––––––––
I rapped my knuckles on Nami’s metal door. “Housekeeping.”
“Eat me,” she called from within the office.
The door opened a moment later.
“You know, I can’t get any goddamn work done if I have to deal with you two clowns all day. If I have to answer this door every five seconds, I’m going to go postal.”
Drew ignored her rant. “Did they grant your access to DHS databases yet?”
“Some of them, yeah. FBI and DEA criminal databases too. Not all of them though, obviously.”
“Good. We need you to look someone up.” Drew walked past her, disappearing through the next door.
“Come on in,” Nami said sarcastically. “I have all the time in the world to look random crap up for you guys. It’s not like I’m in here trying to recover data from burned and crushed hard drives or—”
“Stop your bitching.” I stepped into the office, closed the door behind me. “You won’t be the one getting shot at when we find Smith.”
Nami paused. “That’s a decent point, Gigantor.”
Another anime played on one of her monitors. A small Japanese girl had giant tentacles wrapped around her on the screen.
Drew stared at it. “Jesus, Nami. What in the hell are you watching in here?”
“It’s a brilliant series about—”
“That was a rhetorical question, Short Round.” I sat in a chair opposite her desk.
“Oh. Well, fuck you too.” Nami hopped in her seat, spun around so she faced her desk. “Who do you need me to look up?”
“Her name is Christie Tolbert. She lives in D.C.” Drew held his phone out so Nami could see the screen. “This is her phone number.”
Nami brought up a window on her computer.
She went to Facebook.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You can check up on your boyfriend later.”
Nami showed me her middle finger over her shoulder. “Don’t sass me, dick cheese. Assuming she’s a plain old civilian, Facebook will have a much more accurate profile of her than any law-enforcement database. And it’ll be a hell of a lot faster. We’ll know everything about her in seconds.”
“Nice thinking,” Drew said. “We should’ve had you on the payroll in homicide.”
“You couldn’t afford me.”
I sat behind them in my own little Luddite world. Maybe I did need to sign up for some of those old-lady classes about the Internet. I never would have thought of using Facebook to look up someone.
Because I was old, I guessed.
Christ, I needed a beer.
“Got her.” Nami leaned back, crossed her arms over her chest. “Hashtag—huzzah.”
Christie’s profile picture showed her standing behind a bar in a provocative uniform, a pitcher of beer held in each hand.
“My kind of woman.” I leaned forward. “So why would she be calling Drew?”
Nami scrolled through her feed, finding nothing. “Dunno. She’s a bartender. Seems kind of unhappy with her job, judging by her posts.”
“If she’s a bartender, then she might have been on the subway this morning if she worked really late.” Drew drummed his fingers on Nami’s desk. “Is the security footage from the attack available yet?”
“I haven’t checked. I’ve had to answer the door every five seconds this morning.” Nami looked up at Drew. “Vamanos, Baldie.”
He took a big step backward.
Nami grabbed her desk and shoved herself to the right. Her chair rolled along plastic on the floor. She slid down to the next desk where she grabbed hold, stopping in front of another computer.
“This is on the SIPRnet. I can’t access the other federal databases unless I use this connection. It’s kind of a pain in the ass.” Nami grinned at me over her shoulder. “I look pretty cool sliding around the office though, right?”
“You and I have very different definitions of cool.”
“Definitions? That’s a four-syllable word. You feel okay after using that?”
“I hate all of you.” I got up, walked over to her.
Looked over her shoulder at the monitor.
Nami’s fingers worked their magic across the keyboard.
She went to a sparse-looking website.
Logged in.
Tapped away at a series of screens so quickly that I didn’t have time to read them.
I was starting to get seriously concerned that I might in fact be a total moron. She and Drew were operating on another level. Was I always so stupid or did the drinking and traumatic brain injury make things worse?
The urge to flex in their faces hit me. I fought it though, not wanting to make them incredibly jealous of my beautiful, sculpted muscles.
I was still more awesome than they were.
Obviously.
Drew rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows, exposing his mangled wrist.
Nami glanced at it. “How’s the Freddy Krueger joint doing, anyway?”
“Getting better. My fingers still tingle, but I’m getting movement back.”
“The scars are unholy.”
“My wrist-modeling career is probably over.”
More screens zipped by. More clicks came from the mouse.
Then another window popped up.
“Got it,” Nami said. “Looks it just went up twenty minutes ago. What do you want to see?”
“Skip to the attack, then backtrack thirty seconds.”
The video showed a relatively quiet subway platform. Commuters stood around, waiting for the train to arrive. Everything seemed fine, calm.
Nami moved the cursor over a timeline on the bottom of the video and worked her way through until chaos erupted. She clicked a little further back until everything was relaxed in the window again.
All three of us leaned closer to the screen.
After thirty seconds or so, a group of men in suits appeared at the bottom of a staircase in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Most of them wore gray; one was in black.
“The Man in Black.” My jaw clenched at the sight of him.
“You make him sound like he’s the boogeyman,” Nami said.
“He and I have unfinished business.”
I wanted to punch holes in the walls.
Anger flooded me as I watched the men walk across the platform.
I remembered the brawl I’d engaged in with the Man in Black in the hallway of a hotel. He’d beat the ever-living crap out of me. I’d chocked him unconscious and stomped on his face. Good times were had by all.
That human-waste-of-space had worked as Smith’s right-hand man for as long as I’d been involved in this craziness. His fingerprints were all over everything wrong that had happened in my life over the past year.
Sammy’s blood stained his hands.
Yours, Asher. My blood stains your hands.
I swallowed a knot that had formed in my throat.
A pen on the desk in front of me began to shake.
I watched it, my anger boiling. My vision tunneled as I stared it. Everything around me slipped into darkness.
