Disclosure

From: Delphi@oracle.org

To: C_Evans@athena.edu

Re: The final showdown

Christine,

After Kwan-Sook’s death and Lilith’s new loyalty to Athena Academy, only one of Jackie Cavanaugh’s offspring remains unaccounted for: Echo.

She and I have yet to meet face-to-face, but I’ve gathered a lot of intel on her over these last few months. Her unusual abilities—Lilith said Echo could stop bullets!—have warped her, I think. She’s admitted to her sister that she wants to rule the world, that she believes she’s unstoppable. But I have every confidence in my team of Athena agents. We will take Echo down.

We’ll also retrieve the data she’s stolen and prevent her from destroying millions of lives. I’m betting on our success, with my career… and my life.

D.

Dear Reader,

I just returned home from a ceremony honoring the students and instructors at my daughter’s Tae Kwon Do studio. The instructors put on quite a show, demonstrating several martial arts traditions including Krav Maga, favored by many of our Athena Force heroes and heroines. It was exciting to see a young female Black Belt take on three attackers and make short work of them. She was a blur of ponytail and muscles, and her fierce, proud shouts echoed throughout the room. I was thrilled. I had imagined Allison Gracelyn fighting just like this, and here she was, lifted off the page for me just when it was time for me to say goodbye to her.

It has been such a privilege to write Disclosure. I can’t believe how fortunate I have been to explore the world of Athena Force, and to delve into the character of Allison, surely the most enigmatic of all the heroines (at least, to me!). Allison is a fighter and a leader, but the biggest battle she faces is a war of the heart.

It takes a lot of courage to admit when one is afraid, or lonely, or lost. I know it has been difficult at times for me to admit to feelings like that. I was afraid when I started writing Allison’s story. I wanted with all my heart to write a good book that would honor the fine work of the authors and editors who came before me in the world of Athena Force. Like the Tae Kwon Do artists at the ceremony tonight, I took deep breaths and made each move the best I could. It was a joy to tell Allison’s story of courage, while at the same time losing my fear and finding my bliss.

Be bold!

Nancy Holder

NANCY HOLDER

is a USA TODAY bestselling author who has published approximately eighty novels and two hundred short stories, essays and articles about writing. In addition to writing Son of the Shadows for Silhouette Nocturne, she is known for her tie-in work for TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Hellboy and others. Please send letters to Nancy Holder, P.O. Box 26384, San Diego, CA 92196; or visit her Web site, www.nancyholder.com.

For Mr. Andy Thompson of Family Karate.

Thank you, sir.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Chapter 1

En route to the National Security Administration Fort Meade, Maryland

A dark, sharp wind threw autumn leaves against Allison Gracelyn’s windshield as she put through her call to Morgan Rush, who was already at NSA for the emergency meeting. After the open and cloudless big sky of the Arizona desert, the frosty Maryland night grounded her in reality—her world was a lowering, stormy place; her safety zone as narrow as a grave; the situation as out-of-control as a nightmare.

No. I’m in control. I have a plan, she told herself. I’m on my game. I can make this happen.

She unrolled the window of her sleek black Infiniti and held out her NSA badge toward the security guard, who stepped from his kiosk to take it. The chill bit into Allison’s ungloved hand. Beyond the kiosk, hidden by the night, the Men in Black patrolled the perimeter of the vast complex of the National Security Administration. The MIB were the crack security forces of “Crypto City”—suited up in black riot gear, armed with submachine guns and God knew what else. Not one of them would hesitate to open fire if given the order.

She knew at least one person who would gladly give the word. Her volatile new boss, Bill McDonough, was furious with her for having taken the day off with no explanation beyond the vague and unenlightening “personal business.” NSA was sitting on top of a time bomb—literally—and the terrorist threat level had shot from orange to bright red around the same time that Allison’s return flight to Washington took off from the airport in Phoenix.

Coincidence? She didn’t know yet. She didn’t know what her enemy was capable of. Lucy Karmon, a fellow Athena alum who’d been helping Allison with her “personal business,” had described Echo’s maniacal rage when Lucy had completed her mission to steal a spider necklace that contained a flash drive with the kind of information that could destroy the world as they knew it. “Wacko beyond bonkers. Way beyond. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

That same black-and-gold necklace had dangled from Allison’s neck on her return flight to the East Coast, hidden from view beneath a black turtleneck sweater. Allison had complemented the sweater with black wool pleated trousers and low-heeled boots, which was good, because she hadn’t had any time to change her clothes after she landed, and they would work well in an NSA meeting about preventing hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths.

