it was broken. She was panting and shaking as she crashed back down from the extreme high of her adrenaline rush.
The white van was gone. It would have blocked her getaway from her end of the alley if it was still here. Maybe the wheelman figured the leaper was gone too long and abandoned him. Maybe Husky had lied and CIA decided to wait until she left the parking lot before they attempted another interception.
The better scenario had the white van freaked and gone, and the CIA arriving to see what was going on and staying to do a mop-up, giving her time to put some distance between her and them. Maybe they’d ID the roof jumper, trace him back and discover…what? That a genetically enhanced woman named Echo was after a memory stick?
A memory stick the CIA would love to possess themselves? Did Oracle really want them to know that?
I can’t trust anyone.
She grabbed the nearest phone out of her briefcase— cheetah print—and dialed Selena.
“Allison,” she said, “God, are you all right?”
“The van,” Allison replied. Her voice was ragged and muffled, as if she had a head cold. She pulled around the corner of the bar and straightened out, glancing in the rearview mirror to see if her luck was still holding.
“Nothing on the plates. Allison, you sound—”
Without warning, a red pickup truck backed out of a parking space in front of Jade’s Bar. Allison hit the brakes but it was too late. Metal squealed on metal as she hit the rear wheel well. Her air bag did not deploy, but she was jerked, hard. Pain shot from the center of her nose and radiated like electric wires all over her face.
“Damn it, damn!” she yelled.
She backed up and swerved around it, flooring it out of there. She looked in her rearview mirror, to see a man run out of the bar. He was joined by another man, taller, wearing a ball cap, racing toward her in the rain, waving his arms over his head.
“Allison?” Selena shouted.
Allison gritted her teeth and kept driving straight, noting no fishtailing, no swerving. That meant she was still in alignment. Despite the impact, her car was in better shape than she was.
“Selena, you need to do something for me,” she said. Then she hesitated. No one else in the world knew where that flash drive was. No one, except, perhaps Echo.
If I get picked up—or killed, God knows what will happen to that flash drive next.
“There’s a storage facility.” She grabbed more tissues and pressed them beneath her nose. It hurt like hell. “I’ve got it wired and you’ll need the code to get in. It’s on the mainframe, in a file labeled with the nickname of my favorite horse back at Athena Academy. You know that name. You’ll need it to decrypt a disarming protocol. Don’t try to go into the storage facility until you’re absolutely sure of that protocol.” Because you will die.
“Roger.”
“There’s a paint can in the library where you are now. It’s a duplicate of one in the facility. Both are labeled with the color of my eyes. Take the one from the library to the storage facility and exchange it for the one you find there. When you get to the facility, disarm the alarm system. The protocol will also initiate a pre-recorded visual feed of the storage unit for the caretaker and anyone else who’s watching. It will mask your entry, the swap and your exit.”
“Understood.” Everything Allison had described was SOP for covert ops, so no surprises yet for Selena.
“Once you retrieve the can, don’t open it. Repeat, do not open. Box it up and ship it to Drop Point Alpha.”
Allison was referring to their post office box in Athens. As bizarre as it sounded, the more out in the open they were about receiving their supplies, the less likely the bad guys would be able to locate and intercept them.
“Drop Point Alpha, Roger that. Is the can wired to explode?”
“Not by me,” Allison said. “But I don’t know if the contents are wired. Use extreme caution. Don’t hold onto it, Selena. Get rid of it asap.”
“Roger that,” Selena said.
“Call my cell phone when you’ve done it.”
“Will do,” Selena replied. “Are you hurt? Do you want me to meet you somewhere?”
“No,” Allison said firmly. “Do exactly what I just told you. Do it like the world will explode if you don’t do it.”
“Are you coming in?” Selena asked her.
“No. I’m going deep. I’m going to have to ask more of you to put Oracle first. Anyone who can make special arrangements to free up their time should do it. Spread the word.”
Selena was quiet for a moment. “Understood.”
“I’ll be in touch.” Delphi disconnected and raced through the dark, sharp wind.
Chapter 5
The rain was almost hail, ricocheting off Morgan’s windshield as he left NSA headquarters in his black Lexus. His tie unloosened, his suit jacket laying over his briefcase, he merged onto the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, planning to drive straight to Allison’s town house. There was something about that recording McDonough had showed him that bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
Shortly after he entered the flow of traffic, he intercepted a Maryland State Police dispatch call: hit-andrun and a possibly connected B&E concerning a parts store across an alley from a strip mall bar called Jade’s. Dark sedan, possibly a Lexus or Camry, Virginia plates, numbers not caught. Suspect may be female with brown hair.
He narrowed his eyes as he glided through the traffic like a shark. Could that have been Allison?
The only thing Morgan had to go on was the proximity of the incident to Fort Meade. That and the sixth sense he sometimes had about these things. Still, he wavered as he pulled up the GPS coordinates for Jade’s Bar on his handheld. What if it had nothing to do with her? What if she was at her town house right now, throwing a few fake passports in a bag and shredding incriminating evidence?
Sometimes he used a team when he was on a mission, and he thought now about making a few calls. He could go to the Jade location and someone else could go to Allison’s home. Another someone else could ask some questions at Athena Academy in Arizona. And a fourth teammate could scare the crap out of Valenti until she gave up her friend.
His people were good at coordinating their efforts, but he was moving awfully fast. He’d have to bring them up to speed and he wasn’t sure he could spare the time. For the moment he had the element of surprise on his side. If Allison was looking over her shoulder, she would never dream of seeing him in her rearview mirror. As far as she knew, he was a codebreaker and nothing more. If one of his guys inadvertently tipped Allison off—if, say, she spotted a tail—and he lost her as a result, she would be a whole lot more difficult to find.
But he would find her. It just might take more time.
Better to travel light for the moment. It was just Morgan versus Allison, and he knew
