Follow Me (Corrupted Hearts) (20 page)

John lay in a pool of blood, eyes open, with half the back of his head splattered against the wall. I closed my eyes and took a breath, but it was no use. I ran for the sink and threw up.

Tears stung my eyes as I heaved. I wanted to lash out, rail at the world, at
someone
, for the deaths of these people. Horror stalked me and I had no idea who was doing this. But I was done trying to do this alone. It was time to call the police and let the chips fall where they would. Maybe they could at least protect me, Lana, and George. We were all that was left.

And Jackson.

The scuff of a shoe behind me made me scream as I whirled around, for a split second terrified I’d find John had risen as a zombie about to attack me. But John was still dead on the floor . . . and Clark stood over him, his eyes on me.

I stood frozen in shock, unable to believe what I was seeing. Clark? Here?

It took longer than it should’ve for me to put two and two together—yes, I’m supposedly supersmart—and when it did click in my head, the instinct for survival kicked in hard. He was the one killing people and he’d played me.

Snatching a steak knife from the butcher block at my elbow, I held it out in front of me.

“Stay back, Clark,” I warned.

“What are you doing, China?” he asked, remarkably calm for someone who’d just killed a man in cold blood. “Put that down before you hurt yourself.”

I flipped the knife so I was holding the blade rather than the hilt, then I flung it. As I’d intended, it landed in the wall behind Clark, approximately two inches to the side of his head. I snatched another knife from the block. They weren’t weighted properly, but I could make do.

“Holy shit, China!” he exploded. “You could’ve killed me. What the hell?”

“Don’t try to tell me you’re not behind this,” I retorted. “You know too much. Too conveniently calling me when Freyda was shot. Now you’re here.”

“I didn’t kill John,” he said, “and I didn’t kill Freyda.”

“I have absolutely no reason to believe you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Then answer me this: why are you still alive? I could’ve killed you several times over by now.”

Sirens screamed in the distance and I realized I was in a bad position. What if Clark pointed the finger at me for John’s murder? I was holding him at knifepoint. And who was going to warn Lana and George?

I edged toward the entryway, careful to keep him in my sight. “Don’t follow me,” I warned. “Or next time, I won’t miss.”

The door was at my back and I reached behind me, closing my hand on the knob. Clark was watching me.

“Don’t leave, China,” he said. “Please. I can help you. Protect you. I don’t want your body to be the next one I find.”

That was a sobering thought, but I shook my head. “I’ll take my chances.”

I twisted the knob and jerked open the door, having to turn my back on Clark.

“Wait!” he called. I glanced back. He was pointing a gun at me. “You can’t leave, China.”

I swallowed. The gun looked very serious and that old saying went through my head, the one about bringing a knife to a gunfight.

“I’m not staying,” I said. “If you don’t want me to leave, you’ll have to shoot me.” A gamble, yes. But he had a point—he hadn’t killed me yet and he’d had ample opportunity. So for whatever reason that he hadn’t, I was hoping it was enough to keep me alive a while longer.

Our eyes were locked and I took a deep breath, my heart racing and my palms sweaty. I hoped that if he did shoot, he wouldn’t miss. Gunshot wounds didn’t exactly feel like butterfly kisses.

But he didn’t shoot, and after a tense moment of our Mexican standoff, I sprinted out the door and across the street to Lance’s car. Turning my back on a loaded gun was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Every instinct in me resisted it, but the fight or flight response was full force and I ran like a horde of demons was after me.

I saw Clark in the rearview mirror watching me before I disappeared down the road. Clark knew a lot more about this than he was telling me. I didn’t want to think that he’d killed John. Or that he might kill me . . . eventually.

Lana lived twenty minutes away from John but it was thirty with traffic. I was shocked I didn’t get in a car wreck, as jittery as I was. Plus, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and what little had been in my stomach was now in John’s sink. My blood sugar was low and the adrenaline had sapped me.

I distracted myself by admiring my knife-throwing skills. My father had insisted I do some kind of outdoor sport when I was young and since I had twisted an ankle playing basketball, got a concussion playing soccer, and had nearly suffocated from an asthma attack playing baseball, I’d asked for self-defense lessons. Learning how to throw knives had made me feel badass, even as the shortest kid in my grade. I never thought it was a skill I’d actually use, though.

Lana had given me her address and garage code, and I clutched the knife I’d taken from John’s as I entered her house. I was terrified I’d find someone waiting to kill me—kill her—and I could barely hear as I crept through her kitchen from the garage, the blood was pounding in my ears so loudly.

