The Discarded

CHAPTER 32

“Do not get out of the car,” Desirae said. “I don’t care why you’re here. I don’t know what lies you told my mother. I don’t want to hear any of it. I only let you come this far so you could see how serious I am. You are not welcome. Just your presence here has already ruined our lives. If you come back tomorrow, we will be gone. Now turn around and don’t come back.” She emphasized the last of her words by leveling the barrel of her rifle at them.

Orlando said, “All we need is a few minutes of—”

“Leave. Now.” Desirae braced the rifle against her shoulder.

“Anyone have a suggestion?” Quinn whispered.

“Maybe we should go,” Nate said. “Let her cool down a little and come back in a few hours. One of us could keep an eye on the place, make sure she doesn’t leave.”

Quinn knew as unsatisfactory as Nate’s suggestion might be, it was probably the best solution for now. But as he reached to put the car in reverse, he heard one of the back doors open.

“What are you doing?” Nate said.

“Do not step another foot outside!” Desirae shouted. “Get back in your vehicle.”

“Go ahead and shoot me, then,” Abraham said, climbing all the way out of the car. “I’m not going to leave. Not until you’ve heard us out.”

“I said get in the car, Abraham! Right now!”

He moved around the back of the sedan and started walking toward the house, his hands raised.

“I swear to God, I will kill you where you stand.”

“Then go ahead,” he said.

Quinn opened his door.

“You get back in!” Desirae said, shifting her aim to him.

“There are people looking for you,” he said.

“I know there are people looking for me. They’ve been looking for me for years.”

“They’re getting close,” Abraham told her.

“Because of you,” she said, pointing her gun back at him.

“All I wanted to know was if Tessa was alive. I realize I should have left it alone, but I can’t take it back now.” He paused. “These are the worst kind of people. They killed a good man, a friend who was helping me.”

Surprise flashed across Desirae’s face. “What friend?”

“His name was Eli. Eli Be—”

“Becker?” she said. “They killed Eli? Oh, God. I told him to run.”

Another car door opened. “You’re the one who warned him,” Orlando said as she climbed out.

Nate, apparently feeling left out, opened his door and joined them.

Still holding her gun on them, Desirae repeated, “I told him to run.”

“He did run,” Quinn said. “He went to Florida.”

“I was supposed to meet him there,” Abraham said. “But they found him before I arrived. We followed his trail but we didn’t get to him in time. They knew he’d found some information about Tessa. They tried to torture it out of him. We don’t know how much they got before he died.”

“Oh, my God. Abraham, why couldn’t you stop? Why did you have to keep looking?”

“This isn’t Abraham’s fault,” Quinn said. “These people aren’t looking for you because he wouldn’t stop. They took another friend of ours, but we were able to get him out before they could kill him. When they were interrogating him, they never asked him about Abraham. They don’t even know about Abraham.”

“The dot-xuki computer virus at the CIA,” Orlando said. “I’d be willing to bet that’s what started it. At least this latest round.”

The front door of the house creaked open, and a scared young voice said, “Mom, what’s going on?”

Desirae looked over her shoulder and said, “Get back inside.”

“Who are these people?”

“Terri, I told you, wait in your room.”

From Quinn’s vantage point, he could see the girl standing in the doorway. Abraham, however, had to take a few steps to the side to see around Desirae.

“Tessa?” he said.

“Inside!” Desirae yelled at the girl.

But the girl had frozen in the doorway at the sound of Abraham’s voice.

Abraham took a step forward. “Tessa, I–I don’t know if you remember me, but I knew you when you were very young. My name is Abraham. I—”

“Abraham?” the girl said, her eyes widening. “Abe?”

Abraham’s own eyes were swimming in water as he continued forward. “Yes. I’m Abe.” The girl stepped onto the lanai.

“Terri, please,” Desirae pleaded. “It’s not safe out here.”

But the girl walked on as if she couldn’t hear Desirae.

“Abe?” she said again. “You…you took me on a plane.”

“A few. A couple trains, too.”

“I don’t remember trains.” She hesitated. “You promised you’d come back.”

“I wanted to for a long time, but I’m here now.” He was almost to the lanai now. “Do you still play checkers?”

A surprised half smile. “Every day,” she said. “Just like you taught me.”

Desirae’s shoulders sagged as she lowered her gun. “For God’s sake, come inside before I kill all of you.”

Houses eight and nine were both occupied by large families Gloria quickly dismissed as possibilities.

House ten, like house six earlier, appeared to be unoccupied. There was not, however, a locked gate across the entrance, so they drove all the way up to the house and had a look around.

Not just unoccupied. Empty. Whoever had lived there was gone.

The caller, perhaps? Or was this only the location the caller had used?

They let themselves in through the back door and found enough dust in the place to know that no one had been inside for weeks.

She mentally crossed number ten off the list and ordered her men back to the Suburban. They had one more house in the valley to check.

Two, she corrected herself. They still had to go back to number six.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Desirae said as they walked into the living room. “And don’t expect me to get you anything to drink.”

Orlando and Nate sat on the couch while Abraham took one of the chairs. Quinn didn’t feel much like sitting and remained on his feet. Apparently, Desirae was feeling the same.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” Abraham said to Tessa as the girl took a seat on a nearby footstool.

