Secrets in the Storm Read online

  “Can’t wait to get my hands on them and find out what exactly it was. It had better have been something really big to cause them to go to such terrible lengths.”

  “After we clear this building.” He was all business.

  “Okay, but remember, they’re new to bomb making, but they’re pretty good at fighting.”

  “Did you check the judges’ chambers?”

  “I didn’t get that far. A few minutes ago there were people in the first office past this room, and one terrorist is tied up behind but the reception desk and the clerks aren’t there. The offices over here are empty.”

  “Well, let’s get rid of any other bombs in courtrooms and then we can sweep the offices. We’ll meet back here in ten?” He walked toward the door.

  “Hold on,” I said, unable to keep all my frustration out of my voice as I held up the dead bomb. “It’s not like I can just leave this out here.”

  “Sorry, I forgot.” His tone was clipped and short. Before Celeste, he would never have forgotten.

  I huffed as I moved the inert bomb to the judge’s chair and pushed it under his desk. I had to leave the evidence where I said it would be found, but at the same time, not leave it in plain sight, like I’d told Jeremy.

  He was right, but confusion clouded my thinking. He’d never kept anything from me before, and I knew he was now. Jeremy held the door open for me and the first thing I saw was Celeste at the end of the hallway. Her eyebrows rose when she saw me. She started to move our way only as Jeremy came out of the room. She had obviously been looking for him. To my surprise, Jeremy pushed past me and went straight to Celeste without even a glance at me. I watched, my jaw on the ground as Jeremy put his arms around Celeste and started to guide her away and into the lobby.

  “Jeremy!” I yelled. “What are you doing?” He glanced my way, but didn't come back. He just continued to rush Celeste away. I waited. So much time was wasting. Still no Jeremy. “What is going on?" I said under my breath. So Celeste shows up and she's the most important thing to him? What? He was worried more about Celeste getting hurt? What about me? Wasn’t I the one he was supposed to be worried about?

  When he still hadn't come back after several minutes, I pulled myself together. I had to. There were bigger things going on here. Bombs and terrorists. I turned and went toward the judge’s chambers. But I couldn't get Jeremy and Celeste off of my mind. There had to be a reason he did what he did. Maybe he considered her a great family friend and was worried about what his family would think if he didn’t do everything to save her. He was only helping her get out of the building just in case a bomb did blow. Was she the only one he could think about? No. The mission was always most important. No, not the mission. I was always the most important thing to him.

  Why? Why would he want me when he could have her? She was beautiful. Obviously a brilliant reporter. I tripped over a protruding leg of a bench in the hall. I shook my head. I needed to get it together.

  Jeremy and Celeste were driving me to distraction, and I couldn’t be distracted if I was going to find the bombs and bombers. I took a deep breath to focus my attention on what needed to be done, but even as air filled my lungs, Celeste’s perfect white smile and creamy skin filled my mind. I turned the corner with those jealous thoughts raging in my mind, all my insecurities ravaging me, making me weak—and I came face to face with the terrorist I’d tied up earlier.

  He smirked, and my arms were yanked behind my back. I stifled a scream of pain, and my leg shot up in defense. It was stopped by two strong hands. Another set of hands took hold of my other leg as I kicked out. Both men holding my feet had black, indistinct hoodies on, their faces hidden in shadow. One of the hoodied terrorists transferred my leg to the other one. I tried to kick, bending my knees, but he pulled on my toes, hard. This time, I bit my lip to prevent a groan. The terrorist who let go of me moved to my head and took me by the arms. He was the larger of the two, but still not massive. The terrorist I’d tied up was the largest of the three and walked beside me, staring menacingly down at me.

  We turned a corner that forced the terrorist from the clerk’s office to take a wide berth, and I saw my chance. I swayed hard, pressing one of the men’s hands into the corner of the wall. He cried out in pain and let go of me. With my one arm free, I hit him in the crotch. My head and shoulders tumbled to the ground as I twisted and jerked one leg out of my other attacker’s hand. With a quick kick to his calf, I forced him back, his other hand leaving my leg. As I rolled to my hands and my feet, something hard, metal-like hit me in the back of the head.

