Dani twisted around and watched the two men walk down the road behind the SUV for about twenty feet before stopping to talk.
Thinking this might be her only chance, she leaned between the front seats and looked for anything that could help her get away.
The vehicle employed a button to start the engine, so there were no keys dangling from the ignition. She did, however, spot a black bag in the passenger footwell and reached for it.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.
She looked around for the source, but before she could find it, the passenger door opened and Nate leaned in.
“Sorry about that.” He touched a black square affixed to the armrest and the noise stopped. “Motion detector. Why don’t you settle back in your seat while I reset this.”
“She thinks we’re just like Edmondson,” Nate said as he joined Quinn behind the SUV.
“Well, wouldn’t you?” Quinn said.
Nate sighed. “Probably. What are we going to do if Helen doesn’t turn up? We can’t drive around with Danielle forever.”
Quinn looked out at the woods. “I don’t know. It’s something we’ll have to—”
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.
They turned toward the SUV. Quinn had mounted the motion detector before he climbed out, on the off chance the woman tried anything. Well, more an on chance than off, apparently.
“I got it,” Nate said, already moving toward the vehicle.
Quinn looked back out at the woods. They needed a plan, or at least a partial one that included more than getting out of Seattle.
One option would be to find someplace around here to hide out in and think things through. There had to be dozens of isolated cabins in the area, and at least a few should be unoccupied. But while that idea had a certain appeal, Quinn felt they were still way too close to the city to stop.
If they continued the way they were going, they would cross into Idaho. They could get lost in the backcountry up in the panhandle. He liked that idea a lot better.
As much as he wanted to avoid using Orlando, she could probably arrange things a lot faster than he could. He pulled out his phone, saw the cell signal was down to one bar, and switched it to satellite mode.
“How far have you gotten?” he asked Orlando.
“Almost to Portland. We’ll cut east from there.”
After Quinn and Nate had left Bellevue, Quinn realized she’d left him a voice mail. When he called her back, she’d sprung her idea of shadowing them. He wasn’t keen on it, but he couldn’t fault the logic that it would be smarter for her and Daeng to be nearby.
“I was thinking Idaho,” he told her. “Maybe someplace isolated up north. If you have time, you think you could look into it for us?”
“It’s not like anyone needs me here. Daeng’s driving and Mr. Vo’s telling him what he’s doing wrong. Garrett’s on the bunk playing video games, and Mrs. Vo is pretending to watch one of her telenovelas but is really just napping. Time, I’ve got.”
“Thanks. Any progress on Danielle?”
She’d filled him in on what she’d been doing to find out more about the girl, but ultimately the answer was no.
Unending strings of data streamed skyward and earthbound, as they had since the satellite had come online.
At various points in the orbiter’s history, the monitoring equipment housed in a western Texas facility had experienced undetected augmentations to its operating software. Some of these new modules had built-in self-destruct codes that activated after a specified period of time had passed. Others continued to run long after their initial purpose had been fulfilled. The instigators of these intruders were varied, but they all came from the same family tree — United States intelligence.
The latest module had been integrated into the software at 5:17 a.m. Central time, and immediately began its task of scouring incoming information. The process continued throughout the morning and into the early afternoon without kicking back a single result.
That changed at 2:21 p.m.
The coordinates of the call’s originator pinpointed a spot along an unused access road 1.6 miles off the I-90, on the eastern side of the Cascades Mountain Range. The recipient’s location was not so easily identified. For some reason, the satellite received multiple coordinates for it throughout North America and Europe.
The call would have been flagged for this alone, but another, more telling marker had also been ticked. The conversation had been entirely encrypted.
The module was not designed to decode anything, but it did contain a subroutine that snagged a recorded copy of the conversation, which was then sent along with the notification.
At the same moment a ding rang out from the computer’s speaker, a dialogue box appeared on the screen.
COMMUNICATION ALERT
Sat. 6 G2
Below this were two buttons: VIEW and IGNORE. The attendant clicked the first and then read the details of the alert. After determining it wasn’t an anomaly, he consulted the instructions for this particular hunt.
Adhering to the stated procedures, he created a map of the location and e-mailed the message, the file that had accompanied it, and his map to the listed contact. In addition, he sent a text to the contact’s phone alerting the man of the incoming information.
Then, much like the illegal software had done, he returned to his previous task.
Matthew Morse set down his fork and leveled his gaze at the man across from him. “I don’t care what they’re saying in Hong Kong,” he said, his words straining to escape his damaged vocal cords. “We know the threat exists, and we know it starts there.”
Ketterman, one of Morse’s assistant directors, smiled uncomfortably. “I understand that, sir. I’ve seen the data myself. But our team in country has been unable to locate Tsu anywhere. There’s no indication that he’s in the territory.”
“You just said you read the data yourself. Then you know there is every indication.”
“Gold team is one of our best, sir. If they can’t find him, then—”
“Then they’re not looking hard enough. I suggest you encourage them to do so.”
Morse picked up his fork again, signaling that the meeting was over.
“Of course, sir. Right away.” Ketterman left quickly.
Morse finished off his salmon, dabbed the corner of his mouth with his napkin, and touched the intercom button.
“Mr. Carter, I’m finished.”
A moment later, his assistant came in, collected the used dishes, and exited without a word.
Morse was getting ready to head to his 2:30 meeting when the special cell phone in his left pocket buzzed. He removed it and read the text.
HIT RECEIVED. INFO SENT.
He checked his e-mail and clicked on the message from the NSA.
He ran the recording of the call through his agency’s decoding software. Though the encryption was impossible to fully break, a few words leaked through — Seattle, Cho, photo, and a garbled word that sounded to him like Danielle — leaving no doubt that the scrambled satellite call was related to the woman.
He consulted a map. From where the call was made, the originator could go in only two directions — either east or west along the interstate. If, as Morse suspected, the caller was one of those involved in extracting the girl from Edmondson’s house, he would have come from the west and logically would continue east. This presented an excellent intercept opportunity.
He grabbed the main phone.
“Stevens,” the leader of the field team in Seattle answered.