Skystorm (Ryan Decker) Read online

  “You said it like that?” said Harlow. “Sounds like something a psychiatrist would say.”

  “No. I’m paraphrasing,” said Decker.

  “That was the short version of what you said?” said Harlow, knowing what he meant but wanting to push his buttons a little.

  “What? No,” said Decker, shifting in his seat to face her. “I told him you needed some time to adjust to the warm-and-huggy Decker family dynamic.”

  “Because I’m cold and distant?”

  “That’s not what—”

  “I’m messing with you,” said Harlow. “We’re cool. Your dad is going to put a good word in for me with your mother.”

  “Everyone is making a much bigger deal of this than necessary,” said Decker.

  “Joking again. Whatever you said to him obviously put him at ease. Thank you,” she said. “And for the record, I’d be worried if they weren’t concerned.”

  “Me too,” said Decker. “I think they were more worried that they did something wrong than anything else. They really like you. Not sure why.”

  “Well, they think the world of you,” said Harlow. “So. Maybe bad judges of character?”

  They both laughed for a few seconds.

  “Touché,” said Decker, before checking his phone. “Did you move me off the Chang interview?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to say anything in the house, but I don’t think that interview will be over in time for you to get back to join Riley for lap swimming,” she said. “I put you on the equipment inventory with Garza.”

  “That’s like a one-hour job. For one person,” said Decker.

  “I expanded it to all of our storage units. Three hours tops,” said Harlow. “I want you to spend as much time with Riley as possible. The work will always be there. Your daughter won’t.”

  She instantly regretted her choice of words. Nobody was more agonizingly aware of the value of time lost than Decker. Or of having that time ripped away unexpectedly—never to be returned.

  “Sorry. That didn’t come out right,” said Harlow.

  “I didn’t take it the wrong way,” said Decker. “You don’t have to keep tiptoeing around me. I know your head and heart are always in the right place. Damn. That sounded like a line from a Hallmark card.”

  “I hear a second career calling,” said Harlow.

  “Might keep me out of trouble,” said Decker. “I don’t think the drug cartels or Russian mafia would dare try to break into the cutthroat holiday gift card industry.”

  “Sounds like a safe bet,” said Harlow. “By the way, Garza said he’s running late.”

  “What else is new,” said Decker. “I’ll talk to him about it during the inventory.”

  “It’s getting a little old,” said Harlow.

  “I know.”

  “And he’s starting to grate on people’s nerves during stakeouts,” said Harlow. “I think he’s getting bored.”

  “He definitely doesn’t like to sit still for long, unless he’s behind a rifle scope,” said Decker. “I’ll put him on notice.”

  “Don’t shit on him too hard. I’d like to keep him around. His contributions are solid—when his head is in the game. If he needs to shift into something a little more part-time, that’s fine. Maybe that’ll give him a chance to work on a few jobs outside of the agency. Let him burn off some steam.”

  “We’d need to be really careful with that,” said Decker. “The merc world is small. The last thing we need is for him to bring trouble back from a job. If he needs to take other work to keep the ants out of his pants, I’d prefer that he go back to contractor status with the firm. We hire him as needed. That keeps us insulated from what I know to be a very chaotically opportunistic world. We have enough to worry about as it is.”

  Decker was right. The fewer solid links back to any of these dark underbellies of the world right now the better. The very nature of the firm’s work undoubtedly drew the attention of some dreadful organizations. More than just attention in some cases. The risk came with the territory, and they all accepted it. Harlow saw no reason to open up another avenue of risk, especially after living with the APEX Institute’s thinly veiled threat for several months.

  Within a week of the Nevada warehouse raid that had no doubt deprived one of the Institute’s closest proxies of a fortune in recently harvested marijuana, every member of their firm had come under intense twenty-four-hour surveillance. Teams had made no effort to remain hidden and followed them to and from work.

