He kidnapped one of our men, killed him, and then I killed Ming. And I was with Amanda for three months. Why not tie me to the order?”
“They did,” Nick says. “To kill her. My contact says they were investigating her for similar acts prior to Ming’s.”
“If I was framed for the Ming case,” I say, “it can’t be Casey who did it. He wouldn’t know about that case.”
“Would your father or your mother?”
“No,” I say. “I told them nothing. I followed the rules always.”
“Well, here’s the thing. My contact has her eyes open now. I talked with her about Casey and your father. The records still exist, just in a different location. She has them. And when she pulled them, there was no photographic proof that your father was killed.”
“Who held the kill order?” Seth asks.
“She wouldn’t tell me that,” Nick says. “Only that she’s looking into the accuracy of their work. I can’t promise she’s going to change Amanda’s status, but I think we have a shot. That’s more than we had before.”
“I’m blown away,” I say. “No matter what happens. Thank you, Nick.”
“Just try not to kill Casey. We might need him to talk and spill the details we don’t know, if he knows. It could be coming from whoever framed you, and I let my contact know that I suspect it’s a link to Franklin. I can’t access who those people might be or I’d damn well find out myself.”
“Do we have eyes on Casey yet?” Seth asks.
“We do,” Nick says. “And on Chavez as well. So let’s talk strategy for tonight. And then I’ll talk to my men and give them the thumbs up, and you can go work out the logistics with them. Which brings me to the big question: if you find the toxin, we do what?”
Seth looks at me and asks, “Can we take a sample and create an antidote before we take them down?”
“I can’t promise I can create an antidote,” I say. “I haven’t seen the formula as they’re using it. And if we leave that toxin with them, we’re leaving it to potentially kill people. I can’t feel good about that.”
“Then we go nuclear,” Seth says. “Pull in Chavez and Casey, and the owner of the bottled water company.”
“He’s in Caribbean on vacation,” Nick says. “Which is suspicious timing.”
“Then I’m on track here,” Seth says. “Make Chavez and Casey talk. Make them give us Franklin. I know we risk losing Franklin, but if Rick can’t find Franklin beforehand, it’s a risk we have to take to shut down this attack.”
“We’re completely banking on you making them talk, if we do this,” Nick says. “And that they have no trigger to set off attacks in other cities.”
“I’ll make them talk,” Seth says. “But remind our hacker that if we get the job done before he does, he doesn’t get paid. He n
eeds to find Franklin.”
“If the toxin is here,” I say, “he’s here.”
“Chavez and Casey have been getting calls from local Dallas numbers that track back as throwaway phones. That could be Franklin.”
“Or my father,” I say. “If he’s involved, and it’s okay for you to say he might be, Nick, then he would be communicating with Casey on the toxin.”
“We’re on it. More later, and Amanda?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know that your father is alive, but I believe he is. That doesn’t mean he’s not hiding somewhere and completely uninvolved.” I don’t have any intention to press him to admit that he thinks my father is dirty. It doesn’t matter. We all know. And he doesn’t wait for me to, either.
He ends the call.
Seth and I stare at each other and I don’t have my father on my mind, and neither does Seth. “We’re going to get you your freedom.”
I walk around the counter, and when he turns to me, I push to my toes and kiss him. All the many things I want to say to him will come later.
* * *
Seth knows three out of five of Nick’s men and our prep work goes smoothly. Chavez and Casey are both home in bed, and since we can’t spare the men to watch them in person, Nick’s team manages to get cameras on them. And finally, it’s time to find out what is in that warehouse. Everyone is in black, armed to the hilt, and equipped with headsets. I have a small bag at my hip with a test kit inside it that will be heavily used to test random bottles of water.
Since Bear convinced us to bypass the local FBI involvement, despite this being their jurisdiction, our first obstacle is getting past their surveillance, which means exiting through the garage and using a car other than our own. The rest of the team will be unfamiliar to the Feds, and they can exit through other means, ensuring a mass exodus from the garage doesn’t draw attention. With the garage our obvious destination, Seth and I head down the hotel stairs with Bear and a tall, dark-haired tech guy named “Riot”—the name an obvious joke, since the guy is stoic enough that I worry he might flat line at any moment. Wordlessly, we complete our plan, entering the garage and claiming a black Volvo, with Riot, who we know won’t be recognized, in the driver’s seat and us hiding.
We’ve just hit the highway when Seth’s phone rings. He answers the call, but not on speaker, I assume because Riot is present. His conversation is short and he ends the call. “The hacker genius has a lead on what we hope is Franklin. In the past twelve hours, there have been a series of calls to Chavez from disposable phones. He managed to hone in on a location. He’s pulling Team Three to go after him.”
Franklin, or my father, or both, I wonder. It doesn’t matter, though. We were this close to him in China over and over, and then he was just gone. “He won’t be there,” I say.
From there, the plan unfolds: All teams park at separate designated spots, and then approach the warehouse. Everyone takes waiting positions, hidden in various places outside the line of the cameras that will soon go dark. Our position is behind the Dumpsters dividing the warehouse from a side street and only a few feet from an entrance. Once we’re there, hidden, and met with zero resistance, through our headsets, Bear relays the command. “All ready.”
Two more teams follow with that same status.
