Missing Lynx (22 page)

We sat stone-faced, focused.

Striker continued. “…highly intelligent and vicious. Pretty heinous things happen to people who stand in his way. If you’re out in the field, you’ll take every precaution. Lynx, you’ll obviously be here puzzling. Jack and I will be working with you, explaining everything we have from the other agencies. I don’t mean to add any pressure here, but this is a huge deal. Our various clients are all taking a stab at this. We want to be the ones who take him down.”

“Understood.” I crossed a foot underneath me and leaned forward to study the photo. Good God, this was intense.
Breathe. You’re a professional - act the part.

“Deep, you’ll be on the computer. Gater and Blaze are Alpha Team. Axel and Randy make up Bravo. We need to have eyes on this guy until we get him, or he gets on the plane, so we’re borrowing Clay and Bonz to give us a third surveillance team. They’re Charlie. Remember, there are a lot of government runners in this race, so try not to step on any toes. We don’t want to get yanked off the field after all our efforts. We’ll do five-hour shifts. Brennon deplaned at Kennedy at zero-seven hundred, Charlie took the first shift. Axel and Randy, you’ll relieve them at 1200, then Alpha will take over at 1700. You will continue this rotation. Make sure you’ve been fed and had adequate rest between rotations,” Striker directed.

“Yes, sir,” the men replied in unison. The surveillance teams headed out. Deep moved to the seat in front of my computer and entered his codes.

Nervous energy made my palms sweat and my toes tap the floor. I don’t work well under pressure. And last time we had been on a time crunch, with the Schumann case, I failed, and he wound up dead – you can’t get much worse than that.

Striker and Jack pulled out a box with files in it. They went through the cyber-attack that had already crazied up Wall Street last week.

I squinted at Jack. “Did he launch the attack from the United States?”

“No, Pakistan,” Jack answered without glancing up from the map in his hands.

“Is that where you two were?”

“Classified.” Jack said.

“It’s not part of this case? Or you don’t think I should be privy?”

“Classified, Lynx. Move on.”

I slit my eyes at Jack. If he wouldn’t share, I couldn’t puzzle. “Okay. Did he come in from Pakistan this morning?”

“Abu Dhabi.”

“And that’s where he’s going tomorrow?”

“Correct.”

“Does he have a return ticket? What about family? Are they scheduled to head out with him?”

And so went the day. I asked billions of questions and Jack and Striker patiently answered - when they had data. Deep searched our massive data banks to fill in the holes. We listed everything on the white board that still needed fleshing out.

Command sent meals in. Coffee comprised a major food group. Progress was measured in millimeters. Frustration. I saw no clear lines of reasoning in the copious data spread out in front of me. Truth be told, this was darned complicated, and probably needed weeks or months instead of hours.

After dinner, I went into the bathroom off my office and took a long hot shower until my skin turned red and prune-y. I let my muscles relax. I dressed in yoga pants and tank top, snagging my hair in the zipper as I pulled a fleece jacket over my head. I stayed barefoot, so I could think better. I always thought better barefoot. I slogged into Striker’s office and spent twenty of our precious minutes meditating - freeing up my mind, letting the myriad facts percolate.

I re-approached my mound of clues, making piles, making lists, asking questions, drawing possible connection charts…and so it went through the day, through the night, and back through the day again. Crimes were obviously being committed, but I couldn’t find the smallest shred of evidence to implicate this guy. Everything was indirect and circumstantial. I might even have chosen to venture down a different route, along a different set of clues, if Striker and Jack weren’t absolutely convinced that Brennon was at the top of this food chain. Rrr.

Working a puzzle under time-pressure and no sleep makes me feel overwhelmed. I really can’t speed up the process. My brain didn’t work that way, and the team knew it. I felt them trying to be patient, but this was a big deal. This really bad guy had the potential to do a lot of harm to our economy, and the hourglass was draining quickly. Striker realized the stress was getting to me, shutting down my ability to gather a strand of understanding from here and there and spin them together. Even though time was precious, he ordered me outside to run. He and my dogs jogged beside me. I breathed in frigid air. I tried to unknot my muscles and relax, so inspiration would bloom, and I could save the day.

As we headed back around the trail, Striker’s phone buzzed. He listened, and told the caller we’d be right there.

