Encrypted: An Action-Packed Techno-Thriller Read online

  Aching, Zach kept his gazed fixed toward the one-way mirror in front of him. They would get nothing. Jorge must have sensed his defiance, because the butt of the gun came down hard into his shoulder. Even though it made no sense, it was becoming more and more likely that Zach’s captor was a foreign CIA operative. While Jorge was fast and loose with the punishment, the Mexican kept it away from Zach’s face. He hit areas that induced high levels of pain with minimal external damage. Zach’s own country was doing this to him.

  Wincing, Zach knew that couldn’t be true. This prick had to be a rogue agent, looking to cash in on the bounty on Ronnie’s head.

  “Tell me the code, puto, or you will die.”

  Zach held Jorge’s gaze. “Then I’ll die.”

  The Mexican raised his hand again, but the door opened.

  “Torture wasn’t part of our deal, Jorge.”

  Zach knew that voice. He craned his sore neck to find Grant—with that cheesy smile on his face.

  Jorge grew even cockier than before. “He is a boy born to milk and honey. A little pain will go a long way.”

  As Zach tried to process his shock, Grant walked around the table to face him. “I don’t know. He’s got a pretty big hard-on for her.”

  “All the more reason to beat the resistance from him.”

  Zach finally found his voice. “You fucking bastard…this is going on your record.”

  Fifer shrugged. “Dude, it already has. I was ordered to make sure you went to this damn party.” He turned to Jorge. “Which, I might add, had a skank factor of 100 out of 100.”

  The Mexican shrugged. “We had to be sure he went outside.”

  The conversation was a blur. “Ordered? Ordered by whom?”

  “The director himself. Dawg, I am telling you, this is for real. We need the Robin Hood hacker, like now.”

  Zach shook his head, leaning back from the table. Anything to get away from Grant.

  “The director would never! The FBI would never authorize an agent to be apprehended.”

  “Not on U.S. soil, they won’t. But here? Come on, federal agents get snatched all the time. What’s one more?”

  Zach straightened. Obviously, Grant was in on this with Jorge. Two lowlife scum trying to score the reward for Ronnie.

  Grant put his hands on the rickety table and leaned toward Zach. “Dude, why do you think they left you her case? Jesus, you haven’t caught her for how long? They were about to reassign you when she called the field office. Talk about luck, man. They left you on the hook as bait.”

  Zach’s mind spun. They wanted Ronnie, yet they had snatched him. Why not wait until she showed up? The only conclusion was that they didn’t know. They didn’t know that she was in town. That changed everything. He had a slim advantage, and he planned to use it.

  “All this for some fucking reward.”

  Grant slammed his hand down on the table. “Zach, focus. This is a completely sanctioned mission.”

  Oh, Zach was focused, all right. “Prove it.”

  Opening a laptop, Grant brought up a report regarding the plague. “The Black Death is back, man. It is here. And the only clue we have as to why it is written in this…”

  Symbols unfamiliar to Zach scrolled down the page. They might have been unknown, but they did help clarify one thing for Zach. The U.S. government hadn’t gone to all this trouble just to catch an outside-the-law hacker. They needed her hacking skills. Another slim advantage for Zach to use.

  “Just make the damn call already,” Grant said, pushing the iPod to Zach.

  Zach turned his head to stare at the wall. “Figure it out yourself.”

  “And trigger the self-destruct mechanism?” Grant said in a singsong voice.

  He couldn’t help but look at his ex-partner.

  Grant chuckled. “What? You didn’t know that the woman you are so desperate to protect had the case lined in plastique. The dogs went nuts over it.”

  Zach sighed. He made sure it was a big sigh. A defeated sigh. He had to make sure Grant and the others believed that he truly had given up. At some point, he would need to contact Ronnie. He just had to make sure that it looked like he was capitulating— and not part of his plan.

  Okay, not so much a plan, but the inkling of a plan.

