Power (8 page)

“FBI raided the Century safe houses across the country a few minutes ago,” he said, and I nearly dropped my plate.

“What. The. Hell?” I asked, correcting only a second before my piece of pizza went sliding to the floor. “Who authorized that?”

“Li, maybe?” He gave me a shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t really know. I just know they did it, and they’re finished now.”

I stared at his unconcerned features as he took another nibble of his pizza. “I assume, based on your demeanor, the raids did not culminate in the mass deaths of all the FBI agents.”

“Yeah, they’re fine,” J.J. said, struggling to cram half the piece in his mouth. I resisted slapping him so hard it would all fly out so he could get me a clear answer—but only barely. “Nobody was home at any of them. Looked like they’d been abandoned.” Flecks of chewed cheese the size of pencil erasers flew out of his mouth as he spoke. “Score one for the good guys, huh?”

“Not really,” I said. “Now they’ve gone underground.” I put aside my annoyance with J.J. and chewed my own piece of pizza. A thought occurred to me and I spoke, managing to keep the food in my mouth from spraying out as I did so. “Did Weissman charter that plane or did Century own it?”

“Uhrm …” J.J. said, and he looked like he’d been caught by surprise. “I don’t know. NTSB is investigating the crash, local police are on the hangar.”

“I know what caused the plane to crash,” I said.

“Might not want to tell the NTSB that,” he said with a shrug. “Not sure how well they’ll take it when you give working for a government agency that doesn’t exist as an explanation for why you dropped it in the swamps outside the third most populous city in the state.”

I frowned at him. “Confession may be good for the soul, but time in jail does nothing for my complexion.” I waved one of my pale hands in front of my face. “I was just thinking that if we could trace the origin of the plane, either by following the money if it’s a rental or by following its trail if it’s owned by Century—”

“Yes!” His eyes lit up, and he got it. Finally. “Yes, I can do that. I’ll just—” He made as if he was going to move, then hesitated when he remembered the pizza plate in his hands and took a staggering step, tried to keep from falling as he regained his balance. Then he stared at the plate like his mind had skipped a beat trying to figure out what to do with it while his body rushed to follow his new train of thought. “Uhm …” He looked up at me as if he were seeking my permission for something.

“Eat while you work,” I said, dismissing him with a wave of my hand. “Get me some answers, will you?” I watched him scramble around the wall of the cube and remembered a question I’d wanted to ask him, but a little too late.

I wanted to know what the local PD had done with my mother’s body.

But I supposed that could wait.

I scooped up a few more pieces of pizza and headed for my office, taking care to open the door with my wrist instead of rubbing greasy fingers all over it. I stopped in the door and stared at the bonsai still sitting in the middle of my desk, at that unopened envelope waiting in front of it. I cringed, knowing I’d have to read it sooner or later.

I’d have preferred later, but that wasn’t the mature response. I set the pizza plate on the desk and circled around to find my chair. I sat down and reached for the envelope, my fingers staining the pure white paper yellow with grease. I slid a finger along the seal and found it already ripped open. Someone had read it and replaced it, apparently. Someone who was perhaps a little more on top of things than I was.

I pulled a small note out and opened it where it was folded in half. Simple words were written inside:

To Sienna Nealon,

I have repaid my debt to you to the best of my ability, given the constraints of time. I look forward to our next encounter, when I will meet you for the first time.

With my deepest condolences,

Shin’ichi Akiyama

I tossed the note lightly on the surface of my desk and listened to the paper slide across it. However he’d intended to help me, whatever I’d done to assist him—or would do—whatever—he’d done one thing, to my knowledge. He’d helped my mom die while killing Weissman. The pizza didn’t even taste good anymore. “The best of your ability could have been a whole lot better,” I said to the empty room.

Chapter 12

I am ready to help you now
, Bjorn said, and I could hear the reluctant sincerity in my head.

I sighed, the sound making a quiet noise in my office as it bounced off the walls. “Thank you, Bjorn.” I took it with as much grace as I could, the assistance of a murderer and rapist. It wasn’t like I had armies of wholesome people in my head offering me their assistance, so I had to take what I could get, right?

