The Fall (33 page)

She reached the chain-link enclosure, strong, tall, like those securing prison yards, but topped with coiled barbed wire angled outward instead of facing in, signaling that the compound was designed to keep people out. In addition, the chain-link itself was secured to metal posts via large glass insulators, meaning it was electrified.

At least as of a moment ago.

Reaching for her backpack, Angela removed an amp meter, which she clamped to the fence, punching the red power button, and verifying that Dago's guys had also managed to disable the secondary substation used for emergencies.

“In place,” she said.

“All set, Bonnie.”

Silently thanking Olivia for providing them with so much information via her phone, Angela placed a gloved hand on the rear gate spanning the width of the driveway leading to the shipping and receiving dock.

As expected, it was disengaged from the chain mechanism, allowing it to be opened manually in case of emergency, per local building codes. Hastings might be powerful, but fire safety was still fire safety, and that also included registering the blueprints with the Brevard County Department of Building and Zoning.

The building was vulnerable. At least for the time it took local utility workers to undo the damage.

But Angela didn't need much time, plus her target was just past the loading dock connecting to the shipping and receiving area inside the back of the building, which she hoped to be deserted this late at night.

And on top of all that, she also had an additional distraction in the works courtesy of the Paradise Shop gang.

She slid the gate open just enough to get her slim frame through, before hurtling across the hundred feet of driveway to the single loading dock along the rear of the warehouse, a single yellow floodlight casting a dim glow over the weathered structure.

Weathered my ass,
she thought, reaching the dock, breathing heavily, her back pressed against the corrugated metal wall just as the sound of Harleys reverberated in the night.

Right on time.

Angela grinned, hoping that the noise of Dago and his guys gunning their machines by the front gate would be enough to hold the guards' attention long enough.

She tested the heavy double doors, and again, they were unlocked.

Counting to three, she tugged one open and snuck inside, facing a long corridor, as shown on the blueprints she had retrieved from the county's databanks two hours ago. But the plans didn't detail the quality of the interior, and this one was as high-tech as the best NASA development center, including stainless steel walls, raised tile floors, security cameras, and retinal-thumbprint door access. All in sharp contrast with its deceptive and dilapidated exterior.

She went straight for the fourth door on the right, past shipping and receiving, and tugged on it. As with the rest of the doors, it was unlocked, the power outage bypassing the fancy security system.

And just like that, Angela found herself in the building's server room, the core of Hastings's operation.

She stared at three rows of floor-to-ceiling server racks, routers, and touch-screen panels that were still operational, thanks to a local standby power supply humming along in the corner of the room, and which typically would last for about an hour—long enough for technicians to restore power.

Angela scanned the servers, quickly locating the one of immediate interest.

She unzipped her backpack and removed a small black device the size of a pack of cigarettes with a foot-long Ethernet cable coming out of the top. She plugged the standing end into one of the Ethernet receptacles on the back of the server, and then applied a strip of double-sided tape to the gadget, securing it firmly to the rear of the frame, out of sight from anyone inspecting the server room.

“It's in,” she said.

“Testing now,” he replied.

Angela waited while Art-Z checked the hack into the system's firewall, which was basically a byproduct of Network Address Translation. NAT simply blocked any incoming connection attempt that lacked a matching outgoing connection. The gadget that Angela had just plugged in would create an outgoing connection for them, tricking the firewall.

“We're good, Bonnie,” he said. “Inject and get out.”

She removed a USB stick and plugged it into the back of the same server, introducing a malware brew that, among other things, would bypass the cryptographic protocols that assigned session keys to authorized users, giving them undetected access to the network once they got past the firewall.

Angela zipped up her backpack and headed for the door, inching it open and—

Shit!

She closed it swiftly but quietly.

Two guards were emerging from the other end of the hallway, flashlights in hand.

“Got company,” she mumbled, her heartbeat thrashing her temples, her throat going dry, her mind going in ten directions as she hid in the rear of the server room, behind a couple of stacked boxes of spare parts.

“Need to haul ass before the power comes back up, Bonnie,” Art-Z said.

“No shit,” she hissed. “But there's a pair of guards coming this way in the hallway. Is there another way out of this room?”

“Hold on.”

Angela swallowed, trying to control her breathing, inhaling through her mouth and exhaling slowly through her nostrils. It wouldn't do anyone any good if she started to hyperventilate.

“Bonnie. On the side of the room, by the floor, I see an AC return duct. Looks big enough in the blueprints.”

Angela crawled on all fours while staring at the door, hearing nothing but the hum of the equipment, unable to tell if the guards were still down the hallway or about to open the door.

There.

Just where he said it would be.

“Found it,” she mumbled, unzipping her backpack and pulling out a small flathead screwdriver, which she used to remove the top two screws, taking less than thirty seconds, amazed that her hands were so steady.

“Hurry, Bonnie.”

“Almost there,” she replied, removing the last screw and lowering the cover, which was hinged at the bottom.

Good thing I'm not claustrophobic,
she thought, crawling in and closing the cover behind her, before unzipping the backpack and using a long strip of double-sided tape to hold it in place.

“Now what, Art?”

“Okay … head straight back until you reach a split, then go left … no, go right … no wait, I'm reading it backward … it's left. Yes. Go left.”

She sighed and began to turn around in the cramped space, also glad that she was petite enough to maneuver in this very tight—

The door to the server room opened and the guards walked inside.

She froze.

“… so I told her that she had to either get her kid to straighten up or I was out.”

“Don't blame you, man. Bad enough you're putting a roof over their fucking heads. You shouldn't have to take shit from a stupid brat that's not even yours.”

