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I DIDN’T KNOW WHETHER it was Manny’s irritated tone, the sound of a lot of people moving around or Colin softly talking to me that pulled me out of my shutdown. The moment I became aware of my surroundings, I also became aware of the numbness in my legs.
I opened my eyes and winced as I lowered my legs to the ground. Then I frowned. How had I got to the sofa in the living area of the Zemans’ house?
“I carried you here,” Colin said and I realised I had asked the question out loud. He took my hand.
“How long?”
“It’s now”—he glanced at his watch—“five past twelve.” He squeezed my hand when my eyes widened. I had been in a shutdown for three hours. “No worries. We just needed to make space for the first responders and then the hazmat team, so I brought you here. You wouldn’t let the paramedics touch you.”
I looked beyond him towards the front door. People in hazmat suits were moving around. More tension left my body when I noticed they weren’t wearing helmets and their nonverbal cues revealed no alarm. I looked back to where we were sitting and my frown deepened. Francine was sitting on the other sofa, her laptop on her lap. “Why are you here?”
“Hi to you too, girlfriend. It’s good to see you.” She raised one eyebrow and waited.
I sighed. “Hi, Francine. What are you doing here?”
Her smile was wide. “I came with Vin when you guys phoned. I didn’t think we were going to walk into this.”
“What is this?” I turned to Colin.
“A fucking house tried to kill you!” Vinnie stalked towards me from where he’d been pacing next to the patio doors and stopped next to Colin. “Do you have any idea how fucked up that is?”
“Easy, Vin.” Colin’s tone was gentle. “We’re okay.”
“Only by the skin of your teeth.” He swung around and walked back to the doors leading to the patio and paced from one side to the next, his posture stiff.
“Teeth have no skin.” I knew the expression, but like so many others it was ridiculous and almost impossible not to refute each time I heard it used.
Vinnie snorted and some of the tension left his body.
“Vinster is pissed that he wasn’t the one to save you guys.” Francine winked at Vinnie when he swore at her.
“Is she with us yet?” Manny didn’t give me the same courtesy as Vinnie. He walked right into my personal space and leaned over to stare into my face. “You okay, Doc?”
I pushed myself deeper against the back of the sofa. “I’ll be much better if you respect my space.”
A small smile tugged at the corners of Manny’s mouth. He straightened. “She’s back.”
He stepped away and sat down next to Francine. Only now did I take note of the deep stress lines etched next to his mouth and the dark rings under his eyes. “Manny, are you well?”
“Peachy, Doc.” He waved his hand at me. “I’m alive. We’re all alive and that’s all that counts.”
“I’m fine!” Bree’s husky voice travelled to us from deeper in the house. I turned in the sofa as she came out of a room and shook off a paramedic’s hand on her arm. She turned around. “Touch me again and you’re the one who’s going to need pain medication.”
He stepped back, both hands in the air. “Only trying to help, miss.”
“Oh, dammit.” Bree’s shoulders dropped and she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I know you’re doing your job, but that... that wasn’t fun.”
“Because you refused pain medication.”
“What the hell is going on?” Manny stood up and glared at them.
Bree turned to us and I gasped. Her left eye was swollen so much, she was looking at us through a slit. Almost parallel to her eyebrow was a long cut that had been stitched. The blood from this injury stained her beige blouse, making it look as if her injuries were of such severity she needed to be in a hospital.
“This... patient refused any painkillers when I stitched that cut.” The paramedic’s expression vacillated between admiration and exasperation.
“Yeah. Maybe next time I should. That hurt like a son of a bitch.” She leaned a bit towards him. “Thank you for doing it so quickly.”
“You’re welcome.” He turned and walked back into the room, shaking his head.
Bree looked at Manny, then at the rest of us. She put a chocolate-brown fedora on her head, pulled her shoulders back and walked towards us. “Hello, beautiful people. Miss me? Anyone have a cupcake by any chance?”
“Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?” Francine asked.
“Me? No. This is just a little scratch. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” I pointed at her face. “Your frontal bone could be fractured.”
“My what now?” Bree sat down on a wingback chair.
Manny stared at her for a few more seconds, then sat down next to Francine again.
“Your eye socket bone.” I tilted my head. “How did you get that injury? Did someone attack you?”
“Hah!” She laughed, then winced and pressed gingerly against her temple. “Hmm. I shouldn’t laugh. But yeah, I was attacked by an airbag.”
