Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(41)

The screen froze as the video ended. June’s mom looked out at her, calm and composed.

Not how June felt. Not at all.

She wanted to stand on the chair and scream.

She wanted to curl up on the floor and cry.

She wanted to call the State Police or the FBI. Hand it off. Get rid of it. She wanted to do that more than anything.

But what she needed? She needed to get a copy of this video into a safe place.

She opened a new browser, went to a free email site, and opened an anonymous new account with a complex password. She made a copy of the video, pasted it into an email on her new account, then saved the email as a draft. If she never sent the email, it couldn’t be tracked by the various entities who were eavesdropping on the world’s electronic traffic, including, she assumed, the men who were hunting her.

At least she hoped it couldn’t be tracked.

She wondered if the skeleton key algorithm could find it.

Then she wondered if the algorithm could find her mother’s killers.

Her mom had said “Tyg3r” would contact her. Like it had a mind of its own.

June knew a lot about the current state of information technology. Modern computers were still far too primitive to begin to simulate true intelligence. The computing power of the human brain was many orders of magnitude greater than the current best efforts of computing science. Tyg3r didn’t have a mind of its own.

But machine-learning algorithms could be very effective at complex tasks, and were getting better all the time. She’d just read about facial scanning software used at some U.S. border crossings to detect when people were lying. It was better at the job than most human beings.

Cars could drive themselves.

Airplanes could take off, fly, and land on their own.

It was a brave new fucking world out there.

She deleted the email her mother had sent, then cleared the email’s trash bin, logged off all her email accounts, cleared the browsers’ histories, and wiped the computer’s memory cache. If someone managed to follow her to the hospital and realize she’d used this workstation, they’d have to harvest the hard drive to get anything out of it.

It was time to go on the offensive.

She needed to track these fuckers down.

She needed to talk to Peter.





18





PETER



He’d known the hospital was a bad idea.

They’d put him in the open evaluation area first, which was difficult enough. It was a busy warren of alcoves and cubicles and privacy curtains, like that market in Fallujah with its maze of merchant stalls and gunmen around every corner. Or the power plant outside Baghdad where the insurgents had boiled up from the subbasement while they were still figuring out the floor plan. Or all those mud-brick houses with their booby traps and cement-block bunkers. It was enough to ruin the idea of shelter forever.

The triage nurse cleaned the cut on his head and poked at his leg and ribs, then led him through the cubicles while his warrior brain screamed about firing angles and clearing the room of bad guys.

Bad guys who were two continents away, two years in the past.

An overactive fight-or-flight mechanism was a bitch.

In the cluttered, glass-walled exam room, she handed him a backless gown. “Put this on, please.” She noted the tension in his shoulders, the sweat starting to pop at his temples. “How’s the pain, on a scale of one to ten?”

“I’m fine,” said Peter. “But in kind of a hurry. I’d like to get out of here.”

“We’re not too busy tonight,” she said kindly. “Shouldn’t be too long.” She drew the privacy curtain and closed the door behind her.

He waited in the exam room for another half hour, eyes closed, heart like a drum, sweating through his shirt and gown. To damp down the static, he practiced the exercises he’d learned from a Navy shrink on his discharge. Focus on calming your body. Breathe in, breathe out. Hello, old friend. No bad guys here. Your services are not required.

Not right now, anyway.

The problem was that his supercharged fight-or-flight response was useful, sometimes. Like when some asshole was shooting at him. In combat, that mainline adrenaline was his all-time favorite drug, keeping him and his guys alive and doing the job.

Part of him didn’t want to lose that.

He needed to help June. He needed to be useful.

Peter wasn’t built to be a bystander.

The ER doctor cruised in with a Red Bull and a tired smile. “I’m Dr. Baird.” He was a few years older than Peter, unshaven in green scrubs and black clogs, eyes sagging with fatigue. His hair stood on end like he’d been recently electrocuted, but Peter figured that was just the style. Or shock therapy to keep him awake on a long shift. He hit a few keys on the cart-mounted computer. “So, what’d you do to yourself?”

“Car accident,” said Peter. “Leg, ribs, sliced up my scalp.” He repeated what he’d told the nurse, trying to speed up the process.

The doc stepped back from the computer and looked at Peter. The sweat rings at his armpits, shoulders rising up to his ears. “You must have a high tolerance for pain,” he said.

“It’s not pain,” said Peter, his head throbbing. He was starting to have trouble getting air into his lungs. Breathe in, breathe out. “I’m claustrophobic,” he said. It was an easy shorthand. “Panic attacks, pretty bad. Be nice to get out of here soon.”