It was scandalous.

  Even in a city such as Sodom. There were names here of the elite of the city, the ruling class, and if the wives of some of these men knew what they were up to, and perhaps more shockingly, if the men of some of these wives knew what they were up to, it could rock the city to its core.

  He smiled slightly.

  “What’s on your mind, husband?”

  “Nothing, just thinking of earlier.”

  She reached over and squeezed his bum. “Perhaps tonight we’ll enjoy ourselves once again.”

  He leaned over and gave her a kiss. “I can’t wait.” He headed out the door and into the shop with a slight smile that had nothing to do with the incredible sexual experience he had just had and would have again tonight. He had a list of names, and once his wife completed the vase, he would have a visual image that even though it was merely a recreation of an event, it would have anyone who saw it unable to rid their memory of it. That list, if made public, could be just what he had been searching for.

  Something that would shock the leaders of this treacherous society into action.

  When husbands and wives of the city’s most powerful discovered how deeply sin had penetrated their own homes, it could be the catalyst for change they so desperately needed.

  15 |

  Winters Residence, Knightsbridge

  London, England

  Present Day

  Mary Winters bolted upright in bed and looked about. The room was pitch black, just the way she liked it. Her days working for British Intelligence in MI6 had her sleeping in all manner of conditions, but now that she had left the agency behind, she enjoyed her creature comforts. Officially, she was a travel agent. In reality, she was much more, and what nobody realized was that she had only two clients. Laura Palmer was one of them, and the only one of the three people in this equation ignorant of the truth.

  Twelve years ago, MI6 had assigned her a case involving a mega-millionaire genius named Charles Palmer. She was sent in to gain his trust and figure out just what he was up to and whether the rumors were true that he was working on a quantum computing device that could break pretty much any encryption out there. She had gained his trust by seducing him, but made the mistake of falling in love, an absolute no-no in her business. She had determined that he hadn’t created such a device, but he was close, very close, and the ramifications of his success would be felt the world over if it fell into the wrong hands.

  With her mission complete, she had ended things with him, breaking both their hearts, but worse was that he had discovered the truth of who she was. She had never wanted to hurt him, but honey traps were part of the business. Yet you weren’t supposed to fall in love. It was just something about Palmer that was so compelling. He was the most intelligent man she had ever met, but he was also attractive, funny, and so attentive. When you were with him, he made you feel like you were the only person in the world, and she liked that. He was like no other man she had ever met, which is why it had hurt so much and she’d demanded she no longer be assigned such missions in the future.

  And when he had called her two years later, begging her for help, there was no way she could say no.

  And it had changed her life entirely.

  She grabbed her phone off the nightstand, the device once again demanding her attention. It was an alert from one of the monitors she had set up. She stretched and groaned, then headed for her office, her bare feet cool on the stone floors of her luxury condo in London’s tony Knightsbridge district. It was far more than someone like her could afford, but it was a gift from her benefactor, the keys delivered to her the day she retired from MI6.

  She sat in her Herman Miller Aeron chair, the mesh hugging her slender, nearly naked frame as she logged into her system. She brought up the alert and cursed as her heart raced. Someone was looking into her second client far more closely than they should for a dead man.

  16 |

  Ministry of State Security

  Beijing, China

  Assistant Director Yan Shengtao glanced at his screen and brought up the priority alert. He’d only been in his new position for a week, assistant director of cyber security, a respectable job in the Chinese government hierarchy, though it came with little power, and power was what he craved. With power came freedom, came wealth, came security. He had to distinguish himself and do so rapidly so he could become the next director. That was when things would really change for him and he wouldn’t have to deal with such petty things as these constant alerts set up by his predecessor.

  He brought up the latest indicating unusual search activity on a priority target named Charles Palmer. Who the hell was Charles Palmer? He popped over to the classified database he’d only had access to since starting his new position. It was fascinating what he had been exposed to so far. The government had files on tens of millions of foreign nationals and, depending on how important they were, those details covered every aspect of their lives. The dirt they had on politicians, military officers, police officers, teachers, everyone, was stunning, all sitting there waiting to be exploited should the Chinese people ever require something these people could offer.

  He brought up Charles Palmer, quickly scanning the file, his eyes widening with each paragraph. He reread it, slower this time. The man was considered a genius, a technical wizard specializing in artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It was suspected he was working on a device capable of cracking all current encryption protocols. Orders had been given to kidnap him and steal the technology for the benefit of the Chinese people, but he had died before the mission could be completed.

  Ten years ago.

