“Nothing!”
“Oh, really? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re asking us to believe that S?ren somehow knew, years before you and I even met, that my path would eventually cross with Tabby’s. That I would approach her to assist me with a job for one of my clients, a woman whose company had been hacked by a supergenius hacker no one had ever heard of before, except Tabby. And that somehow, with his godlike powers of precognition, S?ren knew she would agree to take the job, come here with me from New York, and become so desperate to take him down that she’d hack into the NSA’s servers, get herself arrested and taken to an undisclosed government location.”
Miranda says, “From what I’ve seen, S?ren can predict Tabitha’s actions with perfect accuracy. He understands exactly what makes her tick. But the real problem you’re having working this out, Connor, is that you think I’m the only person he made a deal with.”
Silence takes the room as we all digest that.
“Everyone owes him favors. Politicians. CEOs. Religious leaders. Business leaders. People in positions of power all over the world. He bragged about it to me. Laughed about it. He didn’t know in advance who would be in Tabby’s sphere of influence when he was ready to make his play. He only had to get enough pawns on the board and bide his time.”
The skin on my arms crawls. “Six degrees of separation,” I say slowly.
Downs asks, “The movie?”
“No,” says Miranda. “The theory that any two individuals can be connected through at most five acquaintances. S?ren didn’t know in advance what lever he’d have to pull to put Tabby in action, so he acquired himself an army of levers. And when the time was right, he pulled the correct one.” She looks at me.
I’m the lever he pulled to get to Tabitha? Horrified, I take a step back.
One of the quadruplets asks, “If he was so desperate to get her back, why wouldn’t he just kidnap her like a normal bad guy? Why go to all this trouble?”
Miranda drops her gaze to the silver cuffs around her wrists. “It was important to him that it be of her own free will. He kept saying that ‘she has to want to come back.’ And he knew Tabitha would never come back to him unless he did something to compel her to.”
It dawns over me like an atomic mushroom cloud, a hot, toxic blast of pure evil.
The chess analogy Ryan and I had talked about had been spot-on. But now I realize it isn’t simple chess S?ren has been playing.
It’s Capture the Queen.
Tabby didn’t set the trap for him, as I’d first thought.
He set it for her.
Downs says, “Hold on. You’re saying—”
I turn and grip Downs’s arm. “Wherever you took Tabby, you’ve gotta get her out of there. Right. Now.”
He shakes me off, turns, and walks away a few feet, turns back with a scowl. “Let’s recap.”
“Five moves ahead.”
He looks at me like I’m speaking Cantonese. “What?”
In my mind’s eye, I’m at ten thousand feet, looking down at the game board, seeing all the pieces S?ren has been moving, all the way back to the beginning.
“That’s what Tabby said about S?ren. That he’ll always be five moves ahead of you, no matter how well you plan. Remember our talk about the margay? S?ren knew Tabby would pretend to be a baby monkey in distress. He knew that she’d anticipate he’d come for her!”
Downs argues, “Why did he wait until now? He could’ve tried this any time over the last ten years—why now?”
Miranda shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“Downs, get her out of there!”
He snaps at Miranda, “Where is he hiding?”
“I don’t know! He would never reveal that to me, he’s not that stupid!”
I roar, “Get her the fuck out!”
Then his cell phone rings. He snatches it out of his pocket, holds it up to his ear, barks, “What?” He listens for a moment. Then he glances over at me, his eyes wide.
I already know what’s happened.
Thirty-Two
Connor
Hours have passed, and no one is any closer to answers.
The COM center has become government central. Representatives from the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI swarm around talking, arguing, theorizing, and generally holding their limp dicks in their hands. There are so many top dogs from so many different agencies, I can’t tell who’s in charge. I’m not sure they know either.
Since all the security cameras were down at the remote detainment center Tabby was taken to, there’s no visual record of what happened inside. And—big fucking surprise—the orbiting satellite was down too, so there are no visuals of what happened outside. All they’ve got so far are seventeen dead guards riddled with bullet holes, one unidentified man in a coma brought on by a traumatic head injury, and a whole bunch of interior steel doors blown apart by small C4 breach charges.