Angela licked her lips, hanging on to every word as the guards walked the server room for what seemed like an eternity, their flashlights crisscrossing, occasionally forking through the grill cover, piercing the darkness of her conduit.

“Well, this room looks fine, too,” the first guard said before the static of a radio cracked in the room, followed by, “Server room clear. Tell Dr. Salazar.”

And a moment later they were gone.

Angela hesitated, not certain which way to take. Behind her was the server room and a clear shot back out, assuming the guards returned to the front of the building, where she hoped Dago and his guys were causing a loud distraction to draw attention.

“Art, do you really know where this duct is leading?”

“Ah … it looks like it connects to another room … a lab of some sort.”

Damn,
she thought. She didn't need to go to any labs. She needed to get the hell out of there.

Slowly, she turned back around and pushed the cover open, sliding out, before closing it back up, and taking thirty seconds to reinsert the screws and tighten them by hand.

Stretching, rolling her head twice, Angela walked cautiously to the door and placed an ear against its cold surface, frowning. The guards were chatting just outside the door.

Stepping away from it and hiding in the rear, she said, “Art, I'm going back the same way I came in. Tell Dago and his guys to get off their bikes and fake a fistfight, maybe rattle the front gate. I need them to cause a serious uproar out there to get these guys off my ass.”

“Hold on, Bonnie.”

Angela waited, her shoulder aching with tension as every passing second closed her escape window. When the electricity came back up, she'd be stuck in this place.

Suddenly, static cracked and she heard someone shouting in the radio, followed by the guards running toward the front.

She exhaled, slowly inching the door open and peering in their direction, watching them disappear beyond the door at the other end of the long corridor.

“They're gone, Art.”

“Hurry, Bonnie.”

She stepped back out to the dimly lit hallway and scrambled for the rear double doors, reaching them seconds later, swinging one open, and running into the loading—

“You! Hold it right there!”

Shit!

Angela risked a backward glance, spotting a security guard dressed in black emerging at the other end of the corridor. He was tall, athletic, his face tight with anger, a radio in one hand, while the other reached for a weapon in a belt holster.

“
Stop!
Stay where you—”

The heavy metal door closed behind her, cutting off his warning.

Angela sprinted from the building, kicking her legs with all her strength, jumping from the loading dock, landing in a crouch, and hurtling toward the fence.

The wind, the night, and the adrenaline coursing through her veins all blended in a blur as she pushed herself, her vision tunneling on the rear gate, the one she had left open, the one she had to reach to—

“Stop!” the voice echoed from behind, followed by another voice from her distant right.

A second guard!

Angela didn't bother looking.

She could feel them converging on her like a pack of wolves, her eyes locked on the foot-wide gap in the gate, pointing her momentum toward it, kicking as hard as she could, gulping air through her mouth.

Twenty feet.

The shouts were closer now, almost on top of her, mixed with the noise of Harleys, with more shouting coming from the front of the building.

But she couldn't look, couldn't take her attention from her target, from the gap, aching with anticipation of a hand yanking her neck, taking her down.

So she pushed even harder, her heartbeat rocketing, almost drowning her other senses as the gap grew, as she reached it, going through, scraping a shoulder, banging an ankle against a post, the pain streaking up her leg as she winced, nearly losing her footing.

“Last warning!” a voice thundered behind her. “
Stop!
”

Screw you,
she thought, cutting left, then right, like Jack had shown her, making herself a harder target, buying time to reach the forest, the tree line, where she could—

She heard a loud electric spark an instant before an invisible force stabbed her back with paralyzing strength.

Colors exploded in her mind as her limbs seized, fingers stretched to the night sky, before contracting into fists. Her vision narrowed as her legs turned to putty, giving out from under her.

Angela collapsed, her back on fire, as if someone was hitting her repeatedly with a two by four, pounding her into the ground with animal strength.

Shadows shifted about her as she thrashed on the ground, beaten, her thoughts vanishing to the periphery of her consciousness.

And then it stopped—the arresting pain, the spasm, the pressure on her back.

Instead, Angela just stared at the stars, at the cosmos above her, feeling the evening breeze caressing her face, soothing her quivering skin, before someone loomed into view, blocking the night sky, her heart sinking at the realization that she had been captured, that Hastings had managed to take her.

But she wasn't finished.

She needed more time to investigate, to analyze, to theorize.

Angela needed to find Jack.

But the face. It belonged to the enemy.

His lips were moving, but Angela couldn't hear anything, couldn't feel anything but the anger boiling inside of her at the thought of being captured by these bastards.

And like a wounded and cornered animal, Angela tried to lash out, tried to raise a hand and scratch his face, tried to lift a knee and kick him in the groin—anything to fight back, to inflict pain, to make them pay for what they had done to Jack, to her, to Olivia.

But Riggs's hands pinned her wrists against the ground, like a pair of steel clamps, unyielding, immobilizing her as he tried to tell her something, as his lips moved fast while looking over his shoulder, as Angela grew light-headed, dizzy, her tired mind starting to capitulate, to give in, to accept the fact that—

Another face materialized next to Riggs, shifting to the center of her tunneling vision, framed by a sea of bright stars.

Pete?

It was her friend—Jack's best friend.

But it couldn't be.

Pete was with Riggs.

And Riggs was the enemy.

She tried to speak, to shout, to scream that she didn't understand, that she needed answers, that she just wanted to find her husband and disappear forever.

But Pete remained there, floating a foot from her.

Smiling.

She watched him through her tears before passing out.

*   *   *

Angela and Layton lost him somewhere in the middle of gamma rays, particle collisions, quantum physics, and string theory. But he had grasped the basics of the discussion, as the scientists filled the white board with formulas, drawings, and mathematical proofs and theorems.