The woman who’d led him into an ambush.
Did she know what was going to happen? Was she part of Medusa? Or was she another one of their innocent pawns?
He picked up another of the framed photographs on her desk, which showed Abbey standing next to a tall, lean man in a gray suit, obviously a few years older than she was. The man had one arm around her waist in a possessive grip, and he carried a leather briefcase in his other hand. He wore a lanyard around his neck that identified him as part of a United Nations conference. Bourne recognized the background of the photo as inside Grand Central Station. On the photograph itself, someone had written a caption in neat penmanship: Abbey et Michel, New York. It was dated the previous year.
Jason had a hard time imagining these two in a relationship. The man in the photograph had the cautious, humorless smile of a diplomat. By contrast, Abbey stared at the camera with the grin of someone who rode life like a roller coaster with her arms in the air. She wore a little black dress with a plunging neckline and flouncy lace sleeves that said, Look at me. Even though the two women didn’t resemble each other at all, there was something in Abbey’s attitude and eyes that reminded him of Nova.
Bourne examined Abbey’s desk, which was messy, with hardly a square inch of open space. She had notepads filled with writing, scribbled out of the lines with arrows and bubbles as she thought of new ideas. The borders of her computer monitor were covered over with yellow sticky notes. It all reflected a quick, chaotic mind.
He opened the top drawer of her desk. Inside, he found a dozen matching Uni-Ball pens, two tins of breath mints, and coupons for just about every fast-food restaurant in the city. There was also a digital voice recorder.
Jason took out the recorder and pressed the button for playback.
The voice on the machine sounded loud in the dark, empty space. He quickly switched it to a whisper and held the device to his ear.
“Congresswoman, some people say that in the age of social media, privacy is an archaic notion. I take it you disagree.”
He had never heard Abbey Laurent’s voice before, but he was sure it was her. The fast, almost breathless way she had of talking matched her face. She sounded as if her mouth were always trying to catch up with her brain. Bourne kept listening, and the next voice on the recording was one he recognized from television.
Congresswoman Sofia Ortiz.
Her Hispanic-accented voice was slow and measured, like a politician considering her words.
“Yes, I do disagree. Most strenuously. Is there convenience that comes with living our lives online? Have these apps made our lives better? Absolutely. But the question is, who is really in control of all that information? If we are talking about an individual’s personal data, then the individual should own it. Period. And I’m afraid that Big Tech has forgotten that simple lesson. These companies are the latest in a long history of monopolistic industries with too much money, too much power, too much influence, too much potential for abuse. They need to be reined in.”
“Speaking of abuse,” Abbey went on, “one of my sources tells me that you believe Big Tech has been covering up some kind of large-scale data hack. A theft that affects practically every online user. What can you tell me about that?”
“I’m not commenting on that,” the congresswoman replied. When she continued, Jason could hear the smile in her voice. “At least not on the record.”
“And off the record?”
“Off the record, people will be shocked to the core by the volume of data that was stolen.”
“Do you know who is behind it?”
“No. How can you investigate the perpetrator of something that Big Tech claims never happened? There are obviously foreign actors who would be likely suspects. Russia. China. Iran.”
“What are the risks of this data being in the wrong hands?”
“The risks? Incalculable. Online advertisers already synthesize data in order to influence your buying behavior. Imagine if nearly all of your personal data was available to a rogue actor, someone who wanted to influence you for other reasons. To shape what you think, what you believe, how you act, how you vote. That’s the situation we face.”
“There’s already a new social media software that claims to know what you want to do before you do it,” Abbey said. “Prescix boasts that it can predict your behavior. If you don’t know what you want for dinner, the app will tell you. I’ve used it. It’s creepy how accurate it is.”
“Prescix,” Congresswoman Ortiz replied thoughtfully. “Yes, I know the software, but the goal of this technology is not to predict what you do. It’s not so benign as they would claim. The goal is to tell you what to do. To manipulate you and make you do whatever they want.”
Jason switched off the recorder.
The interview confirmed what Miles Priest and Scott DeRay had expected, that Abbey had a source who knew about the data hack. The question was who and whether that person could help him infiltrate Medusa.
He needed a name.
Bourne dug deeper, sifting through folders and notepads on Abbey’s desk. She was prolific and had multiple projects under way, but he didn’t find any research notes that were connected to her profile of Sofia Ortiz. There was nothing to tell him who her source might be. If she had other materials about Ortiz and Big Tech, then she hadn’t left them in the office. He’d have to find her and talk to her himself.
Jason checked his watch. He’d been inside the offices of The Fort for ten minutes, and he couldn’t stay much longer. But he wanted to see if he could access Abbey’s computer. He found the CPU tower on the floor and switched it on, and the monitor on her desk bloomed to life. The login asked for a password, and he didn’t have time to crack it. However, he was intrigued by the wallpaper photograph she’d chosen for her screen.
It showed the hills of Red Rock Canyon outside Las Vegas.
The picture sent a chill up his spine. Las Vegas.
Bourne knew it might be a coincidence. Millions of people went to Las Vegas as tourists, and Abbey Laurent going there might not mean anything at all. But this was also the city in which Nova had been murdered.
He logged into the computer as a guest. He couldn’t access Abbey’s files, but he could load a search engine and search the web. He typed in: Abbey Laurent Las Vegas. What came up first in the results took Jason’s breath away.
THE MURDERER NEXT DOOR:
Inside the Bland Life of America’s Worst Mass Shooter
Abbey had done a profile of Charles Hackman.
She’d done a profile of the man who had killed Nova, along with sixty-six other men, women, and children.
Bourne felt his breathing accelerate. Another flashback paralyzed him. In his head, he heard the bullets, the screams; he saw the panic as people ran. But they had nowhere to go. They were easy targets for a man in a hotel window.
And he saw Nova, dead in the middle of the chaos, her body being carried away by a man he knew.
A Treadstone agent.
Jason didn’t have time to read further. He glanced at the monitor on the desk in front of him and saw a web camera clipped to the frame. The green light on the webcam glowed. It was active.
Someone was watching him.
He grabbed the camera and yanked it out of the computer port and then kicked the power plug from the wall. He didn’t have much time. Seconds. He ran for the office door of The Fort and took the stairs to the first floor two at a time. Rather than use the front door again, he followed a dusty corridor to the rear of the building and found another exit that led out to a side street. He cracked the door and looked out. The neighborhood was empty. He ran across the street, where an iron fence built atop a stone wall led into the rear yard of an upscale residential house. He leaped for the fence, propped his foot on one of the crossbars, and threw himself to the other side. Then he flattened himself against the wet green lawn and waited.