“Bree crashed her rental car through the front door like a boss.” The pride in Francine’s expression was unmistakable. “That’s when her airbag deployed and punched her in the face.”
I leaned back against the sofa, exhausted. “There’s so much wrong with what you just said.”
Francine’s smile was wide and relieved. “Everything I said is fabulous. Because Bree is a hero. She saved your lives.” She pressed her elbow into Manny’s side. “Yours too.”
“You can be glad you still have your teeth.” Vinnie stood next to Francine, his arms crossed in an uncommon display of discomfort. It appeared like he was trying to reach out to Bree, but was unsure how to relate to her. “And your nose isn’t broken. Those airbags are bastards—they can really pack a punch.”
Vinnie was right. I’d read an article about the dangers of airbags. They were triggered and deployed in an average of fifty milliseconds—less than the blink of an eye. It then immediately started deflating in order to absorb the shock and not act as a solid barrier to the passenger. Research had shown that people who were shorter or taller than average were at grave risk of injury when an airbag deployed. Vinnie and Colin were both above average height. It worried me. Yet the dangers were still outweighed by the safety provided by having something to cushion an impact.
I looked at Bree. “You purposely crashed your vehicle into the front door?”
“Yup.” Her lips twisted. “I just hope the insurance will cover this.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Colin looked at Francine and she nodded. He looked at Bree until she inclined her head. “We’ll take care of your car. You saved our lives. Thank you.”
“Any time.” Her micro-expressions revealed slight embarrassment at the attention, but also pride and relief.
I frowned. “How did you know we needed oxygen?”
She looked at Manny. “That one was shouting at me when I knocked on the front door.”
I hadn’t heard any of that.
“Hazmat has cleared the whole house.” Ivan walked in from the kitchen area and noticed me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m well.”
“Thanks.” Colin smiled at Ivan. “How’s your arm?”
Ivan glanced at the white bandage peeking from under his torn sleeve. “Didn’t need stitches, but that disinfectant stuff burned a swearword out of me.”
Colin chuckled, then sobered. “Did they find any evidence of the opioid weapon used in the hotel?”
“None.” Ivan sat down on the second wingback chair and glanced at Bree. “The ME looked at the Zemans and thinks they died from a lack of oxygen, but will confirm once he’s done a full autopsy.”
“Bloody house.”
“Yeah.” Vinnie was standing by the patio doors, but looked more relaxed. “Who would’ve thought we’d ever say that a house tried to kill you?”
“It wasn’t the house.” Francine’s expression and tone indicated that this was not the first time she’d said this. “How many times do I have to repeat myself? Technology is only as useful, effective or dangerous as the user and his or her skills.” She glanced at a panel against the wall next to one of the patio doors. “Shahab hacked the house and tried to kill you. The house didn’t do it by itself.”
Manny stared at Bree. “This doesn’t mean I trust you.”
“Hah!” Her smile was wide, pulling at her swollen eye. “You do. You trust me. And you like me.” She looked at Francine. “He likes me.”
“Bugger off, paparazza.”
Their bantering didn’t distract me from what Francine had said. I looked at her. “Do you have evidence that Shahab hacked the house?”
“Uh, not the kind you want.” She pointed at her laptop. “But the signs are all here. This is circumstantial, but seriously? At this point in the game, it’s really hard to not lay all this on Shahab.”
“My team agrees with Francine.” Ivan held out a hand towards Francine. “You tell them.”
“So, Ivan’s IT people are not too bad.” She smiled when Ivan loudly cleared his throat. “Maybe a little better than not too bad. They managed to get a lot done and only needed my help at the very end. But we did trace the computer that hacked the police station and deleted the footage of Tomas Broz and Bree. That computer was dumped in a public bathroom in a shopping mall in the northern parts of the city. And before you ask, Ivan’s team recovered it, but it’s completely destroyed. We won’t be able to get any data from it or any prints.”
“If it’s completely destroyed, how did you trace it?” This didn’t make sense to me.
Ivan smiled when Francine pointed at him. “My team traced it to its last location, didn’t find it there, looked at the CCTV footage and followed a teenager who was carrying a laptop to the shopping mall. He works for a delivery service and said a man paid him three hundred euros to dump it in the mall.”
“Shahab was one of the best the police had,” Daniel said from behind me. I twisted around. This was only the third time I’d seen him angry. “He would know how to take forensic countermeasures.”