  They had parked overnight on the streets in front of firm members’ apartments or homes. They had bribed restaurant hostesses to be seated at adjacent tables. No outing had been off-limits. Their presence, while never directly confrontational, had felt increasingly oppressive and threatening. The harassment had abruptly lifted around the six-month mark, with a brief escalation meant to drive home the Institute’s message.

  Brad Pierce and his family, who previously had been spared APEX’s wrath, had woken up to a spray-painted house. Police investigators called to the scene had classified the repeated strings of hastily sprayed pyramids and eyes as gang tagging, but the message had been clear. We’re watching—and we’re everywhere.

  Decker hadn’t waited for the same message to reach his parents’ house in Idaho. He had immediately moved Riley and his parents to Los Angeles, where he could watch over them. Where the firm could watch over them. So far, Harlow’s extensive network hadn’t caught a whiff of APEX in LA, but that didn’t mean they were in the clear. The hammer could drop at any moment. And it was obvious that Senator Steele’s money and influence couldn’t shield them from the threat—no matter how hard she tried.

  “On second thought, just read Garza the riot act,” said Harlow. “He’s been invaluable in the field, particularly with the higher-risk jobs. And it can’t hurt to keep someone with his skill set close, given the circumstances.”

  “It certainly can’t,” said Decker. “I’ll talk to him.”

  If the hammer dropped, she fully intended to hit back with every tool in her arsenal.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The smoky aroma of freshly brewed coffee had built a strong presence in the room. Overbrewed as always, but who was he to complain? The new smell meant one thing. His shift had come to an end. Finally. Another twelve hours in front of these screens, doing jack shit and making bank, had almost expired. And just in time. After nearly three months trapped in this brownstone, hours now felt like days, and the days passed with little more fanfare than the rising and setting of the sun—observed through thin curtains.

  Timothy Graves took a long, unhurried drink from a well-worn plastic mug, finishing the last of the coffee he’d made a few hours earlier to help him stay awake through the morning. Not that anything had ever transpired requiring his detailed attention. Like clockwork, Ezra Dalton’s armored town car had picked her up at 7:25 a.m. and turned south onto Wisconsin Avenue, headed for the APEX Institute’s headquarters building in Tyson’s Corner.

  Over two hours had elapsed, her town house now completely quiet and still. Except for one little thing that he couldn’t stop thinking about. His eyes darted to image number eleven, nestled in the bottom center of the expansive screen. A beautifully unobstructed, top-down view of Ezra Dalton’s office desk. He’d placed the microcamera in the bookcase flanking the desk, expecting it to be the most productive of the twenty cameras hidden throughout her Georgetown flat. Of course, Murphy’s Law had something else to say about his camera placement.

  While the desk camera’s feed had produced their only actionable intelligence to date, the past few days had painfully demonstrated that he may have overlooked a more productive location.

  “Tim! Tim! Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”

  Tim glanced over his shoulder. Anish Gupta, his agonizingly cheerful and comically challenged partner of more than a decade, strode into the room holding a carafe of coffee.

  “Refill, bitch?”

  “How old are you?” asked Tim.r />
  “Old enough to know you’re one out-of-touch mother-effing fool,” said Anish, before taking a seat next to him.

  “Let me know when you’re done with the Snoop Dogg routine for the day,” said Tim.

  “I’m done,” said Anish. “More coffee?”

  “Maybe a little later,” said Tim, turning his attention back to the screens. “I’m thinking about changing the angle of the camera in Dalton’s study. She’s taken a recent liking to that club chair.”

  “She’s taken the good shit to that club chair,” said Anish. “Who the hell reads classified papers all curled up with a pot of tea?”

  “Someone who sits behind a desk at an office all day,” said Tim, before pointing at image number eleven. “If I move the book housing our camera from the bookshelf next to her desk to the bookshelf adjacent to the french doors, we’ll have a bird’s-eye view of the club chair and a good enough chance of catching anything she lays flat on the desk.”

  Anish examined the screen and nodded. “Agree.”

  “Glad you’re on board,” said Tim.

