Authors: Fiona Quinn
“All I need you to do, sir, is read out loud each name from this list for me while I watch over your shoulder.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” I reached over and put the stack of money into his hand. He stretched out his other hand and gestured towards the pages with his finger.
I
moved around the cool darkness of Spyder’s apartment. The temple-like quiet soothed my whirling thoughts. Clicking on the lamp would snap the magic. Instead, I sat down at the table and contemplated the rounded outline of his kettle, red against the deep grey hues of coming night.
The door ticked open and Spyder’s thin frame moved into view. He sat beside me. Silent.
“Allan Leverone,” I said.
“That was fast. Are you sure your search was thorough?”
“I didn’t follow your instructions, sir. We don’t have that kind of time. Going through the list of Galaxy Project participants and locating each one would take days, if not weeks.”
Spyder smiled broadly. “Excellent. And so you found a worm hole?”
“I did. It seems that Leverone hid his name from his colleagues’ minds with some undisclosed target protection technique for which he was developing the protocol when the Galaxy Program was defunded. So how it works remains a big secret.”
“Only Leverone knows the methodology?”
“Correct. Now, I can’t prove anything, sir. I’ve developed my ideas based on anecdote, observation, and maybe a little desperation thrown into the mix. So, no facts. One theory is that if Leverone cast the invisibility cloak over his name, people who knew him would seem unable to recollect it, though they’d remember things about him. General Coleridge, his wife, and Major Trudy know who he is, they simply can’t pull up his name. It’s possible that the invisibility cloak covers his hidey-hole, too. No one remembers where he lives. Not General Coleridge and not Major Trudy, anyway.” I glanced back at the kettle. “Tea might be nice. Would you like a cup?” I stood and walked to the stove.
“Thank you. You used the information to your advantage? How did the men not being able to recall the name bring you to the name?”
I waited until I cut the faucet off before I continued. “I used the arts technique Mom taught me. If I try to replicate a picture while looking at it, I draw a mess. If I turn the photo upside down and try to draw it, it comes out much more accurately because my brain has to focus on the details and not the larger picture. So to apply that same trick, I took Major Trudy the list of Galaxy Project remote viewers, and I asked him to read each name. And he did.”
“Except one.”
“Yup. He read every single name right down the list, pronouncing them clear as a bell, but when he got to Allan Leverone, his eye moved right down to the next name on the list, even though his finger pointed to Leverone’s name.”
“Clever girl.”
“I cook well, too.” I smiled, pleased to have earned his compliment.
“Which is, of course, the real reason I decided to mentor you. So his address is still shrouded?”
“I’m working on a plan for that. I asked Deep to do some searches for Leverone.” I started laughing so hard I couldn’t talk.
Spider nodded his head with approval and waited me out.
“I made Deep promise me he’d work in the Puzzle Room only. On my way home from Major Trudy’s house, I stopped at Flock Together – Wild Bird Supplies to get doorknobs. I hung a bunch of bird-scare stuff around the room. So don’t be surprised if you start hearing rumors of my impending schizophrenia diagnosis.” I grinned. “I’ve also constructed an aluminum hat to wear while I’m on campus. I say, why not go all in?”
***
Where are you?
Gater’s text came through as I pulled up to the security gate at Iniquus. I wanted to check on Deep’s progress.
Driving into Headquarters parking –
I typed quickly, then waved to the guard and motored down the road.
STOP! Go to barracks NOW!
I had pulled into the underground parking deck and parked my car before I read the message. I pulled right back out and drove to the high-rise, wondering what was going on. Exclamation points? I thought as I pushed the gas pedal down. Capital letters? I jerked my car into the first open spot. Gater never used either. I leapt from the car and hustled to the elevator, then jammed my finger repeatedly into the call button as if I could telegraph my impatience to its computer system and speed things along. I assumed Gater meant for me to go to Striker’s apartment. I tapped my toe and stared at the light. I had almost decided to sprint the stairs when the doors finally slid open. What was happening?
