Page 51 of Midnight Secrets

Can’t be bought off?

Whoa. Joe sat still. After a moment, he typed:

No. And neither can I.

A couple of minutes passed. None of them spoke. Whoever was at the other end had his own agenda. Joe had no idea whether he was a good guy or a bad guy. All he could do was wait and gather more intel.

Finally, words appeared on the screen.

Good. Call Nick and tell him to meet you in Portland.

Fuck this. Joe’s answer was swift.

Why should I?

And the answer, when it came, was like a punch to the stomach.

The Washington Massacre was homegrown terrorism, directed by someone in the CIA. Our guys. They are going to strike again. We need to stop them.

“Fuck,” Joe breathed.

“Can I talk to Felicity?” Metal asked. “She’s got a higher clearance than any of us have anyway.”

Felicity had done work for the FBI before joining ASI. And Felicity was of Russian blood and had grown up in the WITSEC program. She knew how to keep secrets.

“Yeah, man. Absolutely. We need all the help we can get.”

This was serious stuff. If the Washington Massacre had really been carried out by CIA guys, and Isabel was one of the very few survivors, then she was an eyewitness to one of the greatest crimes in the country’s history. And a real threat to the perpetrators. She didn’t remember anything but memories were notoriously unstable.

Was there an immediate threat to her? Because that was the point of the first message from Mystery Man. PROTECT ISABEL. Had this guy been tipped off somehow that the Massacre wasn’t carried out by jihadists?

Because, if the Massacre was organized by the CIA they were all in real trouble. Joe found it hard to believe it, but he knew that rogue elements existed everywhere. If there was a rogue team within the CIA’s Clandestine Service, the country was in a shitload of trouble, because the Clandestine Service operated almost without oversight.

And they had sneak and peek powers jihadists didn’t have.

“From now on we operate under opsec,” Joe said.

Metal and Jacko nodded.

If this was a conspiracy run by people with access to NSA and Homeland Security assets, every word they spoke on the phone, every email they sent, could be tracked.

“Metal, buy us some burner phones. If this thing is true and it goes to the top, we need to be untraceable.”

“Uh, Joe?”

“Yeah?”

Metal was looking uncomfortable.

“Felicity has, um, about two hundred untraceable burners, and they all have military-grade encryption and voice alteration software.”

“Wow. I don’t dare ask how she got them.”

“Birthday present. From a hacker friend she, um, helped.”

Joe did not want to know what Felicity did to help the hacker friend. He was just grateful that she’d done it and that they had access to those phones. “Great. I’ll make sure Isabel has one too.”

“Isabel…” Jacko said.

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