Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller (11 page)

The men around Cobalt who were still on their feet
looked from one to another. One of them finally worked up the courage to ask
what they should do about it.

“We’ve got to get him out of here without him
figuring out where he was held. That’s going to take some finesse. For now, I
want you all to split up. I want this office watched, I want the other prisoner
in the basement watched, and I want constant patrols through the halls. You
have no idea how much danger you’ve put us in by bringing that guy here.”

The muscle he’d hired split up, heading off to deal
with the tasks he’d given.

Doyle stayed behind and said, “This is your grand
plan to solve the problem of that video you told me about? Kidnap Mike
Vincent?”

Luther growled, “It’s the reporter with him who was
part of my grand plan. Vincent was an accident.”

Doyle replied, “Doesn’t matter what the plan was.
Now we’ve got a serious situation here. If Vincent sees me…”

“I’ll take care of him,” Luther said. “I’ve got to
go take care of someone else first but right after that, I’ll take care of
Vincent.”

Doyle blinked and asked, “Wait, what? You’re going
to just leave him here while you leave the building? Luther, we have to control
this. We’ve got two guys locked up in my personal office who can expose us to
the press.”

The younger brother nodded. He thought for a while
and then spoke.

“OK, here’s the solution. You get out of here. Go
home, go to a bar, I don’t care. Just get out of here. That way, if Vincent
somehow gets loose, you have plausible deniability.”

Doyle sighed and said. “I suppose it’ll have to do.
But I want this cleaned up, Luther. I want it cleaned up fast.”

Luther’s lips wore a feral grin as he said,
“Vincent’s going to have a very rough night. But he won’t be the first one
whose world I rip up tonight.”

He
was skinny, as if he’d forgotten to eat in weeks. His dark hair had not seen a
brush or a shower for days. He stood outside the door to his apartment,
fumbling with his keys. He’d been out with friends, patronizing many of the
bars of McLean, Virginia, and it showed in his clumsy efforts to get the key in
the lock

Success! He got the key
into the door’s deadbolt and went inside.

Then he swore violently
and dropped the keys that had been giving him so much trouble.

Leaning against the work table
at the back of his studio apartment was a beautiful woman with long, braided
black hair. She was dressed all in black that was as dark as her hair. She
smiled at him.

“Hi, Zack.”

He started to back out of
his apartment, but she said, “Please don’t do that. I just want to talk to you.
I knew Moira in prison.”

That changed everything.
Zack stopped in his tracks. He was suddenly conscious of the disastrous state
of his studio apartment. The bed was unmade. Unwashed dishes from several days
sat in the sink. Empty bottles sat where he had left them. He was dressed only
in sweats and a tank top. Here was a person who might talk to Moira about him
and what message was he sending?

But then, who exactly was
she, anyway? A beautiful woman who knew his name materialized out of nowhere in
his apartment? Such things just did not happen. He was a black hat, part of the
computer underground  – a hacker, to most of the world, although he would
never call himself that. His skin was pasty white, his hair sorely unkempt, his
body so scrawny that he would have trouble doing even a single push up. Women
did not seek him out. Especially not gorgeous women.

The most likely thing was
that she was an FBI agent. He was very small time in his hacking; they had no
particular reason to look for him. But he was a criminal nonetheless. Urban
legends abounded in the computer underground of the FBI using beautiful women
in sting operations to lure in black hats.

He asked, “Who are you?”

She said, “My name isn’t
important right now. I apologize for catching you by surprise. I know it would
have been more usual to make contact electronically first but I’m rather
pressed for time.”

Zack didn’t reply. He
wanted to say something witty and debonair, but his mind was not yielding
results.

When he didn’t speak, she
did.

“I assume you’re concerned
that I’m a law enforcement agent here to arrest you or entrap you into
cooperating in their efforts against other black hats. I assure you that’s not
true. I am not a law enforcement agent. I just got out of FCI Rocky, where
Moira was.”

Finally, she had said
something that left him no option but to open his mouth.

“Was?”

The woman nodded. “She
escaped a couple nights ago.”

Zack asked, “How? What
happened? Why hasn’t she contacted me? Where can I find her?”

