Authors: M. Z. Kelly
The following morning, after calling Lieutenant Oz and telling him I was needed in Denver again, I made arrangements for Robin to take care of Bernie. I then took a chartered FBI plane to Denver. Joe Dawson hadn’t given me any details about what was happening and I hadn’t asked because I was still in shock after reading my mother’s letter.
The letter.
It had left me with both a purpose and uncertainty. I now knew there was a conspiracy at the center of the murder of the man who had raised me and also regarding the death of the actress Jean Winslow, but I still had no idea who was involved. All I did know is that I would make it my purpose to find out. I owed that much to the man I call my love-dad.
The uncertainty I’d been left with was because I still didn’t know who my biological father was. That uncertainty had left me wondering if my mother didn’t want me to know about him. It occurred to me that maybe there was something about him that was unsavory or maybe even criminal, like Ryan Cooper.
I’d, once again, considered reading the third and final letter, hoping to get some answers, but, after receiving Dawson’s phone call, I’d held off. I decided I needed more time to process what I’d learned and maybe talk to Noah and my friends about it. There was also the knowledge that there was only one more letter, one last opportunity to hear the words of my deceased mother. There was finality in knowing that, and it filled me with a deep sadness. This was the only connection I would ever have to the mother I never knew, and, to an outsider it might sound strange, but I wanted to savor that connection.
After my flight, a driver met me at the airport in Denver and drove me to the FBI headquarters. I met up with Joe Dawson in the corridor outside a meeting room where the taskforce was assembling.
“How you been, Kate?” Joe asked.
I smiled. “I’m not sure, since you never call me Kate.”
Now he smiled. “Sorry, I mean Buttercup.”
“That’s better.” I thought about his question. “I’m…trying…” I took a breath. “I think I’m still trying to get my head back in the game.” I glanced into the conference room and saw that John Greer, Jeremy Spender, and the others I’d met with before were all there, along with several people I hadn’t met. I turned back to Dawson. “What do you know about what’s happening?”
“Just that some kind of message from The Swarm has been intercepted. We’re supposed to get all the details inside.”
“Anything further from Taylor?”
He shook his head. “Nothing, since she’s been locked in a seven by eight foot cell twenty-four seven.”
“Have we had any luck identifying her victims—the ones we found by the highway near Florence?”
“Not as of yesterday but I heard an M.E. is supposed to be here, maybe shed some light on that.”
Ten minutes later we took seats at the conference table. After some preliminaries about the taskforce being authorized at the highest levels by the directors of the FBI and Homeland Security, Greer mentioned that some of the people in the room were from the regional FBI offices, as well as Quantico. He then told us a medical examiner would be joining the meeting in progress for an update on the Florence victims.
Greer then introduced a couple of agents who he said were central to our taskforce and had information about the latest developments. “Special Agents Dave Rooney and April Meade are with our Cyber Division in Quantico. I’ll turn things over to them to update everyone on where we stand.”
Rooney began the discussion. He was tall, probably around forty, African-American, and handsome, with a build like a linebacker.
“Yesterday, using encrypted information that we were finally able to decode from Janice Taylor’s phone when she was taken into custody, we learned that she had been in contact with a man named Nigel York. Mr. York is well known to us because of his past crimes involving hacking into the databases of several multinational corporations and military sites, and selling that information to the highest bidder. He spent six years in the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute before his release about six months ago.”
The FBI agent used a remote and mug shots of York appeared on a screen at the far end of the room. The convicted felon looked like he was in his late twenties. He was pasty and thin, with the smug grin of someone who had no remorse for his crimes.
“Don’t let Mr. York’s unassuming appearance deceive you,” Agent Meade told the gathering, taking over from Rooney. “He’s a brilliant and cunning psychopath who has absolutely no conscience about anything he does. He also has a history of violence and is probably armed.”
York’s partner was younger than him. She was tall, with high cheek bones and thick brown hair that fell in soft curls to her shoulders. I thought about my own hair that was reverting to its natural unmanageable state, despite Robin’s best efforts. I pushed down my envy as she continued.
