Midnight Secrets (24 page)

An eerie light, she remembered. Like footlights in theaters in the nineteenth century, lighting faces from the bottom, leaving features indistinct. Leaving the eyes in shadow.

And at the same time the world came to an end.

“There were—there were screams from all around the room. And a ripping sound.”

“AK-47s,” Joe murmured.

“Guns, yes,” Isabel said. “Machine guns. Those were in my dreams. There were men everywhere, it seemed. I couldn’t count them. Dressed in black, with black ski masks and black goggles. What you said was night vision gear. Outside the front tables which were lit by the candles, it was pitch-black. So they could see in the dark and we couldn’t.”

Her heart burned. Such a horrible cowardly thing. Shooting innocent people in the dark when they could see! Not even allowing for the possibility of anyone defending themselves, innocent unarmed people in the dark, against armed men who could see. “People were screaming in the dark, scrambling to get out of the way, and then they started falling. One masked terrorist planted himself on the other side of the tables with candles and opened fire on the podium. As if he were shooting ducks in a gallery in the county fair. Left to right.” She closed her eyes but the scene she’d repressed for months was painted on the inside of her eyeballs. Her memory had come roaring back to life and it was exactly as if she was living it again. “My mom, my kid brothers. Mowed down.” She shook.

Joe put his arm around her and bent low to her ear. “Honey, you don’t have to—”

Joe meant well but he was wrong. Isabel pushed away. “Oh, but I do, I do. Teddy—a bullet shattered his head. He dropped to the floor and there was only mist spattering my mom and Rob. Mom had already been shot but she was still on her feet. She was turning to put herself between the shooter and my father and Rob but the shooter got her in the back.”

How could the memory have been wiped? How could she have possibly forgotten it? Dead people on the podium, her wounded mother, blood pouring from a shoulder onto her pretty cream-colored suit, turning with her arms wide, wanting to catch her kid brother except the only thing she caught was a bullet.

“It sometimes took two bullets, but the guns killed everyone. Methodically, coldly. The gunman was making his way across the podium. Dad was struggling with—with Hector. Dad was trying to get to Mom and my brothers but Hector was holding him. Wait.”

Isabel held up a finger and stared into the distance. No one in the room moved. No one even breathed.

She ran through the sequence in her head. She almost didn’t believe herself, but the events rang true somewhere deep inside her.

“This is what happened. The gunman was picking off the people on the podium, Dad was trying to get to Mom and the boys but Hector was holding him. At that point, another gunman shot the man next to me and he fell on top of me. He was a big man, knocked the breath out of me. The gunman killed the man standing next to Hector. Cyrus Lowry, the former secretary of state. Dad went to school with him. Cyrus fell, the gunman pivoted...” Isabel closed her eyes, saw everything. “Hector was standing next to Cyrus. The gunman all of a sudden pulled his machine gun...
up.
”

“Like he didn’t want to shoot Blake?” Joe asked.

“Exactly. Exactly as if he had orders not to shoot Hector. And the two exchanged glances. Both nodded. Then the gunman, oh God!” She reached for Joe’s hand, found it. “The gunman brings his gun down, aims and kills Dad. Hector was spared. Deliberately.”

Silence.

“So Blake was last man standing on the podium.” Joe’s voice was harsh. Isabel looked around at her little audience. The women looked shocked, pale. The men looked grim, as if unsurprised at this example of human wickedness.

“Yes. And he turned away, but before he did, he—”

“What, Isabel?” Lauren asked softly. She still held the portrait of an eminently recognizable Hector Blake between two fingers.

“He saw me. I was on the ground, half-crushed by this man, but I was able to lift my head. We were both in the small circle of light thrown by the candles, the rest of the huge hall black and filled with bloody corpses. And...and he
saw
me. Saw me watching him just as he was turning away. There was still a huge amount of noise. The machine guns were still firing and, though the moans and screams had died down a lot, there was still screaming. So Hector gestured to the man who’d killed everyone on the podium to catch his attention and then pointed at me on the floor. I imagine what he wanted wasn’t immediately apparent because the gunman’s head was swiveling, trying to see what Hector wanted. And Hector’s face tightened...and I have never seen that expression on a man’s face before. Pure malevolent evil.”

Joe nodded. Douglas and Metal and Jacko were listening, looking grim. They were warriors. They’d seen pure malevolent evil before. They knew what she was talking about.

“The gunman is still looking. He doesn’t see me, doesn’t see that I am alive. So Hector checks his watch and makes this gesture—” She twirled her index finger in the air. “And Hector and the gunman run out the door behind the podium. I was drowning in blood and I was trying to get out from under this dead body and there was an explosion and...everything went black. The next thing I knew it was ten days later and I had a concussion that was twelve on the Glasgow coma scale. And I’d lost all memory of that night until—until now.”

“What do we do now, Mystery Man?” Felicity asked in a loud voice.

Mystery Man?

“
Depends
,” a metallic voice answered. It was one of those anonymized voices, like kidnappers had in the movies. Had someone been kidnapped? Isabel looked around. Had the voice come from Felicity’s computer?

True, Felicity’s computer was magical but now it had developed into a person?

“Is someone inside your computer, Felicity?”

“Sort of.” Felicity didn’t smile. Usually any mention of the magical wizard-like properties of her computer made her smile, but she wasn’t smiling. She looked deflated and sad. “An ex-CIA guy who is investigating the Massacre.”

“Can he see us?”

Felicity nodded.

Isabel walked over and addressed the monitor directly. Who knew who was on the other end? Former CIA. Then he’d have known Hector. “Are you investigating the Massacre undercover? Not officially?”