By the time the elevator zipped me to the top floor, I was wringing my hands with agitation. I knew Spyder would shake his head at my impatience. “The Buddha said, ‘What we think we become.’ If you were to look in the mirror, my dear, you would see that you are a worry wart.” I breathed in deeply through my nostrils. This was not the calm demeanor that would make me unreadable to a remote viewer. I blew out through pursed lips. I needed to be impenetrable, like Spyder. I shook my body and smoothed my hand over my hair. Adjusting my shoulders back, I lifted my chin and consciously released the muscles in my face. By the time I got to Striker’s door, I had even managed a Madonna smile.
I put my hand on the knob to unlock it when the door swung open. Striker reached for my arm and pulled me in, throwing me off balance. Before I knew what was happening, he squatted down and draped me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He turned and kicked the door shut behind him.
“Thank God you’re here.” he said as he stalked through his living room and down his hall, my fanny in the air. “I thought I was going to miss you,”
“What are you. . .”
“Shhh.” Striker rolled me gently onto his bed, stretching out his hand to guide my head softly onto a pillow. “I’ve got about ten minutes, and I’m well past the point of desperation.” He jerked his shirt over his head. “All I could think about today was you.” With one tug the buttons on his 501s popped smoothly open.
I came up on my knees and yanked my shirt over my head. “I think I might be a step or two beyond desperation,” I said as I unclasped my bra.
Quickly, our discarded clothes lay across the floor. His hands twisted in my hair and his lips pressed hungrily against me as we fell back onto the mattress. There was nothing pretty or sexy about what came next. It was just hot, sweaty, and fun. Tangling our limbs together, we wrestled around like going to the mat in a jujitsu tournament, only a lot more gratifying. Laughing, we pinned, flipped, and struggled to burn off the sexual frustration.
Whew! If this kind of sprint was going to be our sex life, I was going to have to up my cardio workouts. When my release came, it was glorious. The pent-up emotions from missing Striker exploded with my orgasm.
Striker slid a hand over my mouth. “Shhh.” he chuckled. “No girls allowed in the men’s barracks.” He bent to gently kiss my mouth as he stroked slowly in and out of me.
“What are you doing? You have to go. Don’t you want to, you know, finish?” I asked, feeling boneless and malleable. I used the last of my strength to pet my hands over the muscular expanse of his shoulders.
“I will, Chica.” He smiled down at me. “But nothing brings me as much pleasure as watching you come.” He peeked over at the clock. “I still have three minutes.”
“You think three minutes will do it? I need a nap first.
Finish
.”
“Uh-uh.” He rocked back and forth until the tension built in me again.
By the time Striker pulled his pants back on, I was almost comatose on the bed. Too sated to pull my lips together, I drooled onto the pillow. Striker squatted and tucked a strand of damp hair back behind my ear so he could kiss my cheek. “You’re so beautiful,” he said without a trace of sarcasm.
“Mmmm,” I replied.
“I love you,” he said with a self-satisfied chuckle.
“Mmmmph.” What did the man expect after rocking my world not once, but twice in ten minutes flat?
I heard him whistling as he went out the door.
It was only after I woke up and stretched that I wondered why it was that Gater had texted me to go to the barracks.
I pressed his quick dial number.
“Gater here.”
“Did you need me for something? You texted me to go to the barracks.”
“You must have a big smile on your face.”
He was right—I did. “Why’s that?”
“Darn. Did you miss Striker? He was hoping to see you for a few minutes.”
“No, he was here. I do have a smile on my face. But why was it you and not him sending the texts?”
“He hustled over to get packed as quick as he could, and it was my duty to track you down and get you over there. ‘Send the helicopters if you have to’ were my orders. And I also got to run interference with Vine. You owe me dinner.”
“Why me?”
“Because you cook better than Striker and because I ran interference for you two with Vine, I’ve got a headache for my efforts, and you’ve got that smile. Seems the least you could do is fill my stomach.”
“It does indeed. Well worth any effort to put dinner together for you. It’s Thursday, so I’m making Italian. Why don’t you bring Deep with you? I needed to talk to him anyway.”
I heard Gater talking with his hand over the phone. “We’re headed over soon. Deep wants to know if you can make manicotti.”
G
ater set the table, and Deep opened a bottle of red. I pulled the manicotti from the oven. I’d cheated and used store-bought pasta. Oh, well.
“Gater, you said on the phone that Striker was packing? Do you know where he’s going? How long he’ll be out?”
“He didn’t talk to me that long. Left his orders and hightailed it out of there.”
“Hmm.” Striker and I needed to work on some system for keeping track of each other. Maybe we could get a place to hang up messages like, “I’ll be down range dodging bullets until Tuesday the 19
th
.”
I set a basket of garlic bread and a trivet for the casserole on the table. “What are you two working on in the meantime?”
“Gater’s trying to find Brody Covington, which means Gater’s slamming his head into a wall. Striker told me to be at your disposal until further notice. You were my number one priority. But before we left Headquarters, Colonel Grant overrode those orders.”
“Oh?” I reached back for my chair, but Gater stood behind me ready to tuck it under my knees. Gater’s mama was a stickler for Southern manners, even if she had a son she nicknamed “mud pie.”
Deep sat down across from me. “Yeah, all operatives who are not in the field tomorrow will be at Headquarters putting the Tsukamoto artwork back into place. He said not to plan on going anywhere or doing anything until every last piece is exactly back where it belongs,” he said. “I pulled the designs from Lacey’s computer, so we know what goes where.”
“Aren’t you going over to the FBI?” I asked.
“Colonel Grant says they can go fuck themselves – sorry, quoting,” Deep said. “You didn’t get the call about putting up art?”
“No. Did you already hand over the schematics to the colonel?” I asked, passing the salad on to Gater.
“He’s got them in hand. Foxtrot was on call tonight, so they’ve already started in. Why do you ask?”
I held up a finger, reached in my pocket, and called Colonel Grant’s private number for the first time. It made my heart flutter. “Sir? This is Lynx. Did you speak with my partner this evening?”
“I did,” Colonel Grant said. “And while I don’t understand the significance or the immediate requirement of putting up art work, I’m following through. Foxtrot is on it now.”
“Thank you, sir. It’s incredibly important.” I pushed away from the table and walked toward the hall. “I’m sure my partner told you that we will explain everything as soon as we can.”
“If it were anyone else on this assignment, I wouldn’t be exercising the patience I am exercising now. This is
my
company.”
“Yes, sir.” I swallowed hard. “Sir, I need to keep Deep Del Toro with me until further notice. My window is slamming shut, and I don’t have his skill set.”
“His tactical goat-screw made him stand out like a turd in the FBI punchbowl. Right now, he isn’t even worthy of making my shit list.”
“Uh, understood, sir. But if Deep had behaved in any way other than how he conducted himself in the field with Lacey Stuart, our whole organization would be in jeopardy. If I thought for one second that his behavior was a deficit to Iniquus, I would have reported his conduct immediately. Deep took one for the team.” I paced back to the table. “He really should be commended and not reprimanded in this case. When you have all of the facts in front of you, I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion.” I pointed to the bottle of wine, and Deep poured me a full glass, reaching it out to me with an oh-shit! look on his face.
“Noted. He’s under your command. Spyder sends you this message: ‘My collection is complete, stay the course.’”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And now, an abrupt change of subject, because frankly, this art fuck-up is a burr in my ass. Did you by chance take a Christmas tree by the general’s?”
“Yes, sir. Leanne Burns, Gater Aid Rochambeau, and I did.” I gulped down some wine and paced back up the hall.
“I got a call from his wife. The general uttered his first word since they’ve been home in the States. Sandra said the nurse turned Elliot on his side to bathe him, and he opened his eyes and saw the tree and asked, ‘Lynx?’ When Sandra said yes, he smiled then went back to sleep. Is there a specific reason you put up that tree?”
