Midnight Fire (9 page)

But letting Kearns’s operator languish in the hands of law enforcement, satisfying as it would be, would be counterproductive. Kearns worked hard for Springer. He showed loyalty and, distasteful though it might be, Springer had to show loyalty back. And it was a measure of his power. Kearns was a good soldier, but crude. He would see it as a dick-measuring exercise.
My guy’s dick is bigger than yours.

So Springer had to figure out a way to get this moron out of custody. He was Deputy Director of the CIA, true, and he could always cite that tried and true excuse, national security. They’d let Kearns’s man go, no question.

But it would definitely raise red flags, big billowing ones. There would be written records. Kearns’s man would be fingerprinted and since all his private army of operators were ex-military, the man would be in the system. He’d be identified. And even if he didn’t talk, there’d be questions as big as the Washington Monument asked.

Springer was mulling these factors over in his head when Kearns spoke again. “There’s something else, sir.” That electric shock again. Something
else?
Besides one of Kearns’s operators being found unconscious and his cell and tablet in the hands of someone unknown? What could that something else be?

“Yes.” This time Springer didn’t hide the coldness in his voice and he could practically hear Kearns wincing. Quite right. Springer affected an attitude of
bonhomie
, a civilized man who could be counted on to behave in a civilized manner. But they were playing with fire here and though he was certain of the ultimate triumph of The Plan, nothing was absolutely certain in this world.

World-altering events were in play, events as momentous as World War II. The world would look entirely different once The Plan came to fruition. Only instead of a four year war costing two hundred million lives with a combined military force of seven hundred million troops that left the civilized world in rubble, it would be using cyberwarfare with minimal damage.

No, this was going to be a thoroughly modern operation with very few soldiers, leveraging data instead of bullets. No atom bomb leaving ruins lasting generations. Oh, no. As a matter of fact, it was entirely possible that by the end of The Plan, many Americans wouldn’t even realize that they’d fought in a war and lost. Much would go on exactly as before except the ruling class would change.

They were mid-way through The Plan, so any unforeseen events were borderline dangerous, possibly catastrophic.

He waited for Kearns to explain.

Instead of explaining, a photo appeared on the screen of his cell. At first, Springer couldn’t figure it out. The photo was dark and most of the light came from the sky, the fire which appeared to be about a block away. A human figure, standing outside a vehicle. One of those small hybrid vehicles that looked quite out of place among the manicured grounds of the area. The photos were on a carousel and as they flicked across the screen, a feeling of deep unease, akin to fear except Marcus Springer didn’t do fear, pooled in his guts.

The figure was female. In increments, she closed the door of the vehicle, moved to the front of the car. Moved to an intersection. Shaded her eyes with her hand, as if from that position she could see straight to the fire that was too bright to look at directly. Then she turned and Springer got a clear look at her, full face, and gasped.

Summer Redding.

Summer Redding who owned and ran
Area 8
, a famous—and in his circles notorious—political blog. What was she doing at the blazing fire destroying Hector Blake’s home? It had just hit the news services, and the time tag on the photo was half an hour ago, so she wasn’t ambulance chasing. Did she have prior knowledge? She must have had, to be there so early. But how?

She had to be connected to whoever had taken down Kearns’s operator. Clearly she was investigating Hector Blake and clearly she had some inside knowledge.

She was a liability. She had to be stopped right now, before anything she learned appeared in
Area 8
. Whatever she knew, it was too much. If who she was with identified Kearns’s operator, there was a path that led straight to Springer. And it would be published in
Area 8
.

This had to be stopped. Right now.

“That is Summer Redding,” he told Kearns. “Find out where she lives and eliminate her. Immediately.”

And he heard his two favorite words. “Yes, sir,” Kearns replied.

Chapter Four

Summer waited and waited and waited. And waited some more. It felt like hours went by, though her watch—which must be broken—showed that only twenty minutes had passed since Jack slipped out of the car and disappeared into the night.

