The End Game

Follow through or abort mission.

She never blinked. “How would I know, Matthew? I found the phone in the drawer. I was looking through it to see whose it might be. Then you came in and I was afraid you’d think it was mine and I know how you hate phones. Then this all started to happen, you were kissing me and I forgot about it—”

“So you hid it in the soap? Lucky for you it’s such a big bar, otherwise you’d have hid it in your bra?” His voice was flat, emotionless. He leaned over and turned off the shower. He waved the Beretta in her face as he stepped back.

“Get out of here.” She slowly rose, realized she was sopping wet, shook herself, and stepped out of the shower.

“Vanessa,” he said, her name a caress, “you’re lying to me.”

“No, I’m not, Matthew. I’d never break your rules. Obviously the phone belongs to Ian or Andy; it sure isn’t mine. You’ve got to believe me, Matthew. Now let me get on dry clothes and together we can show the phone to Ian and Andy, see what they have to say.”

He stepped into her face, and she felt the Beretta pressing against her breast.

He whispered against her cheek, “You’re lying, you traitorous bitch.”

He dragged her from the bathroom, his arm around her neck, the Beretta against her temple now, and pulled her down the hall. She jerked at his arm, and he let her suck in a breath, then squeezed hard again.

She saw her uncle’s face, knew he would grieve for her, and he’d know in his heart she’d screwed up. She was facing death alone. Alone. She shut her eyes, stopped struggling, and the pressure released. Matthew threw her onto the floor and she rolled, smashing into the corner of the sofa. She heard Ian shouting, heard Andy talking fast and crazy, nothing new in that.

Ian shouted, “What is going on here, Matthew? Don’t hurt her, you bastard.”

Matthew said nothing, merely stood over her, the Beretta aimed squarely at her heart, and tossed Ian the phone.

“What is this? I’ve never seen this before. Is this her phone?”

Ian paused, looked down at Vanessa, sodden, huddled in on herself. “Is this your phone, Van? Really, it’s your phone?” She heard the horror in his voice, but also heard the acceptance that she was guilty.

“You think we’ve got a traitor here, Matthew?” Andy asked, and jerked the phone out of Ian’s hand. “Let me see it, we’ll know soon enough.”

“Ian, Andy, it isn’t mine. I already told Matthew that it wasn’t, that I found it in a drawer when I was cleaning them out to pack. Is it yours, Ian? Andy? It’s not mine, I swear it. But Matthew doesn’t believe me. Tell him it can’t be mine, Ian. Tell him.”

Ian wouldn’t meet her eyes. Andy was staring down at the tiny phone in his palm, ignoring all of them. “Tell me your secrets, little phone,” he said, his voice almost a croon. Crazy, crazy Andy, even more twisted than Matthew was now, and that was saying something. “Where did you come from, little beauty? So tiny you are. Tell Andy your secrets.”

Matthew said, “Andy, quit screwing around. Who’s she been calling?”

Andy finally looked up. “Sorry, dude, there’s no history, everything’s been wiped.”

Without a word, Matthew hauled her up and threw her into the wall. His fist moved so quickly she almost didn’t see it coming. But he didn’t hit her; instead, his fist slammed into the paneling behind her head, cracking the wood. He stuck the Beretta into her cheek.

Soft, his voice was so soft, cajoling. “Tell me who you really are, Vanessa. Tell me right now or I will shoot you dead.” She felt the rage pouring off him, even as his face remained emotionless, as if they were talking about what to have for di

“Please, Matthew,” she whispered, voice shaking, a little girl’s terrified voice, “please don’t kill me, I didn’t do anything. You’ve got to believe me. It was probably Andy, you know how crazy he is, haven’t you always told me how nuts he is? I mean, give him a match and he’d set the world on fire, and he’s always playing with that Zippo. But not me, how could it be me? You know I’ve wanted you, I was proving it to you in the bathroom. It isn’t my phone, Matthew, really, it isn’t my phone.”

He grabbed her wet hair, jerked her head forward. His voice remained soft, even soothing, comforting.

“Vanessa, I will let Andy set fire to your hair if you don’t start talking. Now.”

Vanessa knew he was ready to kill her with his bare hands. She had to find the right words. “Listen, Matthew, you hired me to make you bombs, and I’ve done my job well. I’ve stuck with you, helped you.” She raised her hand to touch his face. He froze. “Don’t you know I love you, that I’ve loved you since the moment Ian introduced us in Belfast? Why won’t you believe me?”

“How long have you been with me, Vanessa?”

Where is he going with this?

Before she could answer, he turned to Ian. “How long since you brought her to me, Ian?”

Ian was staring down at her. “Four months and, a week or so—we first met at the Duck and Deer pub in Londonderry.” A look of pain crossed his face. “I thought she’d be perfect for us.”

“Four and a half months. And you’ve been in every hour of our lives since.”

Andy looked up from the phone. “I heard Darius telling you she was trouble. I thought he said that because she wouldn’t sleep with him.”

“Matthew, Ian, you’ve got to listen to me. It’s not my phone. Even though there were deaths tonight at the refinery, it will be offline for weeks, and the world will listen to you, Matthew, finally listen. And look what Andy did—he took down the big oil company systems. We’ll have them under our thumbs by morning. You know I feel the same way as you about how our president is cozying up to the Iranians and all those other Middle East terrorists, you know I do.”

Ian said to Andy, his voice and his eyes dead cold, “Take the phone apart.”

Andy plugged it into his computer and tapped on the keyboard. There was stark silence in the living room except for the sounds of the keys and Matthew’s heaving breathing.

Andy called over his shoulder, “The outgoing texts are automatically deleted, very nice custom program to do that. There’s a single number in the memory, though it’s deleted from the phone itself, too. The number’s been called three times in the past two weeks, but the calls go different places.” He looked at Vanessa. “Who are you talking to? Who’s on the other side of the call?”

“Can you reverse the number?” Matthew asked, never taking his eyes off her, his gun now steady on her chest. Center mass: she’d be dead in less than a heartbeat if he pulled the trigger.

“Yeah.” More tapping. “The number’s cloaked, it bounces off four satellites before it goes through. Phone’s encrypted, Matthew.”

His voice—so soft, so deadly calm. “Where’d you get an encrypted phone, Vanessa?”

She said again, “It’s not mine.”

Matthew kept his eyes on her face. “I know, it belongs to Ian, it belongs to Andy. Could it belong to me as well?”

“Maybe it belongs to Darius, and he’s manipulating you yet again. Maybe he isn’t who you believe he is.”

“Darius? Now, that’s a thought.” He said to Andy, “Call the number, Andy.”

15

PAWN TO E4

26 Federal Plaza

New York, New York

As Nicholas drove the Crown Vic into Manhattan, he could still see the plume of fire from the refinery in his rearview, could still taste the burning oil in his mouth. It was hard to get his brain around all that had happened in such a short time. COE had murdered three FBI agents and Richard Hodges, blown up Bayway, not caring how many people died. And now, the launching of a coordinated attack on the oil companies themselves. He saw Mr. Hodges’s face, the perfect circle in his forehead. He’d been a hero, he’d given them Larry Reeves, a man Nicholas was certain was as dead as all the other workers at Bayway.