  Yan leaned back in his chair, his fingers drumming on the armrests. Why would somebody ten years later be hitting every search engine in the world? Could it just be that it had been ten years, so there was renewed interest? He brought up the report and dismissed the idea. There were hundreds of thousands of hits. That wasn’t a reporter putting together a retrospective—these were computers programmed to execute the searches and gather the results. But to what end? And again, why ten years later? Perhaps someone with deep pockets had decided to pursue his research and was hoping to find obscure references or research papers.

  He pulled the alert back up and took a deeper dive into the details. The searches had been going on for weeks, and the automated analysis showed the vast majority of the traffic was generated from a university in the United States, though there were several other computers outside of that network that also appeared to be involved. He brought up the information on the institution. St. Paul’s University in Maryland. He’d never heard of it. He pulled up an analysis done several years ago as a matter of routine that classified the institution as one of little strategic importance. It wasn’t known as a research center. It appeared more designed to give students a solid foundation, then they would later head to more prestigious schools to pursue postgraduate degrees. There was no evidence that this school was pursuing any type of work in quantum computing, an expensive endeavor.

  He continued reading the file then stopped as he scanned a list of prominent professors calling St. Paul’s home.

  James Acton.

  He bristled as he read the name, the memories of the incident last year flooding back, the death of his brother, the humiliation. He was certain it would end his career when Acton and his wife had escaped, but instead, those events had been purged from the records. Everything was blamed on his boss, who had perished at the hands of a traitor that had never been identified. It meant the Party put forward a fall guy, the events purged, leaving him with a clean record again, allowing him to continue his career, his climb up the ladder only slightly delayed.

  He gasped and his jaw dropped as his brain finally made the connection.

  Laura Palmer.

  He quickly brought up the file on Charles Palmer and laughed aloud. Laura Palmer was his sister. He leaned back, folding his arms, staring at a photo in the dossier of them together. There was now a connection from Charles Palmer leading to James Acton. James Acton was the head of archaeology at St. Paul’s University. St. Paul’s University was a source of an Internet search on Palmer’s brother. This new connection unfortunately suggested this could simply be related to the ten-year anniversary. Perhaps someone at the university was putting together a presentation in his honor. He frowned, his visions of propelling his career forward slowly disappearing.

  He brought the analysis back up. The system suggested 10-20% of the university’s bandwidth had been chewed up over a three-week period ending yesterday, with most of it capping out at 10% during the day. He scratched his chin. It was as if whoever was running the search was trying not to trip any indicators in their IT department. His eyes narrowed. A massive amount of data had been pulled down over weeks. This wasn’t search engine results. It was too large for that. Text didn’t take up much bandwidth. This had to be images and video. But why?

  He sighed. Again, it suggested something being put together for the anniversary of the man’s death. Images were what would be wanted, not text. But why hide this? And why the massive volume of data?

  He cursed and pushed back from his desk. Nobody was hiding anything. Whoever was putting it together probably had permission to use the university’s resources as long as it didn’t affect the functioning of the network, so whatever was used was capped at 10% during the day and 20% at night. At worst, the network might seem a little sluggish.

  According to the file, Acton was a big deal at this university, which meant his wife was as well. So, something big done for the tenth anniversary of Charles Palmer’s death was certainly possible. Yet he wanted these two. They were responsible for the biggest embarrassment of his career, despite it being buried. He needed proof that this was nothing, and the key had to lie with those other computers. He clicked on the link for the most active one, the system automatically launching a search, and he was surprised at the result.

  Singapore?

  It had to be a mistake. He clicked the link again, and the system searched once more. Japan. He pulled closer to his keyboard, clicking again. Egypt. France. Canada.

  There was no way the system was so wrong. It meant whoever owned that computer was using a virtual private network or some other means to disguise their true location, and that raised all kinds of red flags. Just who the hell was at the other end, and why were they so intent on hiding where they were if they were merely putting together a memorial for a man dead ten years?

  He grabbed his phone. It was time to take a much deeper dive.

  17 |

  Acton/Palmer Residence, Overlook Village Gated Community

  St. Paul, Maryland

  Tommy’s hands jerked away as an alert sounded.

  Acton flinched at the high-pitched alarm. “What the hell was that?”

  “Somebody’s trying to locate me.”

  “What?”

  “Well, since I started doing work for the CIA, I’ve made sure I’ve had top-level security installed on all my equipment. It makes it look like I’m in different parts of the world every time someone tries to ping me, but I also get an alert if someone’s trying to find out where I am.”

  “Has this ever happened before?”

  The alarm sounded again.

  “Every once in a while, but only once. I’ve never had it happen twice in a row.” The alarm sounded a third time and Tommy’s eyebrows shot up. “Holy shit, three times.” The laptop protested several more times. “Somebody’s really after me.”

