LITMIR.BIZ

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I’d never be this obvious.”

      “Agreed,” Selena said. “But that wouldn’t stop them from shipping you off to Leavenworth. Another one just popped in. Hmm, it’s to a CIA manager. James Wrobleski. Hold on, I’m reading up on him. Gotta love Oracle. It snags more intel than I can get at CIA.”

      Allison didn’t say anything in reply. She did love Oracle. She had designed it, built it, nurtured it. But she couldn’t let Selena know that. Because right now, Selena didn’t need to know that. No one did besides the head of Oracle—code name Delphi.

      Aka, Allison Gracelyn.

      She flipped on her windshield wipers and watched the traffic. Two lanes over to the left, a grubby white panel van passed a BMW on the right, and cut back in front of it. The Beemer honked his horn and flashed his brights.

      “Here we go,” Selena said. “Six months ago, three CIA agents and four Italian SISMI intelligence officials ‘allegedly’ kidnapped an Italian cleric in Rome. Our governments are denying it. Wrobleski is the CIA manager of the three agents and I’m willing to bet this is something very off the books that he has somehow managed to contain, workwise. I sure never heard about it. Your silence is worth eighty grand.”

      A produce truck rumbled up abreast Allison’s passenger side, cutting off her view of the other right lanes. She dropped back and got behind it. In the next lane over, the white van was driving slowly about twenty feet ahead of her, and the trailing BMW was still angrily flashing his brights, insisting it yield so he could pick up speed.

      “So do you know where this smear campaign is coming from?” Selena asked.

      Allison remained silent. It had to be Echo, but Selena had no need to know that, not yet. The less Selena knew, the safer she would be. The safer she was, the easier to send her on a mission if need be; and Selena was one of the best field agents in Oracle. She had single-handedly defended the American embassy in Berzhaan from a terrorist takeover.

      But would that be fair, to make someone fly blind straight into harm’s way?

      This is not a fair game to start with. No one in Oracle is blind, she reminded herself. They agreed to work for the organization with their eyes wide-open. They knew some of it was going to be black bag ops. They knew they could die.

      “Okay, asked and answered,” Selena said, signaling that she accepted Allison’s silence. At some point in their tenure as Oracle agents, nearly every single one of Allison’s operatives had asked Allison point-blank if she was Delphi. Allison had never confirmed it, nor had she denied it. She had merely remained silent, and no one had asked her more than once.

      Her mind was racing. The Oracle mainframe would unpeel the layers of secrecy regarding any other threats and disinformation Echo was sending out in her name. Maybe if she personally watched the threads as they came in she would discover the pattern they wove. Trace them back, learn the location of the original signal and shut Echo down—if indeed she was behind this elaborate frame-up.

      Allison’s cell phone pinged as a message came in on her other line. She glanced at the number as well as the time. It was Morgan, and it was 7:51 p.m. She stayed on the line with Selena.

      “I wonder who ‘I’m’ blackmailing at the NSA,” she ventured. “I suppose I’m ensuring that at least one corrupt person in every intelligence agency will be gunning for me.”

      She heard Selena’s staccato typing, popping like muffled gunshot through their connection. The Infiniti’s windshield wipers thwacked back and forth, an edgy metronome. The white van lumbered along in the rain.

      “I don’t see anything, but it looks like you were right about Morgan Rush. His most recent message to McDonough is encrypted, but I’m running it through our code-crackers and your initials are part of the subject header.” Selena grunted with disapproval. “All the good ones are married, gay, or spying on you.”

      Allison allowed herself a quick grim smile, appreciating the irony of such a statement from someone who was happily married and therefore, believed she had one of the good ones.

      Another call came in. This one was Allison’s boss, Bill McDonough, and she let it go to messages.

      “Oracle just gave me one more,” Selena declared. “No, wait, it’s about the Marion Gracelyn scholarship fund. Someone just gave it a big donation. Two million dollars. Anonymous.”

      Allison grunted. “Wondering how much of that is my newly laundered blackmail money.”

      “Not seeing anything else on you directly right now,” Selena told her.

      “Then I’m listening to my new messages,” Allison said, punching in her voice mail code.

      “Allison?” Morgan queried. “I’m in your office.” That was all. That was a hundred percent Morgan—a man of few words, someone who believed that actions mattered and talk was, well, talk. Which was ironic, given his choice of occupation. He was a damned good codebreaker, alert to the nuances in several foreign languages including Farsi, Mandarin, some Polynesian languages and dialects and Russian.

      She went on to the one from McDonough. His voice came in loud and clear, and he had a little bit more to say. “Rush said you were on your way up. Guard gate shows you left. Where the hell are you?”

      Allison exited her message system and checked back in with Selena. “Anything?”

      “Still doing my search,” Selena said.

      “Then I’m putting you on hold again. Beep me if you need me.”

      Allison pressed redial to call McDonough back. He picked up immediately.

      “Bill, I have an emergency,” Allison began.

      “This is an emergency,” McDonough thundered. “This is the biggest goddamn emergency in the world. You are here in two minutes or you have no job and you never have a job again and I give you to CIA for debriefing until you die.”

      “Sir, with respect—”

      “Respect? You have no respect! No respect for your teammates or your project or your country. Who the hell do you think you are?”

      “Sir—”

      “One minute, or I’m sending someone after you to haul your ass in here.”

      “Yes, sir,” Allison said, disconnecting.

      She pushed her foot down a little harder on the gas and went back to Selena. “My boss,” she said flatly. “Wondering why I haven’t shown up for our meeting. I guess that tells us I’m not blackmailing him.”

      “No. So far Oracle has reported no evidence of Gracelyn-NSA corruption, you’ll be gratified to know.”

      “Keep searching,” Allison told her. “Not that I’m hoping you’ll find any.”

      She saw what Echo was doing—setting fires, wreaking havoc. Allison moved her tense shoulders, rubbing her forehead as a headache threatened. She was tired down to the marrow. Her day had already been very long and incredibly tense.

      She had landed at Washington’s Dulles International Airport at one this afternoon, every cell of her body on extreme high-alert as she unclasped the spider necklace containing the precious flash drive and calmly placed it in one of the plastic bowls at the airport’s security checkpoint. Of course the guard who took the bowl had no idea what was in that necklace—the last third of Arachne’s vast web of off-the-books state secrets; corporate espionage capable of shutting down Wall Street; career-ending dirt on superstars; and life-ending intel on world leaders.

      Echo already had the other two memory sticks; she needed this one to fully reweave her mother’s web. Echo would stop at nothing to get it; Allison half expected the airport guard to reveal himself as a plant, pull out an AK-47 and gun her down as she walked through the metal detector.

      Once on board the jet, she put herself beside a window exit and monitored the other passengers

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