Midnight Fire (22 page)

It was a remarkable piece of driving, though he’d nearly given her a heart attack.

Jacko looked back at her and again, there was a hint of a smile. “I love where I work.”

Jack helped her down and she studied her surroundings. A low rise beautifully restored brick building surrounded by incredibly landscaped grounds. Healthy looking plants, a Zen garden, amazing teak and wrought iron benches strategically placed. An arbor that would be gorgeous come spring.

“I thought this was a security company,” Summer said as they started walking along a brick herringbone walkway with inset lighting.

“It is,” Jack said as they walked straight into a wall that, like the gate, opened fast at the very last minute. “One of the owners is married to a designer. This was her building and her business originally.”

“Best-looking security company in the world,” Jacko rumbled as they walked down a corridor with terracotta wall sconces and thriving lemons in big enameled vases. Turning into a door on the left—by this time Summer wasn’t surprised to see it whoosh open as they approached and whoosh closed at their backs—they were in a huge, posh space. Cool, neutral tones. Elegant, not fussy. Prosperous but not over the top.

It gave exactly the impression a security company should give—solidity and discretion with an extra dollop of beauty. If this was the work of one of the co-owner’s wives, she knew what she was doing.

They walked straight past the receptionist—Jack gave the stern looking middle-aged lady a wink and got a wry smile in return—into another huge room.

This was a command center. All business but still somehow beautiful. Giant monitors everywhere, several work stations. The monitors all showed various disasters as they were unfolding.

A big, lean man with black hair, snow white hair at the temples, rose and walked toward them. He was followed by a young blonde woman with her hair in a ponytail, wearing blue sweats and a TARDIS necklace.

The big man took her hand. “Ms. Redding. John Huntington. It’s a pleasure to meet you, though I wish it were under better circumstances. Everyone in this office admires
Area 8
and we hope that when we find those responsible for the Massacre, you will write a full exposé.”

“Count on it,” Summer said, meaning every word. If she had to go into hiding for the rest of her life, the story would come out. “Traitors working against us. It’s monstrous.”

Jack’s hand fell on her shoulder, a warm, heavy, reassuring weight. “There’s no one better than Summer to break the story.”

The blonde girl peeped from around Huntington’s shoulder. She held one hand out to shake Summer’s and the other out for the laptop Summer was carrying. “Hey, hi! We met onscreen when you were on the plane. I’m Felicity, I belong to that big lug over there—” Metal twirled around in his office chair, sketched a salute then turned back to his monitor. “I’m the IT person around here and I can’t wait to get going on Blake’s laptop and flash drives. These people are driving newscasters and journalists nuts.” She waved at the bank of monitors, each with its own personal disaster.

Summer recognized her. “You’re the one who saw that the Fontana Dam footage was fake?”

“Sure am,” Felicity said, pretty face sober. “But that doesn’t mean they all are. Figuring out how many of these are false-flag digital fakes is taking a lot of bandwidth. The fake ones have been planned for a long time and some of the footage is real but old. These people are doing major damage—every single emergency service in the country is on alert. We’re running through huge amounts of money, tying up resources, clocking up overtime on a vast scale.”

“Do you think this is...it?” Summer asked. “What everything has been leading up to? What the Washington Massacre was about?”

They’d all drifted over to where Metal was manning a computer. What was on his screen was also up on one of the wall monitors.

Metal reached up a big hand, without taking his eyes from his monitor. “Summer. Nice to meet you in person. I feel like I know you from
Area 8
.”

She clasped his hand. “Thanks. How many incidents do we have so far?”

“Twenty one.” One of the monitors switched images. The sound on all was off. Graphics were enough to give the important facts. The monitor showed a school—
Fairmont Elementary School
was carved in the stone of the façade. The feed showed little kids being rushed out of the school, masks being handed out, the kids and teachers being ushered into waiting medic vans.
Anthrax released in elementary school
was the caption. “Twenty two,” Metal said.

Summer clenched her fists. “That better be one of the fake ones.”

The men all nodded soberly.

She looked at all of them. “Whoever these people are, we have to bring them down. Because I think they are showing us how easy it would be for them to create havoc in this country. How easily they can bring us to our knees.”

