Ghost Rendition Read online

  He fired again as I swiveled in his direction to return fire, but Caroline messed up my shot. She had entered the room while it was dark and she dove into me at full speed. My shot went high. Caroline took the Suit’s bullet.

  She landed hard, her head bouncing off the floor. Her momentum knocked me down too. By the time I popped up, the Suit had fled out the back door. I didn’t have to check to make sure the Russian was dead. The cage was pooled with blood. Caroline was doing her share of bleeding too.

  Pratt ran into the room, saw all the blood and started retching.

  “Where are you hit?” I asked Caroline.

  She pointed to her shoulder. She was groggy, probably had a concussion.

  “We’ll get you out on the street and call 911. Tell them it was a mugging gone wrong. In this neighborhood they’ll believe it.”

  “No hospital. Westfield will be watching them. You take care of it.” The concussion had her slurring her words.

  “I’m not a doctor.”

  “I’m not a patient. Do a field dressing and take me home.”

  “It’s filthy in here. You could get infected.”

  “Do it!”

  She was impossible to argue with. It reminded me of Suzanne. The bullet had sliced through the top of her left shoulder, no arteries had been hit. She would survive if I didn’t screw it up too badly.

  “Take off your shirt,” I said to Pratt.

  He managed to stop gagging long enough to unbutton it and hand it to me.

  “Give me a cuff link,” I added.

  I pressed the side of the cuff link and the blade popped out. I used it to cut his shirt into strips and then wrapped the wound with them. The idea was to keep enough pressure on it to control the bleeding but not enough that it cut off her circulation.

  “Don’t be a pussy. You can make it tighter than that.” She growled something that sounded like “Tchaaaa” to punctuate her point.

  I’d never heard that one. She probably knew how to curse in more languages than I did. I peered into Caroline’s eyes. She was responsive and could follow my finger when I moved it in front of her. She definitely had a concussion and probably mild shock, but I didn’t see signs of a brain bleed. I dressed the wound, which slowed the bleeding, but we still had to get her out of there. If I were the Suit, I would either stake out a building tall enough that I had a shot at us whether we came out the front or the back, or the roof of the pet shop. I peered out the back and then the front door. Riflescopes can catch the light if you’re not careful. I didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean much. The Suit was a pro. I scooped Caroline up and carried her to the front of the store.

  “I can walk,” she protested.

  “I just got you bandaged. I’m not going to let you start bleeding all over the place again.”

  “You have a terrible bedside manner,” she said.

  I put her down by the front door and took off my vest.

  “If our friend is out there, he wants you alive,” I said to Pratt. “You’re going to put her in a fireman’s carry. I’m going to drape my vest over her. And you’re going to carry her to the car. It’s only a few feet. Can you do that?”

  “I’m stronger than I look,” he said.

  “Let’s hope so. The vest won’t leave him much of a target. Anything exposed should be too close to your head for him to get a comfortable shot, but you still want to move quickly.”

  “I don’t like this plan,” he said.

  “I’ll cover you. If he gives his position away I’ll hit him. Make sure she keeps her head down once she’s in the car.”

  “How do you get to the car?” he asked.

  “Get it moving as soon as you’re in. Leave the door open. I’ll follow.”

  “This is a bad plan,” he said.

  I picked Caroline up in a fireman’s carry to show Pratt what he needed to do. “You’re going to carry her like this. Pretend she’s a sack of flour. Keep your back straight and flex your knees slightly, take the weight in your legs.”

  “I like flowers. Why don’t you buy me flowers?” Caroline said. Suzanne used to ask me the same thing.

  Pratt bent his knees and straightened his back trying to mimic what I had shown him. He looked like a constipated duck. I laid Caroline across his shoulders and draped my vest over her. Pratt’s legs shook, but he didn’t drop her.

  “Don’t stop no matter what happens,” I said.

