Page 60 of Dirty Love

dirty deeds

—twenty-seven—

Wilson

present day, again

Washington

February

I’ve routed the live feeds from the Tabard Inn to our conference room. Tag is in charge of picking which mic we listen to the audio from, because I’m recording them all separately so it doesn’t matter, and my bots will flag us if anything interesting is said anywhere in the building.

They’ll also flag me privately if Tabitha’s name comes up anywhere, for any reason.

I don’t expect it to, but after the last month, it’s been on my mind that Spencer Rook might have opinions about his sister-in-law.

He’s never spoken about her in his online screeds. And in the conversations we’ve had since Christmas about Grant, when I’ve carefully led her toward his family, she’s never mentioned his brother contacting her. She knows I know more about Grant than I’m telling her. But as far as I know, she doesn’t know about his family’s politics. It’s not like his brother is a household name—yet.

This isn’t where my head should be. I need to be thinking about work, not my personal vendetta, but the fight is in five days and everything is sliding into place. I’m losing my ability to separate the two, and my partners still don’t know about Tabitha.

Jason comes in carrying two extra-large pizza boxes. “Is it game time yet?”

“Not funny,” Cole mutters, his eyes on the screen. One of the local PRISM principals is his estranged mother-in-law, an heiress with an ambiguous sense of right-and-wrong and a generous purse for destabilizing forces. He expects her to show up tonight, and the fact Spencer Rook is there takes that to a whole different level.

Like his extended family getting tangled up in the America First white supremacy movement.

Amelia Dashford Reid probably isn’t racist, but she’s probably not anti-racist, either.

How she managed to spawn Hailey is beyond all of us but we’re all better for knowing her daughter. Too bad the same cannot be said for Mrs. Dashford Reid herself.

Jason takes the seat next to me. “Everything working as you expect?”

I nod. “We’ve got good coverage. A couple of visual dark spots, but the audio pick-up is excellent. I love the new microcontrollers I found, they’re—”

“Got it. Contain your gadget lust.”

“You asked.”

“And you answered more than sufficiently. Any sign of anyone else listening in?”

“Nobody’s planted anything since I did. I don’t know about before that, but you said the rooms were scrubbed yesterday morning?”

“Yeah.”

“And nobody else knows about the meeting.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, it’s not like it matters. We’ll share it through the usual channels if there’s anything interesting.” There was so much information being poured into the dark web, it would be a miracle if anyone noticed or cared.

Most hackers think Rook is a joke.

But they take PRISM seriously, as they should. If this is in fact a meeting of minds that leads to a new partnership, that will be an explosive bombshell.

It’ll give Rook an underground legitimacy he’s been craving, and PRISM instant access to an angry network of home-grown vigilantes.

I didn’t bother to try and pick up Rook’s public conversation taking place downstairs in the bar, but I did leave a camera down there to get a visual. There’s a Washington Post reporter five feet away. If he says anything unexpected, it’ll be reported.

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