Conspiracy Read online

“You talk like you want to die.”

  “It’s not about what I want, little girl. It’s just time, that’s all,” he said quietly.

  Abrianna didn’t know what to say to that—but she did know that she could no longer feel her face. “Well, I gotta go.”

  He nodded. “I understand. You take care of yourself—and if you decide to stay out here—trust no one.”

  She nodded and backpedaled away. It still felt wrong to leave the old guy there—especially if that whole freezing-to-death stuff was true. At that moment, it felt true.

  The hotels were packed—or wanted nearly three hundred dollars for one night. That was more than half of Abrianna’s money, she found out. At the last hotel, she agreed to the figure, but then they wanted to see some sort of ID. The front desk woman suggested she try a motel in another district—or a shelter.

  An hour later, Abrianna was lost. Walking and crying through a row of creepy-looking houses, she had no idea where she was or where she was going.

  Suddenly, gunshots were fired.

  Abrianna ran and ducked down a dark alley.

  Tires squealed.

  Seconds later, a car roared past her.

  More gunshots fired.

  The back window of the fleeing muscle car exploded. The driver swerved and flew up onto a curb, and rammed headlong into a utility pole.

  Bam!

  The ground shook and the entire row of streetlights went out.

  No way the driver survived that shit. Extending her neck around the corner of a house, Abrianna attempted to get a better look at what was going on, but at the sound of rushing feet pounding the concrete, she ducked back so that she could peep the scene. She counted seven guys running up to the car. When they reached the driver’s side, a rumble of angry voices filled the night before they released another round of gunfire.

  Holy shit. Abrianna backed away, spun around, and ran smack into a solid body.

  The pockmarked Good Samaritan materialized out of the shadow. “Hey there, little girl. Remember me?”

  Abrianna screamed....

  2

  Spring

  Abrianna begged for death.

  She had long stopped counting the days and nights. There really wasn’t a point. Each tick of the clock made it clear that she would die in this dark, dank dungeon of a basement. The only question was, when?

  The door creaked open, emitting only a sliver of light into the room before the pasty, skeletal figure of a man entered. Another night of torture was about to begin.

  “How are my ladies doing tonight?” he asked. The voice alone sent fear goosing across everyone’s body.

  Chains rattled.

  Three women manacled to the walls squirmed to get away.

  Not Abrianna.

  Her gaze followed the man’s flickering candlelight attentively. She was weary—and afraid. But for some unknown reason, she refused to let that fear show. The simple act of defiance gave her power. Not much—but it was there.

  Her refusal to cry out or beg for mercy often got under her captor’s skin. In the first few weeks of her kidnapping, he’d marveled at the number of lashes or electric shocks she could take before passing out cold.

  The man thought himself a scientist. Almost daily, he concocted some crazy mix of poison and got off injecting them with it as if they were a group of test animals.

  Two girls had died since Abrianna’s abduction.

  Maybe tonight, she would be next.

  “Which of you wants to be my little guinea pig tonight?” He stopped before one girl. A white girl—blond. “How about you?” He moved the candle in close to her face and smiled when she attempted to twist away. Her chains didn’t let her go far.

  “Aww. My pet. Don’t you want to play with me?”

  “Oh, God! Please don’t,” she begged.

  The skeletal man shifted the candle and leaned forward to roll his tongue up the side of her face.

  The girl quivered and cried.

  Abrianna looked on in disgust, her empty belly flopping.

  “No. I don’t think that I’ll play with you tonight,” he informed the blonde, as if he’d been disappointed by her taste.

  He moved to the next girl and repeated the same sick performance before the candle. Then his attention focused on Abrianna.

  “Noooo. I think I’d rather play with you tonight,” he announced, creeping in her direction.

  Inwardly, Abrianna screeched in horror. Outwardly, she watched his approach with something akin to cool indifference.

  “My tough little black angel,” he cooed, placing the flickering flame so close that it burned her right cheek.

  Abrianna winced, but said nothing.

  He laughed. “Oh, I like you,” he praised. “And I got something that I think you’re going to like.” He held something else up but she was unable to make it out. At this point, she didn’t have to. It was a syringe—filled with his latest creation.

  Despite the prayers for death, Abrianna was terrified.

  But she was ready.

  Her life had been nothing but one vast cosmic joke. Why not end it? Once she ascended, maybe she’d see her baby brother again—since she hadn’t been able to save him.

  A key rattled in Abrianna’s locks, and minutes later, she went from being chained to the wall to being locked down on a metal table. Tears streamed, but the candle wasn’t near her face so her captor didn’t see. However, Abrianna could still hear and smell him.

  Finally, the lone light in the room clicked on, but the grime and dust bunnies clinging to the exposed bulb dimmed the wattage it emitted.

  “This little baby should drive you wild,” their captor bragged, holding up the syringe again. “Dr. Z helped me make this beauty.”

  Abrianna stared at the pink liquid.

  “Now this may pinch a little—or hurt an awful lot,” he laughed. Without bothering to look for a vein, he stabbed the side of Abrianna’s shoulder and jabbed the plunger, emptying the entire syringe.

  The drug was like a fireball blazing through her veins.

  Abrianna gasped—but her lungs seemed incapable of processing the oxygen that she desperately needed. Within seconds, she thrashed and convulsed—violently.

  The man’s maniacal laughter filled her head. Soon, the arm and feet shackles bit into her skin, threatening to break bones. In her mind’s eye, the light above her went from a dull yellow to a blinding bright light. She looked away, but it was everywhere—even when she was sure she’d closed her eyes.

  The all-consuming pain wrenched her body mercilessly.

  She didn’t know if her abductor had finally succeeded in breaking her. She heard nothing. Saw nothing.

  For an eternity.

  3

  Washington, D.C.

  Summer

  Darkness descended over the quiet streets of Benning Heights, approximately twenty miles outside downtown Washington, D.C. A Seventh District police van turned the corner onto Benning Road and braked in front of a pale yellow vinyl 1930s colonial house. A second later, the back doors burst open. “Move it! Move it!” Lieutenant Gizella Castillo barked, ushering the ten-man crew out of the van. Geared up, they fell into position. Four of them, carrying a battering ram, rushed up the residence’s stone stairs first.

  Lieutenant Castillo’s heart hammered in triple time while the hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention. A lot rode on this shit—mainly her career. Hours from a suspension, she committed to this ultimate Hail Mary to bring down Craig Avery—a creepy ex-scientist turned drug dealer, who not only had powerful political friends. For the past six months, as Castillo’s missing teenager cases piled up, she’d habitually stepped on toes and pissed off her own police chief by refusing to eliminate Avery from the list of suspects. There were just too many damn coincidences and holes in the man’s story to add up. Avery had a history of stalking schools and harassing minors. However, none of it had landed the man behind bars. Castillo believed that was only because Avery had selec
ted the perfect victims. Lost girls. Runaways.

  Girls who had no one to look out for them. Girls who had no power or hope. The few they had found had been broken, tortured, and dead.

  Avery dumped their bodies in various places around D.C. whenever he finished with them. The bastard.

  But there were a few girls still missing.

  The smug bastard was so sure that no one cared what happened to these girls. But he was wrong about that. Castillo cared. She’d spent the past two years vowing that she would not only find them, but also take down the man who preyed upon the nation’s capital. So what if she’d forged a judge’s signature on a search warrant? The missing girls were in this house. She was certain of it.

  With a few hard strikes of the battering ram, the front door to the colonial house blasted off of its hinges. “Police!” the officers yelled into the dark house.

  Everyone reeled from the horrible smell. It was an awful combination of funk and rot.

  Jackpot!

  But was anyone still alive?

  Elated but scared of what was actually rotting in the house, they moved in.

  Three officers climbed the staircase to the second level, three searched the main floor, and three kicked open the door leading to the basement.

  Castillo made the split-second decision to go upstairs behind the first set of officers. She got no more than halfway up when bullets rang out. Two slammed into the plaster wall, inches from her head.

  All hell broke loose as her team returned fire.

  It was hard to see what was happening since the staircase was dark. Castillo finally got a lock on a figure darting across the landing and recognized the man instantly as Craig Avery. The muthafucka wore only a pair of yellow-stained tighty-whities, but fired with a Dirty Harry silver revolver. Castillo and her team returned fire, splintering the banister and puncturing various walls. She fired and was certain that one of her bullets nailed his left shoulder. Avery retaliated. His aim was random, but he managed to hit Officer Clemmons. He tumbled back down the stairs, swiping her legs from underneath her like a bowling ball. She fired off a shot, but she had no idea where the bullet actually went because she was tossed back down the stairs with the other fallen officer. The three officers from the main floor redirected and jumped over her to rush up the staircase and join the action.

  It seemed like she was down forever, but in truth it was likely no more than a few seconds. Lieutenant Castillo glanced at Clemmons and knew before placing her fingers against the side of his neck that he was dead.

  “Fuck.” His death was on her. A door slammed somewhere as more bullets were fired. Castillo jumped to her feet and started up the staircase again. Once again, halfway up . . .

  BOOM!

  Lifted off of her feet and blasted back over Officer Clemmons’s body, she slammed into a wall and sank like a stone to the floor.

  Five more officers—gone.

  For a second time, she climbed back onto her feet, but her ears rang like Gabriel’s trumpet. This colossal fuck-up would no doubt cost her her badge.

  Castillo swiped away dust and debris that was doing a bang-up job of clogging her lungs. She shook her head several times to stop her ears from ringing, but it didn’t work. As a result, she struggled for equilibrium.

  Wrapping a hand around the railing, Castillo leaned her weight against it and pulled up two steps. A hand gripped her arm. She jumped and turned, wide-eyed.

  Officer Dennis Holder mouthed something. She hadn’t even heard him or officers Moore and Stevens rush back up from the basement.

  “WHAT?” Panic hit her at the realization that she couldn’t hear herself speak either.

  Holder shouted again.

  Lieutenant Castillo shook her head, wiggled a finger into her right ear as if it would jimmy something loose.

  It didn’t.

  Impatient, the other officers, Moore and Stevens, jetted past them and up the staircase to check on the rest of their team.

