2
It took a moment for me to process what he’d just said.
“I need to get in to work,” I said, jumping to my feet.
An unusual thing to say, but then again, I had an unusual job. I was in charge of Vigilance—a super-secret-I’ll-have-to-kill-you-if-I-tell-you government agency that reported directly to the president. We were the eyes and ears and everything in between for connecting the dots between what people did on the Internet, what they did in meatspace, and what they were going to do . . . especially if it was something Bad. Since something really, really Bad had just happened and we hadn’t known anything about it, I thought I’d better get my ass in to work and find out everything we could.
Jackson said nothing for a moment, his expression unreadable. He was still holding the ring box, but now it was closed. “Okay. Let’s go,” he said at last.
He wasn’t supposed to know what I did for a living, but since he’d been the main developer of the algorithms that turned Vigilance from just monitoring software into thinking and predicting software, he had the inside scoop.
My phone rang as Jackson hustled me into the waiting limo. “Is he alive?” was how I answered the call.
“Yes. They said he’s in surgery,” said Derrick, the night-shift manager.
“What happened?”
“All the news has at this point is that he was speaking at a campaign event and that it was a sniper shot. They’ve practically shut down DC, trying to find the shooter.” Derrick was usually calm and collected, but I could hear the shock in his voice as we spoke.
“I’ll be there in twenty,” I said, ending the call.
A few decades ago when the Cold War raged and the threat of nuclear weapons loomed, Raleigh had built a sprawling Underground. It had flourished for a while, then gone dormant, only to have a brief resurgence in the eighties when it was filled with restaurants and a vibrant music scene, all taking place six stories below. Then that had died off, and most had forgotten the area even existed, which was why it was the perfect place to hide a secret government-surveillance facility.
There were only two entrances to Vigilance: one via a parking garage, and the other a more hidden and obscure one I’d overseen myself. While Jackson knew of the former, he didn’t know the latter, so when I told the limo driver to stop outside a worn-down Chinese-takeout joint, he gave me the side eye.
“This entrance is closer,” I explained.
“Through a Chinese restaurant?”
“Yes,” I replied curtly. It would take too long to explain, and I didn’t have that kind of time.
“I’m coming with you,” he said, stepping outside the cab with me.
“You can’t.” I stopped him. “I’m sorry, but you just can’t.”
“I’ve been in there before,” he argued.
“And Clark shouldn’t have brought you,” I said. “I promise, I’ll be fine. I’ll call you soon.” Stretching up on tiptoe, I quickly kissed him, then ducked into the Chinese place. Jackson still hadn’t looked pleased, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I had to go to work. He wasn’t allowed inside.
“I’d like a Whopper, please. With everything.” My order to the man behind the counter would’ve made anyone else look twice, but he took it without so much as blinking.
“We only serve Big Macs,” he said.
“Then super-size mine.”
Putting down the giant ladle in his hand, he turned and headed back into the kitchen. I followed. He stopped in front of the door to the walk-in freezer and punched in a code on the number pad affixed to the wall. The door lock released and opened with a whoosh of chill air.
“Remember, only fifteen seconds,” he said.
I nodded. As if I needed reminding that I had a finite amount of time to authenticate my identity before I’d become freeze-dried China.
He closed the door behind me and I hurried to the opposite wall. The freezer was empty save for another door on the opposite side with a more complex control panel.
“Authentication China Mack,” I said, my teeth chattering, and pressed my palm to the flat, slate-gray screen. A green light scanned my palm, and an electronic voice said, “Voice recognition incomplete.”
Shit.
I gritted my teeth to stop the chattering and tried again. “Authentication China Mack.” We hadn’t bothered programming in my real last name, since it was fifteen letters and had way too many consonants to be something that just rolled off the tongue. I’d gone by “China Mack”—a shortened form of my middle name, Mackenzie—for as long as I could remember.
This time, without the teeth chattering, it worked, and the door slid open with a hiss. Since the internal clock inside my head was nearing ten seconds, I rushed through to the stairway beyond, and the door swished shut behind me.
Three-flights-down later and I was stepping on the steel-terraced walkway that led to my office, then past that to another set of metal stairs down to the main floor of Vigilance.
Screens dominated the wall opposite, stretching from about six feet off the floor to the ceiling, twenty feet up. The screens were molded to the concave wall. Facing the wall was a three-tiered curved platform with workstations side by side on each level. Usually at this time of evening, only a third of the spots would be filled, but more people were trickling in. The shooting had brought everyone to work.
Derrick was huddling with Mazie, our head of perimeter network security. He saw me and they both shifted in my direction.
“Get the heads of every department in, if they’re not here already,” I said. “Meeting in the conference room in fifteen minutes.”
They both nodded and scattered. I headed for The Black Box, which is what we called the room that housed backups of backups for everything we did. It wasn’t a large room—only twenty by twenty—but it was lined with shelves holding hundreds of drives. Shepherd was on duty, and he looked as frazzled as ever. If the sky wasn’t currently falling, it was always only a matter of time, according to him. And since currently the sky was falling, Shepherd was a wreck.
“Holy bejesus, boss, did you see? How could we have missed this? Do you think it was just a crazy person or maybe a terrorist? I bet it was Russia. It’s like JFK all over again, only it’s the Russian Mob instead of the Mafia. And I have the backups uploading already to our tertiary recovery cloud, just in case. Should I activate the emergency wipe procedure? Because I can, I—”
“Stop!” I had to interrupt him or I wouldn’t get a word in edgewise. He was six foot five and as thin as a string bean. With wild, untamed curly hair and glasses a half-inch thick, he perpetually looked as though he didn’t quite know what was going on. But he was meticulous in his job and took the backups as seriously as though the future of his own next breath depended on them.
“I just need you to upload all data centering around that area of DC from the last twenty-four hours,” I said. “Surveillance footage from any shops, dashcams, stoplights—all of it. Look for patterns, the same people showing up, suspicious packages, the works.”
“You got it.”
“Thank you, Shep.” I left him scrambling to do my bidding, and knew he’d have the uploads done in less than thirty minutes. Shepherd also had a one-track mind and was dizzyingly fast.
I’d compartmentalized my feelings from my work, but now I had time to think as I waited for people and information. I’d met the current president a few months ago, and had been a fan of his and his family ever since they stepped on the national scene.
President Blane Kirk was a no-nonsense kind of guy. Former Navy SEAL, trial litigator, and senator, he’d been elected to the highest office in the land two years ago. His wife, Anne, was America’s own version of Kate Middleton and as close to gracious royalty as it was possible to be without an actual crown. They had twins, a boy and a girl, who were as adorable in person as they were in their photos. The thought that those kids might now be fatherless made my heart hurt.
I had a red phone in my office, which was a total cliché, but you couldn’t mistake its meaning. A direct line to the president, fully encrypted. My goal was for it never to ring. A goal that was shattered by the shrill sound it suddenly emitted.
I grabbed the receiver, irrationally hoping to hear the president himself on the other end.
“What information do you have?” was how the conversation opened, and I didn’t recognize the voice.
“Who is this?”
“Someone with access to the president’s phone. You can call me Kade. Now start talking.”
Now I knew who he was. Only rarely did anyone ever actually see Kade Dennon. He was rumored to be close to the president and have his confidence. We’d done a quick background on him a while back, just to be thorough, and there hadn’t been much to find.
Outside the political scene entirely, Kade was not only drop-dead gorgeous, he had a look that made the Terminator appear to be as friendly as a flop-eared bunny by comparison. I didn’t know what he’d done before becoming a close friend to the president. I just knew I’d never wanted to draw his attention or his ire.
“Um, shouldn’t I be talking to the vice president?” Technically correct.
“He doesn’t even know you exist,” Kade snapped. “Now, someone took a shot at the president. Tell me you know something.”
“We’re working on it,” I said. “How is he?”
“He’s in surgery, but they say he’ll be okay. I want to know who the hell did this.”
“Sir, I understand how you feel—”
“You can’t possibly,” he snapped. “I want answers. Sooner rather than later.” The line went dead.
An ass-chewing from the commander in chief’s BFF. Hadn’t been on my bucket list, and now I knew why.
My phone buzzed. It was Mia.
“Oh my God, have you heard?” she asked, her voice tight with strain. “I’ve been trying your cell for ages.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m at work now and might not be home until late, so don’t worry.”
“Okay. I love you, Aunt Chi.”
The phrase made me pause. Mia and I had grown close over the past six months that she’d been living with me, and I was suddenly glad that she could say something like that to me. “I love you, too. Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
When I arrived at the conference room, almost everyone was already there. I took a deep breath and settled into my chair.
The next hour was spent pulling together what information we had and piecing together surveillance video. The police and FBI had access to the same footage and were already broadcasting grainy shots of a figure wearing a hoodie whom they suspected of being involved. No one had a clear shot of his face, though.
“So there was no chatter, no warning, and nothing afterward?” I asked the room at large. We’d exhausted all our resources and had basically come to the same conclusion. “This was someone off the grid entirely?”
A truly nightmare scenario. Vigilance was excellent software and could comb through millions of terabytes of data to find the proverbial needle, but it could do nothing if there was no data to be had.
“The only talk I’m seeing is those just like us, speculating on who it could be and why.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get back to work. This gets a red-flag priority. We need to find who did this. I want everyone to set aside whatever else they’re working on and devote all our resources to this.”
Chairs scraped against the floor as everyone got up and left the room.
I was bone-tired and no new information was coming in. The adrenaline had worn off, leaving me feeling like a limp rag doll. After telling Derrick to notify me the moment anything of import was found and scheduling a meeting for first thing in the morning, I caught a cab home.
Mia was long since asleep, and the house was quiet. I hesitated to call Jackson this late and just sent a text instead, letting him know I was home and that I’d call in the morning.
Responsibility lay heavy on my shoulders as I passed through the darkened house. Weak winter moonlight filtered through the blinds. My thermostat was on a strict energy-conservation schedule, so it was also freezing. I shivered as I opened the refrigerator. Though I was tired, I knew I wouldn’t sleep without a little help, so I poured myself a glass of white wine.
I didn’t want anyone to get hurt—much less the leader of the free world—not when I was in a position to prevent it. But being in that position had never been something I wanted. My sole career goal had been to learn more and be on the cutting edge of technological development. I loved learning and creating. Writing computer code might not seem creative, but I begged to differ.
Now, I was no longer in the business of creating. I was in the business of law enforcement. And I didn’t like it. Not one little bit. My path out was clouded with uncertainty, not least because the life expectancy while doing this job was questionable . . . at least, under the previous chief of staff. Now that I reported directly to the president, maybe he’d just make me sign my life away and move to Montana if I wanted to quit. I heard it was peaceful in Montana.
All of this was on my mind, as well as the dangling marriage proposal that Jackson and I had conspicuously not discussed earlier, as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom. My Doctor Who TARDIS night-light shone bright enough to see by as I carefully slipped off my shoes and filed them in my closet. Setting my glasses on the bathroom counter, I wriggled out of my dress and washed the makeup off my face.
All I wanted was to go to work, do my job, and come home. Assassins and terrorists were beyond me. It had been bad enough when I’d been the target of terrorists and made to wear a suicide vest, then kidnapped and tortured by the Chinese—events that still haunted my nightmares. Maybe wanting to retreat into my little shell sounded selfish. I didn’t know. I just knew that I felt how I felt.
My bra was a black satin demi-cup to match my bikini Use the Force panties, and I took a moment to sigh at the blurry image in the mirror. Limousine sex notwithstanding, this hadn’t been how I’d envisioned my first Valentine’s Day with a boyfriend ending.
I paused in the bathroom door, sliding my glasses back on and letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. The TARDIS sent pale light past me. I pushed my fingers through my hair, finding pins in it that I’d forgotten. I sighed and began removing them, the curls Mia had worked so hard on falling down my back. I rubbed my scalp when I was done, groaning a little. Who knew taking your hair down could feel so good?
