Read Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller Online
Authors: Bowen Greenwood
Moira shrugged. “Sorry, I
didn’t mean to go all Sigmund Freud on you. What I’m trying to say is, I read a
lot of the news about your trial. So I know you know Mike Vincent. In fact,
some of the Internet rumors say he personally saved your life before the
trial.”
Alyssa shrugged. “It’s
kind of weird being a semi-celebrity. I’m always running into people who know
stuff about me. I lived my whole life trying to be completely unknown and now
I’m the opposite.”
Moira said, “Well,
tonight, I’m offering you the chance to help Congressman Vincent.”
Alyssa held her tongue for
a moment. She tried to think. She tried to pray. She was clean now. She wasn’t
a criminal anymore. But Moira was right, she owed Mike Vincent big time.
“You have my attention,”
she said.
The thrill of revealing a
secret was practically glowing from Moira’s face.
She said, “This corrupt
Correctional Officer? The one who’s got a drug smuggling ring going with the
prisoners he’s supposed to be supervising? The one who set an innocent young
girl…” – here she traced a small circle over her head like a halo – “up to be
beaten?”
She finished, “His name is
Luther Cobalt. He’s Doyle Cobalt’s brother. The news says your friend Vincent
is in danger of losing his election to the very same Doyle Cobalt. If you don’t
care about bringing a corrupt CO to justice, do you care about helping your
friend?”
In between cells, faint
lights illuminated the bare concrete corridor. The floor and walls would echo
like canyon if they made even the tiniest noise.
Some of the cells contained
women who snored. From others, there was no noise at all. Some probably even
held women who were awake, which was why Alyssa was so concerned about noise.
Every footfall rasped like
a file in her ears. Every breath echoed down the hall. Her mind magnified every
noise. Worse, it magnified every thought.
Mike Vincent was a friend.
Without him, she might never have survived being framed for assassinating a
Presidential candidate. Tom Wheeler was helping him, and Wheeler, too, had
helped her come out of the assassination incident alive. She had come with
Moira because of them.
But she would be lying if
she tried to tell herself that was the only reason.
This was what she had
spent her adult life doing. The job tonight was to steal information from a
heavily secured facility and use that information to affect a political race.
This was Alyssa’s life. This was all she knew or had ever known. This was home.
She was the best at this,
the very top of her class. The thrill of defying the law to steal information that
could affect an election coursed through Alyssa’s veins. Her brain buzzed with
acute sensitivity to the danger, while her heart thrilled to the knowledge that
there was no one on earth better equipped to handle it.
And yet…
This was the life that had
landed her in prison. This was the life that had earned her betrayal by her own
father. This was…
Not going as planned. The
sound of footsteps reached her ears very clearly from ahead.
The two women were
approaching an intersection of hallways when she heard the noise. It was the
heavy clomp of tactical boots, but that didn’t surprise Alyssa. If anyone else
was out besides them, it had to be a correctional officer.
She jabbed her finger in
the direction of the sound, pointing very aggressively. Then she peered at
Moira, made her eyes wide, and shrugged expectantly. Everything about her body
language silently communicated the message, “You told me no one would be here!”
Moira shrugged back, but
the look on her face was one of fear.
The choice was between
pressing on and retreating to her cell. Alyssa clenched her teeth and inched
forward.
The sound of the footsteps
was receding down the hallway they were about to intersect. She edged her way
up to the corner, then peeked around it. In the faint light, she could see a
guard rounding another corner about a hundred feet away.
The room they needed to be
in was past that corner.
Alyssa ground her teeth
and moved as quickly as she could. Her socks slid silently on the cement.
Without even looking over her shoulder to check on Moira, she approached the
corridor the Correctional Officer had just turned down. Once again, Alyssa
poked her head out barely far enough to see.. Once again, she saw the man
walking away from them.
Moira pressed against her
from the back. Alyssa understood that she wanted to see what was going on.
Instead of letting her, she held up three fingers. Then she pulled one back to
make it two. Then just one and then a flat palm waving forward.
Alyssa darted across the
hall. Moira tried to stop in the middle to look at the guard, but Alyssa
grabbed her arm and pulled her all the way across.
