The Rogue Retrieval (3 page)

Maybe we
are
flying.

A private jet was on the runway, getting ready to take off. Logan drove right up to it. Right out on the tarmac. Quinn was shocked they were allowed out here, but he kept his mouth shut. After the construction site, he figured he shouldn't be surprised by anything. Logan put it in park, but left the engine running. He and Kiara got out. Quinn would have followed, but his door was locked. He knocked on the window.

“Whoops,” Logan said. He opened the door from the outside.

Quinn climbed out and gave him a dirty look. He doubted they'd locked him back there on accident. Another SUV pulled up beside theirs. A young guy in a suit got out and jogged around to the trunk. He lifted out a black suitcase and handed it to Logan without a word. A woman got out of the passenger seat and got behind the wheel of Logan's SUV. They drove off, one right after the other.

Kiara was already boarding the jet.

“Shake a leg, Bradley,” Logan said. He shoved the suitcase at him. “Don't forget your suitcase.”

Quinn grabbed it by instinct. He saw the American flag label, and the neon-­green shoelace he'd tied on the handle last year. It was full, too. Probably with his own stuff.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. So they
hadn't
needed his address. They hadn't even needed his keys. He walked up to the jet, and noticed the company name on the side. “CASE Global Enterprises?”

“Your new employer,” Logan said.

CASE Global was a billion-­dollar corporation. Quinn couldn't guess what they wanted him for, but one thing was certain.

I should have asked for more money.

 

“Nothing spreads across a continent like disruptive technology.”

—­
R
.
H
OLT,
“R
ECOMMENDATIO
NS FOR
G
ATEWAY
P
ROTOCOLS
”

CHAPTER 2

FLIGHT

F
ourteen hours later, they rode in an unmarked helicopter over some island in the South Pacific. Quinn sat on a bench in the cargo bay, trying to keep his lunch down. Already regretting that he'd said yes. Kiara and Logan sat across from him, stoic as ever. They might as well have been out for a pleasure cruise.

Kiara pressed her headset to her ear, listening to something the pilot was saying. She signaled to him and Logan:
we're landing
.

Thank God for that.

A gust of wind buffeted the chopper as they descended. Quinn fought another wave of nausea. Jet travel he knew. Helicopters were another beast entirely. The whole thing seemed so . . .
fragile
. He was glad when they touched down.

A security team awaited them on the helipad, four men cut from the same cloth. Big shoulders, short hair, dark suits, and excellent posture. Quinn caught the glint of brushed aluminum under their jackets.

Machine guns. Sweet Jesus.

Kiara and Logan held up badges that got a careful look, but then they were waved past. Two of the security men came forward and took Quinn aside. He started feeling nervous. These guys were
huge
. Probably bigger than Logan, and that was saying something.

“Quinn Bradley?” one of them asked, with just a faint accent. German, maybe. He was even bigger up close.

“That's me,” Quinn said.

The man consulted a small notepad. No, a legal pad. His hands only made it seem small. “Who was your favorite high school teacher?”

Quinn was surprised by the question, though he found himself answering without hesitation. “Mr. Ribbing.” His high school physics teacher, the one who'd first gotten him interested in engineering.

“Where was your mother born?”

“Lebanon,” Quinn said.

The man just stared at him, unblinking.

“Uh, Beirut,” Quinn added. He doubted the question was an accident. When were they going to get over the fact that his mom was born in the Middle East? It ticked him off a little, but not enough to talk back to these guys.

The man lifted a hand to speak into his wrist. “Clear Bradley.” He waved Quinn past to where Kiara and Logan waited.

“Good security you have here,” he said to Logan.

“You'll be hard-­pressed to find any better.”

“How do they know that stuff about me?”

“We told you: we ran a background check.” Logan shrugged. “Besides, they know everything about everyone. Oh, almost forgot. Here's your ID.” He handed Quinn a security badge. It had his driver's license photo and the words “CLEARANCE LEVEL: 0” stamped in red on the front.

“Level zero? Seriously?” Quinn asked.

“Won't get you in anywhere except the cafeteria.”

“What's your level?”

“A lot higher.”

A dark-­haired woman in a white lab coat had hurried out from a nearby building. She got to the helipad and started sneezing. Kiara gestured at her. “Quinn Bradley, meet Dr. Veena Chaudri.”

“Welcome,” Chaudri said.