  CHAPTER 11

  Plum Island

  12:02 a.m., EST

  Amanda studied the ancient map, looking at the pockets of plague resistance. The key had to lie in these areas of respite. These areas of vaccinated populations. Whoever created this plague must have taken precautions—just like they did back in 1347. They wouldn’t let loose a rampant, weaponized Yersinia pestis without some kind of vaccine formulated.

  They also had to protect the person wielding the bacterium, spreading it throughout the Venice airport and beyond.

  She glanced around the room at the other scientists who were tracking the plague. Amanda was certain that they all thought her insane for poring over the 1347 pandemic. She just had this nagging feeling in her gut that if they could figure out how they had done it last time, she could figure out how they could stop it this time.

  Jennifer wasn’t back yet, though. She’d tasked her assistant with researching any instance of the subject vaccination in relation to the plague. This research could not have happened in a vacuum. Someone, somewhere must have knowledge of this global plot to wipe out the bulk of mankind.

  Noticing her assistant hurrying down the hall, Amanda sat up and stretched. Dear God, how long had it been since she’d slept? Forget about showering. Instead of coming into the conference room, Jennifer stood out in the hall, signaling Amanda over.

  Stepping out into the hallway, Amanda took the paper Jennifer offered. Her assistant didn’t have to explain its contents as Amanda’s eyes scanned the email. Despite the fact that she didn’t understand half the symbols on the paper, the Latin—the Latin— she did understand. Vindication and fury duked it out in her veins.

  Amanda walked back into the conference room as Devlin popped another cherry throat lozenge into his mouth. She could smell the bitter, medicinal smell from here. His tongue must be a bright red by now. Jennifer pointed to the time stamp on the email. Yesterday morning. Amanda went confront the CIA liaison, but Jennifer shook her head. Her assistant was right. Here was not the place.

  Instead, she walked up to Devlin. “Henderson’s office. Now.”

  “And why in the hell would I ever follow your—”

  She held up the paper long enough for his eyes to dilate. Amanda didn’t bother telling him to follow her second time. He fell in right behind her on the short walk over to Henderson’s office.

  Several officials sat in a semicircle around the director’s desk.

  “Sir, we need to speak,” Amanda stated. “Privately.”

  “Well, we were just going over the best way to quarantine those exposed but not yet symptomatic from—”

  “This is more important.”

  Henderson cocked his head, studying her face. What he really should have been looking at was her fists. Those were shaking in barely contained anger.

  “All right, then,” the director said, and then turned to the officials crowding his office. “Ladies and gentlemen, take a five-minute break.”

  Amanda moved out of the doorway as the scientists filed out of the office. She didn’t look any of them in the eye because they would all be asking the same question with their looks. “What could be more important than containing the spread of the plague?”

  Once everyone was out, Amanda stepped into the office, allowing Devlin to pass by her without giving him a swift kick to the shin. Jennifer shut the door behind them.

  “I think I had better sit down before you start,” Henderson said, landing hard in his leather chair.

  She passed the paper to him. As he scanned it, his frown became deeper and deeper. Finally, he looked up at Devlin. “This is your email?”

  “I do not know how she got hold of official, confidential—”


  “I asked,” Henderson interrupted, “if this truly came from your email account.”

  The man’s toe scuffing the floor like a busted third grader gave them their answer.

  Amanda turned on Devlin. “All this time, you hammered me about how preposterous my theories were, and here is the proof of them.”

  “Hold on, Dr. Rolf,” Henderson cautioned. “We have some kind of intercepted communication between individuals of an organization known as the Hidden Hand discussing how to best “protect” themselves from the plague. There is quite a bit of latitude interrupting such—”

  “Look at the time stamp of the original correspondence,” Amanda urged, waiting for Henderson’s pupils to dilate. “It is dated over a week ago. This Hidden Hand was discussing it at least several days before the start of the plague.”