  Chapter 9

  When I came to, my head felt heavy and my throat dry. I had to blink several times to clear my vision. Eyes peered down at me and someone spoke. I jerked awake, causing a splitting pain to ride through my head. It fell back, cradled in someone’s hands. I sat, taking a deep breath to refuse the pain.

  “Oh, no,” a girl’s voice said. “Don’t get up. You have a terrible goose egg on the back of your head.”

  My hand immediately flew up and touched the extremely sore spot jutting about half an inch from my head. I winced and gritted my teeth.

  “What? Where? What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?” the girl said.

  I looked around the room, taking in every detail in a matter of seconds. Two judges, still in robes and looking very much in charge, three clerks in business suits, one of whom had been holding my head in her lap, and two bailiffs. They sat with their backs against the walls, all with fear rolling off them. I had found the people who were supposed to be in the courtrooms and clerks’ offices. The terrorists had escalated after all. They had taken prisoners, and now I was one of them.

  The room was a fortress, built out of stones and mortar—almost like a medieval dungeon. Two exits almost directly across from each other. Four large metal boxes with padlocks on them. Other than that, the room was bare. My go bag was nowhere to be found. No phone in my pocket, either.

  “What is this place?” I turned to the judges, who sat next to each other.

  “It’s an underground shelter,” one of the two judges said. His bushy eyebrows raised and lowered as he continued to talk. “A hideaway and escape path for anyone that might need an incognito exit from the courthouse. I can’t remember the last time we used it. It might have been fifteen years ago when Judge Nolan had to get out of the courthouse when everyone was rioting. He stayed here for a few hours until the rioters lost interest and left and was taken through those tunnels and out. No one ever knew how he left the building.” He seemed to realize he was babbling and stopped abruptly, licking his ample lips nervously. “Anyway, I guess it makes just as good a prison as it does a shelter.”

  The other judge, a rotund man with a ruddy face, narrowed his eyes at me. “Who are you?” He didn’t hold out a hand to me.

  “I’m here to stop a terrorist attack.” I had to hedge. “I’m—Jenny,” I said. It was the alias Jeremy had given me, and remembering Jeremy’s face as he’d said it, how he’d called me his colleague, caused a rush of anger to flood through me. I gritted my teeth and pushed through it. I needed to focus. “What’s your name?”

  “Judge Hilton,” he said, slightly grudgingly. “I hope there are others of you.” The insinuation was clear. He wondered how I was planning to stop the attack now that I was in here, trapped with them and if there was hope to be had.

  “I was able to disarm a bomb in Judge Mitchell’s courtroom.” I eyed the other judge who said, “That would be me.”

  I nodded. “I didn’t find any in your courtroom, Judge Hilton. Why were you taken?”

  “Not sure.” He didn’t know if he should trust me. Any normal person would be anxious about the situation, but both judges, who experienced extreme stress on a daily basis, appeared only slightly agitated. The rest of the prisoners exuded more than their fair share of anxiety.

  “Did you play any role in the Yousef decision last week?”

  “No.” He clasped his meat
y hands together.

  “Make any comments to the press about it?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Well, yes, but—” He shrugged.

  I spoke as clearly as I could, to make sure he, at least, understood the gravity of the situation. “A group connected with that decision is determined to make everyone involved pay with their lives.”

  A female clerk put her hand to her mouth, and realization dawned on Judge Hilton. He, along with all of us, was put here to die. Was there a bomb nearby or had they had to alter their plans severely because of the storm? “Our job is not to let them.”

  “Ah,” Judge Hilton said. “Now that kidnapper’s words make sense.”

  “What?”

  “One of the kidnappers did spit in my face,” he admitted. “And said something about evil men who thought they could change the laws of Allah must be punished.”