“Yes, sir.” I drained the last of my wine from the glass.
“I’m not going to ask. This is turning into the most fucked-up case I’ve ever come across, with mile-high stakes. When you and your partner finally tell me what the hell’s going on, I’m going to make popcorn and sit back to be entertained. For now, get yourself a good night’s sleep and get out there and fix the damned problem.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
Deep and I pushed open the atrium door at the same time. I sent him a smile. “Today’s going to be exceptional. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Exceptionally good?”
“One would hope.” I needed to make things happen. Surely Indigo knew I was lining up my cross-hairs and was itching to squeeze the trigger.
We made our way through the early morning press, skipping the elevator and taking the stairs instead. In my mind, I was constructing a needs hierarchy for Deep’s search instructions. If we were going to take this guy down, I needed to understand Indigo’s transformation from one of the most altruistic people the military could find — someone they were willing to help develop a lethality that could have truly devastating effect – to a person who seemed to have donned the morality of Machiavelli.
I thought about Spyder’s and my reconnaissance trip to the warehouse. He wanted me to focus on the humanity of the security guards – what would make them happy? What motivated them? If I could figure this out about Indigo, I bet we could find a way to stop him.
As we moved through the hallway on my floor, the buzz in the air stood the fine hairs on my body at full attention. It sucked the oxygen from the space. Gater was right. There was an element of anger – more than anger, vengeance and hatred—to this vibration.
Jack sat calmly on a stool outside of the Puzzle Room, leaning into the wall and telling an animated story. Axel and Randy helped Gater slide the Zen artwork into a transport case. Blaze rested his hand on another box, which I assumed was the Tsukamoto that had been hanging out here in the hall across from Striker’s and my offices.
I vibrated with the sensation and moved forward. As a science experiment, I sidled past Gater and put my hand on his back. He arched back like he was being burned.
Your house is on fire,
the knowing screamed through my brain.
Your family will burn.
I whipped my head around and stilled, staring at a translucent blue light in the vague form of a human. My hand gripped into Gater’s shirt. Gater spun toward me, and I pointed to the light. He turned in the direction my finger indicated.
It was exactly like the glow I had hallucinated when I was in prison. I had asked both General Coleridge and Major Trudy about the blue light, and both seemed surprised. They didn’t say it couldn’t happen — that the energy of a remote viewer couldn’t be visible to some people — I reminded myself. But they didn’t seem to think it was likely. When I was locked in the cell, I was so desperately afraid that I was going insane while held in solitary that seeing the blue light made me feel even more crazy and vulnerable. Especially since I could have sworn that the light recognized me. I thought when I was in the prison cell, it might have been an angel or a guide, but that hadn’t seemed right. Here and now, I knew there was nothing benevolent or holy about this thing. Right now, it felt damned angry – just the way Gater had described the energetic pulse he felt the morning before we went to visit General Elliot.
Gater reached around, winding his arm around my waist. The rest of our bewildered team stared down the seemingly empty hallway. We moved quickly to the Puzzle Room.
“Oh, man.” Gater washed his hand over his tightly cropped sun-kissed blond hair. “I should never be surprised by what happens when I’m around you. But that’s a first for me, ma’am. To tell truth, I’d rather go bare knuckles with grizzly than. . .” He put his hands over his face and arched back with a groan. “Alright, what kind of psychic craziness is happening? And does this have something to do with the art?”
“This has nothing to do with being psychic.”
Gater cocked his head to the side, his hands planted firmly on his hips.
“You and I have psychic sensibilities. That’s why we can see and feel what the others cannot. But what we are experiencing is not psychic in nature. Has nothing to do with being psychic. This is science, pure and simple. No, I take that back. This is science at its most impure and complex.”
Gater stuck a hip onto the tabletop and folded his arms. “There’s no buzz in here like out in the hall.”