Right.

Don’t forget
, Bastian’s soft voice said quietly,
I’m at your disposal as well
.

“Thank you too, Roberto,” I said, nodding as I turned to look out my window across the neatly manicured lawn. The world might be going to hell around us, but our gardeners still worked every day, apparently. I couldn’t decide whether that was soothing or galling and eventually decided on the latter. “I can use all the help I can get.”

I heard a quiet rustle in the back of my head where Gavrikov and Eve still waited, watching me. I could feel them back there, discontented, their anger with me still fresh on the surface. “What about you, Aleksandr?” I asked.

I think not
, his faintly accented words floated up to me.
I do not wish to give you more power which you may hang over my sister’s head like a looming danger, an axe or sword ready to fall
.

“That’s not me,” I whispered, as I felt him retreat to the back of my head. I could nearly taste his bitterness, his suspicion. It fed into all my worst fears about myself, giving me a sense of unease.

What if he was right about me?

I felt another presence, and it caused me to relax just a bit. Bjorn’s psyche, as near as I could tell, still held the hard-planted seeds of reluctance and rawness from how I’d treated him. I didn’t want to ask, but I suspected he was just being a bigger man. Not literally, but figuratively.

“Thank you,” I muttered again.

It is not for your sake,
Bjorn said, and I sensed his anger below the surface.
Sovereign deserves to die, horribly, for what he has done to me, and
… I could hear the hints of grudging admiration spiking through his words as he spoke in my head, …
your plan, your ideas
…
I find them pleasing
.

I frowned then quickly wiped the look off my face, burying my first reaction—distaste—at his approval. I knew he sensed it, but he wisely decided not to comment on it. Our choices were terrible, to either ignore each other, fight each other, or work together. It didn’t take anyone with half a brain to realize that those choices were absolute shit to both of us.

But what the hell else was there to do?

“Sienna?” There was a knock at my half-closed door, one that pushed the door open more than the crack it had been at. J.J.’s face appeared in the gap, and I caught a hint of eager eyes behind those huge black-rimmed glasses. “I think I’ve got something.”

“Come in,” I said, trying to clear my mind of the distractions imposed by having six people living in the mental space meant for one. I waved him toward the desk and he slipped in, pushing the door nearly shut behind him as he came forward. He dragged one of my chairs a couple inches closer to the front of my desk, scuffing the carpet as he did so and getting an irritated reaction from me, as though I’d heard a single nail briefly scrape a chalkboard.

Ever meet someone and just find yourself repelled by them, as though you’d met your polar opposite? That was J.J. for me. I couldn’t exactly explain it (not that I’d put a lot of thought into it), but the guy just annoyed the holy hell out of me. I tried to bury it, since I was his boss and I needed his expertise, but it did not take much effort on his part to set my teeth on edge.

That was probably more on my end than his, honestly. I’m flawed, and one of those flaws is lack of patience. I’d say I was working on it, but that’d be a lie. I was just working on keeping it from ballooning out into murder every time I lost it.

Baby steps.

“I traced the plane,” J.J. said, “and you were right.” Who doesn’t love those words? Music to my ears. And ego. “Looks like it was chartered, and I found a new money trail leading to a shell corporation headquartered in Massachusetts. The Wise Men’s Consortium.” He glanced up at me. “Heh. Like a play on Weissman—”

“Yes, I got it.”

“Right,” he said, turning serious and clearing his throat. “And sexist, obviously. Anyway, it’s something. Also, the NTSB has traced the plane back to its takeoff point, and they’re now on the scene at the hangar, along with the FBI—”

“Oh?” I had a hard time caring.

“They found some stuff,” J.J. said, causing me to strike that ‘not caring’ thing. “Looks like Weissman had been using it as his temporary base, so there was a computer and—”

“Where?” I asked, standing up so fast I nearly overturned my chair.

