Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) (21 page)

I decided to press him again. “What does burned mean?”

“They decided that I am no longer employed and I am considered a threat to the organization, and to the country.” Zeke’s fingers gripped the steering wheel. “And if they catch me before I have a chance to clear my name, everything will be taken from me.”

I could relate to that. Losing everything in one moment was terrifying and disconcerting and unsettling. It had happened to me when I was seven years old and I’d never gotten over it.

“Do you deserve it?”

Zeke opened his mouth, closed it, and frowned, then glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think so.”

That wasn’t an overwhelmingly positive response. On the other hand, he wasn’t loudly proclaiming his innocence either. “How do you not know?”

Zeke pressed his lips together. “Since I was drugged when I was kidnapped, I don’t remember what happened.”

I thought back to his explanation of why the government was after Susan Chen. “But you were drugged.”

“Yes.”

I needed to think about the implications of that more but right now I wanted specifics. “What was the drug?”

“Sodium Pentothal.” Zeke’s blond brows arched down into a deep V. “I thought I was immune to SP and similar drugs.”

Drugs, chemical interactions, were one area where I had no expertise. I was more of a math/physics girl. So I couldn’t be any help there. “How does you being drugged turn into you being burned?”

“I may have associated with questionable people, whether homegrown terrorists or foreign nationals who are considered a threat to public safety and national security. I may have given away national secrets. I may have— Fuck.”

He may have what? His eyes had narrowed and his mouth had tightened. I got the gist of what he could have done and I got the burned part now. I studied him. “What are you going to do next?”

“I’m working on it.” Zeke huffed out a breath. “We need to ditch this car. Not just for me but in case John Stanley does have the capability to track down who rented it.”

We were heading north along Moonstone Beach.

“Can you suggest a place where there would be a lot of cars?”

I thought for a moment, but there was really only one place that came to mind.

“Hearst Castle Visitor Center.” Which was a few miles up ahead in San Simeon. “But once we ditch this one, where do we get a new one?”

“We’re going shopping,” Zeke said cryptically.

By the time we’d pulled into the parking lot, I’d figured it out.

Hearst Castle was a huge tourist draw run by the State of California. Tourists didn’t drive up the hill to the massive estate once owned by the famous mogul William Randolph Hearst. They parked at the giant visitor center and gift shop then boarded buses to go up the hill to the castle. And left their cars unattended. I’d bet we were going to steal a car.

We’d hit at an unplanned yet precisely beneficial time. A tour bus coming back from the mansion had just pulled into the depot station and people were pouring from the bus like ants crawling over a picnic. Some went into the gift/souvenir shop, while others headed straight for their cars. As that group left, a new batch of tourists arrived and lined up at the depot for the bus to head back up the hill. Zeke and I sat in the Range Rover, waiting. There were cars and people everywhere. When the bus closed its doors and headed back up the hill, Zeke pulled a small screwdriver out of pouch from his duffel bag and beelined for an older model Honda Civic that had just recently been parked.

“Keep a lookout,” he demanded as he crouched down in front of the light blue battered car.

“Why this car?” I asked curiously.

“Traditionally the number one most stolen car in the country.”

“Huh, really?”

“Yep.”

Zeke switched license plates with the car next to the Civic, which was a Honda CRV.

One of his unruly blond curls had fallen over his forehead and fell into his vision. He shook his head then bent to finish the task of switching the license plates on the two Hondas. Then he switched plates with the rental Range Rover and another car of the same make, but a different color.

The whole process had taken all of ten minutes.

“Let’s get out of here.” Zeke used a Slim Jim to open the Civic’s driver’s door and then unlocked the rest of the car. He threw his duffel in the backseat and by working some automotive magic that completely escaped me, he hotwired the car. Within a few minutes, he had the engine running.

“Sweet music.” He grinned, his teeth even and white in his tanned face. Slight blond stubble obscured the clean line of his jaw and the scruff gave him a rakish air.

The rumble of an Army truck hit our ears at the same time.

