Rogue Oracle (17 page)

Lockley squeaked away into the kitchen. Veriss followed the frail old man, taking his notebook out of his pocket. His list of questions covered the paper from right margin to left. He hoped he’d left enough room to fill in the answers. He clicked his ballpoint pen, scanning the list. He was excited by the prospect of being in the field, of collecting data straight from the source.

“What is it that you do for NCTC?” Lockley asked conversationally. His pronunciation was awkward, as if his dentures were loose.

“I’m an intelligence analyst. I work on analyzing patterns in data networks and predicting future results.”

“Interesting. I imagine you see many different things in your work.”

“Lots of data. Not to brag, but I’m one of the foremost experts in my field.”

“Wonderful.” The old man’s enthusiasm seemed genuine. “Just wonderful. I’d love to know what you know.”

Veriss smiled, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Lockley, I’d like to ask you about your time with Project Rogue Angel. Some data anomalies have shown up in my analysis. Did you work on recovering the fuel rods from the Chernobyl site?”

“I did.”

“Our files indicate that the recovery efforts were unsuccessful. Do you have any theories about what may have happened to them?”

The old man chuckled. “Several.”

Veriss looked up from his paper to see Lockley standing before his wheelchair.
Standing.
Before he could react, Lockley lunged forward, thrusting Veriss against the kitchen wall. A spice rack crashed down, the bottles rattling and splitting against the floor with the sweet smell of cinnamon. Veriss flailed in the old man’s grip, which was shockingly strong around his throat. He only succeeded in tearing down a corner of the curtains covering the sliding glass door to the patio, startling birds. Daylight penetrated the dark house.

Veriss struggled to breathe against the hands wrapped around his throat. In the light, he could see there was something wrong about the old man. The old man’s lips pulled back in a snarl, and Veriss could see a jumbled collection of pointed teeth. Panicked, Veriss clawed at the old man’s face. His fingers dug into Lockley’s skin … and the skin peeled away. Veriss registered that it wasn’t real skin … It was a mask. Beneath the smooth silicone surface, an uneven mass of lumpy skin was underpinned with warped cheekbones and a melted nose.

Veriss cried out, but the hands around his throat closed inward. He could feel them digging into his skin, trying to steal his breath. But that wasn’t all he could feel them stealing. He could feel those fingers worming into his brain, chewing into his thoughts and rapaciously digesting what they found. All that data he’d carefully collected, all the formulas, all the obscure facts that he’d drawn connections to … it was being devoured by this monster. He could feel those fingers sifting through the facts, his memories, his emotions, like a librarian sifting through an old-fashioned card catalog.

The monster drew him into an embrace. Veriss could feel his information, his life force, pouring into the creature. Blood began to gush from Veriss’s nose.

I’d love to know what you know.
The words didn’t come out of the monster’s twisted mouth, but Veriss still heard them rattling around the broken synapses of his brain.

H
ARRY LEANED ON
L
OCKLEY’S DOORBELL AGAIN
. N
O ANSWER
. He glowered at the dark windows, tapping his foot and jingling the change in his pocket. He had to get back to the airport or Aquila would have his ass in a sling. His boss wouldn’t appreciate him doing the bureaucratic equivalent of poking a hive of bees with a stick and running away.

He glanced back at the curb and the U.S. Marshals waved at him from their car. They’d told him that Veriss had gone in to see the old man a few hours ago. Veriss’s rental car was still parked in the driveway. Harry was furious. Veriss had no business questioning a source without Harry’s say-so. He imagined Veriss and Lockley in the garage, playing with Lockley’s disguises. As soon as he got hold of him, Harry was going to jerk a knot in Veriss’s tail, send him back to Langley with Harry’s shoe jammed up his ass.

Harry stabbed the doorbell again.

Irritated, he strode down the wheelchair ramp and circled around the back of the house. Maybe the old man hadn’t heard the bell ringing. Veriss had no doubt heard it and was just being an ass.

Harry clomped through the ornamental shrubs, disturbing some mulch. The old man’s bird feeders were arranged on the patio. Startled by Harry’s approach, a goldfinch flew away in a rattle of thistle seeds. The feeders were almost empty. The air conditioner was running at high power, leaking water out over the edge of the patio. Harry paused before the sliding glass door. The curtains were drawn, but for one side, where a panel dangled from the rod.

His eyes narrowed. A sign of a struggle.

His hand rested lightly on his gun as he crept to the back of the garage. The door was shut, but the knob was gone from the door. Harry’s pulse quickened, and he drew his weapon.

Tara had been right. Something bad was going down at Lockley’s house.

