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By the time Kendra hit the sidewalk, the bells at a nearby church were tolling. When she got closer, she saw frightened people streaming in, looking for refuge, for solace.
She lingered for only a moment before moving on.
She headed west, away from the city centre, towards Ponsonby.
She wanted to put some distance between herself and the red zone, yes, but she also needed to get someplace where the traffic was free-flowing.
As she brisk-walked, Kendra thought back to the GPS navigation unit that she had found in the operators’ car.
She thought about Ryan’s parents.
What do they have to do with any of this? Are they involved? If so, how much?
She didn’t like the implications, and worse still, she couldn’t just ring up Deirdre Raines and seek clarification. As defiant as it was – as irrational as it was – she didn’t want Section One to get involved here. Because they couldn’t help her. Not with their fucking bureaucracy and rules and duplicity.
Kendra raked her hand through her hair, face pinched.
But... there was one person, at least, she could reach out to.
Getting out her phone, she used it to log into a darknet portal, and from there, into an email account she had set up years ago. It was designed for contingencies just like this one.
Kendra typed out a message to Jim Braddock.
Are they pitching up the circus tent today? Came across four clowns just now, and they didn’t look too funny. The acrobat tossing the knives was funny, though.
Kendra included her phone number and attached the photo she had taken of the dead operators, Thomas Cronin and Peter Wong. Then she saved the message as a draft and logged out.
The virtual cut-out was the perfect way to avoid detection. Because nothing was actually transmitted over the wider internet, the chances of interception were slim, and since Kendra was using a prepaid, disposable SIM on her phone, only Jim would be able to call her back. And when he did, he would be savvy enough to use a disposable SIM of his own.
Any contact between them would be off the radar.
Jim had been out of the service a long time, but he still had the inside juice on covert ops, and if there were rumblings on the circuit, he would know about it.
Kendra had faith that her mentor would give her a straight-up answer.
Still, she wasn’t sticking around to wait for his reply.
There wasn’t time.
She reached the New World supermarket at Freemans Bay. She skirted around it, and finally – finally – the streets ahead looked open and clear.
She flagged down a passing taxi. ‘Remuera, please.’