“Okay, any more and I’m going to hell.”
I yelped, my eyes flying open. Panic closed my throat at the sight of a dark form. I hadn’t seen it before, but someone was in my room. Yet even as my pulse skyrocketed, a lamp flicked into life.
“Between that outfit and the metal bikini costume, I’m starting to think you have a serious sci-fi sex fetish.”
“Clark,” I breathed, grabbing onto the doorjamb to keep my suddenly jellified knees from collapsing.
Clark Slattery, my erstwhile employee and partner, who’d up and quit his job three months ago. I hadn’t heard from him since, though he’d crossed my mind often. A dedicated loner who operated both inside and outside of the law, depending on which best suited him at the time, he’d saved my life on more than one occasion. A fact that didn’t exactly endear me to him, since he’d rather not be responsible for anyone’s well-being, least of all mine.
“Is that you?” I asked when he didn’t reply. It would’ve been hard to mistake Clark for anyone else. He was the best parts of all the Hollywood incarnations of the Man of Steel, in one six-foot-two, musclebound, raven-haired, blue-eyed package. He even had the dimple in his cheek when he smiled, which wasn’t often and certainly wasn’t now.
“You terrified me,” I said, my heart still racing.
“I wish I could say the same.”
His words and the strange note in his voice made me scrutinize him more closely. He looked intense and . . . hungry.
“When was the last time you ate?” I asked, suddenly concerned. Had he lost weight? Maybe. It was hard to tell with him sitting, slouched like that with his knees spread. “Can I get you something? I have leftover Chinese. Mia got takeout even though it’s not technically Chinese night—”
“I’m fine,” he interrupted, his lips twitching in a wry smile. “I’m not really into . . . leftovers.”
I grimaced. “I’m not either, but it’s such a waste otherwise. They refuse to cut down their portions no matter how much I argue that it’s physically impossible for someone of my size to consume that much food.”
He didn’t respond, just looked at me. A shiver fluttered across my skin.
“Do me a favor,” he said. “Slide your glasses down your nose, look over the top, and say, ‘You’ve been naughty, Mr. Slattery.’”
I looked at him, utterly confused. “Why would I do that?”
He shook his head. “Never mind,” he said, getting up from his chair. He had on a leather jacket that he shrugged off. “Since you don’t seem like you’re going to put clothes on anytime soon, let me help.”
I’d totally forgotten that I was standing there in my underwear, Clark’s sudden appearance taking me so by surprise. I grasped his coat, grateful for the warmth. It still held the heat from his body.
“I can put my pajamas on,” I said. “I was just distracted.”
Clark grimaced. “That makes two of us.”
“Why are you here?” I asked, pulling the edges of the jacket around me. The hem reached his hips, but was midthigh on me. “What’s going on? Why haven’t you called?”
Clark sighed and moved past me, leaving the bedroom and heading downstairs to the kitchen. I followed, the wooden floor cold on my bare feet.
“What are you doing? Are you leaving?”
He glanced back at me, his gaze running from head to toe before he answered. “No.” Reaching into my refrigerator, he pulled out the bottle of wine I’d just opened and poured himself a hefty glass. Then he drank half of it in one long swallow.
I watched his throat move, his Adam’s apple prominent, and the skin of his neck. He wore a black, long-sleeve, V-neck T-shirt that stretched across his shoulders and chest, outlining the curves of muscle beneath. Dark jeans covered his legs, and I could see a wide leather belt in the front where his shirt was tucked in, though the tail had come out.
I cleared my throat and lifted my eyes to his. Frowning, I stuck my hands on my hips. “Are you going to knock off the Man of Mystery thing or what? Because it’s not like I don’t have better things to do than play Twenty Questions with you.”
“I need a place to crash tonight,” he said.
“Why? Why can’t you go home?” That gorgeous cabin/mansion in the woods that I’d been lucky enough to see. Once.
He finished his wine before answering. “Because someone’s trying to kill me.”