Dead No More (11 page)

He sat and cocked his head to the side, drilling her with his soulless eyes. Lily fought to remain still. “No emergencies, I hope?”

“No, and I’m so—”

A shrill ring sounded. Grateful for the interruption, Lily sat back. Rowland scowled, fished in his front coat pocket, pulled out his phone and held it to his ear. “Yes, what is it?”

Lily strained to hear the other side of the conversation.
Nothing
. He sat silent for a moment and then nodded. “I see. That’s rather...unfortunate.”

He listened to the other end of the line for a minute more before hanging up and pocketing his phone. He casually reached for his wine and took a sip before looking up. “Well, tonight seems to be the night for eventful phone calls.”

“Oh?” Lily sat forward.
Helen
. “Is everything all right?”

“It’s our receptionist.” He pressed his lips together until they formed a thin white line and casually shrugged one shoulder. “She unfortunately passed away tonight.”

“Oh, Rowland.” Lily reached out her hand. “I am so sorry. Do you need to go?”

“No.” He grasped her hand and entwined his fingers with hers. “I’m here with you. The dead can wait.”

He pressed his lips to the top of her hand, never taking his eyes off Lily. His callous response didn’t really surprise her. Everything about the man studying her from across the table was cold, calculated.

With his free hand, Rowland brought his wineglass to his lips. She blinked.
Had he just smiled?
Lily’s blood ran cold. Did he know? Had he figured out she’d piggybacked into Helen’s computer? Lily’s mind tumbled over itself as she recounted her every move. No, she’d been a ghost—slipping in, slipping out. There was no way anyone could have known that she’d bugged Helen’s computer.

Pulling back her hand, Lily reached for her spoon, took a small piece of the lavender soufflé and brought it to her mouth, tasting nothing.
Had Rowland killed Helen?
There was no way, was there? He’d been sitting here eyeing Lily the whole evening.

She locked eyes with the monster occupying her table and wanted to scream.

He’d
asked
her
to dinner.

His perfect alibi.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tuesday, September 23, 9:30 p.m.

D
INNER
WITH
R
OWLAND
had been excruciating and long. Derek had sent a text that the autopsy results were inconclusive.
Inconclusive, my ass.
Lily had all but sprinted past George when she’d finally gotten home, taken Dakota for the world’s shortest run and raced back to her computer, turning it on.

Quickly, and without hesitation, she hacked into the city morgue’s system and went to work. An hour later, Lily reached for her phone.

Derek answered on the first ring. “Lil, what’s up? You okay?”

The sound of his rich, deep voice instantly made her tight muscles relax. “Yeah. But we have a problem—those autopsy reports the medical examiner sent you were tampered with.”

“I’m not following. Tampered with how?”

“Derek, I worked backward and found the original cause of death. I’ve never heard of it and was only able to find a few articles on it, and they were mostly blacked out, but Helen died from something called Malattia.”

“Wait. What did you say?”

“There were traces of a biological toxin called Malattia in her system. From the limited research I could find, it’s pretty rare, and has an immediate onset of symptoms once exposed—muscle convulsion due to the toxin attacking the nervous system being the first to represent itself,” she explained. Derek remained silent on the other end, and fear prickled her skin. “Why?”

“Lily.” Derek paused, and she squeezed her eyes shut, pushing back the raw anger bubbling up in her throat. Her gut knew what he was going to say, but she still prayed that she was wrong. Derek took a deep breath on the other end of the line. “If you’re correct, and I think you are, ARME is the only manufacturer authorized to produce Malattia, and it’s still in its developmental stages.”

Lily dropped her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What category will CDC label it once complete?”

“Cat A,” Derek said. “It’ll be right up there with Anthrax.”

Category A. Of course.
Easily transmitted from person to person. High mortality rate. Major health impact. Not to mention the public panic and social disruption. Lily didn’t expect anything less from Rowland.

“Wait.” Her head snapped up. “How did none of you get infected?”

“Clearly it still needs some tweaking,” Derek said drily. “Because once fully vetted, it will make Anthrax look like child’s play, and will be for the military’s exclusive use. It’s supposed to be kept under lock and key.”

Lily wanted to scream. Rowland was evil incarnate, and he needed to be put down. Permanently. “Yeah, well. Someone got to it, and used it to kill Helen.”

“I know, and I promise we will find them.”

Lily had no doubt that they would, especially since she already knew who the murderer was—Rowland James. And he’d used her to keep his name unsullied. Bastard.

“Hey, you still there?”

Lily blinked, focused on the conversation at hand. “Yeah, sorry. What were you saying?”