  “Are you all right?” Holder shouted, but sounded like it was from the bottom of a deep well. He touched the side of her face.

  Castillo flinched, the pain shocking. When Holder drew back his hand, her blood painted his fingers. I’ve been hit?

  Incredulous, she touched her face, but whatever it was—either a bullet or shrapnel—had only grazed her head. “I’m okay,” she shouted back, giving him the thumbs-up.

  “You need to come down to the . . .”

  “WHAT?” She jabbed her finger inside of her ear again.

  Holder grabbed her and pulled her in the opposite direction of the staircase.

  “Wait! My men!”

  Holder’s steel grip led her in the opposite direction. She stopped resisting and followed. The house’s foul smell grew stronger the closer they edged toward the door leading to the basement.

  At the top of the stairs, there was a pale orange glow that gave the basement a more dungeon-like ambience. Castillo’s heart skipped while the hackles rose on the back of her neck. The remaining missing girls rushed to the front of her mind, but she was unable to voice the dreaded question to Holder. Are they dead? Instead, she silently followed him down the steep staircase.

  The gray cement floor was splattered with what was unmistakably dried blood. The flickering light bulb couldn’t be giving out more than forty watts, which forced her to widen her eyes so that she could see more than just shadows.

  Foreign torture apparatuses and metal chains hung from both the ceiling and the walls. Moving around the smelly and claustrophobic basement made Castillo’s stomach roll with nauseous acidic waves, but she kept it together. When Holder touched her shoulder again, though, she jumped ten feet into the air.

  “Over there,” he said, his voice almost normal as the ringing finally faded.

  Castillo’s gaze followed his pointed finger toward the right corner, where three young girls sat huddled naked with their bony knees shielding half their faces and with metal collars locked around their necks.

  Relieved, Castillo felt her knees nearly collapse. “Thank God. We found them.”

  4

  United States District Court for the District of Columbia

  Judgment day. Once again, the courtroom was packed. Kadir Kahlifa wasn’t surprised at the media he was getting. It was his intent to get the world’s attention so he could expose the corruption that was so plainly going on in the highest levels of government—only no one ever had the guts to do anything about it. They lived in a land of talkers, not doers. For decades, people had talked about a revolution, talked about returning power to the people. The country was no longer a democracy but an oligarchy. He was far from being the only one who felt that way. There was a whole underground movement dedicated to unraveling the farce.

  Kadir had grown up in Washington, D.C., in one of the Victorian row houses off Logan Circle. He’d started programming games in QBasic at nine and building databases by the time he was a teenager. In high school, he’d placed first in a statewide competition for a computer program that he’d designed. He had then been offered full scholarships to MIT and Stanford, but he’d elected to take the one from Georgetown University. However, his scholarship had been revoked when he’d exploited a security flaw in their computer science department. It made no difference that he’d gone to the administration to tell them about the issue and offered to fix it. They’d been either too angry or too embarrassed about him inserting a backdoor into the program. They’d made a huge deal out of the matter, and he’d been called before the department chair and then prohibited from returning for his sophomore year.

  Kadir had taken his talents to the military. There, he’d transformed into a lean, mean fighting machine and an expert shooter. However, it had also been a grave time that had tested his Muslim faith. Sometime during his three tours in the Middle East, it had no longer felt like he was fighting for America’s freedom and protection.

  Something far uglier lay beneath the surface.

  That had been confir
med when his military stint ended and his work for a private security firm started. The money had been better, but his conscience had continued to nag.

  Once stateside, he’d gotten involved with an electronic civil disobedience group concerned with the National Security Agency’s surveillance program that was supposed to have ended years ago. But the program went right on collecting Internet communications from major U.S. companies. Its shady activity had been leaked by whistleblowers, who’d warned that the collection was far greater than the public knew. Kadir’s friend Ghost was a true believer in the right to privacy and had soon turned Kadir into a believer as well.

  Now twenty-five years old, Kadir sat next to his firebrand defense attorney with his guts twisted into knots and his hands slick with sweat, on trial for hacking into the private security firm T4S.

  T4S provided for a variety of intelligence agencies, from the Marine Corps to the Pentagon and Department of Defense—as well as major corporations. Kadir’s hack had netted over three million emails, which he’d turned over to Rolling Stone and WikiLeaks and other syndicates. What most claimed his hacking had exposed was that there was no division between government and corporate spying. Also exposed was a government hatchet job falsely linking nonviolent activist groups to known terrorist groups so that they could be prosecuted under terrorism laws.

  Though this was his first arrest, he’d originally pleaded not guilty to all charges alleged in the government complaint, but then he had been denied bail and held eight months without trial by iron-fisted Judge Katherine Sanders.

  Kahlifa’s hotshot attorney, Bridget Hodges, had filed a motion three months ago asking the judge to recuse herself from the case on the basis that her father had business ties to T4S clients that had been affected by the hack. Kadir’s legal team had attempted to prove that the link to the victims created an appearance of partiality. Judge Sanders had failed to disclose her relationship to T4S and, in doing so, denied him the opportunity for a fair trial.

  Supporters had come out of the woodwork and rallied behind him.