True Fiction (Ian Ludlow Thrillers #1)(20)
“It didn’t come up in your brainstorming sessions?”
“We were thinking up attacks that terrorists might carry out against us,” Ian said. “Not our own government.”
“We need to go to the police.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We’re up against the CIA,” Ian said. “But why stop there? The Pentagon and the White House could be involved, too. If we walk into a police station, I guarantee you that we’ll be found dead the next morning, even if we were in protective custody.”
“You can’t guarantee that because you don’t know shit about what the CIA can or can’t do. You’re a writer. You make stuff up.”
“That’s right. But here’s what I do know. They were able to crash an airplane into Waikiki by remote control. They knew exactly where we were. They were watching us every second. They were able to locate a car with autopilot, hack it, and try to run me over with it. That tells me that they can reach us and kill us anywhere.”
“That means we aren’t safe no matter where we go,” she said. “So unless you come up with a better alternative by morning, I’ll take my chances with the police. At least I’ll be surrounded by men with guns.”
And they could be pointed at you, Ian thought. But he didn’t say that. She was right. He needed a survival plan and he didn’t have one yet.
“I’m sorry I got you involved in this,” he said.
Margo got up without acknowledging the apology. “The dogs have been fed. They’ll want to go out again. You’ll have to handle that. I’m going to bed.”
“Sweet dreams,” Ian said.
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.” She trudged out of the room.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Seattle’s fleet of metro buses were equipped with security cameras that recorded eight hours of video onto a hard drive. The video was automatically uploaded to the server when the buses returned to the transit yard for gas or service. That’s why it wasn’t until about 8:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time that the video showing Ian and Margo riding the bus from downtown to Laurelhurst landed on the server. It was another forty-five minutes before the video was swept up by Blackthorn’s search bot and sifted by their facial recognition system. The instant the system identified Ian and Margo, a screen grab appeared on the media wall in the situation room, accompanied by a shrill alert beep that got everyone’s attention.
Things moved swiftly after that. The Blackthorn operatives remotely accessed the footage recorded that day by cameras at University Village, Burgermaster, the Center for Urban Horticulture, and other businesses near the bus stop on northeast Forty-Fifth Street. Using that video, they were able to visually track Ian and Margo as they walked to northeast Forty-First Street but lost sight of them once the pair was in the residential neighborhood.
But that was only a temporary setback. Seth searched the recent incoming calls to Margo’s cell phone and uncovered one from Sam Barber, the owner of a maritime shipping company, who lived in Laurelhurst, owned two dogs, and was presently in Beijing with his wife. He figured Margo had to be their dog sitter.
It was an easy assumption to confirm. The Barbers had an alarm system that was monitored by a subsidiary of Blackthorn. A review of the Barbers’ activity logs showed that someone opened the front door, and entered the alarm deactivation code, ten minutes after Blackthorn lost visual surveillance of Ian and Margo.
Shortly after 4:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Victoria called Wilton Cross, who was sleeping in his office apartment, to let him know that the targets had been located.
The assassin was staying at a Red Roof Inn, two blocks from the rental car terminal and across the street from a cemetery, in a ground-floor room with a view of a gas station.
When she’d arrived that afternoon, she removed her glasses, blue-colored contact lenses, and brown wig, stripped off her dull gray pantsuit, and unwound the ace bandages that she’d wrapped around her chest to flatten her breasts. The assassin was now a short-haired, busty blonde with green eyes. She yanked the filthy comforter and blanket off the double bed and rested naked on the clean white sheets to wait for instructions.
They didn’t come until late that night. Her throwaway phone vibrated on the nightstand. She picked it up and checked the message screen. It was a text with DMV photos of Ian Ludlow and Margo French and a hyperlinked Seattle address. She tapped the address and a satellite map came up with a targeting dot on the location. It was a lakefront home on East Laurelhurst Drive.
She picked up her suitcase, unpacked the black jogging suit, and got dressed to kill.
Ian spent the night on the couch, drinking Johnnie Walker from the bottle, eating cashews from a huge Costco jar, and watching reruns of old TV shows, seeking comfort and safety in the company of his good friends Thomas Magnum, Joe Mannix, and Walker, Texas Ranger. Those were guys who knew how to handle problems. So was Clint Straker, and so were Hollywood & the Vine and every other character that Ian wrote about. So why was he having such a hard time figuring out what to do next? If he could come up with crime stories for a man who was half-plant, surely he could think of something he could do to outwit his opponents. Thinking about Hollywood & the Vine actually gave him an idea, one that might help them survive, but probably wouldn’t convince Margo not to go to the police. Still, at least now he knew what to do in the morning but that was still a few hours away.