For the time being, she just wanted something. More often than not she didn’t even know what the something was until she stumbled upon it. In a perfect world, the something would somehow lead her to—
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. It came out half as a shout and half as a laugh. “SecureTrace!”
It was her first real break, and it was a giant one. SecureTrace was a GPS-based subscription tracking service that automatically called the police if the car’s airbag deployed. Operators responded to calls for directions, or, in the most advanced and expensive versions of the program, would provide a kind of valet service to help lost drivers find their way to a particular location.
As with ProtecTall Security, SecureTrace was the most common service of its kind, and as such, Venice had penetrated their firewall ages ago, in support of a different case. Since then, she’d been careful to leave no traces of her occasional visits. As long as a company had no idea that their security had been violated, they had no reason to make substantial changes. Fewer changes, in turn, meant continued easy access, and that, boys and girls, was the Holy Grail of hacking.
SecureTrace was even kind enough to put customers’ account numbers on their credit card invoices. They used that same account number internally. Once inside their system, all Venice had to do was type in the account number, and she’d be able to find the precise location of the enrolled vehicle, written in longitude and latitude. A simple conversion from there would give her a satellite view of the location. The view wouldn’t be real time, of course — in fact the satellite photos could be years old — but at least she could find it on the map and relay directions if needed.
In this case, Emin Zakaev was on Route 474 headed north toward Detroit.
“I got you,” she said with a grin.
Jonathan never had much respect for the law enforcement community. He thought that too many cops put their careers ahead of matters of right and wrong — a trait that was trumped three times over by the prosecutors who saw every indictment as a political statement, the next rung in the ladder of their electoral aspirations. During his days as a hired gun for Uncle Sam, he’d run into a few such careerists in the Army, but precious few of them within the Unit.
Disdain for the profession notwithstanding, he had to respect their ability to pull stakeout duty. Boxers and he had been sitting in the car watching for Peter and Anita Markham for over an hour. It was a pleasant little street in a pleasant little neighborhood, which roughly translated to being a boring as hell spot in the middle of the American nightmare called suburbia.
“How do we know when we’ve waited long enough?” Big Guy asked.
“When they get here, I guess. How long can it take?”
Boxers started to answer, but stopped and dipped his forehead toward a spot ahead of them. “Looks like we might have friends,” he said.
A copper-colored van with tinted side windows approached headlong from the opposite end of the street and took up a position on the other side, about equidistant from the Markham residence. In the dark, he couldn’t make out any other details.
“They’re not even subtle,” Boxers agreed. “How do you want to handle it?”
Jonathan shrugged. “There’s nothing to handle yet. They’re just a couple of guys out for a drive. Just like us.”
“It’s that just-like-us part that I worry about,” Boxers said.
The driver of the other car killed his lights. No one opened a door.
Jonathan brought binoculars to his eyes. “Copy down this license number.” He read off the Michigan plate number.
“Got it,” Boxers said. He’d written it on a page of the notebook he’d pulled from a pocket on his thigh.
Jonathan was reaching for the transmit button when his radio broke squelch and Venice said, “Scorpion, Mother Hen.”
He looked over at Big Guy. “Okay, that was scary.” He keyed the mike. “Go ahead, Mother Hen.”
“I have virtual eyeballs on Emin Zakaev,” she said.
Jonathan sighed. “I’m tired, Mother Hen. What do virtual eyeballs look like?”
She explained about SecureTrace and revealed the physical location of the vehicle. “That’s only about a thirty-minute head start from you,” she concluded.
“Zakaev has PC Two,” Jonathan said, referring to Jolaine. “She’s substantially less important to us than PC One. What do we have on the boy?”
A pause. When Venice’s voice returned, it was heavy with concern. “Nothing that I haven’t already told you. Has he not shown up already?”
“Negative,” Jonathan said. “But we have some friends who have. Tell me when you’re ready to copy a license plate number.”
Tracing plates barely qualified for Venice 101. “Ready when you are,” she said.
Jonathan read the number that Boxers held up.
Seconds later, Venice announced, “That number traces to a Kathryn Kennison out of Muncie, Indiana. It’s a Prius.”
Boxers chuckled. “Did you know that Prius means ‘little penis’ in Latin?”
Jonathan laughed. He had no idea what Prius meant, but he was nearly certain it wasn’t that. “That’s not the vehicle I’m looking at,” he said over the radio. “I’m assuming there’s no report of the Prius being stolen.”
“That’s almost always the headline of motor vehicle reports,” Venice said. “I don’t see anything like that.”
“Stand by,” Jonathan said. He looked to Boxers. “Any thoughts?”
“I defer to the brains of the outfit,” Big Guy said. “I just drive and break things. You think all the lofty thoughts.”
Jonathan smiled. Reading through the bullshit, he understood that Big Guy had no better idea of the next step than he did.
“I’ll tell you something that bugs me,” Big Guy said. “As far as I know, this dance has only two sides, the bad guys and us. Those guys in the other car are bad guys by default. The Markhams are way late getting here, and that’s not good. If ‘not good’ happens to the good guys, it has to be at the hands of the bad guys. So, how come the bad guys are watching the same house we are?”
Jonathan was impressed. It was a very good point. “You know what?” he said. “I think we should go out and have a little chat with—”
“Break, break, break,” Venice said. There was a new edge to her voice, something close to panic. “Emergency traffic. Scorpion, are you there?”
Jonathan punched the transmit button. “Go ahead,” he said.
“This is bad,” Venice said. “I just got an urgent update from ICIS. There’s been a multiple shooting on the road between the police station and your location. Two people shot, a man and a woman. The notice uses the phrase ‘execution style.’ ”
Something twisted in Jonathan’s gut. “Is it the Markhams?”
“No names yet,” Venice said. “The investigation is just beginning. All I know is that the victims are young, and they were driving a car that matches the description of the Markhams’ car.”
Jonathan closed his eyes. This was bad. “Any mention of a teenager?”
“Negative.”
Jonathan slammed the dashboard with his hand. He looked to Boxers and keyed the mike at the same time. “You know this means they got him, right?” he said.
“That means they’ve got both of them,” Boxers said.
“And they’re split up,” Jonathan noted. “I don’t know that they knew what they were doing, but that’s a smart move. We have to choose our targets.”
“We’re choosing the kid, right?” Boxers asked.