Authors: Fiona Quinn
“You said a moment ago, Lacey, that you’re trying to procure five additional pieces. Are they owned by a single person?”
“From what we can tell there are two owners. One we have been in negotiations with. The other, we are still trying to find the owner’s name.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Tsukamoto’s records indicate that four pieces were commissioned six years ago. They were sent to an address. Our inquiries to the address indicate that the pieces are not housed there.”
“Did they have a forwarding address?”
“The owners said that they never owned Tsukamoto’s art.”
“This is an individual?”
“A corporation. Omega Defense International.”
Somehow I knew that was coming, and was able to hide any spark of surprise from showing by scribbling more notes on my pad and nodding my head. “I read that Griffin Babcock owns the other piece. Is it one of the mobiles?”
“No. It’s one of the few canvases that Tsukamoto did. I very much want to obtain that one.” She tipped her head left, then right. “I just need to find the right person to whisper in Babcock’s ear. As Bartholomew Winslow often says, ‘It’s not what you know, but whom.’”
“What are you going to do about the missing pieces? Will that affect the contract?”
“I don’t believe so. But I do not like to fail. I’ll give it my best effort until I run out of time.”
“When is your latest shipping date?”
“Two weeks.”
“Oh, soon, then. I wish you the very best of luck.” I stood and shook her hand. “I think that’s all I need for my paper. Do you mind my calling should I have a quick follow-up question?”
“Not at all,” she said, with her eyes on Deep.
Lacey walked us out. I moved slightly ahead to give them privacy. Deep was asking if Lacey might like to go out for dinner tomorrow. There was a catch in Lacey’s voice when she said she was sorry, but she was in a relationship, and Steve would frown on her having dinner with such an attractive man. I turned my head their way in time to see the wink that accompanied the compliment and the stupid smile that hung on Deep’s face, his hand extended, holding out a business card.
I guess it had been a while since Deep and Ghianna broke up. Though I couldn’t imagine Deep had stayed lonely all this time,
something
had to account for his weird behavior. As soon as we moved through the front door, Deep sucked in a lung full of air and gave himself a shake. He had broken the weird spell, and I recognized him again.
Deep fobbed open the door and we got in. “What the heck is this all about, Lynx?”
“Need-to-know, sorry.”
We drove in silence until we reached the first red light. “Still waters run deep?” I asked, pinching his side.
“Shut up.”
***
I pulled up the website for Mrs. Fitzhugh’s kindergarten class and scrolled down the page, then dialed the number for relay. “This is Lynx.”
“Go ahead, Lynx.”
“The color for the day is purple. The animal of the day is elephant.”
“Thank you, Lynx. With whom should we connect the call?”
“Spyder McGraw.”
I waited as communications linked Spyder and me through an encrypted line.
“How was your day, Lexicon?”
I took some time to review with Spyder the oddity of the whole art issue. The timing of General Elliot’s illness, the players, and that Omega must have four of the works they weren’t willing to talk about.
“And where would you like to go with this data?”
“I think it might be important to see if any bugs were placed during the extraction process if you would please talk to Colonel Grant. And I want to do a little research about the players, including the Hisako Museum. Anyway, other than that, I haven’t been very productive.”
“One never knows. Sometimes white noise distracts us from focusing on the correct goal. Other times, a single pixel, when placed on a screen with all of the other pixels, forms a cohesive picture.”
“I’ll keep working on it and let you know what I come up with. When are you coming home?”
“I am already home. I was successful. I would like you to meet me tomorrow for morning meditation. We have much to discuss.”
T
hat evening, I lay on the edge of Striker’s beautiful silk oriental rug, staring out through the floor to ceiling window that made up one of the walls in his living room. The calm of the Potomac and the ribbon of cars on the distant highway soothed my thoughts.
I had had a bizarre dream last night, and it distracted me all day. In it, General Elliot crawled along the highway toward Iniquus. “Help me, Lynx. Please, help me. I’m being held against my will.” The words still rang in my head. Like a prisoner, his unconscious state kept him from being here and whole. My heart ached for him. “Find the key,” he’d said.
If only I could.
General Elliot wasn’t a tender guy. His skin, leathery and scarred from his time in the Vietnamese jungles, gave him a rough and ready look that he backed with a heart of steely conviction. His retirement from the Pentagon had been a loss for the armed services, but of course, the General knew he would still be serving America — just in a different capacity, by creating Iniquus.
Iniquus was Latin for unequal or unfair. It seemed an odd choice of words to choose for our company, which prided itself on high morals and righteous action. But the General explained to me that our strength would be unequalled, our tactics unfair – we’d stretch the law to its breaking point; we’d slash through any red tape to take down the bad guys who manipulated our justice system and its grinding pace of action. We streamlined our operations to be effective in ways that our clients—prevented by politics and other forces of ego and ladder-climbing—could not be. We would do what was necessary to bring the enemy down. And if anyone was confused, our motto was: Ubicumque, Quoties. Quidquid: Wherever. Whenever. Whatever. That’s why we were so effective and why our clients held us in such high esteem.
