The Last Second (A Brit in the FBI #6)(62)

She ducked out the back entrance, walked four short blocks east into Central Park, and lost herself in the crowds. Fifteen minutes later, on the east side of the park, she hailed a cab. He dropped her at the W hotel in Midtown. After he pulled away, she walked to the Maxwell Hotel instead, went inside, changed clothes, disposed of the old clothes and the ashtray, then grabbed another cab for the ride to Teterboro for her flight to Boise.

What a lovely week it was shaping up to be.





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


T-MINUS 30 HOURS

I named my company Galactus after the Marvel comic book character. That may seem silly to some of you, but Galactus is an ancient being, and is also known as the World-Eater. What name could be more fitting for an aerospace company that will be changing the way the people of Earth move through the universe?

—Jean-Pierre Broussard, founder and CEO, Galactus Space Industries, Annual Meeting, 2013

Galactus Headquarters

Lyon, France

The plane landed hard on the Lyon airstrip, jarring everyone awake. Mike stretched and grabbed her phone immediately, grateful to Poppy for the gift, shocked there weren’t any calls. With a raised brow, she dialed into the office, to Adam’s number. Gray answered.

“You’re safe on the ground, I take it?”

“We are.”

“We have things to tell you, but you’ll want to be on a secure line. Get to Galactus, set up an encrypted channel. We’ll fill you in then. Oh, and we have a trap set on Nevaeh Patel’s and Kiera Byrne’s phone, but neither one is turned on. The moment they go live, we will be able to track them. Both were last used in Lyon, so chances are they’re still there. Be careful, Mike. I don’t like this. More’s going on than we know.”

“Will do, Gray. Thanks for being so cryptic.”

“Anytime,” and he was gone. Nicholas handed her a cup of coffee. He was scruffy and needed to shave, just how she liked him. He smelled like salt from the ocean despite his attempts to clean up in the plane’s shower. She smoothed back his hair, touched his cheek.

He said, “Another fifteen minutes won’t matter, but I would like to know what they’ve found out.”

“Gray was very focused, operational. Whatever it is, it’s important.”

Grant joined them, pouring down coffee and smiling. “You lot made quite an impression on my boss. Congratulations, that’s hard to do. Fentriss is by-the-book, very old-school.”

Mike said, “Well, sure he is impressed. Grant, you told him we were ninjas, right?”

“Oh yes, and maybe he thinks so now, too.”

An SUV waited for them on the tarmac. Broussard said nothing, only nodded to them. They climbed in, and the SUV wound its way from the small airport to the outskirts of Lyon to the Galactus headquarters and campus. It was dark, the roads deserted, but the moon was high and nearly full, and Mike could see the French countryside.

She said, “I bet it’s beautiful in the daylight and not at all industrial.”

“Many do expect us to be in a more manufacturing area,” Broussard said, “but when I purchased this land I knew it was perfect for my company. I wanted a spot out of the way, off the beaten path, as you like to say. Oh look, media. Even though it’s dark. I’m going to duck down now.”

He did. They passed several media trucks from the major international news organizations, satellite dishes on top of the vehicles pointed at the sky. The vans were in front of a small café, all of them unmanned.

Grant said, “There’s luck. Everyone’s on a nap break, it seems.”

Their SUV slid past, no one the wiser.

When they pulled up onto the lovely, lush Galactus campus, Broussard asked the driver to take them to the front gates. He proceeded to unlock it using a series of numbers on an electronic keypad, and the gates swung open.

The grounds were deserted, not surprising for the middle of the night. No lights were on in the building.

It wasn’t only that. Something felt wrong. Nicholas glanced at Mike, noticed Grant shifted in his seat, got the weapon Poppy had provided at the ready.

Nicholas said, “Jean-Pierre, does the idea of sabotage ring true to you?”

Broussard shrugged. “It’s possible, I guess. All right, I have to admit, shutting down the campus doesn’t seem like the logical thing for Nevaeh to do.”

Hallelujah, maybe he was coming around, at last. Mike said, “It makes perfect sense if she had something to do—like set off a nuclear weapon—she’d want to do it in privacy. Be on guard, people. She could be in there, fortified. Go carefully.”

Broussard, to her relief, kept his mouth shut.

They all climbed out of the SUV at the Galactus entrance. Nicholas and Grant cleared the area. At their nod, Broussard walked to the front doors and unlocked them. The interior lights automatically came on. There was no night security, no one anywhere. Broussard went directly to a room just inside the doors. Nicholas knew the media would notice the sudden lights, but it couldn’t be helped. If Patel was here, if she had backup with her, they weren’t going to have the advantage of surprise much longer.

He pointed, “These screens here? They feature our latest security—a laser-guided, heat-sensor motion tracker—it allows the guards to see any movement on all the floors and points the cameras in the direction needed. When it’s set to secure mode, as it is now, if a mouse moves across a hallway or stairwell, the software can home in on it instantly.” He waited. The cameras remained stationary, the screens empty. “No, there’s nothing. She’s not here. No one is.”