Still unsure about how she should react to him, she paused before saying, “Thanks.”

“I never knew what happened to you after…after we separated.”

She took a quick glance at Desirae. “I’ve been okay. Mom takes care of me.”

“How long have you been here?” Orlando asked Desirae.

“None of your business,” Desirae said. “Tell me about Eli.”

“Do you think maybe…” Quinn let the sentence hang as he glanced quickly at Tessa then back at Desirae.

Desirae considered his suggestion for a few seconds. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go to your room for a few minutes?”

“I want to stay,” Tessa said.

“I know, and I’m sorry. But I promise, I will tell you everything after.”

Tessa looked disappointed as she stood up. “Everything?”

“Yes, everything.”

As soon as Tessa disappeared into the back of the house, Desirae said, “I don’t hide anything from her. That way, she doesn’t question me if we have to do something…unusual.”

“Like living in a secret underground apartment below your mother’s house?” Orlando asked.

Desirae didn’t seem fazed by the question. “Something like that.” Her face hardened. “Now tell me about Eli.”

Abraham carried the load of the story, taking it back to when he had first approached Eli for help not long after leaving Tessa with Desirae. Quinn and Orlando added points here and there in regards to the most recent events.

“I was angry at myself for leaving her when I thought she needed me most, I guess,” Abraham said. “Apparently, I shouldn’t have worried.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Desirae said.

“Your turn,” Quinn said. “What happened after Amsterdam?”

“I never agreed to take turns,” Desirae said.

“Abraham needs to know,” Quinn countered. “You owe him that much. He did bring Tessa to you.”

Looking annoyed, Desirae finally sighed and said, “She wasn’t supposed to stay with me. I was head of the pickup team, that’s all. We were to take her to Mexico City and await further instructions from Carter. Those instructions never came.”

“Someone killed him,” Quinn said.

“Yes, but we didn’t know that yet. At that point, there were two of us with Terri…with Tessa. The guy with me went out to try to make contact, but he never came back. It was obvious something was up. Since Carter’s group usually did sub work for the CIA, I used a contact I had there to see if she could find anything out. That’s when I learned about Carter, and the fact that nearly everyone else associated with Operation Overtake had been killed. Not exactly a good feeling knowing you’re probably the last link in the chain.” She looked at Abraham. “For a while, I assumed you were dead, too.”

“What about the person you were supposed to be taking Tessa to?” Orlando asked.

“Carter was the only one who knew who that was. Kept it in his head. Took it with him when he died.”

“So you decided to keep her?” Quinn asked.

“I was asked to help,” she said. “You have to understand, this was a mess. While the Agency wasn’t directly involved, and would have liked to wash their hands of the whole thing, they knew there was a slim but real possibility that if Operation Overtake was exposed, it could be linked back to them. The abandonment of a little girl? Or God forbid, her death? Think of the careers that would have ruined.” She paused. “The offer was a well-paid early retirement, and access to additional funds for whatever other extras I might need. The trade-off was that once I accepted the job, Tessa would be my responsibility alone. If something happened to her, all the blame would fall on me.”

“And you said yes to this,” Quinn said.

“I wasn’t a bad agent, but I wasn’t jumping at the chance to get shot at every day, either,” she said. “It was an out.”

Abraham scoffed. “It was more than an out, wasn’t it? How long were you with her when they made you the offer?”

Desirae said nothing for several seconds. “By then, a few weeks.”

Abraham nodded. “If I had been watching her that long, I would have said yes, too. Hell, I probably would have said yes if you’d asked me in Amsterdam.”

Desirae said nothing, but by the look on her face, Quinn knew Abraham had hit close to home.

“So you moved her into your mom’s basement?” Quinn asked.

A reluctant nod. “The Agency arranged the construction.”

“And then?”

“When I felt enough time had passed, we moved here.”

“So until now there haven’t been any problems?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said hesitantly. “Though I wasn’t to have any direct contact with anyone at the Agency anymore, my friend there did set me up with access to their system so I could watch my back. She contacted me a few times after that, telling me someone seemed to be trying to find out if Tessa had really died in Osaka or not. I kept tabs on things to make sure no one was getting close. The searches seemed to be coming from two different sources. One I tracked back to Eli Becker right there in the CIA. At first I thought he was a mole working for those who had killed the rest of the Overtake team, but after a while I figured out he was working for you.” She looked at Abraham. “That’s when I realized you were still alive.

“The real problem, though, was this other group. It took me a few years, but I was able to ID them as McCrillis International. Familiar with them?”

“You might say that,” Quinn replied. “They’re the ones who killed Eli.”

“I guessed as much. In the first few years, they would probe several times a week for info about Tessa. After that, it dropped off some, occasionally there were months with nothing. This last time was over six months, and I thought maybe they’d finally given up.” She hung her head for a moment, then looked at Abraham. “It’s my fault they’re on me again, not yours. I’m sorry I said it was.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I thought I was being so smart. See, the one thing McCrillis hadn’t been able to get their hands on yet was a full copy of the Agency’s file on Overtake. About a year ago they got close. Scared the crap out of me when I found out. I’d been told the report had been sanitized to reflect that Tessa had been killed along with Jennifer Kagawa, her…mother, but I hadn’t seen the files myself and couldn’t be sure there wasn’t something in them that would lead back to us. So I knew I had to do something.