  I unlocked the car with my key fob and pressed the keys into Pratt’s hand. I shouldered his backpack and gave him a gentle shove out the door. I crouched in the doorway, presenting as small a target as possible. I had my Browning clasped with two hands in front of me. I scanned the rooftops and the car-line ready to react. Assuming the Suit had a rifle, he would likely set up out of my range, but I would give the best cover I could.

  Pratt dumped Caroline in the front passenger seat, climbed over her, and got the car started in good time. No shots were fired. I stayed low and dived into the car on top of Caroline. Pratt pulled out and sideswiped the car in front of us. He didn’t seem to notice. He screamed down the street, pushing the pedal to the floor. I wanted to tell him to turn onto a side street, but I was afraid he’d roll the car. I kept my eye on the side view mirror and didn’t pick up anyone following.

  “Pull over, Hot Rod,” I said.

  Pratt hit the brake too hard and sent me banging into the dashboard. He yanked the wheel and brought us nose first to the curb.

  “I like driving. I’m getting better at it,” he said.

  I took the wheel and exiled him to the back seat. “What happened with the lights? Was that you?” I asked him.

  “He had reinforcements coming.”

  “You saw them?”

  “Caroline did.”

  “And she told you to hit the lights?”

  “I had to warn you.”

  “Sending a text would warn me. Bird sounds would warn me. Smoke signals would warn me. Hitting the lights almost killed me. You only want to hit the lights if I’m in an inferior position. Then it can balance the odds. What you did was get one of our interrogation subjects killed and let the other get away.” I didn’t exactly yell, but I was frustrated. The look on Pratt’s face was like when I used to lose my temper with Devon when he was a toddler. I knew I was being a bad parent, but I couldn’t stop. The adrenaline was starting to wear off and my nerves were vibrating. I could hear Nachash whisper his disappointment.

  “You think Caroline made it up about the other agents?” Pratt said. “She saved your life. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Not much made sense. The disappearing and reappearing agents, Caroline taking a bullet for me, the Suit running off, none of it fit. The Suit should have tried to pick us off when we went for the car. He had us in a vulnerable position. I wouldn’t have passed that up.

  We made good time back to my house. Suzanne was seated on the front steps, and she didn’t look pleased. I had forgotten to call her back. I pulled into the garage, told Pratt to get Caroline into the house and ran to head off Suzanne before she followed us.

  “Is everything okay?” I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be sitting there if Devon was hurt, but Suzanne had never shown up at my house unannounced.

  “Maybe we should ask the young blonde woman who was in your car?”

  “She’s one of Connor’s writers. He wants us to work together on a new book—Hot Chicks for Morons. The kid is our research assistant.”

  “I’m not one of your moron readers,” she said.

  “You’re probably the smartest person I know, and this is only work.”

  “Okay, then let’s go inside and you can introduce me to your coworker.”

  “She’s not feeling well. The kid took her inside to lie down.”

  The look on Suzanne’s face broke my heart.

  “I should have known better. Why would all the secrets and half-truths stop now?” she said.

  “Suzanne, I promise you, this isn’t . . .”

&nb
sp; “Don’t,” she practically spat. “Don’t promise me anything. Don’t make up excuses to see me. Don’t pretend you’ve changed. I can deal with you being a selfish liar. I can’t deal with you pretending that you’re not.”

  She stormed away, and I couldn’t go after her. I had to tend to Caroline. And I wasn’t sure what I could say to Suzanne anyway. I gave myself exactly sixty seconds to feel sorry for myself and then put those feelings away. I used a self-hypnosis trick Nachash had taught me. Suzanne had left Gib, and I felt bad for him, but there was nothing I could do to help. It was like I had two screens in my head. I put Gib on the left screen and turned my focus to the right one. On the right one, all that mattered was helping Caroline. Gib didn’t exist. It was like icy water on burned skin. It wouldn’t heal the wound, but it cooled the pain, for now.

