Shadows (Black Raven Book 1) (23 page)

“We’ve worked on that. Like I told you earlier, our government sources indicate that no type of Shadow Technology created by Barrows is in use in any government databases and especially not in sensitive ones like PRISM.”

“Well, keep digging.”

“FYI. All of our data analysts are working practically around the clock now. Aside from the prison break, some Middle East projects are requiring attention. Short breaks are only for catnaps, food, and hygiene. ” Her tone was matter-of-fact. She wasn’t complaining. She was just stating facts that Sebastian needed to know. “My department is operating past peak capacity.”

“Remind me in an after-action-report. It’s time to up manpower,” he said. In the information age, his company needed the ability to secure massive volumes of data and process it. Taxing their resources wasn’t acceptable. “Can’t do anything about it now, except add to the work list. Here’s another project. Compile a list of parties who were interested in BY Laboratory’s products. Barrows was the brains behind the operation, but Young managed to get Barrows’ ideas sold. I want the profile of Young to be business and personal. I want to know who Young was dealing with and what the hell he was trying to sell. As far as prospective purchases of BY Laboratories products, do an assessment of the interested parties and any possible correlations with the safe house crime scene and anything else that happened today.” He paused. “How’s Pete?”

“Holding his own. In surgery.”

“Good. Play the press conference for me. Interrupt if there’s new news.”

Shattering Barrows’ kneecap and hammering steel pins underneath his toenails was entertaining, but the injuries didn’t produce the desired result. Barrows had a high threshold for pain, but even he had his breaking point. Finally, he’d passed out from the pain, and when he regained consciousness all he could do was mumble incoherently for hours after the morning’s interrogation session. The wounds required treatment.

‘Treatment’ was code in Trask’s world for readying the victim for the next round of torture. They had to feel well enough to fear what was going to happen to them. Without fear, there was no hope of cooperation. In Barrows’ case, there had to be another round, because Barrows wouldn’t deliver the fucking code. Couldn’t. Barrows had spent two days destroying data, and now he couldn’t put it back together.

Dunbar stood at Trask’s side in his office, their attention focused on monitors showing treatment room B, anticipating the reunion of Barrows and Jennifer Root. The safe-house operation had become a disaster, compliments of Sebastian Connelly. One day, hopefully soon, he was going to cut off Connelly’s dick and shove it down the man’s throat.

He’d have to wait for that thrill. For now, all he had was Jennifer Root to exert pressure on Barrows. Root wasn’t a sure shot like Skye and Spring would be, but it could work.

The monitors in Trask’s private office revealed the treatment room that was on the floor beneath them. Bright, florescent light illuminated the treatment room. White linens covered Root’s ass and her legs, leaving her back exposed. Eyes closed, she lay face down on a pillow. Her shoulder length, chestnut brown hair covered half her face. Root was attractive for a middle-aged woman, but her dark brown eyes typically gave away the fact that there wasn’t anything soft or feminine about her. Trask knew and appreciated her, because she was like him. She was a barracuda of a lawyer, who’d rather eat her young for breakfast than have a glass of wine with friends. Chardonnay? Not something she drank. Like Trask, she preferred to sip the heady elixir that came with squeezing the resistance out of anyone that dared to challenge her.

Trask’s intel on Root had told him that in the rare moments when she wasn’t working, she exercised and pampered herself with massages and spa visits. Because so much of her life had been spent in offices and courtrooms and not in the sun, her skin, particularly the soft skin of her back, was smooth and creamy. There had been no massage for Root this afternoon. The space between her shoulders and her waist was crisscrossed with bleeding cuts and purplish-black bruises. Glistening ointment covered her wounds. In the white expanse of the treatment room, with light bouncing off white tiles and stainless steel, Root’s wounds and her dark hair were the only splash of color.

The camera revealed an assistant in light-green medical scrubs as he wheeled Barrows into the examining room, then promptly left.

Trask lifted his cell phone and dialed the audio-visual room. “Give me a close-up on Barrows.”

As the camera panned in, Barrows’ eyes revealed the fatigue and misery that came with being a broken man. He wore a loosely-tied hospital gown. His face and arms were blistered with burns from the sizzling water that had rained on him in the earlier interrogation session. His shattered knee was bandaged, but not repaired. Despite his own sorry condition, Barrows gasped as he looked at his lawyer and best friend. He tried to stand, but instead he fell back awkwardly, grimacing in pain. He hadn’t yet mastered the art of walking with only one operable knee.