“At the hangar, still,” J.J. said, looking up at me like I was at least a little crazy. “I looked in on the reports filed thus far, from the comm traffic and whatnot. Looks like it’s encrypted, so their field guys didn’t want to mess with it—”

“What are the odds that Century has something on that computer worth a look?” I asked, thinking it over.

“I don’t know?” J.J. said, his voice sounding a little lost. “12.3 percent?”

I frowned. “Where the hell did you get that number from?”

He shrugged. “I made it up. It’s not like I know enough about these guys to know what they do with their computers. For all I know, he keeps it because of a Solitaire high score he got three years ago.”

“But it probably has
something
on it,” I said. “Weissman was a truly nasty piece of work. I can’t imagine he’d have brought a laptop to town with him just to game on.”

“You never know,” J.J. said. “He could’ve been really into World of Warcraft, and maybe he didn’t want to miss raids while he was traveling.” I gave him a look. You know the one. “Well, he could,” J.J. said, a little reproachful.

“I want a look at that laptop,” I said, thumping my hand on the desk. “Can you hack it from here?”

“What?” J.J. said, almost verging on a scowl. “It’s turned off, presumably not near a wi-fi hotspot, and about to be checked in to the FBI as evidence.” I looked at him blankly until he explained further. “No, I cannot hack it from here. I’d need it to be on and connected to a network that’s on the internet, and neither of those things is happening anytime soon.”

“So we go to it,” I said, straightening my back. I was still standing, like it was some sort of declarative statement. “We go get you a look at it.” For me, it kind of was a declarative statement. I’d been reeling from punch after punch from Weissman, Sovereign, and all these Century flunkies.

Now it was time to seize on the first opportunity to come our way in a little while—and go on the offensive.

Chapter 13

That thrill, that feeling of being on the attack, faded as we left the gates of the Agency behind. Sitting in the back seat of an SUV as it headed down the freeway toward the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, I felt a strange, nervous, creeping sensation that tickled my stomach.

It probably didn’t help that Kat was sitting next to me. Right next to me. In the middle of the back seat, with J.J. boxing her in on the other side. She smelled faintly sweet, like she’d dabbed on a little perfume that morning.

I tried not to look at her.

Reed was driving and Li was sitting in the passenger seat up front, helping put the kibosh on any conversations that might have taken place. The drive to the 494 Highway loop that encircled Minneapolis and St. Paul was a tense affair, marked mostly by silence and the occasional clearing of a throat.

The sun hung high overhead, shining down through the glass moon roof. It was near noon, probably getting hot outside, and the air conditioner coupled with the car’s engine was producing a soothing thrum in the vehicle. I found myself wishing I’d brought some of the pizza along with me for this jaunt, instead of leaving it behind on my desk. By the time I got back, it would be spoiled. Bleh.

I couldn’t shake that uneasy feeling, and I couldn’t quite attribute it just to the awful silence that was filling the car, either. Part of me wanted to say something to break it, but I really hated talking to Li. And J.J. And Kat, come to think of it—though it was bound to be even more awkward now that I knew killing her was the key to me living a normal life.

You know what? Given that I was surrounded by people I regarded as problems, it suddenly occurred to me, not for the first time, that
I
was probably the problem.

Before I could accept this fact with the humility and grace that was due, however, I saw something black buzz by overhead.

“What was that?” Kat asked, as if she were reading my mind.

“What was what?” Li volleyed back. I was no expert on the FBI agent’s state of mind, but he sounded tense. Which was something of an indicator in and of itself, because he was one cool customer most of the time. Li had been in government service for a while, and I got the feeling it had jaded him a little.

It might also have been the fact that he was forced to work with me, a person he considered a murderer and responsible for the death of his buddy and college roommate, but still … jaded. “I saw something, too,” I said. “Like something just shot by overhead.”

“Like, overflew us?” Reed asked, and I saw him let up on the accelerator a little.

“Maybe,” I said. “It went from in front of us to back. Went so quick I didn’t really get a good look.” I felt that uneasy feeling again. “I hate to sound cheesy, but does anyone else get that sense we’re being watched?”