My palms grew sweaty and I switched the knife from one hand to the other so I could wipe them on my jeans. I could hear no one and the house felt empty, but I didn’t trust it. Why would Lana be spared when John, Terry, and Freyda hadn’t been?

It took me an hour to search every cranny of Lana’s house, stepping slowly and silently around each corner, but I found no one. I was peeking behind a shower curtain when something touching my legs made me scream. (I was getting so good at screaming, I’d have to apply for a role in a horror movie soon.) But it was just a cat, blinking calmly as it looked up at me before winding around and through my legs.

“It’s just a cat,” I muttered, hearing how out of breath I was from panic alone. If I didn’t calm down, I’d hyperventilate myself into blacking out, which would really suck.

I went upstairs and was drawn to the room Lana must use as an office. A laptop sat on the desk, screensaver scrolling across the monitor. I stood looking at it. Trying to get on would be violating Lana’s privacy. Then again, these were extenuating circumstances.

And no one was here to ambush Lana. Hmmm.

That fact alone drew me closer until I sat down in the leather office chair. Toggling the mouse made the screensaver disappear and a log-in dialogue box appear.

I had nothing with me to attempt a hack. None of my usual tools that I could use to bypass the security, or even just pull the hard drive and access it via another device. All I had . . . was Clark’s tiny USB drive he’d given me to plug into Jackson’s system.

Digging it out of my pocket, I stared at it. I didn’t know if plugging it in would be a good thing . . . or if it would lead the bad guys right to me.

The image of Clark, staring after me as I ran from John’s house, flashed through my mind. I had no reason to trust him, no logical reason, and yet . . .

I plugged in the USB drive.

Nothing happened for a moment, then the screen flickered. Just slightly, and if I hadn’t been watching so close, I wouldn’t have noticed. Whatever “they,” i.e., Clark et al., wanted to accomplish with Jackson, was now going to be with Lana instead.

The cat was wrapping itself around my ankles again when I heard a footfall on the wooden stairs.

I jumped to my feet, guilty as a teenager sucking vodka from their dad’s stash on a Saturday night. Could I be in a worse place than in her office? But it wasn’t Lana that came around the corner.

“Jackson!”

Emotion and relief overcame logic. I threw myself at him, clutching him as he caught me up in his arms.

“Thank God,” he murmured in my ear, holding me so tight it was hard to breathe, but I didn’t mind. “You scared a decade off my life, leaving like that.”

I was trying so hard not to cry that I couldn’t talk, and it took a massive amount of effort to get control of myself. When I could finally breathe again, I tipped my head back to look at him and opened my mouth to speak.

But he was kissing me, his mouth hard and urgent, his tongue stroking mine with fevered intensity. I was overwhelmed. I could do nothing but hold on to him, standing on my very tiptoes as he kissed me. One hand in my hair, the other wrapped around my back. I felt safe for the first time all day.

When he let me come up for air, I pried my eyes open, finding his dark gaze blazing as he looked at me. My limbs felt boneless, and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have crumpled in a heap if he hadn’t been holding me.

“Umm . . . hi,” I managed.

His lips twisted. “Hi.” Then they flatlined.

We spoke at the same time.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“How did you find me?”

I flinched at the barely leashed anger in his voice. “Lana told me to come here, plus I was worried she would be next.” I repeated my question. “How’d you find me?”

“Process of elimination,” he said. “And I assumed you’d try to do something stupid and altruistic like try to protect the remaining members of the team.”

I pouted a bit at
stupid
. “Some would say it was heroic,” I argued just under my breath.

He gave me a look. “Lance’s car is also LoJacked.”

Figured. Here he was trying to make me think he knew me oh so well when it was the damn car that had led him straight to me. Whatever. “Stupid or not, someone is killing everyone who worked on Vigilance.”

“You realize that includes you,” he shot back.

The lump in my throat grew like the Grinch’s heart inside that little measuring device, until speech was impossible. To my dismay, Jackson blurred in my vision. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear things.

I heard him mutter a curse, then he dragged me into his arms again. His lips pressed the top of my head, against my hair. My body gradually relaxed and I was able to regain my composure. I’d cried more in the past week than I had since Rose was trapped forever in that alternate universe apart from the Doctor. Or when they’d cancelled
Firefly
.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I nodded. “It’s been a long week,” I managed, reluctantly extricating myself from his embrace.

