Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) (12 page)

His praise gave me a warm glowy feeling. I never felt brave. Most of the time I felt like a big fat coward, hiding away from the world, hiding my true self, so that my stepfather couldn’t find us. With just a few words, Zeke had managed to bolster my confidence.

“You probably would have been fine.” But my heart skipped a beat as I remembered the encroaching waves pulling at his unconscious body.

“Lucky for me you were on the beach.” Zeke said, “Lucky for me that we met at all.”

“But our meeting wasn’t by chance,” I countered. “You admitted that you were here for me.”

“Yeah. Except we weren’t supposed to meet at all.” Zeke took another turn. “I was only supposed to keep an eye on you.”

“So....”

“I fucked up,” he said harshly. “I wasn’t supposed to make contact.”

“With me?”

“Yeah.”

“But you did and....”

“And you’re in trouble. I’m not just going to walk away.”

He seemed to have an unrealistic sense of obligation that I just didn’t understand. No one took care of me; I took care of myself.

“Let me help you,” he said it again.

“How?”

“Who’s after you?”

“You really think you can help?” I calculated odds and his sense of responsibility. Maybe, just maybe, I could find out about my stepfather and we could come up with a way to save me and my mother.

If I used Zeke Thorn’s resources, I could find out where the monster was staying, maybe even his permanent address, maybe somehow I could end this need to hide, this need to constantly be vigilant, and end his reign of terror. Once and for all.

Dammit, between our mini-date this morning and my mother’s sudden surprising relationship with Blue, I was lonely, and sick of running. I wanted to
live
.

Zeke interrupted my musings. “I’ll do my best.”

I knew he meant it. Why did I have the inexplicable urge to trust this man? Truthfully he’d done nothing to inspire that trust. My suspicious nature, cultivated from years of being on the run, was oddly dormant.

Zeke pressed his lips together. “I won’t promise any more than I can deliver.”

He pulled in to the parking lot of the nondescript motel behind a strip mall and a grocery store. His room was around back, hidden away from the street. Our comings and goings would be obscured by the traffic from the stores.

He parked at the end of the lot, the car nearly hidden by the dumpster. Room card in hand, he hustled toward a service door. He swiped the key card and pulled open the door. “Let’s talk when we have privacy.”

His gaze was constantly moving, and he had put his body between me and the outside. Protecting me or herding me toward captivity? He looked left, right, then headed down the hall. He stopped in front of a door with a Do Not Disturb sign on the handle. He swiped the key card once, twice, three times. Then tightened his mouth. As soon as the lock clicked, Zeke nudged me inside.

The room was lit with the glow of light from an open laptop and the desk lamp. The blackout curtains were drawn so that no one could see in the room.

One last thing. “Show me your card.” I wasn’t about to reveal anything until I’d seen some sort of proof.

Although he was right. Anyone could have fake cards printed.

Trepidation and, oddly, a budding sense of hope swirled through me.

I sat in the chair at the desk. The room was decorated in a generic beach theme, blues and greens with peach accents and lots of seashells. The design was background noise without any flash. Nothing notable about it. Most people would likely stay here and after they left, they would have no remembrance what the room looked like.

Kind of like me. I faded into the background, bland, pastel, unremarkable. I didn’t make waves. I didn’t show my intellect. I didn’t ever show the hunger that existed inside me. That black hole that craved new knowledge like a heroin addict craved a needle. But I didn’t just yearn for knowledge. I wanted new experiences.

And I was tired of hiding. I wanted to be me. I wanted to be visible. I wanted to have choices.

He pulled a card from his wallet and extended it to me held between his pointer and middle finger. I tried not to notice the curve of his bicep straining at the cuff of the short sleeve t-shirt and the smooth tan skin of his forearm, his veins prominent in the rippling muscles. His eyes were an intense, ocean blue as I reached out slowly to take the white linen rectangle.

“Uh, wait.” He jerked the card back and cocked his elbow up. “There’s one thing.”

Right. Here it comes. I tensed, getting ready to make a break for it. I was closer to the door, although with his physique he could probably overtake me. But I had to try.