Hmmm. Not anymore, though. Some force had aimed a lance at the heart of Iniquus and swept us from our warhorse.
When I woke up, General Elliot’s voice echoed loudly and insistently in my mind, compelling me to action. After finishing at the gallery, I had gone by to visit him, but nothing had changed. He only had vague moments of lucidity when he could answer questions by squeezing his wife’s hand. Mrs. Elliot had grown frail from worry. She was always sitting next to him, knitting or reading, just in case he came to for a moment; she didn’t want to miss it. They’d been through forty-two years of marriage. She demonstrated the love and commitment that people dream of having with her vigil. Tears stung the corners of my eyes as I thought about the deep sadness that pressed down on her.
“Is there a reason you’re down there?” Striker called from the kitchen.
“Thinking position,” I called back.
“What are you thinking about?”
“The vibrations I’ve been feeling at Iniquus Headquarters.”
Striker walked over and sat down beside me. “Only at Headquarters?”
“It seems so.” I shrugged.
“What did the doctor say at your appointment?”
I scooted around so I could put my head in Striker’s lap. He combed his fingers through my hair, and I closed my eyes to enjoy the sensation. “Jasper’s scheduling a MRI.” When Striker didn’t answer, I glanced up. Concern tightened his jaw muscles. “They aren’t going to find anything they haven’t found before,” I assured him.
“So you don’t believe the vibrations you’re experiencing at Headquarters are physical in nature?”
“Yes, I think they’re physical in nature. That is, I think they are physically happening. I don’t believe it’s my brain injuries that are manifesting them within my physiology. But I still thought it warranted a check.”
“Hmm.” He tapped my arm. “Come sit on the couch with me. I want to know what’s going on with you. I’m not thrilled about us working on two different missions.” He pushed me to sitting, then got to his feet and reached for my hand. “I like our team working as one strong unit.”
I cuddled up to him on the sofa, in complete agreement.
“I don’t know where you are, what you’re doing, who the hell you’re partnered with, and if he’s up to the job of keeping you safe.”
“Iniquus only hires the best,” I said.
“So it’s an Iniquus guy, not someone from one of the alphabets?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny. Sorry.” I sent him a little apologetic frown.
“Are you safe? Can you tell me that much?”
“Can anyone ever say that for sure? Look, I understand what you’re going through. I go through it every time you say you’re headed downrange. Lack of control, or at least lack of inclusion, makes the monsters roar louder in my ears. Then I get very busy at the gym and anywhere else I can burn off my stress energy and keep myself distracted because thinking you might be hurt or in danger. . .” I clutched at my chest. “It wrings my heart and lungs until I think it will kill me.”
Striker tucked me closer, kissing the top of my head. “Yup. That’s a pretty good description of it.” He interlaced his fingers with mine. “Hell of a profession we’ve chosen.”
“I don’t know how much choosing I did,” I replied. “Some things just seem to be. Fighting a riptide only wears you out, and you still get pulled to sea. I tried to lead a normal life. A few times. And it never worked out for me. What about you, Striker?” I arched my neck to catch sight of the side of his face. “Did you choose this life?”
“No, I guess not. It’s pretty clear that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“And if Iniquus, God forbid, goes down?”
“Then I’ll still be doing this somewhere else, but I’d probably like it a lot less.”
“Understood.” I frowned. What were we going to do if Iniquus went under? It was hard to believe our team could stay together. It was hard to believe we’d have the freedom we have now to take on a mission and see it through. We were in a battle to save Iniquus and all that she stood for. If only we could figure out why this was happening. . .though in my gut I knew it was more a question of who was making this happen. Who was playing the mole, and how could we catch them?
“So why did you have your thinking cap on, lying there in front of the window?” Striker startled me away from my churning mind. “Is this part of your mission, or is this a topic we can actually talk about?”
“I was thinking about the USSR, so I think it’s a pretty safe topic.”
“Okay, I’m listening.”
“Yeah, it was one of the weirder things that happened during the Cold War. Did you know that the Russian government bombarded the US embassy in Moscow with microwaves for over a decade starting back around 1965?”
“Why?”
“That’s a good question. I have no idea. It seemed that they were microwaving our diplomats. Just shooting rays in through the front and back windows.”
“What did the US do about that?”
“Absolutely nothing. No, that’s not true,” I said. “Eventually they put up screens on the inside of the embassy windows that blocked some if not all of waves. And they had a doctor who took blood samples to check on the effects of the rays. They found over time that their white cell count went up significantly. That’s all I remember.”
“You said you were thinking about the vibrations you feel only at Iniquus. Are you thinking someone is shooting us full of microwaves?”