John Huntington nodded soberly. “We’re on it, though we don’t have much to go on. You know, Ms. Redding—”

“Summer, please,” she said.

He nodded again. He had a natural authority. Part of it was his physique and good looks. But most of it was something that just flowed from him, a leader’s calm. The whole company had an amazingly reassuring vibe to it.

“Summer. As you know, we’re working with an element in the FBI. Both of us have immense resources. It’s just a question of time. Plus” —he indicated Felicity, whose fingers were blurring over Hector’s keyboard—”we have a secret weapon. If there’s anything to be found in Blake’s computers, she’ll find it. No question. Then we analyze it and go on the offensive.”

“Yes, sir,” Summer said. “You understand that both Jack and I fear that there is CIA complicity in all of this, don’t you?”

“I do. We do. Which is why the FBI has set up a secret task force with only very trusted agents. Headed by Special Agent Nick Mancino. The operation is compartmented and there will be no leaks.”

Summer stiffened at that. “I hope you’re not implying that
Area 8
will leak anything? I would never do that. As a matter of fact,
Area 8
is offline for the moment.”

He was already shaking his head. “I wasn’t implying anything of the sort. It’s clear from what you write that you are a true patriot. Though the whole story will have to come out some day and I hope you’ll write that story once we have the leaders behind bars.”

“Gladly.” Oh yeah. She was going to write a series of exposés and then a book and then she was going to go on TV and report on the group of traitors who sold out the country and killed hundreds of people. For money.

And they weren’t finished yet.

A dull ringing sound and Metal clicked on Skype. Nick Mancino’s face showed. He looked pale and drawn. “Hey, man. Is Summer there?”

Her eyes grew wide and her heart thumped. What did Nick want with her? Had something worse than her apartment being blown up happened?

Metal rose from his chair, opened his hand. Summer sat, because her knees felt suddenly weak. Jack stood at her back, his hand still on her shoulder. She reached up to hold it, like a touchstone, something solid to cling to.

“I dispatched an agent to provide protection for your two editors, Zac Burroughs and Marcie Thompson.”

Oh God! Summer’s head swam. Zac and Marcie. So smart and so energetic. They’d help her make
Area 8
what it was. Her throat was so dry she had to take a sip of water to be able to speak. “And?”

“We couldn’t find either of them. They weren’t anywhere and their cells were off. My agent let himself into Burroughs’ apartment and made a thorough search. One door was closed, and he was unable to open it. Some kind of liquid cement had been placed in the lock and the door was stuck in the jamb. Circumstances warranted his breaking the door down and it wasn’t easy. This is what he found.”

On the screen was a long plastic...thing. Several screenshots carouselled across the screen until she realized what she was looking at. A body bag. She gasped and Jack’s hand tightened on her shoulder.

Nick nodded. “I won’t show you the next pictures, but Zac Burroughs is dead, Summer. I’m really sorry.”

Grief washed over her. Funny, smart Zac. Who’d had crazy parents like hers, only loving grandparents. Who’d studied his heart out at journalism school. Who believed in the power of the written word with every fiber of his being. Who’d fought alongside her to build
Area 8
to what it was. Zac, who’d had a secret crush on her but rarely let it show.

“So they’re going to get away with this, too?”

Nick gave a grim smile. “Not quite. As a matter of fact we have a lead.”

Everyone leaned forward. “Spill it, Nick,” John Huntington ordered.

“Yes, sir. So we backtracked and Zac had had a latte at a corner bar.”

“Trigo’s.” Summer blinked her tears back. “We met there a lot. He said his apartment was too messy to have meetings there.”

“Yeah, Trigo’s.” Nick leaned forward too, though he was three thousand miles away. The picture and sound were so clear it was as if he were sitting across the table from them.

“So the guy left no forensic evidence, and the street cameras showed this.”

On the monitor there was the photograph of a man with a baseball cap on and white fuzz where his face would be.

“IR lights in the bill,” Jack said. Summer glanced at him. He was all business, face gone completely cold. The man on the screen was linked to the people who’d destroyed his family. His eyes travelled as they took in every detail.

