His laptop pinged. Notification of an incoming message. Diane Heughan. The CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence and Analysis wanted to speak to her son on a secure line.
And she wanted it to be now.
An off-the-books anti-terrorism group created by the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the Joint Task Team didn’t have any official capacity after discovering Jonas Johnson’s plan to win the next federal election by scaring Americans into voting for him.
A plot foiled when the JTT discovered the truth and pissed off his backers by subverting two-point-five billion in dirty arms trafficking money to a bank account nobody had access to but Jay. His idea. And a good one.
Unfortunately, Johnson’s backers discovered the hole in their pocket too soon, and they’d retaliated by murdering the JTT’s leader and taking Tak hostage. Jay’s fault for underestimating their opponents’ technical abilities. Not many hackers out there who could break through the walls around the codes he’d put in place. Something for him to dig into later. For now, he had more pressing matters.
He waved Adam over.
“Find something?”
“Nothing new.” He’d already shown the team the surveillance video of Jamie being pushed out of the hospital in a wheelchair. His father helping him to escape via a ground-floor fire exit. Since then, nothing. “Diane sent a coded message. She wants to talk to you on a secure line. Says it’s urgent.”
Adam looked at his watch and frowned. “Why now?”
“No idea.” Jay shrugged. “You want me to make the arrangements?”
“Yeah. Go ahead. Level five security protocol.”
With a couple of taps on his keyboard, he set up the video call using the encryption software he’d created for Diane’s intelligence unit. Another couple of taps, and he scrambled the hangar background to a blur.
An unnecessary precaution in his opinion.
He trusted Diane implicitly. Had since the day she’d found him hacking into the CIA’s secure server for shits and giggles. She could have sent him to prison. Instead, she’d recruited him and sent his ass to MIT. Education and expenses paid for by the United States Government. A fact nobody else around the table was privy to.
“Put her on speaker,” Adam ordered, pulling up a chair and sitting in front of the screen while the rest of them gathered around off-camera.
Call answered on the first ring, she got straight to the point. “We have a possible sighting of Takoda Keenan in Boston. Facial recognition coming in at sixty percent probability. I’m sending Jay the video now.”
Jay entered his twenty-two-digit alphanumeric code to access and decrypt the file, and while a surge of hope filled the air, they watched a man resembling their teammate look directly into the security camera as he walked by carrying a large duffel bag over one shoulder.
“Holy shit,” Cody mumbled. “What do you think, Mac? Is it him?”
“Can’t say for sure.” Chase leaned in to scrutinize the fuzzy black-and-white image frozen on the screen. “Any way you can enhance it, Jay?”
“Don’t waste your time,” Diane said. “We’ve already tried, and this is as good as it gets. Start it again at eight nineteen and play it through to eight twenty-two. Look at the two women in front of the subject and the kid behind.”
“What the fuck?” Adam said, looking at the video a second time. “How is it everyone else is in focus?”
“Signal jam?” Chase asked.
“Has to be,” Jay replied. “But I haven’t heard of a program with the capability to scramble individual features.”
“It’s not something we’ve seen either,” Diane added. “But I’ve set my people on it. If we come up with anything useful. We’ll share.”
“Date stamp shows this was taken yesterday morning. When did your team get it, and why the delay in notifying us?” His voice carrying an edge, Adam’s focus never left his mother’s face. For his own reasons, he didn’t have any confidence in her motives.
A dispute Jay knew little about and wanted no part of, so long as it didn’t impact on getting Tak, and now Jamie, safely back into the JTT fold.
“There was no delay, Adam. Sixty percent probability is below the threshold set by Jay’s scanning software. Every federal agency is on high alert after the shootings. We’re scouring everything we have from Boston. One of my analysts pulled this off our server an hour ago and flagged it to me after a routine review.”
Explanation accepted; he leaned back in his chair. “So where was this taken?”
“Long Wharf South. That puts Tak seven minutes from Boston Common Park and ten minutes from Mass Gen eleven hours before the shootings start.”
“Now wait a minute,” Adam growled. “You’re not suggesting he had anything to do with yesterday’s massacre, are you?”