Let it go, Asher. Let your anger go.
The pen vibrated violently, clattering on the wood surface.
Let it go.
It zipped off the desk and smashed into the wall behind it.
From far off, miles away, I heard Drew calling out to me.
His voice got louder, punching through a fog that had descended around me.
Hands grabbed my shoulders, spun me around.
I glared at him.
“Ash?” Drew shook me. “Can you hear me?”
The rage that encompassed me pulled back a bit. I closed my eyes, forced in a deep, shaky breath.
“Can you hear me?” Drew squeezed my shoulder with his good hand so hard that it hurt. He still had a lot of strength left.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I hear you. Stop squeezing my shoulder like it’s little Drew when you’re alone on a Saturday night.”
“What the hell just happened to you?” Drew asked. His grip eased up, though he didn’t outright release me.
I opened my eyes, saw both of them gaping at me.
Drew was concerned.
Nami was scared.
“Sorry,” I said. “Seeing him really pissed me off.”
“You went full Bruce Banner.” Nami watched suspiciously. “And then you mind fucked my poor pen.”
Drew asked, “Did you move the pen on purpose?”
“No... yes... sort of. It started moving without me even thinking about it. It flew off the desk when I focused.”
“I thought you couldn’t control it?”
“Usually I can’t.”
Drew finally let go of me. “You really spaced out there. It looked like you were going to trash the room. What’s going on, man?”
“I—” I thought about it for a second, wondering if I should just tell them about Sammy playing the bongos inside my head. “I’m good.”
“If that’s good, then I don’t want to see bad. You and I have been in the lowest of lows, Ashley, and I’ve never seen you like that before. So don’t give me that crap. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
My resolution returned. I straightened out, squared my shoulders. “I’m good. Just want to catch these bastards. That’s all.”
I didn’t need to be a telepath to see that neither one of them believed me. Drew couldn’t read minds, but he knew a lie when he heard one. The guy was a walking polygraph machine.
After several uncomfortable seconds, they both decided to drop it. I knew Drew would jump on me again when we were alone though. He was a dogged SOB. Guessed he had to be with that whole detective shtick.
Nami had paused the video when I freaked out. She started it again, and we watched Smith’s flunkies walk across the platform. A train eased to a stop and the doors opened.
And then all hell broke loose.
The Man in Black and his Merry Band of Assholes skinned a few pistols and turned the place into the O.K. Corral. They lit up the train with a hail of gunfire. Commuters freaked out.
“Pause it,” Drew said. “Who are they shooting at? Do we have any footage from inside the train?”
“Hang on.” Nami performed more digital fu and another video popped up. “We do, but the quality is ass. Looks like they recorded it on a potato.”
The camera appeared to be stationed in the corner of one end of the train car. It was in black and white and as grainy as a field of wheat.
Drew inched even closer to the screen.
Nami played the video.
There was no sound.
A few people were scattered throughout the car. In the middle sat a man with a thick, unkempt beard. He had the look and style of a former spec ops something or other.
“That’s our player.” I leaned over Nami. “But who the hell is he?”
A woman in a skimpy outfit walked into view, moving away from the camera. She sat across from the man. As she took a seat, we caught a view of her face.
Even though the video had the quality of an 80’s porno, we could all see who it was.
Christie Tolbert, bartender extraordinaire.
“Bingo.” Drew reached into his coat, which he’d tossed across the back of a chair. He pulled out a tiny pad of paper and jotted some notes on it. “The pieces are coming together.”
When the time in the video of the train caught up with the one on the platform, we watched as the man in the car returned fire. He pulled Christie down, and they had some kind of exchange.
The three of us huddled together, giving the monitor our rapt attention. We were kids watching our first horror movie when our parents finally let us stay up late.
The bearded hombre kept speaking to her even as she tried to move away from him. Something passed between them.
“What is that?” Drew asked.
“Looks like a thumb drive,” Nami said.
We rewound the video a few times, but we couldn’t be certain. I wasn’t sure rewinding was really a thing anymore, was it? It wasn’t like we were watching a tape. Man, I probably should check my mail to see if my first Social Security check had arrived. Maybe I could catch an early-bird dinner soon.
Christie and the bearded man each put earbuds in before storming out of the train. He was dragging her along behind him.
Nami switched the video to the security camera on the platform.
The Man in Black had some kind of a device in his hand.
“That must be what they used to transmit the signal,” Nami said. “That’s scary as shit.”
I had to concur. CAIS had created an encryption system that would supposedly protect our cell phones, but that wouldn’t do anything if a maniac could drive down the street with a megaphone and infect everyone within earshot.
At least that would keep the problem local and stop them from getting an entire city at once. I guessed. Seeing the bright side wasn’t easy when dealing with those jerkweeds.
We continued watching as everyone but the men in suits, Christie, and the bearded wonder all went stiff. The man eventually went down under a barrage of bullets.
Christie escaped and called Drew later.
“Balls.” Nami stopped the video. “Guess we should find her.”
Drew was already punching her number into his phone.
He held it to his ear, listened in silence for almost twenty seconds before cursing and ending the call. “Straight to voice mail.”
“If we found out who she is, then you can bet your ass that Smith can.” I pursed my lips. “They might have her already.”
“I don’t know what he handed her, but if it was important enough for Smith’s right-hand man to make an appearance, then it must be something big.” Drew turned to me. “I’ll call down to D.C. P.D. and get some officers to her apartment to see if they can bring her in. You get the team together. We need to head down there in case Smith’s men show. I’ll fill Nelson in and get approval for an op.”
I nodded. My teeth were grinding. “Hopefully, our guys are ready.”
“And girl,” Nami said.
“They better be.” Drew grabbed his jacket. “Time to saddle up.”