Internal Threat (7 page)

Swinging his car door shut, Matt’s eyes surreptitiously scanned the surroundings. Although he was nearly positive that whoever was orchestrating this nightmare was a professional who would not allow himself be seen, he also knew that this was his first opportunity to spot him. A quick peripheral raking resulted in nothing. The voice was in his ear again, instructing him to open up the glove compartment.

Inside, Matt found a small black leather box. He flipped it open to see what looked like a plastic shirt button and a white earbud.

“Hang up the phone and put the earpiece in.” Another click and dead air filled his ear. Matt cut his eyes to Luke who was shivering slightly. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder to steady him.

“Hey, we’re going to be okay. You hear me?”
Luke met his father’s gaze and nodded. Matt squeezed his shoulder and popped the earpiece in. Instantly, the killer’s voice was there again.

“Clip the button to the top of your collar.” Matt did, noting in the mirror how the button looked like it was a part of his dress shirt. Unless someone became fixated on why his collar had an extra button beneath it, the addition was barely noticeable. “You are wearing a pinhole camera. I can see everything you see. I can also hear everything you say. Just so we understand one another.”

“What do you want?” Matt demanded again.

“We will get to that. Turn the car on and go back down to Sunset Boulevard. When you reach it, make a left. I will guide you from there.”

Matt put the Porsche into gear and slowly pulled into the street. As he drove, his mind worked feverishly. Survival skills revved up on instinct. Emotions bubbling up from the events threatened to tip him into irrational, desperate behavior. That was exactly what this person would want and Matt refused to give him that power. Often on the battlefield, chaos and confusion were the enemy’s best weapon. When a soldier felt he could not trust his instincts or, even worse, those of his superiors, he became a pawn to be used at will.

The intersection for Sunset came into view, Matt making the turn and pulling onto the heavily trafficked thoroughfare. He was familiar with the entire street from his many years traversing it to appointments. The fabled boulevard lay in a serpentine ribbon across the heart of Los Angeles. Beginning at the Pacific Ocean, it wended through the lush green hills of Beverly Hills and Bel Air before becoming a straight strip for cruising through the legendary nightclub and bar scene. Miles more of its asphalt stretched into the bohemian hotbed of Silverlake and the cluster of soaring high-rises that marked downtown Los Angeles’s business center.

Matt now found himself navigating the street for the longest five minutes of his existence. A traffic light flipped to red at the La Brea intersection, placing him squarely next to a police car. The patrolman glanced in Matt’s direction, catching his eyes.

Signal him somehow
, Matt told himself. The voice reappeared in his ear, jolting him.

“Smile and look away,” came the order.

Damn
. Matt cursed himself for facing the policeman, forgetting that the killer could see in conjunction with him. He flashed a tight grin which was met with indifference, then turned his eyes back to the road. The light turned green and the police car pulled away.

“Drive behind him, not too fast,” the killer said. When the black and white trunk rounded a corner ahead, Matt felt his heart sink. “In a few minutes, you will be approaching the Hobson Building,” the voice in his ear continued.

Matt knew it well since it housed several of his clients and their servers. “And what am I going to do there?” he asked.

“Pull into the driveway before you miss it,” was the reply, ignoring Matt’s question. “Find a space against the wall and park.”

Matt turned into the parking lot, shooting a quick look at Luke who was slumped in his seat. He noticed how the boy was shivering slightly and a small dot of sweat trickling down his temple. Matt wiped it away for him, earning a wan smile from his son.

Turning his attention back to the parking garage, Matt rolled the Porsche to a stop in front of the small security guard booth. It was empty since the time was approaching five o’clock, the building’s typical closing time. The opposite guardrail was lifted for the flood of office workers currently leaving the building. Matt withdrew a key card from his wallet and pressed it against a smooth plastic pad with a glowing red light. There was a low thunk as the light turned to green, simultaneously causing the rail in front of him to lift.

Matt drove forward and found a parking spot against the far wall, as instructed. Except for a few sedans scattered about, his was now the only car in the garage.

