He listened intently and recognized the chorus of squeaking clothes hangers. The sound grew louder. The assassin was navigating his way through rows of clothing toward him. Millar looked up at his only option.
If I can’t hear him, he can’t hear me.
The shrieking sound of the fire alarm was much louder than he had expected. Etzy Millar spied a look through the displays and saw the gunman surveying the whole of the store. Millar took his chance and sprinted through an army of mannequins and out the door. He ran across the street pushing his way through the pedestrians in the crosswalk.
He quickly glanced over his shoulder and saw the assassin closing in. The heavy breathing caused his broken ribs to scream out in pain, but there was no stopping if he wanted to live. Another shot of adrenaline kicked in when he saw a tall, brown column with a capital M emblazoned on the top. He knew the killer wouldn’t have a SmarTrip card, and the fact that he didn’t shoot at him in public gave him a little confidence.
He sprinted toward the Friendship Heights Metro station, putting every ounce of energy into the effort. There was no time to check for oncoming traffic, but luck proved to be on his side as he narrowly skirted in front of an oncoming SUV.
Millar fumbled his way down the escalator and into the depths of the underground world. The Metrorail system meant familiar stomping grounds for the carless college student. As he reached the bottom of the escalator, he slowed to a brisk walk and quickly pulled out his wallet. He slid it over the turnstile machine’s sensor. The second the plastic flaps took to open seemed like an eternity. He looked back and didn’t see any sign of the killer yet.
His relief from gaining entry was quickly wiped away by the 1980s-style digital readout hanging above the entrance to the platforms. The next train was forty-five seconds away — a Red Line train toward Shady Grove. Factoring in the time it would take for the doors to open and close, it would be more than a minute before the train left.
Etzy Millar pressed on. He found himself in a new kind of war, one that took place covertly, and that he had only heard whispers about. He and his friend were involved in a computer hacker group called The Collective, and it was clear to him now that they had been used.
Chapter 4
The drive down the New Jersey Turnpike seemed like an eternity. Trent Turner wore a pained expression on his face, oblivious to the incessant squeaking of the windshield wipers as they cleared away the last hints of rain. Today his eyes held a threatening gaze that mirrored the storm clouds he was leaving behind. Normally that meant something completely different. Today, he was the one in pain.
It had been nearly seven years since he had made his decision. He chose a self-imposed exile from the ones he loved. The remnants of his previous life consisted of calling his mother on her birthday and late in the evening on Christmas, and even that was frowned upon by his employer.
His father had been insufferably stubborn in previous conversations, and learned not to pick up the phone when Trent was expected to call. He understood any attempt to talk his son into coming home would only result in the droning sound of a dial tone. At least when Trent spoke to his mother, Cathy, his father would gain some comfort in knowing he was doing all right.
This afternoon was the first time his mother had used the emergency contact number he had given her. As he drove south, he knew when she saw him in person she would try once again to bring him back into their lives, but it was too late for him. That sort of change wasn’t possible.
Turner viewed his line of work as a necessary evil. It was complicated at best. His activities were scarcely known to the world but delivered high impact. Anyone who knew about his work either employed him, or could expect to have a short lifespan. What he did wasn’t about thank you cards or recognition. Trent Turner was the kind of man who was content working in the shadows. He had his own motivations.
He had felt the impact from September 11, 2001.
Nancy had worked for the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald at its headquarters in One World Trade Center. He met her halfway around the world on the Spanish island of Mallorca, just months before the terrorist attack on the buildings would take her life.
He replayed the sunny afternoon in his head as he continued south. It was something he did often. It helped him to rationalize his decision to live this way, to sacrifice a normal life in order to perform a crucial service for his country. They were visiting the city of Palma de Mallorca, and it was a day full of memorable conversations that shined a light onto her kindness and potential. He and his brother were just teenagers looking forward to college at the time, and he had hoped to one day see her again. Even at his age, he knew the world needed more people like Nancy.
Fate would soon see her promise extinguished by a dark reality. Her loss, and the deaths of thousands more, opened his eyes to a world that many refused to see or chose to ignore. The tragedy served as motivation for his chosen career path. A lot of people hated his country. Whether ideologues or religious fundamentalists, they sought to take advantage of the freedom America provided and what its constitution stood for. He considered himself part of the last line of defense, and, unlike that fateful day in September, he was the hunter and would make them suffer.
Brake lights snapped him to the present, and he reached to turn off the groaning windshield wipers.
Turner had felt it. He didn’t know what it was at the time, but something had happened. It woke him up on Wednesday night, his first night at home in over a month. A sick feeling deep inside left the hair standing up on the back of his neck. He couldn’t fall back to sleep. He was always keenly aware of what was happening around him, especially when it came to his brother. Having a sixth sense was essential in his line of work if you wanted to stay alive.
He was trying to put the pieces together, attempting to make sense out of the situation from what little he knew. The conversation with his mother was as short as it was brutal. His brother was in intensive care, likely brain-dead, with a gunshot wound to his head. Every possible scenario he ran through pointed right back at him, a case of mistaken identity. They were, after all, identical twins.
Chapter 5
Ryan Turner’s mother had been sitting in the chair next to his bed for nearly two days. Rest became secondary as she tried to extract what information she could from the steady stream of doctors that shuffled in and out of the room. She had taken notes diligently and used her iPad to scour the Internet with the hope of uncovering some morsel of information that could help save her son. She knew it was a long shot with the severity of his brain injuries, but the research, and classical music she played for him, helped to occupy her mind.
Cathy Turner was a fighter. Harvard educated and a competitive long-distance runner in her youth, she was forced away from her partnership at one of Washington, DC’s premier law firms to battle cancer. The disease had been in remission for more than three years now, and rather than step back into the world of criminal justice, she decided to focus on what was most important to her: spending time with her grandchildren, son, and loving husband, Joe.