“Someone’s trying to kill me?”
Garrett Parker got out of the Adirondack chair on the balcony. He left a computer behind on the seat of the chair. He paced back and forth, then went to the railing that looked down on the woods. He stared through fog and darkness toward Highway 1 and the Pacific. His long dark hair was oily and loose, and he wore a feminine silk kimono that barely reached his knees. Bourne had already collected their clothes for the cleaners.
“That’s insane,” Garrett went on, turning back to Jason and Abbey. “I’m a fucking nerd. Who would send a hit man after me?”
“That’s what we need to find out,” Bourne told him. He added, “By the way, until we do, I’d suggest you not stand at the railing in the open like that. You’re an easy target for anyone with a long gun.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
Garrett shook his head. “It’s pitch-black out here.”
“Night vision,” Bourne said. “Thermal scopes. A sniper would have no problem taking you out.”
“Jesus.” Garrett came and sat down at a glass table next to Abbey, and he gestured at Bourne. “Who is this guy? You were really in love with him?”
“Let’s not talk about that now,” Abbey said. “Okay? Jason’s here to help.”
Bourne saw the man shoot him a hostile stare with his dark eyes flashing. He couldn’t really blame him. Here was his wife’s former lover showing up in the middle of the night and rescuing them from an assassin, then breaking the news that his life was still in danger for reasons unknown. No one was going to react well to that.
He couldn’t help but wonder what had drawn Abbey to this man. To Jason, Garrett at twenty-nine years old looked even younger than he really was. He still seemed to be a teenage boy, playing with video games, sneaking weed, and erasing porn sites from his browser history. The long hair. The beard. The tall, gangly frame. Not to mention the ridiculous kimono. He was like Gen Z come to life.
All of which was unfair.
God, I’ve gotten old, Bourne thought to himself.
In fact, he recognized that there was chemistry between Garrett and Abbey. Emotionally, intellectually, sexually, they fit together. Garrett was young, but also extremely good-looking. Physically, he didn’t have Bourne’s strength or skills, but he would have made girls swoon in a boy band. He probably made Abbey feel young again, in and out of bed. If he was a nerd, he was also wicked smart. The red wine he was drinking was a high-end Russian River pinot noir, and the screen saver on his computer scrolled through images of Qing dynasty artwork. Garrett Parker was no naive kid.
“The first thing to do is determine what makes you a target,” Bourne told him. “Abbey says you used to work for Jumpp.”
“For eighteen months. I went out on my own six months ago.”
“Where were you before that?”
“An AI start-up. The founder screwed me when he sold the business. I didn’t read the fine print on my contract. Dumb. I should have walked away with millions, but instead, I had to start over. I went to a conference on AI tech ethics in Washington two years ago, and Jumpp was there looking for someone to replace their head of AI integration. I signed on.”
“Jumpp is a social media software, right?” Bourne asked. “Girls posting dance videos and cat memes? What’s the AI connection?”
“Everything these days has an AI connection,” Garrett replied with a roll of his eyes. “You remember the Prescix software? Social media that could predict what you were going to do next?”
Bourne and Abbey exchanged a meaningful look.
“Yes, I remember,” Jason said.
“Well, AI is like Prescix on steroids. That’s what I do, and it’s what I did for Jumpp. I develop software that intelligently predicts buying behavior based on social media history and creates individualized marketing pitches based on psycho profiles. Advertisers pay a lot of money for that kind of technology.”
“Other people do, too,” Bourne said.
“What do you mean?”
“Jumpp is a Chinese company.”
“Yeah. So? I worked for their American operation. Do you think I’m some kind of spy? I’m a programmer.”
“I realize that.” Jason nodded at the laptop screen on the Adirondack chair, which showed a landscape painting by a seventeenth-century Chinese artist named Wang Shimin. “But based on your taste in art, I’m assuming you’ve spent time in China.”
Garrett shrugged. “Yes. I took courses in Asian studies at the University of Puget Sound, and I spent a year in China after college. That’s one of the things that made me attractive to Jumpp. I also like Chinese art. I’m not sure what the problem is.”
“The problem is, a lot of people think software like Jumpp and TikTok are platforms for Chinese spyware. I think whoever wants you dead is in possession of information that might have been gathered from programs like that.”
Garrett reached over and slapped his computer shut. “Come on! I don’t have any information on anybody. I write code.”
“Which would put you in a position to find—and expose—spyware that the Chinese might want to conceal. Have you seen anything like that?”
