Jeff Abbott - Panic

She looked at him with haunted eyes. ‘I don’t know why… I assume he thought it was good money, better than I was making. I have a degree in criminal justice from the University of Illinois, I went into police work… he told me I could make a lot more money doing “corporate security.”’ She drew quote marks with her fingers around the last two words.

‘What kind of work did you do?’

‘Low-level stuff. I’d be the go-between from Jargo to other agents or client contacts. I filled dead drops – you know, secret places where you leave documents and the client picks them up. I never even saw Jargo or the client’s contact. I never got the location of the dead drop until the last minute, so it was much more difficult for Bricklayer to watch. I hadn’t done a job for Jargo in three months when he ordered me to Houston.’

‘Bedford says you came to him to fight Jargo.’

‘I never bought the robbery story… my father was trained to fight, he wouldn’t be taken so easily. I was on a job in Mexico City and I went to the embassy. They put me in touch with a CIA official, he got Bedford down fast on a plane. He asked me to stay in place, keep working for Jargo, feed them what information I could. But it was hard. I wanted out. I wanted to shoot Jargo dead. I’ve wanted to kill Dezz. But Bedford ordered me not to – we needed to wrap up the whole network, and their clients. I kill them, another Deep simply takes over and we’re back to square one.’

‘I still don’t see why they can’t put their hands on this guy.’

‘Evan. He’s extraordinarily careful, and he’s been doing this a long time. I’d get my instructions – encoded – in what would look like an innocent e-mail. Then I’d pick up from a dead drop the materials for the client that another Deep had stolen, go to a second dead drop, often in another city or country, and leave them. If the CIA picked up whoever picked up the goods, Jargo would know his network was blown, and we wouldn’t get any closer. The best the CIA could do was to replace the information I was dropping off with data that was similar but not quite right. He never uses the same e-mail twice. Never the same base of operations twice. Everything is handled through third-party companies that are simply fronts, and as much with cash as he can. He’s really, really hard to stop. He’s killed four people in the past few days.’ Tears threatened her eyes. ‘I thought I could do it alone, but I couldn’t.’

He kissed the top of her hands and put her hands back onto the blanket. ‘I’m going to find the files my mom stole. Jargo still has my father, I’m getting him back. Do you know where he is?’

‘I think in Florida. Jargo has a safe house there, but I don’t know where.’

‘Bedford has agreed to help me.’

‘Let Bedford hide you, Evan. If your dad can get away from Jargo-’

‘No. I can’t wait. I can’t let my dad down. Bedford already said I won’t be able to talk you out of this. Will you help me?’

She nodded, took his hand. ‘Yes. And…’

‘What?’

‘I know it’s hard to trust anyone now. But you can trust Bedford.’

‘All right.’

She put her hand on his cheek. ‘Lie down here with me.’

‘Um, I don’t want to hurt your shoulder.’

She gave him a slight smile. ‘You’re just lying down, ace.’

She scooted over and he stretched out next to her and held her and she fell asleep in a few minutes, her head on his shoulder.

Bedford sat watching a monitor that showed Carrie and Evan lying in the hospital bed, whispering quietly, talking. Love at twenty-four. It was the intensity of it that could frighten a man, the sureness of it, the belief that love was a lever to lift the world. He had already lowered the volume; he didn’t need to hear what they said. He was a spy but he did not want to spy on them, not now.

Carrie slept and Evan stared off into space.

I wonder, Bedford thought. I wonder how much you really know, or really suspect.

‘Sir?’ A voice behind him, one of his techs.

‘Yes?’

The man shook his head. ‘The damaged music player… we can’t recover any encoded files from it. Whatever process was used, it did not leave any other files hidden inside the music files when he transferred them to the player. I’m very sorry.’

‘Thank you,’ Bedford said. The tech left, shutting the door behind him.

After a moment Bedford switched off the monitors and went down to the clinic’s kitchen to make himself a sandwich.

He heard a noise behind him after he spread the mayo on the rye.

Evan stood behind him, a slightly crooked smile on his face. ‘I know where we can start. We can make a move that Jargo will never anticipate.’

Galadriel looked at the readouts while sipping decaf and eating a chocolate doughnut. She knew she shouldn’t, but stress made her crave carbs. She had hacked into the FAA database, examining every plane takeoff in Louisiana and Mississippi since Jargo and Dezz had lost Carrie and Evan in New Orleans. Every flight accounted for, recorded, logged. But no flight that led to a place where it should not. Which meant that they hadn’t flown, they had driven out of New Orleans. Or they could still be in New Orleans.

But she had already been through every hospital record she could acquire, stealthily weeding through the databases, and no young woman matching Carrie’s description had been admitted to a hospital in that area. She would have to widen the search, cover Texas to Florida.

She sipped her coffee, nibbled at her doughnut. Shame that Carrie was a traitor. She rather liked Carrie, although she had never met her and had only talked with her on the phone a few times. But Carrie and Evan were young and stupid, and sooner or later they’d poke up their heads, via a travel document or a credit activity, and Galadriel would see them. Then Jargo would unleash his dogs and end this particular mess.

She had an unusual protocol to follow, designed by Jargo years ago, in case he feared the network was in danger of exposure. Panic mode. She was to monitor phone lines used only for emergency communications by certain Deeps, to ensure that no one was running. She ran a program that would feed cleaned money into banks around the world. And for some odd reason, he added another request last night: she was to track cellular phone call patterns to and from a small chunk of southwestern rural Ohio. Glean every cellular call made, incoming or outbound, then deliver the data to Jargo.

She wondered, exactly, what the hell Jargo was looking for in Ohio. Or what conceivable danger could lurk for him on such quiet country roads and fields.

W ednesday morning Evan and Carrie regarded each other’s new look over breakfast.

‘You don’t look like you,’ Evan said.

‘Welcome to Salon Bricklayer,’ she said.

Evan’s hair was now a rich auburn and cut in a cleaned-up military burr, his hazel eyes hidden behind brown contact lenses. He wore a dark suit with white shirt, a shift from his normal colorful clothing. Carrie’s dark hair had been lightened to blond and cut short. She wore tinted glasses that made her eyes look brown instead of blue.

‘Call me chameleon boy,’ Evan said.

‘Hope and pray that this is the last time you ever have to go through a transformation.’

After reviewing their plans with Bedford, Evan and Carrie boarded the small government jet that had brought them from New Orleans. They flew to Ohio, landing at a small regional airport east of Dayton.

Bedford had arranged for a car to be left for them, and while the pilot hurried to fetch it, Carrie and Evan waited under the canopy in front of the airport. Rain weighed the pewter sky, the wind blew damp and constant. Evan had an umbrella, from the plane, and he abandoned the idea of talking to her under it, even surrounded by the open lot. There might be a mike hidden inside the umbrella’s shaft. There might be a mike hidden in the car. The pilot might report every word he spoke back to Bedford. He wondered how his parents had coped with the burden of endless deception. Perhaps it explained their silences toward each other, the gentle quiet of the love that demanded few words.