Chasing zero, p.24
Chasing Zero, page 24
part #9 of Agent Zero Spy Thriller Series
“What did he say?” Zero prodded.
“Something about a curse.” She shook her head. “He said, ‘The nation made to wander for forty years, until the generation of men had died.’”
Zero frowned so hard that a tension headache threatened to storm in his skull. It sounded like a quote—no, it sounded like a verse, specifically referencing the Israelites wandering the desert.
Forty years.
Meanwhile the countdown ticked along. 14:21:12…
14:21:11…
14:21:10…
Numbers. Endless numbers.
It’s all a numbers game.
That’s what Shade had said. In the moment it had seemed odd that he’d put such emphasis on the word “numbers.” And it still did.
Numbers.
“Son of a bitch.” Shade had played them. He knew where the men were going, where they were holding the president. Yet he’d pretended to be terrified, had even peed himself to avoid torturous interrogation tactics. Just like he’d dressed as part of the wait staff and feigned the French accent. The man was a master manipulator, and he’d manipulated them.
But he didn’t need Shade now. The man had gotten caught up in his own game, and had given them a necessary clue.
Numbers.
The phone was to his ear in an instant.
“Go for Penny,” she answered.
“There’s a Bible verse from the book of Numbers that references Sinai and the Israelites,” he said quickly as he put her on speaker. “I need you to look it up. Verbatim.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Penny, please…”
“All right, give me a moment.” He heard fingers rapidly tapping keys in the background, and seven seconds later she told him, “Got it. Numbers 10:12 says: ‘Then the Israelites set out from the Desert of Sinai and traveled from place to place until the cloud came to rest in the Desert of Paran.’”
And they wandered for forty years, until an entire generation of men had died.
Zero’s heart pounded despite standing still.
“The biblical ‘Desert of Sinai’ is believed to be the Sinai Peninsula,” Maria suggested. “Which means we have the right spot. Doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think so.” Sinai was too easy. He just felt it. “I think they’re in the Desert of Paran.”
“…Which is also in Egypt,” Talia pointed out.
“Where the hell did y’all go to Sunday school?” Foxworth asked, incredulous.
Zero ignored him and turned to Mendel. “Yes—in Christian and Judaic faiths.” And therein lay the problem.
Sinai. Hatred. Cursed.
They couldn’t approach this from a Christian or Judaic perspective, because their perpetrators wouldn’t be.
“In Islam,” Zero told them, “the Desert of Paran is believed to be in Libya.” This was a wild goose chase, intended to throw them off at every turn—as long as they thought like themselves and not the people they were after.
But that’s it. I’ve figured it out. It had to be. It made sense, especially for the bigger reason that he hadn’t yet addressed.
Penny was the one who said it aloud, through the phone’s speaker. “You think they’re in the Sahara Desert.”
“I do,” he confirmed. But it wasn’t his call to make.
Maria met his gaze and held it for a long moment. He hoped that she saw conviction there and not the doubt that he’d started to feel ever since saying it aloud.
“Penny,” she said at last. “Put every available resource you can into a search. If Zero is right, they needed a signal to upload that video. Let’s find it. Chip—fire up the jet. We’re going to Libya.”
He nodded to her as the others quickly boarded the Gulfstream. If he was right, they would be on the right track for the first time since the tunnel explosion.
But if he was wrong, they were pulling resources from what seemed a likelier location to search in entirely the wrong part of the world.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
It wasn’t hard for Sara to find him.
The new girl from Common Bonds, Stephanie, had an impressive social media presence. All of her posts were positive, rife with hashtags, and talked about “living your best life,” whatever that meant. Sara just had to scroll through for about a minute before she found a post with the ex tagged in it. She jumped over to his profile, which was far less active and only seemed used to celebrate milestones. A change in career, a new car… She scrolled back further, almost two years, and found a post of him posing in front of a large home he had just bought.
A reverse-image search of the house gave her a listing on a real estate marketplace site, and voila. She had an address. It wasn’t far, and she had her dad’s car at her disposal.
It wasn’t terribly late but it had long since fallen dark. Sara tiptoed to Mischa’s doorway and peered inside. The girl was lying on her back, on the bed, eyes closed, her index finger holding her place in the history book—which she’d nearly finished.
Sara could have laughed aloud. The girl read herself into exhaustion. She flicked off the light and padded to the foyer.
Yes, she had promised her dad that she wouldn’t leave Mischa alone. But the girl was fast asleep. And even if she woke, what was she going to do? She’d probably assume Sara was sleeping down in her basement room and would go right back to bed. She wasn’t going to leave the house and start wandering the neighborhood in the middle of the night.
Besides, despite her youth, Mischa was right. Abusers would not just wake up one morning and decide to no longer abuse. They needed to be persuaded. And Sara would be the one to do it.
She slipped on her shoes and a jacket as quietly as she could. She grabbed her phone and her keys and her hammer and, as stealthily as possible, pulled the front door open. She winced as the alarm beeped twice in stay mode. But after hearing no movement or sound from Mischa’s room, Sara locked the door again behind her and hurried down to the car.
