Page 66 of Midnight Secrets

Joe sat down at his laptop. Felicity scooted over in her office chair, pulling her laptop along. They were sitting side by side.

Hello,Joe typed.

Let’s talk.

Joe looked around. Felicity was calm. The guys all leaned in.

Okay, he answered.

“Hello, Joe.” A metallic affectless synthesized voice came from his speakers. Joe was familiar with the software. It washed out all identifying traits, including gender.

“Hi.” He kept his voice neutral.

“So, introduce me to your friends.”

Joe could feel his eyebrows climbing up. Felicity leaned forward. “If you’ve got eyes on us, we should have eyes on you. Switch on your camera.”

A metallic laugh. “Nice try. Maybe later. Not quite yet.”

“You have us at a disadvantage,” Joe said evenly. “But I’ll introduce everyone anyway. Felicity Ward is our computer expert. The guy to your left is Douglas Kowalski, then Sean O’Brien and Morton Jackman.”

Jacko grimaced at hearing his real name.

“And the man on the right is Special Agent Nick Mancino, FBI. HRT. You asked to have him here and here he is.”

“Special Agent Mancino. Nice to meet you. You any good with a computer?”

“I’m okay,” Nick said evenly. He pointed to Felicity. “But we’ve got a genius here.”

Felicity’s face didn’t change. She was a genius with a computer and she knew it.

“Mind letting us know what this is about?” Joe was getting impatient. “This is about the Massacre, isn’t it?”

“What do you know about the Massacre?”

“I was in a coma when it happened. Battle injury, got on the wrong side of an IED. So I’ll let Nick answer that. FBI were among the first responders.”

“So, Special Agent. What do you know about the Massacre?”

Nick wasn’t fazed. “Alex Delvaux was expected to announce his run for the presidency at around 7:30 p.m. at the Burrard Hotel. They were running a little late. There were about eight hundred people in the room and behind the scenes. The Delvaux family itself, the extended family. Friends of the Delvauxs. A lot of the party higher-ups because Delvaux was the party’s leading light. And party activists. There were about a hundred and fifty members of the press who had received accreditation, but estimates are that there were also about fifty unaccredited bloggers who were allowed in. And then general supporters of the Delvaux campaign.

“The room was fifteen thousand square feet and it was packed. There was going to be a buffet reception later and there were a hundred and seventy people who were either part of the kitchen staff or waitstaff. A deejay who was on a podium at the end of the room. And ten armed guards. There were no Secret Service special agents since Delvaux hadn’t actually declared his run yet. As of the next day, Secret Service protection would have begun.”

“So if something were to happen it had to happen that night.”

Nick met Joe’s eyes then turned to the monitor as if it was a face. “Yeah. I guess you could say that. I mean the security that night was good but not Secret Service level.”

“No. What next?”

“At 7:20 the lights went. At 7:21 cell phone coverage stopped. All cell phone coverage died. Everyone taking pictures, everyone Instagramming, uploading videos to YouTube—it all stopped at 7:21. All internet coverage stopped too.”

Felicity stirred. “It was a powerful jammer.”

“Yeah,” Nick said.

“Not just the cells,”the metallic voice said from the monitor. “Power, the power backups, elevators, security vidcams, all switched off. All over the city, too.”

“Yeah, the power going out all over DC was crazy,” said Nick. “It was all crazy. We were part of the rescue team that night after it was clear that it was a terrorist attack. We thought there would be hostages but there weren’t. It was just wholesale slaughter.” Nick clenched his fists. He’d been there that night, seen the carnage. For Joe it was all secondhand information, acquired after he’d woken up. No one had actually given him an overall recounting of the event and the first month after he’d woken up he’d been in pain and weak. The outside world had retreated to a far-off signal for him. And Isabel had no memory of it at all.

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