Internal Threat (22 page)

“I don’t care.”

“Stop the car,” Larsen told him. Behind them, the whine of the police car’s siren was rising.

“No way.”

“Weatherly, stop the car!”

“I’m not stopping this car!”

“Stop the damn car before that cop calls for backup or your son is going to die!” screamed Larsen.

Matt’s face flushed red as he turned to glare at the detective. Silently, he slammed on the brakes, pitching both Ashley and Larsen forward. The police car screeched to a halt at their bumper, the door flying open and a uniformed silhouette appearing next to it. The officer stayed in the shadows cast by the far-away streetlamps.

“Let me do the talking,” Larsen ordered. He spotted his badge on the back floor and placed it into his hand. Making Ashley lean forward, he opened the passenger door and climbed out.

The voice of the policeman immediately hit Larsen’s ears. “Hands in the air! Now!”

Larsen complied, putting his arms out at his side and clutching his badge in his hand. “Everything’s fine,” he said. He squinted to get a better look at the policeman but the gloom only provided the hint of the officer’s outline next to the open car door.

“Keep your hands up!” the officer shouted.

“I’m Detective David Larsen of the LAPD. Homicide.”

There was a beat of silence before the policeman spoke again. “Show me your badge.”

Larsen flipped open his wallet to expose the shield.

“Toss it to me,” the policeman said.

There was something in the man’s voice that gave Larsen pause. He could not put his finger on what was bothering him and yet the gnawing feeling was there.

“I said, toss it to me,” the order came again.

Larsen did as instructed, lobbing his wallet to the man’s feet. He waited for the policeman to kneel down to pick it up, which would undoubtedly put the man’s face in the direct path of a streetlight’s glare. Yet, the officer did not move. He only kept his gun trained at the detective.

“Now your gun,” the policeman commanded.

“I don’t have it on me,” Larsen parried. It was a lie but one that the detective felt was necessary. Something in the other officer’s tone – or rather the complete lack of anything in the man’s voice – was thoroughly unnerving him.

“Is Weatherly still in the car?” the officer asked.

The ropes of worry in Larsen’s stomach tied themselves into a knot. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I said, is Weatherly still in the car?”

Larsen fit the pieces of suspicion together in his brain. If this guy was a cop on patrol, he would not have had time to radio in the plates on the car. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. His words hung in the air, the silence giving Larsen all the warning he needed.

Everything that followed happened within the span of seconds.

The gun in the officer’s hand popped, the muzzle flash illuminating a stoic young face with short-cropped blonde hair.

Larsen dove to the left, his body skidding along the chipped black asphalt. Simultaneously, he screamed out, “Matt, get out of here!” The Porsche’s tires roared, churning up bits of the ground and pluming exhaust that burned Larsen’s lungs.

The officer, who Larsen now realized was the mysterious John that had set the entire night’s events into motion, immediately climbed back into the police car. The engine roared to life. Larsen saw the grill set on a collision course with his skull. He rolled to the side, the wheels catching the cuff of his pant leg and shredding it. The detective pulled his gun from beneath his jacket, unloading a barrage of bullets at the swerving backside of the police car. One of them found its mark, bringing a pop and hiss as it struck a rear tire. The car fishtailed, then straightened, its passenger door flinging open from force. A bulky object tumbled on to the ground about twenty feet from Larsen. As he gained his senses, the detective realized that it was a body, arms jerked into an unnatural position by the fall. The neat hole of a gunshot rested just below a receding hairline. The man was stripped down to his police-issued undershirt.

Larsen squeezed his eyes shut. Another dead body, a cop this time. He mumbled the Lord’s Prayer, crossing himself. As he touched his left shoulder, his hand came back sticky. He glanced at it and winced. Blood covered his fingertips. Suddenly, the pain that had been held back by a wall of adrenaline flooded his body.

“Damn it,” he grumbled through gritted teeth. He had only been shot in the line of duty one other time and it had been the fault of a coked up Hollywood producer who thought the detective was there to steal his stash. That wild bullet had only grazed him. This wound was more serious. Larsen found the entry point beneath his left bicep. It was a small hole and he was thankful that the bullet appeared to have passed through cleanly. He quickly ripped off a shred of long fabric from his pants and tied a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood. The pain became a dull throb that Larsen could deal with. He stood up on wobbly legs.

