“I told you?” Mason stared at his wife, wanting to tell her that she was an optimistic crazy person. He knew better, though. For one, he wouldn’t have married a crazy woman who latched onto unsupported optimism. For another, in the short time he’d come to re-know Denny, he’d learned all over again how smart and capable she was.
If she said that he told her, he must have told her. And under the circumstances, the fact that he couldn’t remember didn’t mean a whole hell of a lot.
“So when exactly did I tell you? And what exactly did I say?”
She reached out and took his hand, then eased close to him for a kiss. “You told me in that brilliant note of yours.” Her delighted laugh caught him off guard, washing away the building worry. Maybe they really would get the antidote in time. “Want me to explain how brilliant you were?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I really do.”
“First of all, calling yourself The Master. Innocuous, right? But it’s a clue. Only not the kind you’d see until you saw the other clue. They go together.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Now you’re just toying with me.”
She shook her head and pulled out her phone, then passed it to him, the screen showing an image of the note.
“Burn hotter than a shooting star,” she read, looking at the screen with him. “That’s another clue. And last longer than eternity. Taken together, they lead right over there.” She pointed to a shelf in the corner with at least two dozen cans of paint.
He headed over to the shelf and started reading off the paint names. “Moonrise. Nightfall. Shooting Star.” He shook his head, still clueless. “They all deal with night?”
“Good guess, but no. Longer than eternity is the clue that tells me you’re talking about paint.” She grinned. “You don’t remember, but before you left on assignment, I bitched about how we should have waited to buy the paint until you got back—remember, we never expected you’d be gone so long.”
“And I told you that paint’s not like eggs.” He remembered. It was fuzzy, but he remembered.
Her eyes widened, and she nodded slowly. “Yes. You said—”
“—there were so many chemicals in paint that an unopened can would probably last longer than eternity.” He pressed his fingertips to his temple and started to idly rub. “Denny, oh my God.”
“I know, right? You did this. You sent me a message, and I was too dense to even think about looking for one.”
“And when you said that The Master was a clue, it meant that we were talking about colors we picked out for our bedroom?” He said it as a question because he didn’t remember, but that seemed to make sense.
She nodded. “And as for shooting star…” She pointed to the shelf, where three quart-size cans of off-white trim paint sat in a row. “The walls are going to be a pale, pale blue. You said this would be a perfect complement.”
“I don’t believe it.” His words were barely a whisper. “Whatever we’re looking for is in one of those cans.”
“Is that a memory or a guess?”
He squeezed her hand. “A guess. But I think it’s a good one.”
“Me, too.”
They looked at the cans together for a moment, then she shrugged and grabbed a flat head screwdriver from a box of tools. “So now we open and dump?”
“That one,” he said, pointing to the one closest to him. “See? Looks like one of us cracked the lid.”
She nodded, grabbed it off the shelf, then used the screwdriver to pop the lid off. “It’s just paint,” she said, peering into the can.
He passed her a bucket. “Let’s waste some paint, shall we?”
“With pleasure.” She upended it, the paint dripped out, and there, in the stream, a small plastic baggie slid out, too, then landed in the bucket with a plop.
He used two fingers to pull it out, and then laid it on a sheet of plastic set up beneath a sawhorse.
“There’s another bag inside it,” she said, after returning with a damp sponge and wiping off the goo.
Careful not to get paint inside the bag, they opened the seal, then pulled out five nested bags.
“You weren’t taking any chances,” she said, and he silently agreed.
Finally, they were down to the end, and he held up the small device. “A flash drive.”
“Do we need to check it?”
He shook his head, wincing as the low-thud of a headache started to beat behind his eyes. “It’s the encryption key. I remember.”
* * *
Mason stared at the map on the burner phone the Face had left with Denny. A pin marked a set of coordinates in East Los Angeles. Then he read aloud the message that made his gut twist. The message that he and Denny had privately discussed for five full minutes before calling the information in to the SOC:
Send the woman and the key to this location.
Alone.
Surveil her, she dies.
Follow, she dies.
Disobey, she dies.
Cooperate, she will be treated and returned.
When he was finished reading, silence hung in the room. Then a voice came over the speaker of Mason’s phone.
“And there’s no way to reverse-engineer the antidote’s formula from that key?” The question was posed by General Montero, a member of the oversight committee responsible for policing the SOC. Mason hadn’t been thrilled when Seagrave put him on the line. In Mason’s experience, bringing in retired officers tagged with oversight to spec out missions was a universally bad idea.
“No sir,” Mason said, hating wasting time going over information again. “I sabotaged their mainframe. I didn’t steal the formula. Once they have the key, they can decrypt the formula, manufacture the antidote and vaccine, and sell them to the government and consumers.”
“Why haven’t they already released the toxin into the food supply?”
“Their plan requires the antidote,” he said. As the only SOC agent in the room, he was doing the talking. As far as the General was concerned, Denny was simply a civilian.
“They don’t think of themselves as terrorists,” he continued. “They’re entrepreneurs. They want to create a threat and profit off of providing the solution. And sir, I remember now what the toxin does.” He drew in a breath, hating the thought of the toxin biding its time in Denny’s blood, a horrific threat hanging over her and their child.
“It destroys tissue, sir,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “Breaks it down completely. Basically, it makes Ebola look like a bad case of the flu.”
“Good God.” That curse came from Seagrave.
Beside Mason, Denny went pale. He took her hand, and he watched as she drew a breath and straightened her shoulders. She wanted to break down—he was certain of it. And he was equally certain she wasn’t going to. The woman was amazing. More than that, she was his.
And he wasn’t about to lose her again.
“This organization can’t give in to terrorist tactics.” Montero’s deep voice boomed across the line, firm and authoritative. “As I understand, Agent Marshall has not yet entered the final twenty-four hours prior to infection. That means we have time.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but that means we’re lucky. I beg you not to squander this opportunity.”
“We won’t,” he said. “Reply that you accept their demand. Then forward us the coordinates. We’ll send a team to intercept their transport. I assure you, we’ll obtain the antidote.”
“And if you don’t? They’re going to start shipping out their tainted preservative. It’s going to go into commerce. They’ll offer the antidote for sale right away, but folks tainted early won’t believe. They’ll get the antidote too late or not at all. And these bastards are counting on that. They need to make the news. They need a huge scare and bloody, gooey deaths. Because that will drive up the price of the antidote and the vaccine.”
“I think you’re aware of the skill level of this organization. And for a threat like this, we’ll take extraordinary measures to stop the toxin from leaving their facilities.”
“And get Denise Marshall killed in the process?” Rage underscored Mason’s words.
“Agent Marshall understands that this office must focus on the big picture. If we utilize this opportunity to send in a full team, we can shut them down. This toxin cannot be permitted to enter the chain of commerce. Not with an antidote. Not without an antidote. Not at all.”
“Denise Marshall is no longer with the SOC. You’re destroying her chance of getting the antidote in time. You’re putting a civilian’s life at risk and—”
“You have your orders, Agent Walker. Forward the coordinates.”
He looked at Denny, and she looked back evenly, her expression flat and emotionless. A agent calling on all her training so as to not give a single thing away.
But they’d talked about this. The risks. The possible outcomes.
They’d talked, and he knew what he had to say now. As much as he hated what was going to happen, he knew what he had to do.
“I’m sorry, General,” Mason said. “We’re going to handle this my way.”