“What?” I asked.

“Gater’s coming in from his surveillance shift and brought you photos. He doesn’t think they’ll be very helpful. But then, we don’t think the way you do. I need to get you back, and let you take a look at them.”

“Who’s watching Brennon now?”

“Axel and Randy are on. Charlie Team’s racked out before their next op; the rest of the team is in the Puzzle Room waiting for instruction. Why don’t you head back? I’ll take Beetle and Bella over to the barracks for now.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in a minute.” I jogged off toward headquarters.

When I reached my office, the team was bent over the photographs laid out on my table. They had coffee mugs in their hands. Gater held one out to me.

I shook my head. “No thanks. Give me a second, and I’ll come see what you’ve got.” I went into the bathroom and washed the sweat from my face and swiped on some deodorant. “All right, what’s the story?” I walked over to them.

“Ma’am, Blaze and me were out on surveillance today, and I c’ain’t say we got much of anything,” Gater said.

He handed over the pile of photos. I looked down and gasped. The energy radiating from them was overpowering. There was the bad guy, Andrew Brennon - average good looks, about five foot ten; a hundred-and-seventy pounds, with straight, black hair; hazel eyes, thin lips on an over-wide mouth. He was with his family: his wife, Naomi – who looked like a Scandinavian model. The two didn’t visually fit together even if he
was
rich and powerful - his two little girls, who would grow up to look like their mother, and …When I looked at the other woman in the photograph it was as if I was punched in the stomach. I couldn’t inhale. This woman was frantic, hopeless. This woman had the answers we needed.

I felt the tug and familiar pull, a call from behind the Veil. I was teetering between two planes. I had a choice to make. The Veil was open to me. If I wanted to, I could walk behind it now and merge with this woman – maybe get the answers we needed, maybe find something to implicate Brennon and keep him on American soil. In an American prison. Should I go? The call lured my awareness behind the Veil. It sounded familiar to me — “Come. Come,” chanted the African women who helped me save Striker’s family. “Come,” they sang. I trusted these women. Yes. I’d go.

I dragged my eyes up from the photographs, and found Jack staring at me. “Jack, I have to go help her.” I pointed at the woman in the photo. “You know the rules.”

Jack didn’t usually wear his emotions on his sleeve. He was a huge man whose carved features lent themselves well to stoicism, but right now, it was easy to read the anguish in his eyes. I put him through hell last time - when I went behind the Veil to save Lynda and Cammy.

“Yes, ma’am.” His voice was tight. “I will not leave beginning to end. I will not touch you. I will not allow anyone else to touch you. No one else will come in…What about Striker? I don’t think I can keep him out once he knows what you’re doing.”

I nodded my consent. Now that I had made my decision, any interaction in the here and now was a monumental effort.

Jack continued, “I will not allow you to leave until you are able to walk out on your own two feet.
Please
, Lynx, we should wait for Striker. This isn’t a good idea.”

“She needs me now, Jack. I’m so sorry…”

The Veil pulled at my consciousness.

Jack got on his phone, “Striker, Code Red. Puzzle Room.”

I sat down, with the photos, but I barely felt the chair. I was already on my way out of my body. I looked at the photo in my hand. I didn’t pay the least bit of attention to the Brennons; they made my stomach heave, but they wouldn’t be the ones to tell me what was going on. This girl would.

I sat with the photo. She was my age - maybe nineteen? twenty? In the photo the wind had caught her raven black hair and whipped it across her high cheek bones. Her dress was chic, if extremely modest, the dark blue wool outlined her rounded breasts and cinched in at her tiny waist. She was model-beautiful. Especially her eyes. I focused on her eyes.
Tell me.
Her eyes were tormented, staggering, mesmerizing. She was in hell. I waited as a name formed in my mouth.

“Anna, Anya, Anyushka. She is Anyushka,” I said out loud pointing to the photo. “Yes,” replied Blaze; he looked quickly over at Jack to see if he should have responded. Jack and Striker had never told the team about this talent of mine. They had protected my secret at their own expense. This meant that Blaze, Deep, and Gater were in the dark right now, watching something very peculiar transpire.

