H
e moved outside the bar, away from the road, and finally chose an alley behind the restaurant as a quiet and secluded location appropriate for taking a call from Anja.
When he answered the damn thing and put it to his ear, he could already hear the Russian hacker. She sounded angry and cussed at him for a few seconds in Russian before she reverted to English.
“Goddamnit, Savage. Don’t you answer your fucking phone anymore?” she asked but didn’t slow enough for him to slip an answer past her barrage of assumedly foul language. “What, are you in the middle of something? I think you can take a couple of minutes out of your busy schedule of picking up skanky drunk chicks to answer your damn phone.”
Savage nodded. “I was…with company.”
“Are you on a date right now?” Anja asked.
“I…no,” Savage said. It wasn’t a lie, not really. He and Coleman had both agreed that it wasn’t a date.
“You do know I can look you up based on the GPS signal on your phone and simply look into the security cameras, right?” she asked and revealed the reason why he really regretted having lied. If he’d simply said he was at a bar hooking up with someone, she probably wouldn’t have gone further than to berate him a little more. That much, at least, was evident by
the fact that she hadn’t tried to find a camera view of him already.
“Aw, is that Dr. Coleman? Jessica?” she asked and confirmed that she’d already accessed the camera feeds. “I really liked her. What happened between you two kids anyway?”
“That’s none of your business,” he retorted and paced the alley in irritation. “And before you threaten me with hours wasted on digging through my personal life, might I ask if there was a point to you calling me repeatedly?”
“Oh, right,” the hacker said with a chuckle like she had almost forgotten the matter in light of more intriguing possibilities. “I have sleeper programs in place all over the databases in the US government. The purpose is to make sure they don’t access certain files and break out certain documents I would rather they keep secret. I would explain, but there’s no time for that. The down and dirty of it is that your personal file in the Pentagon has been raided.”
“I have a personal file in the Pentagon?” Savage frowned as he considered that. He’d thought his tracks had been covered more efficiently.
“Well, Jeremiah Savage doesn’t have much in the way of anything like files anywhere,” she said. “You’re welcome for that, by the way, and thanks for taking such good care of your online profiles. It’s surprisingly easy to keep you off the books. Anyway, Savage is a ghost. Jeremiah Johnson, on the other hand, has a number of files in place—as the Pentagon usually does since they like to keep thorough tabs on the killers they’ve spent millions and millions of dollars training and developing.”
“Okay,” he said. “Were you able to stop it?”
“I can’t stop anything,” Anja grumbled. “Any action on my part would raise all kinds of red flags that would have the government databases swept for the bugs I’ve put in all over
the place. In addition, it still wouldn’t stop someone from accessing the files after the sweeps have been done. No, I couldn’t fucking stop them, Jer.”
“There’s no need to get snippy. What kind of damage are we talking about? I’m supposed to be dead, right? Everyone thinks I’m dead. That was the whole point of faking my death.”
“Well, I did a little back-tracking on that, actually, and found a few problems.” She tapped her keyboard and rocked on the office chair that squeaked loudly enough for him to hear. He wasn’t sure if he missed or dreaded the sound these days. “Right, they didn’t come looking for your files—not directly, anyway. They ran a database-wide search based on a photo. I can’t tell, but it looks like a selfie with you in the background that I must have missed. I really hate the information age sometimes. Selfie cameras have a far higher res than when I was growing up.”
“Isn’t your expertise based on the information age, though?” Savage asked.
“I said sometimes,” Anja corrected herself. She sounded annoyed and frustrated, and it had been a while since he had heard her like that. “Anyway, I was able to take a peek at what they were looking for—which turns out to be basic shit about your past. They seemed to know what they were looking for, too, and selected your service record, the people you served with, where you served, the people who trained you and who you trained with, your family, place of birth… Essentially anything they could get their hands on, I suppose. It sounds like someone is working Sun Tzu’s method of knowing their enemy.”
For a second, he couldn’t hear anything she said. A ringing sound filled his ears, and he wondered briefly if it was the tinnitus he had previously been treated for. He dropped to his haunches in the middle of the alley when the reaction in his ears was joined by the suddenly erratic beating of his heart in
his chest. He had a hard time breathing, and he couldn’t tell if this was a heart attack or not. The doctor had said it was one of the very rare side effects of the medication he was on. Considering that he had all but ignored their suggestion to avoid alcohol while on his painkillers, he might have increased the risk of something really bad happening.
Savage extended his free hand in front of his eyes. In the dim streetlight seeping into the alleyway, he could see it trembling. This was a new feeling and perversely, it brought a small, distant smile. He’d faced fear before and always had the faith that his training and his abilities, as well as the help of his support, would be there to give him a chance at survival. Fear wasn’t necessarily a bad thing since it did have the side effect of pumping his body full of adrenaline, which made him faster, sharper, and better overall at what he did.