The woman said, “Well, she
and I broke into a computer server room, from which it turned out there was an
HVAC vent we could use to get outside the secured area. She brought me into the
scheme because she needed help picking a physical lock, which I’m good at – for
example, you’ll notice your own deadbolt was not exactly an impediment to me.
We didn’t stick together after the escape, so I don’t know where she is now.
However I need to find her again, and she talked about you while we were in
prison together, so I figured you might be able to help me find her.”

“I’ll help you on one
condition.”

The woman raised her
eyebrows by way of asking what it was.

“Take me with you. I want
to see her.”

She smiled at him. “You
like her.”

Zack stammered for a while
before he said, “None of your business. You’re asking for my help. I’m telling
you my condition. I will tell you where to look for Moira, but only if you take
me with you.”

At first, the woman didn’t
say anything. She just stared at him, openly evaluating him. Again, Zack was
made to feel self-conscious about his appearance.

Finally she said, “You
don’t know what you’d be getting into. I don’t want to say too much, but this
situation is dangerous in the extreme. I almost got killed before I came to see
you. Someone had set an explosive trap that I almost fell into. If you came
with me you’d be dealing with people who are willing to set traps to murder
other human beings, and who are willing to use explosives, and cause untold
amounts of collateral damage, to get that killing done.

“I mean no disrespect, Mr.
Ravenberg, but it’s a world in which training and experience are required to
survive. You have neither.”

“Hey!” Zack shot back
indignantly. “You just met me. You have no idea–”

She shook her head.
“Actually I do. I do this for a living. If you’ve ever even seen a firearm, or
dodged a punch since 7th grade, I’ll eat the nearest available hat.

“Look, I get wanting to
see your friend. I get it. But coming with me makes that less likely, not more.
If you just sit here quietly and wait for me to tell Moira to call you, your
odds of seeing her go up from where they were before I broke in here. If, on
the other hand, I actually agreed to let you tag along, and the next murderous
trap we discover kills you, then your odds of seeing Moira again are zero.”

Zack pressed his lips
together. He glared at this stranger who had invaded his apartment. He wanted
to just give her the bird and tell her to get out.

He said, “Fine, make fun
of me. So I’m not a brawny jock. I don’t care. But you can make as much fun as
you want, it won’t change the fact that I know where Moira will be heading, if
she really escaped from prison, and I won’t tell you unless you agree to take
me with you.”

The woman opened her mouth
to speak but was interrupted by a noise. Zack had left his front door unlocked
when he came home and found the woman. Now, both of them heard the squeak of
the poorly maintained hinges as it opened.

***

Alyssa Chambers leaned against the grimy work table, her backside
pushing an empty wine bottle slightly back from the edge as she rested. She
pondered the young man’s desire to go with her on the search for Moira. So far,
she had avoided telling him any outright lies. But that was likely to get
harder and harder as they went on.

Alyssa wanted to do this
job without getting completely back into her old life. She wanted to be done
with secrets and lies. She still wasn’t sure if receiving a Presidential pardon
was a real world miracle but if it was, she felt guilty about responding to it
with violence, lying, and stealing.

In talking to Zack, she
had fed him a bunch of mostly true statements with strategic blank spots where
the real facts might have caused him to turn against her. But that couldn’t go
on forever. If nothing else, turning Moira over to the Federal Government was
going to make Zack a little unhappy.

The squeak of the door
opening interrupted her train of thought.

Zack stood with his back
to the door, but Alyssa was leaning on the table facing the opposite direction.
She saw the door open.

She grabbed an empty wine
bottle from Zack’s unkempt desk before the door even finished opening.

When the man who came
through it turned out to be holding a pistol, the bottle flew at his head while
Zack was still turning around.

The young hacker’s eyes
went wide as the bottle went right past his eyes. He threw himself backward,
collapsing onto the ground.

The man coming through the
door reacted instinctively to split-second awareness of an object speeding
toward his face. He brought his right hand up to cover himself. Unfortunately,
that was the hand holding the pistol.

It went off, and the
recoil knocked it out of his hand to the ground.

While everyone took a
second to process the accidental discharge of a firearm, Alyssa realized who
the man was.

Standing in front of her
was the corrupt guard from FCI-Rocky.

This man stood by and
watched while Moira was beaten. He had come into Alyssa’s cell and threatened
to kill her.

