Betrayals (Black Cipher Files series Book 2) (12 page)

“I had a really bizarre conversation today and I need to run it by someone who knows the situation.”

Zeke rubbed a hand through his curls, grabbed onto the ends and pulled them over his eyes for a second. “You know I’ve been suspended pending investigation, right?”

“Shit. Sorry. I didn’t.”

Zeke shrugged casually as if it was no big deal. “No worries.”

Which was a total freaking lie.

Jordan noted the lines of tension around Zeke’s mouth and the misery in his ocean blue eyes. If Zeke wanted to pretend everything was fine, Jordan wasn’t going to argue.

Their friendship was new and some places guys just didn’t go.

“This has to do with our, uh, adventure.”

“Nice way to put it.” Zeke smirked into his beer. “Thanks. Haven’t smiled in a few days.”

“I just had a very weird meeting with the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.”

Zeke’s gaze shot to his. “That blowhard.”

Jordan snorted. “Called that one.” He took a slow draw on his beer.

Zeke studied him quietly for another moment. “So what did the esteemed senator from Virginia want?”

“Information about the incident at the Presidential Suites.”

“Are you shitting me?” Zeke dropped his beer on the table, the dark, yeasty liquid sloshed over the side to dribble onto the scarred tabletop. Zeke leaned toward Jordan and lowered his voice. “No one, and I mean, no one knows about that.”

“Yeah. So where is he getting his information?”

“I’m on leave. And not allowed any-frickin’-where near an agency computer or anyone who knows anything,” Zeke bitched softly.

“Then what are you doing with me?”

“You work for a think tank. With the exception of Carson, who I’m pretty sure won’t bust me, no one else knows you had anything to do with...” Zeke waved his hand dismissively, “...the adventure.”

“Yeah. So how the fuck does the senator know I was there?”

“Dude. You didn’t ask?”

Jordan closed his lips firmly and leaned back against the leather banquette. He’d been so on guard against the man, against giving him anything, it hadn’t even occurred to him to come out and ask.

“The whole meeting was just short of a weird-fest. That was an off-the-books job. How could the senator even know about it?”

“Someone leaked the information,” Zeke murmured. He took a big gulp of stout. “Shit. Had to be someone fairly high up.”

“You have any ideas?”

“No idea. Haven’t been in the office since. Ya know?” Zeke took another large swallow of the dark beer. “I’m in a tenuous position as it is. The Assistant Director himself is handling and reviewing all aspects of this clusterfuck. I sure as hell don’t want to come to his attention more than necessary.”

“Okay. Fine. We can work around this.” Jordan sipped at the brew. “What if I sort of speculate out loud and you can hand signal me if it seems like a logical solution.”

“And later we can use our invisible ink to write messages on our napkins,” Zeke responded in a singsong-y voice.

“I’m desperate here.” Jordan inhaled sharply, then blew out a breath slowly. “I need to find Staci and...I need help.”

“Hey, sorry, dude. You haven’t been able to turn up anything else?”

“It’s like she disappeared after ‘hiring’ Johnny Wishbone to look after Bella Holden.”

“What about the cell phone number she gave the kid as a contact point?”

“Disconnected.” Jordan clenched his fist around the glass, feeling the cool condensation against his palm. “But it’s a pay-as-you-go phone anyway. No way to trace it.”

“All known residences?”

“Checked and double-checked.”

“All known bank accounts?”

“Haven’t been accessed.”

“Could she have an unregistered bank account?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Shit. When he’d found her bank statements, he’d been surprised by the amount of money she had.

She was loaded.

He should have known. The clues were there. A rowhouse in Alexandria, a house on the cape of Massachusetts, and another in the Bahamas.

But beyond certain extravagances, money wasn’t important to him or her. So how would he know if she had a hidden bank account?

“But I haven’t got any way to find a hidden bank account...or access it.”

Zeke pursed his lips. “All known associates?”

“That’s a little more difficult. I don’t know anyone else.”

“She didn’t have any girlfriends?”

“She had some work acquaintances through Georgetown.” It had been one of the things they’d had in common. They’d each been a little bit lonely. Work consumed them both to the point where outside relationships were almost nil.

