Chapter 12
Ghost's domain was the basement.
Not the gym, that was the west half of the lower level, separated by drywall and a door that didn't lock.
Ghost's space was the east half, a server room that he'd designed and built himself, cooled by a ventilation system that hummed with the constant, low-grade fever of machines working at capacity.
Zain had been down here maybe six times in five years. Ghost's territory was Ghost's territory, and the unspoken rule was that you didn't enter without invitation. But tonight, Ghost had left the door open. In Ghost's language, that was practically a dinner invitation.
He knocked anyway. Habit.
"Come in." Ghost's voice was flat, distant, the voice of someone whose attention was distributed across multiple screens and only partially available for human interaction.
The room was dim. Blue light from four monitors cast everything in submarine glow.
Ghost sat in a chair that had been modified, extra cushions, lumbar support, armrests worn smooth by years of use, surrounded by the tools of his particular genius.
Two laptops. A desktop rig with a custom case.
A server rack against the wall that blinked green and amber in patterns that probably meant something to Ghost and nothing to anyone else.
The walls were bare except for one thing, a map of Detroit, covered in pins and string, the physical manifestation of Ghost's digital investigations. Red for active. Blue for confirmed connections. Black for closed.
More red than black.
"You wanted to talk?" Zain asked.
"I wanted to show you something." Ghost pulled up a window on the central monitor. Code: dense, scrolling, meaningless to Zain. "Mercer's encrypted communications. I've been working on a decryption algorithm for three months. It broke last night."
"And?"
"And Mercer isn't the top of the chain." Ghost's voice was still flat, but his hands had gone still on the keyboard.
Ghost's hands were never still; this was the equivalent of someone else shouting.
"He's regional management. There's a network.
Multi-state. The communications reference a coordinating entity that oversees operations in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. "
Zain let that settle. "How big?"
"Big enough that Mercer's four sites are a rounding error.
We're talking dozens of locations. Hundreds of victims. Millions in revenue.
" Ghost swiveled his chair to face Zain.
In the blue light, his face was all angles, sharp jaw, deep-set dark eyes, the pallor of someone who lived in artificial light.
He was younger than he looked. Or older.
It was hard to tell with Ghost. "This is bigger than us. "
"Everything's bigger than us. We do it anyway."
"This is different." Ghost's eyes held something Zain had rarely seen there, not fear, exactly. Urgency. The look of a man who had stared into a data set and seen what changed the shape of the problem. "I'm going to need help. Real help. The kind of digital forensics that I can't do alone."
"Ghost. "
"I know someone." The words came reluctantly, like they'd been pried loose. "Someone with the skills. Someone I… knew. Before."
Ghost never talked about before. That was the deal, as Nate had said. The unspoken agreement that Ghost's past was Ghost's past, sealed behind encryption more complex than anything on his servers.
"Who?" Zain asked.
"It doesn't matter yet. The point is, Mercer going down is going to attract attention. Federal attention. People with badges and subpoena power are going to start asking questions that lead to Lakefront."
"Your intel has always been untraceable. "
"Untraceable to local law enforcement. But federal resources are different. NSA-level different." Ghost turned back to his screens. "I'm shoring up our digital infrastructure. But you should know that the next six months are going to be dangerous in ways that have nothing to do with men with guns."
Zain studied him. Ghost in profile, the sharp line of his jaw, the slight tremor in his hands that he hid by keeping them constantly in motion.
The man was brilliant and broken and held together by code and caffeine and stubborn that looked, from certain angles, like strength and from others like a cry for help.
"You okay?" Zain asked. The same question he'd started asking Seth, and maybe the same question he should have been asking Ghost all along.
Ghost's typing paused. One second. Two. Then resumed.
"I'm functional," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
"It's what I can answer."
Zain nodded. He'd been where Ghost was, the place where functional was the ceiling, where okay was a theoretical concept that applied to other people, where the only honest answer to how are you? was I'm still here.
"If you need anything," Zain said. "Not for the op. For you."
Ghost's hands stilled again. He didn't turn around.
"I'll let you know," he said. And something in his voice, barely there, almost imperceptible, cracked.
Zain left. Closed the door behind him. Stood in the basement hallway and thought about the people in this house, every one of them broken, every one of them brilliant, every one of them holding on to what the world had tried to take away.
He thought about Seth upstairs. About the distance between wanting and having, and how the bridge between them looked more like a cliff every day.
He climbed the stairs. Seth's light was on, a thin line under the door. Zain stood in the hallway, hand raised to knock.
He didn't knock.
Same failure as the night before. Same locked jaw, same fist that wouldn't open. A man who could breach a warehouse and kill six guards couldn't cross three feet of hallway to say something honest to someone who mattered.
He lowered his hand. Went to his room. Lay in the dark and listened to Seth's footsteps on the other side of the wall. Pacing. Restless. Awake.
They were both awake. Three feet of drywall between them. Neither one moved.