Shadows (Black Raven Book 1)

Also By Stella Barcelona

DECEIVED

Praise for
Deceived
:

“Stella Barcelona’s stunning debut,
Deceived
, has it all. Mystery-check. Action-check. Romance-check. A heart pounding must read, Barcelona writes for those of us who want intelligent protagonists and an intriguing mystery.”

– Cherry Adair, New York Times Bestselling Author

“Stella Barcelona’s
Deceived
brings history to life in a suspenseful, contemporary tale that sends the protagonists on a research trip to a past close to their hearts. Barcelona’s debut books brings an excellent author to the fore; the intrigue blends beautifully with the romance.”

– Heather Graham, New York Times Bestselling Author

“With the power of a master craftsman, Stella Barcelona takes us on an unforgettable journey in her debut novel,
Deceived
. She sweeps the reader away with whirlwind action and heart-pounding suspense, all the while sitting you beside vibrant, unforgettable characters who take root in your heart and refuse to leave. This is one book not to be missed!”

– Deborah LeBlanc, author of Voices

SHADOWS

Stella Barcelona

Shadows
Copyright © 2015 by Stella Barcelona

Black Raven logo design, Copyright © 2014 by Stella Barcelona

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, storied in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior express written permission of the author.

Please report the unauthorized distribution of this publication by contacting the author at
stellabarcelona.com
, via email at
[email protected]
, or at Stella Barcelona, P.O. Box 70332, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70172-0332.

This is a work of fiction. The people, places, and events in
Shadows
are entirely fictional. This story is not intended by the author as a reflection of historical or current fact, nor is the story intended as an accurate representation of past or current events. Any resemblance between the characters in this novel and any or all persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

To Bob, my own blue-eyed hero, thank you for your constant encouragement, for making me laugh, and for sharing with me the luck of the Irish.

They’ll kill me when they realize I’m not cooperating
.

With that thought screaming though his mind, Richard Barrows’ fingers shook as he typed commands. Sweat dripped into his eyes. He swallowed his growing panic, squinting at the computer monitor as he longed for the relative security and peace of prison. After his conviction for tax evasion, mundane prison routine had the odd effect of slowing his thought processes, which typically raced through infinite possibilities. Craving that safety and calmness wouldn’t produce it, though.

His physicians and psychiatrists had strongly suggested medicine to treat his obsessions, compulsions, and paranoia. He’d refused, knowing that one day, the world would need every ounce of his unfettered brainpower.

Today is the day.

Who the hell were his captors, and how had they gained access to his proprietary data? They didn’t have all of it, thank God, and much of what they had was encrypted. More sweat dripped into his eyes as he analyzed their latest stumbling block:

dsfcd;kafoAr,.idyeliwrknldJaKDlHSUXsgvn9824NCPXOX63473l66B643BE666F412C2EOx666436b666f412c2e6979657777277bc44a4b444853dsfRxyO66SdsE444853444276

Their isolation of this data stream indicated they were close to cracking his encryption code. Close, but they weren’t there. It was only a matter of time before they’d see the clues. For now they wanted him to provide the key for hundreds of breakpoints such as the one he was studying.

Not in this fucking lifetime.

Pretending to be prison guards, yet not allowing him to know where they were taking him, had been leading indicators of a problem. The lab where they ordered him to work was exactly the type of place that made him feel safe and comfortable. It was too perfect, though. The tech was too state-of-the-art, the lighting at exactly his specified lumens, the temperature at precisely his preferred working temperature of sixty-two degrees. They’d copied his personal work environment at BY Laboratories, right down to the ergonomic keyboard he used with an integrated palm rest and a footrest under his desk at precisely his favored height.

Peripherally he was aware of other technicians and analysts working in the lab. From their sweat despite the cool temperature, hair-pulling frustration, pacing when they weren’t typing, and furtive glances at him, he deduced that their frustration level matched his fear. If their extreme dedication to work wasn’t odd enough, the six black-clad men with weapons, strategically positioned around the room, confirmed that this was no legitimate endeavor. There was one piece of good news, and for that he was elated.
My encryption program is working.
These men were running state of the art decryption programs and they hadn’t broken through the bag of tricks he’d employed in protecting Shadow Technology.

A man approached and stood at his side. Richard glanced into the lead analyst’s light brown eyes. The man pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up his nose. “You haven’t typed anything in ten minutes.”

“I have to think it through. This takes time,” he lied. Richard knew the commands the characters prompted. What was taking so long was thinking through an alternate command that would prompt an invisible data purge, because his gut told him his captors weren’t the government agents they claimed to be. For that reason, he wasn’t giving them a damn thing. What he could destroy, he would.