Allowing himself a minute to catch his breath, Larsen did the only thing he could think of. Started running in the same direction he had been heading with Matt and Ashley.

C
ameron Allen was hungry. It was a feeling he was all too familiar with. In fact, in the rare moments when he was honest with himself, it was a sensation that had haunted him for his entire life. As his bulky frame lumbered out of his vinyl chair, he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflective glass of a flat-screen monitor and grunted. He had imagined that the slightly lower intake of calories he had ingested this week would cause a noticeable difference. It had not. All two hundred and eighty-three pounds stared back at him.

“Screw it,” he thought. His intended destination had been the secure printer across the hall but he changed direction towards the vending machine at the opposite end of the hallway. Depositing his three quarters, he waited for the King Size Snickers to drop out of its coils. He was so intent on the candy’s descent that he failed to notice the intermittently flashing lights in the top corner of the passageway. When he did, he shrugged. “Not my problem,” he mumbled aloud.

Back at his chair, he cracked his knuckles and hovered his hands above the keyboard for the briefest of seconds before plunging them down in rapid-fire typing. Cameron was a code monkey. That meant he spent most of his life writing computer code. The majority of it was done in the service of the United States government. Some of it, however, was done in his spare time at his apartment in Colorado Springs.

The private coding had begun purely for his own enjoyment. Without much of a social life, he needed something to amuse himself in the evenings. Cameron enjoyed creating worms and viruses and then dumping them on unsuspecting users. One of his favorite creations automatically subscribed the visitors to a certain church’s website to a paid membership in a hardcore pornography site. He chuckled imagining the awkward conversations it must have created in hundreds of homes. As time wore on, though, he became bored by his usual hacking. He craved more of a challenge.

That’s where his job came in.

The government job he had obtained straight out of college was a daily grind that eventually became intolerable. Frustrated at his lack of promotions and increasing workload, Cameron saw the opportunity for surreptitious revenge. Through various chatboards, he spread the word that he was available for the right price. The offers trickled in. Most involved obtaining low-level items like email addresses and personal cell phone numbers. He was never stupid enough to go after top secret information, knowing how heavily firewalled and monitored such things were. Cameron was easily able to satisfy the orders, building a tidy savings account in the process. He was rather pleased with the whole setup.

When Emma Hosobuchi showed up, though, things began to change. Emma was the first woman that Cameron found himself truly enamored with. She had shown up in his office one day shortly after starting work there, thumbing her Blackberry incessantly.

“Hi. I hear you’re the best programmer we have in the building,” she said nonchalantly.

Cameron fumbled for an answer, quickly trying to straighten up his junk food-strewn desk. “Well, I guess I could be. I’m Cameron Allen,” he stammered, pushing a few Snickers wrappers into the trash can.

“I know,” she said, finally looking up from her cell phone. “We need to increase our security. I’m concerned about how vulnerable some of the lower level assets are.”

Cameron’s heart began pounding so strongly, he was sure Emma could hear it.
Did she know? Is that why she was here? No, he reasoned. I’ve covered my tracks so well.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Cameron retorted to hide his nervousness.

“Emma Hosobuchi.”

“Right, sorry. I heard you had started downstairs. I just didn’t imagine you were so…” the words “young and cute” got lost on his tongue as Emma stared at him. “Anyway, I’m Cameron Allen.”

“Yes, we covered that.”

“Sorry. Great programming skills, bad communication skills.” He chuckled, dying inside.
Jesus, that was a stupid thing to say!

Emma brushed by him, ignoring the comment, and headed for his workstation. Her fingers immediately began tapping on the keys. “The walls around our communication systems are weak. I’d like you to see what you could do to enforce them.”

Cameron took a seat at his computer and peered at the screen. Emma leaned over his shoulder, pointing at the monitor.

“This right here. A third grade student in China could hack through it in ten minutes.”

“Huh. You’re right,” Cameron conceded.