This would be quick, she told herself. Get there, scare the hell out of the guy, and get back home. Just the drive over there gave her the tingle of fear mixed with excitement, just like she’d felt the last time when she’d busted the hell out of the red Mustang. What would it be this time? He seemed like the kind of guy who kept his cars in a garage. So maybe the windows of his home then?
Fifteen minutes later she parked the SUV two blocks from the address. As she walked, the head of the hammer in her hand and her hands in her coat pockets, she tried to map an alternate route back to the car, looking for yards without fences or ones easy to leap if she needed a faster and more direct getaway.
And then, there it was. The home wasn’t all that impressive, all things considered. It was big, bigger than one person needed. Three stories tall with a stone façade and a tall front door, at least eight feet. Sara remembered seeing one of those dumb home renovation shows during her long period of malaise after rehab, that said a good front door adds a lot of value to the house.
Maybe I should break it? She wasn’t sure she could with just a claw hammer.
Her general plan was to make noise, break something, get him outside. Then threaten. And then run for it. Just like last time. Easy.
She went around the right side of the house. There was no fence; that was a good thing. There were no lights on inside; also good. On that side of the home she spotted two tall, narrow windows in frames that had been cut on an angle to be parallel with the slope of the roof.
Custom windows. Those were expensive to replace.
Here we go. An electrified thrill chilled her slightly as she reared back with the hammer, and then swung it forward.
The sound of shattered glass was, to her, as euphonious as someone running a finger down the length of a piano. She could have laughed aloud, but there was work to do. She hurried to the next window and sent the hammer through that one, too.
She ran then, dashing around to the back of the house, where she would hide and wait for the guy to come stumbling out in his pajamas, blinking through a fog of sleep and confusion—
A bright light suddenly clicked on, so bright it blinded her for a moment. Sara threw one hand over her eyes to shield her face but there were already spots filling her vision.
A motion sensor. Son of a bitch! She had to hide. She was standing in plain view on the guy’s rear patio. But she couldn’t see, and when she took a step forward she tripped over a chair, her feet tangled, and fell forward onto her hands and knees.
A door opened. Feet pounded against the patio.
“Who the hell are you?!” a male voice demanded.
The hammer. Where was the hammer? It was there, had fallen just a few feet away, but out of reach. Sara turned over, on her elbows, facing the guy. And the electric tingle of delight soured instantly into one of terror.
The guy’s face was obscured in shadow by the bright floodlight behind him, but his arm was outstretched toward her, and the revolver in his hand was plain as day, glinting as if it was gloating at her.
“Well, well,” the guy said, obvious pleasure in his voice. “What’s this? Just a girl. You come alone?”
He quickly looked left and right on the patio, the gun tracking his movement. As soon as the barrel was off of her, Sara tried to squirm backward, to put some distance between them—but he snapped around with the revolver back on her.
“No, no,” he said. “You stay right there. Now, why are you coming around smashing my windows? You know what those cost? What was this, a dare?”
Sara said nothing. Her throat was dry. All she could see was the gun, the barrel of it like a dark mouth leering at her. It wasn’t her first time facing down a gun. But she’d been stupid to let it possibly be her last.
“Oh,” the guy said slowly. His lips curled into a wolfish grin. “Oh, I think I know what this is. You’re one of Steph’s new friends, aren’t you? You look like the type. One of those liberal college bitches that convinced her I was the bad guy.” He leaned over her. “Tell me something. Did Steph ever tell you what I do?”
Sara still said nothing, just staring back, her heart pounding in her chest.
You were stupid to come here. You got sloppy.
“See, I’m a lawyer,” the man said. “And let me tell you, it doesn’t look very good, you skulking around my house, smashing up my windows and…” He gestured toward the hammer on the ground behind Sara. “Possibly trying to assault me. So tell you what. Why don’t you come on into the house, and maybe we can work this out. Just between us.”
Terror mixed with panic at that notion. There was no way in hell she was going into his house. She’d be trapped worse than she was now.
Finally she spoke. “No.”
“No?” He chuckled. “Okay. That’s fine. Way I see it, I can just as easily shoot you now. See, someone was trespassing on my property, smashing my windows. I went outside to check it out. It was dark. All I saw was a person with a hammer. What’s a guy to do? It’ll be self-defense, darling. Trust me on that.”
Sara closed her eyes. She wished her dad was there. Or Maya. Anyone at all.
“So unless you can give me a damn good reason not to, I don’t see why I shouldn’t—”
There was a sound then, a flat, slapping sound like beating the dust out of a pillow.
“Ooph!” she heard.
She opened her eyes to see the man doubled over. The gun was pointed at the ground. A shape, a small shadow, circled him quickly, like a predatory animal. Not an animal, though; a foot came up, kicked the gun away. It skittered across the patio.
What the hell?
The blazing floodlight caught the shadow’s face, and Sara’s mouth fell open.
It was Mischa.
The girl jumped, higher than should have been possible, and wrapped both legs around the man’s neck. Her body twisted in the air, and then she was upside-down, her palms on the ground, like doing a handstand. She folded herself, legs coming down to earth—and the man’s head came with them. His body left the ground, tumbling end over end, and landing with a startling thump.
