“At first I thought if the dot-xuki virus was meant to get rid of all the Overtake files, then whoever was behind it must also have been responsible for the deaths of the Overtake team members. But the large amount of time between the events bothered me. I mean, the team members had all died or vanished seven years ago, and it’s only been a couple months since the dot-xuki attack. It got me wondering — if the girl was alive, which seemed so from the photo, then what if the cyberattack was carried out by someone who was trying to protect her? While the earlier deaths were conducted by someone trying to find her?”
He ran a hand through his hair and looked at his watch. “Shit, I need to wrap this up, so whatever I have will be on the disk. See this?”
He picked up a piece of paper off his desk and held it up to the camera. It was heavily creased but they could still make out the message written on it.
Mr. Becker. Please call.
Below this was a phone number.
“I found this about twenty minutes ago. Someone had pushed it through my mail slot. I tried looking up the number but there was no listing for it. If you’re wondering if I called it, of course I did. There was a part of me that didn’t want to, but how could I not?
“A woman answered. Don’t ask me how old she sounded, because I don’t know. She had a slight accent, European of some kind, I think, but she spoke perfect English. The moment she picked up, she said something like ‘You should have never looked into her history. You were not supposed to do that. Why couldn’t you have been satisfied? Why did you continue to look?’ Before I could say I had no idea what she was talking about, she went on. ‘If you stay in your house, they will find you. I can distract them for a few hours at most, but that is it. Be gone by then.’ I asked her who she meant, but she’d already hung up. I called back probably a dozen times, but the line would just ring and ring and ring.
“Abraham, she told me I should have never looked into ‘her history.’ She’s got to be talking about Tessa. I mean, who else would it be? And the people she’s warning me about? What if they’re the ones who killed Carter and the rest of Overtake?
“I can’t ignore her warning so I’m leaving here right now.” Eli reached forward. “See you in Florida, buddy.”
The video stopped.
Orlando and Abraham stared at the screen, speechless. After several seconds, she backtracked the footage to the best frame of the piece of paper Eli had held up. She captured a clean image of the number.
“We should call it,” he said.
She closed the computer. “Yes, but not here.”
They left cash on the table and returned to the Audi. Not wanting to chance someone overhearing them while they were parked in the lot, Orlando started the engine and headed out. At the first stoplight she opened her computer and handed it to Abraham. The image of the phone number was still on the screen.
“Go for it,” she said.
He pulled out his cell and dialed.
Five rings.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
“Abraham,” Orlando said softly.
Nine rings.
“Abraham.”
He finally looked over as the tenth ring began.
“They’re not going to answer.”
“Just a moment longer,” he said.
The twelfth ring cut out halfway through. Abraham leaned forward as if his wait had paid off, but the voice that came through the speaker was merely a recording. “Please try your call again later.”
His shoulders sagged as he dropped the phone into his lap. Orlando gently took the cell from him and disconnected the call.
After they were back in her room at the hotel, she said, “Why don’t you go and get some sleep? We can start fresh in the morning.”
“I’m not tired,” he said, though clearly he was.
She considered her next words very carefully, but even though she knew what his response would be, she had to say them. “Abraham, perhaps it’s time to drop this. The picture tells us that Tessa’s probably alive, so you know that much. But looking into this is what got Eli killed. It could happen to you, too. Maybe you should let it go and disappear like he suggested.”
His jaw tensed. “Don’t you get it? The people who killed Eli and took your friend Daeng are hunting for Tessa. What do you think they’re going to do to her when they find her? I guarantee you it won’t be good. So tell me, if you were in my shoes, would you just disappear?”
“No,” she said after a moment. “No, I would never do that.”
“So why on Earth would you think I would?”
CHAPTER 25
Nearly fifty minutes passed before Gloria finally heard someone in the hall outside the observation room.
“King? Ms. Clark?” Nolan’s voice. “Are you down here?”
Gloria pulled the chair out from under the handle and opened the door.
Nolan and Andres were in the corridor. They had turned at the sound of the door and aimed their guns at the opening. Once they saw it was Gloria, they lowered their weapons.
“Thank God,” Nolan said. “Are you all right?”
“Where’s King?” Andres asked.
Ignoring the questions, she marched over to them and asked, “Where the fuck were you two?”
“You found them,” a third voice said. “Good.”
Gloria looked past her men toward the stairway. Standing near the entrance was Scott Foster, head of the McCrillis emergency response team. They had undoubtedly come in response to the call she’d made from the observation room.
She turned back to her men. “Answer my question!”
Nolan swallowed hard. “They knocked us out and tied us up.”
“They knocked you out and tied you up? Are you serious?”
Neither Nolan nor Andres said anything.
From the stairwell entrance, Foster said, “What’s the word on the prisoner?”
“Gone,” she told him.
Foster frowned.
“Hey, I’m not pleased about it, either,” she said. “But there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do when the people who were supposed to be watching my back weren’t doing their job.”
In a hesitant voice, Andres asked, “Is King all right?”
She glared at him for a second before nodding back at the observation room. “He’s in there.”
When Andres caught sight of the other man’s body, he asked, “Is he dead?”
“Out cold.”
“So they got him, too,” Nolan said.
“True, except he wasn’t supposed to be guarding the place.”
She pushed past them and headed for the stairwell.
When she neared Foster, he said, “Mr. Davis said for you to call in as soon as we found you.”
“Davis isn’t my boss,” she said.
“He is now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Davis will tell you.”
Cursing to herself, she pulled out her phone and headed up the stairs. A moment before she hit the top step, the line was answered by one of the night operators.
“McCrillis.”
“It’s Gloria Clark. I believe Mr. Davis is expecting my call.”
Hold music, low and unobtrusive.
It had barely played two measures when—
“Clark?”
“Mr. Davis, you wanted to talk to me?”
“What the hell happened over there?” he asked. Perry Davis was McCrillis’s vice president of general operations, a man who was reportedly a competent organizer. Gloria had no firsthand knowledge of this. Her work had never strayed into his arena before.
She grimaced. It wasn’t his place to ask that kind of question. “We had an incident, sir.”