“I went to Dallas to get Deke. I think something’s wrong at the office, and he’s the person most likely to know how to handle the situation,” Maddie admitted.
“And all those times I asked you about work, you didn’t think to mention your suspicions?” Drake asked. “We were getting close.”
She shook her head. “No, we weren’t. You were nice and all, but I was planning on ending it even before I found out you’re a spy.”
“Why?” Drake sat up straighter, a look of genuine confusion on his face. “On paper I’m perfect for you. I made sure of it.”
She shrugged. “I bet you did. Did you manipulate the app so we would match?”
“Believe it or not, I didn’t have to do much to get us to match.” Drake slid off the chair, letting the ice pack drop to the counter. “We share a lot of the same interests. I am mostly the man I presented to you.”
“The one who bored her?” Deke couldn’t help the dig.
“I didn’t say that.” Maddie frowned his way.
Deke stared at her for a moment, and she finally winced, a sure sign that he’d been right. Maddie didn’t need someone exactly like her. She needed her natural opposite, and that was him, not some overly educated asshole with a ton of old money behind him. Drake was connected in the DC world. His family was powerful in both the business and political worlds. He’d heard rumors that Drake’s mother was a senator. Samantha Radcliffe of Virginia. He wondered what she thought of her son running around the States playing James Bond.
“Like I said, I slow-played it, and that was why it failed,” Drake summed up. “I thought slow was the way to go with you. You didn’t seem like someone who fell in bed with the first set of abs you met. I didn’t get a chance to show you mine. They’re spectacular, by the way.”
“She’s with me, and not in a just-for-the-op way.” He would lie to Drake all day if it meant keeping Maddie safe from him.
It also wasn’t a terrible way to stay extra close to her. He got the feeling Drake was about to dig in like a tick.
Drake’s gaze shifted between the two of them as though he was sizing up the situation and looking for a way around the problem he faced.
“Baby, I think you should come here.” He hoped she caught on to his use of baby because this was their first real test.
“I don’t think he’s going…” Maddie’s eyes widened, and she hurried to his side. “Oh, this is one of those times, right? I’m supposed to obey you now.”
Drake groaned. “Well, of course. I should have known the ridiculously smart scientist would go all Fifty Shades on me. Honey, if that was all it took, I can tie you up right.”
Strangely, with her arm wrapped around his waist, his inner caveman was easier to control. “I think she’ll pass on that. So you understand that if you want access to what Maddie knows, you go through me.”
“Fine.” Drake seemed to get serious. “Madeline, what do you know about Justin Garcia?”
Maddie tensed beside him. “I know he worked on the communications team with the audio portion of my AI. He was fine tuning what Clarke will sound like when he talks to home base. I know he wasn’t a regular drug user and yet they treated it like it was no big deal that he died in a flop house.”
“And Pam Dodson?” Drake prompted.
“She also worked on the comms team, and I don’t think she’s hiking to try to find herself,” Maddie replied.
“No, she’s not. She was going to meet me the day she disappeared,” Drake revealed. “I’d been working her as an asset since she joined the team. I led her to believe I was an investigative reporter doing research on Byrne. For the first year or so what I got out of her was gossip. I wanted to keep the lines of communication open in case something did go wrong. Three weeks ago, she contacted me and asked me to meet with her because she’d learned some information that could put Byrne behind bars.”
“And what was that information?” It was time to see if Drake was truly willing to play ball.
Drake’s shoulders shrugged. “I don’t know because when I got to the motel we were meeting at she was dead.”
Maddie gasped. “Someone killed her?”
“Either that or she stabbed herself with that knife.” Drake’s casual tone let Deke know he’d seen his fair share of bodies. “I didn’t stick around. I left the motel, but I waited and watched because I wanted to see how they dealt with her body. A few hours later a cleanup crew showed. They were professionals. They took the body, cleaned up the room, talked a bit with the staff to make sure no one remembered something they shouldn’t. And that was when my journalist identity started getting hits.”
“Hits?” Maddie asked.
“He peppered records and documents on that ID around the web,” MaeBe explained. “He would want to look real. Like I’m sure there’s an Internet footprint for Dan Gray.”
“Not anymore, there isn’t,” Drake replied. “I had my techie erase it all about two minutes after I realized my cover was blown. I sent her a signal, and I assure you she’s done her job. But the point is they knew Pamela was about to give me real evidence about what Byrne is planning.”
“What do you think he’s planning?” Kyle asked. “I know you wouldn’t be out here if you didn’t have some kind of idea.”
Drake went quiet, and for a moment Deke worried he wasn’t going to talk. “Have you heard of Havana Syndrome?”
“Of course.” Years before there had been complaints from members of the US Embassy of a mysterious attack. They’d been woken by terrible sounds that brought on bouts of nausea and vertigo. Over the years more and more of these attacks had been reported, and the long-term neurological problems had been documented and called Havana Syndrome. “I thought they’d determined it was likely microwaves.”
“Attacks like these have been happening for far longer than the incident at the embassy in Havana,” Drake explained. “The Agency has records of similar incidents going back decades. Those were single spies, usually working in remote places. We believe that the attack on the embassy is proof that the technology has evolved. Since then there have been several more mysterious attacks. None of which we can prove.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with our satellite,” Maddie said. “We obviously don’t have microwaves on board.”
“Would you know?” Drake asked. “I’m not talking about something that blatantly looks like a laser beam. We know so little about this technology that it’s impossible to say what it is we’re looking for. Most of the people I’ve talked to think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t.” Deke was with him on this point. “We’ve been tracking a woman we believe is working with a group called The Consortium. She has tech we’ve never seen before and can’t explain. It’s far beyond anything that’s on the market today or even close to being released.”
“She was involved in a case we worked with Hutch’s wife,” MaeBe offered. “That case was about high tech, too. We believe the group she works for was paying to slow down technological advances so they could profit for longer off contemporary tech.”