“What was the target?”
It’s almost unbearable to do it, but I look up and meet his eyes. “A grade school. He bombed a fucking grade school. When I confronted him, he said he was doing a service to humanity by killing future terrorists. I could choke on the irony of that.”
Shaggy doesn’t even have the good grace to look disgusted. “When was this?”
“December 25, 2007.” When I swallow it tastes like ashes. “He said it was his Christmas present to me.”
I have to look away for a moment to compose myself before I can continue. “Before that, it was all talk. At least, I thought it was. He’d say casually, ‘Tabitha, did you see the news today? Bomb went off in the British Prime Minister’s office,’ and he’d smile. I’d roll my eyes and tell him he was full of shit. It was a game he liked to play. A little deception. The boy who cried wolf. Only ultimately I realized it wasn’t a game. I mean, for him it was. For everyone else, it was deadly real. But until the end, I had no idea that he was really…that he was capable of…”
I swallow, take another deep breath. “Once the cat was out of the bag about the drone, he told me the truth about the crash my parents died in. When we first met, he showed me letters between my father and his mother, detailing their secret affair. He said he’d found them along with the DNA tests after his mother died, and was overjoyed to discover he had a sister. What he left out was that his mother went into a deep depression after my father rejected her when he found out she was pregnant. A depression that years later led her to commit suicide.
“So S?ren figured out a way to pay my father back for that betrayal. It didn’t matter to him that all those other people, including my mother, died on the plane he took down. He called it ‘collateral damage.’ That’s when I realized all the times I’d thought he’d been joking about the things he’d done, he hadn’t been. And that’s when I snapped.”
Shaggy sees the despair on my face and moves in for the kill.
“Where is he?”
I look up. “If I knew that, he’d already be dead.”
His amber eyes narrow. He doesn’t believe me.
“Okay. Let me tell you how this goes. If you don’t cooperate and lead us to him, you’ll spend the rest of your life here.” He points at the floor. “Right here, in this room. No jury. No trial. You’ll just disappear. You’ll get a bucket to piss and shit in that will be changed once a week. You’ll get a cot in that corner to sleep on. Maybe you’ll get a pillow. Maybe not, but definitely no TV and no computer. You’ll eat the same thing every day, for every meal. You like chicken soup?” He gifts me that celebrity smile. “Personally, I find it overrated.”
He stands with a smooth unfolding of limbs. “So. Are you going to help us, or are you going to rot?”
I want to roll my eyes, but I’m too tired to expend the energy.
“Honestly. Why do you think I’m here, Shaggy?”
“You’re here because you hacked into our mainframe, which is the topic for another conversation.” He pauses. “Incredible work, by the way. Off the record, that was the first time I’ve been truly surprised in years. How did you do it so fast?”
“Thank you. And duh, with a universal encryption key.”
Shaggy’s left eyebrow shoots up, like Spock when he’s parsing some bit of human behavior that makes no sense to his Vulcan mind. “There’s no such thing.”
“Right. And there are no alien aircraft at Area 51.”
His other brow shoots up.
“And no, hacking your database isn’t why I’m here. Well, technically it is, but that’s just what got me here. Why I’m here is to help you. By helping you, I help myself, and…well, pretty much the entire human race. It’s time for me to put an end to this game, once and for all.”
The man has the patience of a Buddha. He waits for me to explain myself as if he’s got all the time in the world.
I rub a hand over my eyes. They feel gritty. Suddenly I’m more than tired. I’m completely spent.
The rows of fluorescents overhead flicker and snap. Shaggy looks up, frowning.
With a pop and a sizzle, they’re extinguished, plunging us into blackness.
Into the dark, I sigh.
“It’s been nice chatting with you, Shaggy, but my ride’s here.”
Twenty-Nine
Connor
I don’t know how long I was out, but when I come to, I’m on the floor in the office next to the COM center, flat on my back. They must’ve dragged me in while I was unconscious.
By “they,” I mean the four FBI agents flanking either side of the closed door.
I sit up, wincing, and gingerly touch the back of my head. Sticky wetness, an open gash, a big-ass lump… Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark.
I’ve had worse. And right now, I’ve got something much more important to worry about.