The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Boxed Set, page 44
part #1 of Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Series
Douglas would survive if the emergency response team got to him soon enough. Coleen wouldn’t, not if Huiyin pulled the trigger of the gun pressed against the older woman’s throat. No wrinkles, no sign of wear and strain. Like Margo had.
After I kicked the pistol farther from Douglas’s reach, I started a stopwatch and said, “Two minutes. Emergency response is en route. Miss Fanon, there’s no need for more bloodshed.”
Her eyes—a pale green—turned, but she didn’t move otherwise. “What do you want?”
I pulled the ski mask off. “Your predecessor and his cohort hired me to kill Senator Kelly Weaver. They wouldn’t take no for an answer, so…”
“You killed them,” she said, still rigid in the chair. “I know.”
“And now I’ve got people trying to kill me. Who? Why?”
Coleen smiled. “To an outside observer, it seems that you’ve made some enemies, Mr. Mendoza.”
Huiyin squeezed the older woman’s cheek. “They don’t work for you?”
The threat in Huiyin’s voice apparently wasn’t lost on Coleen, who didn’t protest or resist the abuse. “My predecessors had a very specific need. That was satisfied through a fortunate opportunity, an opportunity your former employer offered them, Mr. Mendoza. I’ve kept myself clear of such questionable activities. If you look, you’ll find there is nothing connecting me or the rest of my team with anything illegal.”
The Metacorporate Initiative. How much money had really been at stake over that? Enough to kill a presidential candidate, apparently. The stopwatch buzzed in my head. Our time was almost up. “So you have no idea at all who these people are?”
Disdain showed in the older woman’s eyes as she jerked her head free of Huiyin’s grip. “There will always be people who operate independently. Corporations compete. They’re not monolithic. I would suggest you focus on whoever it is you angered the worst with your bloodletting. Perhaps your former employer considers you problematic. I could certainly understand that.”
We were out of time. The mask went back on. “Let’s go.”
I sprinted back out to the living room, then out the front door and angled for the point on the wall where we’d come over. Sirens were a distant cry, drawing closer. Clearing the structure was easier from the inside. I didn’t wait for Huiyin. She was just reaching the top of the wall when I settled behind the steering wheel. I pulled onto the road as she pulled the passenger door shut.
She pulled her ski mask off and scowled. “That was a waste of time.”
“We’ll see.”
I connected to Chan. “Chan, what’s the Grid traffic like now?”
“Emergency services. Mostly.”
“Outbound traffic from the mansion?”
“Nothing.”
That was disappointing. We’d been counting on—
Chan said, “Wait. Just now. Outgoing. Encrypted.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Capture it. That’s what we need. Content, destination—this is the break we’ve been waiting for.”
“On it.”
An emergency services vehicle sped past, lights flashing.
I disconnected.
Huiyin tilted her head. “You think she contacted the people trying to kill you?”
“Let’s hope so. Without a lead, we’re going to be stuck reacting, and the way their attacks keep escalating, they’ll eventually get us.”
Chapter 14
Wallpaper bulged above faded and scraped paneling, the colors changing in the flicker of a dying lamp. Sticky carpeting that might once have been beige or gold or some other bad idea tried to cling to my sneakers. It registered as modest pressure on the top of my feet as I searched for a place where the stench of urine and who knew what else wasn’t so strong. Somehow, Chan remained oblivious to the smell, and to the chill let in by the window to the left of the door. A good third of the lower pane was gone, and the rumble of nearby traffic was a reminder of just how desperate our situation was.
We had maybe another hour before the sun set, then we would have to find a place to stay for the night. The abandoned motel wasn’t fit for a night.
Ichi squatted on the seat of one of the chairs we’d dragged into the room, arms wrapped around bunched legs. She wore her black hoodie, but still seemed to be shivering. She stared at Huiyin, who was rooted in the corner near the broken window. The Chinese agent seemed focused on Chan, never moving, eyes locked either on the array of devices spread in a semicircle on top of a stained and torn mattress, or on the Gridhound’s hair. The glow of the devices shifted the magenta dye I was growing used to from the red of security data to the yellow of Grid-search operations.