Amazing. He was a huge man, took up a lot of space. He’d been there on the sidewalk and then suddenly he wasn’t. Gone in an instant.

So he’d been a good Clandestine Service agent. Had to be if he’d spent these past fifteen years undercover, and if he’d managed to disable her security.

So if he was so good, what was taking him so long?

The fire was brighter in the sky, she could hear the crackling sounds of Hector’s house burning.

There were no happy memories for her in his house, but she had lived there for two months, two traumatic months. Her first two months in the United States, having lived abroad all her life. The two months after the death of her parents. Aunt Vanessa and Hector hadn’t been warm and welcoming and they’d been in the middle of a vicious divorce, but she’d had a nice room, new clothes—hand me downs from Aunt Vanessa that looked ridiculous on a twelve-year-old, but better than anything she’d had before—and suddenly the Delvauxes had been around a lot.

She spent more time at their estate than at Hector’s and her memories of them were all happy. Particularly when she could see Jack. Just seeing him had been enough to make her happy.

But she remembered the Blake house clearly. The heavy antique furniture, the thick drapes, the plush carpeting. The huge kitchen and astonishing bathrooms. She couldn’t figure out how the shower fixtures worked and washed with a sponge until a maid showed her how to turn the multiple showerheads on. Her first shower in Casa Hector had lasted an hour.

Everything in the house had been expensive, even her inexpert eyes could see that, and now fire was eating it all up.

There wasn’t anywhere to put the emotions she felt. There was no a-fire-is-burning-down-the-home-of-my-aunt-who-was-never-kind-to-me shaped place in her head. All she knew was she felt unsettled and sad. And she also wished that Jack’s presence didn’t unnerve her. And while she was at it she wished she didn’t have hot flashes whenever he came near her.

Damn! All these things springing up from her past, when she’d done such a good job of pushing them all down to the bottom of her brain. Now they were simply popping up and messing with her.

What was Jack doing? Suppose he didn’t come back? Not coming back was a very Jack thing to do. He’d done it before, to her and to innumerable girls. Maybe he was investigating and after that he’d find his way back to wherever it was he was staying and he’d forget that she was here, waiting for him.

In an exact replica of that terrible night when he’d forgotten he had a date with her and she waited and waited.

God, this was so unlike her. This was a
story
. Maybe the story of a lifetime. She had endless patience on the job. One story—which had won her an award—had taken weeks of going through the Snowden files, day after day after day of close study of files and she’d found a thread and pulled it and patiently pieced together a fantastic story of misappropriated funds and quite a lot of cocaine consumption by an American ambassador.

She hadn’t been impatient, not for one second.

Now she felt like leaping out of her skin.

What was taking him so long?

The whole sky was bright now and she could actually see flames over the tree tops. Just like in the movies. Bright reds and oranges and yellows, and dark clots flying up in the air that were the house eating itself alive.

She checked her watch again. Jack was definitely not coming back. It felt like her entire body was one long line of stress and tension. She grabbed the steering wheel and pushed back against the seat in a vain attempt to dissipate some of the tension and it didn’t work.

It was hot. She couldn’t possibly be feeling the heat of the fire from a block away. It was the tension that was making her hot.

This was ridiculous. Summer opened the door and stood up and immediately felt better, even though the rancid smell of smoke burning its way through the house filled the air. She stood in the open door of her car, sniffing the air, as if she could get information through her nose.

But that’s not how a reporter got news. A reporter got news through her eyes and her brain. She slammed the car door, walked to the intersection and looked down the street. It was exactly as she remembered it from nearly twenty years ago. The houses were the same—prosperous, with well tended gardens. Many of the inhabitants of the beautiful homes of Exeter Street were out on the sidewalks, some already in pajamas. The average age of the householders was surely eighty by now. It had been a place of fussy elderly rich people twenty years ago, now they would be doddering.

