DeathWeb (Fox Meridian Book 3) (36 page)

‘Interesting,’ Fox said.

‘I’ll look into it,’ Deveraux said. ‘It’s going to take time, but I don’t have any politically minded bosses to reel me in.’

Cant actually grinned: Fox was beginning to wonder whether he had been replaced with an android. ‘You know,’ Cant said, ‘I could get used to this inter-agency collaboration.’

Deveraux gave a shrug. ‘Getting into bed with the UNTPP can have its compensations.’

‘Yeah,’ Dillan said, flicking a glance at Fox, ‘I’d noticed that.’

~~~

Pythia’s vertol was back at the MarTech tower hangar with a direct, fibre-optic link to the MarTech network, which was speeding things up a little. They were down to two unknowns with none of the others showing any signs of being useful. One had come back as the DNA of a man wanted for embezzlement in Norway so Cant and Deveraux had decided to haul him in for questioning, but it was mainly so that the UNTPP could start extraditing him: no one expected him to be a likely suspect in the murders.

Jackson’s request that Fox and Dillan come to his office had come late in the evening when Fox was thinking about getting some more sleep under her belt, but when the big boss called…

The fact that Jackson had Travis and Terri with him, and that he immediately locked down the room, had Fox on immediate alert. ‘Travis has come up with some very interesting findings,’ Jackson said, ‘and I want to discuss them in a secure location.’

‘Okay,’ Fox replied. ‘Discuss.’

‘Travis?’

The technician straightened his back. ‘We have been through the evaluation of the software taken from Miss Shaftsbury’s implant. At this point we have not found a vulnerability in it.’

‘But it’s not behaving the way it should,’ Fox countered. ‘I mean, it has to have been hacked, right?’

‘Actually, it’s behaving
exactly
the way it was programmed to behave. It was not hacked.’ Fox frowned at the thin man. ‘Hacking implies some form of infiltration and the operation of the code in a manner counter to its normal operating mode. This software
was
switched into an alternate operating mode, but not via any form of infiltration.’

‘A backdoor,’ Dillan said. ‘Grant put a backdoor in the code.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Jackson said, ‘
who
put the backdoor in cannot be determined. Grant is certainly a likely candidate, but there are almost certainly others. We need to find it to determine who worked on it.’

‘We need to find it fast, Jackson,’ Fox said. ‘There’s a girl being tortured to death right now. There’s no way we’ll get authorisation to go after someone like Grant without some solid evidence.’

‘I’m aware. How much sleep have you had in the last day?’

‘Not important right–’

‘Get some. Take a tranquiliser if necessary, but sleep. I suspect you’ll need your wits about you when we track this down. If it’s Grant you’re after, he almost certainly knows that we’re looking. You’ll need to move fast.’

‘You can stay here,’ Terri said. ‘Guest room beside mine. We’ll sleep when we find what we’re looking for, and you’ll be that much closer to Pythia when we do.’

Fox nodded, frowning. ‘Okay. You wake me as soon as you have something. Helen, you’ll keep an eye on them and get me out of bed at four a.m. if nothing’s come up sooner. Then you crash. Oh, and let Jason and Cant know that we’re onto something.’

‘Not that I think I’ll be much use,’ Dillan said, ‘but that’s fine with me.’

‘Of course you’ll be of use, Helen,’ Jackson said, smiling. ‘We are going to need a near endless supply of coffee if nothing else.’

28
^th
July.

The insistent buzzing dragged Leonard Dandridge out of fitful sleep. He had taken a tranquiliser before going to bed and it had put him under, but his sleep had been far from restful and, as he struggled to make sense of what was happening, the drug was more of a hindrance than a benefit.

‘Lights,’ he snapped and the room lights came on, too bright. ‘What…?’ A call at… two thirty in the morning!? Who would be calling then? The thought occurred that it was NAPA or Meridian with some news of his daughter and he cleared the call through.

There was no video and the audio was distorted, electronically masked. ‘I have your daughter.’

‘Who is this?’

The response cut through him like a knife. The sound was clear, unmodified. Screams. A woman screaming in pain. No, in agony. Then words. ‘Please! God. Stop.’ Chantal’s voice, twisted in pain. ‘Please, God, make it stop!’ He was about to say something when the electronic voice came back.

‘If you want to see her again, you’ll go to your yacht. Be there at three thirty. Alone. If anyone else is there, if the cops show up, I’ll know and she will die in more pain than you can imagine.’

‘I’ll–’ He stopped as the connection was cut. Almost automatically, he checked the source, but that was blocked. Nothing could be entirely blocked, he knew that. Meridian could trace it, or her technicians could. He called up the contact number and paused. Whoever this was, they might be monitoring his network access. ‘I can’t lose Chantal as well,’ he whispered. His eyes strayed to the empty side of the double bed. ‘I can’t lose her too.’

Slipping from his bed, Dandridge went to a chest of drawers on one side of the room and found the pistol he kept there, locked in a safety case. He had never fired it, not even to test that he could, but by God he was going to use it now.