  Caroline was laid out on my couch. The bleeding had started again, staining the couch cushions and the rug. This job was getting way too expensive. If I survived, I was going to have to beg Connor for more work.

  I washed my hands carefully and took out my medical kit. I donned surgical gloves and spread a square of sterile latex on the coffee table next to the couch. I placed on it a syringe, a bottle of saline solution, a bottle of benzoin, a tube of lidocaine ointment, sterile swabs, surgical scissors, and a suture needle with absorbable suture material attached.

  I filled the syringe with saline solution and irrigated the wound. There weren’t any foreign bodies. The bullet had made a clean crease in the shoulder. I swabbed lidocaine on the area to numb it.

  “You doing okay?” I said.

  “Yup,” Pratt and Caroline answered in unison.

  Pratt looked like he was going to start gagging again.

  “Why don’t you go work on cracking that encryption,” I said.

  He took the hint and beat a hasty retreat.

  “This is going to hurt a little,” I told Caroline.

  “Get it done. We have work to do.”

  The shock was wearing off, which was a good sign. I used mattress stitches about two millimeters apart to close Caroline’s wound. The work would never be mistaken for plastic surgery, but I felt an odd satisfaction when it was done. It was nice to use my hands to help someone for a change.

  “Thanks, Doc,” she said sitting up.

  “You need to rest. Doctor’s orders.”

  She tried to stand and failed. “Maybe I’ll rest a little. Tell me a story. My father always told me a story when he put me to bed,” she said, lying back down.

  “I’m terrible with bedtime stories. Devon used to kick me out and demand that Suzanne take over.”

  “My ex was a terrible storyteller too.”

  “Is that why you broke up? Because Suzanne had a much longer list of grievances.”

  “He always had to be right. The world was black and white, and only he knew which was which.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  “Comforting for a while. I always knew he wanted me. Never had to get jealous.” She was too sleepy for complete sentences. “Then all I wanted to do was prove him wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything.”

  “That must have been fun,” I said.

  “But I did it.”

  “Did what?” I said.

  “Proved him wrong. He thought we would always be together.”

  I sat in the armchair and gently roused her every fifteen minutes to make sure there was no cranial bleeding, that was the protocol. With everything that was out of control, it felt good that I could keep her safe.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Have you found anything on Westfield yet?”

  From counting the Starburst wrappers, it looked like Pratt had been up all night working on his computer.

  “You can’t rush these things,” Pratt responded.

  I tried to clean the stains out of the carpet with mixed success. It no longer looked like blood, but the color of the carpet had turned to a disturbing orange. The couch was a lost cause. I would have to drape a blanket over it until I had time to replace it.

  I hadn’t gotten much rest myself, watching over Caroline. I’m not sure I would have slept anyway. I had peeked in on Suzanne using the Big House’s webcams. I felt bad about violating her privacy, but I couldn’t help myself. Watching her cry and Rowan comfort her was my punishment. I clicked off before it went beyond that, but I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.

  They were all out of the house now. It was time for a visit. “Keep an eye on Caroline. You need to check her every half hour,” I said.

  Pratt nodded and was back to work. I was beginning to lose hope that he was ever going to crack the CIA servers, and the clock was ticking. Westfield would uncover my identity and where I lived eventually. I had to figure out a way to unravel what was going on and get to him first.

  I took a jog to the Big House. I came at it from the rear and let myself in the back door. I didn’t want a nosy neighbor telling Suzanne I’d dropped by.

  The webcam I had planted in Devon’s room had captured him inputting his password. I had watched the feed from the camera as Devon sat alone at his computer. His face had been completely intent. It reminded me too much of Pratt.

  I plugged a thumb drive into his computer and downloaded every file and folder on the hard drive. I uploaded an industrial strength decryption program and worked my way through a few that were encrypted. I also uploaded a spyware program that would let me follow what he was doing on his computer remotely. I could have had Pratt hack into his computer for me, but that seemed like a bigger violation of Devon’s privacy. This was between the two of us. I sneaked back out, dropped my child support check in the mailbox and jogged home.

