Read Ghost Country for Free Online

a loop. The subject dominated every conversation Travis could hear at the tables around them.
    Bethany had her phone low in her lap, out of sight to others nearby. Travis watched her mouthing commands she was entering into it. He couldn’t make out any of them. Probably wouldn’t have understood them any better if he could see them typed on the screen.
    After a minute she looked up at him. “Signal strength is pretty weak now. Fall-off is consistent with a living body gradually flushing the iodine through the kidneys and passing it out as urine. And once it’s in the sewers it’s way too dispersed to read.” She frowned. “This signal is also consistent with just one body. Paige is the only survivor.”
    Travis nodded. He stared at the corner of the ninth floor. No way to see in. No way to tell if Paige could see out. Maybe it wasn’t even a window. Maybe the glass exterior concealed a brick-walled holding cell on that floor.
    “So what exactly are we up against, here?” Travis said. “What do we know, right now? We know Paige and the others came to D.C. to meet with the president, and show him the entity. We know they trusted him, at that point. And we know that once they were attacked, they realized they’d been wrong about him—and that he’s part of this thing, whatever it is. Whatever she and the others were trying to learn about. And obviously, lots of other people are involved too. Including whoever controls this building.”
    Bethany continued gazing at the structure. Travis did the same. They’d seen no one enter on foot through the street entrance yet. A number of cars had pulled off of Vermont into the narrow drive that separated the building from the one next to it—a building that had its own garage entrance at the front. That meant the cars going into the drive were entering the green building by some entrance at the rear. Most of the vehicles were town cars or SUVs with tinted windows in the back, professional drivers alone up front.
    “Let’s see who owns the place,” Bethany said.
    She went to work on her phone again. Travis watched screens of data, reflected in her glasses, flashing and changing every few seconds.
    After a minute she frowned.
    “It’s not federal property,” she said. “It’s not listed that way, at least. The district records have it as a corporate office structure, privately held. Built in 2006. No entry for a company name, or any shareholder’s name. Maybe it’s a defense contractor, or a civil-engineering firm, something like that.”
    She stared at the building for a long moment, eyes narrowed.
    “Can you get anything more on it?” Travis said.
    “I have to, if we’re going to help Paige.” She looked at him. “Here’s what I’m thinking. If we wanted to get some help, like official help, it would have to be the FBI. There’s really no one else who can touch something this scale. But we’d need to be careful as hell. Whatever Paige and the others stumbled onto, whatever it is that the president is protecting, we have to assume that everyone he’s appointed is on the same page as him. And since Currey’s taken office he’s replaced both the attorney general and the FBI director. And who knows who they’ve fired and replaced since then. They’ve probably got all kinds of loyalists in the ranks by now. If we go in blind, we stand a good chance of just touching the same nerve Paige touched.”
    “How far from blind can we get?” Travis said.
    Bethany looked at her phone. “It depends on the connections I can make. Names to bank accounts. Other kinds of holdings, like real estate. Connections from those back to other names. Like that. If I could get a clear enough picture of who’s involved in this thing, it might tell us who’s not involved. It would make our guess a hell of a lot more educated, anyway. The problem is that none of the names we know right now will help us. Not the president. Not anyone in his cabinet. Their names won’t be on