Page 68 of Midnight Secrets

Of course not. The CIA was full of liars and cheats—that was their bread and butter. But traitors? No.

“Yes,”the voice answered and Joe looked at Senior, Metal and Jacko in turn. They all looked grim.

Joe’s hands were balled into fists. “Who?” Who in the CIA could turn traitor like this? “Not the entire agency, obviously. How many people do you think are involved? And can’t they be reported?”

“I don’t know how many people are involved. Probably not many, four or five I think. But they are strategically placed. And those who ask questions of the wrong guys end up dead.”

A shudder went through Joe. He glanced at the corner where Isabel and Lauren were working hard on the image she saw in her nightmares. “No one is touching Isabel.”

“No. Keep her alive.”

Fuck yeah, he was keeping Isabel alive.

Nick shouldered Joe aside. “If any American citizens were involved in the Massacre, they’re going down. Whoever is involved is guilty of high treason.”

“And mass murder.”

Joe was a warrior. He’d been in battle. He’d killed. But he had never encountered anything like this before.From his own countrymen. It was hard to wrap his head around this. Afghani warlords behaved like this, not members of the US government.

“Why?” His voice came out hoarse but no one seemed to notice. He felt rattled like never before. He knew the crazies out there. He’d fought them far away from the homeland never thinking that pure random evil on that scale could happen here.

“Money, for one,” the metallic voice answered.

So—not pure random evil. This was worse.

“As Felicity said, those three trillion dollars went somewhere. Check what I’m sending.”

On Joe’s laptop files started appearing, data streams flowing vertically like something out ofThe Matrix.

“Stop,” Felicity said, typing furiously. She picked up her laptop and showed her monitor to Joe’s monitor. For a second it was like SkyNet had taken over the world and the monitors were talking to each other. “Send the info here. I’m showing you the IP. Joe’s computer can’t handle the data, mine can.”

The men in the room looked at Joe to see if he’d taken offense. He hadn’t. It wasn’t like Felicity was challenging his manhood or his dick size. And anyway, herswasbigger than his.

The data stopped immediately on Joe’s monitor and after a few seconds began flowing into Felicity’s computer. It flowed like a curtain and as Felicity did her thing, the data started morphing into different patterns, sliding, forming shapes then flowing apart.

After ten minutes. Felicity froze her screen and lifted her fingers from the keyboard.

“Okay,” she said. “Ex-CIA guy, are you still with us?”

“Oh yeah,”the metallic voice answered.

Felicity shot them all a glance. “You guys ready for this?”

Isabel and Lauren were lost in their world in the corner but Joe’s guys were all ready and waiting.

Felicity drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “So those three trillion dollars fled the country. And as you all would have noticed if this weren’t such an incredibly well-run company—” she shot a quick glance at the Senior, “you’d know how impoverished this country is now. Or perhaps you know it already. We had just begun climbing out of the post-2025 hole when the Massacre struck. Since the Massacre we’ve lost over two million jobs, unemployment is at its highest level since the Depression and the stock market has lost two thousand points. It’s like the Massacre sucked out the economic backbone of the country, besides scaring the shit out of everybody. The darknet hasn’t managed to actually trace the money that was lost, but this information is new.

“These tables—” she gestured to her monitor, “courtesy of a former hedge fund manager via ex-CIA guy, show sudden spikes in income and asset creation of a number of offshore funds and tax haven banks. Ordinarily it would be impossible to figure out who the people behind those funds and banks are but we have a treasure trove of info in these charts. I had to data-dive and do some massive number crunching to start to understand who profited from the Massacre but we have some preliminary results.”

Everyone leaned forward. Joe was sure that Metal Voice was leaning forward, too.

Felicity gave a dramatic pause.

“Well?” Joe nudged her shoulder. Ordinarily Metal wouldn’t let him get away with that, nor would any of the other ASI guys because Felicity was untouchable, but they were burning to know, too.

“This doesn’t make me happy,” Felicity said. “Usually when I crack a difficult database the sheer challenge is enough to make me smile, but this doesn’t make me smile at all. Not when you think how many people died in the Massacre. Not when you think how many people have lost their homes, their businesses, their jobs. How many people’s lives have been ruined.”

Metal put his hand on her shoulder and she reached up to put her pretty hand over his, never taking her eyes from the monitor.

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