  I looked at the encrypted files first. It was a fairly typical collection of porn and fantasy game stuff. It looked like he and his friends had been pranking some of their classmates, sending porn to them anonymously. Visualizing those uptight private school kids seeing porn pop up made me smile. I couldn’t figure out exactly what the fantasy stuff was about, but it looked like they were hacking into gaming sites to steal virtual weapons and such. Not a great hobby, but a victimless crime. I waited for Devon to come home and followed what he did on his computer to make sure there wasn’t anything else going on.

  He connected to at least three other IP addresses, presumably his partners in crime. They used a sophisticated proxy set up to disguise themselves. Where did they learn all of this? Maybe I should enlist them to help Pratt. I expected to see a parade of fantasy game images. Instead, I saw names, numbers, and letters. As the numbers changed, I realized what I was seeing. Now I knew why he was getting such good grades without doing his homework. They were hacking into the school’s server to change their grades.

  I would have to confront Devon without letting Suzanne know. If she found out, she would freak out for real. Of course, if she got wind of it and realized I didn’t tell her, she’d never forgive me. Not that I was sure she would forgive me as it was. There was only one bright side. I figured out what Rob was trying to tell me when he showed up at Devon’s school. He knew what Devon was up to, and he wanted to make sure I knew.

  Pratt was at his computer. Caroline had dozed off on the couch.

  “We need to talk,” I whispered to Pratt.

  “About what?” he asked.

  I hand signaled him to lower his voice. “When you yelled at Westfield, you said, ‘We know who you are. We know who the dirty one is.’”

  “You, Caroline, and me.”

  “That’s what I thought at the time. But that’s not what you meant, was it? It’s you and your coworkers. You’re not trying to find Westfield. You’re still working on Tiresias. That’s why you wanted to go back to Advanced Crypto. There was code on their servers that you hadn’t been able to get out. You and a bunch of your buddies are working together to finish the program and sell it to the highest bidder.”

  “We would never do that.”

  “My contact went
a long way to warn me that you were collaborating with others on this. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Of course. He knew exactly what we were doing. But we would never sell the code. We are going to make it open source.”

  “You mean like anyone can use it?” I said.

  “Including hackers all over the world. It won’t take them long to figure out a way to protect against it.”

  “If that’s true, why not upload it right now,” I said.

  “If a foreign government, or a terrorist group, or our government for that matter, managed to finish it first, they would be able to use it until everyone else caught up. We can’t take that chance.”

  If it was a lie, it was a good one. No matter who had the program, you always had to worry that it would fall into the wrong hands. This was the only way to permanently neutralize it.

  “Why the whistleblower complaint? That gave you away.”

  “They were onto me already. The complaint was a red herring,” he said.

  “You still would have ended up renditioned if Rob hadn’t alerted me.”

  “But he did, so it all worked out.”

  It was a well-thought-out plan. It was too well-thought-out for a civilian. “Rob tipped you, didn’t he? You thought I was there to save you at Starbucks because Rob told you I would.”

  “Then you acted like you had no idea what was going on,” Pratt said.

  “I didn’t. Rob liked to play mind games. He probably figured I would fight him if he told me he wanted to go against the Agency like this. He set me up where he knew I’d save you.”

  “That was smart,” Pratt said.

  “He completely manipulated both of us and that’s your reaction?”

  “He was right. You saved my life.”

  “But you still couldn’t trust me with the truth?” I said.

  “He told me that you would figure it out when the time was right.”

  “And why did you trust him?” I asked.

  “The same reason you did. He recruited me.”

  And that was the rest of Rob’s message. In the spy world, Pratt was Rob’s progeny, and he had gotten mixed up in something that was over his head, like Devon had. Rob thought I would figure out the message, because I would pick up on what Devon was doing. If I were a better father, I would have.