Chapter 16
After dinner, Sienna grabbed a cup of coffee and made her way back to her desk in the office. It was late; she was tired, but her mind buzzed. Surely there was more information to find. With no one around to hear her, she freely talked to herself out loud. And that made her feel better as she went over what she knew so far.
She brought up her notes on her laptop, refreshed the page, then walked to the table where the spreadsheets still lay. Pulling up a chair she grabbed a blank notepad and emptied her mind. She studied the number and letter combinations. It might be names and numbers, but there had to be more to be found here. It would help if she had more sheets, with more data and options, easier to confirm too, because she’d have a larger sample to work with. She took the complex number and letter combinations and wrote down the information she had already decoded with the letters on the side. Then she took a look at the numbers lined up. Was it also in a pattern, or were they something simpler? Like an invoice number, purchase dates, or could they be random? “No, not random,” she whispered. “It’s too specific to be.”
There had to be a pattern. It didn’t mean she would know what it was. Then she turned to look at the spreadsheets Bullard had sent. These papers had been found in the young IT guy’s desk. She’d started with the first but hadn’t caught anything. Just more numbers. This time just straight numbers and columns. The final column appeared to be monetary amounts—a decimal point two digits in from the right. But no dollar sign. And for this level she doubted anybody dealt in change. But accountants the world over kept precise track of every transaction. She put that page down and picked up another.
By the time she had the third one, an idea sparked in the back of her mind. She grabbed her notepad and tossed around codes, numbers, and ideas. Finally she sat back and noticed it had been over two hours, and she had a glimmer of truth in her hand. But she needed Bullard to confirm. She also needed to review the names she had gathered so far, including the six dead gunmen.
She got up and walked back to her laptop. She’d noted the various people her decoding had brought up. She added the six people from the shooting in Dallas, wondering if she should pull up Robert’s name too.
She went back to the spreadsheets, checked every one that had an R.F., considering the numbers behind it. If he was involved—and that was a small if—he was the only one she knew of who might confirm some of these numbers.
What if these were bank accounts? What if they were payments into one with his name on it? She had several from the Swiss Bank.
Back at her laptop again she printed off every Swiss Bank account. Then with a highlighter, she quickly cross-checked them and found nothing. Now that was wrong. She knew something had to be here; she could feel it. And then she saw it. In an attempt to confuse the account numbers, the first and last characters had been switched. And with that knowledge, she quickly decoded all the bank account numbers in front of the initials. Now she needed somebody to confirm the name on these accounts.
“This is it,” she said jubilantly.
“This is what?” Rhodes asked.
Surprised, she looked up to see him leaning against the doorjamb, watching her.
“I think I solved it.”
He came around to look at the data she had.
She quickly showed him how the accounts unscrambled onto the scanned ledger sheets with the ripped edges. “I think these are the accounts and names they belong to.” She sat back. “And I can’t let go of the idea that R.F. is Robert Forrest, the DA.”
Rhodes shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. R.F. could mean a lot of people. He’d been with us. He had ample opportunity to set us up or to get rid of us himself.”
She frowned. “That’s true,” she said slowly. “And if he had hired somebody to go in the building when we were there, it would’ve been a simple enough case to have taken us out. He had a cell phone with him.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t making him be the bad guy. I was just fitting the name to the R.F. initials.”
“Robert is only one of the many possibilities.”
She nodded. “And that takes us down a rabbit hole because there’s probably hundreds, if not thousands, of potential combinations.”
“Hundreds of thousands.” He tapped the papers on the table. “But this is interesting, and very good.” He glanced down at her. “We can ask Bullard if he knows any of these people on his end. And we can also get somebody here on ours, someone a little higher up, to help us out and get some names for these accounts.”
“In fact, that is something Robert could probably do for us, right?” she asked drily. She glanced down at her watch. “It’s seven. Probably too late to call him now.”
Rhodes laughed. “We could certainly email him. If he’s working, then he’ll be on it and answer pretty fast.”
With him sitting beside her, she quickly typed up an email, documenting bits and pieces that she’d found. She hit Send.
He held out a hand and asked, “You ready to leave the office now?”
Her laptop dinged immediately. She sat back down and looked. “It’s Robert.”
She heard Rhodes’s heavy sigh beside her and realized he probably had different plans for her this evening than what she was currently doing. She smiled. Now that she could get behind. Still … “Let me just see what he says.”
She brought up his email in response. There were only two words, thank you. She sat back, stared at them and shrugged. “Just because I’m excited about it, doesn’t mean anybody else is.”
He chuckled. “And Robert is probably way too tired to deal with any of this.”
She winced. “I had to stay behind and handle a lot of late nights in my former position, so I understand how overwhelming it can be.” She sat there and stared at the thank you for a long moment. She didn’t like it.
“I haven’t had any contact or dealings with him in the past, but this seems way too simplistic for an email from him. And no capitals.”
He stopped and stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
She shrugged. “I asked a bunch of questions, gave a lot of information.” She turned her gaze to him and asked, “And all he says is ‘thank you’?”
She scrolled down to his signature, just below the message. And above the signature was an odd series of digits, numbers. She sat back and said, “Whoa.”
He walked around and asked, “What?”
She pointed out the code on the bottom. “This helps.” She turned to gaze up at him. “It’s the same code I had explained to him earlier on the accounts.”
He stared at her, then the email, pulled out his phone and tried to phone Robert. She waited in her seat, studying the code, her blood running hot at the thought of somebody going after the Dallas DA. But of course, that could’ve been because they’d gone after Rhodes and her.