Two blocks down was a riot of movement and noise as firefighters were doing their valiant best to beat the fire back. They moved fast and precisely, shouting out orders above the roaring of the fire, moving in practiced coordination, like ballet dancers, only braver.

As she watched the firefighters, faces lit by the reflection of the fire, a deep boom sounded that stopped everyone on the street in his and her tracks. The fire raged upward, reaching high up as if to touch the stars. The neighbors, huddled inward, stepped farther away from Hector’s home. The firefighters moved faster.

The gas mains had blown. The house would be unsalvageable.

Suddenly, Summer felt sad and old. As if Hector’s house disappearing in smoke and ruins had eaten up her past, too. A bit of her girlhood was tied up in the house, not happy memories but her memories nonetheless, and now everything was gone.

She walked back to her car and slid back behind the wheel and checked her watch again.

The door opened and closed and suddenly there he was, Jack, filling the car’s interior with the smell of smoke. Summer blinked. How did such a big man move so fast and so quietly?

“Took you long enough,” she said.

He looked at her curiously, then brought out an odd-looking cell. He punched in a number. “Yo, Nick,” he said when a deep voice came online. “You got my text? Yeah. Well, someone definitely torched the place. I, ah, got him.” He frowned heavily. “Yeah, he’s still breathing, but not conscious. Christ, what do you think I am—okay, okay. I sent you fingerprints, full frontal and side views of the face, and I have his cell, we’ll do an infodump of everything on it. Or rather, Felicity will. The firefighters will have this guy and will bring him in for questioning. So have someone from the Bureau scoop him up, okay, before the CIA gets to him. Because if they do, the guy will be in the wind and we’ll have lost a promising lead. Get me intel on this guy ASAP.” He listened carefully to something this Nick was saying. Summer couldn’t make it out, all she heard was the deep voice at the other end of the line but she couldn’t make out the words. Jack shot her a glance and she straightened, surprised. “Yeah, I’m with Summer. Summer Redding. Of
Area 8
. She’s promised to hold off on publishing until we get more facts and she’s going to help me investigate. I’ll get back to you. Go get this guy and interrogate him. Pull out all the stops. Yeah. Later.”

As he talked, he was tearing off the wig and beard.

“So.” He turned to Summer and curled up his big hand. “Give it to me.”

Oh, God. Another comment that wasn’t suggestive at all, but her body read it as pure invitation, and heat flashed over her skin, head to toe. She would love to give him what she had. Her body would, anyway. Her head? Not so much. But since Jack had reappeared in her life, her body seemed to be calling the shots.

She clutched the steering wheel hard and stared straight ahead. “Hector’s second apartment, you mean. He called it his
garconnière
.”

“Bachelor’s pad,” Jack said with a shake of his head.

She looked at him in surprise. “I’m glad all those French lessons your mom insisted on proved useful.”

“Those French lessons never penetrated my head,” Jack said. “But I picked up street French in Cote d’Ivoire. Was undercover there for two years.”

And there it was, the difference between the two Jacks, now a world of time apart. Jack’s sullenness at taking French lessons the summer she stayed with Hector and Aunt Vanessa was legendary. He hated his French teacher who had chin hairs. He erected a force field around him and French just bounced off it. His passions that year were archery, shooting insane music videos and a succession of girls. Not French.

And here was the Jack at the other end of that time leap. Hard and focused and she had no doubt his French was excellent. She’d read somewhere that a facility for languages was essential in the National Clandestine Service.

Jack was still fiddling with the odd looking cell in his hand. “What are you thinking?” he asked suddenly, without looking at her.

“What?”

“I can hear your head whirring. What’s going on in there?”

“I was thinking about the summer your mom insisted you take those French lessons.”

His mouth tightened. “From Madame Bettancourt. Nasty woman. She had chin hairs.”

“So you said, repeatedly.”

“And she was cruel.”

“What?”