“Put that up on the wall,” John Huntington said, and the photograph showed on the wall monitor. It was very clear. She could see every wrinkle in the man’s jeans, every zipper on his backpack. They just couldn’t see his face.

“Later, the fucker must have worn latex gloves,” Nick said. “But on the street he was glove-free.”

“What did he touch?” Jack asked. “Please let him have touched something.”

“He touched Zac’s body when he injected him with what the autopsy showed to be ketamine.”

Summer’s eyes widened. “Isn’t that used on
animals
?”

“It is,” Nick said grimly. “Kid didn’t have a chance. And the fucker sprayed the kid’s upper body with bleach so there aren’t any prints or any DNA we can pull. However...” He held up a forefinger. “Our entire forensics lab is top flight, of course, but we have a particular forensic scientist who is off the charts brilliant. He lost his wife in the Massacre and he’s pledged to work day and night without sleep if he has to until we bring those responsible to justice. And to tell the truth, he’s already done something amazing. Now pay attention.”

Everyone was practically quivering with attention, except Jack, who was as still as stone.

“Watch this photo,” Nick said. It was another shot of the man with the blurred face, in mid-stride, one hand reaching for his backpack, open palm facing the lens.

Nick manipulated the photo, bringing the hand into close-up. It was slightly pixelated. Then another manipulation, some kind of magnification, and the close-up showed the open palm in incredible detail. Summer could even see the calluses.

“Shooter’s calluses,” Jacko murmured and the other men nodded. Jack had told her that Jacko was the “designated shooter” of the group—a gifted sniper. If anyone could recognize shooter’s calluses it was him.

“So our genius guy sent this photo to an experimental 3D printer he’s been working on with a private sector company, and they manufactured a hand out of polymer and took its prints.”

“I want that printer,” John Huntington told Nick. “Right now. I don’t care what it costs.”

“We’ll see,” Nick answered. “But the important thing now is that we had prints and we found a match.”

A
match!
The man who’d killed Zac! The man who probably killed Marcie.

“I want to see his face,” she said but before she finished a face was up on the monitor. It was an ID card and it bore the seal of the CIA.

Summer brought a hand to her mouth. The blood drained from her head, she saw spots. Her lungs wouldn’t work. A loud buzzing filled her head. She couldn’t read the name her head swam so hard.

The man who’d killed Zac, who’d probably killed Marcie, who was after
her
, worked for the CIA. It was official.

“Wait!” Jack studied the photo. “I know him.”

“Yeah. I imagine you do, though he was recruited while you were stationed in Singapore. Philip Kearns. In the Clandestine Service from 2010 to 2014. Fired for inappropriate use of Agency resources and blackmailing a CI. Corruption, in other words. But our forensics guy found a couple of bank accounts that are linked directly to Marcus Springer’s black funds. It’ll take a warrant to pull the files and we might have to go to a higher court, but by God we’ve found a smoking gun here.”

“Springer is mine,” Jack whispered and the hairs on Summer’s arms rose at the ferocity in his voice. “I want him.”

Nick shifted in his seat. “Totally get you, big guy, and I can’t fault you, but the Director’s not on board with personal vengeance. But I promise you, Jack, I
promise
, that when we get through with him, Springer will do life in solitary confinement at Leavenworth. And we’ll make sure what remains of his life is miserable.”

“So, this man—” Summer waved at the screen. “This guy killed Zac.” Her eyes welled over. “And Marcie?” she asked through a tight throat.

Nick shook his head. “Missing. We can’t find her. She’s not in her apartment. We can’t pull out all the stops, not yet. Can’t put out a BOLO, that would blow the op. Springer’s got eyes and ears everywhere and we’re trying to keep under the radar, but we have several men working on finding her.”

Summer wiped her eyes. “I’m so afraid you’ll find her body.”

“So are we.” Nick apparently wasn’t a guy to mince words. “But we will find her and we’re working fast. I still hope we can find her alive.” On camera, his gaze shifted. “Hey, Delvaux. I’m counting on you keeping Summer alive.”

Jack’s grip on her shoulder turned painful for a second, then he eased up. “I will. You can count on it.”

“Plus us,” John Huntington added.