CHAPTER ELEVEN
An abandoned building stood before us, deep in the heart of Norfolk’s warehouse district. The perfectly coiffed shrubbery and vibrantly planted flower boxes spaced across covered front porches were a distant dream in this run-down street lined with cracked pavement, busted out windows, and foul litter.
I skirted around the decaying body of a rat the size of a cat, hearing Corbin’s gasp of surprise when he almost trampled right through the corpse since he’d been following so closely behind.
“Jeez and ham on crackers!” he swore in that playfully innocent way of his. “How about a little warning next time, Callie-Cat?”
“What if I wasn’t aware you were there?”
“You always know.”
I wish that were true. My senses had relaxed somewhat from being constantly attuned to listening for danger, so the shifts in air, subtle smells, and faint sounds didn’t always register when concerning my teammates. While it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, it also signaled that I might be losing my edge, which was deadly, considering all the criminals on our dance card against the CIA’s expressed demands.
Inside, the place failed to improve. The cavernous size meant the damp air felt cool despite the warm temperatures outside. Regardless of the missing glass from the windows that allowed a strong, steady breeze to intrude, the scents of mildew and stagnated water still clogged my senses.
“Damn, that’s rank,” Duane complained, pulling the shoulder of his V-neck tee shirt over his nose. “What is this place?”
“Old shoe factory that was shut down in a tri-state drug raid a decade ago. Technically the government owns it, but these things often fall through the cracks, so I like to post surveillance on them, and if there aren’t any signs of life after a year, I set up shop.”
He led us down a short hallway to a modest office at the end. It looked considerably more put together.
It had running lights, for one, and no mold. Duane pulled his shirt off his face.
“I powered the outlets and fixtures in here with solar panels and a battery I installed on the neighboring building.” Paride pulled out a rolling chair at a desk, the only furnishing in here apart from a small cot similar to the ones we’d been sleeping on at Delta. “Here, Callie. Sorry, CJ.”
CJ waved off his concerns, hopping up on the desk and spreading his gear out.
I only needed to open my laptop and boot it up.
Brock moved to the sole window and studied the narrow alley bisecting this building from its neighbor. “So you just have a network of safe houses across the state?”
“Yep,” Paride answered, gripping his elbows and canting back slightly in what I was quickly recognizing as his at ease stance, so to speak.
CJ glanced up from his work. “Okay, Callie. I piggybacked off a network with the strongest signal in case I need more than one operation running on Jarvis Junior, so pick any of the others on the list to hack into, and we’re good to go.”
“Jarvis Junior?” Paride questioned.
“My baby brother likes his Marvel references, and he’s dorky enough to give his laptop a name,” Jace explained while I went to work connecting.
“Okay, we’re ready,” I warned once my password breaking program bypassed the network’s single-layer authentication security. “Any last words?”
Duane ruffled my hair. “Just do it, babygirl.”
“Here goes nothing.”
I clicked on the email, and things took an immediate turn south.
My eyes rounded at the windows popping up left and right, superimposing themselves one on top of the other. I jolted into action, my fingers flying across the keys, attempting to pull up a command box to isolate whatever program I’d unleashed.
“What’s happening?” someone demanded, but I lacked the capacity to answer them, too focused on figuring out what sort of Pandora’s box I’d opened.
CJ’s keys started up in their own chorus after a momentary delay. “What the… ”
My jaw tensed. “I know. Can you build a safety net? I might be able to ping it your way to quarantine it, but I can’t shut it down entirely because I can’t stay ahead of the windows’ generation. It’s executing code so fast that—”
“Yeah, I can see it,” CJ agreed. “It’s like a nesting doll of packers that are rushing to free themselves.”
“Any clues about what the final payload might be?” I posed, beyond worried about the end result because it was becoming increasingly obvious that this message wasn’t from Petrov.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Think it’s from the CIA? As revenge for blowing up their computers?”
I hummed. Every time I tried to type, my mouse shifted, drawn to the new box, so it was impossible to click back in the coding box to add any new functions. “Government types do tend to get tetchy when you mess with their assets.”
“Have a lot of experience with that, do you?” Paride joked.
“Yes,” I answered bluntly, and judging by the silence, I’d shocked him. “Hadn’t you heard that the hacker Byte-syzed is wanted in several countries?”
CJ broke the silence. “Of course the packers could be a distraction while a multipartite virus slips through.”
Eyes rounded and reflecting the flashing lights of what had to be a hundred open windows at this point, I glanced at him. If we didn’t do something soon, my processor would fry.
“Okay,” Duane began, drawing out the word. “That was not a good look. What would that mean? This multi-whatever?”