“Do not risk being seen,”
Alyssa whispered. Then she walked across the hall and into their destination.
The first room had only
the normal security. It was supposed to be secured by an electronic lock, but
Moira had already done away with that. On the far side of the room, though,
Alyssa saw a second door. That one had both a thumbprint scanner and a
traditional pin and tumbler lock.
“The biometrics are
already disarmed,” Moira said when she saw Alyssa looking at it. “I just need
your help for that deadbolt.”
Moira had supplied most of
the elements for success in this mission. She had hacked the duty roster. She
had manipulated all the electronic security.
In addition, she had also
brought two paperclips.
Famously helpful to lock
pickers, the thin paper clips could be bent into shapes that would fit inside
the keyhole. From there, it could be manipulated to cause the spring-loaded
pins inside the lock to release. It required physical access to the lock to
make those bends, though. Alyssa set about doing it as fast as she knew how.
In the real world, Alyssa
owned many sets of torsion wrenches, hook picks, snake rakes, and other
arcanely-named locksmith tools. She also had a few bump keys, which half the
time could make all the other tools unnecessary. Here, she had to make do. She
bent one clip into an “L” shape for a makeshift torsion wrench and the other
into a twisty “S-rake” shape. It wasn’t the most artistic method of picking a
lock – anyone who looked at this in the future would have no doubt it had been
picked – but it was fast.
When Alyssa pushed the
door open, Moira rushed past her, pulling her contraband smartphone out of her
pocket. Alyssa watched as the younger woman found a cable and plugged the phone
into one of the racks and racks of servers that lined all four walls. Blinking
LEDs made the room seem like a convention of cherry fireflies.
“Boot up one of those PCs
behind you,” Moira whispered. “Once I find the right file, we’ll pop it onto a
computer and attach it to an email. I’m just assuming you know the right people
in the media to send it to?”
Thinking of Matt, Alyssa
smiled as she picked out a computer and pushed the power button.
“I know just the one,” she
replied.
Soon Moira came out waving
her smartphone. She plugged it into the machine at which Alyssa sat, then just
leaned back and smiled.
“I’ve got like a zillion
fake webmail accounts,” the younger woman said giving Alyssa the web address
and username and password to one of them. “From what I read about you, you’re
good enough with computers to get a file off a memory card, right?”
Alyssa sniffed. “Want to
compare the dollar value of the data I’ve stolen and the data you’ve stolen?”
Moira replied with a very
quiet laugh. “It would all be subjective. How are we going to place a dollar
value on the contents of a Presidential candidate’s hard drive?”
“You say that like there
was only one,” the older women replied. Then she turned her attention
exclusively to the job at hand. As she pulled the video file off the phone and
put it on the computer’s desktop for eventual attachment to an email, Moira
said, “Check out the video. If you didn’t already feel good about sending this
guy to prison, this will do it for you. You can fast forward to about the 4:42
mark.”
Alyssa wanted to say no.
This wasn’t exactly a safe place to sit around and watch web videos, but
something led her to click.
After scrolling to the
indicated time marker on the video, she watched as the corrupt CO and two of
the women from the fight strolled through the camera’s field of view. They were
in the exercise yard, probably only minutes before they attacked Moira. They
were heading toward the corner that was out of view.
“I don’t care if she lives
or dies,” the man said. “Either way works for my purposes.”
“It’s a lot harder to kill
someone without a shank than people think,” one of the prisoners replied.
She was the one who had
been choking Moira. A shank was the prison term for an improvised weapon. It
was usually a piece of metal sharpened on the concrete floor.
“Last time I offed a guy,
a chokehold did it,” the guard replied on the video.
Alyssa felt her skin
prickle at the casual way he talked about murder.
“Pretty bad way to go,
too,” he continued. “Even if she lives, she’ll never forget the lesson.”
Sickened, Alyssa clicked
the video closed. Moira was right. Seeing that made her want to get the video
to Matt more than ever.
She worked quickly,
logging into the webmail account Moira had given her. She noticed a lot of
emails from a guy named Zack Ravenberg, including one with the subject line
“Did you get the phone?” Alyssa quickly memorized that email address, figuring
it was the phone hacker Moira had mentioned and that she could find a use for
information like that. Then she composed a new email addressed to Matt. Just as
the younger girl had promised, finding the file on her smartphone was easy.