“Why didn’t we check on him before?” Her body was tense as she waited for Robert to pick up his phone.
But his phone rang and rang. Finally it went to voice mail. Rhodes didn’t leave a message. He turned it off and said, “I’ll find Levi.”
She closed her laptop, tucked it under her arm and raced behind him. “Any idea where they are?”
“Last I heard, they were talking with Alfred in the kitchen area.” They ran down the stairs and burst into the kitchen. All three people turned to look at them.
“What’s up?” barked Levi.
Sienna opened the laptop, hit the button to bring it out of screensaver mode and showed him the email with the little bit of code on the bottom. “If I decode this like for the other accounts to get names,” she said, “that particular line of code reads help me.”
*
The discussion was hot and heavy as they decided the best way forward. Harrison came in from the other room where he was watching a movie, snagged up the laptop with Sienna’s permission and checked to see where the message came from.
“It was sent from his house,” he announced ten minutes later. But he glanced at his watch.
“That’s … several hours’ drive away,” Sienna said. “We should call the cops and have them go by his house.”
Ice said, “We already contacted somebody there. But they’ll check first if he’s being held hostage. If they just knock on the door, there’s a good chance they won’t find out anything or will get a bullet through the door themselves.”
Rhodes knew the truth was hard sometimes, but Sienna needed to understand these people were dead serious and had long-reaching arms.
Levi’s phone rang. He pulled it out and said, “It’s Robert.” He waited a second for silence to follow, then held it to his ear and asked, “Hello, Robert, that you?”
Rhodes watched Levi’s face as his gaze hardened. It zinged to Sienna and if possible, became even harder.
“I heard you. Where do you want to make the exchange?” He turned and faced Ice. “You are where? Almost in Houston?”
Rhodes waited and realized exactly what was happening. He checked his watch, mentally ran over the weapons they had ready and the men available. The plan of action would be determined by wherever the exchange was because Rhodes had no doubt they had Robert and were looking for Sienna too. Levi would have said, in exchange, but in reality, one of them was likely already dead. Which meant they were all leaving and Sienna would stay here, where she’d be safe.
Levi closed the phone. “A hotel on the other side of Houston. They’ve come into our neck of the woods. An hour.” He stared at everybody at the table. “This will take every one of us. We’re to meet in the parking lot.”
Rhodes pursed his lips. “That’s still pretty public.”
Harrison snapped, “Even worse, he could have a dozen men hiding inside the hotel rooms with sniper rifles already in position now.”
Levi nodded. “He said Rhodes must come too.”
Rhodes crossed his arms over his chest and said, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“No way you’re going,” cried Sienna. “He wants to kill you.”
Rhodes turned to stare at her. “No way in hell you are.”
She stuck her chin out at him and said, “We have to stop them and help Robert. These bad guys think they can just take out a DA now?”
“Five minutes ago you thought that DA might be the bad guy,” Rhodes said calmly. “And you’re not leaving. You’re safe here. That’s the way you’ll stay.”
“And no way are we getting Robert back if they don’t see me there.” She added in a low voice, “Or you, for that matter.”
He opened his mouth to order her to stay when Levi stepped in.
“You know she’s right, Rhodes. She has to be visible—not accessible. We can protect her. But we have to do this. We’ll need all hands.”
“One hour’s not much time.” Rhodes stood up. “We must get there earlier and park somewhere else.”
“We need a plan,” Ice said as she stood up, facing them. “I can fly several into town but where to land and have wheels there?”
Levi studied her. “If we take the helicopter, we’re likely to trigger an alarm, and it’s not worth it. We’ll be faster driving. It’s only thirty minutes out.”
“We do need a plan,” Rhodes snapped. “But let’s make it while we’re driving. Because there’s just no time otherwise.”
“We’ll take three vehicles,” Levi said, standing up. “Everybody gear up. This could get ugly so come fully armed. Ice with me, Sienna with Rhodes.”
Stone walked in just then and asked, “Do you want to leave somebody here or not?”
“I’ll stay,” Alfred said. “I’ll be in the control room with Lissa and Katina.” He nodded to the women. “Sienna has to go. Otherwise, I would have kept her here too.”
“We leave in five.”
The room scattered.
Rhodes kept his gaze on Sienna. She clenched the laptop, her knuckles white. He told her, “Grab a sweater. Don’t know how late this night’ll be. We’ll take the same truck as the last time. Be there in five.” He waited, watched her nod before she bolted from the room. He turned back to Alfred and the other two women. “Use the satellite and see if you can find the hotel. You start searching now, you might be able to give us the heads-up as to what is waiting for us.”
“We’ll be up there in five minutes. As soon as you’re all off the compound, we’re in lockdown.”
Rhodes gave him a curt nod and headed to the truck. On the way, he stopped at the weapons room. They had depots all around the compound with a full armory downstairs. He pulled out several handguns and put one into his shoulder holster, then tucked a spare in his ankle boot.
He grabbed the keys and raced to the truck. Now all he needed was Sienna and they were gone. As he shifted the truck into Reverse to back up, the passenger door opened, and Sienna hopped in.
She quickly buckled up and said, “Let’s go.”
She slammed the door shut; he hit the power locks and ripped out of the compound. Levi drove with Ice, Harrison rode in the back. Stone drove the third truck carrying Merk and Logan. The full team.
Every one of them ready to kick some ass.