  “Shut it down,” ordered Acton.

  Tommy reached forward and held in the power button, killing the laptop. A moment later, he raised his hands and pushed back from the table, his mouth agape. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Somebody’s obviously looking for you.”

  Laura pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. “We should have just left well enough alone.”

  Acton tapped the table. “But this doesn’t make sense. You said the searches you’re doing don’t have anything that would link you to her brother.”

  “They don’t. They didn’t. I was searching for Terminator: Dark Fate. His name wasn’t involved at all.”

  “Then maybe this has nothing to do with what you’re doing right now,” suggested Acton. “Maybe it was the previous searches.”

  “Maybe.” Tommy pulled back up to the table. “If it was the previous searches, then that means whoever is looking for me has access to the raw results. Only those would have my IP address.”

  “So, someone or some piece of software deep in the bowels of Google, for example, flagged your searches and got your IP address?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Laura clasped her hands. “Thank God you have that software installed. Otherwise, they’d know where we are.”

  Tommy was about to agree then stopped himself.

  Acton picked up on it. “What?”

  Tommy shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I have this software installed on all my devices, but the bulk of the searching was done at the university. Anybody worth their salt will know within moments where all those searches were coming from.”

  Acton tensed. “And if we’re talking about the type of people I think we are, it won’t take them long to put together the fact that his sister lives only a few miles from the university.”

  Mai’s eyes widened. “If they think he’s alive…”

  Laura gripped Acton’s hand. “They’ll be coming.”

  18 |

  Idit’s Studio

  Sodom

  1649 BC

  Idit carefully painted in the figures she had drawn. Her heart was racing with the eroticism of it all as she recreated what her husband had destroyed. When Canaan had described what he wanted, her skin had crawled. He was a pig, what he described disgusting filth, depraved. But as she had translated his descriptions into images, it had become exciting, titillating. She had been ashamed of how it made her feel, but when she had put her face and Lot’s on two of the figures, it had been transformative. Her mind was alive with the images and she couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to do such things with her husband.

  Then the stray thought had entered her mind. What would it be like to participate in something like this, an orgy of passion and lust where one’s own pleasure was all that one was concerned with? Sex to her had always been a chore. She enjoyed it to a point and wanted to make her husband happy, so never denied him. But what they had done the past several days had been unlike anything she had ever felt. The rapture her body experienced at the wickedness of it all was shocking. She had heard tell of orgasmic explosions but had never experienced them before.

  It had changed her.

  She wanted more. Lot seemed eager and willing, and she was certain he could satisfy these needs since he appeared to take equal pleasure. But as the party grew nearer, she found herself wondering what it would be like to commit to five times the commission just this once.

  But Lot would never go for it.

  She leaned back, examining her handiwork.

  Maybe I can convince him to let me go alone.

  Her jaw dropped and her eyes shot wide at the thought. She was a married, pious woman. To think such things was sinful. She put her brush down and closed her eyes and prayed for forgiveness. Lot was right. As long as sinful temptations were so readily at hand, Sodom stood no chance. She had to get control of herself and she begged God for the strength to resist that which she had never known she desired.

  And to send her husband help, for this was a battle he couldn’t fight alone.

  19 |

  Operations Center 2, CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  Present Day

  Leroux stepped through the security door to the state-of-the-art operations center located on one of the sublevels of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He smiled at the waving Sonya Tong, his second-in-command a woman he held in high esteem, whom he was aware had feelings for him that could never be reciprocated as long as Sherrie was in his life.

  “How did you get in here before me?”

  She shrugged. “It helps when you have no life.”

  Leroux laughed. “If Dylan hadn’t been with me, I probably would’ve been in here sooner.”

  The door opened behind him and Randy Child, the team’s tech wunderkind, entered. “You know, I can think of better places to be on a Friday night.”

  Marc Therrien, a constant thorn in Child’s side, delivered a retort from the back of the room. “You can think of them, but you’re never actually there.”

  Child flipped a bird as Leroux made his way to his station at the center of the room. More of the team trickled in as he situated himself. He logged in and checked for any urgent messages, both on the CIA network and Kane’s private one. Sherrie and Fang had arrived back at their apartment building and they along with Kane would be heading for Maryland any minute now. That meant security for the professors within an hour.

  The door hissed open and Danny Packman entered, Leroux’s mental tally complete. Several members of the team had replied back that they were in no state for an op, but that they would come in the morning after they had sobered up. He had no problem with that. No one had been on call, and people were supposed to have lives outside of the Agency—he’d rather them not here than here and inebriated.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22