Page 25 of Until the End

She was well-informed. Lee liked that about her too.

Ed waved a dismissive hand. “I want results by the end of the week. Or it’s every man”—he shot Valerie a look—“and woman for themselves.”

Lee glanced outside at the unmarked van parked across the street and rubbed his chin, the signal they were wrapping up. Randall was inside the van with a listening device powerful enough to pick up the entire conversation through the double-glazed window.

The headlights flashed on the van. Once.

Everything had been recorded. If necessary, words could be cut, others spliced together, to edit a scandalous sound bite so incriminating the Boswell name would go down in infamy.

“Ed, united we stand,” Lee said, his voice steady, cordial, “divided we fall. Don’t do anything that we’ll both regret.”

Killing a United States senator, discreetly, was a challenge, albeit not an impossible one, but Lee really didn’t want to have to go through the trouble.

08

Gray Box Headquarters, Northern Virginia

11:45 a.m. EDT

Castle was the only person Kit had made inroads with. More or less.

For him to abandon her in this place for two minutes had her stomach flipping over.

At the park, he’d shielded her from gunfire, keeping her safe. And in the car, he’d sworn to protect her, like a man who made a vow and kept it no matter what. But getting lured in by gallantry and ignoring the fact that he had an ulterior motive—she glanced around the room, reminding herself—would be a big mistake.

Bottom line, she needed to get out of Area 51 for spies without being in handcuffs or a body bag. Castle was her best chance, even if what he represented scared her spitless.

If only she could be nicer to him, less defensive. But something about him—the way he was a walking, talking challenge—made her want to fight and win, not cooperate.

The door opened. A young woman entered, fair-skinned and sylphlike, holding a notepad.

“This is Willow,” Alistair said, introducing the very pretty woman. “She’s our crypto-techie. Willow, meet Kit01Y0L0.”

Willow wore a winter-white blouse and rose-pink skirt, her chestnut hair coiffed into an impeccable ballet bun. She had the kind of flawless, makeup-free skin that women on NYC’s Upper East Side, where Kit grew up, would’ve sold their souls to have.

Kit ached for a shower.

No eye contact from Willow. No greeting. Maybe their techie was shy. She was definitely wicked-smart.

Thousands of real-time only IRC channels were like shipping lanes in an ocean. To fish a message out of the dark web, or Tor, that had multiple layers of security, you had to cross the right lane as it was broadcast, but to do so targeting one keyword was exponentially harder. Tack on the fact Kit had used a secure Pastebin—a web application for sharing text, source code, and log files with others on a virtual clipboard that vanished after the recipient read it—as the digital boat to pass her message through, and that should have made grabbing the texts almost impossible. There were no connection logs, the messages to Hodges had been encrypted, and the pasted data wasn’t stored on the server.

“How did you find and decrypt the message?” Kit asked.

“That’s classified. You’d need a level-5 security clearance and need-to-know for me to give you that answer.”

Kit’s first instinct had been to send the message with Ricochet or Signal, some end-to-end encryption tech, but Gary didn’t use them. And neither software would’ve provided an additional layer of protection while running searches for Z-1984 on Tor.

Willow slinked around the table, taking a seat beside Kit. A stunning black bird pendant, tasteful in size and studded with diamonds and pearls, hung from a delicate chain around her neck. Her left hand, still pressed to the pad, bore a unique engagement ring. Rose gold with two pearls, surrounded by an infinity loop of diamonds.

Whoever her fiancé was he had exquisite taste and had paid a mint for that ring.

Willow smoothed her skirt down and set her pad on the glass table. Her nose crinkled. She looked around, sniffing the air. “What’s that smell?”

Fudge. Their techie also had a hypersensitive olfactory system.

“Something stinks.” Willow sniffed the air, tracking the stench straight to Kit. “You smell horrible.” The young woman lurched back, looking appalled.

Kit ran her tongue over the inside of her cheek, refusing to squirm under the humiliation. All she could do was own it. “Try rolling around in a rancid pile of garbage and not showering for two days and see how good you smell.”