“The dot-xuki virus was yours,” Orlando said, leaning forward.

Desirae shook her head. “I can’t take credit for creating it — that was done by a tech I still trusted — but I did execute it. Good thing, too. It wiped out the files at the Agency and delivered a copy to me. The stupid son of a bitch who had asked me to take care of Tessa had created a special subfolder detailing the decision and had subsequently been adding updates of her status. If McCrillis had found that, we’d both be dead right now.”

“What about the recent picture of Tessa?” Quinn said.

“The one Eli was sent? That came from me.” Once more Desirae looked at Abraham. “I thought maybe it would be enough to satisfy you. See that she was alive and well. I should have never sent it. Within twenty-four hours, not only had Eli somehow been able to dig up more information, but I was also receiving notifications that McCrillis’s activities seemed to have kicked into high gear and I realized they were on his trail. I couldn’t have that. Eli had the picture of Tessa. McCrillis would know she was definitely alive if they got ahold of it.” She took a breath. “I called, told him that someone was after him and he had to leave town. Then I set up some quick and dirty false trails I hoped would keep McCrillis busy for a while. Apparently, it wasn’t enough.”

“Who took the picture?” Orlando asked.

“I don’t know. I used one that was in the file, so someone from the Agency, I assumed.”

“I have news for you, then. Your virus left a few things behind. Eli had a second copy of the picture on his computer, only he’d found it in the CIA system and it had a dot-xuki extension.”

“What? Oh, my God. How many files were left?”

“I don’t know. The message Eli left made it sound like only a few. The good news is they’ve been isolated, so it’s doubtful McCrillis has gotten to them.”

Desirae didn’t look convinced, and Quinn was willing to bet she would attempt a second purge in the future.

“Have you ever been able to figure out why these McCrillis people would want to kill Tessa in the first place?” Abraham asked.

Desirae stared at him for several seconds, as if caught off guard. “I live with this every day. I guess I forgot that information was kept from us during the operation. It’s her father. He’s Frank Rostov.”

Silence.

“The Frank Rostov?” Orlando asked. “Rostov Dynamics Frank Rostov?”

“Yes.”

Frank Rostov had turned his father’s small San Francisco electronics company into one of the largest tech firms in the world, rivaling Apple and Google and Microsoft. Aside from making much of the equipment and software that served as the backbone of the Internet, his company had also become one of the largest tech-related defense contractors in the country, easily making him worth more than thirty billion dollars.

“Didn’t he get sick or something?” Nate asked.

Desirae nodded. “A severe stroke. Hung on for a little while before he finally passed away.”

“That was what? Five or six years ago?” Nate said.

“The stroke was just a little over seven,” Desirae corrected him. “More precisely, two months before Jennifer was killed in Osaka.”

Tessa’s mother, Desirae told them, had been Rostov’s mistress. When she became pregnant with Tessa, he had sent her away to appease his wife, promising his mistress he’d take care of her and Tessa, and acknowledge the child as his own at some point in the future. The money had come, but the public acknowledgment had yet to materialize when the stroke cut him down. In his diminished capacity, Rostov was no longer able to run the company, so his wife, Jacqueline Rostov, took on the role of CEO. She had been the one who had used the company’s defense connections at the CIA to find someone who could handle a delicate matter for her. This turned out to be 525, Gavin Carter’s group, and the job was to terminate Tessa and Jennifer.

“But why?” Nate asked.

“I couldn’t figure it out at first, either,” Desirae said. “His wife had inherited the company. What did she care anymore? At the suggestion of my hacker friend, we infiltrated the system belonging to the law firm that represented the Rostovs. It turns out that while Frank Rostov hadn’t publicly acknowledged Tessa, he had added her to his will a few weeks before he became incapacitated. If Tessa showed up, half the estate would be hers. Mrs. Rostov is clearly not interested in sharing. She made a bad choice, though, by hiring Carter. He might have been greedy for the money the project would bring in, but he wasn’t able to stomach the idea of killing a little girl and had come up with an alternate plan.

“What he didn’t realize was that apparently Mrs. Rostov had a separate plan to eliminate anyone associated with the deaths so they wouldn’t be able to talk about them later. There’s no doubt in my mind that’s where McCrillis first came in. In the process, either McCrillis or Mrs. Rostov herself must have realized something odd was going on. Otherwise, why continue looking for Tessa?”

They all fell quiet as they digested this last bit.

“They may never find out about this place,” Orlando said.

“I can’t take that chance.”

“Do you have somewhere else to go?” Quinn asked.

“I have backups.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

“The best thing you can do is leave us alone.” There was no malice in her words. She was only stating a fact.

Abraham rose from his chair. “Can I at least tell Tessa good-bye?”

“Of course,” Desirae said. “Her room’s last one on the left.”

He had barely disappeared into the hallway when somewhere toward the front of the house a buzzer sounded.