Chapter Eight

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.” Thomas Jefferson

Kate arrived just in time for morning prayers the following day. She’d decided that a small prayer might help—or at least stop Teresa visiting. She spent the morning jumping at every sound, every alert, expecting to be arrested at any moment. But all remained quiet and, as the hours passed with no consequences, she relaxed.

There was no reason they should know of the deletion. She’d covered her tracks. She hoped.

An alert flashed up. Yellow, thank God. She didn’t know what she would do with the next green. Her mind hadn’t taken her that far. She pressed the key to run the alert through Auspex, expecting the usual negligible answer. Instead, a moment later, a message came up on the screen.

There is a 68 percent chance of Report 10245 resulting in terrorist activity that would be harmful to the American people.

She frowned, then re-ran the alert. And came up with the same result.

She pursed her lips, then downloaded the info dump to her screen. Most of it was just snippets of conversation. None of it made much sense to her or seemed particularly threatening. Then, halfway through, she came upon something she recognized.

Search term: atomic

Final test of Special Atomic Demolition Munitions completed.

That didn’t sound good. Weren’t they some sort of nuclear bomb? As far as she was aware, all nuclear devices had been destroyed decades ago. Why would anyone be testing them? Unless it was for some sort of terrorist attack.

She continued reading but found nothing of interest until close to the end.

Search term: Aaron Frome

Internet search performed by Stella Buchanan.

She stared at the name blankly for a long time. Of course it meant nothing. It was only an internet search—nothing incriminating. The chatter was always picking up pieces of information that were nothing but random snippets. Probably Stella had just been curious? Gideon’s return was bound to raise old memories. That was all it was. Stella was dedicated to the Loyalist Party. It was her whole life.

Kate’s head hurt.

It was likely that the search was somehow related to Stella’s job. If so, the agents at NTAC would just delete it from the log.

But what if it wasn’t? Even the hint of something like this was enough to devastate a person’s career. And worse. People had been known to disappear. Or be arrested and never heard of again. The whole family could be investigated.

She ran through the rest of the info dump, but there was nothing of interest.

What to do?

She screwed her eyes shut for a moment, but the information was still there when she opened them. Swallowing, she leaned forward, and her fingers flew across the keys as she deleted the lines mentioning her sister. Then she repeated the process in the encrypted files and placed the edited version in the folder to send to NTAC.

She sat back. She’d crossed another line.

Her fingers were shaking as she picked up her phone and swiped her sister’s number.

The call went straight to voice mail.

I can’t talk right now, but I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

“It’s Kate, call me when you get the chance.” She ended the call and stared at her phone, tapping her foot on the floor. She frowned. Thinking about it, she hadn’t heard from Stella all week, except a text cancelling lunch, which was unusual. Kate had been so caught up in what was going on with Auspex that she hadn’t thought too much about it. She flicked through the numbers and found Stella’s office. She called, and it was picked up immediately. “White House. Stella Buchanan’s office.”

“Hi, Sam, it’s Kate. I was trying to get hold of Stella but she’s not answering her private phone.”

“She’s away from the office this week. I think she and Joe are having a little together time.”

“Oh.” Why hadn’t she mentioned it? Joe was Stella’s husband. They’d been married for two years now. Joe was a nice man—though the total opposite of Gideon Frome—who had absolutely nothing to do with the Party, but Stella seemed happy with him. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Should be Monday. If she calls in, I’ll tell her you’re trying to get in touch.”

“Thank you.” She tried to shake off the feeling of unease. She’d never been unable to get in touch before.

That didn’t mean anything. They’d probably gone somewhere for some alone time. She knew Joe had a cottage just outside the city.

She flicked through her phone and found Joe’s number, but when she tried to call it, there was no signal. They must be at the cottage.

Either that or her perfect sister was involved in a code yellow alert.