Page 7 of Craved

And then I’ll call Maxim.

I take a gulp of lukewarm coffee. I need it. My mouth’s gone dry merely from the thought of talking to him. I’m going to need a gallon-sized water bottle when I’m actually undertaking the real deal.

As soon as Brax left, I’d stripped down to my typical at-home attire, which consists of a tank top and girl-style boxer briefs. In pink, of course. Now, I turn on the TV for company, then settle on the couch with my iPad to review the PDF that the research team put together.

As Barbie streams in the background, I scroll through the twenty-five single-spaced pages. The first page is a summary of the key points followed by a table of contents. An appendix at the end includes various relevant illustrations and photographs. Even from my quick scan, I can grok the major takeaway—we know there’s a weapon; we have no clue what it is.

Armed with that rather obvious bit of information, I start a more comprehensive review. I skim the summary first, just to get the lay of the land. Then use my stylus to make notations as I read through the rest of the document. It’s dense, but well-organized and very informative.

It also reinforces the fact that we don’t know nearly enough. And that Maxim Wilder is our best chance for learning more.

Which means I need to find a way to contact Maxim.

My first thought was to simply try his old cell phone number, but Research had the same thought, and the file makes clear that the number has been reassigned, and the assignee is a ninety-three-year-old nursing home resident who lives in Portland.

Research opined that he is not likely involved. I’ll go out on a limb and say that’s a pretty good bet.

Fortunately, there’s another possibility. My mission stems from the fact that we know about the non-profit water project. Whether we believe it’s legit or not is beside the point as far as locating Maxim is concerned. The bottom line is that corporations have addresses. Or they should.

In the case of the water project, the address turned out to be the business office of the agent of record. Who happens to be an attorney who pretty much makes a living by allowing the corporations he forms to use his physical address.

Annoying and dicey, but not technically illegal.

Thankfully, tracing that thread was Research’s problem, not mine. And I only skim the paragraphs that describe how they used the New York State corporate records database to search for businesses incorporated by that lawyer, then narrowed those responses based on various factors, then narrowed again and again until they finally landed on a corporate entity that seemed to hit all the right buttons.

But corporations can have multiple names by filing even more papers, which meant that in order to hone in on the actual address, the research folks had to do a bit of digging and blah, blah, blah.

In other words, I pretty much skipped to the bottom line, which is that the team managed to peg the location of a second building owned by Group Ultra.

Specifically, a corporation called Foundational Tech Services both owns and is housed in a ten-story building called the Squire, which is located in the Flatiron District, an area that has become very tech-heavy over the last few years.

Presumably, the personality of the area is one of the reasons Group Ultra chose it for a location. Especially since, in addition to secretly working on next-gen weapons, we suspect that Group Ultra generates additional capital by creating and selling equally sinister—though not deadly—software through one of its many legitimate arms.

Well, legitimate on paper, anyway.

The building itself was erected in the thirties, originally as a bank, and has been completely remodeled. Now it includes office space, the original bank vaults, several massive server rooms, a theater for presentations, a classroom that one of the local universities rents for community education programs, and a full-fledged, completely tricked out lab that would put both NASA and the CDC to shame.

In addition, a video game company, a documentary producer, and a company that develops cruelty-free cosmetics all rent space on site. All check out as legit businesses and add that air of respectability to everything going on at the Squire.

In other words, the building and the businesses all feel and smell legit.

Which, of course, is exactly what Group Ultra was going for.

“Killion Lambert is an evil genius,” I tell Brax when I call him only minutes after reviewing the file.

“Which is why we’re trying to stop him.”

“Oh, right,” I say. “I thought maybe he had too many traffic tickets.”

“You called me to state the obvious and tell bad jokes? Because, gotta say, newlywed.”

“Yeah, yeah. That one’s going to start getting old, you know.”

“Yes, but not before we get past our first month anniversary.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, the humor is gone from his voice. “You think he’ll be there. On site.”

“Foundational Tech,” I say. “It’s the primary tenant. Once the research team got that far, all they had to do was use Google to find the phone number.” I make a scoffing sound. “A criminal organization intent on genocide, and it’s phone number is right there on the Internet.”

“Dickens was wrong. This is the best of times. And the worst of times.”