“After piecing together the IP address of several individuals York’s been in contact with, he and those other subjects are ready to make good on Janice Taylor’s threats. The Swarm is coming and we have less than twenty-four hours to stop it.”
Dawson spoke up. “Are these people that York’s been in contact with part of The Swarm?”
Rooney answered. “No, we believe they’re Internet traffic funnels, directing The Swarm to act in unison and carry out Taylor’s orders.”
“Do we have any idea what they’re going to do?” Jeremy Spender asked.
“Better put on your beekeeper outfit, Jerry,” Dawson said. “They’re coming for you.”
“That may very well be the case,” Agent Meade said, as Spender’s face flushed with anger. “But more precisely, they’re coming for all of us.”
Meade used her remote, and we saw a map of the United States appear on the screen. Moments later, there were streaks of light aimed at what looked like nearly every major city in the country.
“The lights you’re seeing are the projected paths The Swarm will follow. In a few hours they will detonate explosions in all fifty states, targeting the major cities within those states.”
John Greer spoke up, asking a question that was probably on everyone’s mind. “Why are they waiting twenty-four hours to begin? Why don’t they use the element of surprise?”
Agent Meade gave him an answer that sent my anxiety level off the charts. “They want chaos. As I speak to you, news of this event is going viral on the Internet. The Swarm wants to kill people, but it wants something else even more. It wants widespread panic and fear. These are domestic terrorists at work and they want nothing more than for every city in America to erupt with violence before they act.” The agent glanced at the map with the streaks of light indicating the projected targets. “What we’re looking at is nothing less than a cyber-swarm.”
The room was silent as the group took a moment to process what we’d just been told. A cold fear gripped me. I remembered what Janice Taylor had said to me when I’d been held captive by her and one of her disciples in a church basement a few months back, her words about there being a turning point coming to the world.
“It is the beginning of the end. The others, those who are left of the original seven, will begin a killing spree and signal their followers to kill. That is the change in the world, the transformation that is coming. It will be the end of civilization as you know it. It will also signal my rebirth, my personal metamorphosis.”
Those words were never clearer to me than in this moment. We weren’t just looking at a serial killer, someone intent on doing harm to those she perceived as doing harm to her. We were looking at domestic terrorism in its worst form. Janice Taylor and the others didn’t have an ideology or a creed they wanted to spread. They wanted nothing less than the destruction of society and everything it stood for. They wanted total anarchy.
“This twenty-four hour period before they begin to detonate their explosions,” Joe Dawson said. “How do we know about that?”
“Because of this,” Agent Rooney said. He used the remote to activate a website that appeared on the screen. “This went live a few hours ago. It’s already had thousands of hits and the message is being picked up by all the news services.”
The website began as a black dot on a white screen. In seconds that one dot divided into hundreds and then thousands of identical dots as the familiar sound of a swarming beehive could be heard. When the screen was completely covered by the dots and the buzzing sound became overwhelming, it turned black and then fell silent. The screen then dissolved into white letters that formed three words:
WE ARE COMING
The message went on to say that at midnight tonight detonation devices would be exploded in every major city across the country. It told the reader that the coming annihilation could not be stopped, and to prepare for the worst. It was both frightening and simple in its threat.
“As you can imagine, we’re already beginning to see some civil unrest in the metropolitan areas,” Agent Rooney said. “In some areas, there are large numbers of people trying to leave the cities. As the day progresses, we expect there will be more violence and looting.”
Greer jutted his chin toward the website. “Why can’t we take this thing down, find out who’s behind it?”
Meade answered. “We’re using every tool in our arsenal to try and do just that, but the site has multiple robust firewalls. We believe the host server is out of the country, also configured with firewalls and malware if anyone tries to hack into it. So far, it looks impenetrable.”
“How does Nigel York fit into all this?” I asked.
“Our experts believe that he’s directly responsible for the website. The subroutines in some of the code appear to approximate what he’s used in the past.”
“So let’s get the son of a bitch,” Dawson said. “String him up by his little nuts, and make him give us the password to take it down.”
