parental pride…
Thirteen of them had escaped that night, the group of twelve and their leader, Zack, with Seth immediately captured but overcoming the two guards and slipping out in the confusion; and the colonel had spent much of the last ten years trying to round up this deadly baker's dozen.
He knew the higher-ups considered his recapture record less than stellar; the irony was, he had done his job so well with his young soldiers that they had made him look incompetent. Two out of thirteen in a decade did seem a shade paltry… he still remembered the general staring at him in contempt, saying, “You mean to say you can't recover a goddamn bunch of little
”
Little kids.
When they'd escaped, the youngest one had been seven. That meant six years of full-bore Manticore training… Kavi had been the first to be recaptured and that had taken over five years. Even then, it had been luck that they'd stumbled onto him in Wolf Point, Montana.
Kavi, then twelve, had been spotted by a Manticore operative— Finch, in fact— who'd stopped to watch some kids playing baseball. Kavi made a throw on the fly from the outfield fence to home plate… a major leaguer would have envied that throw… and Finch knew immediately where the kid had gotten the golden arm.
Two and a half years later, Vada, a female— eleven at the time of the escape— had been surrounded in the desert outside Amargosa Valley, Nevada. She had grown into a shapely young woman in a T-shirt and jeans and running shoes— soft brown hair, huge brown eyes, full sensuous lips.
Noting the sexual attractiveness of one of his own kids, Lydecker felt a twinge of something… guilt? Embarrassment? But the colonel could hardly fail to notice that Vada's blossoming physique looked ready for a whole different set of sins than those she'd been designed for.
When she fought back, dropping three members of the TAC team without losing a drop of sweat, Lydecker had drawn his pistol, warned her once.
She cursed him and came running at him, like a wild beast, her fists tiny hard things raised to pummel…
When he put that bullet between her pert breasts, Lydecker surprised himself with an immediate feeling of loss.
his mind assured him.
But it wasn't that easy: Vada was, after all, one of his own. He had reminded himself that this was his job, and if anyone was going to kill one of his kids, it should be him. After all, the X5s were his responsibility.
And it wasn't like she was the first.
After the unpleasantness in Los Angeles— he'd found dealing with the Russian and his rabble extremely distasteful— Lydecker had returned empty-handed again. The amazing reports of the dark-haired young woman— Jondy?… Max, maybe?— had all the earmarks of an X5.
But after aiding and abetting the slaughter at the Chinese Theatre, Lydecker had come home with bupkus, the trail cold, ice cold…
Now, a reprieve, a real shot at getting back another of the X5s, a male, and he didn't want to let that chance get away like the girl in LA.
He picked up the phone to arrange transport to Seattle. No matter what his men learned or did not learn at SNN, Lydecker had a trip to take.
One of his kids had turned up in Seattle…
… and “daddy” longed for a reunion.
ENGIDYNE SOFTWARE
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019
The child Lydecker sought was creeping down the hall of the uppermost floor of Engidyne Software, the computer infrastructure company whose youthful CEO… and owner… was Jared Sterling. Seth had bypassed the alarm, opened a window in a lunchroom, and gotten inside.
This was the executive level of a steel-and-mostly-glass six-story suburban box that was otherwise primarily rabbit warrens of underpaid computer geeks. This floor, unnervingly quiet after hours, served the top echelon, half a dozen wonks who had been with Sterling from the start, millionaires thanks to Engidyne stock options. No one on this floor had to stay late to prove him- or herself, and— while a few geeks on the floors below labored into the night, seeking advancement that would never come— that left only a token security staff, about half a dozen… who had just finished their hourly rounds of the floor.
With its deep plush carpeting, expensive oak paneling, and gilt-framed examples from Sterling's art collection lining the walls, the executive floor felt more like the mansion of the company's owner than his corporate office. Seth moved down the darkened hallways, spidering himself to the wall, avoiding the built-in video cameras. Slick and unobtrusive, the security cams had a flaw: they were stationary, and could be maneuvered around.
Without any trouble— and with the help of Logan's info— Seth easily made his way to Sterling's office. Even without Logan, Seth could hardly have missed the egomaniacal display that was Sterling's name, embossed in gold on a black plate on the rich wood door. He picked the lock and went in.
To the right sat the desk of Sterling's executive assistant, Alison Santiago (or so said the nameplate). This reception area gave Ms. Santiago a generous space that any nerd downstairs would have given his or her pocket- protector collection for.
Stepping to Sterling's door, Seth found this inner barrier locked as well, used a pair of picks to open it in 3.5 seconds, and stepped inside, closing and relocking it. If the security guards checked while he was inside, they'd find this door locked and likely move on: all Seth would have to do to facilitate that was conduct his search in the near dark. Between his sharper-than-shit eyesight, and blinds he adjusted to let in moonlight, Seth knew that would be no prob.
He settled in for a thorough search.
Seth didn't even turn on a lamp or use a flashlight to take this unguided tour of Sterling's office. The CEO's desk was clutter-free and not quite big enough to accommodate an ice-skating competition, his computer station a second, smaller desk behind. An immense painting took up the whole wall above the computer…
Seth's wide eyes traveled over severed arms, bull's heads, image upon image, screaming women, dead people… it was the strangest, most bizarre painting he had ever seen and he wondered what weird shit had been going on in the mind that created such a horrific, yet undeniably beautiful scene.
He also wondered what sort of a man would have a painting like this in his office— would want to live with such a violent collage of images, who might find this nightmare in oils soothing, or somehow inspiring…
Slipping behind to the computer, Seth sat down, touched a key, and the monitor came alive, the flat screen glowing brightly in the dark room; the computer itself was already on.
Seth thought, and started breaking Sterling's security.
Coming from a company so supposedly adept at computer tech, Sterling's system caved pretty quickly; on the other hand, X5s had hacker training and physical abilities that would put the best system to the test. Once in, however, Seth searched through thousands of computer files with no luck.
He did find one promising folder, though… an encrypted one with its own password. No matter what he tried, he couldn't open it, which was starting to piss him off (admittedly, his rage threshold was easily crossed).
Finally, giving up, Seth copied the file onto a disc, covered his computer tracks as best he could, and crept back to the door. He unlocked it quietly, slipped into the executive assistant's space, then opened the hall door a crack to peer out and down, both ways, to see a wonderfully empty corridor.
Seth was halfway back to his lunchroom entry point, on a floor where no geeks labored, when he saw a member of the security team, a heavy guy in his midfifties— probably an ex-cop or maybe somebody's uncle, passing the days until retirement. The guard had no firearm, but he did have a Tazer and a walkie-talkie on his belt.
Keeping to the shadows, Seth followed the guard down the hall toward the entry point. All the guard had to do was keep moving and Seth could slip out as easily as he'd slipped in.
But as they passed the lunchroom, the security man looked in casually… then stopped—
