James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

“Which bill gets the GPS system?” asked Shada.

“That’s not important,” said Chuck.

“I’d like to know,” said Shada.

“I’m not telling you,” said Chuck, his tone taking on an edge.

“What do you mean you’re not going to tell me?”

“It’s better that you don’t know,” said Chuck.

“Better for whom?”

“It’s for your own safety.”

“That’s bullshit, Chuck, and you know it. Tell me which one has the damn chip in it.”

“Shada, back off,” said Chuck.

Jack could see the anger in her eyes, and even though Shada had expressed remorse for what she had done, it was also clear that she was approaching her limit with Chuck. Jack jumped in before they could tell each other to shove it.

“Folks, can we all take a deep breath and remember why we’re here?”

Slowly, the tension drained from the room, and before anyone could stoke the fire, Jack changed the subject.

“I understand that there is no talking Shada out of making this delivery,” Jack said. “I can also understand why she feels the way she does. But I’m here for a reason, too.” He paused as thoughts of his friend caught up with him. “If Shada is going to put herself at risk, I want to provide backup.”

“No,” said Shada.

“Why not?” asked Jack.

“It’s better that you don’t,” she said, glancing at Chuck’s image on the screen while parroting his words. “It’s for your own safety.”

“Now we’re getting petty,” said Jack. “I’m sure everyone is overtired.”

“I agree with Shada,” said Chuck.

“What?” said Jack.

“There’s no reason for you to tail her,” Chuck said. “We’ve got the GPS tracking embedded in the bills. If something goes wrong, we’ll call the police.”

It didn’t sound like Chuck-taking the safe route and suggesting that they call the police in a pinch-but Jack was getting too tired to argue. “We have a little more than two hours until the call,” said Jack. “Let’s all try to get some rest.”

Reza said, “There’s a two-bedroom flat upstairs that you can use.”

“Works for me,” said Shada.

“Me, too,” said Jack.

“Shada, no hard feelings?” said Chuck. It was the first bone he had tossed since finding out about the Dark, and it seemed to take Shada by surprise.

“Whatever,” she said.

“Good night, everyone,” said Chuck.

Reza logged off the computer and led them from the storage room, locked the door behind them, and reset the alarm. A back stairwell led them up to the second-floor flat. Reza directed Shada to the bigger of the two bedrooms, and Jack took the small one with the twin bed. He needed sleep, and he hoped his mind would shut off and let him rest.

“I’ll wake you at five,” said Reza.

“Thanks,” said Jack. He sat on the edge of the mattress, and even though it was lumpy, all worry about falling asleep vanished. One shoe was off when his phone chimed with a text message. It was from Chuck: Just between u and me, it read, and the last two words were in all caps: FOLLOW HER.

Jack pulled off his other shoe, typed a response, and hit SEND: Do you trust her?

He settled back onto the mattress, exhausted and staring at the ceiling, his phone resting on his chest. Chuck’s response came sooner than he’d expected: Would you trust your wife after she cheated?

The question hit Jack hard. Shada had been so contrite that he’d actually let himself believe that Chuck should be more like those I-love-you-no-matter-what guys who forgive and forget. But when the question was turned around on him-would you trust your wife?-he realized that this was the real world, not Lifetime TV or the Oxygen Channel. Jack typed out his response, then rolled over and turned out the light as he hit SEND once more:

OK. I’ll follow.

Sid Littleton watched from his office window as the snow fell on the illuminated buildings and monuments of the capital.

The phone call from London had been unsettling, but Littleton always had a backup plan. The plan’s name was Lisa Horne-or whatever her real name was-and he just hoped the weather wasn’t going to screw things up and keep her from coming to the office on short notice.

“She’s in the building,” said Bahena.

Littleton turned away from the window and saw his right-hand man standing in the doorway. Danilo Bahena had been with Littleton since the formation of Black Ice. Most of the company’s four hundred employees didn’t know him. Very few knew he was the mastermind of the black sites that the company ran for the CIA. Only Littleton knew him as the specialist who would do anything to see a mission succeed.

“Good,” said Littleton. “Go down, take her to the limo. I’ll meet you there.”

“You sure? I could just take her for a ride. Very treacherous roads tonight. Accidents could happen.”

“No,” said Littleton. “We need to know who she is first.”

“Her name is not Lisa Horne, that much is for sure.”

“If she’s an investigative journalist chasing rabbit holes, that’s one thing. If she has some other agenda, I want to get to the bottom of it.”

“Whoever she is, she knows too much.”

“That may be,” said Littleton. He turned back to the window, thinking. The gist of the warning from London replayed in his head: I have my exit strategy. You need yours.

“Get the limo,” he said, watching his own reflection in the window. “And let’s be quick about this.”

Jack lay awake in the glow of his smart phone.

The text message from Chuck had made it impossible to sleep, and Jack made the mistake of surfing the Internet to numb his brain. For the heck of it, he followed up on Andie’s conversation with Grandpa Swyteck and searched “General Petrak.” He could have spent all night reading about the daring plot of the Czech resistance to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler’s planned successor, and how the general in exile coordinated it from the U.K. It didn’t make them Jewish, but Jack hoped that there was something to his grandfather’s ramblings, that perhaps they were somehow related to this Petrak-but that was for another day.

He put the phone away and closed his eyes. He wasn’t dreaming-sleep that deep didn’t come so soon-but in his mind’s eye he saw himself at Brookfield Zoo with his grandfather. He was five years old and enthralled by the polar bear exhibit. Suddenly, Grandpa was gone. Jack was alone and surrounded by strangers.

He shot up in bed and grabbed his smart phone. Jack had been getting lost in strange places since childhood. Tailing Shada would require a working knowledge of the area, and Jack spent the next hour studying maps of the East End. In Miami, the rule was CRAP: Courts, roads, avenues, and places flowed north and south-top to bottom-like the stuff we get from our bosses. As best Jack could tell, the only way to make sense of London was to ask, “Which way to the nearest tube?”

“It’s five o’clock,” said Reza. He was outside the door.

Jack couldn’t believe it. “Be right down,” he said.

Jack went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He’d had no sleep in the last twenty-four hours and about five hours total-thankfully, he’d slept on the flight from Miami-in the last thirty-six. He’d tried murder cases on less rest. Another two hours tonight would have been just enough to revive the jet lag. A quick shower brought him to life, and he was downstairs in fifteen minutes.

The kitchen was already bustling. The Banglatown Curry Shop was a traditional Bengali restaurant where spices were ground by hand and mountains of vegetables were chopped with pride and precision. One team filleted the morning’s delivery of fresh fish, while another cut whole chickens into parts. Two men by the wood-burning oven were arguing in their native tongue, and Jack guessed it had something to do with the cooking temperature.