Mischa grabbed one of his arms and forced it straight, arching her back with her legs still wound tightly around his neck, twisting him into a painful-looking lock.
Sara just sat there in stunned silence, uncertain that what she was seeing was really happening. But it was; the small girl held the man, his neck and limbs locked, with a passive expression on her face that suggested it was taking very little effort to hold him.
Suddenly Sara was on her feet, and the hammer was in her hand. She didn’t even realize she’d grabbed it but was glad she did, needing to feel like she had some measure of security in this insane situation.
“Go ahead,” Mischa told her. The man tried to say something but only sputtered, his face turning red. “Do what you came here to do.”
She had a thousand questions on her mind. But only one made sense in the moment.
What did I come here to do?
To break windows? To threaten? No. More than that. Put a stop to this, to him and his ways. She looked down at the hammer in her hand. That wasn’t the way.
“I have a better idea,” she said aloud as she pulled her phone from her pocket.
Mischa tightened the grip on the man’s neck between her thighs. His head slumped, and he lost consciousness as Sara dialed 9-1-1.
*
When the police arrived, they found a man unconscious, a loaded revolver, and two terrified girls on the front lawn. Sara was just as impressed with Mischa’s acting ability as the way she’d taken the guy down; somehow the girl was able to instantly summon thick, brimming tears, streaming down both cheeks, and for added measure she ran to the first responding officer and flung her arms around his waist.
Their report would say that the two stepsisters were walking back to their car from a friend’s house when they heard a cry for help. Thinking someone was in trouble, they investigated the patio and found the man waiting for them with a gun. He tried to lure them inside. But Sara found a hammer and fought back, knocking the man unconscious, and called the cops.
The man coughed hoarsely as he came around, and found himself being handcuffed. “Wait one damn minute!” he tried to protest. “That girl broke my windows! And the little one, the little one, she…”
“She what?” challenged the arresting officer, a stern-looking woman.
“Well, she… she beat me up,” he said lamely, and coughed again.
“Uh-huh. You can tell us more about it down at the station.” She pulled him away by an elbow, even as he struggled and swore at her.
“You two need a ride home?” the male officer on the scene asked.
Sara wiped her own crocodile tears from her cheeks. “No. Thank you. Our car is parked two blocks away. We’ll be okay. Thank you,” she said again. “I don’t know what would have happened if… if…”
“Hey. It’s okay. It didn’t happen, and you two are safe.” He shook his head. “This isn’t the first time we’ve gotten a report on this guy. You two just caught him in the act. Believe it or not, this is a good thing, in the long run. We’ll make sure he can’t hurt you. But I’ll need your phone number and address, so we can follow up tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay. Thank you, sir.” Sara sniffled, gave him her information—mentally noting that she was going to have some serious explaining to do when her dad got home—and then put her arm around Mischa as they walked back to the car.
They were silent until they were both seated inside the SUV. But Sara didn’t start it just yet. She had a thousand questions on her mind. But only one made sense in the moment.
“Okay, just who the hell are you?” she demanded.
“I’m not supposed to say,” Mischa replied simply.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“I hid in the trunk.”
“You what? How? You were asleep—”
“I was pretending to sleep when you checked on me,” Mischa explained calmly. “I had a suspicion you would try something tonight. While you were putting on your shoes and jacket, I slipped out the back and climbed down the balcony. You left the car unlocked earlier, but I said nothing so I could sneak into the trunk before you got there.”
“Jesus,” Sara murmured. How could she be that fast? That quiet? And those moves… “So that brings me back to my original question: who are you? And don’t give me that ‘I can’t say’ crap. We’re going to be sisters. Family trusts each other.”
She was fully well aware how hypocritical that sounded, given how many secrets they’d kept from each other over the years. But Mischa just stared ahead.
“Family,” she repeated. “Fine. I will tell you. But only if you tell me about you, and why you go to those meetings. Why you wanted to hurt that man.”
Sara nodded. “Deal.”
“I do not know where I was born,” the girl said. “I do not know who my mother was, or even what country I came from. I was raised and trained by a former Russian spy who defected to the Chinese. Together we smuggled an ultrasonic weapon into the United States and attempted to melt down the Culvert Cliffs nuclear reactor. Your father and Maria stopped us. I was held by the CIA for three months until Maria formally adopted me.”
Sara blinked. It was a lot to process, and the girl said it plainly, as if she was reciting a well-rehearsed poem.
“Okay,” was all she managed. “Wow.”
Most families just brought home a stray dog or cat. Leave it to mine to bring home a deadly spy kid.
Mischa looked over at her. “I understand if you don’t want to be sisters anymore.”
Sara chucked. Despite herself, and despite the abject lunacy of the situation, she laughed. “Mischa, your story is wild, but trust me when I say that in this family, it’s the tip of the weirdness iceberg.” Then she fell silent; she had made a deal, and though she didn’t much like to talk about it, she wasn’t about to go back on her word.