Quinn shook her hand, impressed by the strong grip. She was almost as tall as him, too. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Chaudri turned abruptly to sneeze again. “Oh! Sorry. It's my allergies.”

Kiara and Logan started toward the building, which was long and low like an army barracks. Quinn fell into step beside the newcomer. She looked to be in her mid-­thirties. Had to be from India with a name like that, but the accent was puzzling. Not Indian, but not British colonial, either. “Are you a medical doctor?” he asked.

“Not quite. I'm an anthropologist. What about you?”

“I'm an entertainer,” Quinn said. “A stage magician.”

“Really?” She didn't seem terribly surprised. “They certainly have thought of everything.”

Whatever the hell that means. . .

The interior of the building belied its outward drab appearance. The corridors were brightly lit, the floors polished. Everything was spotless. It looked more like a research laboratory than anything else . . . if research laboratories had state-­of-­the-­art security.

Quinn had trained himself to look for cameras, microphones, and other forms of surveillance—­the secrets behind his stage tricks were too valuable to put at risk—­and right away, he knew they were being covered from multiple angles. Most of the cameras were stationary, but at least one or two pivoted to follow their progress as Kiara took them in.

The company was watching.

T
hey stuck the magician in a secure conference room while Kiara briefed the executives. Logan waited for her outside the briefing room, looking over the file on Bradley's father. Both the parents were dead, but the father had worked for the State Department. Sometimes that meant CIA. Kiara had told him to pull the file, to make sure it wasn't a cover.

Her briefing took longer than it should have. Logan knew how it had gone the second she marched out the door. He saw the tightness in her jaw, the too-­stiff posture soldiers adopted after a good chewing out.

“That bad?” he asked.

“They're not happy with how it went in Vegas.”

“Why not? We got the magician they wanted,” Logan said.

“We were exposed. Someone knew we wanted to recruit him,” Kiara said.

“Any word from the cleanup team on who they were?” Logan asked.

“No, but I have my suspicions.”

“Raptor Tech,” Logan said. CASE Global's largest competitor. They had a huge presence in the defense industry, and were doing their best to infringe on every market CASE Global dominated. Mostly by black hat stuff, and this fit the bill.

“The sooner we're mission-­ready, the better,” Kiara said. She saw what Logan had been reading. “Is that the file on Bradley's father?”

“It looks legit,” Logan said. “He worked as a cultural attaché in Beirut when Hezbollah bombed the embassy in '83. Spent twelve hours under the rubble, and then a month in the hospital. I saw the records.”

“Hard to believe he stayed after that,” she said.

“I think he'd met the mother by then,” he said. “She'd applied for asylum a ­couple of times, but couldn't get it. He smuggled her out in '86. Got a write-­up for it.”

“Her family filed a complaint, too,” Kiara said. “Our sources over there say they disowned her after that.”

“For joining the infidels?” Logan asked.

“That, and the fact that she'd been promised to someone else.”

Logan grunted. “No wonder he got the write-­up. State benched him after that. Put him behind a desk in Nevada.”

“Reassignment to somewhere boring,” Kiara said.

“The government's favorite kind of punishment.”

“Any red flags on the mother's family?” she asked.

“No ties to any radical groups. She came over alone. Wasn't on any watch lists.”

That was the main concern. Not that she was a terrorist—­the company couldn't care less about that—­but the possibility that feds could be keeping tabs on Bradley. Tapping his phone, monitoring his travel. Just because of where his mother had been born. The fewer satellites keyholed to the island compound, the better.

“All good news,” she said. “So why do I feel like you still have a problem with him?”

He kept his face still. She'd had a tough briefing and he didn't want to do this now. “You know where I come in on this, Lieutenant.”

“Pretend I don't.”

“I never liked the idea of bringing in a civilian, much less one without any training. I'd rather bring a ­couple of my guys.”

“We need someone Holt doesn't know already. Someone he won't expect. An ace in the hole.”

Logan doubted that was a play on words. He was pretty sure Kiara had never uttered a joke in her life. “Oh, I'm sure he won't expect us to bring a Vegas performer along. Mission accomplished.”

“If you have a more creative idea, say the word.”

Logan said nothing.

“Good. One last thing: the executives want us to make sure he's not in touch with any of his father's old contacts from the State Department. If not, we can read him in.”

