‘Then why let a human victim go?’ Lopez challenged. ‘Why kill two men with unbelievable savagery, then let the last one go?’
‘Efficiency,’ Dana Ford replied. ‘You’ve gotten one meal, the second one shoots you so you kill him in self-defense. The last meal runs away but is no threat and you can only carry so much meat anyway. You let him go.’
Ethan smiled ruefully in the dark.
‘That would work, except that the creature took one of the bodies, left another there for us to find, and let the third victim go. Three different targets, three differing responses. You know what that says to me? That whatever this thing is, it thinks.’
Kurt Agry’s voice called across the camp to them from where the soldiers were sitting.
‘Only thing it’s going to be thinking about is the end of its goddamned life, as seen down the barrel of my M-16!’
Two of the soldiers laughed and clashed palms. Agry grinned as he slowly polished the barrel of his rifle.
Dana Ford watched the soldiers for a long moment and then shook her head.
‘Even if we do find one there’ll be nothing left of it by the time those assholes have finished blowing it to hell.’
Duran Wilkes’s voice replied to her from out of the darkness.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, ma’am.’
Ethan was about to speak when he heard the hoot of a bird calling out in the forest. He had barely turned his head when he realized that it was not a bird, but something much further away.
‘You hear that?’ Lopez asked.
Ethan was about to answer when a low, alien cry swept across the camp from somewhere deep in the forest.
The laughter of the soldiers died away as across the valley the cry became a keening, strained howl that soared up into the night sky. The sound seemed to shudder through Ethan’s body and creep beneath his skin.
The mournful howl died away softly to be replaced by the crackling of the flames.
Ethan glanced across at Duran Wilkes, but the old man simply sat and sipped his coffee as though nothing had happened.
28
‘You’re absolutely sure?’
Ben looked at the images on Natalie’s cellphone of the blue sedan.
‘No question about it,’ Natalie replied. ‘Look, I even got a close-up of the guy driving the sedan. It’s not a perfect shot but it might be enough to identify him. And that’s not all. Somebody broke into my apartment.’
‘Are you sure?’ Ben asked, stunned.
‘Definitely,’ Natalie insisted. ‘They barely left a trace but I could tell that things had been altered, moved.’
Ben looked at the photograph, thinking hard.
‘Without hard evidence the break-in, if one happened, means nothing. This photograph is probably enough to identify the agent in question, if he is an agent, but this isn’t enough for you to take it to the House Intelligence Committee. Even if they did turn out to be CIA, they could just say that the agent was out for a drive or something. Christ, all of the major agencies have field offices in the district.’
Natalie’s shoulders sagged as she realized that Ben was right. Her suspicions about her apartment could be dismissed as paranoia and the photographs couldn’t be used as evidence of a conspiracy. Even when combined with the evidence that she was under surveillance, it wasn’t enough to place Natalie as a witness to misappropriation of resources by any agency. It might even raise questions about her own loyalty and patriotism, something that Guy Rikard would no doubt exploit.
‘So we’re back to square one,’ she said finally. ‘And we need to stay quiet about what we’ve discovered here, so it can’t be part of the committee’s evidence. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Pretty much,’ Ben agreed. ‘Keep the images, they may come in handy later, but right now all we’ve got is the search for Joanna Defoe and the fact that your brother showed up as a result of it.’
Natalie rolled it around in her head as though she were chasing food around a plate with a fork.
‘Ethan’s been working with the DIA, that much we know,’ she said.
‘Which means it’s unlikely that they’re the ones doing the surveillance,’ Ben said. ‘They already know where Ethan’s going to be when he’s working for them, so there wouldn’t be much point. We could possibly take this to them and see what happens?’
‘No,’ Natalie replied. ‘They may be a government agency but we don’t really know anything about them and I’m not sure I want to go cap in hand to a bunch of strangers asking about surveillance operations on my brother.’
‘You need to get to the bottom of this, Nat,’ Ben tried again. ‘Whoever is behind this could be doing it for their own ends and not for national security.’
‘Ethan just got back on his feet after what happened in Israel,’ Natalie insisted. ‘I’m not going to wreck that. I don’t like that he’s working for the DIA but as long as he’s got something to focus on I’m not willing to risk derailing his life. Plus, he’s got that partner of his, Nicola Lopez. She seems to keep him on the straight and narrow.’
Ben glanced at the paperwork strewn across his desk.
‘What about her?’ he wondered out loud. ‘You ever meet her?’
Natalie shook her head.
‘She’s never been with Ethan on the rare occasions when he’s come home,’ she admitted, ‘but I can tell by the way he talks about her that they’re close.’
Larry Levinson’s voice infiltrated their conversation. ‘Why not run a search for her too?’
Natalie glanced at the diminutive man in surprise, and he blushed. ‘Sorry, Natalie, but you guys have been working on this all day. Sooner or later Rikard’s going to corner you about it, so why not check out this Lopez, and see if she ties in with it all? If she does, you might be able to take the search out of the office and get away from Rikard.’
Ben shrugged, turned to his monitor and tapped Lopez’s name into the search engine.
‘Let’s see if she shows up,’ he said, sitting back and waiting for the engine to complete its search.
‘Why would she be on there?’ Natalie asked. ‘Surely she’s got nothing to do with our family.’
‘Maybe not,’ Ben said, ‘but like you said, what if this isn’t about your family?’
Ben gestured to the monitor screen as it flashed up the results of the search.
NICOLA LOPEZ
b. 1981, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Surveillance active and deployed.
‘I’ll be damned,’ she whispered.
‘Holy crap,’ Larry whispered. ‘Is this for real?’
Ben nodded as he prodded his chin with the tip of his pen and looked up at Natalie.
‘You, your brother, your brother’s work partner and your folks are all being watched simultaneously, presumably by the same agency. Lopez is the odd one out here as she is not family and yet is connected to you via Ethan, so best guess would be that this operation isn’t about direct family at all. Lopez is being watched simply because your brother’s always with her. This is about somebody who connects you all.’
‘Joanna Defoe,’ Natalie said softly.
‘Who, according to our database here, is not under any kind of surveillance whatsoever,’ Ben said. ‘Which kind of makes sense, seeing as she disappeared years ago.’
Natalie frowned in confusion.
‘Then why the surveillance on us?’
Ben tossed his pen down on his desk as he replied.
‘It’s a fair bet that nobody actually knows where Joanna Defoe is or even if she’s still alive for sure, so this surveillance operation is a kind of sleeper-cell gig. The agency in question has exhausted all leads and has set this up as a last resort in the hopes of catching her if she hightails it home to Ethan in Chicago.’