Zeke twisted in the driver’s seat, just as I swung my body into the passenger seat. A convoy truck barreled up the paved road to the Hearst Castle Visitor Center.

“Shit.” Zeke shoved out of the driver’s seat and quickly hopped into the back seat. He lay on the tattered fabric seat on his back so he wasn’t visible unless you were staring straight into the car, and commanded me. “You drive.”

“What?”

“Act casual.” Zeke’s muffled voice came from the backseat. “Don’t speed. Don’t stare overlong at the truck. Just drive like you’re a tourist.”

My heart boomed in my chest. “You think that truck is for you?”
Us?

“I can’t afford not to think it,” Zeke replied. “Get us out of here.”

I got behind the wheel and slowly exited the tourist center parking lot. The Army truck went flying by as if on a mission. “Maybe they’re just getting ready to do some repairs at the Castle. After all, it is a National Landmark.”

I was grasping and I knew it. But that Army truck made everything that had happened this morning real in a way that I didn’t expect.

“Do you really want to stick around and find out?”

He had a point. I tooled down the winding road. At the stop sign to Highway One, I asked, “North? Or South?” We couldn’t go west, that lead straight into the ocean. East lead up the hill to the castle which was only accessible by official buses.

“Camp Roberts is south and east, Fort Hunter Liggett is north and east. Roberts is closer. North would send us near the Ventana Wilderness and towards Monterey.” Zeke’s voice ruminated from the backseat. I didn’t freaking care I just needed to know which way to go.

“Which way?” I asked again almost desperately.

“South.”

So I turned left, and we were on our way. I glanced back at the visitor center. I couldn’t be sure but I thought the soldiers were clustered around the Rover that Zeke and I had abandoned. But he’d switched plates so I wasn’t sure how they knew the correct one.

My palms began to sweat and I blew out a nervous breath. “I think you were right,” I whispered.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here.” Zeke’s muffled voice was stringent.

We headed south, my mind whirling at a hundred miles an hour even as I kept the car’s speed just under the posted limit.

Zeke pushed up to sitting and hung his arms over the backseat to stare out the side window at the slowly receding visitor center.

Those Army guys were after him. As if he were a public enemy. And I voiced the thoughts that were swirling in my head since he’d told me his impossible tale. And given me new information about my stepfather. If he was right, and John Stanley was a sleeper, then more was going on here. “What are the odds that my stepfather and your problems are not connected?”

He didn’t say anything but his dark blue gaze met mine in the rearview mirror. The older car’s mirror was mottled with age, the blemishes in the mirror obscuring and revealing his features and giving him a slightly demonic cast.

“The Single Law of Chance,” Emile Borel’s work on evolutionary inevitability I mused aloud, “would presume that the probability that these events are connected is so small it would never occur.”

Except, that it had occurred. John Stanley had been in Cambria. Susan Chen had been in San Luis Obispo. Zeke had been burned. And the Army was in San Simeon. “Taken alone they are all on the edge of impossible. However, all of those events had happened which means, at least in my mind, that they have to be connected.”

Zeke was still silent.

When he didn’t say anything I thought maybe he didn’t know what I was talking about. “Are you familiar with Borel?”

“Of course,” Zeke snapped. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around the fact everything is tied together.”

Ooookay.

“Usually I see patterns before they’re patterns,” he muttered. He didn’t say it but I could hear the question. How did he miss it? And how was everything connected?

“You…and me.”

As far as I knew there weren’t any other variables that intersected us, so in theory, our problems should be mutually exclusive. “Unless there is another Venn intersection that I don’t know about.”

He continued to stay silent.

“You know, Venn diagrams. Circles that overlap. Some variables are unique to each circle but the variables that both have in common are in the overlapped part.”

“Jesus, yes, I’m familiar with Venn Diagrams. Pretty sure everyone learns about them in third grade,” Zeke said.

I could practically hear his brain churning in the backseat. He knew something. Something else that tied us together.