But this wasn’t fear. This was something he had always been told to avoid since it was what would get him and anyone who depended on him killed.
This was panic. Pure, unadulterated, body-freezing panic. There wasn’t anything to train you in what to do when your family was suddenly in the crosshairs of killers the likes of which seemed to gather around Carlson and his goons.
“Jer? Savage, are you still there?” Anja said, her tone concerned, but he needed a moment to collect himself before he spoke again. He dragged in a deep breath and went through the effective mental techniques he’d committed to memory and which usually calmed him when he was too worked up. While he’d never quite had this situation in mind, he assumed they would have a positive effect.
After what seemed an eternity, his heart still pounded in his chest like a runaway rabbit but the shaking had ceased and he could hear again.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” Savage said and winced when he heard his voice was cracked and soft. “That part about my
family—did they get all the details on them?”
“From what I can see, yes. They got everything,” she replied. “I can’t find anything specific, though. I was locked out of the ‘names’ sections of the files. Why do you ask?”
“Because it sounds like someone is coming after me,” he said and cleared his throat roughly to bring his voice to his normal pitch. “And given the history of the people we’re up against, I think they’ll try to use my family and the people I care about against me.”
A long and very tense silence ensued and he could tell she thought about asking him who it was he thought might be in danger from the information that was now out in the open. He wouldn’t talk about it if she asked because he wasn’t ready for it. His entire world seemed to have been upended and he hung onto sanity by the barest of threads. Quite simply, he didn’t know what he would do if he was pressed. It could be anything from rampaging through the restaurant or stealing the nearest car and driving all the way to Seattle. He needed a moment to collect his wits and gather himself physically. The priority was to pull himself together—for the sake of his family if not his own.
“What will you do, Savage?” Anja asked suddenly, her tone worried.
“I can’t simply charge off,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I need to know what I’m doing and take a moment to think and plan before I act. This is not the time to act impulsively.”
“That sounds about right, yes,” she affirmed.
“Can you track down where the leak came from?” Savage asked once he’d managed to slot his brain back into the cold, compartmentalized place he took so much pride in. “A name or a location—something for me to start unraveling this thread.”
“I’m working on it,” she said. “I’ll call you back when I know
more.”
“Thanks, Anja, you’re the best.” His voice was satisfyingly steady and he pressed the end call button. First things first, he decided. Coleman was still in the restaurant, ordering dessert he didn’t have an appetite for anymore. He wasn’t sure how he would break the news to her.
Honestly, he didn’t even know if he would.
His numb fingers fumbled to shove his phone back in his pocket but he finally succeeded on the third try and made his way into the restaurant again. He ignored the noise and the other patrons as he walked over to where she was still seated.
“Jer, there you are. I couldn’t decide on the chocolate lava cake or the mousse, so I ordered both and thought we could share and see which one was better,” she said and turned to face him. She quickly realized that sharing a dessert was the last thing on his mind when she saw his face. “Hey…is everything okay?”
Savage opened his mouth and actually considered simply telling her the truth. My ex-wife, her new fiancé, and my kid have had their connection to me revealed to the kinds of people who actually attack families to get at the people they want out of the way.
He shut his mouth again and stood silently behind his chair.
“What happened, Savage?” Coleman asked and pushed up from her seat. “What did Anja want?”
“Something’s come up,” he said softly and gripped the back of his chair firmly enough that the whites of his knuckles were visible. “I…can’t say what it is exactly, but the fact remains that I need to leave right away to take care of it. I know we didn’t get around to talking about what we scheduled this dinner for, so I’ll have to rain check you on that one. And I won’t be able to take you up on that dessert either.”
She nodded and touched his shoulder gently. “I understand, Jer, and that’s fine. I think we both know I can wolf down anything made of chocolate in no time flat.”
He smirked, which was all the mirth he really had time for as he located his wallet in his pocket and withdrew the necessary bills to cover his half of the check, a generous tip included.
“Let me know if you need my help,” Coleman said, her voice laced with real concern. “Believe it or not, my time working for Monroe has brought me a fair number of contacts in all kinds of walks of life.”
Savage nodded. “Thanks, I might actually take you up on that.”
“Be safe, Jer,” she whispered and he turned to make his way outside. He knew he wouldn’t really enlist her help or be safe, so there was no real point in pretending otherwise. His was a very dangerous line of work, and if he had to do what needed to be done to keep his family safe, he had to put himself in harm’s way.
Being safe wasn’t really an option.
He stepped into his car and stared at the steering wheel for a second before he yelled as loudly and as hard as he could into it. His vocal protest continued until his lungs were empty and he leaned his head into the horn, gently enough that it didn’t sound off. He needed the release, even if only for a few seconds, before he could regain his focus, start the car, and head home to pack.