Law Offices of Bertrand, Owens & Cromwell | Palo Alto, California
Kayne wasn’t used to this.
In fact, she was so unaccustomed to it, she barely had the words to describe it.
Sitting beside Ross Eckhart, billionaire technologist, while the two of them reviewed not only the files from Bertrand, Owens & Cromwell but also the deep analysis of those files offered up by QuIEK, the feeling that had settled on her was one she hadn’t felt in years. At least three years, by her reckoning.
Trust.
Somehow, through a means she couldn’t backtrack or trace, and in a timeline so rapid she couldn’t piece it together, Ross Eckhart had managed to earn her trust.
It felt weird.
Paranoia and distrust had become default behaviors for her, over the past three years. She didn’t fully trust anyone, except maybe to the level that she was certain they would inevitably betray her or turn on her. She knew she could always trust that.
Admittedly, that was a cynical sort of mindset. She tried not to linger on it.
Trust wasn’t entirely foreign to her, of course. She had a certain level of trust in Agent Eric Symon. She liked him, and she believed he liked her. She even believed him when he said he thought she was innocent. So, she did trust him, at least a little.
But she also knew him. No matter what he said, no matter whether he believed her or not, he would arrest her, if he had the chance. She would never give him that chance. She would always keep him at a distance, always have an escape route ready for when he was around.
She trusted Eric to do exactly what he thought was right, at least. And that had to count for something, didn’t it?
She had come to trust another fellow Historic Crimes “asset,” too. Dr. Dan Kotler, archaeologist and FBI consultant—and inveterate troublemaker, from what she’d seen of him. Or maybe just “trouble magnet.”
He was a charming guy—brilliant, personable, relatable. He’d even been a fugitive for a while. A short while, anyway. But being hunted had a way of sharpening your perspective, and it was a club that only had a scant few members worth knowing.
Kayne felt like Kotler was a kindred spirit, at least. Someone who could relate to her life in a few different ways. And someone she could talk to about it, if she ever felt the need. But did she really trust him?
Sort of.
Although she had no concerns that Kotler would try to get her arrested, she also knew that if it came down to it, he wouldn’t directly intervene to prevent her capture. He wouldn’t interfere to prevent his FBI partner, Agent Denzel, from putting her in a cell. Though he had been known to give her some heads up, and to keep some of her secrets, there’d been no jeopardy in it for him at the time. It was more like an opportunistic kind of assistance—no harm in looking the other way, no danger in letting this fact or that observation slip.
It was possible, though, that she trusted Kotler more than any other human being on Earth. In a way, at least. After all, in her current social sphere, he was the most like her—an outsider with something to offer, with talents or skills or knowledge that could be useful, and with a willingness to actually help. It was an odd for of common ground, but it was enough to give them a bond.
Everyone else on Earth seemed to be gunning for her, though, so it was kind of a low bar.
Despite feeling a certain level of trust in Kotler, however, she didn’t feel like she could depend on him. His loyalty to her could only go so far. And she couldn’t really demand that he put his own freedom or his own life on the line for her. Trust was fragile. It had its lines that couldn’t be crossed. And she wasn’t willing to push those lines with Kotler, or with Eric.
Ross Eckhart, however…
She wasn’t sure why she felt she could trust or depend on Eckhart. She just… did.
Again, it came down to gut instinct. And again, maybe it was because they shared a certain sort of background. Maybe he just felt like a kindred spirt as well, though one from a different aspect of her soul than Kotler or Eric. Less “kindred spirit,” and more “complementary spirit.” Maybe.
Eckhart had already shown her that he was willing to risk going to prison right alongside her, if it meant he was doing the right thing. It was a level of altruism she hadn’t yet seen from anyone else—though she knew many good people who’d be willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. This was different, though. This was more akin to her own perspective, her own way of thinking. This was the most like her commitment to “doing the right thing” that she’d encountered, since going on the run. And it was possible she was letting it color her impression of him.
But she thought there might be something else lending an aura of trust to their newly formed relationship: Ross Eckhart was one of the most candid and pragmatic people she’d ever met.
This wasn’t necessarily a revelation. Nor was it unique to his relationship with her. In his interactions with the media, Eckhart had always been a bottom-line guy. He didn’t pull punches, and wasn’t all that well guarded with his words. He was famous for tiffs with other influencers in the technology sphere, and with high-profile government officials. Public opinion of him tended to be “softly galvanized,” with some of his biggest detractors frequently flipping to become his biggest defenders, and vice versa.
He was a hard guy to figure. But he was genuine, and he was authentic.
Kayne hadn’t exactly followed him closely over the years, but he was impossible to miss, if you spent any time monitoring traditional or social media. His rise to the status of billionaire was always of interest, obviously, but it was the work he was doing in his various silos of business that seemed most fascinating. He appeared to be something unique in the current class of Silicon Valley billionaires: A futurist with a plan, and no concern about doing what was expected of him.
In other words, Eckhart was building an empire of technological advancement that was so far outside the box of profit-driven development, he sometimes came across as insane. His predictions about the future were bizarre and wildly off in the weeds at times. The focus of each of his businesses seemed ludicrous to even the most progressive financial analysts. On paper, Ross Eckhart seemed like a crackpot, destined for financial ruin and historical obscurity.
And yet…
All his predictions had a tendency to come true. All the tech he was developing had a tendency to attract a rabid following. All of his plans tended to inspire the public and ultimately set trends for other influencers in his sphere.
Ross Eckhart would be considered an eccentric crackpot, except for the fact that he always seemed to be right. Which meant other people in his orbit ended up following while he led. He set the pace, and they had to race to keep up. It was the sort of thing certain Silicon Valley egos eventually began to resent. It made enemies.
It made him an outsider.
It made Eckhart someone Kayne could relate to.
“What about Alishondra Cromwell?” Eckhart asked, startling Kayne out of her reverie. “You seemed to kind of flag on her.”
Kayne blinked and shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. I know she’s relatively new to the firm, but she’s a named partner. She’s making a ton of money already without the need to get her hands dirty. I’m not saying attorneys would be above doing something illegal for money,” she smiled, “but having one of the richest people on the planet practically giving them a money printing machine seems like it would keep the greed fires contained. Also…” She hesitated.
“Also?” Eckhart asked.
“My gut says no,” Kayne replied.
She wasn’t sure what she had expected from him, as a reaction. Maybe he’d burst out laughing? Gut instinct wasn’t entirely absurd to someone like Eckhart, but he might laugh over the idea of using it to eliminate suspects.
Instead of laughing, or even smirking, he simply nodded, shrugged, and turned back to the work as if she’d just shown him proof that it couldn’t be refuted.
“That’s it?” Kayne asked.
“What’s what?” Eckhart replied.
“I say, ‘it’s gut instinct,’ and you’re just… ok with it?”
He studied her, then shrugged again. “Most of my decisions in life are gut instinct. I’m not going to start questioning it now.”
Kayne considered this. “Ok. So… does your gut say anything?”
Eckhart shook his head. “Not yet. But I’ll admit, this kind of thing isn’t my strong suit. I tend to default to trusting people until they burn me, and I don’t spend much time trying to hunt down traitors in my midsts. That’s one of the reasons I have lawyers in the first place. And a personal security team.”
Kayne smiled, shaking her head slightly. Defaulting to trusting people was nearly the exact opposite of how she’d lived for the past three years, and she couldn’t even imagine how she might do it and still survive. Trust was like a foreign language to her right now—or a language she hadn’t spoken in a long while. It felt weird. Maybe even wrong. But it had certainly worked for Eckhart. And she imagined it must be a…
Well… it must be a peaceful sort of life.
Kayne envied him for it.
She settled back. The two of them were in a spare conference room in the Bertrand, Owens & Cromwell offices. They’d been given carte blanche access to anything they needed, with the exception of the firm’s case files. They had agreed to Adele Bertrand’s very strict conditions regarding access to internal files, and then almost immediately had QuIEK scour the entire network.
Someone here was dealing dirty, and Eckhart had agreed with Kayne that these were exigent circumstances. He seemed unperturbed by any moral or ethical qualms over it, as long as they stayed on their objective.
The data they were getting was limited, at any rate. Kayne wasn’t interested in digging up dirt on anyone. She was looking for threads that they could tie together to lead them to whoever was behind all of this. And as they looked, it was becoming increasingly evident that things went deeper than they had imagined.
It wasn’t just patents controlled by Curie Motors. The corruption extended to all of Eckhart’s businesses, everything he had any ownership in.
“Someone here is definitely playing a game,” Eckhart said. “But there’s no common thread between all of these.” He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table, shaking his head as he considered all the dead ends.
Kayne was studying the files QuIEK had pulled together, looking for any hint of a common denominator. So far, the only facts these files had in common were that they were owned by Ross Eckhart, and they were managed by BO&C.
It was hard to conclude anything other than BO&C—possibly the entire firm—was dirty. That implied a pretty big conspiracy, which would have to be managed and kept secret among not only the senior partners but every attorney on staff, as well as every clerk, every intern, every contractor. It was corruption on a monumental and, frankly, unmanageable scale. But by all evidence, it had to be the firm itself. All of it. Or…
Or it was Eckhart.
