The Unseen (28 page)

“Well,” she said. “You back to set off my alarm again?”

“Um, is your husband here?” Lucas asked.

“Hospital,” she said. “Tore up his leg pretty bad when I shot him. Had to have surgery.”

“Is he gonna be okay?”

She shrugged.

Lucas shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Look, can I come in?”

She stared for a moment. “Why do I get the feeling I'm going to regret this?” she asked.

“I just figured something out,” he said. “I think you should hear it.”

She stared for a few more seconds before stepping aside. He walked into the house and waited for her to close the door, then followed her back to the living room and sat down when she did. He tried to put thoughts of his last visit to this house, just a few nights ago, out of his mind.

“So,” she said, “you back for some more video, are you? Need a couple extra shots?”

He ignored her question, but offered one of his own. “So, your story—how'd it hold up?”

“You mean about my husband going paranoid, and seeing people in our basement, and beating me because he's sick?” She ran a hand through her long, dark hair. “So far, so good. I think they even bought it when I told them a friend picked me up at the hospital last time, let me stay at her house, and brought me home the next day.”

“Which explained your car at the hospital.”

She nodded. “Story's mostly true, anyway.” She looked at him with her dark eyes. “All the important parts, anyway.” She leaned back against her couch. “Now, you want to tell me why you're back?”

“I . . . uh . . . can you tell me what, exactly, your husband does?

His work?”

“Diplomat for the Venezuelan embassy here.”

Lucas nodded. “And what about you, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Don't mind you asking what?”

“What you do, your line of work.”

She smiled. “So you don't buy the stay-at-home trophy-wife story, huh?”

He returned the smile. “Trophy wives, for the most part, don't know how to use a gun.”

She nodded. “Okay, no harm, I suppose. I was a weapons designer once upon a time,” she said. “Got my degrees here in the States, did some work for the U.S. government, designing . . .”

“Weapons.”

She smiled. “Yes. Weapons. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were a police officer suddenly.”

He shook his head. “Just trying to put some things together.”

“Like?”

“Like why your house was targeted.”

“Targeted for . . .”

“For surveillance. A group that calls itself the Creep Club. Couple dozen people across the whole DC area, and they . . . well, they essentially spy on people in their homes.”

She stared for a moment. “You're serious,” she said. She shook her head, looked at the ceiling. “A bunch of high-tech Peeping Toms.”

“I think Peeping Tom is maybe the wrong way to describe them. I think, maybe more like spies.”

“Spies,” she repeated.

He switched gears. “You and Kleiderman, you're both from Venezuela originally?”

She stared for a few moments. “Yes.”

He bit his lip, unsure how to continue. “Venezuela's been through some . . . well, political turmoil is a good way of putting it, these past several years.”

“
Some
is a mild way of putting it. Just spit out what you're thinking,” she said.

“I was looking at the Blackboard today—”

“The Blackboard?”

“It's a large wall. Kind of a giant bulletin board, where people in the Creep Club keep photos, tidbits, souvenirs of the projects they're working on.”

“Stolen pieces from the homes.”

“Yes.”

“What's there from my home?”

He squirmed. “Some photos. Uh, I think a wiring schematic of some kind.” He swallowed hard. “Hair samples in a vial.”

She stared hard. “Someone stole hair clippings from my home?”

Lucas said nothing.

“Why?”

Lucas said nothing again. He wasn't sure what he could say.

“And this is what you do?”

“No, no, no. Like I said, I'm not one of them. I'm trying to stop them.”

But he felt the sour, medicinal taste of the lie in the back of his throat. He wasn't one of the Creep Club, not in any official capacity. But he was getting the feeling there was some thread that tied them all together. He did all the things they were doing, but he was a natural monster, not a trained one. That, in many ways, was worse.

“Okay,” she said, not sounding convinced. “So what do we do?”