The door opened with a groan and Danny slipped in. He searched for a place to set his rifle down, winced, then gently balanced it in the window frame to the right of the door. Dust billowed from the grungy drapes—once sheer, now gray and opaque. He met my eyes and signaled with a glance at the door that we needed to talk.
I tapped Ichi on the shoulder and said, “I’m going to walk the parking lot with Danny.”
She nodded, but there seemed to be protest in her eyes. We would have to chat later.
Sixteen individual units surrounded the weed-choked, asphalt-and-dirt parking lot, which was buried in a shallow pool of melted snow. We hopped along raised asphalt clumps, stopping and scanning the other buildings and the surrounding woods—oaks whose leaves now littered the ground or sat beneath the water, pines bent by recent storms. The other units stared back at us with black eyes.
The vehicles we’d acquired were in those woods, about two hundred feet off the dirt trail that led up to the highway where robot trucks sped by.
Danny jumped to the steps of one of the other units and cocked his head, listening.
I couldn’t hear anything but the trucks and the grumble of my gut. “You don’t like it?”
“It? This place?” He shrugged. “If they come in from the woods, we’re probably dead.”
“We won’t be here for them to find.”
“Chan’s got something?”
“Not yet. We’ll cut the search off in another thirty minutes.”
Danny hooked his index fingers inside the belt loops of his jeans. “This isn’t good.”
It wasn’t. “We’re outside our comfort zone.”
“Uh, outside our capabilities, more like? Chan was cracking before you contacted us. Staying off the drugs, yeah but just barely. Ichi wasn’t much better.”
Heat rushed through my neck and face. “I’ve been wanting to thank you for taking care of them.”
He shook his head. “They thought you were dead. I wasn’t even sure myself.”
“They’re too young for this. I shouldn’t have involved them.”
“They’re adults. Like it or not, they get to choose. How old were you when you signed up for the Army? You think you were ready for it when you killed your first person?”
I glanced back at the unit that was our only shelter. “As a soldier, it’s pretty straightforward: point the gun, pull the trigger, kill the enemy. What we’re doing here, it’s different. Ichi’s had to kill people who were—”
“People who were trying to kill us. Her father was one of the best there ever was at it. Look at her for what she is. She’s not the little kid you promised to protect.”
She hadn’t been a little kid for years. “I can’t let Norimitsu and Tae-hee down.”
“You won’t. But maybe it’s time you walked away.”
“Walked away? I was trying to. I was minding my own business back home. They came for me. They killed Margo.”
“Your high school sweetheart? That’s pretty…cliché.” He bowed his head and smiled. “Sorry.”
Clichéd. That was a nice way of saying amateur. Stupid. “I’d used that place before. No one knew. It was my mother’s property, but we had it put back under her father’s name when…” Danny knew about the injury, about the old man going to jail for good, and about the guilt I felt for not being there for her. “I guess someone at the Agency figured it out eventually.”
Danny’s lips twitched. “Going home. That’s…it’s…um. Why? You don’t fit in any better than me, do you?”
“Worse.”
“Yeah. You hated it, didn’t you? Right?”
“I didn’t understand it. Don’t understand it. Lots of bad memories. More now.”
“So don’t go back. Like I said before, a new life, live it fast. Remember?”
I did. “I wanted peace, but I couldn’t escape them.”
Danny shrugged. “What Stovall did to you, that had to have been in the works for a while. He had to be running some sort of surveillance, some sort of tracking. This whole game, what you two have between you, it’s messed up.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Um.” Danny scraped his boot on the steps. “Like I said, maybe it’s time to walk away. Give it a break, make sure you’re seeing everything clearly.”
“You think I’m too close to this? It’s too personal?”
