Jasper smiled and said, “Hi.”

“Hi. Are you David?”

With a nod, Jasper agreed to being David and was immediately shown into the security offices of Hunwick’s compound. He had arrived through the service entry at the rear of the ground floor, wearing a clean, freshly pressed white shirt. A simple red tie. And a badge which read, BioCleanse.

He was there to treat the building’s mold problem. It had poor ventilation, and up on the top floors—the southern, ocean side specifically—the office workers would open the windows and allow in all the moisture. It would settle into the walls and make the paint bubble and flake, or, in the corners, go black with mold. This was especially problematic in the closets. Jasper—or David—was an expert at this. Just let him in and don’t pay much attention to him, and the problem should solve itself by midday. No big deal.

Jasper wheeled his cart through a long, empty hallway. The place was quiet. Too quiet. “Everyone got the day off today?”

“Yeah, something like that. We’ve also got some more repairs going on downstairs. A lot of power interruptions.”

He stared into the various rooms as they walked down the hallway, all of them appearing dark and empty.

“I’ve actually treated this building before,” Jasper said, doubling down on his role. “Maybe a year ago? No offense, but, whoever designed this place . . .”

“I can’t wait till the move,” the security guy said. “The lease is up in March.”

“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this,” Jasper said. “But with the kind of mold you’ve got . . .”

“What?” Security Guy looked concerned.

“Nah, never mind.”

“No. What?” The guy had stuck his foot in front of the cart’s wheel, pinning it against him.

“I just assumed you owned the building.”

“It’s a lease.”

“You should look at your contracts,” Jasper said. “Maybe bring a case against them.”

“Is it dangerous?” he asked. “Being here with this mold? I’m not tracking it home with me to my wife and kids, right?”

“Not after today.” Jasper continued with the cart. “But you’ll probably want to stay away from the sixth floor, though, until I’m done.”

“Yeah,” he said, catching up to Jasper and his innocuous little cart. “Yeah, okay. Well, here’s the elevator.”

Jasper was finally given some privacy on the sixth floor, a little breathing room to step out of his mold-control role and think more clearly about the mission at hand. His undercover mission was the first prong of the attack, to get in and neutralize their security systems. Jackson and Matthias would follow up, beginning the first phase of their expanding search for Annica’s phone. It was a point made earlier, specifically, that their goal was to find her phone because they knew for sure it was still in the building. Annica’s whereabouts, however, or even whether she was alive or not, was way too unclear.

And there was also that niggling feeling that Jasper knew not to share with anyone. He’d had no conversations about it, but could tell he perhaps wasn’t alone in the thought that Annica was a trap from the get-go, that she hadn’t been abducted after the crash, but merely walked back into the shadows. And now, it was those shadows that they were all walking into. The same perilous, murky shadows that had surrounded them in Libya. How else could Hunwick’s clandestine headquarters be described?

He flicked on the light in a nondescript sixth-floor office. It smelled of mildew and cheap cleaning supplies and it looked to have been empty for some time. It had become a storage space for old, leftover office crap. Old, broken shelving, stacks of chairs. A half dozen water coolers. In the far corner, behind a file cabinet that had already been moved out several inches from the wall, Jasper took note of the dark stain growing out from the corner. Black mold. He stared at the stain, imagining how teeming it was with life, horrible rotten life, expanding and radiating out, and infecting. It reminded him a little of the steady growth of the US shadow government, the rogue cadre of assholes who had trapped them in Libya, and who were probably still trapping others. His brother included.

A crackle of radio static knocked Jasper from his increasingly morbid thoughts.

He clicked back—two clicks—a wordless response that meant it was safe to talk.

“ETA?” Tansy asked. He had been stationed in a large moving van, parked outside the building. By the looks of the beat-up old van, anyone might think that it was full of plumbing supplies or old, water-damaged rugs. Not thousands of dollars in computer equipment. “Hello? ETA?”

“I’m in position,” Jasper said, moving away from the mold, and then leaving the room completely. He pushed his cart across the hall to what looked like a call center. Rows of computers with headsets hung atop the monitors. “You should see something in a minute.”

He pulled a wire from one of his bags, crouched down next to a router panel, and inserted the cord. It looked like just another USB cable, not something that would link up a hacker outside the building to their systems.

“I don’t see it,” Tansy said.

“I said a minute.” Jasper pulled a router from his bag and then fed the cord into it with a loud, rewarding snapping sound. “You good?”

Tansy replied. “We’re good.”

And so Jasper began packing his bags.