Allison had flown to Phoenix yesterday specifically to retrieve the necklace from Echo’s half sister, Lilith, to whom it had been bequeathed when Athena Academy’s greatest enemy, Arachne, committed suicide. Arachne had left behind three genetically enhanced daughters and three flash drives that held the keys to the empire of evil she’d created before her death. Lilith wanted no part of the evil that came with her inheritance, while Echo had murdered men, women and children—and would have murdered Lilith—to steal Lilith’s share as well as her own.

Still, a nuclear attack just didn’t seem like Echo’s style.

“Rush,” Morgan said, the deep timbre of his voice caressing Allison’s earlobe, the low, male rumble as pleasurable as running her cold hand along the warmed leather seat of her car.

“Yeah, hi, Morgan,” Allison replied, adjusting her earpiece, keeping her voice neutral. Even during a national security crisis, Morgan threw her off. She had a feeling McDonough had assigned Morgan to her task force—Project Ozone—to keep an eye on her. Surely McDonough had no idea what working in close quarters with Morgan did to her insides. Or maybe he did.

“Meeting’s set up in Conference Room A,” Morgan said. “I ordered you a latte with soy milk and two sugars.”

He remembered her beverage of choice. Any other time, she might have smiled.

“Thanks. I’m on site.” Which he might already know, if he was keeping tabs on her. “I’ll be up in five minutes.”

“Hold on,” he said. “I’m getting a red e-mail.”

“Okay.” Her adrenaline spiked. Red meant extremely urgent.

As she waited, she glanced at the time on her dash. It was 7:35 p.m. McDonough had called the meeting for eight. She’d been on the go for nearly twenty-four hours, but she could make another twelve or so before she started getting sloppy.

“We got some more,” Morgan continued. He was obviously referring to the team’s successful cracking of chunks of the heavily encrypted chatter between the unstable Middle Eastern nation of Berzhaan and the despotic nation of Kestonia. “Big stuff. You called it right.” His voice betrayed his anxiety.

Damn it, she thought. She didn’t want to be right about a probable nuclear attack somewhere on the Eastern seaboard in less than a month.

“Brief me first, my office,” she told him. She wanted to walk into that meeting fully informed.

“Will do. Something else is incoming,” he announced.

“I’m holding,” she said. She took her badge back from the guard, who waved her on to proceed. The white Jersey gate raised and Allison rolled onto the grounds of the most heavily guarded, mysterious facility in the alphabet soup of national and international intelligence agencies.

Allison heard the gentle ping signaling an incoming text message on her handheld.

SSJ: STAY OUT. U R COMPROMISED. CALL ASAP.

An icy chill washed up her spine. SSJ was Selena Shaw Jones, CIA, an Athena alum she’d sent to watch for intel at the headquarters of Oracle, the supersecret spy organization of which they were both members. Selena’s choice of words was telling. Employees stayed away. Spies stayed out.

“Okay, here it is,” Morgan began.

“Morgan, save it. I’ll be there soon.” She disconnected. A microsecond later, her cell phone flared to white noise. She had reached the perimeter of the NSA’s new and improved jamming field. She glanced at the handheld. Selena’s message had disappeared. Nothing else electronic would work, not her laptop, nor her PDA, nothing.

“Damn it,” she whispered, ticking her glance toward the central building, which rose into the night like a twinkling Rubik’s Cube. Compromised how? By whom?

Echo, she thought. She’s made her next move.

Allison pulled her car over to the turnout. Her face prickled as she kept her speed slow and easy, hanging a U back to the gate. No one else was leaving, and she knew her Infiniti was a conspicuous ebony dot on several dozen surveillance cameras as she unrolled her window and stuck out her badge for the same guard who’d waved her through. She remained silent; she was a top-level NSA agent, and there was no need to explain her comings and goings unless requested.

The guard’s phone—a secured landline—rang as he took her badge. Her heart stuttered, her mind raced. Was it an order to detain her?

As he reached for the handset, she forced herself to look unconcerned. He swiped her badge and handed it back to her as he put the receiver to his ear. She left her window unrolled, on the chance that she might be able to eavesdrop. But he closed the door of the kiosk, sealing himself inside.

The Jersey gate had not yet raised.

Her gaze ticked toward the shadows, where the Men in Black patrolled. If she tried to bolt the gate, they just might shoot her.

Through the window, the guard’s eyebrows raised; his forehead wrinkled as he looked at her through the window. She did not react, merely gazed placidly back at him, although her heart was trip-hammering against her ribs.

