Anew: Awakened Part 26

There are even more children than I thought, and more families. As engaged as I am in people watching, I can't help but notice that I'm coming in for my own share of curious looks.

Whether because I'm with Gab or because news of my arrival at Pinnacle House has already spread, people seem curious about me. Their glances aren't offensive or threatening in any way. On the contrary, they just seem to have a friendly interest in the woman Ian has brought into his domain.

The guilt I feel at the possibility that they could suffer because of me quickly ratchets up even further.

"I've worked for Ian for five years," Gab says. She's watching me carefully. I have the impression that she doesn't miss much.

"There's no one I respect more," she goes on. "He's smart, tough, and absolutely reliable, or at least he always was. But right now something's wrong. First, he goes off for ten days on personal business, unheard of for him. When he comes back, he's definitely not happy. Until suddenly he is, only then he isn't again. A guy who's normally rock steady has turned into a friggin' emotional roller coaster. I think you're the reason why."

She pauses, giving me an opening to deny that. When I fail to take it, she shrugs and goes on.

"He's never brought a woman to Pinnacle House before. Now you're here but he's keeping his distance, having me show you around and make sure that you're comfortable instead of doing that himself. Whatever's going on between the two of you, something isn't hunky-dory."

At the thought of all that isn't right between Ian and me, my throat tightens. I have to press my lips together to hold back the short, hard sob that wells up without warning.

Gab groans. "s.h.i.t, you're not going to cry, are you?"

My head jerks up. I blink fast to hide the tears that threaten. "Of course not! What do you take me for?"

Her tone softens. "You kind of remind me of Daphne."

"Who's she?"

"The love of my life."

I can't hide my wistfulness. "You're lucky to have someone like that. Does she know?"

"Know what?"

"How you feel about her?"

"Of course she does. Why would I let her go around not--"

She breaks off and stares at me. "That's how it is? You're in love with him but you're not sure how he feels?"

The question comes as a shock. I know nothing of love, having never experienced it. I don't even know if I'm capable of so profound and mysterious an emotion. The thought that I might not be fills me with sadness.

"There's nothing like that between us." I say quickly. "We're just..." What exactly? Our relationship hardly fits any of the usual categories. Lamely, I pick one. "Friends."

Gab looks amused. "Oh, okay. Since you two are 'friends', you shouldn't have any trouble figuring out what's bothering Ian and fixing it."

My face heats. "I wish that were the case but the fact is I don't know all that much about him and I'm afraid that I understand even less."

She hesitates and I have to a.s.sume that she's wondering how the only woman Ian has ever brought to Pinnacle House can be so ignorant about him.

Finally, she says, "What do you want to know?"

Her offer convinces me that I've found another person who truly cares about Ian. That emboldens me.

"Anything you can tell me, please."

She knocks back the last of her espresso, stares at me for a moment, and says, "He's a Patriots fan, don't ask me why. He makes great chili. He plays lethal handball, likes kickboxing, and has one of the highest kill shot ratings ever recorded. He's brilliant, holds several hundred patents, and has a bunch of honorary degrees."

Her gaze darkens. "He hated his father. He's extremely protective of women. What else do you want to know?"

So much that I have no idea where to begin. I'm tempted to ask her about the women in his life besides Susannah but I know that would be overstepping.

"What about his enemies?" I know beyond any doubt that they must exist. "Who are they?"

Gab hesitates. "I can reel off names for you, men and women who hold high office and who hate his guts. But most of them aren't much more than puppets. The real danger lies with those who work behind the scenes, pulling the strings. They're unchecked and unaccountable to anyone."

A possibility occurs to me. "Is Charles Davos one of them?"

She shoots me a hard, fast look. "Did Ian tell you that?"

"No, he's hardly told me anything. But I've met Davos." I shudder at the memory. "There's something off about him."

"You think? The guy's a snake. And he's not alone. Ian's been working to find out who the others are. Or at least he was until this HPF thing came along."

She catches herself, as though she's said too much but I hardly notice. I'm too busy swallowing the fear and guilt that come with the confirmation of my suspicions.

"Do you know when Ian is planning to act?" I ask faintly.

"Not yet. The situation is still being a.s.sessed. But it's going to be soon and if he's in less than full control of himself--"

I think again of his behavior on the polo field when his explosive aggressiveness and disregard for his own safety placed him and others at risk. In a confrontation with the forces of the HPF, the consequences could be far worse.