“When I called to ask if they had heard from her,” he said in disgust, “they asked to meet for drinks.”

He’d learned after the second meeting they didn’t have any info. The were just trolling for a date.

“Wow, dude. Must be nice.”

“Not really. I don’t want them.” Shit. Did his voice just break? He drained his glass.

“You are crazy.” Zeke joked, but Jordan heard the underlying note of truth. “I'd take some of that action.”

Zeke stared hard at the jukebox, his attempt to avoid eye contact told Jordan he was being brutally honest.

“I don’t do anything but work and all of the sudden, I’ve got nowhere to go. Nothing to do and no one to do it with.” Zeke thumped his head into his hands. “Jesus, could I whine more? Don’t listen to me. I’m feeling a little sorry for myself. I’ll get over it.”

“Help me find Staci.”

“As long as it doesn’t get me fired.” Zeke tapped his fingers on the scarred wood table, like he was at a keyboard. “Or worse.”

“I could really use your help.” Jordan hesitated. “Clearly I’m not doing so well on my own.”

The fact that the senator knew about the shooting in the Presidential Suites upped his pucker factor.

Jordan needed to get to Staci.

His need to find her had increased exponentially after learning she’d been injected with a mysterious drug. She needed the antidote. This wasn’t just about his need to find her anymore. This was about his need to save her.

And maybe he needed to hold her in his arms for a minute or an hour or fantasy time, a night, and just be thankful she was okay.

“Can you tell me....”

Zeke waited with patience for Jordan to spit it out. “Can’t tell if you don’t ask.”

“Did you feel different when you had that drug in you?”

Zeke was the only person he could ask. He had been injected with the unstable compound. He’d also gotten the antidote which should have rendered the original drug inactive and returned Zeke to ‘normal’.

“Do you remember?”

“Shit. You don’t ask easy stuff, do you?”

“If it isn’t hard, it isn’t worth it.”

“I was a little more manic than normal about work. I’d check and re-check everything. As if...I was working at hyper-speed. And patterns. I could see patterns in everything. Not just work but everywhere I looked there were patterns I’d never noticed before.”

“You liked what the drug did.”

Zeke gazed at the jukebox as the lights on the display flickered and flashed, and his voice got softer and softer. “In some ways, it was amazing.”

“Are you sorry you got the antidote?”

Zeke shifted his gaze back to Jordan, as if becoming aware of his surroundings and their conversation again.

“My grandfather was a little bit crazy,” he said abruptly. “Mostly OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You know. Little nightly rituals, lock the door three times, check that the stove is off four times, wash your hands five.”

Jordan nodded, not wanting to interrupt.

“Sounds fairly harmless...until you’re living with it,” Zeke said wryly.

He slouched against the wood paneled booth. “And the drug Susan Chen gave me, without my permission,” his mouth tightened belying his relaxed posture, “It made my slight tendencies extreme. So no, I wasn’t sorry.”

Jordan shifted, uncomfortable with having a glimpse into Zeke’s private life. He liked the guy. Even though normally he took a while to warm up to people, he and Zeke had hit it off right away.

Probing Zeke for intimate details made Jordan feel as if he were asking too much, delving too deeply into Zeke’s feelings without the requisite lapse of time while they got to know each other.

At the same time, he needed this information.

“Staci is alive.”

“Based on Johnny’s account, she is definitely alive,” Zeke said slowly. “What you need to do is focus on how she acted after she had the drug. Go back and try to remember everything that happened right before she left for Afghanistan. Because whatever she was working on then, is most likely what she’ll be concentrating on now.”

“You’re a genius.”

“Why yes, yes, I am.” Zeke smiled, baring his white, perfectly straight teeth. “Sometimes I forget.”

“She was obsessing about her grandparents' death. And about something at work. She had a spreadsheet, but she didn’t tell me what it was for and I didn’t ask.”

Zeke leaned in close and glanced around to make sure they were isolated enough. “Fifty four ninety one,” Zeke murmured. “Her grandparents' death was part of that. That’s where you need to start.”

5491? He had no idea what that meant. But her grandparents' death. Rightness settled in Jordan. Her grandparents mugging and murder was the key. He knew, he knew. “That’s it.”