  “Who’s on board with what?” said Jared Hoffman, suddenly standing in the doorway.

  “Timbo is thinking about going all Mission: Impossible and moving the camera in her study,” said Anish.

  “Right now?” said Jared, stepping into the room.

  “I figured we’d give it thirty minutes or so to make sure she didn’t forget anything,” said Tim.

  “Her schedule is clean?” asked Jared.

  Tim spun his chair to face the veteran operator, who stood at the window, peering through a crack between the curtains. Jared sported the same outfit he’d arrived in a few months ago. Hiking boots, a pair of slightly wrinkled khaki pants, and an untucked gray T-shirt—a black pistol grip pressed against his right hip. The T-shirt changed occasionally from gray to black, but the rest remained the same.

  Jared had been with the team as long as Tim could remember. Before Argentina. They were considered plank owners by General Sanderson. Only a few members of the team went further back than that. The scarce few who had somehow managed to survive close to two decades of this kind of work.

  “Housecleaning came through yesterday,” said Tim. “Clean as it gets. No pun intended.”

  Jared chuckled before going stone-cold serious.

  “I don’t know about swapping between bookcases. Dalton strikes me as the attention-to-detail type. I’d feel more comfortable adding a new camera. Give us a view of both locations. How long would that take?”

  Tim clicked on a file, which displayed an image of the bookcase in question. He zoomed in on the top two shelves, which mostly housed red-and-brown clothbound classics. The kind of books Tim, and most high school graduates, had been forced to read at some point. A number of more contemporary titles spoiled that highbrow selection. They could easily find one of those in a used bookstore.

  “We could have a book ready by tomorrow morning,” said Tim. “But I really don’t think she’ll notice if we swap one of the Penguin Classics for another. Seriously. She hasn’t touched a single book on those shelves since we started watching her.”

  “Is there any downside to waiting until tomorrow?” asked Jared.

  “Reading files in that chair is a new behavior. Something might be up over at the Institute,” said Tim.

  “SKYSTORM?” asked Jared.

  “Unknown. We can only pan the camera for a partial view of the chair. Not that it would make a difference. The way she holds the files upright has prevented us from viewing the material. We need to get a camera in the bookshelf above her,” said Tim.

  Jared rubbed the thick stubble on his face. “She’s never done this before?”

  “Not in the ninety-three days we’ve had her under direct surveillance,” said Tim. “On top of that, it’s pretty rare for her to bring files home.”

  Anish pressed his finger against the screen. “We could swap the current book for this one. Same color. Same size. Nobody is going to notice Moby-Dick swapped for The Count of Monte Cristo.”

  “You really think this can’t wait?” said a gruff voice.

  Richard Farrington stood next to the door, arms crossed under a dour face. He’d somehow slipped into the room undetected. Again. Tim had known him longer than Jared and still found his presence somewhat unnerving—in a “slit your throat before you knew what happened” kind of way. A good thing if he was on your side.

  “Damn. How long you been ghosting us, dog?” asked Anish.

  “Can it wait for a replacement book or not?”

  Brass tacks. That was Rich in a nutshell.

  “No,” said Tim.

  “I’m with him,” said Anish.

  “You’re always with him,” said Jared.

  Rich shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Jared?”

  “Ideally, we’d wait, but I’d really hate to miss an opportunity,” said Jared. “And we’re looking at a simple run. Door to door, this won’t take me more than twenty minutes.”

  Rich locked eyes with Tim, as though the operative had been reading his mind.

  “Anish will move the camera,” said Rich.

  “Uh. I don’t know if that’s—” started Jared.

  “You don’t think I can swap two books?” asked Anish.

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” said Jared, rolling his eyes.

  “We need two operators covering the streets. Front and back of the house. And one here,” said Rich. “That leaves Anish and Tim. Whoever we send will need to perform a minor Cirque du Soleil act to reach the top shelves. Tim walks with a noticeable limp and can barely raise his right arm above his shoulder—thanks to his previous willingness to absorb bullets on the team’s behalf. Anish?”