He nodded, as if to himself. “A group of underprivileged kids had received a grant from a French immigrant who’d made a fortune in software design. The grant was for French lessons and he hired Madame to oversee the course. Some of the kids were really good, were studying hard, but Madame constantly belittled them. They could do nothing right. Whereas I sucked rocks at French, wasn’t making any effort at all, but she was understanding to me. Because my father was Alex Delvaux. I hated her.”

Well. Some things shifted around in her head, big heavy immutable objects were pushed aside and new ideas filled that space.

“So where’s your lead?”

She was still working on the new image of Young Jack. “Huh?”

He stopped fiddling and turned to look at her. “That lead? You were talking about Blake’s
garconnière
. You found out about it through your aunt?”

“Oh.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Yes. So, um. I found out about it that summer. The summer I...came home.”

Jack put his hand over hers on the wheel and squeezed. “The summer you lost your parents,” he said gently.

The summer she lost her parents.

She was suddenly blindsided by emotion. Something—something inside her cracked, some hard carapace that split open and roiling emotions just tumbled out.

Summer prided herself on her emotional stability. She was perfectly aware that she’d been badly parented. Her parents had been drug addicts, wayward, hapless children who’d dragged her around with them on their unending quest for highs. But she was also perfectly aware that she’d had immense help since her return as a young girl. She’d gone to boarding school and had been taken under the wing of the headmistress who had spent hours talking gently to her, which she recognized with hindsight had been excellent psychotherapy. She’d excelled and everyone had helped her. In college she’d had three mentors who took care of her, passed her on from one opportunity to the next. Fantastic internships, good bosses, she was highly recommended wherever she went.

Her life had been split into two and she’d left the unhappy, abandoned Summer behind many years ago.

Apparently not, though, because she had a flash of herself at twelve, channeling herself as a youngster who’d spent her entire life up to that point as an outsider, looking in. Lost and lonely and afraid.

She felt all those things now, keenly, piercing her with sharp shards of memories that had been repressed, but came welling up now, slicing her along the way into a million pieces. To her horror, tears came, as unstoppable as rain, and tracked down her cheeks. Oh God!

There was no controlling this, no way at all. Images blasted her brain, things she hadn’t thought of for years, for
decades
. Sitting alone in a hut outside a hamlet in Costa Rica, with no food in the house and her parents gone, she had no idea where. There was no electricity and she’d sat in the house, unmoving, for three days and three nights, not knowing if they were dead. And then her parents came tripping in, high and laughing, casually said hi and went into the only bedroom to crash.

The time in Katmandu when her mother started bleeding heavily from down there and Summer had no idea where her father was. Years later, she understood her mother had had a miscarriage but at nine she had no idea what was wrong. All she knew was that her mother was turning icy white and between her legs was so much blood... Summer ran out to call a neighbor and she would never forget the kindly neighbor’s face—
those crazy Americans
,
what now?

The time her parents completely forgot her birthday. Her tenth. And she’d cooked herself a pancake and stuck a candle in it and sang happy birthday to herself.

The time they’d crossed to a Greek island in an ancient ferry and fire had broken out and her parents rushed to the top deck and forgot her. She found them on the pier, wrapped in blankets from the Red Cross.

Summer clenched her teeth against a sob. She’d rather crack a tooth than let it out. That summer she’d come home, she’d watched fiercely for any signs of pity from anyone and rejected them hotly, batting them away before they could be spoken. She never wanted pity, ever.

Certainly not now.

She was fine.
Fine.

So why was she so choked up?

Two more tears tracked down her face and she widened her eyes to forestall any more. Crap! What was this about?

Staring straight ahead, she could still see Jack from the corner of her eye. He was frowning, concentrated on a tablet he held in his lap, tapping from screen to screen.

Thank God he wasn’t looking at her, at her crazy, humiliating mini-breakdown. Summer stared to her left for a second, fighting fiercely for control. It slipped from her grasp, but she didn’t give up and finally she wrestled herself to the ground.

The tears dried up, her throat loosened a little and she could breathe. She wasn’t bombarded by memories. Her breath came in normally, she was okay.