“Multipartite,” CJ explained. “It’s a ‘covering all bases’ type of malware that can attack and spread everywhere at once. They are the hardest to contain because they infect virtually every part of a computer—the memory, files, executables… even the boot sector which means that no, we won’t be able to turn it off and turn it back on.”
The last part was directed at his twin, who often liked to tease that our jobs weren’t so hard when every technical support’s first answer was to restart whatever troublesome device customers were calling in for.
I carried the explanation. “Malware comes in different types based on what they do or how they do it, but a multipartite utilizes all the techniques. If this is a present from the CIA, they are either hoping to force me to ditch my computer or that I won’t realize what they did and be able to track my every move with ease, especially if there were any beacons.”
A last window popped up on my screen.
Unease trickled down my neck. This had to be the final payload. A dimly lit room with a single light and empty chair showed up.
An image?
“CJ?” The twin in question glanced up at the trepidation in my tone. “How’s that quarantine coming?”
“Why? What’s—”
Suddenly, a slim figure, dressed in all black, walked on screen. This was a video, not a picture file.
“Hello, Callie,” the masked man said.
“What the fuck?” Brock growled.
I knew that voice.
“Tarasovich,” I whispered, my eyes shifting to my computer’s built-in camera.
“Are you sure, Callie?” someone asked, but the man had already continued speaking.
“Just to clarify, this is not an open line of communication. Unfortunately, I was advised that to do so would almost certainly put me at risk from your quick-thinking fingers.”
That he’d pointed out this information just as I covered the lens of the camera didn’t exactly reassure me.
“Soon, I hope to have a more in-depth interaction, but I must practice caution with you. You see, you surpassed everything I dreamed of in my fantasies over the years. I’ll be the first to admit, I had you up on a pedestal, but you didn’t disappoint. I thought a man like Ivanov would never be knocked from his throne, and you managed to do so even after he kept you so far beneath his thumb.”
“CJ?” I whispered, my fingers numb from an inner cold, unable to type.
“I’m trying, Callie,” CJ promised.
Tarasovich continued. “Now, until I’m ready for you and have taken the necessary precautions to guarantee you won’t bring about my demise, I am going to keep my distance. As a strategy, that only works if you do the same. So, to ensure you back off my trail, I’ve left you a little present. The collection of research you have of me is so barren and bleached of juicy details. My version tells a fully fleshed out story. While you watch, remember this. If you continue to chase me, I will come after those closest to you. Enjoy.”
The window disappeared, and the most godawful, soul-wrenching screams of agony blared to life. All the windows that had been opening up held their own videos—each one starring Tarasovich’s victims—playing simultaneously. This had to be what the lowest, most depraved depths of what hell sounded like.
Waves and waves of torture blasted out, broadcast through the computer’s double speakers.
I attempted closing the boxes, but for every one I closed, another horror show popped up. It was impossible not to pick up some of the details. I recognized several victims from the police reports and newspaper clippings I’d compiled, but there were dozens more that I’d never unearthed, all spread out in stark detail.
“Good God,” someone whispered.
Tarasovich was right. My research on his kills had been sanitized of humanity and emotion, only dealing with the aftermath. Desperate, begging people hit a lot harder than cold, motionless corpses.
Bile rose in my throat, and I gave up closing the windows in favor of covering my mouth as I sprinted out the door, stumbling to the nearest wall and losing my lunch.
I continued to dry heave long after I’d lost everything in my stomach, until that shifted into sobs.
There’d been videos with entire families on there.
Time passed, but it held no meaning. It could have been five minutes or five hours before someone approached.
“Callie?”
The voice didn’t register as Bryce at first because my mind was still preoccupied with looping the reel of horrors, and he hadn’t addressed me as Callina.
Bryce knelt, shifting me away from the puddle of sickness. “Come on, Callie. CJ’s in there by himself. We can’t do this without you. We need to know what to do with your computer before we make our next move.”
Our next move? How could anyone recover after a hit like that? So many lives lost… The sheer destruction in that…
Tarasovich had interacted with me several times, and I’d never sensed the danger of being so close to pure evilness. That seemed universally unfair. With that much seething blackness housed in one soul, nature should have evened the odds and provided the general population with a warning system.
“Do we try to salvage your computer? Are we calling things off? Come on. Your team needs you, and as badly as the others want to punch a wall and coddle you, I know you have it in you to fight this, so buck up, Callina. We have work to do. This psycho needs to be buried sixty feet deep in an abandoned mine somewhere.”
I nodded, wiping my tears on my arm.
“Here,” he murmured as a handkerchief appeared in my line of sight. At my questioning look, he shrugged. Even that movement seemed aristocratic. “What can I say?” He rapped his knuckles against his dark brown hair. “Despite my rebellious nature, I find some of my mother’s etiquette lessons hard to shake.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, cleaning myself up.
