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And a really beautiful, smart, nice woman would be gone from the earth. They didn’t grow that many beautiful, smart, nice women. Pierce really wanted to keep this one safe. Not to mention the fact that Felicity, Hope and Emma loved her. If anything happened to Riley on his watch, he’d be toast.
Jacob Black leaned forward, hard face grim. “What are they talking about, Riley?”
She gave a shudder, but pulled herself together. “Henry Yu is my boss. I told you I showed him my data, he said he was going tohisboss with it. We realized that the Sommers Group was involved. I’ll tell you the whole story. But after Henry went to report what we found, I heard he’d killed himself. Henry Yu is —was—the least suicidal person on earth.”
Pierce leaned forward. “Someone thought fast. There’s this video that is damning, so they killed the man who was bringing it to people’s attention, and blamed it on his subordinate, the one who brought it to light. Two birds with one stone. Brilliant. Framing it as a lover’s spat was a stroke of genius.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Riley said. “Henry Yu was gay.”
Jacob Black’s head came up. “Was that general knowledge?”
Riley blinked. “What?”
“Did everyone know Yu was gay?”
She thought. “No. I mean Henry didn’t hide it, but he was a very private man, had a strict rule against mixing work and his private life. He made an exception for me, but really, it just amounted to a few after-work drinks. So, no. I don’t think it was general knowledge at all.”
“They didn’t have time to research any of it. They came after Riley right after killing Yu.”
Riley turned to Pierce. “And I’m alive, thanks to you. They came after me right away, but they failed to capture me, and decided to change the narrative.” She sat up straight. Some color had come back into her face. “It won’t stand up to scrutiny. And what were armed operators of the Sommers Group doing at the NSO anyway? But in the meantime, they’ve muddied the waters and driven me into hiding. Plus stopped anyone who knew the video was a deepfake.”
Black looked at Riley. “I think now would be a good time to tell us the whole story, all of it. Down to now.” He paused a moment, checked his cell. “Okay. One more person has to be called in and he’s here.” Black stood up and went to the door.
Standing there was Black’s right-hand man, Nikolai Garin. He was huge and rough-looking. Pierce glanced quickly at Riley to make sure she didn’t perceive him as a danger. But she remained calm, figuring if he and Jacob Black accepted Nikolai, he was okay.
And Nikolai was more than okay. He looked like the bad guy in a B movie, the one who swings a meat cleaver, but he was solid. Skilled, and on the side of the angels. But you definitely wanted him as a friend and not an enemy.
Black and Nikolai came back into the living room and Riley rose, as did Pierce.
“Riley, this is Nikolai Garin, a vice president at Black Inc. He has a lot of contacts abroad and has been keeping his ear close to the ground. Nikolai, this is Dr. Riley Robinson, a friend of the Queens back at ASI, and someone who has a remarkable story. I called you in because it’s important for you to hear it.”
“Dr. Robinson,” Nikolai said and held out his huge hand. He had an unusually deep voice, and Pierce saw Riley widen her eyes for just a moment.
“Mr. Garin,” she answered, taking his hand. Hers disappeared for a moment in his.
“Nikolai,” he said.
“Riley,” she smiled.
Nikolai took the empty armchair, and Black pressed a cut crystal glass with a few fingers of whiskey into his hand without asking what Nikolai wanted. They worked together closely every day and knew each other down to the bone. Nikolai looked at Riley. “I understand that you have some information on the current situation that—” he glanced at Black, “—changes the nature of it. Black here was really cagey, so I can’t imagine what it is.”
Riley nodded. “Yes, I do have information. It’s a real game-changer, and flips what we think is going on.” She nodded, pulled Pierce’s laptop toward her. “This is a shitty laptop,” she grumbled, shooting a look at him. It was the second time she’d made the point.
Pierce still wasn’t offended. The women of the IT department always turned their noses up at his tech, because they had access to amazing hardware and software in beta that was essentially beamed in from the future. “Best the market provides,” he said mildly.
She sighed and opened his laptop up, dove into the dark web, pulled something out. She pressed a button and what was on the computer—a dark web screen with only a long alphanumerical string in green letters—went up on the wall screen.
“Okay.” Riley looked at him then at Nikolai and then at Jacob Black. “Let me bring Nikolai up to speed. As I said before, what you are about to see crossed my desk more or less by accident two days ago. At the same time, it hit a few news sites. But it didn’t bubble up to the surface until yesterday. It was taken by one of our Scorpius satellites. But the NSO deals in multiple terabytes of intel a day so it took some time for it to be noticed. I imagine it was plucked out of the running feed because it met the criteria for some algos. Now watch carefully.”
Pierce and Black and Nikolai leaned forward. Pierce watched very carefully because this was the beginning of what was threatening this beautiful young woman, and he needed to understand every step of it.
It was still pretty shocking, though he knew what it was and had seen it multiple times before. A few seconds of the video had been playing on every major website more or less nonstop. And most websites had a disclaimer beforehand that what they were about to show was graphic. And it was.
A massacre, brutal and swift, and at the end nothing was left alive. There were even a few animals that had been killed—two monkeys and a dog.
The quality of the recording was astounding. In a few instances, he could see arterial blood spurting.
When Riley switched it off, there was silence. Total silence, because though they were in the middle of busy Alexandria, the safe house was totally sound-proofed.