“Well, like I said, I was looking at the Blackboard, paying attention to all the faces on the photos—all the people pictured who were targeted for projects—and it occurred to me how many of those faces were brown, black, yellow. A few of them white, but only a few. And I started wondering why that is, and when I began looking at the names, I noticed most of the people had—what's the politically correct way to say it—
ethnic
names. Not Americanized names, you know.”

Her eyes were hard flint. “Yes.”

“And here were photos of these people and videos and things from their homes, and it just struck me, this isn't random. I mean, we're in Washington DC, and—”

“Homeland Security.”

“What?”

“That's what you're dancing around. You think we're all being watched by Homeland Security, because we have foreign ties.”

“I know it sounds crazy.”

She smiled. “Ask any Japanese American who was herded into an internment camp during World War II if it sounds crazy.”

He thought he saw a tear starting to form in the corner of her eye, but then her eyes shifted and became that hard steel again.

She looked at him. “So what are we gonna do about it?”

He smiled. “I was hoping you'd say that,” he said, “but I need to ask you something first.” He dropped to a knee on the floor.

“If you're going to propose, remember I'm already married,” she said.

He smiled. A little humor. Good.

He rolled up his pant leg, exposing the manacle. “Unfortunately, I'm already attached too.”

She crouched on the floor beside him, examining the manacle for a few seconds.

“Ever seen anything like it?” he asked.

She nodded. “You wouldn't believe the kinds of things I've seen,” she said. “It's pretty basic.”

“So can you get it off me?”

She looked at him. “Sometimes, basic isn't so good. No high-tech way of overriding it, or bypassing the code, or anything like that.

You mess with it too much, you—”

“Blow off my leg.”

She stood again. “Yeah.” Pause. “What happened?”

He stood, retreated to the couch again. “You know that saying, no good deed goes unpunished?”

She came to the couch to sit by him. “Yeah.”

He indicated the manacle on his ankle. “There's your proof. I tried to save a guy from people I thought were planning to kill him. Turns out, I shoulda tried to save them.” He let out a bitter chuckle.“I think the guy's Russian Mafia, and he didn't take kindly to my heroics. Coincidentally, he's also on the Blackboard.”

She stared at the manacle. “And so this is his way of making sure you do what he wants.”

“Yes.”

“And what is it he wants?”

“Wants me to lead some people to him, like lambs to slaughter. People he's convinced I'm working with. Only one problem with that.”

“What's that?”

“Those people don't exist. Not that I'd lead them to Viktor anyway, but I think he's convinced I'm with a rival crime gang or something.”

“There will be override codes,” she said. “To shut it off, or to reset the timer.”

He stared. Far away, in the kitchen, the refrigerator's compressor kicked on with a whoosh.

“Thanks,” he said. “But I'm pretty sure he won't be sharing.”

“Then we have to figure out another way to stop him.”

“I've been working on it, believe me.”

She flopped back against the couch, stared at the ceiling. “I think I need a drink. How about you?”

He nodded. “Make it a double.”

17:33:22 REMAINING

A few minutes before nine o'clock that evening, Lucas stood across the alley from Saul's office building, waiting.

Waiting for what, he wasn't sure.

He looked at the building. Lights illuminated the lobby where two men sat at a guard station; outside, security cameras scanned the building's perimeter.

As Lucas watched, three quick bursts of light flashed from the hedge by the row houses. A signal. Quickly, Lucas unshouldered his backpack and retrieved his new flashlight, then returned three quick bursts.

He waited, but no other signal came. After a few minutes, he put his flashlight back and continued to wait.

Moments later, he felt someone in the dark alley with him, moving lightly in the deepest shadows. He smiled. “Nice to not see you again, Snake.”

Moments later, Snake spoke from the darkness near him. “You ready to do this?”

Lucas kept his gaze on the building. “Does it matter?”

“No.”

“Then I guess I'm ready.”