  “Mr. Devlin? How would you like to explain the fact that the CIA had knowledge of a group discussing the Black Death along with a possible prophylaxis, and did not feel the need to share it with the division of the CDC tasked with fighting the plague?”

  Now it was Devlin’s turn to squirm.

  “It was on a need-to-know basis. My superiors didn’t think you needed to know.”

  Henderson rose from his desk, his fist slamming against the wood. “How about you assume that we do now?”

  The CIA liaison’s eyes darted to the door, but Jennifer strategically blocked his exit. “Like you said, especially with those unexplained symbols, there were numerous ways to interpret the communiqué.”

  Amanda wasn’t letting him off the hook so easily.

  “Who wrote this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who was it meant for?”

  Devlin looked away. “I. Don’t. Know.”

  “Then, why do you even have it?”

  This time, the CIA liaison locked eyes with her. “Why do you think?” His eyes scanned over to Henderson. “I was sent to see if any of you might be involved in the Hidden Hand.” Devlin turned to her. “Especially you.”

  “Me?” Amanda squeaked.

  * * *

  Quirk scooped rose petals into a small trash can. His burden never ceased. But before he could get truly riled, he cocked his head. Yep, the bathwater was still flowing. Ronnie could try to hide the sound of her crying, but Niagara Falls couldn’t drown out that sorrow.

  Moving on to the nightstand, Quirk almost threw out the motorized dildo, and then thought twice about it. It hadn’t been used. There was no point in wasting such a useful device. He tossed it into his suitcase, and then Quirk came across the infamous iPod. Such a little toy that had caused so much damage. That definitely could go into the trash, but before he could toss it, the thing chimed.

  “Unauthorized contact time. Override code being input.”

  Oh, no. Zach was definitely not going to get back into Ronnie’s life with a belated, lame excuse. Even before the bastard could load in the sequence, Quirk aborted the contact and typed in a little message for Mr. Loverboy.

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  * * *

  Zach watched the words roll across the screen. He didn’t blame Ronnie. She must be confused and very, very livid.

  Grant kept a wide berth from the iPod. “What does it say?”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Zach replied.

  Jorge went to his go-to response. A kidney punch.

  Fingers flying, Grant brought up pictures of plague victims. “These aren’t from the fourteenth century, Zach. These are victims in Italy. Now. Today.”

  The bodies were bloated and blotchy. Zach could only imagine how they smelled.

  “The U.S. might be lucky and have 10 percent of the population survive, but Mexico?” Grant said, his eyes sliding over to Jorge. “His people may speak Spanish, but their blood is that of the indigenous people of the Americas. A population that has never seen this bacteria before. A population that has very limited medical resources.”

  Jorge spoke through a clenched jaw. “A population that will die out completely unless you make that fucking call.”

  Zach looked at both men, and then at the screen. They could be playing him. But Zach did see that fax just before heading out to chase down Ronnie. And he knew that Europe had already seen hundreds of plague deaths. But were these two just leveraging that tragedy for their own endgame?

  “She is a hacker. What good is she against a bacterium?”

  Jorge’s hand went up to strike.

  “And so help me,” Zach growled. “If you hit me one more time…”

  The Mexican chuckled. “You will do what?”

  “Let you kill me,” Zach held his voice steady.

  Jorge looked like he was ready to do just that when Grant stepped between them.

  “This plague isn’t natural,” Grant explained.

  Zach’s eyes narrowed. What game was Grant playing?

  “Look, Langley can’t break this code, or at least not fast enough,” his ex-partner said. “We need the Robin Hood hacker to break the code so that we can determine how they are protecting themselves from this weaponized strain.”

  “Who is ‘they’?” Zach asked.

  “The Hidden Hand.”

  * * *

  “Any organization like this Hidden Hand that wanted to pull something of this caliber off,” Devlin continued, “would need some pretty heavy-duty backup. Scientists willing to do their bidding.”

  “Wait,” Amanda said, as her brain finally caught up with her mouth. “Back to me. Why investigate me?”

