The Enraged

CHAPTER 29

The Mole had no idea what he was going to tell Griffin if Orlando and Quinn didn’t provide him direction. He could go ahead and give up this Misty Blake woman, but he had a pretty good idea what Griffin would do if he found the woman, and the Mole couldn’t bring himself to be a part of that.

Perhaps he could generate a fictional identity. He could easily seed data all over the place to support it. He played it through in his mind, and grimaced. With enough time, he could do it, but that he didn’t have. One little glitch and it would be a house of cards tumbling down right on top of him.

So…what? Keep lying and say he couldn’t find anything? Griffin would never go for that.

The only real solution was if he didn’t have to worry about Griffin anymore.

He folded his arms and pursed his lips. Now there was an idea. He couldn’t execute it himself — not the physical part, anyway — but he could help someone else achieve that goal.

Quinn, for instance.

Griffin was already moving into the cleaner’s crosshairs. If the Mole could make sure Quinn had a clear shot, that would be problem solved.

All right. So what’s the first thing Quinn would want to know?

Where Griffin was, of course.

The Mole woke his computer and opened Slime, his self-written tracking software. Slime was a constant work in progress. He tweaked it sometimes two or three times a week, improving its capabilities and success rate. It could employ a variety of methods, the most common being the ability to track a cell phone.

The Mole didn’t try inputting Griffin’s number, though. He was sure the phone would be untraceable via traditional methods. That was fine. There was another, backdoor route he could try. He’d used it before, after the last time Griffin paid him a visit, when the Mole had wanted to make sure the man had actually left Seattle. It meant sending Griffin an e-mail, but as long as he had a legitimate reason for it, there shouldn’t be a problem.

Using the tracking program, he opened a blank e-mail with an embedded bot that would travel to Griffin’s phone and report back. Until the message was deleted, it would act as a tracking bug.

In the body, he typed:

He read it again, felt it would stand up to scrutiny, and hit SEND. He then switched to the tracking control screen and waited.

With the exception of the blinking cursor in the upper left corner, the box was empty.

“Let’s go, baby. Show me where he is.”

The cursor continued to blink, unmoving.

“Come on, you son of a bitch. Where are you?”

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

There was at least one other time, with a different target, when the bot had not sent a message back, but the Mole was confident he’d taken care of that error. So why was this one not—

Suddenly the cursor began to move, spitting out a set of GPS coordinates. Once the line was complete, the Mole copied it, pasted it into Google Maps, and was almost instantaneously provided with a location.

For the first time since he’d been shooting aliens with his team, the Mole smiled.