He was scrutinizing me and I glanced away. I wasn’t a weak person—you didn’t get to where I was, doing what I did, by being weak—and I didn’t want Jackson to view me as incapable of handling whatever was thrown my way. My nervous breakdown could wait until later.

“I have to tell you about Clark,” I said. “You’re right, he’s not who he says he is. When I confronted him, he told me he was ex-military intelligence. That he contracts out to the CIA now for human intel.”

“He told you this?”

I nodded. “He’s particularly interested in you and what you’re doing.”

“That’s . . . not good, China,” Jackson said. His expression was grave, alarming me.

I frowned. “Why not? The CIA, those are the good guys. And if they’re watching you, it doesn’t matter. You’ve done nothing wrong, right?” He didn’t answer, his eyes on mine. “Right?”

The slamming of a door downstairs made us both turn in reaction. Oh God. Had they come for Lana?

Jackson must have thought the same thing because he gripped my arm and hauled me close, looking frantically around the room. He spied a closet door and dragged us inside, closing the door softly behind us.

It was cramped and we were pressed close together, back to front. His arm was around my midriff, holding me tight. If it were any other kind of circumstance, I might have enjoyed it. As it was, though, I was terrified, especially when I heard two men talking.

“Is she here?” one asked.

“Not yet,” was the response.

“Thought she was supposed to be here by now?”

“Well, she isn’t. So what do you want to do?”

They were close, right outside the room, and they were here to kill Lana. If they found Jackson and me, I had little doubt they’d kill us, too.

It was hard to breathe, the darkness felt stifling. Moving my hand, I held on to Jackson’s in a death grip. His hand felt strong and dry covering mine. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing. Passing out from terror would be a really embarrassing way to go.

“I’ll wait here, you go on ahead. That way we don’t lose any time.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

“All right.”

I strained my ears, listening. I could hear footfalls on the stairs, growing more distant, but I couldn’t tell if it was one set or two.

“Don’t move.” Jackson’s whisper was barely audible and his lips were right by my ear. I gave the tiniest of nods so he knew I understood. Honestly, did he think I was going to launch myself out of the closet and yell “Surprise!”?

But it was a good thing I didn’t because I heard something from inside the room. Someone was still here, and they were moving around.

Jackson repositioned us, silently moving me to the side. When he withdrew his arm from around me, I panicked, latching on. Was he going to try to confront the man?

“It’s okay,” he whispered in my ear. I frantically shook my head
no
. He squeezed my hand, then pried it from his arm. “Trust me.”

I bit the inside of my lip so hard, I tasted the tang of blood. I felt, more than heard, him take a deep breath, then he opened the door.

14

In the movies, the good guys burst through closed doors in a flash of noise and overwhelm the bad guys. But Jackson didn’t do that. He opened the door in a slow, steady way that was nearly silent.

Peeking between his body and the doorway, I saw a man sitting at the desk. As the door opened, he glanced around curiously. But by that time, Jackson was nearly upon him and he had no time to react.

The crunch of bone against bone made me wince when Jackson’s fist met the guy’s jaw. He’d been reaching for the gun in his side holster, but Jackson grabbed his wrist and bent it backward. The guy yelled as the bone snapped. Another punch from Jackson and the guy slid to the floor. He didn’t move.

Holy shit. I’d never seen Jackson do anything like that before, and I wasn’t going to lie . . . it was pretty darn hot (as Mia would say).

“I had no clue you could do that,” I said.

“Being bullied as a kid means you learn how to fight,” Jackson replied. He bent down and took the gun from the man’s holster. Searching his pockets, he retrieved a cell phone as well.

“
You
were bullied?”

He glanced at me, frowning. “Of course I was. You told me you were, too.”

“Well, yeah, I just . . . hadn’t thought of you as being someone who was bullied.”

“I was little for my age, smarter than everyone else, and poor. What do you think?”

An image flashed in my head of a scrawny boy in hand-me-down clothes carrying a stack of books, then being knocked down by a crowd of bigger kids. It struck a pang of sympathy in me, and was so unlike what I’d imagined Jackson to be as a kid. Not that I’d spent a lot of time wondering about that, but if I had, it wouldn’t have been as a skinny, poor, picked-on kid.

“So you learned to fight?” I asked.

“Absolutely.” He glanced up from where he was scrolling through the phone. “Didn’t you?”

“I learned how to throw knives.”