Snake held a two-way radio to his face and spoke into it. “Give it to us in thirty seconds,” he said. A squelch of static responded, followed by a woman's voice simply saying, “Okay.”

Snake answered Lucas's question. “Can you wait for thirty seconds?”

“I suppose I can spare that.”

They stood quietly, watching the building. The woman's voice spoke on the two-way radio again. “Ten seconds.”

Then the block went dark. Everything in the building dropped to complete blackness, the lights extinguishing immediately.

“Now,” Snake said, springing into action. “Run.”

Three figures jetted across the street to the building, and Lucas followed. Silently they opened one of the side doors, then moved toward the stairs and sprinted up them to the second floor. There, they all filed into a small utility closet.

“Generators will kick on any time,” Snake said.

As if on cue, they heard an odd roar that lasted for just a few seconds, followed by a hum. A weak sliver of light spilled in beneath the crack of the door they hid behind.

“Generators run the basics,” said Snake. His flashlight came on, illuminating his face in the darkness of the utility closet. “None of the cams, but the alarms are live.” He smiled. “Most of them, anyway.”

“How'd you get us in the side door?” Lucas asked. “Typically, in a power outage, the whole place goes into lockdown.”

Another smile from Snake. “Yeah,” he said. “Typically. But then, this isn't your typical power outage. It's good to have contacts.” Snake shined his light above them, showing the pipes and electrical conduit intersecting floors above. A makeshift rope ladder hung from above, and Snake grabbed it. “We have about ten minutes before the computers go through their systems checks and reboot completely, and we need to get to Saul's office on the fourth floor. Elevator's out with no power, and the stairs are definitely off-limits. So here we go.”

Snake scrambled up the ladder, Clarice and Kennedy followed, and Lucas brought up the rear.

A few minutes later, they exited the utility closet on the fourth floor.

Snake spoke into his two-way radio. “We still clear?”

The woman answered. “You got about five more minutes.”

Snake put the radio back in his pocket and led them down the hallway to an office door. At the door, Clarice and Kennedy clicked on lights strapped to their heads, opened the door, and slipped inside. Snake waved Lucas inside next, then followed him into the office and closed the door behind them.

They set to work, searching files and desk drawers, but finding nothing. Snake suggested they look in the acoustic tiles of the ceiling, but after Kennedy boosted Clarice up for a peek, she shook her head.

“Two minutes,” said the woman's voice on the radio.

Snake held the flashlight on Lucas's face. “Any ideas, Humpty?” he said. “That's why you're here.”

Lucas followed his flashlight's beam around the office until it settled on something that made him stop.

A cuckoo clock, mounted on the wall.

“The clock,” he said.

Kennedy scrambled to the clock, pulled it from the wall. Behind it was a small space, just big enough to hold the two or three file folders that were hidden there.

“Okay,” Snake said. “Grab it and go.”

Kennedy pulled out the files and stuffed them in his pack, and they sprinted out into the hallway again.

“One minute,” came the woman's voice on the two-way.

They scrambled into the utility closet and back down the ladder, then out onto the first floor. As they dashed into the hall, the main lights flickered.

“Power's on again,” Snake yelled. “Let's go.” He sprinted around the corner, and the others followed.

A high, ear-piercing alarm began to sound as iron gates quickly dropped into place at each end of the hallway.

They came to a stop, and Lucas looked at him. “What now?”

Snake looked around them. “Punt,” he said. He ran into the nearest office, appearing moments later with a large chair. Snake went to the closest window and threw the chair at it. The glass cracked, but refused to break.

He picked up the chair and threw it again. More cracks.

Behind them, they heard one of the security guards. “Drop that chair or I'll shoot!”

Lucas looked back at the security guards, and just as he'd feared, he saw them standing at the nearest gate; both had their guns drawn and trained on them.

Lucas heard glass shattering, and he turned to see Clarice scrambling out the window.

Something whizzed by his ear, and a hole opened in the wall next to him, spraying him with chunks of concrete.