Blowback (The Black Cipher Files Book 1) (26 page)

The words echoed in my head as the earpiece broadcast the sound.

“Yeah.” I touched a finger to my ear. The white one piece work suit, with Mel’s Window Washing printed in water blue on the back, hung limply on me. We’d agreed I would go through Staci’s things, while Lucas stayed outside and squeegeed windows, keeping an eye on the alley behind the house.

We’d left the van, complete with a magnetic sign advertising clean windows fast, parked one house over from Staci’s backyard. That didn’t sit particularly well with me but the van needed to be easily accessible. Just in case.

We’d picked up a ladder at the Home Depot in Halethrope. Lucas propped the ladder against the house and we climbed to the second story quickly. He soaped up a window while I jimmied open her bedroom window using new magnets and double stick tape, and climbed inside.

Then I hustled to the bedside table and pulled out the remote. I punched in the code for the hidden door and waited to hear the slight slide of the door opening. Instead, I heard nothing.

I punched in the code again.

Still nothing.

Listening intently, I heard no other movement in the house. Maybe whoever kept watch on the house had changed the code. But that didn’t make sense. The men who had come in last time didn’t know anything about the secret doorway.

Maybe the door had gotten hung up on something. I walked over to the closet and slowly opened the doors. Nothing moved.

As the closet door swung open all the way, I realized why I hadn’t heard the secret door slide.

Both doors were already open.

Before I could retreat, a man stepped out from the same place Lucas and I had hidden the last time.

“Drop the remote. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

I kept silent, judging my options, as I knelt down slowly and placed the remote on the carpeted floor. It would be stupid to go for the weapon at my ankle.

Lucas’s coveralls rustled in my ear. “Find anything?”

“Who are you?” The man with his cold gaze trained on me held an American-made weapon like he knew what to do with it. He stood about six foot three with broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist, hair military short, clothes black and nondescript, his ethnicity a Hispanic/Anglo-Saxon mix, facial features sharp and unremarkable.

Until you looked at his eyes.

“Who is that, Jamie?” Lucas must have picked up the guy’s voice on his earpiece. Sensitive suckers.

“I don’t suppose you’d believe...a window washer?” I hedged, wondering how the hell I could get out of this. I let my hands dangle at my sides trying to look as non-threatening as possible.

If anything the guy straightened more, his body alert and ready.

Lucas said, “Shit. I’m coming in.”

“No,” I said at the exact same time as the guy with the gun.

“What are you doing in this house?” The guy in the doorway stepped toward me.

“Are you in trouble?” Lucas barked.

This is why I didn’t like working with a partner. I reassured Lucas first and hoped the guy with the gun wouldn’t make any unexpected moves. “Trust me.”

“Nope.” Closet man narrowed his gaze. “I won’t ask again.”

I assessed my position. He was too far away to disable with a well-placed Krav Maga kick. The damage his weapon could do at the range of six and a half feet was significant, assuming he didn’t miss. And based on his confidence, he wouldn’t miss.

This could work to our advantage. We’d wanted to find something, anything that would give us a clue to Staci Grant’s private password. A big clue stood right in front of me.

When dealing from a position of weakness, it could be beneficial to give something up. We needed this guy. “I’m looking for information about a young man Staci Grant recruited and I believe it’s here.”

“This is a private residence not an office,” he parried.

I nodded my head toward the open stairway. “The files up there are private.”

He stiffened.

The air behind me shifted and shimmered. Dammit. Lucas hadn’t listened. And gun guy had figured it out.

“What is this--a goddamn party?” the guy said gruffly.

“Ramirez?” Lucas called from the beyond the open closet door.

“Holy shit. Goodman?” The guy’s focus shifted behind me. The barrel of his weapon dipped to point at the floor.

Lucas trod past me, ignored the weapon, and grabbed the guy in a bear hug. “How the hell are you?”

Ramirez slapped Lucas on the back. “What the f—heck are you doing breaking into Staci’s place?”

“Ah...missing person case.”

“B & E suddenly become the new Bureau approved way to get inside a building?”

Lucas stepped back and looked uncomfortable. “I...left. Last year.”

“The OPR smear.” Ramirez looked regretful. “For what it’s worth, I thought you got a raw deal, man.”