A sudden grin split his face. “That’s badass. Love it. Did it help?”

“Did it for the school’s talent contest. No one bothered me much after that.” One of my few good memories from school. The auditorium had gone absolutely silent when I’d thrown five knives at a human silhouette target, hitting the center of the head, the chest, each hand, and the last one landing right in the groin.

“What are we going to do with him?” I asked. The guy was still out cold.

“Grab his feet.”

Between the two of us we managed to get him into the closet, not being particularly careful about how many of his body parts we knocked against the door frame and wall. Jackson lodged a chair underneath the door handle, locking him in.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We were nearly to the front door when it swung open and Lana stepped inside.

“Thank God,” I breathed. My heart couldn’t take much more of this. For a split second, I’d thought it might be that guy coming back to check on his buddy.

Lana looked shocked to see us. “What are you doing here?”

Okay. Weird question. “You told me to come here,” I reminded her. “I went to John’s first, but they’d already killed him. I was afraid you were next.”

“And you would’ve been,” Jackson said. “The man they sent is locked in your office closet.”

“Locked in my closet,” she repeated, still looking stunned. “Wh-what are we supposed to do with him?”

“You should probably call nine one one,” I suggested.

“Yeah.” She looked dazed, but obediently dug her cell phone out of her pocket. Dialing, she walked into the living room.

“So what do we do now?” I asked Jackson. “Someone still has that software and the cops think I did it.”

“We’ll hide you until I can figure out who took it,” he said.

“The cops are going to be watching your house.”

His lips twisted. “True. But they won’t be watching the cabin I have outside the city.”

“Cabin?”

He nodded. “Got sick of the paparazzi constantly knowing where I lived and driving by, taking photos whenever I’d leave or bring a . . . companion . . . back to the house.”

And by
companion
I knew he meant a woman to spend the night. Part of me was instantly and insanely jealous of all of the nameless, faceless women Jackson had been with. Which in and of itself was crazy. We weren’t an “item.” He was my boss. Although we had really good chemistry, at least from my point of view, and judging by that little scene at his house earlier. I hadn’t imagined the passion between us.

I stamped down on my rabid-girlfriend/stalker feelings and tried to focus. “No one knows where it is?”

“Nope. I bought it under Lance’s name. I don’t get there as often as I wish. Maybe someday.”

Lana walked back in before I could reply. “I’ve called them. They’re on their way. Did you find out who’d stolen the software?”

“I was sure it was John,” I said, “until they killed him. Which leaves George.” It was so unexpected. He was of an earlier generation where loyalty to your employer was paramount.

“Do you have access to the system?” Jackson asked her. She nodded. “Let me get on. I might be able to trace who touched the files, regardless of log-on ID.”

“Okay, follow me.”

I watched Jackson and Lana head back upstairs, then noticed he’d left his phone on the table. Just as I picked it up to take to him, it rang. Without thinking, I answered.

“Jackson Cooper’s phone.”

There was a pause. “China, is that you?’

Wow.
Really
weird. “Um, yeah. Who is this?”

“Don’t hang up,” the man said, which was never a good sign. “It’s Clark.”

“Asshat.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry. My pet name for you. What do you want and why are you calling Jackson’s phone?”

“You planted that USB drive, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yeah, but not on Jackson’s system,” I said. “It’s on Lana’s. She works for Wyndemere.”

“No. No, she doesn’t. She’s a sleeper agent. She works for ISIS.”

I stared straight ahead, unseeing, my mouth agape. “Wh-what?”

“The program uploaded to her system and started sending us information right away,” he said. “She’s the one who stole the software from Wyndemere. Now she’s covering her tracks.”

My head tried to catch up with what I was hearing. Lana was an ISIS sleeper agent? But . . . why?

“I don’t understand,” I said. “How does this software help ISIS?”

“You said it yourself,” Clark replied. “It’s the perfect targeting software, collecting all that data. All it needs is an algorithm. With the right one, it’s the perfect recruiting tool. Their recruiting has increasingly come from social media: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, you name it. If they were able to pinpoint specific people who would be vulnerable to their message, they could increase their members by astronomical numbers.”

I could follow Clark’s logic, but still couldn’t reconcile Lana as being an ISIS agent, “But . . . she’s a woman,” I said at last. “ISIS hates women, treats them like chattel.”

“Which is why they’re the best to use,” he said grimly. “No one suspects them.”