  Devlin frowned. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Amanda looked at Henderson, who shrugged. “Why don’t you enlighten us, Devlin?”

  “Too smart for her own damn good,” the CIA liaison began after clearing his throat. “She’s got a soft spot for the plague, plus, no family. No husband. No boyfriend. Not even a sexting partner. High student loan debt. I could go on all day. Dr. Rolph is a prime target for foreign agency recruitment.”

  Blinking back tears, Amanda tried to hold her reaction in. To think that because she had lost her parents early, sucked at dating, and decided to take a low-paying government job instead of a six-figure pharmaceutical deal, she somehow was suspect. She looked at Jennifer, who oozed sympathy. The grad student was in about the same boat as Amanda.

  “Well, Dr. Rolph, did you help to create this weaponized form of the plague?” Dr. Henderson asked.

  “No,” Amanda said through clenched teeth.

  “All right, then,” the director said, turning back to Devlin. “I take it that you don’t have any proof of anyone here being involved, or I can only assume the DHS guards would have swooped down on them.”

  The CIA liaison looked at the floor. “Not yet.”

  “So, isn’t the more important question,” Amanda stated, “ ‘what is the CIA doing to find this source of ‘protection?’ ”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dr. Henderson glared at Devlin. “We are in the thick of it, son. If you know anything, just tell us.”

  Amanda watched as the CIA liaison popped another throat lozenge in while he shook his head from side to side. Finally he cleared his throat.

  “I really don’t know,” he said. “How they were going to decode the full message was a ‘need to know’ that clearly I didn’t need to know.”

  As much as she wanted to believe that Devlin was holding out on them, his hunched, puppy-dog posture indicated that he wasn’t. He looked more embarrassed that he wasn’t high enough up on the food chain to know the details.

  Perhaps they couldn’t control things out in the world, but they certainly could control things within the facility.

  “We’ve got to start acting like there is a viable vaccine out there,” Amanda said.

  Henderson shook his head. “I don’t want to start a riot of speculation. We need everyone to stay focused on their tasks.”

  “Fine then, just the four of us,” Amanda countered. “But we’ve got to trust that the CIA is going to find the vaccine and
bring it to us for mass production.”

  The director sat at his desk.

  Jennifer nudged her from behind. Ugh. She’d already gone out so far out on a limb that she feared it would crack under her.

  “This is why they accelerated the bacterium’s virulence,” Amanda explained. “They needed to infect as many people as possible before we could develop any of our own ‘protection.’ Our only hope is to take a successful vaccine and multiply it.”

  She took a step closer to the desk. Why she had to be all assertive, Amanda didn’t know, but she did know this bacterium. She did know what was going to happen to the world’s population if they didn’t act decisively.

  “We’ve got to be prepared.”

  Henderson finally nodded. “Quietly, though. Get the techs down in the wet lab prepping for a modified live vaccine. Let everyone think that we’re just gearing up for a run of our own.”

  Amanda took a deep breath—the first she had really taken since the first confirmed case of bubonic plague came from Europe. At least they had a name for who created the plague—The Hidden Hand. They also knew why and how the Hidden Hand hoped to accomplish the most egregious use of biowarfare that man had ever seen.

  Now they only had to somehow stop it—the most virulent, antibiotic-resistant menace to mankind.

  Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have taken that deep breath just yet.

  Especially not as Jennifer and Devlin coughed at the same time. She turned to her grad student, who tried to wave her off, but Amanda persisted. Reaching out, she put the back of her hand to Jennifer’s forehead. The skin burned.

  Amanda snatched her hand back. “How long?”

  Jennifer wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “What’s wrong?” Henderson asked.

  She turned to Devlin. “And you?”

  “And me, what?” the CIA liaison shot back.

  Ignoring his rudeness, she felt his cheek. It was on fire. “How long have you had a fever?”

  “I feel kind of crummy,” Devlin said, his eyes darting from person to person. “But I’m fine.”