All teams are in place, and on a planned timer, the lights several miles deep in the county will go out and the electric company will have a message up that says there’s a car accident to blame. I glance at my watch and then Seth, and everything, street lights included, go dark. That’s when everyone moves. Us toward the entrance. One of our backup teams toward the wall. The final team to our starting positions. Riot gets us past the locks, and what is left of the security system, which isn’t much. We’re inside the building in sixty seconds, and we trust Riot to dismantle the security system and make sure the cameras are on loop when the lights come back up in five minutes.
We’re greeted by pallets of water bottles, and aware that someone could show up to check on the building, because of the power outage, we all pull out small flashlights, and divide and conquer. We search for a lab and then we gather water from random water bottles from different parts of the warehouse that I will test. It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s a decent plan.
I’ve just cleared my part of the warehouse, feeling discouraged by the idea that we are going to be back to ground zero, when Seth speaks into my headset. “We hit gold,” he says.
It’s at that moment that the lights come on. I start running toward Seth’s search territory and I find him standing in a doorway, leading to what appears to be offices. He disappears inside, and I follow him through one office, and then another, to an open door. I enter a supply room, and pass row after row of paper and pens and random products, before I’m suddenly looking at a line of ten tables, all covered with hundreds of sealed test tubes. All with white powder inside, waiting to be dumped into water.
“My God,” I whisper, opening my kit, even as I glance at Seth. “It’s going to test positive. I’ll bet my life on it.”
“The team that went after Franklin is headed to pick up Chavez,” he says. “Riot is headed to get Casey.”
“Because Franklin was a no-go,” I say, already sitting at one of the tables, preparing my kit, gloves on. Mask on. Seth stands to one side of me and Bear to the other, and it takes me sixty seconds to confirm that yes, the powder is our toxin. I give them a nod and both men curse. While they digest the news, I quickly contain the sample, package it in special container I seal in my bag at my hip, and then pull off my mask and gloves.
“Let’s hope this is all of it and that I can make an antidote,” I say, standing to face Seth and Bear. “Otherwise, a lot of people will die.”
Seth’s cellphone vibrates and he pulls it from his pocket, listening before he ends the call. “Our men have Chavez. ETA five minutes.”
“Three would be better,” I say.
“Nothing more on Franklin?” Bear asks, stepping beside us.
“He wasn’t at the pinged location, which was a hotel,” Seth says. “And there was nothing in the hotel room, but they took fingerprints and we’ll have it tested for DNA.”
I inhale and let it out. “He’s going to get away again.”
“Chavez is going to talk,” Seth says.
There’s a sound of a struggle in the warehouse and Bear takes off running. A few seconds later, Bear and one of our backup teams shove two men to the floor in front of us. “One of them is the guard I followed,” Seth says, as the second starts cursing at us.
Bear plants his foot in the man’s back and shoves him forward. “I hate jabber-jaws.” He ties the guy’s hands and feet. By the time the same process happens for both men, the jabber-jaws is jabbering again, and Bear tapes his mouth shut. He eyes me and winks. “Never piss off the Bear, Princess.”
I’d laugh. But not now. Maybe not for a long time. It’s at that moment that two of our men, Lucas and Gil, deliver a man I know from photos to be Chavez, still in his pajamas, his arms tied behind his back. He’s a short man, with dark hair and a belly that’s had its fill of too many beers. He’s scowling, of course, but at least silent. Bear sets a chair down for him right in between the two men on the floor. Lucas hands Bear a phone I assume belongs to Chavez, while Gil deposits Chavez on the chair, and gives Seth a two-finger salute. The two men back up and head back to the warehouse, which is not nearly as well guarded as we need it to be.
Chavez looks me up and down. “Interrogate me, baby.”
I’d interrogate him all right, but Seth steps in front of him and Bear murmurs, “That was a mistake, bud. Big fucking mammoth mistake,” right before Seth says, “I’ll interrogate you, baby. Where is Franklin?”
“Who?”
“See,” Seth says, “you think this is where I hit you, but I don’t do that. I just kill people. And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you are already dead.”
He laughs. “You’re law enforce
ment. You don’t kill people.”
“I’m CIA. We do whatever we want and say we didn’t.”
“You’re law enforcement.”
Seth pulls out his gun and shoots one of the men on the floor between the eyes. He falls forward, and even I’m a little stunned. “Here we go,” Bear says clapping his hands. “Are we going for two?”
Chavez is now shaking. “Who are you?” he demands.
Seth looks at Bear. “Phone.”
Bear crosses to him and hands him the phone. Seth holds it up. “Call Franklin and tell him you’ve captured the Poison Princess.”
His eyes rocket to me with recognition before returning to Seth. “I can’t call him. He calls me.”
“Is there more poison?” Seth demands.
“In a warehouse two blocks away.”
From there, Chavez sings like a bird, and I’m listening in when Bear flags us. Seth and I walk a few steps to privacy with him. “Casey was dead when we got to him,” Bear says.
The words are a blow, both to this case, and to mine. “We had cameras on him,” I say.
“It was an assassin’s work,” Bear says. “He knew how to get in and out without being seen.”
“To shut him up,” I say. “Probably the same one who killed my mother.” I shove a hand through my hair and look at Seth. “Is Chavez going to give us Franklin?”
“He doesn’t have him. It’s time to hand this over to the local Feds, and we have no idea if Franklin has the toxin with him to duplicate it. We need to get a notice out on official bulletins nationwide.”
“I need to get to my lab and create an antidote.”
“Go,” Bear says. “I’ll handle things here. I’ll call Riot to meet you at the side door with the car key.”