~~~

Fox’s eyes flicked open as soon as she detected someone else in the room with her. She was turning, sitting up, before Terri and Dillan made it more than a metre in.

‘Damn, girl,’ Terri said, ‘you trying to remind me what I’m missing?’

Fox ignored her. ‘You found it?’ It was barely three and they would not have woken her without reason.

‘They found it,’ Dillan replied.

‘The backdoor itself,’ Terri explained, ‘is in interface code which just about anyone might have had a hand in, but we traced the command structure all the way into the core. The
only
programmer who worked on that area is Reginald Grant. It’s signed for God’s sake.’

‘I sent the information to Cant,’ Dillan said. ‘He’s organising a warrant for Grant’s house.’

‘Right,’ Fox said, swinging her legs out of bed. ‘I’ll take it from here. You two get some rest. I hope Jackson and Travis are already on their way to bed.’

‘Poppa wanted to check a couple of things,’ Terri told her, ‘but he’ll be turning in soon.’

Fox gave a nod, grabbing up her clothes. ‘Get some rest and, Helen, you come out to Grant’s place when you wake up. Not before. I can handle this with Pythia. Remind me to buy everyone a drink when we’ve got this bastard in a cage. Damn good work.’

‘Damn hard work,’ Terri grumbled. ‘The code is bloody opaque. If it had been produced by someone at MarTech, I’d be skinning them over hot coals. I need to wind down. My head’s buzzing with it and it was Travis who actually found it. He’s fond of single malt whiskey, if you’d like to reward him specifically.’

Fox belted up her jeans and grabbed her jacket and pistol. ‘I’ll remember. Just don’t keep my second in command up for too long while you’re winding down, okay?’

‘Good idea,’ Terri replied with a grin, ‘but thirty minutes and I’ll be unconscious so it shouldn’t be too bad.’

Fox flashed a grin at the blushing Dillan, though she was not entirely sure whether it was the ‘second in command’ comment or the impending sex that was causing the blush, and rushed out.

‘Kit, make sure Pythia’s ready to leave and then contact Cant. I’d really like that warrant ready when we go in. Tell him I’m taking Pythia out to Grant’s house. There was no sign of a place he could have been hiding Chantal, so it’s hidden and we need to find it. When that’s done, call Leonard Dandridge and tell him we have a lead on his daughter. Don’t tell him what it is.’

‘Pythia is fully fuelled and warming her engines,’ Kit replied.

The elevator from Jackson and Terri’s apartments had Fox in the hangar in under a minute and the vertol was waiting under one of the rooftop launch doors, engines already wound up to idle. Fox climbed through into the pilot’s seat and got clearance for take-off immediately.

‘Pythia, I’m going to want a full deployment of all your forensic frames when we get in. Full scan, ladar, multispectral, and terahertz radar. We’re looking for hidden panels, subsurface access, anywhere Grant could be hiding a torture chamber.’

‘I am sending instructions to my subsidiaries now,’ Pythia responded.

Fox lifted the aircraft straight up, turning before she was even clear of the bay. As soon as ground control signalled clearance, she swept the aircraft into level flight and started through the night sky.

‘Inspector Cant has received his warrant,’ Kit said. ‘He has authorised you to begin the search as soon as you arrive under that warrant. I’ve received the details.’

‘Good.’

‘He indicated that he will be there as soon as possible with additional backup, including medical personnel.’

‘I may have misjudged that guy a little bit.’

‘Perhaps a little,’ Kit agreed. ‘Not, I think, entirely.’

‘Probably not. ETA is two minutes. Pythia, hold the frames ready until I’ve cleared the building.’

