Shattered Lies (Web of Lies #3)(21)
“Calling the prez.” Suddenly Alex sat up and looked at her. “That wasn’t cool, dude. You shouldn’t ditch your team. Lame. Real lame. Do you know how worried we were? How much time I took trying to find you, hoping you weren’t dead? Not cool, dude. Not cool.” Alex shook his floppy-haired head and went back to work.
Somehow his words hurt even more than Lizzy’s. Maybe because Alex wasn’t like her or Lizzy. He was somehow innocent, even though he’d served time in prison for hacking. Valeria imagined this was how a mother felt when a child was disappointed in them.
“I’m sorry, Alex. It won’t happen again,” Valeria said softly. She went to move when two string-bean arms were flung around her. Alex’s mop of a head was pressed against her as he hugged her.
“Good,” he sniffled as he hid his face from view. She felt him take a deep breath and sit back up. “Are you ready?”
The group nodded, and Alex connected with the laptop in the hospital. He moved it to sit on top of the TV stand as everyone sat on the couch or the floor in front of the coffee table so they could all see the computer.
The secure connection linked up, and Tate was the first person Valeria saw. She sucked in a breath at her friend’s bruised and battered body. “Jesus, Tate.”
The perky press secretary just smiled wide. “Val! Oh, I am so happy to see you. Are you okay?”
“Am I okay? Are you okay?”
Tate nodded and reached across to grab Birch’s hand. “We both are. I channeled my inner Valeria.”
Fuck. She would not cry. Valeria looked at the ceiling and tried to take a breath without anyone noticing she was choked up. But when she looked back she saw Grant had noticed everything. “I’m proud of you, Tate. You bought me enough time to get the evidence we need to blow the whole thing wide open when you talked to Manuel’s man.”
“Not only that, but she took down the entire media arm of Mollia Domini,” Birch said proudly.
Tate shook her head. “No, we did. We all did it together.”
Val cocked her head. “I don’t know what’s been going on. I haven’t been near a television or radio in over a week.”
“I guess this is where we come in,” Dalton said, drawing everyone’s attention. “Thanks to Tate, we knew that Claudia Hughes was following a script of talking points that were setting Birch up to fail and to shake the people’s faith in the country. The talking points revolved around wars that were going to be fought and an economy on the verge of collapse, which wasn’t true.”
“So,” Lizzy picked up, “thanks to Alex running the fingerprints Humphrey helped us get, we found out Secretary of State Sandra Cummings was the person placing the orders for Phylicia to carry out. Sandra fled the country, and Alex tracked her down. And this is where it gets interesting. When you called us, we were in Romania, trying to find Sandra. What we found instead were the dead bodies of George and Helena Stanworth.”
“And at two in the morning, police were called to the Stanworth mansion. Apparently his much younger wife, Christine, hung herself,” Dalton added. “I guess she was the one who found the bodies of Fitz and Hugo that Jason left for George.”
Dalton nodded to Lizzy who picked the story. “We found the house where George and Helena were killed. Alex is working on tracing ownership, but we believe it was a meeting of the inner circle of Mollia Domini. George and Helena’s time of death lines up with a phone call from Christine, most likely when she found the bodies. Our guess is the head of Mollia Domini took them out since they were made. And probably killed Christine as well since she found the bodies. Alex?”
“Yeah, so I found out the house is under an estate, but I’m having a real hard time finding who the relatives are. I’m still working on it,” Alex said, running his hand through his hair, making it stick up more. “Also, there’s something else I need to tell you all before we turn it over to Valeria. Um, so you know I’m like a hacker, right?”
Everyone rolled their eyes.
“Yes, I think we know that,” Birch said dryly.
“Well, I kinda sorta told some hackers about Mollia Domini.”
Lizzy reached out and smacked the back of his head. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
Alex winced. “There was a reason! Dudes, really. It’s big. There’s a small chat room with some of the best hackers from all over the world in it. I have a couple friends in there, and there was already chatter about something big going on. Well, they told me some interesting things. First, there was a bomb stolen from Australia. And second, there were five Russian bombs stolen as well. Third, the Chinese police killed a man outside of the Shanghai Stock Exchange with a bomb in a large duffle bag.”
Everyone was quiet as they looked at each other. They all knew what it meant.
“So, there are five more bombs out there,” Birch said, shaking his head. “This is very bad.”
“I think this is where I come in.” Valeria stood up and pulled off her belt.
“Dude,” Alex whispered with wide eyes.
Valeria rolled hers at him. “I’m not getting undressed, I’m getting you a thumb drive. Can you make it so everyone can see it?”
“Dude,” Alex said in such a way it was obvious Val was underestimating his skills. Who knew one word could mean so many things?