Suddenly I realized . . . Jackson was upstairs with Lana. Alone. Panic flooded me.

“Oh my God,” I breathed into the phone. “You’ve got to help us. What if she tries to hurt Jackson? Or me?”

Clark said something, but I couldn’t hear because just then, the door opened and two men walked in. Both of them average height, dark olive skin, dark hair . . . and each holding a semiautomatic weapon.

I opened my mouth to scream, but one of them was on me in an instant.

“Don’t even try it, bitch,” he hissed.

“China? What’s going on?” I could hear Clark in my ear, but couldn’t respond. My eyes were glued to the gunman’s. Dark and empty, his gaze sent a chill down my spine. And there was also the cold press of the gun’s barrel to my forehead.

I didn’t protest when he took the phone from me, dropping it to the floor before stomping his huge booted foot down on it. The glass and plastic shattered into a million pieces.

“She said they were upstairs,” he told the other guy, dragging me to a kitchen chair and forcing me to sit. “Go get them.”

Jackson. They were going to kill him. And he had no warning. And they were going to kill me anyway . . .

I screamed.

Blinding pain hit me as the butt of the gun hit my temple.

My head was going to fall off. Surely. There could be no other recourse for the massive ache that made me long to be unconscious again. Though perhaps I should be grateful I was waking up at all.

I pried my eyes open, my brain beginning to catalogue my surroundings and situation before my emotions could catch up.

I was somewhere dark and cold, and I could barely feel my fingers, though that wasn’t entirely because of the cold. My wrists were tied behind my back, likely with a zip tie if the pain cutting into my skin was any indication. The ground beneath me was concrete, as was the wall at my back.

A noise caused me to jump, and light flooded the room. Someone had opened a door and the sudden brightness blinded me. I barely had time to see the silhouette framed in the open rectangle before another person was shoved into the room. They stumbled and fell, the air whooshing from their lungs as they hit the floor. Their hands were tied, too, and I winced as their arm and ribs caught the brunt of the fall. Then the door slammed shut again.

I was frozen for a moment, unsure who was in here with me, then I heard a slight groan.

“Jackson?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

“Who else?” he rasped, grunting slightly.

I had to get out of the zip tie. Part of me was amazed that they’d actually used something so ridiculous to secure me. Everyone knew how to get out of a zip tie. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t know because I was a girl or something. Idiots.

Bending my knees, I swung my arms under my feet, moving them so my hands were in front of me. Using my teeth, I adjusted the zip tie so the little square fastener was right in between my wrists before getting to my feet. I settled my elbows on my hips, took a deep breath, and flung my arms down and apart with all my strength, using my hips for leverage. The plastic bit into my skin, stinging me, but the tie broke and I was free.

Easy peasy.

I hurried to Jackson, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Ambient light was coming from somewhere, enough for me to see that he wasn’t bound with zip ties, but with a thin nylon rope that wound around his wrists at least a half a dozen times. No way was he going to be able to do what I had done with the zip tie.

He sat up with some effort and that’s when I saw his shirt was dirty and torn. Grimacing, he worked his jaw for a minute, which was when I noticed the blood on his face.

“Jackson, what happened to you?” Putting a hand on his cheek, I gently turned him so I could see his face better. There was a cut by his eye, and his lip was split and bleeding. It was too dark to see bruises, though, and I didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. My stomach churned at the thought.

“Let’s just say I didn’t come quietly,” he replied. “Especially when I heard you scream.”

I swallowed. “What happened?”

“Lana didn’t even react,” he said, “which was when I knew. Those men hadn’t been there to kill her. They were
working
for her, with her, whatever—not trying to kill her. In hindsight, I should’ve been more suspicious of her.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” I said. “She had me fooled, too.” My personal animosity toward John had gotten in the way of logically considering
all
members of the team.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Did they hurt you?”

I shook my head, glancing away. “Not really.” Which was an understatement. My head was pounding like someone had set up a jackhammer behind my eyes that was intent on drilling through my forehead.

“You’re lying,” he said flatly.

Damn. I really needed to play poker more. “Did you see outside?” I asked, changing the subject. “Where are we?” It was too big of a space to be Lana’s basement, and it had an industrial feel to it.

“I don’t know. They blindfolded me for the ride here.”

“What do they want? Why didn’t they kill us?” Not that I wasn’t grateful to still be alive. “They have the software, but the algorithm hasn’t been written yet,” I said. “Do you think they’ll want us to write it for them?”