‘Understood,’ Pythia responded. ‘I have programmed the airborne frames to scan the grounds, in case the entrance we are looking for is outside the building.’

‘Good thinking. You can start those as soon as we land. I think it’s inside, though. I don’t think he’d want his victims that far away from him.’ Fox pushed the vertol downward. There was clearance for a landing outside the building and she was going to put it down right there. Grant was going to know she was coming, but he was going to know that when she smashed down his door anyway. ‘Get me a magazine loaded with electrostatic rounds and another with explosive. I’m not sure what that gynoid of his is capable of.’

‘Both will be ready in the rear compartment.’

Fox pulled the vertol to a hover over Grant’s front driveway and then dropped, applying thrust at low altitude to break the fall and bring them to a fairly soft landing. Cutting the engines back, she started for the rear. ‘Power down, Pythia, and wait for instructions.’ She did not wait for a reply before grabbing the two magazines being held out by the arachnoform cyberframe and then heading down the ramp.

The house was dark, silent, apparently unoccupied, but Grant might have been asleep. Hannah could have been recharging and offline. Maybe Grant was the kind of man who could sleep through a jet landing outside his house, but somehow Fox doubted it. With her pistol in hand, she marched up to the front door.

‘Tara Meridian. I have a warrant from NAPA to search these premises.’

Hannah’s voice responded from the door panel. ‘Mister Grant is unavailable at this time. Please make–’

‘Kit, transmit the warrant data.’

‘Done,’ Kit responded.

‘Mister Grant is unavailable at this time,’ the voice said again. ‘Access is denied.’

‘Kit, send it again.’ Behind her, Pythia’s two airborne robots were beginning their sweep of the grounds.

‘Access is denied. Please leave these grounds–’

Fox aimed her pistol at the door’s access panel and fired three rounds into it. The voice died in a sputter of electronic noise. ‘Denied my ass,’ Fox informed it. She kicked the door, but it remained resolutely closed, so she backed up a few metres, swapping the magazine as she went. ‘Fuck you, Grant.’ And she fired again, the lock and part of the wall and door vanishing in the resulting explosion.

‘Remind me never to annoy you,’ Kit said into her head.

Fox swapped magazines again, this time to the electroshock rounds. ‘You wouldn’t: you’re my gorgeous assistant.’ She edged into the building, checking the angles as she moved. The house felt empty. It was too quiet. All the blinds were open, but there was little light, no moonlight to make shadows. She swept her pistol in arcs around the rooms as she worked, using its infrared scope to look for any signs of occupancy. It took five valuable minutes, but she went through every room she could find.

‘Nothing. He’s not here and neither is his walking Barbie doll. Pythia, get the robots in here.’ Fox turned and started back to the front door. ‘Where the Hell is he?’

~~~

Leonard Dandridge walked down the pier at the marina where he kept his yacht, one hand in his pocket, fingers wrapped around his pistol. The marina was fairly traditional and, at this time of the morning, he was alone. There was a human guard stationed at the entrance and two airborne cyberframes which patrolled on a cycle, but that was it. If he ran into trouble here, there was some chance that he might be seen, but it was not a big chance.

Then again, he could see no sign of anyone waiting for him. Had this all been some sick ploy to get him out of the house? Someone had left a pile of crates on the pier near the yacht, which was against regulations for the marina, but they were there and there could be someone behind them.

Dandridge slipped his pistol from his pocket, holding it against his leg as he walked quickly down the wooden platform. There were the crates, no sound aside from the noise of the city in the distance, no movement. Dandridge swung around the crates, his pulse hammering in his ears, his gun rising… And there was no one there. Frowning, he peered around the pier, stepped back from the boxes to look back the way he had come, and checked the time. He was there when he had been told to arrive, so where was the bastard? He took a step back the way he had come, his hand and the pistol dropping to his side.

And that was when the stack of crates came alive and jabbed a shock rod into his side.

~~~

‘I have not been able to locate any form of hidden doorway,’ Pythia reported and Fox’s heart sank. Where had he hidden her? ‘There is an area in the core of the house which has been heavily shielded with metal plates. The radar is unable to penetrate.’

‘Where?’ Fox snapped. ‘Show me.’ A model of the house appeared in her vision field, a section in the central, concrete-walled core highlighted in red. ‘Superimpose the map onto the building for me.’