Fault Line

The license plate came into view. Ben recognized it just as Hort said, “It's him. Back off now. Keep a few cars in between.”

The thudding in Ben's chest got stronger. Adrenaline surged through his system. He flexed his thighs, his calves, his toes. He glanced left, right, ahead, measuring distance, calculating odds. He wanted to rotate his neck but didn't. He didn't want any sign that he was anything but resigned.

The only hope he saw was to disrupt them when they tried to take Alex. If Alex could see they weren't interested in bargaining, maybe he would understand his only hope was to disseminate Obsidian. If he could get away, if he figured things out, if he disseminated it… Jesus Christ, he thought. He had never tried to execute a plan so entirely composed of ifs and mights and maybes.

They followed Alex right onto Addison, a bucolic street of perfectly kept bungalows. Alex slowed for the traffic circle at Bryant. Hort said, “Take him.”

The driver cut clockwise into the circle and accelerated into the street on the other side alongside Alex. He cut the wheel right and slammed into Alex's car. Metal whined and Alex went up on the sidewalk and straight into a tree. The driver hit the brakes and they screeched to a halt just ahead of where Alex's car had stopped.

The driver hit a switch and the passenger-side door slid open. The guy behind Ben moved up alongside him and braced to leap out. In one smooth movement, Ben spun in the seat, planted the back of his head and neck against the side of the passenger-side seat, brought his knees to his face, and blasted both heels into the guy's lower spine. The guy cried out and went flying through the door, smacking his face into the overhead jamb on the way.

Ben let the momentum of the kick bring him to his feet. He dove through the open door, hit the ground on his shoulder, and rolled to his side. He brought his knees up and shoved his arms down, getting the cuffs over his ass. He straightened his legs and pushed lower, getting the chain past the backs of his knees, his calves…

Shouts came from the van. He heard a door open. Come on, come on…

The chain snagged on his heels. He wriggled his feet frantically and shoved his wrists forward with all his strength. The cuffs bit savagely into his wrists and he thought he wasn't going to clear it and then the chain was over his boots.

He started to come to his feet and someone grabbed him by the hair. He felt the knee coming in time to turn his head and get his hands in the way. The blow landed but he'd avoided the worst of it. He tried to straighten, but the guy had a fistful of hair and was twisting now, pushing his head down. All he could see was ground and a pair of legs. One of the legs retracted, setting up another knee shot. Fuck that. Ben shoveled his arms up and snapped both fists into the guy's balls, the knuckle of each thumb leading the way.

The guy grunted and the grip on Ben's hair loosened. He cork screwed his head and tore loose. It was the other guy from the backseat. He tried to close and Ben threw his arms forward like a double jab, trying to plant the chain in the guy's neck but catching him in the teeth instead.

Sarah was out of the van, her hands still cuffed behind her. She looked at Ben. “Run!” he shouted.

The guy shoved Ben's arms to the side and slipped past him. He grabbed Ben by the hair again and whipped an arm around his neck. Ben jammed his fists up just in time to stop another sleeper hold. “Run!” he shouted again.

Sarah took off like a deer. A second later, the guy behind him yelled and his grip loosened. Ben spun and saw why: Sarah had run up behind him and bitten him on the arm. She was hanging on like a terrier. The guy drew back an arm to cuff her. Ben crossed his arms and brought his hands down behind the guy's head, catching his neck in the triangle formed by his wrists and the chain. He leveraged his wrists back and his elbows forward. The guy's eyes bulged and his tongue popped out. Ben felt cartilage grinding and squeezed harder, the chains cutting into his wrists.

There was an explosion of white light, and suddenly he was looking up at the sky, unable to account for what had happened. He was choking the guy, killing him, and then…

His head throbbed. Someone… someone must have pistol-whipped him from behind. He looked over at the van. The Asian guy was shoving Sarah back inside. And Hort… Hort was holding Alex by the hair, a gun at his temple.

No, he thought, but the words didn't come. No.

Alex was holding a laptop. Jesus Christ, he'd brought Obsidian with him? It was over.

“Get in the van, Ben,” Hort said. “Or I'll decorate you with your brother's brains.”

Ben got to his feet and took an unsteady step toward the van. It felt like someone had planted a vibrating chisel in the back of his skull.

“It's all right,” Alex said. “I brought them what they wanted.”

“Alex,” Ben said, and stopped. He didn't know what to say. They were all dead.

This time they cuffed Ben to Sarah. His wrists were bleeding. “That was a hell of an effort,” he said to her, because he wanted her to have something to feel good about in whatever time they had left. “For a lawyer.” But she might as well have not even heard. He wanted to say something to Alex, too, but what could he? Alex had delivered Obsidian on a platter. It was game over.

They drove off. The guy Ben had kicked in the back was groaning as if someone had put thumbscrews on him, and the guy Ben had tried to strangle was coughing so much it sounded like he was going to bring up lung tissue. Whatever damage he'd done them, he hoped it was permanent.

Hort turned in the seat and pointed a pistol at Ben. “All right, son,” he said to Alex. “Nice and simple. I want you to turn off that dead man's switch you set up.”

Dead man's switch. What had Alex done, set up some kind of dissemination program that only he could stop? Christ, all he'd done was guarantee he'd be tortured before he was killed.

“I need an Internet co

“Alex, don't,” Ben said. “They'll kill us all the second you-”

“I'll kill you all if he doesn't,” Hort said evenly. “Like I said, Ben, I didn't want it to be this way. But the mission comes first.”

“Drive into Mountain View,” Alex said. “Google has the whole town covered in Wi-Fi.”

Ben grimaced. “Goddamn it, Alex-”

“Ben, I know what I'm doing.”

“No more talk,” Hort said.

Ben closed his eyes. His head was throbbing, his wrists ached, and they were one hundred percent out of options.

They drove in silence. Ben tried to focus on the pain, because what he felt in his body was infinitely easier than what was going on in his mind. He'd been a fool. Everything he'd believed about there not being rules… but that was to prevail against the other side. Well, this was the way it worked. Hort was just more ruthless. Which was why he was holding the gun while Ben was wearing the handcuffs. Why Hort was going to walk away, while the three of them would be dumped in some shallow grave. He'd always thought of himself as a realist, prided himself on it. And now, in his last minutes on earth, he'd been exposed, forced to confront the truth. Which was that he was nothing but a stupid, naïve dipshit, and the real realists had run rings around him and were now about to take away everything.

When they reached Shoreline Road in Mountain View, Alex opened the laptop. “Okay,” he said. “I've got a co

They pulled onto a side street and stopped.

“Do it,” Hort said. “And show me that it's done.”

“It's already done,” Alex said.

Hort frowned. “What do you mean it's already done? You told me you had to decrypt it, put in a passcode to stop a dissemination sequence.”

“I only said that because I was afraid you'd hurt Ben or Sarah before I could show you what I'd really done.”