Then the barrier went up, signaling permission to leave. Her hands shook on the wheel as she drove through. She took slow deep breaths and kept her face slack and expressionless, picking up a little speed as she neared the NSA-only on-ramp onto the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, because anyone would speed up a little. It would look odd if she didn’t. She fought the urge to floor it. She wasn’t safe yet. She could still be summoned back. Shot at if she didn’t comply.

She eased onto the on-ramp. Traffic was relatively heavy, and fat raindrops spattered on her windshield. She moved into “dry cleaning” mode—evasive maneuvers designed to reveal a tail, putting space around her car—in case she had to gun it and get the hell out of there.

With one eye on the traffic, she reached across to the passenger seat, where her leather briefcase lay facing her. She flipped it open and slid out her laptop. Using top-secret NSA data gleaned via the Oracle system, Allison had shielded her cell phone and wireless connections from eavesdropping with state-of-the-art sophistication; she should theoretically be immune to invasion, even this close to Crypto City. She popped the lid and punched in a macro, taking her eyes off the road long enough to scan the monitor windows showing a dozen views of Storage Unit #217 at OldAlexandria Self-Storage, just two short blocks from the new Oracle headquarters. The storage unit door was still bolted; her paint cans and tarps were undisturbed. Illuminated by a tiny light she had installed inside the otherwise empty paint can, the gleaming golden spider necklace still lay inside.

I’ll kill you before I let you have it, she silently promised Echo. It was a promise she fully intended to keep—even if the Eastern seaboard blew up before the month was over.

Chapter 2

After Allison assured herself that the spider necklace was still secure, she kept her eye on the flow of traffic as she speed-dialed Selena Shaw Jones.

“Blackmail,” Selena said by way of greeting. “I texted because I went straight to voice when I called.”

Allison was mildly shocked. She hadn’t even heard Selena’s incoming phone call. Morgan’s voice had captured her full attention.

“Go on,” she told Selena.

“Oracle snagged an e-mail ‘you’ sent to an FBI agent named Phil Matsumoto. Looks like Special Agent Phil’s in bed with Monya Kishinev.”

“I don’t know either name,” Allison said.

“Kishinev’s Russian mafia,” Selena filled in. “The message was sent to Matsumoto’s private home desktop, which is well-protected, but the sender cut through all the firewalls like a laser. If Matsumoto doesn’t wire seventy-five thousand dollars into your offshore account in the Cayman Islands, you’re turning him in.”

“The Caymans? That’s so last year,” Allison quipped, but she was shaken. Of course she hadn’t sent the e-mail. It was a setup, and she wondered if this Matsumoto guy would buy it. If he was stupid enough to jump in bed with a criminal, he probably would. Or maybe he was smarter than that; maybe he was an undercover good guy working Kishinev, flipping him to the Jedi side of the Force. Maybe now Matsumoto would reconfigure his targeting system to probe the wrongdoings of a dirty NSA agent initials AG.

“How does it look?” she asked Selena, as a flash of lightning blazed across the sky.

“Anything but clumsy,” Selena replied frankly. “It’s a totally professional job. If I didn’t know you, I’d believe you sent it.”

Allison grimaced. “Except 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 for the duration of the flight. She skipped the champagne and went for the steak, storing up protein in her body, staying loose and easy so she could go from zero to sixty if she had to.

In the airport parking structure, she swept her Infiniti a dozen times for both bugs and bombs before she drove straight to Old Alexandria Self-Storage, two blocks away from the new Oracle headquarters, still located in Old Alexandria.

There she ran an hour-long soft recon on the storage facility, studying the security cameras, staring into the shadows. Popping some button cams when and where she could, making sure the wireless uplink to her laptop was solid. Once assured of that, she forwarded the feed to the Oracle mainframe.

She left the you-store-it to buy some supplies so her unit would pass cursory inspection—paint cans, a ladder, tarps. She did it alone; she told no one where she was and asked no one for help. She warred with herself about that decision as every step of the way she thought about the stupid little things that could happen: slipping on the newly washed floor in the paint store; getting hit by a car. But it was too late in the game to change her rules.

Returning with her purchases, she rented Unit #217 from the overly friendly, middle-aged man at the desk, surreptitiously adding more button cams under the ledge of the office counter as she filled out forms, paid cash and collected the keys.

She also installed a fully portable state-of-the-art laser security setup at #217, which she tied into the existing alarm system. It was identical to the system she had put in her town house in Old Alexandria, and at the new Oracle headquarters location.