“No. . . I was thinking about General Elliot’s sudden illness. Mrs. Elliot says the doctors can’t find anything physically wrong with him. They actually think he’s in great shape, given his age and what he’s been through in his lifetime. So that leads them to believe that this must be psychological in nature. But according to Mrs. Elliot, there are really only two reasons that happens—schizophrenic catatonia or depressive catatonia. Since he’s not schizophrenic or depressed, that seems improbable.”
“Yeah, that’s what she told me, too.” Striker scratched his hand over his five o’clock shadow. “He looks drugged to me. I asked if they’d done blood samples to check if he’d been poisoned, or if this could be the result of someone slipping him sedatives. Pathology said his blood was clean and healthy. Spencer sent our in-house doc over to get a blood sample to make sure no one tampered with the original results. They came out the same. The odd timing is my biggest issue with it. Elliot goes down for the count and very quickly Iniquus sinks into quicksand.” He pinched his lip. “Your Russian story—how do these things all fit together?”
I stood up and jerked on my pants legs to get them to fall into place. “No clue. I was just letting my mind wander around to see if I couldn’t pull some analogical story from my subconscious that would help me to understand. All I could come up with was enemies sending evil energy waves at us.” I offered up a rueful smile. “So, not helpful at all. We need Elliot back if we’re going to survive. That’s the feeling in my bones, anyway. So I hope his doctors come up with a cause for the effect, and we can make it go away.” I moved toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving. I haven’t eaten all day. Let’s have breakfast for dinner. Eggs and toast, some fruit. Quick and easy and limited clean up.”
I focused on Striker and saw fatigue in the slack skin around his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately. He’d tossed around a lot more than normal. I wondered if something was going wrong with his mission. We were all walking on eggshells, trying not to make any mistakes. Every last foible felt like it could bring the whole shebang to a crashing end. And Striker had to deal with Vine—that had to be wearing on him.
Striker followed me into the kitchen. As he added ingredients to the counter, his phone vibrated. Glancing down at the screen, he smiled at the photo of his four-year old niece, Cammy, doing a plié in the tutu she wore like a uniform. He answered the phone on speaker, so I could hear her too.
“Hi, baby doll. Did you have a happy day?”
“Uhm, I need to talk to my fairy godmother. Uhm, Mommy doesn’t have my fairy godmother’s picture on her phone.”
“She’s right here, sweetie.” Striker pushed the phone to me, his form expanding as his muscles tensed; Cammy needing a fairy godmother meant something bad was going on.
“Cammy, It’s me, Lexi. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah well, see, I need you to go get my mommy.”
Striker had shifted to operations mode. Every part of his being seemed primed for action. His sharp eyes scanned the room, catching on me as he mouthed “purse.” I pointed to the chair by the door.
“Where are you, Cammy?” I asked.
“In my kitchen.”
“Your kitchen at your house where you just moved? The one with yellow walls?”
“Yes.”
“And your mommy isn’t there? Is there anyone else in the house with you, Cammy?”
“Mommy was here and then the bad men came to the house, and she went away in their car. She said be a good girl, and make a wish for my fairy godmother. I
wish
you’d go get my mommy.”
Striker fished my phone from my bag and tapped in numbers.
“How do you know they were bad men, Cammy?”
“They had guns and Mommy had to put her hands on her head. And they threw all of our things on the floor.”
Striker gave their Miami address to the police department, and repeated Cammy’s words. After he disconnected, I watched him stare at the ceiling, muttering, and then he tapped in another number.
“Did they hurt you? Are you okay?”
“Uhm. I want my mommy to come home. Can you go get her?”
Striker placed his hand on my shoulder as he talked quietly on the phone with his dad. “I don’t know. Cammy just called this minute. She’s talking to Lexi now.”
“I’m going to do that,” I told Cammy in the calmest voice I could muster. “But first, do you know how many men came in the house? . . . Cammy, are you holding up your fingers for me?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t see them, sweet pea. Tell me how many fingers you have up.”
“Three.”
“Three? And did you see their car drive away? Were you looking out the window or were you looking at something else when they left?”
“It was big, like Grandpa’s car.”
“And what color?”
“Black.”
“Good girl. I hear sirens. Those are police officers. Your Uncle Gavin called them to come and make sure you’re safe. Your grandpa will be there in just a minute. He’s driving right now to come and take you to his house. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Cammy, are you wearing your dance shoes?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to think about which way the men went in their car. Can you imagine which way they drove and point in the direction they went?. . . Are you pointing?”
“Yes.”
“Now look down at your shoes. Are you pointing toward the toe with the sticker or no sticker?”
“No sticker. The policemans are in the kitchen with me. Where’s Grandpa?”
“He’ll be there in just a minute, sweet pea. Can you let Uncle Gavin talk to a police officer?”
I pushed the pad in front of Striker where I had listed the details: three men, guns, black SUV, headed right. He circled ‘headed right’ and put a question mark next to it, while he gave the police his phone number, his father’s contact information, and the little information I had pulled from Cammy. He disconnected. “They turned right?”