“CDC cleared us to leave. Want me to come over?”

She did, but something still gnawed at her. She wanted to get back to those files, dig a little deeper. “Can I take a rain check?”

“Sure thing, babycakes.”

Lily smiled at the nickname. “Meet me at Keystone in the morning? Around seven?”

“It’s a date,” Derek said and hung up.

She brought her fingers to her lips as warmth surged through her body. Yeah, a breakfast date with Derek was exactly what she needed. It sounded divine. She glanced over at the computer and the warmth faded.
Helen was dead
. Lily jumped up and paced her room, letting her mind tumble over the current information, no matter how scattered and fragmented.

Rowland killed Helen and covered it up within a day of Lily hacking into Helen’s system. How was that even possible? Lily hadn’t even found the exact files until less than eight hours ago.

Stalking to the kitchen, she opened a cabinet, grabbed her favorite mug and slid it under the Keurig coffeemaker. A few moments later, cradling the cup of scalding hot liquid, she whistled for Dakota and went back to her room, settling at her desk.

She set down her coffee and went to click on the first unmarked file when her computer chimed.

Spinning in her chair, she turned her attention to the screen monitoring Rowland’s office and smiled as Rowland sank into his large leather chair.

“Gotcha now, handsome.”

He yanked open the top drawer and pulled out a frame. The angle of her camera picked up the faded faces of two smiling dark-haired beauties, and judging by the similarities between them, they were mother and daughter. He gently rubbed his thumb over the picture safely hidden behind the glass.

“I will punish them,
mi amor
, I swear to you. I will avenge you and our daughter.”

Lily’s mouth dropped open.
Rowland had a wife? A daughter?
Somehow she doubted Derek was privileged to
that
tidbit of information. She zoomed in on the frame as far as she could and leaned forward to get a better look.

They were standing with their backs to the ocean, purple, red and orange hues spread across the sky behind them. Black hair framed the woman’s large dark eyes, which sparkled even through the faded photograph. She’d thrown her arms around the little girl’s tiny body and hugged her close to her chest as they both grinned at the camera, not a care in the world.

Lily glanced at Rowland’s face and her chest constricted. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she would have never believed that the coldhearted monster
had
emotions, let alone that he could cry—but sure enough, tears rimmed the edge of his bloodshot eyes. For a split second, a resonating pain attacked Lily, and her heart ached for him, felt his loss.

He reached for the crystal glass, his hand shaking.
What the hell had happened to Rowland’s family?
She watched, fascinated, as he tipped his head back and downed the caramel-colored liquid.

Gone was the swagger, the charisma, the magnetism.

Lily stared at the face of a heartbroken husband, a crushed father.

Never letting go of the frame, he poured another full glass of Scotch and took a swig before setting the glass down. Dumbfounded, Lily watched as Rowland stared at the photo, face drawn.

Without taking her eyes off the screen she reached for a pen and scribbled “He has a family?” on the first piece of paper she could find.

His cell phone rang and he swore, set down the frame and snatched up his mobile. “This better be good.”

He silently listened to whoever was on the other end of the line, and then his face grew hard and he slammed the crystal glass down. “That is
not
something you need to concern yourself—”

He stopped midsentence. Lily’s pen hung suspended above her scribbles, and she stared at the monitor.
Who had the balls to interrupt him?

What she wouldn’t give to hear both sides of this conversation.
Damn it
. She needed to get a tap on Rowland’s phone. Pronto.

“No. You listen to me, you son of a bitch.” His face darkened and he leaned forward. “I’ve been systematically positioning my people amongst world leaders for years, and they answer only to me.” He thumped his fist into his chest. “I’m the puppet master. When the time is right,
I
will pull the strings.”

Dům Hrůzy.

Was Rowland at the helm of Dům Hrůzy? Lily scribbled notes as fast as she could, her mind tripping over itself. Had he really infiltrated the world’s top governments, and if so, how high up did his people go?

“Do
not
call me again. Wait for my call.” Rowland chucked the phone across the room and it hit the far wall, shattering into pieces. Pushing back from his desk, he got up and walked out of sight of her cameras.

Lily leaned back in her chair and whistled, long and low. She’d expected to gather vital intel from her little rendezvous with Rowland’s office, but she hadn’t expected it so quickly, or for it to be such a game-changer.

Rowland had a family, and he was quite possibly the head of the deadliest terrorist group she’d even encountered, silently positioning
his
people within
her
government.

Head spinning, she went back to the folder marked “DH,” clicked on one of the two unmarked files. A photograph of a complex, handwritten equation popped up.