“We need results,” the analyst answered, with a glance to one of the gun-toting guards who stood at the doorway, “and we need them now.”

Looking closer, Richard realized that moisture had seeped through the man’s blue button-down shirt. His thin red hair was damp with sweat. The man was anxious, but trying hard to be cool on the exterior. “Who are you working for?”

“We’ve told you. We’re with the National Security Agency. This is all a problem of your creation. You’ve created chaos. You must correct it.”

I’m not falling for it. My programs made sense out of chaos.

The stakes were far higher than his mortality, and Richard’s racing thoughts all collided at a dead end.
Help
. He needed it, badly.
This isn’t paranoia
. These men were out to get him. Well, not him, but what he’d created. Shadow Technology and LID Technology. He needed help and, as much as he didn’t want to involve her, there was only one person who could give it.

Alert Skye. The cataclysm scenario is in play.

“Maybe these two words will speed things up.” The analyst stepped closer, bent, and said, “Skye and Spring,” then stepped away.

The two people he’d protect with his life.

Richard’s stomach rolled with sudden nausea. He resumed typing, narrowing his eyes as he read the monitor.
Yes.
That was enough to make things look good, but not enough to work. The analyst was absolutely correct. The way to ensure his cooperation was by threatening his daughters. By voicing their names, that’s what the man had done.

I have no choice.

Richard almost choked on his fear for his daughters, typing commands that would, without his captors knowing, allow him to penetrate their network. He’d found the vulnerability in their system that would provide internet access hours ago. If he was in and out in a matter of seconds, he had a strong hope they wouldn’t figure out he’d been there or see the message that he sent. He’d always known it would come to this, yet his hands trembled as he sent the message that would alert Skye.

Please God, help her.

131441413923117208152620

The number stream, the one and only communication she’d received on the phone that was dedicated solely to transmission of such a message, jolted the last sleep-induced blur from Chloe’s brain. Her hands shook as she mentally translated numbers to letters.

C-A-T-A-C-L-Y-S-M-N-O-W-R-U-N.

She gripped the phone tighter, checking her translation. Same result. It was the message she’d been hoping would never come. Maybe she’d made a mistake. Kicking aside the sheet and blanket, she turned on the lamp, opened the top drawer of the nightstand, pushed her revolver to the side, and pulled out a pen and paper. Drawing a deep breath, she started over, writing as she assigned letters to numbers.

Cataclysm. Now. Run.

Adrenaline surged through her veins, but as she stood, hope glimmered – maybe the message itself was a mistake. No. Not possible. A wrong-number text message would have made sense in a simple, uncomplicated life, rather than in her father’s private code. As her father’s daughter, her life was neither simple, nor her own. And despite her father’s propensity for paranoia, the
cataclysm
part of his secret code galvanized her into action.

‘Normal’ wasn't part of her father’s vocabulary. He wasn’t normal, but he was her father. While a majority of the world now ridiculed him, Chloe didn’t. Cataclysm wasn’t supposed to happen. The word meant only one thing in her father’s world, and she had instructions to follow. Without question. Well, maybe with questions. A train car full of questions, starting with how her father, who was imprisoned in a federal penitentiary, had managed to send her a text and why this particular message now. Yet she knew if he had a few minutes with a computer–any computer–he could do anything. Other questions bombarded her, but now was not the time to entertain them. Even with doubt, she’d follow the pre-arranged steps of his cataclysm scenario as though her life, and a whole lot more, depended on it.

Cataclysm. Now. Run.

Her father had taught her to act first, worry later. A simple idea, and one with value, although he had the luxury of living in grand schemes and high ideals.

He’d left her to contend with the real world, and to say it was a damn inconvenient day to have to
run was an understatement.

She shredded the paper where she’d written his message, put the pieces in her mouth, almost gagging on the wad of pulp. With all that was inside of her, she knew that chewing and swallowing paper as a means of destroying the message was ridiculous. Yet she was committed by blood and loyalty to following her father’s instructions, no matter how off-base, so follow them she did. She walked over to retrieve her personal ditch kit—cash, loose diamonds, gold medallions, and weapons—all packed in a backpack that was tucked in a locked trunk in her closet, under spare linens.

The location where cataclysm prompted her to run—a lake house on Firefly Island in Hickory Lake, near Nashville, Tennessee—had more supplies. For now, she just had to get there. Fast. She checked her backpack, put it by the bedroom door, and tried to calm herself by deep breathing. This first step of the cataclysm scenario—getting to the lake house within twenty-four hours and awaiting her father’s next instruction—would be a no brainer if she were alone. But she wasn’t alone.