“Okay, now what?” he asked aloud.

“You are going to assist me, Weatherly.”

“With what?”

“A job I need done.”

“And why do you need me?”
“Access.”

“To?”

There was a slightly annoyed expulsion of breath from the killer which Matt felt grate against his eardrums.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Part of my training,” responded Matt.

“From where? Your first real estate job at Mirza Investments? Or maybe from that eight year stint you did in the Army. Perhaps when you went to officer school in West Point.”

Matt’s chest tightened.
He knows everything about me.

“In any case, this is more of a business proposal,” the man continued. “You are going to enter into that building and gain entry to the server space you own. When you do, you will disable space 634, the one you leased to Phoenix Trust Services one year ago.”

“And what do I get out of the deal?”
“Simple. You and your son get to live. Along with everybody else in Los Angeles.”

Matt processed the last sentence. “What do you mean ‘everybody in Los Angeles’?”

“Somewhere with you is a rather powerful bomb, enough to evaporate everything from where you’re standing all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Roughly a few million people, depending on when it detonates.”

Matt’s eyes frantically scanned the interior of the car. A hundred objects leaped out at him as possible hiding places – underneath the car, in its trunk, the cell phone itself that the killer had given him. Too many to ever give Matt a chance to find it at the moment.

The man’s voice was coming over the earbud again. “The deal I am striking with you, Weatherly, is to follow my instructions for the night. Only then do I disable the bomb.”

Matt’s urge was to rip the earpiece out and floor the Porsche out of the garage. Getting Luke to safety was his first priority. He tamped those feelings down briefly, though, to fully assess the situation. This man would lie to get what he wanted; there was no doubt about that. Matt’s honed instincts told him, though, that the bomb was no lie. And if he were responsible for the lives of millions of innocent people…then, in his mind, there was only one choice to make.

His voice thick with revulsion, Matt at last replied, “Let’s get started.”

T
om Grafton genuinely liked Matt Weatherly. The man always had a kind word for him, treated him respectfully when he was forced to go through the standard checking in procedure and had even gotten a gift for Tom’s daughter, Isabella, when it was the girl’s seventh birthday. Yes, Matt was one of the good ones that passed through the front doors of the Hobson Building. It was why Tom considered him almost a friend.

It was also why he was willing to cut Matt some slack when Tom saw what he was currently doing. Tom had just come on to the beginning of his shift when he noticed the image of Matt’s Porsche Panamera entering the parking garage on his desk monitor. He watched as the car pulled into an empty space against the far wall, not where Weatherly usually parked. His brow furrowed when Matt opened the passenger door to help a young boy out the passenger side. Tom recognized him as Weatherly’s son – Matt had shown him some pictures a few months ago when they got to talking about their kids.

Tom’s confusion increased as Matt and his boy failed to take the stairs to the lobby as he always did when visiting. Instead, the pair entered the side stairwell that could take them all the way up to the top floor without checking in at the front desk.

A sigh whistled through Tom’s lips. This was not how he hoped his evening would go. The last thing he wanted to do was create waves with one of the building’s top tenants. Matt and his company had been renting server space on the uppermost floor for over four years now and even a security guard like Tom knew that the rent income was substantial for his employers. He knew other guards in the building that were by-the-book types and relished any excuse to have a power trip over the suits that came to visit. Tom liked to think of himself as a cut above those guys.

Maybe he would just wait a few minutes. Perhaps Weatherly had brought his son to see his work and had forgotten that he needed to check in. It could have been that Matt was simply distracted; even though he could not hear anything over the security monitors, Tom could plainly see that Matt was animatedly talking to somebody on his Bluetooth headset. The door to the stairwell shut behind the duo and Tom flicked his eyes to the next monitor, showing the two progressing up the stairs. They trudged upwards with no sign of stopping.

Tom shook his head and grabbed his walkie-talkie.
I should at least call it in to HQ
, he thought. But before he could step outside of his circular lobby desk, his eyes caught sight of another of the building’s customers.