“Bastard.” Manny turned to Ivan. “Did your team find the five people Shahab used as guinea pigs for his poison?”
Ivan nodded. “The ME had no problem pointing out the strange opioid deaths. These people had clearly died from an overdose, but they didn’t have any signs of prior use. And the ME noticed something peculiar in the toxicology report. He didn’t follow up on it, because then it just looked like a usual overdose. But now he’s running full tests on all of the victims.”
“I like Ivan’s team,” Francine said. “They’re good. They immediately ran with the names and found that three of those victims had worked at or donated to women’s shelters. The other two were rather loud activists for women’s rights.”
“He’s killing people helping women?” Bree’s levator labii superioris muscle raised her top lip in disgust. Vinnie swore and Bree nodded at him. “Sick, sick, sick.”
“I also got an initial report back from the ME.” Ivan glanced up. “He’s still busy with the Zemans, but will rush their toxicology tests as soon as he gets them to his office. The report he gave me is for the hotel victim. He was definitely killed by an opioid analogue, but they haven’t seen this specific analogue yet. They’re trying to identify it, but the ME says it’s more powerful and deadly than carfentanyl.”
“And carfentanyl is ten thousand times stronger than morphine. This is the drug Roxy said Doctor Jan wrote about in his journal.” Francine shook her head. “This has to stop.”
Daniel walked around the sofa and placed a photo frame on the coffee table in the centre of the area. “I found this when I walked through the house.”
Manny leaned forward and took it. A second later his eyes widened. “Holy Mother Mary and all the saints.”
“What’s that?” Francine leaned in and gasped. “I knew it!”
Manny turned the frame around for us to see. It was an enlargement of a Christmas photo. Radek and Marta were sitting at their dining room table laughing with two young people. It was easy to recognise Natálie as their daughter. She had all her mother’s features, but her father’s smile. Next to her with his arm around her was Jarda Zonyga, the man who’d died in the five-star hotel from the opioid weapon Doctor Novotný had created for Shahab.
“Well, I’ll be.” Colin rested his elbows on his knees and looked at Francine. “What do you know?”
“My Spidey sense was shouting at me, so I ran a check on everyone we’ve so far come across in the case. I wanted to see if anyone’s paths have intersected.” She turned her laptop for us to see the screen. “That’s when I came across this photo on Jarda’s social media. There’s only this one photo and she’s not clear in it, but I’m quite sure that the woman there is Natálie.”
The photo had been taken at a house party. Everyone was standing around a living room with a glass of alcohol in their hands. This didn’t look like a house party for friends. Most people were too formally dressed and their body language was too controlled and even withdrawn to display the kind of comfort people showed when with friends.
At the very left of the photo was a couple, the man smiling at the camera Jarda Zonyga. The woman was turned away and her long hair partially covered the side of her face. She was standing in Jarda’s arms, his one hand resting low on her back, the other on her waist. Her arms were around his neck. After seeing her in the Christmas photo, it was easy to identify her features. This was Natálie.
“I got curious and started digging.” Francine turned her laptop back. “Natálie and Jarda were a couple for almost six years, but ended it on very good terms last year. I spoke to his partner, who said that Jarda and Natálie were best friends. When they realised that the romance in their relationship was completely gone and they only loved each other as friends, they were determined to keep their friendship and not ruin it. They used to speak to each other at least once a week.”
“Hmm.” Manny scratched his cheek. “If Shahab is targeting people who help women, why target Jarda?” He looked at Francine. “Did he donate to some women’s something?”
“Nope. Nothing I found. And his partner said he didn’t know anything about Jarda’s personal finances. But it could be his connection to Natálie that painted a target on his back.” Francine’s laptop pinged. She looked at the screen and her eyes narrowed. “Slap a rainbow horn on my forehead and call me a unicorn.”
Manny sighed. “What now?”
“I’ve told you guys before that hackers often see themselves as artists. They like to sign their stuff. But not everyone does. Smart hackers won’t leave any trace that it was them, but that’s not always possible.”
“Get to the point.” Manny tapped his index finger on the sofa between them. “Now.”
“My point”—she rolled her eyes at Manny—“is that as humans we don’t realise when we form a habit. We don’t realise when our work becomes our signature. There is something very specific about certain hackers’ methods that makes it quite easy for me to tell whose work it is. I ran a program on the hacks of the police station and the house to compare the code. The person who hacked the police station is the same person who hacked this house. Shahab.”