He pulled me into a side hug. “Don’t worry about it, Callina.”
After a moment of gathering myself and slowing my breathing, I turned my head on his shoulder. “Bryce? Was contacting Petrov a mistake?”
He frowned. “Why would you think that?”
“Because it feels like we’ve made things worse.”
“You’re kidding, right? Is it even possible for that psycho to get worse?”
“Okay, fine, worse for us then.”
“That’s part of the job, Callie. If we backed down every time we squared off with some scary bad guy, you would have frozen to death or drowned in that fucked up tank in Russia.”
That was true. Nikolai Ivanov had, indirectly, killed countless more than Tarasovich, but that fact was difficult to recall when the worst Ivanov could do from the grave was haunt my thoughts.
Tarasovich was very much alive and in the present. He’d threatened my loved ones, and there were a lot of people who had been sorted into that category.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Bryce quoted.
I sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. I already feel responsible over that firefighter he nearly killed. If it wasn’t for her expertise in her field, we might not have even had this lead.”
“Now there’s some optimism. Come on. Think you’re ready to face the crowd of concerned boyfriends?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be. Bryce?” I hugged him when he turned. “Thank you.”
It was obvious I meant I was thankful for more than just the handkerchief.
“Anytime, Callina.” He stepped away when I ended the hug. “But not really, so do avoid reverting to your old habit of constantly getting kidnapped.”
“How in the world did I have any control over that?”
“I haven’t worked that part out yet, but when I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
The door opened, and chaos rushed to greet Bryce and me.
For some reason, Paride had my computer and was flipping through the files.
If I wasn’t about to destroy the thing, it might have raised my hackles. As it was, it looked like he held plenty of ire for the both of us.
His head snapped up, a sharp look in his eyes. “Tell me the truth, Callie! Did you intend to sabotage the CIA’s computer lab?”
What?
He’d heard about that this morning, so why was he only bringing it up now?
Two walls of thick muscle converged in front of me, blocking the irate Italian from view as Duane’s voice cut through the tension. “Hey, back the hell off, man. What’s your damn problem?”
I was shuffled backwards, recognizing the two protectors as Aleks and Brock.
Duane continued, edging away from fierceness, but not by much. “Look, I get it. I do. You just had a shitload dropped on your doorstep, but blaming Callie, a person who’s been working on taking that killer down before she could even drive, is not where you offload your frustrations, because I promise you, you won’t like the outcome.” After a dedicated pause for emphasis, he lowered his voice. “So get your shit together, man.”
A drawn out exhale sounded, and I tapped on Aleks’s and Brock’s shoulders, asking them to step aside. They didn’t budge, only conceding to my wishes after I repeated the action as a clear warning that I wouldn’t back down. As my view cleared, I saw Paride, his eyes a little desperate and lost.
Anyone who delved too deeply into Tarasovich’s sphere of destruction adopted that terror at some point or another.
Feeling like I owed him, I stepped forward. “No, the CIA wasn’t meant to keep deciphering it. I underestimated their tenacity, but if no one had opened it, the program would have sat dormant forever.”
He didn’t reply, seeming deep in thought.
I continued. “And to be honest, I couldn’t have imagined all the glass shattering would be physically possible. Who knew computer speakers were even capable of something like that?”
“Well, the CIA always has the best equipment,” he remarked offhandedly as he reached some decision. “Excuse me for a moment. I need a second to think.”
He left the room.
I glanced around, and sure enough, we were all a little lost. “Wendy and her lost boys,” the Cardinals used to tease when the guys began gravitating toward me. We’d had our own Disney monikers.
“Sorry, Callie.” CJ lifted his head from his screen, looking miserable. “I couldn’t do anything to stop this.”
“Hey, at least you tried. I froze.”
“Do you want to see if we can scour through your computer?”
I didn’t even need to consider it. “No.” When I went to elaborate, my phone dinged.
CJ and I shared a terrified glance.
“What?” Corbin pointed at us. “No, you don’t get to make faces like that and not explain. Our hearts can’t take it!”
“It shouldn’t be possible, right?” I whispered, slipping my phone from my pocket.
“No. At least I don’t think so,” CJ answered, crowding closer to watch over my shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Payton demanded, his voice sharp.
It was a notification, but with a breath of relief, I recognized the encryption. “Oh,” I murmured. “It’s Petrov.”
Who thought I’d ever be happy to hear from Natasia’s boogeyman, a man who rose to rule Russia’s criminal underground in the wake of Ivanov’s death?
Life was funny that way.