“I think they did a lot of damage to you, Stefan.” He sighed. “I don’t think I’d even be able to walk around if I went through what they did to you.”
“That’s the conditioning.”
“Never should have taken that. Should’ve walked away when they gave you the ultimatum.”
I should have. But it was who I was now.
A door creaked behind us. Huiyin stood in the opening. “Chan has something.”
I hurried back with long jumps, not even worrying about the water. Inside the room, Chan rocked on the mattress, black-metallic fingernails scraping along the legs of the VR goggles I’d come to dread. The pair I used sat at the edge of the bed, waiting.
Chan’s eyes flicked up, locked on me. A slender tongue licked sweat from above quivering, black-painted lips. “They left a trail. Don’t want to go in.” Chan pointed the goggles at mine. “Not alone.”
Danny shut the door, glanced at the goggles as I picked them up. A twitch screwed up his face. “Think, um…” He looked around the room. “Just think about what I said.”
I tapped the VR devices against the back of my hand. “Yeah.” I slid the goggles on. “Later.”
Chan’s voice shook as the goggles came to life. “Coleen Fanon. She has money?”
“Lots of it. She made a mint running a couple companies into the ground before going into politics. Didn’t you read the dossier you gave me?”
“Skimmed. That computing device? Different. Can’t figure it out.”
Chan had become obsessed. Given the problems with drugs I’d already seen, this was dangerous. “Maybe it’s time we looked at it from another angle.”
“Different Gridhound?” Defensive. Hurt.
“I was thinking trying to attack it through hardware.” I pushed the goggles down my nose to look at Chan, who seemed frozen, absorbed in the VR world. “I already have the best Gridhound.”
Chan’s head drooped slightly, and a smile threatened to settle on twitching lips. “Maybe not the best.”
“The best.” I slipped my goggles back on and found myself in the dark room with black eggshell seats lit by LED strips.
“Got a name for you. From Denver. Dale Rappaport. Former Navy.” The image of the computing device guy popped up, with the name beneath.
“Navy?” I chuckled. “He did okay holding the gun. That’s surprising.”
“Computer guy. Pretty good. Worked for a couple name companies. Went quiet for a while. Thought he might be doing something big.”
“Bigger than trying to kill me?”
Avatar-Chan looked almost hurt. “No.”
“I’m kidding.”
A fragile smile, come and gone in a blink. “Yeah. So Rappaport. Was working for something big. Big money. Data center build-outs. Ever hear of a company called SunCorps?”
“Should I?”
“No. Nothing about them until about a year ago. Weird.”
It was weird. Very weird. “Why’d you ask about Fanon’s money?”
“Ran some good crypto.”
“They all do, don’t they?”
“No. Primo. Proprietary.” Avatar-Chan’s fingers were steepled beneath a chin that seemed more prominent. It took me a second to realize that the ever-present hood was pushed all the way back, the magenta hair fluffed out and wild. The spikes were completely gone. The avatar’s facial tattoos covered less flesh. There was even a difference in the hoodie jacket—less baggy, unzipped. The T-shirt beneath was also less baggy. I could make out the faintest swell of breasts.
I focused on stillness, doing my best to keep my avatar from reacting, but the questions… “How’d you hack it, then?”
That produced the same shy, uncomfortable smile the real Chan had shown moments before. “Breadcrumbs.”
The dark room shattered, replaced by Douglas Fanon’s mansion. Avatar-Chan stood on the lawn, eyes closed. When they opened, they glowed.
I looked around, unsure what to make of that. “You okay?”
“Building things, that’s all.” The lawn took on a clarity that put me back earlier in the day. Grass lay crumpled where someone had run over it. A breeze puffed out Avatar-Chan’s hoodie, revealing faintly umber flesh on arms that had no hint of muscle to them at all. There was no mistaking the breasts or the slender body.
And then the wind died. Avatar-Chan pulled the hoodie jacket closed. Self-conscious.