For the next twenty minutes, he listened to Emma take him through her ideas to update the system. He felt as if he was in a master’s class on programming. Emma was so incredibly astute in her observations and technical skills that it became immediately obvious why she had been given her position at such a young age. At last, her phone buzzed and Emma glanced at it.

“I’m needed somewhere else.” She moved towards the doorway, then turned. “I have another idea I’d like to talk to you about tomorrow, though.” With that, she exited, leaving a dazed Cameron in her wake.

Over the next two weeks, Emma spent a good deal of time at Cameron’s side. She was intent on updating the security protocols for the cell phones all of the employees were assigned. “I’d like to create a program that tracks each and every call made from this building.”

“We do that on the hard lines,” Cameron told her.

“I know. I want it for the mobiles. We should have that capability, right?”

Cameron nodded. “I can do that. It might take a little while but-”

“Is two days’ time enough?”

“I was thinking more like two weeks.”
“Come on, Cameron. I have faith in you.” For the first time, Emma smiled at him.

He sighed. “Alright then.”

The next thirty-six hours were a Red Bull and Snicker-fueled coding frenzy for Cameron. When he at last emerged from his office, he headed straight downstairs to tell Emma the news. Earning perplexed looks from the office workers in the basement, he marched towards Emma’s office. He found her at her desk, working on two computer monitors simultaneously.

“I did it,” he said, beaming with pride.

Emma blinked in confusion. “The tracker program?”
Cameron nodded. “I think you’ll be impressed.”

“Great,” she replied. “I’ll come up and see it in a little while.” She turned back to her keyboard.

“Emma,” he began, dredging up his bravest voice for the question he had been planning for the past day. “I thought maybe you would like to join me for dinner. To celebrate.”

Emma looked at him with surprise. “I don’t really get out of the office much.”

“This is a great excuse then.”

“Well,” she paused before answering, “Sure, that might be nice. You pick the place. I’ll meet you there tonight at eight o’clock.”

“Great!” Cameron said before hurrying away. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. She actually said yes! Surely, that was an indicator that there was more feelings brewing for Emma as well.

Several hours later, Cameron sat at the small Italian restaurant Emma had agreed to meet him at. He waited. And waited. Twenty minutes ticked by, then thirty. An hour and a half after the arranged meeting time, Emma burst through the front door, spotting Cameron and waving. She sat down across from him, hair mussed and looking tired.

“Sorry,” she said, yawning. “I got caught up with something in the office. I’m surprised you’re still here. Good thing this isn’t a date or you would have left, huh?”

Cameron nodded, distracted by the emotions churning in his belly. Perhaps it was the time spent in the uncomfortable wooden chair while waiting or maybe it was the half a bottle of Chianti that he had downed. But, if he was being honest with himself, Cameron knew exactly what it was that was bothering him. This date was like every other one he had gone on in his life; a miserable failure stemming from cues that he misread as something different.

“Cameron?” Emma’s voice called him out of his thoughts. He glanced up at her. “You still want to eat? I’m starving.”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” he replied. He drained the last dregs of red wine at the bottom of his glass. “Everyone knows,” he blurted out.

“Knows what?” she asked, confused.

“About Mike Saunders. How you’re in love with him.”

Emma’s face flushed red as her mouth fumbled for a response. “That’s not true,” she stammered. “He recruited me. I talk to him sometimes. That’s all.”

Cameron leaned in, his voice thick with anger. “He’s not such a good guy. In fact, he’s a prick. Always acting nice to get people to like him. He’s married, did you know that?” Cameron enjoyed seeing the surprised look on her face. “Yeah, you didn’t. He doesn’t like to talk about his wife much. She’s stashed away upstate for some reason. Mental hospital is my guess.”

“Cameron, I don’t understand why you’re saying all this to me.”

“Whatever,” he mumbled, rising from the table. Without another word, he stumbled past her and out the door into the night.

That had been six months ago. Cameron had not spoken a word to Emma since then, preferring to answer her only in curt emails. If she had cared, Cameron did not see anything to indicate so. He went back to his life of solitary nights spent with his computer and his surly thoughts. He did not dare hack at work anymore. He knew enough about Emma’s talents to know that she placed traps within the system’s framework to catch someone like him.