Multi-angle cameras, concealed in lighting hardware and invisible to the occupants of the exam room, caught the drama perfectly as it played out on the monitors in Trask’s office. He’d wanted to give them a few minutes together, alone, thinking that the surprise reunion, and her wounds, might prompt Barrows into revealing something useful.

Trask watched the monitors for several irritatingly long minutes as Barrows tried to breathe through his pain and collect himself. Finally, Barrows wheeled himself to Root’s bedside and gently touched her shoulder. “Jennifer.”

Root opened her eyes. She whimpered. Her eyes widened when she saw Barrows. She attempted to sit up, but collapsed onto the bed. Finally, she struggled up on an elbow, moaning as she did. She dragged the top sheet up, covering her breasts and most of her body. For a few long minutes, her eyes had the unfocused look of someone whose awareness hadn’t caught up with the fact that she was awake. She stared at Barrows and shook her head in confusion.

Trask stepped closer to the monitors, riveted by the interaction between his two captives.

“Oh, dear God,” she said. Her gaze became sharper as she took a quick visual survey of the room. She squinted against the bright lights, as she looked at Barrows siting beside her. Her focused gaze revealed that her brain was, as usual, firing with no-nonsense, analytical thoughts. “We’re in hell.”

Trask glanced at Dunbar and chuckled. He’d orchestrated the reunion of Root and the client who had made her well known and wealthy. He hadn’t expected Root to be overly effusive in concern for Barrows, but her lack of immediate concern for the physical condition of her client was downright comical.

Eyes back on the monitor, he folded his arms and watched the drama.

“He says he has Skye and Spring,” Barrows whispered, as if he knew someone was listening.

Into his phone, Trask said, “Increase volume. Make focus on the close-up on Barrows sharper.”

He held his breath as he waited for the adjustment on focus. Nice. He could see each fluid-filled blister on the man’s high cheekbones, and the stark terror in his rheumy blue eyes.

“Is it true?” Barrows’ voice broke off as he choked in panic.

“I don’t know if he has them now, but he sure as hell came close this morning. He sent kidnappers after them. His attempt was foiled with not a second to spare. Last I heard the marshals had established a safe house, and they were taking them there. Dammit, but this hurts,” she said, wincing as she turned to her side and sat up in the bed, wrapping the sheet around herself to cover her nudity, before sitting all the way up and easing herself off of the bed. She groaned when she was fully upright. “Son of a fucking bitch, this hurts.” She lifted his chin with the crook of his finger, and said, “What the hell did he do to you?”

Barrows shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said, her tone quiet but confident, her determination visible in the steady gaze she shared with him.

“Shhhh,” Barrows said, eyes wide, glancing up, around, and at the walls. “They’re listening.”

Jennifer’s eyes blazed. “Good. I hope the fucking bastard who is doing this to us is listening. He’ll realize that we’re smarter than him.” She broke eye contact with Barrows and glanced around the room. “I need clothes.”

“What happened this morning?” Barrows asked.

“Aren’t you listening? The monster who has us attempted to kidnap your daughters.” She walked around the room, pulling open cabinet doors and slamming them shut when they didn’t have what she was looking for. “A private security contractor who was hired to do prison security, and who now is trying like hell to find you, happened to be on the scene. Lucky for all of us, he’s tough, tenacious, and, by all accounts, brilliant. Sebastian Connelly. Black Raven. He prevented the kidnapping, took Skye and Spring to a hospital to make sure they were okay, and they were heading to a marshals’ safe house. I don’t know if they made it there, because these bastards kidnapped me. I was in my office. Three men entered.”

She opened the final cabinet in the room, where there were neatly folded linens and clothes. Rummaging through the stacks of linens, wincing in pain with each move that she made, she continued, “They gave me something. Chloroform. I don’t know. I passed out. Woke up in a room down the hall, where a man in a mask whipped me.” She glanced at Barrows. “He whipped me as he asked me questions about your
work. I don’t know what the hell all of this is about. But whatever it is,” she sneered at him, “it’s your fault and once again, I’m having to think a way through a mess that you’ve created. I can do a lot with my legal expertise,” she turned her attention back to the clothes, “but the technological aspects are a little over my head. It’s time for you to step up to the plate.”

He stiffened. “Hospital? Jesus. How badly were my girls hurt?” Barrows demanded, not addressing the bulk of Root’s concerns, his paternal instincts blinding him to personal peril.