“
Not officially no.
”

But unofficially, yes. And presumably Mr. Former CIA knew a lot about what actually happened. So Isabel had to ask the question. And the answer would divide her life into two. She almost wanted to cling to her precarious mental state. Poor Isabel, who was blown up and can hardly stand, what does she know?

Because if she was right...if she was right...

“This is the guy who told me to protect you,” Joe said.

Isabel faced the monitor. “Do I know you? What am I to you?”

“
You’re one of the very few survivors of the Massacre.
And the only one close to the podium to survive
,
except for Hector Blake
,
who in his official statement during the Senate inquest says that he was knocked out and came to after the explosion.
He was found with a few cuts and scrapes.
”

Isabel hadn’t been called to the Senate inquest. She’d barely just woken from her coma and would have been unable to testify to anything. She hadn’t even been asked.

So. This guy in Felicity’s computer seemed to know a lot. She’d spent so many months in which her memory was a blur. In which putting one foot in front of the other was painful and hard. In which merely surviving seemed to be the most that she could hope for.

These sudden memories were sharp, almost too sharp. She had to ask.

“So tell me. Am I—am I crazy? Or do I remember what really happened? Is my memory reliable?”

“
Your memory is reliable
,
Isabel.
”

Isabel stepped back a moment, in shock, and Joe was right there. He had her back in every way there was. She leaned back for a moment, leaned into that wall of strength, then straightened. Whatever happened from now on in had to depend on
her
strength, not Joe’s.

“Do you have any idea why on earth Uncle Hector—Hector—would be involved in this?”

Everyone exchanged glances. “What?”

“Well, honey,” Joe said gently. “We aren’t in his head. So we don’t know if that was the motive. But the side effect of the Massacre was that three trillion dollars were drained from the United States into holding companies owned by Chinese companies. And that Hector Blake personally gained over a billion dollars. Which is a big motivator.”

A hot wind blew through Isabel, scorching and scouring so hard it felt like her skin was removed. It blew away all her insecurities and anxiety. It blew away the past six months and it blew away all her fears.

She hardly recognized her own voice, hoarse and raw. “Do you mean to tell me that Hector Blake killed my family, orchestrated the Massacre...
for money?
”

Joe shifted on his feet, watching her carefully. “It looks like—”

“
For money
,” the mechanical voice said. “
But maybe this is also part of a larger plan to destabilize the US economy.
Or even destabilize the country.
”

Isabel barely heard the mechanical voice. Her mother, father, three brothers. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Hundreds and hundreds of innocent people.
Murdered.
Murdered for money.

She had no idea she could feel such rage.

Isabel pulled her cell phone out of her purse and started scrolling furiously.

Without looking up she could feel the eyes of everyone on her. “What?” Damn, where was that number? Her fingers were trembling, making the delicate screen jump around.

“Who are you calling, Isabel?” Joe asked. When she didn’t answer, he put his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. “Who?”

Aha!
There it was!
“I’m calling that son of a bitch Hector Blake and I’m going to accuse him of mass murder. And I am going to bring that bastard down!”

“
Stop her!
” The mechanical voice said, urgency even in the artificial tone, just as Joe snatched her phone from her hands.

Isabel turned to him, fury in her voice. “Give that to me!”

Joe’s face was sad but firm. “Sorry, honey. Ask me anything else and I’ll give it to you, but not this.”

She slapped her hand against his chest, feeling hard muscle. She hadn’t hurt him, but she wanted to. She wanted to strike and scream and hurt. “Give me that phone!”

He was holding it away from her and if she knew anything at all, it was that she had no chance of grabbing it, none at all. He was bigger than her, taller than her, stronger than her.

The way of the world. The biggest guys won.

Tears burned in her eyes but she refused to shed them. She would never cry again. She looked at everyone in the room, looked directly in their eyes, stared at the monitor where this ghost man resided, then looked Joe squarely in the face.

“You’re not going to let him get away with this!” She looked around. “All of you. Hear me, hear what I’m saying. We have to do something. I’m going to call every single reporter I know, and I know a lot of them, including Summer Redding, who runs the political blog
Area 8
. She’s not afraid of anything, and neither am I!”

Joe’s face was tight, nostrils wide, white lines around his mouth. He wasn’t happy keeping her phone from her. But he was doing it.

“Goddamn it, Joe!”

He just shook his head.
Not giving it to you
,
sorry.

Isabel rounded on Metal. “Joe told me your story, Metal. How you lost your whole family on 9/11, father and brothers. And your mother dying of a broken heart a week later. Your entire family, wiped out. What would you do if you could find the men who did it? Actually come face-to-face with them? What would you do?”

“I’d rip their hearts out,” Metal answered.

“And I will rip Hector Blake’s heart right out of his chest,” she replied, meaning every single word.

Metal let out an audible breath. He was with her.

“Honey, listen—” Joe began.

“
If you go to the press now
,
if you confront Hector Blake without a plan
,
you are letting him win
,” the metallic voice from the monitor interrupted.

Isabel twirled. “What do you mean?”

“
I
think that the Massacre was just the opening salvo of a bigger campaign.
Hector Blake has enormous resources.
If you face him alone
,
you will lose.
And your testimony will be lost
,
too.
And we will lose any advantage we have.
Right now Blake has no clue anyone is on to him.
”

Strong fingers cupped her chin. Joe turned her head toward him. “He’s right, honey. We need to go after him carefully. We don’t know where he has allies. And if he’s got allies in the CIA, we could end up incarcerated, at a black site or dead.”

Isabel stared him in the eyes. “He cannot be allowed to get away with this.” She looked around. “He cannot be allowed to get away with this,” she repeated.