“First we would have to find him,” Agent Meade said. “York is on federal probation but has absconded. He was last seen in the Lawrence, Kansas area, where his parents live. We’ve got agents in that area. We’ll also be sending a tactical unit from this taskforce there after our meeting ends.”
“Do we have any idea about what targets they’re going after in the cities?” Jeremy Spender asked.
“We can only assume it will be large gatherings, with a potential for mass casualties. We’ve alerted local law enforcement, but, as you can imagine, the target pool is vast, and…” Meade checked her watch. “…we’ve got less than fifteen hours left.”
I glanced back at the website, the warning was in bold lettering, and gave voice to something I dreaded. “I’m willing to go back to Janice Taylor, try and negotiate with her to stop this.”
“We’ve already worked through her lawyer,” Agent Rooney said. “Taylor is refusing to talk to anyone, including you.”
“Why are we letting her call the shots?” Dawson asked. “I say we drag her ass out of her cell, Use any means necessary to get her to tell us what we need to know.”
“Even supermax prisoners have rights,” John Greer said. “You know that can’t be done.”
Dawson said something about his willingness to act on his own and accept the consequences for his actions if someone would turn their back for a few minutes. Greer dismissed what he’d said outright.
“What about others who might be involved?” I asked. “We know that Taylor bills herself as one of the seven original disciples, with one member of that group already dead. That means there are five others out there somewhere. Could they be part of what’s happening?”
Meade answered. “We have no way of knowing for certain, but it’s likely. We’re looking at a coordinated attack that probably took months to plan.” The agent’s blue eyes swept over the gathering. “It might sound strange to everyone, but the biggest factor in what’s being threatened isn’t necessarily stopping the individuals who might carry out the explosions. This group is after something far bigger. They want to create a social conflagration that will rip apart society as we know it.”
A door opened, and a thin man in a dark suit entered. Greer stood up and shook hands with him before he took a seat at the table.
“This is Dr. Vaughn Wright,” Greer said. “He’s the medical examiner that’s been the head of a team of physicians trying to identify the victims found near the highway outside of Florence.” He nodded at the doctor.
After taking a moment to introduce himself, Dr. Wright got down to business. “We have a positive identification on five of the seven victims in question. They are all in their late teens to early twenties, students who were taken from colleges in different states throughout the country over the past few days. All of the victims are the children or grandchildren of United States senators.”
Dr. Wright’s words only served to heighten the tension in a room that already seemed ready to burst at the seams. We all felt powerless to stop what had been set in place. The medical examiner went on to give us the gruesome details about the Florence victims.
“The beheadings were probably carried out with a knife, but the cuts were ragged and uneven, suggesting they tortured their victims during the process. There were also abrasions and ligature marks, indicating the victims were restrained during the act. After the torture session, once the carotid artery was severed, each victim would have bled out and died quickly. We still have nothing on where their bodies might have been dumped.”
I felt a profound sadness for the parents and grandparents of the victims. The students had been slaughtered in the worst way imaginable and the families didn’t even have their bodies to bury. The thought of what they were enduring was horrifying.
Agent Rooney took over again after the M.E. was finished. “We have to assume the worst, that this group will show absolutely no mercy in carrying out their plans.”
After another hour discussing the events and answering questions, John Greer addressed the gathering. “We have our media people working with all the outlets. The directors of both our agency and Homeland Security will be holding a news conference later this morning to try and control some of the hysteria. The president is also expected to speak at some point. In the meantime, our Cyber Division will continue trying to take down the website and our tactical teams will be sent to Lawrence.”
After the meeting adjourned, Dawson and I got Greer’s permission to join one of the teams being sent to Lawrence. We rushed to the airport, where we took a jet and landed in Kansas City. We then rented cars, Dawson and I following the other agents to Lawrence, about forty miles from the airport.