“What?”

“My name isn’t Zeke Thorn.”

“Oh.” Somehow Zeke had really seemed to fit him.

“It’s Zeke Hawthorne.”

“Oh.” Boy, did I sound intelligent.

He handed me his card. The white card was simple, a government seal with a bald eagle, key clutched in it’s talons and crest across his chest, Zeke’s name in navy blue, and National Security Agency printed in the gold band that surrounded the eagle.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a programmer.”

“So that part was true.”

“Uh, yeah.”

He sat, trying I was sure, to project an air of trustworthiness. He didn’t know that I’d never in my life trusted anyone. Not since I was seven years old. But the temptation to believe in him was strong. “You going to trust me?”

Finally, I blurted out, “I need to find that man.”

He didn’t make jokes, he didn’t smirk. It was almost as if he understood that this was a huge leap of faith for me.

Faith I’d lost long ago. Perhaps never had.

“Do you have a name?”

Somehow I’d expected him to ask other questions first, like why, who was he, what did he mean to me? But Zeke got right to the point.

My heart thumped in my chest. My hands trembled as adrenaline flooded through my body. I wasn’t sure I could do this. My throat constricted, my mouth was dry. And I was freaking stalling.

“Of the person who you think is after you,” he clarified, as if he thought I didn’t know what he was talking about.

I hadn’t spoken the monster’s name aloud in thirteen years.

When we left, we’d looked back but we’d never, ever,
ever
said his name again. As if by uttering the words we might conjure him up.

The thought was terrifying and crazy. And I felt like I was seven years old and fleeing for my life again.

“Do you have a name?” he asked again.

I couldn’t stall any longer. The terror gripping me gave way, broke over me like a wave. If he was working with my stepfather, I would know in a minute. Watching him carefully for any sign of recognition, I quietly spoke the name of the devil. My devil.

“John Stanley.”

Seventeen

John Stanley.

Sunshine had said his name as if waiting for Zeke to recognize the guy.

There was an expectant pause in her body language, and he knew he needed to tread carefully over the next few minutes. She was so damn skittish that he thought if he showed even a slightly overt interest she would bolt.

“Okay.” To begin, he touched the top, the exact center of the left edge, the exact center of the right edge, and the bottom of his laptop keyboard. “That’s the guy we just saw?”

She pressed her lips together tightly, swallowed, then nodded.

“Let’s start with the license plate.”

He’d memorized the full plate number. First Zeke accessed the California DMV database. But when he pulled up the information on that plate number it was for a late model Lexus. Not an old Ford truck. The Lexus had been reported stolen two days ago.

Zeke sighed. “That was a dead end.”

She slumped. “Do you think he got your plate number?”

“Even if he did it will take a while to track down the rental information and then my credit card information. You’re safe.”
For now.

Sunshine stiffened her shoulders. “So that’s it?”

“Of course not. It just means this will be a little more difficult.”

So Zeke tried some basic internet search stuff.

It was a pretty uncommon name but several names came up ranging all over the country. “Do you have any idea where he lives?”

Her face was white, her gray eyes large granite pools in her face. “Ah, he used to...live in Kansas.”

Zeke scrolled through the names, clicking on page after page, but no one with his general characteristics popped in Kansas. “Can I ask for more information?”

She licked her lips. “Like what?”

“What are you willing to give me on him?”

She sat there as if paralyzed. She was truly terrified by this guy.

Finally he couldn’t stand her fear any more. Zeke asked gently, “What did he do?”

If Sunshine was this terrified, the threat was real.

She shook her head. A strand of her black hair escaped her loose braid and curled along her neck, momentarily distracting Zeke from his questions.

Couldn’t tell him? Or wouldn’t?

“I need more information.” Or he needed to contact someone else to get the information. “Or I’ve got to use a contact within the NSA to dig deeper.”

Which would expose him and the fact that he’d made contact with Sunshine. At this point, he should probably call Carson, and come clean. About Sunshine and Susan.

Zeke thought that Carson would keep his secret. But he couldn’t be sure. Dammit.