  Emily spoke up. “The one that grabbed me didn’t spit on me, but said I must pay for his sister’s death.”

  It was all fitting together now. The full picture formed before me. These were men who felt forced by grief and pain to find justice. They were most likely peaceful men, Samaira’s family, who could not stand for Judge Mitchell’s decision. They were now trying to seek justice in a sick, twisted way that was, in truth, against the laws of Islam, but not in their eyes. They believed they were praising Allah with their efforts.

  It was worse than I thought. Not only were we working with novices, but also men who were fighting for their beliefs—a most deadly combination. I needed to get to work and get us all out of there.

  I turned to the two women. “What are your names?”

  “I’m Emily,” the one who had held my head in her lap said. Her modest white button up was fastened all the way to her neck, and if it hadn’t been for her bright and flowery skirt, I would have thought she was a hipster. “And she’s Charlotte.” Emily indicated the woman with rich black hair, who was leaning into the heftier of the two bailiffs, sobbing. Her clothes were tailored and all name brand.

  Judge Mitchell spoke up. “We’ve tried everything we could think of to get out of here. Unless there’s someone on the outside working with you who knows where you are, I think we’re stuck and at the mercy of those men.” I didn’t miss the slight tremble in his chin as he said the last words.

  Charlotte let out a squeal and burrowed deeper into the hefty bailiff’s shoulder. I shook my head, a slight movement to ask Judge Mitchell to be more cautious about what he said in the future. “Don’t worry, Charlotte,” I said. “There’s always a way out. We’ll find it.” My words sounded empty in my mouth.

  Judge Mitchell gave Judge Hilton a withering look that underlined his belief that there was no way out, and I shouldn’t be giving hope when there was none.

  I stood slower than I would have liked, my head pounding to the beat of tribal drums and pulled a bobby pin from my hair just above my neck. I’d discovered it was a great place to hide a very handy tool, and no one ever thought to look there. I went for the exit door, then glanced back at the other one, only then realizing I had been looking at a reflection. The other door was not metal, but glass. Beyond it lay some sort of tunnel. “Where does that lead?” I pointed to the tunnel, but kept moving toward the steel door.

  “It’s the passageway out of here. There’s a steel sliding door that usually covers the glass one. It makes the room completely secure. I’m not sure why they have that open. The door leads to the old sewer tunnels,” Judge Hilton said. “They aren’t used anymore,” he continued. “They have them totally blocked off to the updated sewer system. There are a couple ladders leading up to street access. It’s how Judge Nolan got out unseen.”

  “Clever,” I said as I walked toward the steel door. The closer I got, the more concerned I became. “Wait. There’s no keyhole on this door?”

  “It’s electronically controlled.” Judge Mitchell said. “The keypad is hidden behind one of the fake rocks.”

  “Do you know the code?” I stared hard at the steel door and my vision fuzzed a little. I blinked hard. Why did it have to be steel?

  “I did at one time,” Judge Mitchell said, “but the terrorists must have changed it. The door didn’t open when I tried it.”

  Great. Someone on the inside had most likely helped the lunatics gain access to this shelter. Then again, hackers these days were pretty good, and if the courthouse hadn’t updated their online security in a while, they very well could have left themselves open for an attack. “Just for laughs and giggles, let me give it a try.” I wasn’t sure why I thought if I used the same code they’d tried, that I might get it to work, but I had to try.

  “Justice101.”

  I smirked at the code. I couldn’t help it. I tapped the stones until I came upon the right fake stone and lifted it up to reveal a keypad. I punched in the code and, like he said, nothing happened. The door remained closed. I thought about my time in the country of Monterra and how hard it had been to jimmy that booby trapped keypad. I hoped this wouldn’t be the same ordeal. We’d barely made it out alive.

  Charlotte cried out when I turned back to the judges after the code hadn’t worked. The civilians seemed to huddle a bit closer to each other. “Any fail safes to keep people from messing with the keypad?” My mind sorted through all the training modules from spy academy and various problems I could run into if I pressed too many incorrect key sequences. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.