My own concerns seem petty by comparison. I put them aside without a second thought.

"What can I do?" I ask.

"You're not going to talk him out of what he's planning," she warns. "The best you can hope for is to make sure he's focused. To do that--" She looks at me shrewdly. "How far are you willing to go?"

My throat is so tight that it hurts to speak. But that pain is meaningless compared to the dark fear in the pit of my stomach.

"As far as I have to. If he were harmed because of me--" I break off, unable to continue. Every other consideration, including the need to make my own choices and live my own life, pales into insignificance.

A flash of compa.s.sion darts across Gab's face. Quietly, she says, "Then figure out what the problem is between you two and fix it. Whatever that takes."

Chapter Twenty-six.

Ian "The building was vaporized," Hollis says. "There's nothing left but a hole in the ground. The authorities are running around like chickens with their heads cut off but our guys are getting the job done. They're doing soil a.n.a.lyses to identify the explosives. Meanwhile we've got people fanning out, looking for anyone a.s.sociated with the Inst.i.tute who's still alive."

"Did they find anyone yet?" I ask.

We're on the operations floor, always busy but now with the quickening tempo that indicates a mission is imminent. Data flows across the walls of screens, a.s.sembling and rea.s.sembling itself into patterns.

Operators are moving images, matching voice prints, putting together what amounts to a four-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, three in the physical s.p.a.ce that the Inst.i.tute occupied and the surrounding area, the fourth as a timeline, which is racing by frustratingly fast given how little we know yet.

For all that I can appreciate a good laser weapon or a drone-mounted canon, the fact remains that information is the ultimate power. Ordinarily, I'd be totally focused on putting it together but there's no point lying to myself. Amelia's nearness has blown my concentration to h.e.l.l.

After the Rolls, I was determined to stay away from her for both our sakes but circ.u.mstances have made that impossible. I've never believed in fate but I do have a healthy respect for sheer dumb luck. I've seen too many battles--and lives--turn on it. These days, it's definitely not working in my favor.

Reminding myself that nothing matters more than her safety, I take a breath and give Hollis my undivided attention.

"No," he says, "and they probably won't. The place went up right after 9:00 am local time, which means everyone who worked there would have been on site. The only chance is if someone was traveling or out sick."

I nod. "Our people need to talk to the families before the authorities get to them."

Down in the bowels of the political-media-bureaucratic complex, clever gnomes will be crafting a story to explain the explosion in terms that will rea.s.sure the public. Once that's done, no one will be allowed to deviate from it.

"I'm betting they'll go with gas," Hollis says.

Clearly, he's been thinking along the same lines that I have. Accidental gas explosions are a favorite cover for all sorts of non-accidental events. But not this time.

"They'll have a problem with that," I say. "The Presidio complex gets its power from its own fusion reactor. It was one of the first installed after they were authorized for commercial use. There was a lot of publicity about it."

"Then they'll pin it on one of the staff," Hollis says. "Make him or her out to be a suicidal nut job, tragic event, blah, blah, move on, nothing to see. End of story."

My eyes are on the big board as I listen. The type of explosives present in the crater have been identified along with a handful of fragments found near the site of the detonation. Holographic images of them flash on the screens.

"Looks like there was some sort of failsafe device," I say.

All the evidence points to it having been activated, which can only mean one thing. The HPF f.u.c.kers didn't just intend to destroy the Inst.i.tute. First, they tried to raid the data files, only to encounter an electronic tripwire intended to stop data loss at all costs, including human lives. An extreme measure for any place to use but not a complete surprise given the value of the replica technology and the controversy that surrounds it.

The question is whether they managed to get any of what they were looking for--especially anything that could allow them to identify a specific replica--and transmit that information to a.s.sociates off site before they went up in smoke.

This complicates things. Badly. I hoped for a quick, straightforward mission, the kind that can be kept under the radar. Cut the head off the HPF snake and the body will die on its own. Brutal but effective. That's not in the cards anymore. Instead, it's going to be a whole lot messier.

Without taking my eyes from the board, I say, "We'll need the HPF leadership alive."

I'm confident that they still are. The privilege of having one's body parts smeared across a bomb site is reserved for the poor saps a whole lot further down the terrorist food chain. If data was transmitted, the top guys will have it. More importantly, they can be persuaded to tell us who they've shared it with beyond the HPF.

I can be very persuasive when I need to be.

Information continues to sputter in, most of it not particularly useful but all slowly adding to our understanding of what happened.