Alyssa attached it and sent the message winging its way to Matt.
That was when she heard
footsteps coming toward their room.
She whispered, “That’s it,
Moira. Time to go.”
There was no reply.
Step. Step. Step. Whoever
was out there was coming their way.
Alyssa’s head whipped back
and forth, looking for her co-conspirator. She was nowhere to be found.
She risked a tiny bit more
volume and called, “Moira?”
Again, no answer, unless
it was the footsteps growing louder.
Alyssa raced from her
chair to the server room she had unlocked. She put her head through the door
and called, “Moira?”
Nothing.
Moira LeBlanc was gone.
The sound of combat boots
on a concrete floor grew louder and louder. Alyssa knew she was out of time.
The noise was too close for her to leave the room she was in.
Franticly, she ran to the
door and shut it. Just in case Matt was right, she said a prayer. She wedged
herself into the corner such that, if the door opened, she would be behind it.
Then she stopped breathing
to avoid being heard. If she could have, she would have stopped her heartbeat,
too.
The door opened.
Alyssa felt squeezed as it
pressed against her. Watching out the corner of her eye, she saw the
Correctional Officer walk into the middle of the room.
He looked around.
But he never looked
directly behind him. Instead, he went over to the door of the server closet. He
worked the thumbprint scanner.
Then he reached down for
the keys at his belt.
Alyssa had scratched that
lock up pretty bad in the course of picking it. There was no way for him to
avoid seeing what had happened.
The Correctional Officer
fumbled with his key ring.
Silently, Alyssa slipped
out from behind the door, staring at his back the whole time. She took one
silent step to the right, never taking her eyes off the guard. Then she slowly
backed out the door. She took it one step at a time, silently retreating from
the room and into the hallway.
She turned and ran back to
her cell.
Alyssa stood near the door
of her cell to be counted.
Of course, the count came
up one short. Moira LeBlanc was well and truly gone.
The hubbub that followed
didn’t really affect Alyssa. She was far too keyed up to sleep, so the din of
Correctional Officers searching the facility for the missing prisoner didn’t
deprive her of any rest. Obviously, the search of her own room did not yield
Moira hiding under the bed and once that much had been ascertained, the
officers moved away from her.
As the increasingly
frantic search went on, gossip passed between cells by women too annoyed or
excited to sleep that told Alyssa the COs had found an HVAC duct in the server
room with the grate forcibly removed. It had an outlet to the outside.
That meant the entire case
was closed in Alyssa’s book. She now knew how Moira had gotten out and why she
had tricked Alyssa into breaking into the server room. The incriminating video
file they had sent to Matt probably never mattered to her at all. Game over.
Except for one thing.
Before dawn, just as
relative quiet was returning to the cells, Alyssa’s door opened yet again. She
half expected Moira to re-appear and this time she was determined not to trust
her. She came out of bed at once, rising to her feet and dropping into a guard
stance, ready to fight.
The man who entered her
cell had no hair on his head. In the moonlight, she could make out the
slightly-bent nose of someone who had had it broken once. His large chest and
upper arms made it feel very threatening when he stepped forward right into her
space, until that broken nose was only an inch from the fist she held up in her
guard stance.
This close, she could see
that one of his eyes was green and the other black. His breath smelled of
cheap, sour coffee.
Belatedly, Alyssa
recognized him. He was the Correctional Officer who had just stood there and
watched while Moira was getting beaten.
“You shouldn’t have sent
that video,” he said, his voice halfway between a whisper and a growl.
That caught Alyssa by
surprise. If a CO knew what she had done in that room, something didn’t
compute. Why hadn’t he stopped her then? Or was Moira wrong or lying, and the
security cameras were still on?
She barely held onto her
poker face and didn’t bother to reply. This conversation was way off the books.
No CO should ever be in her cell alone. What was happening was obviously
outside the law.
The guard growled, “I’ve
waited too long for my revenge. I’ve worked too hard to get here. I will not
let you steal from me.