But the longer I waited, the more sure I became that he had no intention of sharing with me. Which totally blew. And he could tell I was waiting.

He finally said, “It’s classified.”

Twenty-Six

October 21

Seattle, Washington

Oliver studied the simple tract house in the suburb of Seattle. He’d hated coming to dinner at this house. Susan’s family was dry, boring, and mundane. He’d been a premier scientist and to have to share a meal with the plebian and simple tastes of her Asian sibling and Caucasian wife trying so hard to be the quintessential American family had driven him insane.

But he’d done it. He’d tolerated those dinners and backyard barbecues all for the sake of science and for the cause of mother Russia.

His rage built as he stared at the simple tri-level clapboard house with its red brick foundation and cement walkway. He hated the rounded, precisely-trimmed bushes out front and the little pots, filled with cheerful Fall flowers and trailing greenery, that flanked the cement steps and iron railing.

They had talked
ad nauseam
about their stupid flowers and their minivan and their neighbor’s vacations and what universities their darling, brilliant children were going to attend.

It was so tempting to just torch the house. He spied the electrical box attached to the side of the house near the fenced backyard. He could probably even make it look like an accident. He could just zap the fuse box, engulf the house in flames, and get rid of his former in-laws permanently.

But he needed Liliya. And he needed his
wife
.

And, most importantly, he needed their research.

He’d tried contacting her through the silly method they’d set up years ago. An online chat room that was just for them. She hadn’t responded. Hadn’t acknowledged his attempts to get in touch with her in any way.

That seriously pissed him off. He was not to be ignored.

Of course, she had no idea he was in her country.

He wasn’t about to put that onto the internet even to get a rise out of her. But he didn’t know how else to make contact with her. He’d been at this house for the last two days and she hadn’t come to see their daughter. The in-laws had other visitors. Official looking men in navy blue suits and white shirts, which meant he wasn’t the only one looking for his absent wife. Another visitor who appeared to be a tutor came every day for several hours.

It was time for more desperate measures.

Oliver sat in a car down the street hoping that the brat would show soon. He’d thought he’d caught a glimpse of her in the window earlier but since that one quick shadow, his daughter hadn’t come outside. He could concede that perhaps giving Liliya the DNA-enhancing drug was not well thought out, but at the time he’d only meant to increase her brain power while testing the drug, and help her agoraphobia, not make it worse. Unfortunately there had been unforeseen consequences to the drug’s effects.

He was done waiting around for Susan to respond. He’d make it impossible for Susan to ignore him.

Oliver sat up in his seat as the tall, thin woman in a light blue Prius parked in front of the house. The tutor, he presumed. She was carrying a bulging messenger bag. She rang the doorbell and was quickly ushered into the home by Susan’s sister-in-law. No sign of his daughter.

Oliver continued to wait. As he canvassed the neighborhood, he noted that there was a banged up, white service van, with some sort of logo on the side, parked at the opposite end of the street.

Something about the van and the fact that no house on the street seemed to be having any type of work done set off his radar.

Oliver tried to see if there was someone in the back of that van. It was possible he wasn’t the only one waiting for his darling wife to show.

But damned if he’d let another spook take what rightfully belonged to him.

Oliver kept one eye on the house and the other on the van. But nothing changed.

Two hours later, the woman exited the house. He caught a glimpse of Liliya but no Susan. She had to be coming here, right? She was so fucking protective of the girl. But what if Susan was not in Seattle? How the hell would he find her? The United States was a big fucking country. Although she had limited mobility since it was likely that every intelligence and law enforcement agency in the country was on the lookout for her. He needed her to come to him.

As he watched the Prius drive away, he contemplated his next move.

Ring the doorbell? Grab the girl? His employers had given him two weeks to carry out his mission but he didn’t want to use all the allotted time. It would be best for him to get out of the United States as quickly as possible. The longer he was here, the more chance he could be discovered.

He didn’t have time to waste.

He’d been in front of this house for the last two days, and nothing. Maybe he needed to think outside the box, as the Americans liked to say.