Striker burst into the room. He looked over at me, and then Jack. “She’s gone behind the Veil? Why?” Striker sounded like a commander, but there was a frantic tinge to his voice, belying his control. He knew I was going somewhere where he had no power, and no way of helping me.

I heard Jack. “She said she had to go.”

Striker turned away from me to address the team. “Men, this will be explained later. There will be silence unless you can corroborate a fact. The only words you will use are ‘confirmed,’ or ‘refuted.’ You will under no circumstance, and I mean NONE, touch Lynx. She’s on a mission.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied.

I looked at the pictures again. Brennon and his wife were too distracting. I tore the picture so only Anyushka stared back at me with her hollow gaze. She was incomplete. There was something important missing. I felt empty arms. Unbearable grief. There was some
one
missing from this picture — a baby. I drew a baby on a piece of paper and cast about for a name.

Two names came to me in layers. Both belonged to the same child, yet both did not belong to the child. I didn’t understand.

“Anastasia,” I mouthed, “Olivia.” I looked up for confirmation; the men stared at me blankly. “Can you confirm an infant? A baby less than one year of age?”

“No, Lynx,” Blaze said. “I can neither confirm nor refute. We haven’t seen any babies and no other children other than the Brennan’s children in the photo.”

“The names Anastasia and Olivia mean nothing to you?” I mumbled rhetorically.

I breathed in waiting for Anyushka to speak to me. Volcanic heat enveloped me. My skin prickled from fear sweat. My center dragged forward as I merged with Anyushka. Oh my God, the heat. I jerked off my fleece hoodie. Even in my sleeveless jogging tank, I sweltered.

My forearms rested on the arms of my chair; and now to my horror, I couldn’t lift them. I was held in place by panic and some kind of leather binding. I glanced around a windowless room lit dimly from above. Cement walls, unfinished ceiling beams. A basement? A desk sat on my left and bookcases to my right. Andrew loomed above me, naked from the waist up, his black suit pants were unbuttoned and sliding down his hips. His psychopathic face was purplish-red and transformed, hideous with anger and evil.
Dear God, what is he doing?

He leaned in – inches from my face. His breath was ragged with excitement and stank of salami and cigarettes. His eyes were blood shot, glowing red with anticipation. He licked his lips, and I cowered the best I could given my restraints.

“I am your lord god. I will do whatever the
fuck
I want to you and you will thank me.”

“Thank you, Master,” I bleated and cringed.

“If you make a single noise – just one, I will strip your flesh from your bones.” He hissed.

I pushed my lips together tightly, curling them in to hold them in place with my teeth, and nodded my understanding. Anyushka’s eyes were screwed tightly shut – I couldn’t see what Brennon was doing, but I felt it.
Oh dear God in Heaven, deliver me from this hell.

I felt tiny points of blood spring up from the soft skin of my inner arms as Brennon stabbed something into me with quick staccato thrusts. My muscles convulsed as I yanked against the restraints trying to escape.

A song sung in a foreign language, in a thin off-key voice pushed against reality. Anyushka tried to force a lullaby between her soul and her physical self. She struggled — wavering and reclaiming — using the song as a barricade. I tried to focus on her voice. Something. Anything to distract me from the searing pain.

I sucked air in hard through my clenched teeth and exhaled through nostrils that flared and dripped. Tears leapt to my eyes and pushed through the dam of my lids. I fisted my hands against the pain. That’s all there was – pain — like fireworks bursting against me, light and color and soul shaking sound.

Andrew bellowed like a crazed animal then joy filled his voice as he caressed the plots he hatched and revealed, explaining how he was going to hurt me next.

“Open your eyes, Anyushka.” Andrew’s voice was sing-song and silky as he swept the hair, hanging damp across her cheek, back behind her ear with gentle fingers. He planted kisses near her lips — still curled in and caught between her teeth. “Open,” he said.

Anyushka forced wild, unblinking eyes onto Brennon’s face. His slow smile seemed benevolent as he slid his signet ring from his finger. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a lighter and before our eyes he heated it, twisting the gold in the yellow flame.

Oh, like a fairy. Sunlight on glittering water. No. No. — Baby, baby-mine, Mommy will save you – protect you. Do you know what Mommy does to protect you?
I saw a sweet infant’s face wrapped in a pink blanket peacefully asleep. Anyushka pushed the lullaby forward again.