Dear God, why today?

Living on the hope that the cataclysm scenario would never come, she had worked hard at creating the life that she and her younger sister, Colbie, were living. Today, of all days, was of supreme importance to Colbie, who even on an ordinary day couldn’t just get in the car and run from one life to the next. Not without questions, not without coaxing, not without a story that would make sense in the world of Colbie-logic. She breathed deeply, then exhaled slowly.

Figure it out.

Realistically, with her sister, it would easily take a full twelve hours to get to Hickory Lake, and that was assuming everything went smoothly. She’d travel faster alone. She debated whether she should leave Colbie, go to the lake house, get the message, and return for her afterwards. Colbie would be fine for a few hours without her, as long as she felt comfortable in her surroundings, had people with her whom she loved and trusted, and had something to do that was time consuming and detailed. Chloe had built such a life for her sister in Covington, Louisiana, and maybe home would be the best place for Colbie today.

Chloe glanced at the clock. Five-thirty in the morning. The text had come in at five twenty-five. Breathe, she told herself. She had plenty of time. Allowing twelve hours for the drive with Colbie was acceptable. They shouldn’t separate. In the cataclysm scenario, if they had to reach the end of the cataclysm road, they needed to be together. It was too risky to leave her in Covington.

Run. Now.

Allowing twelve hours, they’d be at the lake house in plenty of time to ready herself for the next set of instructions that should come in by five twenty-five the following morning, exactly twenty-four hours after receiving this morning’s message.

Chloe deleted the coded text and took the phone apart, breaking it into as many pieces as she could. With the heel of one of the cowboy boots she planned to wear, she then smashed the pieces. Three toilet flushes later, the phone was gone.

She allowed herself a few minutes to shower. Hot water soothed her and helped her plan how the morning would unfold, once she awakened her sister. Colbie, of course, had no knowledge of the cataclysm scenario and wouldn’t grasp what it meant, even if she was told every detail. With serious coaxing, Chloe would be able to get Colbie out of the house a few minutes earlier than normal. There was no way, though, that she’d be able to get Colbie on the road without stopping at their new bakery and coffee shop, Creative Confections, picking up the cake that Colbie had decorated the evening before, and delivering it to the customer.
Bingo
. She’d focus on the cake as a reason to hurry. Once they delivered the cake, they’d be able to run. She combed her wet hair and wound it into a twist, so that it would dry without wetting her sweater. No make-up. No time.

She slipped on the clothes that had been reserved for this day that was never supposed to happen, put on jewelry that she could use for barter later, if needed, and slipped into her sister’s lamp-lit bedroom. The barrage of color that filled bowls on Colbie’s oversized desk and apothecary jars on every bookshelf sent a chill through Chloe. Colbie’s current project at home involved organizing marbles by swirl and color. Lots of them.

Please God. Not marbles. When she finally has her meltdown, don’t let her want marbles.

Candy, their eight-month old golden retriever, rested her head next to Colbie’s head on the pillow. They were snuggled together, Colbie’s body a larger crescent behind the long-legged, fluffy puppy. Her sister wore pink headphones as she slept, snoozing to the sounds of a rainforest. Colbie didn’t stir at Chloe’s entry, but the dog’s big brown eyes opened, following her progress as she approached the bed. Before touching Colbie’s shoulder, sadness threatened to choke her. Oh God. This had to stop. She couldn’t let her sister see, or even sense, how afraid she was. Her sister would be worried. Colbie’s worry led to anxiety, and anxiety led to meltdowns.

An anxiety-filled wake-up wasn’t the way to start any day, much less this day. Not when so much depended on them getting where they were supposed to be. Chloe drew a deep breath, reminding herself she could start over and succeed again. She’d make their next life even better for her sister.

A half hour had elapsed since the message came through. Now she had twenty-three hours and thirty minutes to get to Firefly Island. Plenty of time, she assured herself, as long as she could get her sister going. As she touched Colbie’s shoulder, her sister’s blue eyes opened and she smiled her usual sweet, innocent, slightly-sleepy, morning smile.

Cataclysm. Now. Run.

“Today’s going to be a fabulous day.” Chloe forced calm and enthusiasm into her voice. “Why don’t you shower? I’ll put your clothes together and take Candy outside.”

***

The sleek interior of Raven One, a Gulfstream 650 ER, with supple leather seats and polished wood accents, reminded Sebastian Connelly how much was on the line with his slim-ass hunch that Skye Barrows would lead him to her father. His hunch had better be right. Black Raven Private Security Contractors, his company, was at the top of its game. It had a long way to fall, and he was up to his ass in a problem that was becoming an uncontrollable downward spiral.