As Dawson drove, I read the biographical data we had on Nigel York to him. “York grew up in the Lawrence area and attended high school there. He was considered a genius by his teachers and got a full scholarship to MIT. He dropped out after a couple of years and went off the grid.” I glanced at Dawson. “It says here he made tens of millions after hacking into some of the most secure networks in the world, before being caught.”
“How did they eventually find him?”
“A girlfriend gave him up to the feds.” I chuckled, after reading the rest of his bio. “He was living in the penthouse suite at the Ritz Carlton in New York under an assumed name.”
“Sounds like he went from the penthouse to the outhouse.”
I scanned some additional material and then said, “OMG. One of the agents involved in his arrest was none other than Janice Taylor.”
Dawson nodded and rubbed his jaw. “So why Kansas? We know his parents are there, but, assuming our boy still has some of that dough stashed away that he raked in for selling corporate and state secrets, it seems unlikely he’d go back home, unless…”
I picked up on his train of thought. “The girlfriend…do you suppose…”
“What do we know about her?”
After thumbing through the stack of paperwork, I found her name and birthdate. “Abigail Stewart, age twenty-seven.”
“What about her background?”
I glanced through the paperwork again. “Nothing.” I then pulled out my phone. “Let me make a call.”
In a moment I had Selfie on the line and gave her the information on Nigel York’s ex-girlfriend. “I need everything you can pull together on her in the next twenty minutes.”
“You’ve got it,” Selfie said. “I heard about your case…do you really think…”
“I don’t know, Selfie. All I do know is that I need the information ASAP.”
“Call you back.”
As he drove and we waited for Selfie’s call, I checked the time on my phone. “Just under eleven hours before the deadline’s up.”
Dawson glanced at me. “It could be worse.”
“You always were an optimist.”
He smiled and changed the subject. “So how are things on the home front, Buttercup?”
I again thought about how Dawson and I had bonded after surviving some harrowing situations that nearly ended both of our lives. Because of that, I felt like I could share almost anything with him. What I’d learned from my mother’s letter was still on my mind, so I told him what she’d said.
After going over the details, I added, “It sounds like Jean Winslow was murdered, it was covered up, and my father paid the ultimate price for what he knew.”
“Jean Winslow. Really?”
The movie star’s death, possibly being a homicide, was one of those sensational stories that never seemed to go away. There had even been several documentaries about her life, speculating that her death wasn’t a suicide.
“Really.” I said, before taking a breath and watching the flat countryside sweep by. I looked back at him. “And if it’s true, I intend to find out who murdered her, because her killer hired Ryan Cooper to murder the man who raised me to cover everything up.” I found Dawson’s pale blue eyes again. “It might sound crazy, but I think it was somehow fated.”
“What do you mean?”
“Me finding out who ordered my father’s murder. I think I was meant to bring him to justice, and I won’t rest until I find him.”
He smiled as my phone rang. “That’s my girl.”
The call was from Selfie. “I have an address for Abigail Stewart. She’s attending the University of Kansas and living in a dorm.” She gave me the details.
“Anything else?”
“Molly talked to York’s probation officer. He thinks he has it in for Abigail because she turned him in to the authorities. He also said something about her being York’s high school sweetheart.”
“Thanks, Selfie.” I started to end the call but then thought about the cases I’d walked away from. “Anything new on Reeder or Hodge?”
“Alex and Leo are still trying to find Galen Marshall. So far, no luck.”
I ended the call and filled in Dawson on what I’d learned. “We need to alert the tactical units to find York’s girlfriend.”
Dawson glanced at me before finding the highway again. “You and I both know a tactical team is good for one thing.” He glanced over at me again. “Taking down a bad guy from a known location.”
“What are you thinking?”
“We go to the school and find the girl, get her to tell us what she knows about York. And when I find the little bastard, I’m going to use whatever means necessary to break him down.” He glanced at me again. “I can drop you off at the motel staging area if you’re not in.”
I exhaled and took a moment before responding. I knew that Dawson was right. Even if the tactical teams found York, they would take him into custody and advise him of his rights. By then it would be too late. The cities would be in flames and full of mass casualties.
I looked back at Dawson. “I’m in, Joe.”