“What?”

“It’s almost October nineteenth.”

A pained look crossed Zeke’s face.

Jordan asked. “What about that date?”

“My grandfather died in a climbing accident.” Zeke blinked. Once. Twice. “Patterns. Shit.”

“That’s when Staci’s grandparents died. In a mugging.”

Zeke tapped his fingers on the tabletop again, a faraway look in his eyes. “Yeah. I remember the information from my look at the file.” So the file had something to do with both Staci and Zeke's grandparents' death. Jordan turned over the information, thinking and analyzing. “There’s only one logical conclusion.”

“You’ve got to go to New York.”

“You’re a genius.”

“I thought we already established that.” Zeke was starting to sound like his old self.

Jordan still needed more to go on. “If I gave you access to all of Staci’s known accounts, could you possibly find an unregistered account?”

“I might be able to.” Zeke pursed his lips. “If she set it up in the last few years and if I could access her travel records. Forensic accounting isn’t exactly my thing but I know enough to start.”

Jordan thought about travel records. Thought about the number of times they went to the Bahamas in the six months they were together. “Focus on the Bahamas.”

Zeke tapped the tabletop. “She’s got a house there, right?”

“Yeah. What’s the maximum wire transfer that doesn’t have to be reported to the Treasury Department?”

“Under the Bank Secrecy Act, under $10,000 and the transaction is exempt. Although if you have a steady stream of them, the bank has to report them.” Zeke smiled. “If I can find that account, and get into her spending records, then you can find Staci.”

“I still think New York is where she’ll be.”

“Probably right, but Manhattan is a fairly large borough.” Zeke rubbed his hands together. “If she's there, maybe I’ll be able to narrow it down to a few blocks based on her transactions.”

“There’s one catch.”

“What’s that?”

“When you find her, you have to let me know first.”

“Done.” Zeke thought about the request, then slumped back. “You know, I’m not supposed to have any contact with the NSA until they can verify I haven’t given away state secrets.”

“She’s CIA, not NSA.”

“Semantics,” Zeke said.

“She was investigating her grandparents’ deaths before she was imprisoned. Your grandfather is in that 5491 file too? What if her file on 5491 is what got her into trouble?”

“5491.” Zeke said reverently, “Wish I had access to that file. I’d really like to analyze the data, understand what happened.”

Jordan hesitated. “I can get you a copy.”

“Are you shitting me?” Zeke pushed the half-finished Guinness away.

Jordan wanted to make sure Staci wasn’t penalized if the contents were discovered. “You have to promise to be discreet.”

“My middle name, dude.” Zeke’s eyes lit up. “You really have access to that file?”

“Yeah.”

“The whole thing?” As if Zeke still couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah.”

“The patterns in that file are just waiting to be discovered.” Zeke said, “I only got a small glimpse of the contents. There were what, eleven people and their parents' or grandparents' deaths, right?”

“Twelve.”

Jordan looked at Zeke and realized he couldn’t hold the file hostage. Zeke had a right to the answers about his grandfather’s death.

“I’ll get the file for you.”

“Do you know how incredible it will be to finally figure out the truth behind my grandpy’s death?” Zeke put his palms flat on the table, spreading his fingers, staring at the white of his hand against the scarred wood. “I’ve been haunted by that accident for fifteen years.”

“Why?”

“He was an expert climber. Taught me everything. He expounded on safety, so much so I could recite the rules in my sleep. Some people get comfortable with rules, get lax, but my grandfather didn’t.”

He paused, swallowed. “He was...obsessive. Compulsive. He checked his ropes, his carabineers, his equipment all the time.”

Zeke’s intensity finally clicked with Jordan.

That was how Staci felt. She had an overwhelming need to understand every aspect, review every detail to make sense of her grandparents’ deaths.

He should have tried harder to understand.

He needed to go to New York, follow her thought processes, if he could.

And fuck....

He needed to find her.

FOURTEEN

October 18

4:00 pm

New York City, Broadway and 51
st

I was at the end of my options.

I have been investigating and running for five weeks, and I’m still no freaking closer to figuring out why I was arrested and tortured in Afghanistan or who was behind it.