The tailspin had started four days earlier, when seven prisoners escaped from a low security satellite facility at a Federal Correctional Institution in Mississippi. Escaped on Black Raven’s watch. His watch. Of the seven escapees, three remained at large. U.S. Marshals and Black Raven agents were closing in on one of them, and they had a decent lead on another. The one without leads–Richard Barrows–was Sebastian’s problem. No one had a clue regarding the whereabouts of Barrows, the brilliant and paranoid computer genius, who should be sitting in the federal pen for tax evasion.

Should be, but wasn’t, because there’d been a total failure of all systems at the prison. The systems failure hadn’t been a simple electrical issue. There had been an electrical outage, and the security system that Black Raven was in the process of replacing had also failed. No one had had detected anything going wrong while it happened. The end result had been an outage of every light, camera, lock, and security measure. They were damn lucky only seven prisoners had strolled out.

As the wheels touched the runway, Sebastian, alone in the passenger cabin, inserted a tiny audio transmitter and receiver into his ear, pressed a few buttons on his watchband that turned the earpiece into a phone and auto-dialed Ragno, Black Raven’s senior data analyst. Unless Ragno’s work was focused on a particular operation, she or someone on her team provided a steady stream of updates to Black Raven partners on sensitive operations. Phrases like
client safely delivered in Karachi
or
deposit made in Istanbul
were not uncommon to hear from Ragno or her team throughout a normal day. Today wasn’t normal, though, and one hundred percent of Ragno’s focus was on the prison break.

“Talk to me.”

“Good morning,” Ragno’s tone was, as usual, clear, crisp, and calm. The woman was unflappable, non-alarmist, and always cool under pressure. She was Sebastian’s conduit to the numerous agents who were working the prison break, his link to the rest of the world, and the point person for assimilating the massive amounts of information Black Raven’s data analysts were gathering.

“Holt was just apprehended in Georgia, and we’re getting more leads on Biondo,” she said. Relief fluttered in Sebastian’s belly. Holt, and one of the escapees who had already been apprehended, had been in the prison library with Barrows and Biondo when the blackout occurred. The other three prisoners had escaped from the prison laundry facility. “Holt is en route to the nearest federal prison for debriefing.”

Five escapees down. Two to go. He might be able to save this clusterfuck after all. “Is Holt saying anything about Barrows or Biondo?”

“No. So far he’s saying he left with the others, before Barrows. He didn’t think Barrows was going to leave. Didn’t see Barrows or any of the others once he was outside the gate. Interrogation is continuing as we speak.” She paused. “Did you manage to sleep while in flight?”

“No,” he shut his iPad, slipped it into his backpack, and stood as the plane halted. “I’ve read through some of Barrows’ interviews.”

“Fascinating, right?”

“Yes,” he said, slipping on his jacket. “Imagine if all of that brilliance could have been harnessed.”

“Oh,” she said, “I’ve been imagining.”

At six-five, Sebastian could stand upright in the jet, but what he needed was a good, arms-over-head stretch, and that was impossible. “Get the senior agents for each team on the line for action reports.”

“Back in five.”

Sebastian slung his backpack over one shoulder and nodded to the two pilots, who stood at attention as he departed. “I’ll call with a departure time. For now, plan on two hours.”

He walked down the narrow stairs to the tarmac, breathing in fresh, crisp February air. Above the yellow and orange horizon, stars blinked in the clear, pre-dawn sky. He didn’t bother breaking the connection with Ragno as she put together the conference call. He could hear her keyboard clicking and her soft breaths. While they worked the prison break, they’d keep an open line throughout the day and most of the night.

Sebastian walked to a black Range Rover that had pulled up to the private airport’s landing strip. He usually enjoyed high-stakes hunts with elusive prey, but Barrows wasn’t just elusive. He had disappeared, and Sebastian couldn’t get a handle on where he might be. No one could.

Sebastian nodded to Pete St. Paul, the driver of the Range Rover, who had stepped out and opened the front passenger door for Sebastian. Pete was one of Black Raven’s newer agents. “Good morning, sir.”

“Morning.” Sebastian dropped his backpack into the footwell of the passenger side, did an arms over head stretch before stepping into the SUV and extended his legs as he pushed the seat back as far as it could go. “Having fun yet?”

Pete’s smile made it to his dark brown eyes. “I’ve done worse.” He shut the door and came around to the driver’s side.