Of course yesterday he’d suggested Carson assist Jordan and Staci with a sting. He hadn’t heard from his pal today, but that wasn’t surprising. Especially if Jordan was still with Staci. He knew that Zeke needed to stay far away from the fugitive.

He would need to call Carson at home. Away from the office.

“No! Don’t call anyone else.”

“Why are you looking for him?”

“He...killed my grandparents.”

Zeke reared back. She knew the name of her grandparents’ assassin? On the heels of that thought, he connected the pieces into a pattern that had him salivating for more information. What he wouldn’t give to talk to this guy. “Is he out of prison?”

She laughed bitterly. “Who said he went to prison?”

So he’d killed her grandparents and gotten away with it. And then suddenly he realized what that meant. This guy was a sleeper sent specifically to murder her grandparents.

Just like his Grandpop had been murdered.

And there too the murderer had gotten away with it. But Zeke had no idea who had murdered his grandfather. Then another connection fused. “Honey, if he killed your grandparents, you’re safe.” He had no idea how he was going to explain it all to her but he’d have to try. She wasn’t in any danger. The subtle tension that had gripped Zeke when he thought about her being in jeopardy eased its constriction around his lungs. All of the sleeper assassins had killed their targets, sometimes with collateral damage, but no one had come back for the descendants years’ later.

Sunshine threaded her fingers together in her lap and worried at the chipped lavender polish on her index finger. Her head was bent at such an angle that he couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see her eyes.

A tear dripped on her clenched hands.

He wanted, no needed to reassure her, but based on the level of her terror, she wasn’t going to be easy to calm down. Although he knew she was safe, she didn’t have any reason to believe him. “You don’t need to worry about him anymore.”

She whipped her head up. “You’re wrong.”

“How did he kill them?” he asked gently. The report indicated that they had drowned after their tire blew out.

“He shot their tire. The car went into the creek. We’d had unprecedented rain that year. The creek was angry, swollen almost to the banks, and they were swept away.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and rubbed her biceps briskly as if trying to get warm. The anxious move brought his attention to the slender strength in her arms. And his brain kept trying to make the connection between this fragile woman and his muscled bulk.

He shifted gears, thinking about last night. “How the hell did you ever get me out of the water?”

She shrugged. “Physics.”

“Thank God for science nerds,” he murmured.

She snorted, her silver eyes brightened for a second. Then fear dampened their glow and a guilty expression crossed her face. She was thinking about her grandparents again.

“At least you had closure.” He couldn’t help but think that she was lucky. She knew her grandparents were murdered. After all, until a few weeks ago, he’d believed his grandfather had died in a climbing accident.

“God should not allow monsters to live and angels to die,” Sunshine said bitterly.

“God didn’t have anything to do with your grandparents’ death.” Zeke countered, trying to keep the snap out his words. “They were murdered.”

But how did she know exactly what happened when, according to the info he had, the coroner had ruled it an accident? “Are you sure about what happened?”

“I saw him do it.”

Shock, sharp and unexpected, surged through his body. His vision blurred and a chill rippled down his spine. “You saw him?”

She nodded.

Jesus.

But even so...she should be safe. The assassin had completed his task.

Except, she’d seen him. And she knew what he’d done. Was that why he was after Sunshine and her mother? Although it didn’t explain how she knew his name. Or why, years later, he would still be after her and her mother?

“It was thirteen years ago.” Zeke pondered, “Why is he still after you?”

She surged up from her perch on the generic bedspread, then fluidly reached into her long hippie bag, pulled out a small SigSauer P229, and cocked the trigger with the barrel pointed straight at his sternum.

“How do you know how long ago it was?”

***

“I assume you know how to use that?” Zeke nodded his head toward the Sig, not moving anything else.

Not even twitching.

He was motionless. He wasn’t sweating and he wasn’t screaming. What the hell that meant, I had absolutely no idea, but he wasn’t reacting the way I’d anticipated. Usually people were afraid of guns.
I
was afraid of guns and I was holding the damn thing.