Trask chuckled. The video monitors and audio mics were catching every nuance of the interaction between Barrows and Root, revealing that they were almost as narcissistic as he was.

Root shook her head. “As far as I know, not anywhere as bad as what the bastard’s done to us. It would be damn nice right now if you were more concerned about our immediate survival.” She yanked down a few stacks of folded clothes and found a pair of drawstring pants and a hospital gown.

She glanced at Barrows. “Shut your eyes.” She dropped the sheet, exposing her naked body, seemingly unconcerned about the strong possibility that they were on camera. She pulled on the drawstring pants and hospital gown, which she tied in front, wincing as the gown touched her wounds.

“I talked to Skye while they were being examined at a hospital. She and Spring were scared but physically fine.” Root gathered her hair off her face with both hands, winced, then dropped her arms, face pale. “Just having that conversation required me to pull every string I’ve ever managed to collect, Richard.” She drew a deep breath and shot him a furious look. “I told you from the beginning not to cut me off from them.”

“Don’t you understand that I had no choice,” Barrows said, his expression pleading with her for understanding, as he wheeled himself over to her and continued. “You know that. The only thing in the world that would get me to do what these people want would be threats to my girls. I did everything in my power to keep them from being used in that way.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want you in the position of being their protector. It’s too much responsibility.” He paused. “Who has us?”


“I don’t think this madman is a who. I think he’s a what,” Root said, “and the answer is fucking obvious. He’s a rich, powerful, sadistic psychopathic freak.”

Trask glanced at Dunbar, who was sponging perspiration off of his brow. Root’s description of him was accurate. He loved it, but Dunbar was holding his breath, awaiting his reaction. “She doesn’t mince words, does she?”

Dunbar’s dark hair and dark eyes made his face seem even paler as the color drained away. “No.”

“Don’t look so afraid,” he said to his assistant, turning back to the monitor as he added, “I know exactly what I am.”

“And he’s got my data,” Richard said, his desperation and despair apparent in every word. “He’s got it. For the last few days I’ve done nothing but stare at the programs that he’s running, analyzing the code, and wondering how he got it. It had to be Young, but why would Young give it to him?”

“Don’t worry about that now. Focus on how we’re going to get the hell out of here.”

“For the first couple of days, they tried to make me believe that they were with the government, that there was some sort of emergency. I fell for it. Until I ran the programs. I was hours into testing and realized that he had an incomplete set of code. He’s got 92.6% of the LID,” Barrows eyes were wide. He dropped his head to his hands, his temples meeting his palms, and rested his forehead on his palm. “I let him know there’s more. Dear God,” he lifted his head to meet Root’s gaze. “I let him know he had an incomplete set of code. I should have told him what he had was meaningless.”

Root got on her knees, gently touched his hands, and said, “Richard, look at me.”

He slowly lifted his head.

Root’s dark eyes were steady, her gaze strong. Even through the camera, Trask could feel her strength. “You have to give him what he wants.”

Trask held his breath, anticipating whether Barrows would now agree.

Barrows shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Hell,” Trask said, anger pulsing through his veins. “Still resisting.”

“He will eventually kill us,” she told Barrows, voice merciless. “He told me to tell you that. I believe him, and so should you.”

“I’m sorry. My life is expendable. Shadow Technology and LID Technology is not. I’m sorry-”

“Well, my life is not expendable!” She snapped, grimacing in pain as she walked stiffly to the bed and sat on it, easing her butt to the mattress. “If we don’t get out of here, they will kill us, and I suspect not before testing our pain threshold further. I can’t handle another whipping like that, Richard. I absolutely cannot! The girls are safe—for now. But who knows whether they’ll be safe in a day? An hour? You have to make sure they’re secure, and to do that, we have to get the hell out of wherever we’re being held. You have to give the man what he wants. Are you listening? Just give it to him. We’ll get out of here and you’ll figure out a way to undo whatever damage he causes.”

“I’m sorry,” Barrows said, hanging his head and shaking it, resisting yet physically looking like he had the spine of a goddamn beaten puppy. “There’s a limit to what I can do, and I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”

In the room filled with monitors and other surveillance equipment, Trask glanced at Dunbar. “It’s time for more persuasion.”

Dunbar nodded and made a phone call. Trask would have walked away from the monitors, but he realized that Root hadn’t given up.