Kayne felt the familiar pang. Trust, eroding. Suspicion, rising.
She glanced sideways at Eckhart, who was engrossed in reading through a group of patents and holdings, subconsciously shaking his head as he silently scanned, line by line.
He certainly seemed sincere in his desire to track this down, to ferret out whoever was responsible and help Kayne bring justice for her client. Could that all be an act?
Again, Kayne’s gut said no. But how much could she really trust that? Instinct wasn’t evidence. But she hadn’t kept ahead of those who pursued her for the past three years by ignoring either evidence or instinct.
It was just that those two pillars of her life hadn’t really come into such conflict before.
She was feeling a sort of cognitive dissonance, and a growing uncertainty. And that made her more basic instincts kick in. Something felt off, even if she couldn’t quite define what it was.
Trust was a dangerous game. Trust was how fugitives got caught. Kayne had avoided capture all these years precisely because she didn’t trust anyone, and she always remained paranoid, standing apart from everyone so they never had a chance to put their hands on her.
She could feel it happen, as she dug in to more of the files. The erosion of trust. Or, maybe, the dampening of it. Eckhart hadn’t done anything to actually erode that trust so far, so this was Kayne tamping it down, keeping it in check. The longer she sat there, the more that gut feeling nagged at her. She tried to rationalize it away, but it kept coming back, kept whispering something is wrong.
Better to be paranoid than to be imprisoned. Or worse.
“I… need a restroom,” Kayne said.
Eckhart looked up, and she thought she saw something strange pass over his features. But he said nothing as she left the conference room, moving through the richly decorated halls of the BO&C offices, past the receptionist’s desk. Julia looked up as Kayne passed and smiled lightly as she tracked her movement toward the restroom. The receptionist’s desk squarely faced the waiting area and the elevators, as well as the entrance to the main stairway.
No chance of getting out that way, Kayne thought.
In a moment she was in the restroom, and she quickly closed herself in one of the stalls. She took out the sat phone. She had QuIEK tap into public records for the building and turn it into a 3D model, highlighting any potential exits.
Her options were limited.
This was not like her.
How had she let herself fall into such a huge lapse of judgement? For the past three years, she didn’t even go to the bathroom in her own hotel room without at least three exit strategies. And now, here she was, her guard down and her exit routes narrowed to practically nothing.
Was she really so desperate to trust someone that she’d fold at the first sign of a good man?
Maybe, she thought.
Because she couldn’t help it—even now—believing that Ross Eckhart really was a good man. Even with things feeling off with this patent thing, and in the practices of his business. Even with the potential that not only was he the secret, real villain of the story, but that he’d managed to fool her and lure her into a snare so completely, to get past her meticulously arranged web of paranoia and self-preservation, and effectively trap her in this place. He somehow got her to let her guard down, and now…
She was back to being paranoid. She knew that. Maybe it was gut instinct again. Maybe it was just habit. Self preservation was a hard one to kick, particularly when you didn’t want to.
She turned her attention back to the 3D model on screen and had QuIEK overlay it with a WiFi map.
By accessing all the various devices in the building, from mobile phones to tablets to laptops, even smart watches and set-top steaming devices, QuIEK could gauge WiFi signal strength throughout the entire structure. And by overlaying that with the 3D model of the building, it could effectively recreate details and features in the layout, the placement of furniture, even people moving around in the various spaces. It was, in effect, like using sonar—pinging a signal off of objects so that QuIEk could “see.”
Doing this allowed QuIEK to use its predictive algorithms to determine a potential exit, and a strategy for getting there.
Kayne looked it over, made a few educated guesses about things that QuIEK could not see, and then made her plan.
She left the restroom, but instead of turning to pass back by Julia Faure’s desk, she went the opposite direction. Moving quickly through the lavishly decorated suite of offices, she came to a door that led into a back stairwell. She pushed her way through, and quickly made her way down, swiping and typing on her phone as she went.
The bottom floor had an exit to the outside, as well as one to the lobby. The outside exit would trigger a fire alarm.
She pushed through and heard the siren spin up as she rushed away. A car would be waiting for her about three blocks East of the building. From there, QuIEK had randomized a set of arrangements, including decoys meant to throw off anyone who might be watching.
Her lapse in paranoia had meant that she had to do this all rough and ugly. She rarely relied on QuIEK to make her exit strategies. But strange times called for unusual methods. And if she was going to trust anyone or anything, QuIEK was her best choice.
But despite that, whether this exit worked out or not, she came to a decision. A commitment, really.
She would not make a mistake like this again.
Even if it turned out to be baseless paranoia, even if Ross Eckhart turned out to be exactly who he seemed to be, trust wasn’t something she could afford.
From here on out, it was trust no one.