"No one was off site," Hollis says when that's been confirmed. "All one hundred and twenty-seven employees were at work. Our operatives have made contact with about eighty percent of the families and should have the rest interviewed within a few hours."

The faces of those employees are flashing on the screens above me. Men and women in about equal numbers, most on the young side. Smart people who beat the odds and found meaningful, well-paid work and put good lives together for themselves.

Until whatever future they imagined they had was ripped away so fast that their brains probably had no chance to even register what was happening. One moment they existed, the next they were gone in a roar of heat and a flash of incandescent light. I've seen worse ways to go--far worse--but that still sucks.

Under other circ.u.mstances, I'd respect that those who have lost loved ones need time and s.p.a.ce to grieve. But that won't work here. While they're still stunned by the news, before they've begun to process what's happened, that's when they're most likely to give up something useful.

"Keep at the relatives," I say. "Whatever they know, we need to know."

The results stream in real time across the screens. Mostly, my people are getting the usual. So-and-so was a great guy/gal, no enemies, so much potential, how could such a terrible thing have happened, and so on.

Usually, I have no trouble concentrating on operations data no matter how repet.i.tious or predictable some of it may be. But now that I know where we're heading, my thoughts keep turning to Amelia--her strength and courage, the generosity of her spirit, her pa.s.sion, her trust. I can't get her out of my mind.

With hindsight, I should have run like h.e.l.l the moment I learned that she existed. Instead, I let myself forget what I'm capable of. What I am.

I suck in my breath as a bolt of hollow pain stabs through me. Before it can fade, Hollis says, "Here we go."

New information is flashing on the center screen, the one to which everything of actionable importance is routed. The image of a white-haired woman with a worn face that testifies to the battle life has become for so many people appears. She's the mother of a technician killed in the explosion.

I can only guess at the sacrifices she made to get her son the education and the opportunity to climb as high as he did. With dignity that I have to admire, she reveals that he ran up a s.h.i.t pile of gambling debt in recent months playing at local casinos. He was worried sick about it until a few days before, when he cheered up suddenly.

Hollis grins, or at least he shows his teeth which for him is pretty much the same thing. "Touchdown," he says.

I nod. This is what we've been waiting for. Somebody got the HPF a.s.sholes into the Inst.i.tute and the odds are good that it was the technician. Now we've just got to figure out how they met up with him in the first place.

"Start with the casinos," I say. "I want social networks of every employee and anyone else linked to those locations pa.r.s.ed down to the smallest detail. Somewhere in all that is somebody with a connection to the HPF."

"It'll take awhile," he cautions.

"Just so long as we get the answer before anyone else does."

It's only a matter of time now. The techniques for plotting social networks to expose terrorist connections were pioneered toward the end of the twentieth century, primarily during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've been constantly refined ever since.

The quantum computers I have at my disposal will already be crunching through virtually infinite amounts of data to make sense of it in a way that would take humans months or longer. But in the end it will come down to our intuition, our grasp of which results have real significance, and our willingness to act.

I step aside to call Edward with an update. The fact that he offered no pushback when I told him that I was taking Amelia to Pinnacle House racked up a lot of points in his favor.

He adds a few more when he says, "I want to be there when you question those HPF f.u.c.kers. We find out where they've been getting their money, it will lead us to whoever's really behind all this, no matter how cleverly they think they've covered their tracks."

"Fair enough." Ordinarily, I'd never include anyone from outside but I know Edward. He won't like what has to happen anymore than I will but he won't lose any sleep over it either.

When I get off the link, Hollis says, "It'll be several hours at least before we're operational." He drops his voice a notch. "Whatever's riding you, now's the time to put it to rest."

I hesitate but there's no point denying what we both know is true. My head is not where it needs to be. That has to change and fast.

A big part of me knows that I should just keep my distance from Amelia. But there will be all too much time for that once the HPF is no longer a danger to her. Before then, I don't want her last memory to be of my threatening her yet again and making her feel like a prisoner.

The plain, sobering truth is that I don't want her to think badly of me after everything is said and done, and I'm no longer in her life. On a slightly better note, I need for her to know that she truly is safe and that she's going to stay that way.

I tell myself that if I can accomplish that much, I'll be able to let the rest go.

I'm not a total dumba.s.s; on some level I know that's a crock. But I don't let that stop me. When a man is as intent on making a fool of himself as I am, nothing better get in his way.