Chapter 10 #2
Damnit! That feeling was back. That regret mixed with nostalgia that came with too many what-ifs and if-onlys.
He changed the subject again. “So, tell me how ya came up with this brilliant plan of yours?”
She wrinkled her nose—habit, clearly—and he distracted himself from being too charmed by the move by taking a bite of his sandwich.
“Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched.” She shook her head. “It’s only brilliant if your friends can pull it off.”
“Concept’s solid regardless,” he contradicted around a mouthful of bread and meat.
“It is, isn’t it?” She grinned, clearly proud of herself.
Then she waved a breezy hand. “It’s simple, really.
A bunch of day-to-day stuff crosses the chief of staff’s desk.
By proxy, it crosses my desk. And when I overheard Eliza talking to her dad this morning about needing cash fast, I remembered seeing a memo about how the Federal Reserve Bank here in Chicago was slated to destroy a bunch of old one-hundred-dollar bills at the end of the month.
Figured with BKI’s contacts, you all might be able to get your hands on those bills before they went into the paper shredder. ”
She was right about their contacts. They had more than their fair share. Even still, they’d had to call in enough favors to make a politician blush.
Boss had rung up Lawrence P. Washington, the former police chief, with the ask.
Washington had called up an old prosecutor friend and that guy had given BKI the name of a justice willing to sign off on a warrant granting permission for two local FBI agents to “temporarily use” ten million in scrap-bound bills.
And only after all that had been squared away had Grace and Julia scurried out the door on a mission to pick up the warrant and take it to the Federal Reserve.
Fingers crossed, they would return home soon with bags chock-full of bills bound for the burn pile.
“And instead of callin’, you flew here because…?” He let the question dangle.
“I wanted to call. Told the chief of staff we should call to give you guys plenty of time to get the ball rolling. But he’s paranoid.
He said he didn’t want me using the phone.
Didn’t want any breadcrumbs to lead back to him or the president if this thing you all are dealing with suddenly goes sideways.
So, my options were a homing pigeon or a Boeing 747. I figured the latter might be faster.”
Smart, pretty, and funny?
Lura Dougherty was an embarrassment of riches.
“How’d you end up workin’ for Meadows anyways?” he asked around another bite of roast beef, ignoring Peanut, who was back to begging by doing figure eights around his calves.
“Little bit of luck and a little bit of being dumb enough to take the job no one else wanted.”
When he cocked his head, she continued. “After college, my dad pulled some strings and got me an internship in the West Wing. I worked my way through the secretary pool, and when Meadows’s office manager passed—she was eighty-six, god love her—my name was put forward as her replacement.
I jumped at the chance to take such a prestigious position. ” She made a face. “More fool me.”
Graham nodded in understanding. “Leonard Meadows has got more quirks than a porcupine’s got prickles.”
Her grim smile said she didn’t disagree.
“What about you?” she asked with a curious cant of her chin. “Everyone thought you’d go on to play college ball. Then you just…disappeared.”
His half-eaten sandwich suddenly felt like it weighed twenty pounds. He stared at it briefly, then set it back on his plate.
He hoped she couldn’t hear the rawness of his voice when he admitted, “After Mom died, football felt…meaningless. She’d been the one who signed me up for peewee.
The one who drove me to the weight room on the weekends and waited in the car for me to finish gettin’ my reps in.
She was always there on the sidelines…until she wasn’t.
Until she got too sick. And then when she wasn’t, I got mad.
So mad at the system and the situation and the sorriness of it all that I figured it was better to take out my anger on America’s enemies rather than on friends and family.
So when the Navy recruiter shoved a sheet of paper at me and said, ‘Sign here,’ I didn’t hesitate. ”
She blinked like she hadn’t expected him to be so honest.
“Four years enlisted,” he went on. “Nine as a SEAL. Five now as a Black Knight.” He cocked his head. “Speakin’ of which, how the hell do ya know about us? I thought Madam President and Leonard Meadows kept this whole situation we’re runnin’ real hush-hush.”
Lura winced. “I, uh, came across some information I shouldn’t have.
Then, in typical me fashion, instead of keeping my mouth shut, I asked questions.
By that point, the chief of staff knew me well enough that he figured it was better to come clean and swear me to secrecy rather than have me playing Sherlock Holmes in the outer office. ”
“What’s that old saw about curiosity killin’ the cat?”
Her sigh was exaggerated. “That’s what Mom always says and—”
Pop. Hiss.
Graham took one more bite of his sandwich before brushing off his hands. “That’s the front door. Time to find out if your brilliant plan bore fruit.”
Lura wiped her hands on the paper towel he’d given her to use as a napkin and hopped down from the barstool. He didn’t notice how the move made parts of her jiggle.
Okay, so he did notice. But only a little.
Together, they followed the hall to the main shop, where most of the Black Knights had already gathered.
Graham, a head taller than most, caught sight of Grace and Julia and breathed, “Oh, thank Christ.”
“What?” Lura asked from beside him, going up on tiptoe. “What do you see? Did it work? Do they have the money?”
He opened his mouth to answer. But just then, the gathered group parted to reveal the two FBI agents.
Both women looked very official in their pantsuits and with their badges hanging on lanyards around their necks.
But, more importantly, they looked victorious since they each held an army-green duffel bag loaded down and lumpy with cash.
Sam Harwood, a former Marine Raider, and Hunter Jackson, a former Green Beret, held an additional two bags each.
Ten million dollars.
Would ya get a load of that?
“Julia had to do some convincing even with the warrant,” Grace told the group, her face shiny with sweat even though the sun was well on its way toward the western horizon. Golden rays streamed in through the tall windows, casting honey-colored shadows over the whole shop.
“And Grace had to bat her lashes and flash some cleavage at the old guy running the place,” Julia added in her South Side Chicago drawl. “But we got it.”
“The catch is, we have to return it in seventy-two hours.” Grace made a face. “Or our asses are grass.”
“How are we planning to do that?” Becky asked the question they were all thinking.
“One problem at a time,” Boss declared. “We have the cash to buy Sabrina’s freedom. After that’s done, then we figure out how to get the money back from her abductors.”
“Uh, guys?” Ozzie’s voice echoed down from the second floor, and that’s when Graham realized the mad hacker was missing from the crowd. “You’d better get up here. You’re gonna wanna see this.”
The alarm in Ozzie’s tone was as clear and ominous as a klaxon. In response, duffels were dropped on the floor like they were full of dirty socks instead of stacks of cash.
Graham was the caboose on the train of folks who wasted no time beating feet up the stairs. Which meant he bore witness to half a dozen gasps and curses before he hit the landing and saw what all the hubbub was about.
All six monitors had switched from screen savers to show jet-black backgrounds with bright white letters blazing in the middle of each.
“We are the ears that listen in the darkness.
We are the eyes that witness secret sins.
We are the guardians against tyranny and fascism.
We are Kerberos.”
Kerberos…
The hacker collective. Anonymous on steroids.
“Well, shit,” Graham muttered, the sandwich in his gut turning to stone.
If Kerberos was reaching out, it meant only one thing.
This wasn’t some simple abduction motivated by greedy bastards wanting quick cash. Something was very, very wrong.