“I’m going to make you
pay,” he said. “Not tonight. Not while the whole place is up in arms looking
for your little friend. But you’re going to pay. I like hurting people. I know
ways to do it that you can’t imagine.”
He continued, “I know
everyone else is afraid of you, but I’m not. I’ve killed people — better
fighters than you. Someday soon, when you’re not expecting it, you’re going to
learn a new definition of pain.”
He turned and walked back
out of her cell with a growl and a parting shot Alyssa could barely hear.
“You’re going to pay.”
Alyssa took a few moments
to let her heart rate get back into the normal range. She had never been afraid
of a fight but then she’d never dealt with someone who just wanted to hurt her
for hurting’s sake. Most of the fights she’d ever had before – in and out of
prison – had been about some larger goal.
Staring at the door where
the corrupt guard had walked away, Alyssa could not stop one thought from
rattling around in her head.
Be careful, Matt!
***
What am I gonna do,
God? I want to give her everything she wants, but I don’t think she knows what
she wants. I want to protect her, but she doesn’t need anyone to help her with
that. I want to help her with her pain about her father, but everything I can
think of to say sounds so cheesy. How do you love a woman who has everything
but her freedom and her family? I need your help, God.
He wondered if he should
have told her about the encounter with the mystery man after the debate. She
had noticed right away that he was off kilter. He could have talked to her
about it. But chances to talk to Alyssa were so rare, he hadn’t wanted to waste
it on that.
Tomorrow, he had stories
to file about the various top-tier Senate races going on in the mid-term
elections. His friend Mike Vincent would be near the front of the line,
although it wasn’t a happy story for Matt. He wanted Mike to win, and that
didn’t look likely.
If he’d been more
dedicated, he could have started writing them on the plane, but he was never
any good when he came back from visiting Alyssa. The look on her face when she
saw him felt too good. The fact that it had taken Federal prison before he saw
that look felt too frustrating.
Like many people, he couldn’t
sleep in the cramped quarters of coach-class airline seats so when the plane
finally landed at Reagan and he made it back to his townhouse in Adams Morgan,
he fell almost instantly to sleep.
He woke up when he smelled
smoke.
The acrid stench of burning
plastic and petroleum byproducts dragged him out of a dream. His mind rapidly
went through, “What stinks?” to “Make it go away, I’m trying to sleep!” to
“what’s up here, I’m having real trouble breathing…” and landed on “Fire? Here?
Now? For real? FIRE!”
His eyes shot open, and he
saw the door to his bedroom with black smoke pouring in through the edges. He
stumbled out of bed and went over to perform the classic test of seeing whether
the door knob was warm to the touch, but it was so hot he couldn’t even get
close enough to lay a finger on it.
Matt backed away as he
tried to get his mind around the fact that this was real. His house was really
on fire.
He slept in black sweats.
His bare chest showed the sweat that came from a very warm room. His hair stuck
up in all directions from sleep.
He went to his bedroom
window and popped the screen out. He had to get out of the house and the door
wasn’t going to work. The window was the only way.
He worked the latch to
unlock it, then pushed to slide the window open. To his surprise, it wouldn’t
move.
He tried again to slide
the window and got nowhere. He knelt down a little bit to get his leg muscles
into it, then tried with all his strength to shove it open. It wouldn’t budge,
and the exertion left him panting for breath, which hurt from the smoke.
Out on the frontiers of
his consciousness, clouds of panic began to gather.
Matt took a pillow from
his bed and placed it against the window. He took a deep breath and punched it
as hard as he could. The glass cracked. A few more hits and he had a genuine
hole to work with. Gratefully, he pressed his face to it and took several deep
breaths from the cleaner outside air. But the smoke was out there, too, and his
nose and throat felt raw from breathing it in.
Using the pillow and, when
that was completely shredded, some blankets from his bed, he cleared the frame
completely of glass. Awkwardly, he braced himself on the floor in a push
up-like position, then backed his legs out first. He would have to drop ten
feet or so to the ground from his second story window; he wanted to do that
feet first.
Finally, he was almost
out. Just as he was finally getting his second hand into a good grip on the
window ledge, it caught on a remaining fragment of glass. Shouting in pain, Matt
missed his grip and plunged to the ground below.