“Thanks.”

They were both verbally dancing around the real issue and we didn’t have time. The surveillance out front could well do some sort of hourly rotation. “We need to get into her files.”

Ramirez stiffened, going back on alert in a heartbeat. “She with you?”

“Jaime meet Jordan Ramirez.”

Jordan Ramirez noted Lucas hadn’t given my last name, just as I noted Lucas failed to tell me how he knew Jordan Ramirez.

I inclined my head.

“Staci isn’t here right now,” he said, as if she’d gone out for a jug of milk.

“Staci Grant is dead,” I said gently.

“No. She isn’t.”

“Ramirez....” Lucas placed a hand on his shoulder, but Ramirez shrugged it off.

“That may be the common theory but I don’t believe it.”

“We don’t have time for this,” I said sharply.

Jordan Ramirez glanced at the military dial watch on his wrist. “You’ve got thirty minutes before he makes rounds again.”

Lucas looked even more uncomfortable. “What are you doing here? How did you know Staci?”

“We’re...friends.” Jordan Ramirez had been more than Staci Grant’s friend. Theories clicked through my brain at top speed.

“Did anyone know?”

Jordan Ramirez’s gaze snapped back to me. “Our relationship was, is, private.”

Lucas straightened, as the possibilities fired between us.

“No one?” I persisted.

“I never told anyone.” Ramirez flipped the safety on and tucked his weapon into the waistband of his jeans. “And Staci wouldn’t.”

“What do you think?” I directed the question at Lucas, but I knew we’d found the key.

“It’s worth a try.” Lucas glanced at his friend. “If it’s okay.”

“We have to find out what’s going on,” I murmured fiercely.

Being part of Staci Grant’s files, in my book, placed Bella in clear danger. Johnny was in Staci’s files and hanging out with Bella under an alias. At this point I didn’t know what that signified. Staci had information on 5491 that I needed in order to figure out what was going on with the NSA, the kidnapped agents and me. “I need in those files.”

Ramirez watched our exchange with a puzzled look.

“We need to find a recruit of Staci’s,” Lucas said.

“What kind of recruit?” Ramirez asked, not giving anything away.

“Her agency recruits.” I looked at him steadily. “The ones she recruited for the U.S. Government.”

No one mentioned the CIA.

Ramirez aimed a look at Lucas. “You trust her?”

Shit. I was on uncertain ground here. I intended to get into Staci Grant’s files with or without this guy’s permission. But wasting time to take him down would be an annoyance.

“Yeah. I trust her,” Lucas said softly.

I let out the breath I’d instinctively held. An emotion, elation maybe, seeped into my blood fizzing like a lack of oxygen.

“I can’t help you. I...can’t get into those files.” He hadn’t approved. It was clear in his body language. He’d wanted nothing to do with Staci Grant’s job.

“I think I can.”

“Right.” Jordan Ramirez laughed, but it was far from a happy sound. “Did you know her?”

I stepped toward the attic office. “No, but....”

He stretched his arm across the doorway, barring entrance. “I’ve been trying for weeks and can’t get into her private files. What makes you think you can?” Fierceness shimmered off of him.

In that instant, I knew Staci Grant had one more thing for me to be jealous of. This man had loved her. So much so that he wasn’t willing to accept her death.

“Let her try.” Lucas surprised us both. “Her record is pretty good.”

Jordan Ramirez reluctantly dropped his arm. I bolted for the stairs. The clock was ticking.

Jordan and Lucas followed. They spoke in low tones but I ignored them. When I got upstairs the computer was up and running. “You’ve been working?” I asked slowly.

“Only in her regular files. I’ve been...tracing every one of her students. Looking for answers.”

Answers to what? And did he really want to know?

“Trying to find her,” he said.

But Staci Grant was dead. I sat down at the computer. “What is your middle name?”

“Mine?” Jordan Ramirez lifted his eyebrows.

“Yours.”

“Angelo.” He rubbed his fingers up and down his arms. “She wouldn’t use me. Our...thing was casual.”

Jordan Ramirez wasn’t telling the truth. If it had only been casual he wouldn’t be here, trying to find Staci Grant and prove she wasn’t dead.