To the average person, the scribbles would look like the scrawlings of a mad scientist, but Lily had seen something like this during an old mission with a defecting Russian nuclear physicist. It wasn’t just random scribbles, but a complex chemical equation.

Was that the chemical formula to weaponize the WMD?

Enlarging the photo to give her tired eyes some relief, she studied the multifaceted and intricate equation. It had been a few years, but maybe that part of her—very fatigued, mind you—brain would kick in. She read through it, stopped, started from the beginning and then paused midway.
What the...?

It was incomplete.

Useless.

Pushing back from her desk, she left her room and paced along the wall of windows, staring at the twinkling lights of downtown. The traffic light at the corner switched from green to yellow to red and back to green without a single car passing. The city was still, quiet. She leaned her head against the glass, enjoying the cold seeping through the hard surface, and closed her eyes. Nothing was quiet in her brain. The further she dug into these files, the stranger things became.

Settling back in front of her computer, she clicked on another unmarked file and numbers flooded the monitor. Lily leaned forward and studied them again, her eyes flipping between the numbers.

“You aren’t random now, are you,” she whispered into the stillness surrounding her.

Rubbing the palms of her hands across her eyes, she blinked twice and turned back to the screen, letting her mind roam over the numbers, deciphering their meaning. She sucked in a breath.

They were coordinates.

Snatching up her laptop, she moved into the main living space and set the computer down on the kitchen island, then rushed to the closet and pulled out an old paper map of the United States. Spreading it flat across the kitchen island, she weighted down the edges.

She looked at the first two coordinates and, shoving a pen between her teeth, Lily drew her fingers down, found the first coordinate on the map. She pulled the pen from her mouth and circled the location.

St. Louis.

She repeated the process and circled the next spot.

San Francisco.

She continued mapping out each set of numbers—Boston, Chicago, New York—until eighteen locations were circled. Stepping back, she stared down at the map, perplexed.

“Why are these so important to you?”

Sinking onto the closest bar stool, she reached for her laptop, plugged all the cities together into her search engine and hit Enter. Waited. Nothing. She chewed on her bottom lip, rearranged the cities, left some out and tried again. Still nothing. On a whim she typed in the first twelve cities.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Twelve of the eighteen cities housed a branch of the Federal Reserve.

Was Rowland planning to bomb the banks? Taking them out would cripple the economy, cause mass panic, quite possibly throw the United States into a second Great Depression, yes, but somehow Lily didn’t think that was his endgame.

Bombing the banks, or even the cities that housed them, didn’t have enough flair for Rowland, and nothing was
that
easy with him. The man was cold, calculated and—the photo of his family flashed in her mind—very, very...complicated.

And what about the other locations? She tapped her pen against the list she’d scribbled. There were no coincidences with him, everything had a purpose, so what did Omaha, Raven Rock Mountain, Colorado Springs, Berryville, Culpeper and White Sulphur Springs mean to him?

Updating her search engine with the last six locations, she pressed Enter and waited. She scanned the first article that popped up and her eyes hit on one disturbing sentence.
All part of the government’s doomsday plan...

Each of the remaining six cities listed housed alternative command posts for use in the event of a nuclear emergency, ensuring the continuity of the US government. Take out all six while they were occupied, and you’d cripple the most powerful government in the world.

Was Rowland planning on launching a nuclear war on the United States? She flipped between the two lists of cities—what did a list of eighteen cities mean? Frustrated, she settled back on the bar stool and sipped her coffee. Without more evidence, a solid plan of attack, something, it was all just circumstantial.

Dakota curled under her feet, resting his head on her ankle. Smiling, she reached down and ran her hand over his ear. Her eyes traveled over the documents and landed on an unmarked folder buried within the numbers.

“What have we got here?” Lily opened it, and a detailed time line popped up. She studied it for a minute, then sat back, stunned.

The twelve cities housing the Federal Banks aligned with one date, the other six corresponded with a second—three days apart, and both set to happen in less than three weeks.

The world fell out from underneath her. The bastard
was
planning a two-prong attack. Against her country. Against her people.

She hung her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. But with a formula that wasn’t complete, it wouldn’t work. What was she missing? What the hell was going on? Damn, her brain needed a reprieve.

Reaching for her phone, she dialed Derek’s number, cradling the phone between her shoulder and chin as she stared at her computer screen until her eyes crossed, blurring the screen.

“You okay?” Derek asked in a drowsy voice after the first ring.

She blinked twice to focus her eyes and glanced at the clock, cringed. The green numbers shone back at her—4:00 a.m. “Sorry. Yes. I didn’t realize it was so early. It can wait.”