He looked up to where I pointed at the bird-scares dangling from the ceiling.
“You want to explain why you’ve put up enough bird repellant to protect an orchard? Have you been watching too much Hitchcock?”
“I can’t tell you, Gater. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this. Do you have your notes with you? Can I take a look?”
He pulled out the sheet of paper and handed it over.
“Looks like you’ve been moving up the scale. You hit an eight last night before you came to dinner.” I pulled out my phone. “Actually, you hit an eight just before you texted me. Where were you? What happened right around that time?”
“I was in Striker’s office. Nothing much was happening. I updated Striker on my search for Brody, which means I was telling him I’d found nada. It was a thirty-second conversation that included my directive to find you and keep Vine tangled in the weeds. The numbers were budging up the whole time but Striker ran out, and that’s when I got hit by the eight. Things calmed down to zero when I found Vine and invited her to go to the cafeteria with me to get something to eat while Striker threw his duffle together.”
“And this morning?”
“Since you said something about the art changing on the wall, and you asked me what happened next, I’ve been thinking that through, and I think you landed on something. About the time the art changed, is when all hell started breaking loose around here. Elliot went down for the count. Iniquus has been taking hit after hit. We know our success rate has sunk so low the operatives are walking around with their tails tucked between their legs. Morale’s in the dumpsters. Rumor has it our ledgers are bleeding red ink from having to take assignments that are sure to show up as financial losses on the books.”
“And why would we think of doing such a thing?” I mimicked his stance—arms akimbo, legs wide, my brows pulled tightly together.
“Because without them, we’d have no assignments at all. Command seems to think if we can post a few wins, we’ll get our swing back. Here’s a big problem with that—Iniquus needs to keep expenses to a minimum. The men aren’t getting everything they need as they need it.”
I absorbed these extra pieces of information. Striker told me about Iniquus’ spiral downward. But hearing it again reminded me how much was at stake. I thought back to Spyder’s and my flight on the Iniquus jet to see General Coleridge and felt a little uneasy about the others tightening their belts while we did not. As a matter of fact, Spyder told me I had whatever budget and resources I needed to get this job done. And since Iniquus very existence depended on our success, I planned to use them.
Spyder had sent word that he had collected all of the data from the necklaces. He was focused on swinging his sword at Omega, Sylanos, and the Assembly, but my target was Indigo. If I couldn’t decapitate him and bury his head, still chomping away, into the hole and cover it with a massive boulder, then beheading the other parts of the monster only bought us a bit of time. Indigo could regenerate those aspects. The more I thought this through, the more dire I found the consequences. And to be truthful, I couldn’t see a way to stop him. I needed to talk to Spyder.
I blinked and brought my attention back to Gater. “That puts our guys at risk in the field. Did that have any bearing on Fuller Mine and the D.O.A?”
“There’s a mole. Gotta be. I cain’t figure any other way around it.” Gater’s nostrils flared. “General Elliot’s gonna be some kind of ticked off to have left everything thriving and come back to this crisis if and when he recovers.” He pushed his weight onto his knuckles and leaned across the table, closing the space between us. “So is the art change a coincidence? Why the mad rush to get everything hung again?”
I pursed my lips.
“Other than laying eyes and ears around while removing the pieces, why would art have anything at all to do with our success and solvency?” he asked.
This must be what it was like for Striker when I hammered him with unanswerable questions—darned frustrating. I so wanted to lay everything out for Gater and get his perspective.
“Well, we know that’s not the case.” Gater continued. “Echo Force crawled the whole building, searching for bugs. Everyone’s saying it’s a mole. Just the thought that one of my best buds could be ratting us out sucks the joy out of working here. Used to be I wanted to breathe, drink, and eat this job. Right now, it’s a chore to come in.”
I reached out and squeezed Gater’s arm. “I’m so sorry this is happening, Gater. You will see improvements after today. I’m certain. There is no mole in the classic sense – but that’s between you and me, and no farther.”