“The one that put those people aboard the cable ship. The ones you think Grigor signed off on.”
“Yes.”
Natasha nodded. She slid a chair up alongside Kali and sat down. “When you say starting...”
“I type in a search term and let the results guide me,” Kali said. “I want to fully understand Malkira’s reasons for returning to the States.”
“Because why would he do it unless there’s a bigger reason than getting rid of one snoopy investigator? It isn’t like he’s just some mob hit man.”
“Yes.”
Natasha nodded. “So...you free-associate when you search?”
“Yes.”
“Web browser as Ouija board. Cool concept,” Natasha said. “I’m the same. With my analytical software. And when I make music. Everything, really. It’s all improvisational. Like spirit writing. Thoughts come to you out of nowhere.”
Kali looked at her. Natasha sipped her coffee. Kali looked at her another moment.
“He’s the best at what he does,” she said finally. “I need to do what I do best.”
Natasha nodded again. Then she put her coffee down on the desk beside Kali’s, tilting her chin to the screen.
“We should get this shit started,” she said.
Carmody accelerated as he shot off the bridge on the R 18, then cut left heading toward Queens Boulevard. Black helmet, jacket and leather gloves, his black riding pants thick at the knees and tucked into his boots. Traffic was heavy as usual, but he weaved speedily through it, white-lining the lane dividers as he raced past the clumps of plodding vehicles. Drivers honked their horns, shouted curses out their windows, and flashed their middle fingers, but he ignored them. New Yorkers seemed to aggressively compete for every square inch of space. He didn’t like it, didn’t have time to waste on petty battles. He’d been in too many real ones where men and women working together selflessly could mean the difference between life and death.
Two innocent kids had been taken hostage by a human killing machine. Carmody didn’t care what Malkira wanted or where he came from. He barely cared about Malkira at all.
For him, right now, it was about those kids.
He whipped onto the highway ramp and opened his throttle, following the route map the OTTER techs were relaying to his head-up.
“You all there?” he said into his helmet mic.
“We see you nice and clear.”
“Good, stay with me,” he said and roared east.
It was three thirty in the afternoon in New York and therefore nine thirty in the morning on the island of Oahu, when Grigor sent a secure, self-deleting text message to Jochi from his satphone. He stood in the sunroom of the house near the overgrown cul-de-sac. The Musil girls were in the beach chairs. His Glock was just forward of his right hip in a concealed-carry holster. His message was typed thus in simplified Chinese:
