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They were so slow. She just took off, which was the only way to get them tomove.Pierce gave an outraged huff of breath and followed. She didn’t look back to see if Jacob Black was with them but she was sure he was.
At least they were quiet. Amazingly quiet, considering they went through hedges and shrubbery and considering how large they were. You wouldn’t know they were there.
Riley knew this area very well, knew where to go and how, but once they actually got going, they had no difficulty in keeping up.
Finally, she unlatched a gate covered in ivy that was more or less invisible, and there they were—on the left side of her building. Her apartment was three stories up. She could see the wrought-iron balcony and dark windows. In there was her computer and she longed for it. It would straighten everything out and the nightmare would be over.
Riley gestured to see the monitor and Pierce handed it over. Just as she hoped. The two operators were still in their SUV, waiting for her to walk through the front door of her building like a moron.
Well, good luck waiting for that.
She was going to get her freedom, and vindication. Revenge for Henry’s death, too.
The combat vest fell to the ground with a thud.
She jumped.
6
Son of a bitch!Pierce had just enough presence of mind not to shout it out loud, just in his head. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He thought Riley would go through this basement entrance—which he’d just realized was non-existent—and then she took a running leap at the side of the building.
For a moment, it looked like magic. Like those movies where a character with super powers like Spiderman just walks up the side of a building. Then he realized it was a wall climb for her. She used every single handhold and foothold to make it to each floor’s small balcony. Pulling herself up to the second-floor balcony via the spout, she stood on the top of the railing, pushed off—his breath snagged and he moved forward instinctively to catch her before realizing she didn’t need catching. She caught the bottom railing on the third-floor balcony, pulled herself up, launched herself up to stand on the balcony.
And disappeared.
Pierce looked at Jacob Black, not daring to say a word. But Black looked as stunned as he was. Sooner than he thought possible, Riley reappeared on the balcony with gloves on, a backpack and a length of rope looped over her shoulder. She did a complicated flip down to the balcony below, quickly knotted the rope around the far end post and slid down to alight noiselessly and easily on the ground.
Beginning to end, maybe five minutes. Done as smoothly as any SEAL could have done it. More easily, even, because she was very light.
Without saying a word, Riley made off in the direction they’d come from, stopped and looked back.
They were observing sound discipline and no one could speak, but her expression was clear.Come on, guys!Riley glanced at the monitor velcroed to Black’s combat vest and he checked and nodded. The team on the stake out was still there. Hadn’t moved.
Pierce picked up her combat vest which clearly she wasn’t going to wear, and they all hurried back to where they’d left their vehicle. Soon Pierce pulled out.
Riley had opened her backpack and extracted the laptop. Pierce didn’t turn around, but he did see Black open his eyes a little, the SEAL equivalent of pure astonishment, as he looked at the laptop. All the IT brainiacs back in Portland had one—a computer that seemed to have been transported from the future, or given to them by an alien civilization, in slight variations of matte, non-reflective colors. No brands. There was someone in Tokyo who specialized in leading-edge computing and he had a number of beta users, including Felicity, Hope, Emma and apparently, Riley.
“Does this vehicle have wifi?” she asked. “I don’t want to use my hotspot. It might be traced.”
“Sure.” Black took out a visiting card, wrote something on the back and turned around in his seat and handed it to her. “Here’s the password.”
Riley smiled. It was blinding. Pierce was watching her in the rear-view mirror and nearly had a heart attack. Smiles like that should be illegal. Even Black was a little taken aback.
Black had never been seen with a woman by his side and seemed perennially single. There were rumors about a girl in his past, a lost love, but no one really knew the story. He was always all business around women, but even he was affected by that smile.
That smile was fucking magic.
Pierce tightened his grip on the steering wheel, telling himself sternly to get his head out of his ass. She wasn’t paying him any attention, anyway, head bent over her computer. The one she’d risked her life to get.
Riley stayed glued to her computer all the way back to the safe house. Pierce could have turned the GPS on, but didn’t. He had a superb sense of direction. Once he’d gone a route, he remembered it.
Nobody spoke. There was a lot to talk about with Black, but without Riley’s input, they’d just be talking in circles. And she was immersed in her own stuff. If they batted ideas about, they’d just be disturbing her, and they wouldn’t be good ideas anyway, since they had incomplete intel.
On the road, Pierce tried to piece together what he knew. There were discrete points. Someone had killed Riley’s boss, most likely operators from the Sommers Group, because Riley had given Henry Yu intel, which he sent to his own boss. Pierce had no idea who that was. It was possible Henry Yu’s boss was a mole, or at least in the pay of the Sommers Group and told Adrian Sommers. Once they’d killed Yu, they went after Riley because they understood she was the source of the information.
She alone knew that the video roiling foreign affairs, leading to a possible confrontation with the People’s Republic of China, if not to armed conflict, was a deepfake. A really good one. He had no idea who had created the deepfake.
The deepfake was incredibly dangerous and Riley held the key.