I still wasn’t completely comfortable with the supposition without concrete evidence, but I agreed about the improbability of this being someone else. “That means he also killed the Zemans.”
“And so his list of victims grows.” Francine’s lips thinned.
“If you are now able to identify his method of hacking—” I stopped when she gasped.
“Oh, my God! Of course.” She bounced on the sofa. “I’m totally going to run a search for any other hacks he might be responsible for.”
This day had started with a visit to Tomas Broz and had continued with numerous revelations. Bits of information we’d gathered that had seemed disconnected were becoming clearer in their connection to the case. Yet I felt as if there was an as of yet undiscovered element that linked all these loose pieces.
One of those loose pieces was Bree. I studied her. She was quietly listening to us in a manner that I was becoming familiar with. “How did you know to find us here?”
“Huh?” She looked at me and blinked, then swallowed when everyone turned to look at her.
“Well?” Manny shifted to the edge of the sofa, scowling at Bree. “Answer her.”
“And while you’re at it, tell us about your burner phone.” Francine’s innocent expression was blatantly false.
“Research. That’s how I came here.” Bree looked at Francine then back at me. “And I use an untraceable phone because I’ve been an investigative journalist for many years and have learned not to trust anyone or anything. When it comes to technology, the police have shown themselves to be horribly disrespectful of my privacy. I have one phone that I use to make calls to respectable members of society. A phone that won’t be problematic if the police break into it.”
“And you have another phone for your less kosher contacts.” Francine nodded. “That way you can protect your sources and also stay out of trouble.”
“Not always successfully, I might add.”
“How did you get here?” I wasn’t interested in her investigative methods. Not at the moment.
“I heard you guys talking about a Shahab guy. You also mentioned Hatami the first time we met. So I did some digging.” She ignored Manny’s swearing. “It wasn’t hard to find out that he was part of the team that worked with you on a case last year. I have a friend at Interpol who told me that he’s been on the most wanted list for a year now.
“So I got in touch with a colleague in Iran. And no, I’m not going to tell you anything about him. He’s Iranian and works for a state media outlet. He does everything the government demands of him. But in his private time, he sends to a select few internationally renowned journalists the information he gets from the many people who want the unofficial tyranny to stop.”
“He uses the dark web?” Francine asked.
Bree nodded. “That’s one of the great things about the dark web. It’s enabled him to shine light on a few terrible issues that the Iranian government doesn’t want the world to know about. Well, I asked him if he knew about a Shahab Hatami, who is now on the most wanted list. He came back to me almost immediately, but gave me very little. He said he would find out more and send it to me.
“What he did tell me was that Shahab Hatami got extremely angry when he was overlooked for a promotion a bunch of years ago. The next week he started his drug-smuggling business. He stayed in law enforcement because that helped him to become very successful with his drug trade. But something happened seven years ago that broke him.
“My contact said that rumours are that he lost someone close to him. It’s suggested that this event was the trigger that turned him into a psychopath. He carried on for a while, but some years after that he changed once again. He and his teammates were watching a travel documentary when he lost his mind. It took four of them to hold him down until he calmed enough to be sent home.”
“What travel documentary?” Colin asked.
“It was about Prague and the surrounding areas. The scene that made him lose his marbles was one with a lot of people on Charles Bridge. No one knew what he saw and he refused to say anything.”
“You’re lying.”
She huffed a laugh. “Man, I was about to correct myself. He didn’t say anything more about the documentary, but when his bosses pushed him about his behaviour, he just said it was about Chabahar.”
“Stop!” Ivan jumped up and looked towards the front door where the hazmat team were packing up. He sat down again and lowered his voice. “Not here.”
Manny stared at him. “Are you finally going to tell us what the hell you’ve been hiding?”
Ivan nodded, concern pulling at his features. “But not here.”
“Well, she said she’s hungry.” Vinnie pointed at Bree and took a step towards the patio doors. “And my Roxy is all alone in our hotel room still reading through Jan Novotný’s journal.”
“Good idea.” Daniel got up. “We’ll meet you guys at the hotel.”
I took my time studying Bree, Daniel, Manny and Ivan. Daniel didn’t appear to know what Ivan was about to share with us. And Manny’s superior rank in an international agency apparently hadn’t assisted him in gaining the needed information from Ivan’s bosses either. Bree only exhibited curiosity. She didn’t know.
I got up. I needed to know what this information was. I needed to find out if this was the missing piece tying it all together.