Lines glowed beneath the ground—the Grid.
Avatar-Chan waved a soft hand at a line that glowed differently from the others. “Hardened. Crypto. A good million dollars.”
“He’s a lawyer. It might be part of his practice. Or maybe it’s something that was installed by the original owners.”
“Douglas Fanon’s the original owner.” Avatar-Chan walked along the glowing line. “The alarm. When you broke in? It ran on this line. And on the Grid. The emergency response? There was another unit. Not just medical and security. Firm he works for. They pay for his bodyguards.”
The lawn disappeared, and we stood in an office that nearly mirrored the one where Huiyin had shot Douglas. But this office was smaller and didn’t have a fireplace. The desk was more modern, slightly less ostentatious, the floor polished tile. A shelf off to the side was loaded with thick, leather-bound books with titles that screamed legal references. “This is where he works?”
“His office.” Avatar-Chan plopped into the leather chair and threw a leg over one of the padded arms. “Biggest clients? Chinese corporations. Korean chaebol. Japanese keiretsu.”
My real stomach flipped. Huiyin’s decision to go after Coleen Fanon suddenly seemed less odd. “When we attacked, the firm was tipped off.”
“Sent a security team to the mansion.” Avatar-Chan spun the chair around.
“And contacted our Miss Fanon?”
Avatar-Chan’s head bobbed up and down, magenta hair like silk in the office’s subdued light. “Took the case from the police. Running the whole thing.” Avatar-Chan tapped the desktop, and a computer terminal rose. Swift typing and swipes, then a confident twist, and the display was pointed toward me.
“You’re in their system? I thought you said the connection was hardened?”
“All systems have a vulnerability. This place, it’s HR and IT support. Run out of Singapore. They outsource to India. They use a data center in Vietnam. No encryption between any of the sites. Password scraping’s a breeze.”
“Shit.”
Data flew by, sentence fragments highlighting, freezing, going into a document window. The document came together: dates, names. Connections.
Avatar-Chan stared at the hoodie’s zipper. “These people. The ones who sent Huiyin. Who are they?”
“MSS—Ministry of State Security. That’s…it’s complicated. They operate differently—”
“You trust her?” The avatar’s lips twisted. Jealousy? Suspicion? “Huiyin?”
“Never trust a spy. Ever.”
Avatar-Chan’s magenta eyes flashed to mine. “Except you. Trust you.”
I looked away. “I’m not a spy. I just kill people.”
Avatar-Chan coughed. “There’s a virus in their system. They have IT people working on it. Testing the encrypted lines. Searching for the source. Tracking back all communications, capturing data traffic, tearing it apart.”
The chair transformed into what seemed like a typical office chair, the desk into what I imagined a computer person’s desk might look like. I’d seen Agency contractors at work in the belly of the headquarters—sickly pale, hunched, leeched of life as they toiled away. Some people inside the Agency recognized the work of these people for what it was: life-saving, critical. Stovall hated the computer people. He mocked them. Anything that had a chance it might diminish him, he tore it apart.
Avatar-Chan leaned forward, chin on upturned hand, head shaking slightly, examining a huge display. “They’ve got the source. Douglas’s library.”
“You inserted a virus into Fanon’s system?”
Avatar-Chan tapped the screen. “Unencrypted traffic, password scraping.”
“But why? Your breadcrumbs?”
Avatar-Chan brought up several screens, and once again the highlighting, copy and paste process took over. The security team was examining all traffic, even Coleen Fanon’s encrypted Grid traffic. Could they break the encryption if Chan couldn’t? The answer appeared on the screen: They’d sent a communication of their own over the same connection, encrypted. Unbreakable. Untraceable.
But Chan had the credentials!
A new window opened and filled with garbled, meaningless junk. Avatar-Chan typed some commands in, fired off an app, and the junk became separate files—video and the tracking data. The tracking data was selected first. In its own way, it was also meaningless junk, at least to me.