  “I was born for this shit.”

  “Please don’t make me reconsider,” said Rich.

  “Sorry. I can handle it,” said Anish in a rare moment of seriousness.

  Rich checked his watch. “We should do this before lunch. Before all of the baby strollers and yoga-mat hustlers come out of hibernation. Twenty minutes. Door to door. No messing around. There’s no margin for error with APEX.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bernie strode through the massive, sweltering hangar, barely glancing in the direction of the mayhem his in-house team of aviation mechanics had unleashed on his beloved C-123. Normally, he’d be all over that crew, micromanaging them with the same obscenity-laced, insult-heavy dialogue everyone had come to expect when working on his “baby.” But not this morning. His mind was fifteen hundred miles away from this dusty Nicaraguan airstrip. Somewhere over Texas.

  The GPS tracker on Rohm’s aircraft had stopped transmitting—nearly an hour ago. On top of that, she wasn’t answering her personal satellite phone. He could envision a system-wide satellite communications problem. They’d experienced a number of issues with the electronics suite on board the overpriced jet since he’d added it to his fleet. But Bernie couldn’t rationalize why Rohm wasn’t monitoring her satellite phone. That had been the whole point of it.

  He stepped into the blazing sun just outside the hangar and checked his phone. It had locked onto three satellites. Bernie gave the phone a minute to download any messages before looking again. Nothing. He tried to place a call to her phone, yielding the same result. Something had gone disastrously wrong. He was sure of it now.

  Bernie stormed back into the shade, a full flop sweat having enveloped him in the two minutes he had been standing outside. Sean Fitzgerald (a.k.a. Fitz) intercepted him on the trip back to the air-conditioned office. At six foot five, the security officer’s two-hundred-fifty-pound frame towered over Bernie. Probably enough to shade him from the ghastly midday sun. He’d keep that in mind the next time he left the hangar.

  “Still nothing?” asked Fitz.

  He shook his head and kept walking.

  “I’ll increase our security posture,” said Fitz.

  Bernie nodded absently. He hadn’t thought of that. The surveill
ance flight may have finally kicked the proverbial hornet’s nest. The dense jungle surrounding this airstrip suddenly felt more like a liability than an asset. Shit. He highly doubted APEX had traced his operations to the remote jungles of Nicaragua, but stranger things had happened in his lengthy career. He couldn’t discount any scenario. Even the very remote possibility that Rohm had been shot down over Texas.

  When he got back into his air-conditioned oasis, Bernie shut the door and quickly went to work on his laptop. His first step would be to call the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. The aircraft had been equipped with an emergency locator transmitter, which transmitted a 403 MHz signal to the NOAA Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking (SARSAT) system orbiting high above the United States. The beacon automatically activated if the aircraft crashed, or it could be triggered midflight by one of the crew members. Either way, SARSAT would mark the last known position for search-and-rescue efforts.

  If the rescue coordination center strategy didn’t yield results, he’d contact air traffic control towers in the vicinity of Rohm’s mission area to see if they had received a distress call from her aircraft, starting with the international airports in Amarillo and Lubbock and expanding to smaller airports. Someone somewhere would have heard or seen something. The Texas Panhandle was a vast, sparsely populated region of the country, but an aircraft that size couldn’t disappear without a trace—unless it was somehow blown to pieces in midair. And Bernie didn’t even want to think about the wide-reaching ramifications of that scenario right now.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Senator Margaret Steele’s phone buzzed somewhere behind her, momentarily distracting her from the tariff briefing. She glanced back at Julie Ragan, who mouthed, “I got it” and started digging through her leather satchel. Right about now was one of those times she wished Ragan weren’t such an efficient chief of staff. Steele needed an excuse to mentally check out of this agonizing regurgitation by her fellow senators of the same PowerPoint presentation she’d received late yesterday afternoon and could have digested on her own in a fraction of the time—sipping a glass of wine on her deck. She turned her attention back to the droning.