  The judges looked at each other and shook their heads. “Not that we know of.”

  The second bailiff spoke up. His skin was like porcelain, not a hint of stubble anywhere. His uniform had sharp creases. “I took a class on cyber security, and I still remember the top five passcodes. We could try them.”

  It couldn’t be that easy, could it? “Good idea,” I said, hoping to encourage everyone to participate in the escape. I punched the five codes in as he said them. I had learned these codes as well, and a few more besides the top five, but for some reason, I couldn’t pull them up in my mind. I couldn’t even pull up the latest memo Division had sent out on the subject. I must have been hit really hard. The codes did not open the door.

  I heard the scrape of metal on metal outside the steel door. It was most likely a guard’s gun brushing up against the door. “Someone’s guarding the door. Maybe we should go out that way.” I pointed to the glass door.

  I let the fake stone cover the keypad again and took a few steps toward the glass door. It looked to have a key lock.

  “They destroyed the lock,” Judge Hilton called out to me and joined me. He was not a small man. His movement triggered several others to also stand, and he towered above them and me. Charlotte and her bailiff along with the other civilians stayed seated.

  The closer I got to the door, the easier it was to see the damage. It was like they’d hit it hard with something. My hand went up to the bump on my head. Had they used the same thing on me? My head gave a painful thud in response. If only I had some headache meds. I had to squint to look properly. I most likely had a slight concussion. Great. I touched the lock, looking for a way to use it despite the damage.

  “There’s also an electronic keypad to your left that controls those two doors. Each door has one, but the code doesn’t work on those either.” Judge Hilton moved with me, followed by the bailiff that wasn’t soothing Charlotte, Emily, and another male clerk.

  “Both of the doors?”

  “There’s a steel door that normally slides out behind the glass one.” Judge Hilton said. “It’s there as a failsafe, in case someone is down here waiting something out and the tunnels are breached. Like the steel that could be raised on the main floor to prevent a car or something from smashing the glass and entering the building. Once the two steel doors are closed, it’s supposed to be completely cut off and impenetrable. The glass gives people the comfort to know there is a way out if they need to take it and I think the designers couldn’t stomach a room made solely of steel when the res
t of the building was a combination of both, even if the room would be seen by very few people.”

  Surprisingly, it did ease my claustrophobia to look out the thick glass and see tunnels beyond. I tapped on the glass. “I’m guessing there isn’t anything we can use in here to break that glass?”

  “No,” a stocky and tan male clerk said. “There’s nothing in here besides those bloody boxes, and we can’t find a way into them.”

  “What’s in them?” I asked, glancing at the four metal boxes.

  “Food and blankets and such. Survival stuff.” Judge Mitchell brushed his hand through his hair.

  I immediately went to work on the locks on the sturdy boxes and had them open in no time. At least I could manage that small win. There had to be something that would help us in there. It seemed to shift the feel in the room from complete resignation to slight hope. Instead of dead silence, the captives began speaking in low tones as they took blankets and food from me. It was obvious that this shelter was not meant to hold people for very long and that it was made to protect wealthy people. Expensive survival items were in the boxes, things normal people would never buy simply because they didn’t have the funds to do so. “How long have we been down here?” How close were we to being blown up?

  “We’ve been down here an hour maybe.” Judge Hilton said. “You? Fifteen minutes or so.”

  It was a little after four then. I shuffled through the rest of the contents in the box, looking for something to help us break the glass. There was nothing. The most promising items were the locks themselves, but they would never break such thick glass. I tossed one as hard as I could just in case, but it simply clanked off. I wanted to scream, but closed my eyes instead.

  Outside the glass door, the tunnel went out until it disappeared into the dark abyss. Stones in varying shades of gray butted up to the enclosure. I examined the lock. There was no hope of using bobby pins to open it, or a key for that matter. It was smashed almost beyond recognition, the keyhole nonexistent. I had to work with the electronics.