“Believe me, you’re not the first person to ask. A few months into my new job, I got a subpoena to testify at a congressional hearing. They couldn’t talk to my predecessor, so they came after me. I’ll tell you what I told them. I’d been over the Jumpp code in minute detail, and I saw no evidence that they were gathering any data other than what was outlined in their privacy policy. Just like every app you use on your phone.”
Bourne heard Garrett’s voice go up, but the louder and faster he talked, the more Bourne realized that Abbey’s husband was lying. He was hiding something. More than that, he was scared of something.
“Are you familiar with an app called mygirlnextdoor?” Bourne asked.
Garrett hesitated. “Sure. It’s basically an exclusive online escort site. Sort of a high-end OnlyFans thing, right? Rich guys talk to beautiful naked girls? What about it? I don’t have an account, if that’s what you’re asking. Not that I could afford it anyway, but I don’t need to go online for sex.”
He stroked Abbey’s leg as he said this, and she gave Jason an uncomfortable stare.
“My point is, there seems to be a connection between the app and the hacked database I’m looking for,” Bourne said. “I just wondered if Jumpp was part of the puzzle somehow.”
“I don’t know anything about mygirlnextdoor,” Garrett insisted.
Bourne didn’t say anything for a while. He let Garrett stew, and he watched the man grow increasingly agitated by the silence. Finally, he went on in a calm voice. “Do you understand the situation, Garrett? If I hadn’t been here tonight, you and Abbey would both be dead. Is that not clear to you? People don’t go through the risk and effort of finding someone like Rod Holtzman unless they are very serious. Somebody has a motive to kill you, and I think you know what it is.”
Garrett sprang up from the table. So did Abbey, following him. The two of them went to the balcony railing together, and Bourne didn’t bother giving them another warning about snipers. Abbey kissed her husband, the kind of sensual kisses she’d shared with Jason many times. Her hands caressed his face, and then her arms slid around his waist. Bourne hated that it bothered him to think of her with another man—with her husband—but it did.
Abbey whispered something in Garrett’s ear. Bourne couldn’t hear what she said, but Garrett took a long, slow breath and then returned to where Jason was sitting on the balcony. He put his hands on his hips, which didn’t make the kimono look less foolish.
“It’s not the first time,” Garrett said.
“What?”
“It’s not the first time someone has tried to kill me.”
Bourne leaned forward. “When did it happen before?”
“Last winter. Long before I met Abbey. A homeless guy came at me with a knife in Seattle near Pioneer Square. I figured he was just whacked-out on drugs, except . . .”
“Except what?”
“Well, afterward the police couldn’t find him. I gave them a good description, they did a sketch that was dead-on, and then they canvassed the streets around there. No one recognized him. That’s weird. Homeless people know each other, and they all know who’s violent, because those are the ones you avoid. This guy wasn’t on anyone’s radar.”
“So you think you were targeted,” Bourne said.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure somebody was sending me a message.”
“Who?”
Garrett rubbed a hand nervously across his beard. He sat down again without looking at Bourne. “The thing is, I told my boss at Jumpp what happened. How I was assaulted. He said all the right things, how terrible it was, how scary, maybe I should take a couple days off. But then right after that—right after, the very next thing he said—he told me he’d looked into questions I’d raised about the software. I mean, I talked to him about this months ago, but suddenly that’s when he tells me he looked into it? Right after a guy came at me with a knife? He said there was nothing to be concerned about and I shouldn’t waste any more of my time. The way he said it, the way he looked at me, I knew it was all connected. I better stop asking questions, because if I didn’t, they’d find me in an alley somewhere.”
“What questions did you raise?” Bourne asked.
Garrett exhaled loudly. “I told you I testified that there’s no spyware in Jumpp. Right? There isn’t. I know the code backward and forward. But then something weird happened. I downloaded one of those word puzzle games on my phone. DicTrace. The dictionary race app. Remember, everyone was posting on Jumpp and X about their longest words? It was the hot thing. I’d been using it for a few days, and then for the first time, I posted about it on Jumpp. Right after that, I got a security alert on my computer. You see, I wrote my own security software to make sure I don’t get hacked, and the alert warned me that it was blocking a large transfer of data to the cloud. I looked. Sure enough, the firewall had blocked a download of most of my personal and financial data, passwords, credit card records, everything. Without my custom security software, I never even would have known it had happened. So of course I dived in to figure out what caused it.”
“Where did the breach come from?”