He landed hard but not
hard enough to break bones. It hurt. He lay there gripping his shins for a
second, ignoring the cold rain that poured down and soaked his sweats
immediately. Finally, he happened to look up at the wall of his house. About an
inch below the window, where his head would have been if he’d gotten the grip
he planned for, was a tiny round hole around which shattered wood stuck up in
splinters.
It was a bullet hole.
At the same time, he noticed
the rain.
Hard, cold, pouring rain.
Washington got such storms often in the spring. What was unusual was the fact
that it was having no effect at all on his burning house.
That, he though, probably
meant some kind of fuel or accelerant was keeping it burning. And that, he
realized…
Matt shot up from the
ground the moment he put two and two together. A fire that wouldn’t go out and
a bullet hole in his house? As he sprinted away, another bullet impacted the
wall. He couldn’t even see who was shooting at him. Fighting wasn’t an option
until he knew more. Retreat was the only option likely to produce results.
Without wasting another
second, he raced to the tiny walkway between his house and the neighbor. He
sped through it, hearing a ricochet behind him. He ran to the side door to his
garage and hurriedly placed his hand against the wood. Not warm. The fire
hadn’t spread here yet.
He went inside and scooped
up the spare key to his Camaro from the front driver-side wheel well. He
slammed on the button to raise the garage door then dropped into the seat. With
an eerie sense of déjà vu from the last time he and Alyssa sped away from his
house in a sports car, he slammed on the gas and burned rubber backing out onto
the street.
***
Matt bought the red Camaro with black trim because
he loved to drive. He loved the feel of acceleration. He loved timing the shift
just right to get the maximum possible speed. He loved the way the seatbelt
barely held him in place in tight turns. Put him in his car, and Matt Barr felt
like he could conquer the world.
That confidence was put to the test when the first
bullet screeched through the body of his car.
Matt let a profanity slip out, and his foot was
already holding the pedal to the metal before he could even decide what to do.
Behind him, a black SUV loomed large in his rear
view mirror. In the dark of night it wasn’t possible to see the gun hanging out
the window until it fired. Then a painfully bright muzzle flash stabbed through
the rainy night. It was bright enough that Matt had to blink to clear his eyes,
even though he was only looking at it in the mirror.
The sound of glass breaking followed closely behind
as the back window of his sports car became an opaque web of shatterproof
pieces.
Matt began a series of turns trying to get away from
the vehicle behind him. Gunshots echoed through the night; sometimes they hit
his vehicle and sometimes they missed. Matt just kept driving. If one was going
to hit him, that was out of his control. The only thing he could control was
the wheel of the car.
He had forgotten about the mystery thug with Doyle
Cobalt, but the fact of being shot at brought it freshly to mind. The whole
series of events seemed unreal. He was a reporter who covered politics. The
violence in his life was all sublimated — politicians “attacked” each other
with press releases and commercials, not guns and bullets. It was hard to make
his mind accept this as real.
Matt worked through the factors of the
situation. He didn’t have a gun and the people behind him obviously did. On the
other hand, there was no way that big bulky sport utility could hang with his
baby. Matt had the faster car, and he also had a weapon the other side didn’t:
Exposure. Whoever they were and whatever they wanted, they weren’t likely to
appreciate police attention. And Matt knew how to get that.
He whipped out of the side streets and onto
Connecticut Avenue, for exactly that reason. The bigger the street, the more
the cops would patrol it. Besides, Connecticut Avenue led through Dupont Circle
and toward the White House. If there was anywhere to find police assistance,
that was it.
Another burst of gunfire came from behind him. Matt
yanked the steering wheel first left then right, trying to present a harder
target to hit, but coming dangerously close to the other lane of traffic.
Matt leaned on his horn as he entered the traffic
circle. Merging into the things was a tricky exercise at best but slowing down
was not an option tonight. Not with random strangers trying to murder him.
He drew a chorus of angry honking as he blazed
through the circle and heard the squeal of tires somewhere as a car or two had
to slam on their brakes. Then he pulled out of the circle on a direct course
for the White House.
Why? Why are they trying to kill me? I didn’t do
anything! I don’t know any secrets. Everything I write about comes out in a
press release for the whole world to read.