Harry gently pushed the garage door open. A wave of frigid air conditioning hit him. Harry listened, heard nothing. He swung inside the shade of the garage, gun lifted.

Lockley’s workshop had been tossed. The cupboard doors stood open, their contents spilling out on the floor. Masks and bits of latex had been knocked around, and brushes were strewn on the surfaces of Lockley’s tables. Harry scanned the half darkness. There was no telling in this jumble of materials what was missing and what remained. Broken bottles of paint and fixative gave the air an acrid odor. Harry knelt on the floor. The mixtures were half dry. This tumult had been recent. And frantic.

Harry opened the kitchen door. The refrigerator and the air conditioner hummed. Sweat freeze-dried on Harry’s palms, wrapped around the butt of the gun. It had to be in the fifties in here. The last time Harry had entered a house with the air conditioning this low, it had been full of bodies. The assailant had turned up the AC to keep them from decomposing quickly.

Harry’s nose twitched. He smelled cinnamon and spices from a broken spice rack. The kitchen had been tossed. A wall of decorative clocks behind the kitchen table had been smashed. Lockley’s wheelchair was parked beside the kitchen table, but the old man wasn’t inside.

“Lockley?” he called out. If Lockley were still here, injured, Harry was sure that he was armed. No use risking being shot. If an assailant was here, he’d have to get past Harry to escape through the back, or get through the front door and expose himself to the Marshals. If they were even awake. “Veriss?” he said, as an afterthought.

No one answered. Harry edged through the kitchen. No dog came bounding up to him. The kitchen curtains were torn, allowing only a dim shaft of light to penetrate the gloom. Over the sight of his gun, he peered into the empty living room, down the hallway. He nudged the doors open, one by one, checked under the beds and in the closets.

No Lockley. No Veriss. No Diana. Just blood.

Harry snatched his cell phone out of his pocket to call for backup. Maybe when more cars rolled into the driveway, the Marshals would wake up.

He only hoped that the Marshals he’d sent to hide Cassie and Tara were more alert than these.

Chapter Thirteen

T
HE
M
ARSHALS
Harry sent weren’t what Tara had expected.

Tara stared through the peephole of Harry’s door at the two figures standing in the shade of the entryway. The man on the right was only slightly taller than Tara, a beer belly distending the stylized pattern of hibiscus flowers on his Hawaiian shirt. He wore a ginger-colored beard and sunglasses. The man on the left was tall, lanky, clean-shaven. A cowboy hat shaded his eyes, and he crossed his arms over a corduroy jacket obscuring the bulge of a gun. Both of the men seemed a bit long in the tooth for this to be their first rodeo.

“Hold your creds up to the door,” Tara insisted, her fingers sweating on the pistol at her hip.

The man in the Hawaiian shirt flipped his ID out of his back pocket, shrugged. He held it up to the peephole. Tara couldn’t make out much through the fish-eye view, but it looked authentic enough. The lamination was yellowed and cracked with age.

“Now him.”

The Cowboy rolled his eyes and reached into his jacket pocket. Reflexively, Tara flinched at the gesture. He pressed his creds close to the fish-eye. He wasn’t wearing a hat in his cred photo.

The Kahuna said: “Harry Li sent us. He said that you play a mean game of cards. You, uh, a poker player?”

Tara smirked at the inside joke Harry had planted for her. “Not lately.”

These guys looked like the C-Team. No wonder, since Harry had rustled up every other Marshal in the district to babysit ex-spies. Whoever they were, at least they weren’t Delphi’s Daughters. The Pythia would never suffer men with such questionable fashion sense.

Tara’s fingers worked loose the deadbolt lock and loosened the safety chain. She tucked her pistol back in her holster and opened the door. Maggie stuck her nose through the door first. The dog sniffed over the two men like an anteater searching for snacks. Apparently satisfied that she smelled no sign of Delphi’s Daughters on them, Maggie turned around and let them into the apartment.

The Kahuna’s sandals slapped on the carpet. He gave her a big grin and stuck his hand out. “Hi. I’m Steve Barney.”

Tara took his hand. “Tara.”

He pumped her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

The Cowboy stood in the doorway and nodded. He scanned the area behind the entryway before crossing the threshold and closing the door behind him.

Kahuna Steve jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the Cowboy. “That’s Steve, too. Steve Moss. Don’t mind him. He’s pretty quiet.”

“Both you guys are named Steve?” Tara lifted a dubious eyebrow.

“Yeah.” The Kahuna shrugged. “It happens. There’s a team of guys on one Fugitive Investigative Strike Team I worked with who were all named Jeff. They all went by code names to keep things straight.”

“You guys don’t look like Marshals.” In the hallway, Cassie stood with her arms crossed, voicing Tara’s thoughts.

“That’s the idea, kiddo.” The Kahuna made a pistol-bang gesture with his hand and winked.

Cassie froze. Tara saw her knuckles whiten where they were wrapped around her elbows. Tara crossed the room and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Let’s get your things together.” Cassie nodded and scurried back down the hallway to gather up her meager possessions.

The Steves were trading glances. The Cowboy gestured at Cassie with his chin. “The girl’s gun-shy.” His voice was like gravel.

Tara put her hands in her pockets. “Yeah. Is that a problem?” She didn’t elaborate further. This was none of their business.

The Kahuna scratched one of his sideburns. “I hope not.”

Tara’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?” Her voice crackled out with more hostility and force than she’d intended.

The Kahuna put his square hands before him, palms up, in a placating gesture. “Look, we were told that the girl’s a relative of a shop guy that had disappeared. And that you work with Harry Li.”

Tara stared at the mirrors of his sunglasses, stubbornly refused to answer him.

The Kahuna glanced at the pistol concealed under the hem of Tara’s shirt. “Looks like you can take care of yourself. And the little one.”

“Do you usually ask so many questions?” Tara lifted an eyebrow.

“No, ma’am.” The Kahuna shook his head. “Steve and I haven’t been on assignment for a while … just trying to get the lay of the land,” he admitted.

Tara’s mouth softened. “She’s the most important person in the world to me, okay? I just need her to be safe.” She didn’t tell them that, as the future Pythia, she might be
the
most important person in the world, period.

The Kahuna nodded. “Where we’re going, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

Cassie came down the hallway with her shoes on and bag slung over her shoulder. She dragged Oscar out from under the table and tried to stuff him into the backpack. The cat yowled and squirmed, anticipating another long car ride. The Cowboy took Oscar from her and whispered something to the cat. The cat stopped struggling long enough for him to put the cat in the bag and zip him up.

Tara was impressed.

“Steve’s good with animals,” the Kahuna explained. “Used to work on a farm as a kid.”

Tara wondered how the Kahuna had managed to elicit that information from him. She hoisted her suitcase. Inside, she heard the clink of pet dishes against Oscar’s makeshift oven pan litterbox.

The Steves made no other comment about the animals coming with them. The Cowboy took point, leading the way out the door. Maggie trundled behind him, and Tara and Cassie behind the dog. The Kahuna took the rear. Tara could see that, once they were in open air, the men constantly scanned the steps, the parking lot, old habits settling over them. Their hands were loose at their sides like gunslingers in old action films.

Tara smiled. She understood old habits died hard. They became like muscle memory, reflexes that were summoned out of any retirement the brain forced upon them.

The Cowboy led them to a hulking beast taking up two parking spaces. A late-seventies model Ford Bronco sprawled like a brown dinosaur on the fresh macadam. The Cowboy paced around the car, checking for sabotage or door dings, Tara wasn’t sure which.

“Company car?” Tara murmured.

“Personal car,” the Kahuna said. He popped the door open and ushered the women and Maggie into the backseat while the Cowboy paced the perimeter. It took a hop for Tara to get in, and her jeans squeaked on the back bench seat as she piled in with Cassie. Cassie pulled her feet away from the shotgun on the floorboards as if it was poison, stared out the side window.

The Cowboy slid behind the wheel, banging the door shut behind him. The Kahuna climbed in on the passenger side. The engine started up with a deafening roar, and the Bronco backed out of the parking lot.

“I didn’t even know that you could still get parts for these things,” Tara shouted over the diesel growl of the engine as it pulled onto the highway.

“EBay,” the Cowboy said succinctly.

“They don’t build tanks like this anymore,” the Kahuna laughed. “This thing has the hide of a rhinoceros.” He patted the dashboard, which shone with a glossy coat of Armor All. Tara noted that there was a fracture in the upper left part of the dash that might have come from a bullet hole, but did not mention it to Cassie.

The Bronco rumbled down the freeway for a few dozen miles. Traffic thinned a bit the further south they drove, away from DC and into Virginia. The HOV lanes disappeared, and the Bronco exited on a suburban off-ramp. Strip malls, gas stations, and video stores dotted the landscape.

“Where are we going?” Tara asked.

“You know that we’re really not supposed to tell you,” the Kahuna admonished. “But, seeing as we’re almost there …”

“Already?” Tara lifted an eyebrow.

“We’re local yokels,” the Kahuna explained, as the Bronco tooled down a side street. “The official safehouses are all full with the other rellies of ex-spies. Since Agent Li specified that you needed pet-friendly digs, we thought we’d take you home with us.”

The Bronco pulled down a side street in the commercial district, into a gravel lot. A two-story brick building was decorated with a sign that said
STEVE’S MILITARY SURPLUS AND FIREWORKS
in block lettering. A smaller sign in the door festooned with iron bars said that it was
CLOSED—PLEASE COME AGAIN
. The exterior of the building had been painted over in a mural depicting an American flag, the Statue of Liberty, and a saluting cartoon soldier. Tara’s eyes flitted to the second floor, where there was a balcony holding a gas barbecue grill. One—or both—of the Steves must live above the surplus store.

“That is, if that’s okay with you,” the Kahuna said, casting a glance through the rearview mirror at Cassie.

Cassie swallowed and nodded, but didn’t say anything. Tara squeezed her hand.

The Steves parked around the delivery entrance to the store. The Cowboy unloaded the women’s belongings, while Maggie scrambled out of the car to sniff the dandelions growing in random patches in the parking lot. The Kahuna unlocked the steel door and motioned them inside.

“Home sweet home,” he announced, flicking on the overhead lights.

The surplus store smelled of mothballs and gunpowder. Racks of camouflage clothing stood on the floor. The walls were decorated with POW-MIA and American flags, gas masks, hats and patches, plus racks of guns with chains run through them. Green ammo boxes were stacked up against the walls. Merchandise bins held gloves, ski masks, and bundles of socks. Glossy glass cases held what looked like grenades. Tara hoped they weren’t live.

Beside her, Cassie stiffened. Her gaze was fixed on the handguns behind the case and the targets pinned up on the walls. Tara heard her breath gone shallow, slipped her hand in hers. The girl’s grip was cold and clammy.

“Don’t mind the décor. This way,” the Kahuna said, pointing up a series of steps.

The women followed the Kahuna up the steps to a metal security door, while the Cowboy stayed behind to lock up. The door banged open to reveal a beautiful industrial loft. The building had been gutted, down to the brick exterior walls. Pipes and ductwork gleamed overhead, lit by skylights set into the flat roof. Sunlight streamed down onto wood floors, illuminating a galley kitchen, a massive leather sectional, and built-in shelving that held a television and scores of books. Tara glanced at the titles. Mostly military history, small arms pricing guides, and auto repair manuals.

The Kahuna led them down a hallway constructed of what looked like recycled corrugated steel. Bits of stamping and tool marks could still be seen in the metal. The walls stopped some ten feet off the floor, with light streaming in glass partitions above. Tara squinted at the glass, which had a slightly blue tint, and realized they were windshields from old cars, suspended on wires like transoms.

“Wow … this place is amazing,” Tara said.

“Thanks,” the Kahuna said. “Most of the materials are recycled. The floors are old barn wood, for instance. Got it for free when a farmer tore his barn down in Manassas. Free for the hauling … and the sanding, and the polishing.”

Tara could nearly see her reflection in the shiny gray wood. “It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks.” The Kahuna beamed. Tara wondered how many people got to see this hidden sanctuary above the surplus store.

“We really appreciate your hospitality. This is really so far out of the ordinary …”

“No worries.” The Kahuna shook his head. “I hate hotels, but like having visitors.” He opened a door at the end of the hall. “You girls can stay here.”

The guest room was full of sunshine. A bed dressed in simple linens stood against a wall constructed of what looked like part of a ship’s hull. A dresser was festooned with a collection of grinning wooden Tiki gods, and a beaded curtain was strung over the window to the outdoors. A private bathroom extended to the right of the room. Tara crossed to the window, pulled aside the rattling beads. From this height, she could see the river and the masts of boats in the harbor.

“I’ll let you girls get settled,” the Kahuna said.

“Thank you.” Tara smiled at him warmly as he closed the door.

Cassie sat down on the bed and released Oscar from the backpack. The cat shook his fur out in indignation and paced across the bedspread to hop down on the floor. He began to bat at the beaded curtain. Tara began setting up Oscar’s makeshift litter box in the tiny bathroom. The broiler pan fit nicely under the sink, and the cat immediately began scratching in his oatmeal cat litter.

Cassie remained sitting on the bed, staring at her hands.

Tara came to her side. “Hey.” She stroked the girl’s hair. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah. I think so.” Cassie shuddered. “Just as … just as long as I don’t have to go downstairs.”

“I think that they’ll understand.”

Cassie looked up at the shifting prismatic rainbows on the wall summoned by the glass beads. “Can we trust these guys? I mean, they seem okay, but …” Her shoulder slumped. “I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

“Let’s make sure.” Tara tugged her purse to the bed and pulled her cards out of the bottom. She began to shuffle them, as specks of sunshine played over her hands. She asked the cards: “Can we trust the Steves to keep Cassie safe?”