Abbey’s husband shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t find anything. Not to be arrogant, but if I can’t find it, it’s got to be AI. Okay? The only thing smarter than me when it comes to coding is a machine that can think faster than me. Somehow I did something that triggered an AI program to come looking for my data, and the only thing I could find that lined up from a timing standpoint was posting on Jumpp about my fucking word puzzle game. There’s nothing in the Jumpp code. There’s nothing in the puzzle code. But when the apps interacted, they began to behave differently.”
“Is it just Jumpp and the puzzle app?” Bourne asked.
Garrett frowned. “That was my question. And no. It always seems to be Jumpp on one side, but dozens of other apps seem to have the same trigger.”
“Including mygirlnextdoor,” Bourne guessed.
“I don’t know for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“And this is what you talked to your boss about?”
Garrett nodded. “I told him what I’d found. I said it looked like somebody was piggybacking on our code for nefarious ends. He said he’d investigate. A couple of months later, homeless guy comes at me with a knife, and that same day, my boss says to stop asking questions. I got the message.”
“Did you stop?”
“You bet. I dropped it right then and there. And not long after, I quit and went out on my own.”
“Were there any more attempts on your life after that?”
“Not until tonight. That’s what I don’t understand. I haven’t pursued this in months. Why would someone come after me now?”
“They think you can identify them,” Bourne concluded.
“But I can’t.”
“Maybe you can, and you don’t realize it.”
“So what do I do?” Garrett asked. He looked at Abbey, then back at Bourne. “What do we do? I don’t like that Abbey is in the middle of this now because of me.”
“For now, lay low,” Jason told him. “I’ll see what I can find out from my end. Is there an alarm system for the house?”
“There is,” Abbey replied, “although typically we don’t turn it on.”
“Turn it on,” Bourne told her.
He stood up, and Abbey came over and briefly took his hand. “Thank you, Jason. I mean that.”
He nodded at both of them, then headed for the door that led inside the house. But he stopped when Garrett called after him.
“There’s one other thing. It may be nothing . . .”
“What is it?” Jason asked.
“When I met the people from Jumpp at that conference in DC,” Garrett went on, “they were looking for someone to replace their director of AI integration. Mr. Yuan. He was from China, and he brought a bunch of Chinese programmers over here with him. Most of the foundation of the code came from him and his team, so if there really is an AI time bomb in there, it probably started with Mr. Yuan.”
“Okay. How do I find him?”
Garrett shook his head. “That’s the thing. You can’t. That’s why Jumpp was looking for someone new. Mr. Yuan quit the company. In his resignation letter, he said he missed his family, his wife, his two daughters. They were still back in Shanghai. Most people thought the government was essentially holding them hostage to make sure Mr. Yuan did what he was told. Anyway, he left Jumpp and went back to China. His whole team quit right after that. No notice, just up and left. A few weeks later, Mr. Yuan took his family to Huangshan. The Yellow Mountains. He and his wife went hiking, but they never came back. Later that day, one of his daughters found them in a canyon. Dead.”
*
The woman moved like a cat through the underbrush, making no sound. She crept to the very fringe of the trees, where a sloping green lawn surrounded the house. The dense fog had finally lifted, and her keen eyes could see silhouettes on the balcony, framed by the bright lights inside. She couldn’t see their faces, but she’d been here in this same place on many nights, observing, analyzing, and planning.
Two of the people she knew from the outlines of their bodies, which she’d memorized long ago. Garrett Parker. His wife, Abbey Laurent.
Now there was also a stranger with them. Who was the stranger?
Their voices murmured above the wind, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. It didn’t matter. All she knew was that Garrett was still alive. Holtzman had failed. All that effort to find him, and the hit man had been a disappointment.
The stranger. The third man. He had killed Holtzman.
Who was he? How had he even known about the assassin?
But she knew. He was hunting for her. Hunting for the Files.
The third man came to the balcony railing above her. She couldn’t see his face, but she could sense in the way he held himself that he was a formidable threat. There was something in the way he looked into the darkness that made her think he knew she was there. He sensed her presence.
Like a cat, she left, melting back into the woods.
When she was finally back in her car a few minutes later, heading south on Highway 1 toward the city, she rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. She’d made a mistake once, lighting up when she was close to the house. The woman, Abbey Laurent, had smelled it and spotted her. It was ironic, really.
Smoke.
Fire.
Her heart burned as it had all those months ago, but she remained calm and focused. If Holtzman had failed, that was a sign. She’d tried to take the easy way out, but she couldn’t be a coward. This was more than a mission. It was a commitment. An obligation. She would fulfill it herself.
Garrett Parker would die at her own hands.