Alyssa charged him and landed
a front kick right to his solar plexus while he hadn’t quite reacted to the
fact that his gun had gone off.

He shuffled back and faced
Alyssa, a snarl on his face.

Without pause, he rushed
her. A flurry of punches and kicks bore in on her face and midsection.

Alyssa shifted to the
left, blocked and dodged, managing to avoid any serious damage.

She counterattacked by
lifting her right leg as if to kick with it, then turning that into a leap. She
flew up and kicked with her left leg instead, aiming it right at the guard’s
head.

He dodged to the side, and
while she was still in midair he landed a hard punch to the inside thigh of the
leg she was kicking with. It hurt, and it also altered her airborne momentum.
She fell over to the side, rolling out the door and into the hall.

Luther Cobalt stepped out
of the apartment and turned to face Alyssa. The sneer on his face was just as
bad as it had been that night in her prison cell.

“Who knew I’d get to keep
my promise so fast,” he said. “Little miss ‘Clean Up My Life’ is back in
trouble the moment she gets out.”

Alyssa stepped back
warily, then asked, “Are you really Doyle Cobalt’s brother?”

The only answer was a
furious attack. The corrupt guard charged her with his fists driving hard for her
head. The man fought with a singular purpose. Each punch had so much force
behind it that even blocking hurt. Far better to dodge but sometimes he moved
too fast.

She caught a tiny little
opening in his non-stop attack and drove her knee hard into his groin.

The man kept coming.

Alyssa knew from
experience that sometimes guys could be so hyped up on adrenaline that they
kept going after that. He’d be in a world of hurt in a half hour, but that
didn’t do her any good right now.

Their fight had carried them
a small distance from the door to Zack’s apartment, and the younger man took
advantage of that. Alyssa caught sight of him sneaking out his door then
sprinting like a madman down the hall toward the stairway. She didn’t blame him
for running; this was a serious fight. It wasn’t a good place for innocent
victims to stand around.

Cobalt came at her again
with punches aimed at her face. Alyssa blocked and dodged, forearms in pain
from every time one of her blocks stopped one of his punches.

The final right cross
missed her head because she moved and drove a hole through the wall.

Alyssa shuffled back,
trying to create some distance and time. This fight was rapidly getting out of
control.

But Cobalt – if his last
name really was Cobalt, as Moira had claimed – wasn’t about to let her get
away. He rushed at her in an animal fury, shouting as he did. Alyssa threw
herself against the wall to let his momentum carry him past her. As he skidded
to a stop, she ducked down almost to a crouch to drive her fist hard into his
solar plexus. Even that didn’t stop the man.

Alyssa started to feel
something like a distant relative of panic. Punching him in the solar plexus
wasn’t working. Kicking him between the legs wasn’t working.

She darted in to take a
quick shot at his face, but Cobalt took the hit on his jaw without even batting
an eye.

Then he grabbed her
jacket.

He whirled Alyssa around
and threw her to the floor. She landed hard on her back with the wind
completely knocked out of her. For a precious second or two, she simply gasped
for air.

Cobalt threw himself down on top of her. He grabbed
her wrist and bent it backward. Her body instantly obeyed the pain, rolling to
the side to avoid having her wrist broken. Then he got his beefy forearm around
her neck and began to squeeze.

Pressure on the windpipe triggered the panic reflex,
and Alyssa had to fight to keep herself from surrendering to it. She clung to
her training. She knew she had only so many seconds of consciousness in which
to affect the situation before blacking out and eventually dying from lack of
oxygen.

She knew several strategies for breaking a chokehold
but most of them required either that she be on her feet or that she have the
ability to start fighting before he had the hold in place.

Neither was true. Worse, his phenomenal size and
strength made her jerks and thrusts feel like an ant trying to move a boulder.

The panic instinct became harder to fight.

His lips pressed against her ear in an ugly parody
of intimacy.

“I told you I’d kill you,” he whispered.

It might be too late. She couldn’t breathe, and
hadn’t been able to for many precious seconds. Panic was taking over.

Alyssa’s feet began to thrash back trying to kick
her attacker, not entirely consciously. Her reflexes were separating from
conscious thought.

What if this is really it? I hope Matt’s right
about God. If he is, I could really use a hand here.