Ashley Kane was making her way up the front steps.

“Just great,” he said to himself.

Tom tolerated Ashley’s occasional abrasiveness because she always managed to score him Kings tickets when he requested them. His interest was piqued, however. The presence of her and Matt Weatherly together at the same time seemed to indicate that something was going on. As he raised his muscular bulk out of his chair, he exhaled in frustration again.

This was shaping up to be a bad night.

“Keep moving,” the killer’s voice breathed in Matt’s ear.

Luke faltered on one of the steps, so Matt placed his arms underneath the boy’s arm. “You need me to carry you?” Matt asked him.
His son shot him an annoyed glance coupled with, “I can do it.” He shrugged away Matt’s grip, speeding his pace.

After several minutes of climbing, they had reached a gray metal door on the top floor. A thick metal bar was placed across its center, a glowing keypad to its right. “Authorized Entry Only” blared from a white and red sign pasted to the door’s surface.

“Use your passcode to get in,” Matt heard. He rapidly punched a six digit code and heard a click from behind the wall. Placing his hand on the metal bar, Matt pushed downwards, causing the door to swing back on hidden hinges. Entering first into the dimly lit space, he pulled Luke in and shut the door softly behind him.

As Matt’s eyes adjusted to the light, he observed the full room. Before him stretched row after row of what resembled wide partitions stacked to the ceiling. Inside each of them was a nest of wires and small black boxes covered with blinking green lights. These were the servers and routers that allowed terabytes of information to flow through cyberspace and deposit the information where the owners wished.

“It’s cold in here,” Luke said next to him.

“They keep it that way so the servers don’t overheat.” He nodded towards a bank of boxes at the far end of the room. “The one we want is over there.”

He and Luke crossed the polished cement floor, Matt’s eyes scanning left and right to see if anyone else was here. He knew that the chances were slim considering most of the building’s workforce had gone home for the night.
Tom is working security tonight and he should be watching, though
, he thought to himself. If Matt could alert him somehow, then-

“Keep moving. You have a tight schedule to keep,” the killer said in Matt’s ear.

Matt and Luke reached the space at the back of the room, taking in the expanse of machinery emitting a low hum. Matt spotted the server that the killer was looking for in the middle. It lay behind a crisscross of black metal grilling that allowed air to pass through thin holes that were too small for even a pinky finger to wiggle into.

“How are we supposed to get to it?” Luke asked.

“Simple. We just-” The words froze in Matt’s throat. With a sudden sickening realization, he understood exactly why he had been chosen for this.

And why it was desperately important that he get help.

“I
’m sorry, I can’t help you,” Tom said, his voice firm.

Ashley stood in front of him, placing her palms on the front of the high lobby desk. “Come on, Tom. I know Weatherly is here. I’ve got a guy who works in the office across the way who said he just saw his fancy little Porsche pull in. All I want to do is take a quick peek to see what he’s up to. It’s called healthy competition.”

“Is it now?” the guard replied skeptically.

“Tom, you and I have known each other for a long time, right?”

He shrugged in response, “A couple of years.”

“How many tickets have I gotten you in that time?”

“A lot,” he conceded. “But that doesn’t mean-”

She held up a hand to stop him. “I know. It doesn’t mean we’re friends. What it does mean is that we’re business partners of a sort, right?” Tom simply stared back at her. “And, as a business partner, I would never ask you to do anything that you haven’t done before. Like the time you let me see the space that Weatherly was going to rent to that Taiwanese gaming company? I just took a fast look and then was gone. Remember the hockey seats you got for that?”

The guard nodded, mumbling, “Right up against the glass.”

“Exactly. And if you let me upstairs to see what Matt is up to, then I can guarantee you a similar reward. A better one, even.”

Tom hesitated, his mind working.
Damn, this lady is good.

“Floor seats for the Lakers next week,” Ashley pressed, knowing her prey was wavering.

“Floor seats?” Tom echoed incredulously, knowing the exorbitant value of such a gift.