Chapter 10 #2
Quinn stood, joining Coulter in front of the screen. “That asshole’s seen battle. No one walks through bullets the way he did unless he’s spent a lot of time getting shot at, enhanced or not.”
“Agreed, which is why I switched to scrubbing the shadow-broker ledgers and Interpol red notices. I mean, if he walks and talks like military, but isn’t, he’s gotta be a close cousin.”
“PMC?” Quinn shook his head. “He seemed too seasoned for just a decade or so in a paramilitary company.”
“That’s because it’s been much longer. Turns out Hackett was essentially raised in one.
I couldn’t find a birth certificate, but he appears on the board at fourteen working for an outfit operating out of Eastern Europe called the Veles Group.
They’re known for their zero-hesitation wet work and complete disregard for the Geneva Convention.
They grow their ranks by recruiting kids from conflict zones who have nothing to lose and turning them into sociopathic assets.
But it gets better. Guess who bought out his contract five years ago? ”
“Finch?”
“Close. Peter Ramsey and Blackridge Security.”
Quinn inhaled, glancing back at Scout. “Isn’t that the company that was behind your attack at Bralorne?
The one that was dismantled a few months back?
” He paused, all the pieces clicking into place.
“Wait. Was that you? His facility. That bastardized logging compound out in Skagit. Were you behind all of that?”
Scout grimaced, toeing the floor. “Right, so I guess we forgot to mention all of our missions.”
“Ya think?” He scrubbed a hand down his face, wincing when it pulled on the glue and butterfly bandages. “Okay, so I assume Ramsey was working for Finch?”
“He and Blackridge were Finch’s private PMC. Did all Finch’s dirty work so the bastard could keep his hands clean. We tried to connect Blackridge back to Hyperion, but Ramsey destroyed any damning intel.”
“I thought they’d rounded up all of Ramsey’s men? I remember the BOLOs on them. I memorized every name, every face, and I can assure you, Ives Hackett wasn’t on that list.”
He’d gone so far as to map out how to personally track them all down, but they’d either been found dead or been outed before he’d gotten his shit together and decided to screw protocol — hell, his career — and make the final move.
Zadie tapped her keyboard, put up more images on the monitor.
“That’s because he was quietly transferred a few weeks before that happened.
Remember that downed UAV site where we got the patches and watch?
Hackett was part of Ramsey’s retrieval team we intercepted, before he suddenly vanished the following day.
My guess is he got shifted over to whoever our mystery woman is to head her security detail.
” Zadie took a sip of coffee. “Maybe Finch was worried she’d been compromised or wanted to ensure she didn’t have second thoughts. ”
Quinn groaned. “That was you, too? That mess outside Hope?” He tipped his head back. “Shit, you were probably the ones who dropped off that hiker. Christ, we all thought her story was the result of trauma from her head injury.”
Scout stood, moved over and took his hand. “I promise, I’ll go over every op.”
He tugged her a bit closer, the image of her sitting on that exam table, multiple impacts bruising her skin taking the fight out of him.
“I’ll hold you to that.” He looked over at Gideon.
“What I don’t understand is, if Hackett works for Finch, why were these trials operating outside his network?
That’s what you said, right? That it was as if this woman didn’t want Finch to know about her experiments? ”
Gideon braced his weight against one of the desks. “There’s no trace of those new watches on ORACLE—Finch’s internal network. She’s running them completely off grid from Hyperion.”
“So, the question is whether she’s double-crossing Finch or working both sides.
Still completing her tasks for him while carrying on her own, private experiments.
But why would Hackett suddenly abandon Finch?
Because the way he looked at her on that screen…
” Quinn whistled. “It definitely isn’t the way I look at my boss. ”
Gideon grinned. “More the way you look at Scout.”
Quinn stared down at her for a moment, chest tight, waiting for her to breathe so he could, too. Though, it only reinforced how far gone he was.
He pressed his hand to his chest where it ached as he focused on Gideon. “You think they’re involved.”
“Maybe she gave him something Finch couldn’t. And before you all roll your eyes, I mean a home of sorts. I can only imagine how the guy grew up. Maybe she treats him like family.” Gideon nudged Zadie as he smiled. “That’s powerful motivation.”
Scout raked her hand through her hair, wincing the way Quinn had. “What we really need to know is who this woman is, what kind of experiments she’s running, and where we can find her.”
Gideon sighed. “About that…” He gestured toward Zadie.
Zadie snorted. “Sure, make me be the bad cop.” She laughed when Quinn simply stared at her.
“Tough crowd. And I’m working on it. Turns out that encryption I mentioned is military grade polymorphic encryption.
It shifts its own code every few seconds.
We’re going to have to set up a brute-force algorithm to crack it, and that’s gonna take twenty-four to forty-eight hours. But we’ll break it.”
Quinn let his head fall back as he clenched his jaw to keep from letting his frustration speak for him. Not that he didn’t appreciate everything Scout’s team was doing to find Brea, he just wasn’t sure she had any time to spare.
Scout squeezed his hand, sighing when he looked over at her.
“I know. Time isn’t a luxury we have. And we don’t know how much Brea has left.
I know nothing any of us say will ease those doubts.
Make this okay. But you heard what that woman said.
Brea’s somehow unique. That makes her far more valuable alive. ”
Quinn kicked at the floor. “She also said she wanted to see how far she could push her before she broke.”
“Which I think was more to torment you than anything else. And yeah, I can’t know that for sure, but…
If she’s really prepared to double-cross Finch, she’s not going to kill her best asset.
Not when she can’t possibly know if she’d be able to find someone else who could take Brea’s place before Finch realizes what’s going on. ”
“So, we what? Lick our wounds until the computer’s done brute-forcing or whatever it needs to do?”