Q
uinn faced Kiara and Logan across a small conference table. It hurt to keep his eyes open, but they'd insisted on the briefing right away. The conference room was modern and functional, the table a single sheet of glass on metal legs. The walls were bare except for a security camera with a steady red light. How many did that make? Quinn had lost count. The level of surveillance had him on edge.

“First things first,” Kiara said. She slid over a thick document in a manila folder. “The nondisclosure agreement.”

Quinn scanned through the pages, wishing he'd thought to consult a lawyer. Too late for that now.

“This agreement went into effect the moment we met, and never expires,” Kiara said.

“What if I don't sign it?”

“They'll never find your body,” Logan said.

Quinn wasn't sure he was kidding. “Not taking any chances, are you?”

“Everyone signs one of these. It's standard protocol.”

“Right.”

“To be fair, your background has some of the executives nervous.”

Oh, delightful. The Lebanese question again. “Look, I never met anyone from my mother's side of the family,” he said. After she'd married his father, none of her relatives would even talk to her. She'd almost never spoken about them, either.

“So it would seem. Telecom records only had the occasional call from her sister.”

“Really? I—­I didn't know.” Once, while still in high school, he'd come home early and caught her in the kitchen, whispering into the phone. She'd hung up right away, wiped her eyes, and never said a word about it.

“Yes. But it's not your mother I was talking about,” Kiara said.

“What?”

“It's your father.”

Now
that
one Quinn hadn't seen coming. He was behind the curve again, and he hated that. “Why would he make them nervous?”

“He worked at the State Department.”

“Yeah, that's how they met,” Quinn said. “But he was an office worker. Boring stuff. He said so all the time.”

“Do you know what he was doing in Beirut?” Kiara asked.

Quinn shook his head. “He never talked about it.” His father hadn't been a big talker. Hell, the company probably knew more about his past than Quinn did. Knowing that added fuel to the smoldering anger against CASE Global. They'd sabotaged his career, dug into his past. God, it was almost like they were
trying
to piss him off.

“You're not in touch with any of your father's old coworkers, then?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Answer the question,” Kiara said.

“Like I said, he wasn't a big talker. And we don't get a lot of federal government types out in Nevada—­not a lot of foreign dignitaries in the desert. So, no.”

Kiara pressed two fingers to her ear, as if receiving instructions. Which he realized was probably exactly what she was doing. Her eyes flickered to a large mirror on the wall. The surface wasn't as reflective as it should be. Had to be a one-­way. No one knew mirrors better than magicians.

She stood. “All right, Bradley. It's time you saw where you'll be working.”

I guess I passed.

Q
uinn followed Kiara and Logan down a stark corridor. A group of soldiers strode past, headed the other way. At least, they looked like soldiers, from the bearing and confidence. And from the way they saluted Kiara as they approached. Two men and two women. Dressed in black. With swords at their belts . . .

Quinn did a double take.

Yep, swords.
He was about to bring it up when they hit the security checkpoint.

There was a heavy steel door, flanked by two security guards who cradled automatic weapons. They stiffened when Kiara approached, but made no salute. She slid back a panel in the wall. She put her palm on a gray panel. It lit up blue at her touch. “Lynn Kiara,” she said.

Biometric scanners and voice recognition. So, she did have a first name.
And it was Lynn.
Quinn smiled. He'd never have guessed that in a million years.

The panel flickered green, and then the guards broke composure to salute her. The steel door hissed open.

Quinn stepped close to Kiara, so that the guards knew he was with her. The chamber beyond surprised him. It was cavernous, easily the biggest room he'd seen in the complex so far. The air was heavy and smelled of . . .
wet stone
? The reason became apparent when he saw that the back half of the chamber was raw bedrock, carved out around a steel-­and-­Plexiglas door.

“What you're about to see was discovered fifteen years ago by a local shepherd,” Kiara said. “He'd been missing for days. Limped home to his family raving about it. He was dead within a few hours.”

“Of what?” Quinn asked. He started holding his breath, just in case it was some kind of disease.

“Frostbite,” Kiara said.

Logan appeared beside him. He wore a heavy coat in brown wool, and held out another for Quinn. “Put this on.”

Quinn took the coat and tugged it on. It wasn't really wool, but some kind of synthetic fiber. The coat itself was actually plain and shapeless. Like the world's warmest poncho. He'd been in caves before, and they were cold, but this seemed a bit excessive.

Kiara had bundled up as well. She entered a command at the computer terminal on one side of the cavern, and strode over to join him. “This is CASE Global's single most important asset.”