He clarified. “Besides, I’ve already tried my name.”

But Lucas had caught on. “Initials. Just like the other.”

I typed in JAR. The computer hummed in the silent air as we waited tensely. The system beeped: Access Denied.

“When did you meet?”

He rattled off a date and I added that to the initials.

Then the computer dinged. “Welcome, Dr. Grant.”

“I can’t believe she used my initials.” Jordan Ramirez wrapped hard fingers around my bicep. “How did you know?”

I started to shrug him off with a glib comment, but he deserved more. “We’re a lot alike,” I murmured.

“Great. Maybe you can tell me where she is.” He bit the words out without any heat, just sadness.

These files, her secret CIA recruit files, had to give me answers to why Johnny Wishbone was pretending to be Donald Christian. And why Staci Grant had recruited him. And why Bella was in her files.

Staci Grant was dead. But maybe I could help Jordan. If our suppositions were correct, it was possible she’d had the DNA altering drug.

She might have died
because
she’d had a DNA altering drug. “Had she been acting differently before she left?”

He thought back. “She’d become obsessed with her grandparents’s deaths. She started going over the old police reports, looking for something but she wouldn’t ever say exactly what.”

That had hurt Jordan Ramirez.

Then I processed what he just told us. Her grandparents, who had died in a single violent act.

Like mine.

“What did she find out?”

He shrugged and wandered toward the window. “She didn’t say.”

And that had hurt him even more.

I ran a search on files, typing in Johnny Wishbone’s name. Waiting, I stared at the black and green screen as the computer scrolled through files at lightning speed.

“She ever mention anything about TICOM?” Lucas’s casual question jerked me back to their conversation.

“TICOM? Isn’t that from the second World War?” Jordan frowned. “She’s only thirty-two.”

“You realize those files are still sealed?” Lucas’s statement was again casual.

“So they’re still sealed,” Jordan said. “Where’s the connection?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“I can’t believe there is any connection between the Target Intelligence Committee, from World War II, and Staci.”

The computer dinged. I clicked open the file on Johnny Wishbone and sent a copy to the printer. Then I typed in my sister’s full name, hit enter and waited. The need to know what information she had about Bella burned like acid etching stone.

The computer dinged again. My heart stopped with fear.

I’d faced down crazy killers, scientists with syringes and the death of my family, but right this moment I was terrified to look at that file.

I needed to send the information to the printer but my hand shook too badly. I clenched my fingers into a fist and hoped no one had noticed.

Lucas leaned over and hit the print button. He’d noticed.

I opened the file on 5491, the computer whirring as the file loaded. I hit the print button.

Jordan Ramirez sighed and looked out the window. “Uh-oh.”

Crap.

“This is another reason I don’t believe she’s dead.” He waved toward the street below. “We’ve got company.”

TWENTY-NINE

Lucas swore. “Forgot about the ladder.”

I said drily, “Our friends are back?”

“Yeah.” Jordan pressed a button under the desk top.

The hidden closet door slid closed. I wondered how long we’d have to hole up here before the butthead twins left.

“Let’s go.” Jordan motioned.

“Where?” Lucas whispered. We’d all heard the alarm go off and the heavy tread of feet. They’d make a beeline for Staci’s bedroom because of the ladder.

“This way.” Jordan flipped open a keypad along the shared wall then silently punched in a code. Suddenly a pocket door, well-hidden in the wood paneling, slid open.

I snagged the printout from the printer and stuffed the papers into my jumpsuit. Couldn’t figure out why we should hide in a small room when we had the whole attic but I filed into what I’d assumed was a hidden room.

Except we stood in a mirror image room, set up with a large sparring mat, a weight bench and stack of towels. Similar to Staci’s without the computer.

“Where are we?” Lucas asked.

“My place.” Jordan closed the door and peered out the identical round window.

“You live right next door?” I assessed the concealed door. “You sure no one knows about this?”

Jordan’s mouth flattened into a tight line. “We put it in together.”

“You and Staci?” Lucas said.

“Yeah.”

His appearance in her house when we were here was awfully convenient. “Why was the door open in the closet?”

“Because I knew someone had been in the attic. I hoped they would show up again.” He bared his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile.