The Voting Machine

Secure Strategies

The first thing I needed was clothes. We had killed our captors and I couldn't bear the humiliation of being naked for another moment. Polk's suit was too small for me to wear. And Decatur's body was embedded with the spike in such a way that his coat and shirt were torn and soaked in blood. In the hall, I found an alcove with my clothes and shoes in a pile next to another set, which I assumed belonged to Abdul.

"Where are we?" I asked Teresa. She turned away and let me dress.

"Somewhere below the flood tunnels, I am not sure where. They drove me here blind-folded, I had to feel my way down a ladder."

"Does anyone else know you're here?"

"I don't think so. They tricked me. I was still in shock over Harvey and I let down my guard. They'd asked me to meet them alone in Summerlin. They said they had a lead and they wanted to keep it close in case there was a leak. They said they needed me to confirm some detail since I knew Harvey and Alex so well. By the time I met them it was too late."

We returned to the Judas chair. Teresa stood over the corpse of the woman who'd called herself Polk. She stared up at us with bloodshot eyes, her fingers clutching at the rope around her broken neck.

"Serves you right, bitch," Teresa said.

I tore the woman's suit and wrapped the lining around my hands, creating a pair of makeshift mittens. I searched her blouse and pants for pockets.

"Who were you really, Ms. Polk?" I asked.

Underneath her blouse, a belt was strapped against her waist. It contained keys, a driver's license, a cell phone and a badge with the name we knew her by. I ran my fingers along the belt and felt something else enclosed in a separate, hidden pouch. I stabbed with one of the keys until I did the stitching for the second pouch. It contained an employee ID card with a corporate logo.

SAMANTHA LIVINGSTONE

SECURE STRATEGIES LLC.

I stuffed the ID in my pocket. Teresa grabbed her phone and played with the passcode but there was no way to unlock it. Then we used the same process to search Decatur's clothes. His quick fall onto the spike had created a mess, spraying blood across the floor and in my face and hair. There was no mirror to see how bad I looked and no sink to wash myself. That would have to come later. Eventually we found an inner pocket in his jacket and an ID with the same corporate logo.

GEORGE PIERCE

SECURE STRATEGIES LLC.

"You ever heard of this company?" I asked Teresa.

"It's a security contractor. They do background checks for TS/SCI."

"What's that?"

"Security clearance. The intelligence agencies are growing and they need more workers. Companies like Secure Strategies do the vetting. They're the gatekeepers"

"So Shiro can slip its people through the gate."

"That's how it seems to work. If you control the background checks you can plant people in multiple agencies, you have access to surveillance, cybersecurity, law enforcement."

"You can pretend you're an FBI agent."

"Harvey told me he'd never worked with them before. He said they'd been transferred into Nevada from one of the overseas field offices. Their work history was classified."

We heard a cry from behind a door at the end of the hallway.

"That's Abdul. We have to go back for him."

The door was locked so we kicked it down. He'd removed the sheet and was crawling across the floor away from the pool. I gave him his clothes.

"We have to leave," Teresa warned.

When Abdul was dressed, he limped along following us into the hallway.

"Where is my daughter?"

"She's safe at your store."

"Who is she?" he whispered nervously, pointing at Teresa.

"Her name is Teresa. She's the one who saved us."

At the end of the corridor a stainless-steel door led into a maintenance entrance for a flood drain. We continued through this opening, crouching over and stepping slowly into the dark, damp underpass. A street lamp far above us lit the path through a grid overhead.

"You've got to tell us the truth, Abdul," she called. "What did you confess to back in that room?"

"I would've told them anything to stay alive."

"Did you tell them the truth? They said you raised funds for Shiro. Why would they lie about that?" she asked.

"They wanted me to confess I was a terrorist."

"I heard your confession," I said. "You told them that you started giving money to Shiro a long time ago and then you couldn't get out."

"That's the truth. We were students back in Cairo from well-off families. Very idealistic, very naïve. We were thrown in jail and tortured for suggesting the very notion of a free and fair election. We learned through a sympathetic professor about an organization that could help us achieve our goals. Its existence was a secret and it was constantly changing shape. But it had influence all over the world. Shiro delivered results, they said. And what was the point of our good intentions if we could not get any results?"

"And you believe this."

"I still do. Shiro is designed to deliver results. The problem is the methods are too extreme. It's like any corporation, it was started by real people, but it has acquired a life of its own. It isn't constraint by any code of ethics. The ends justify any mean. And once you are part of it, once you know too much about Shiro's operations, you can't walk away. You have to remain complicit."

"You said you didn't know Shiro would kill people," I said.

"I didn't know what would happen in Las Vegas," he said. "That's a true statement."

"But you did know it was an organization of murderers. And you paid into that."

"We all pay into murder, Temo. They take taxes from your salary, don't they? Where do you think that tax money goes? It makes bombs and warplanes that kill innocent men, women and children all over the world."

Teresa finally spoke up after listening quietly to our conversation. "He's right. We all pay into murder. None of us are saints. I think you did what you did for your daughter, Abdul. I know I did what I did for my son. I lied for him, I stole for him, I killed for him. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Wouldn't you, Temo?"

"I just did," I said, wiping splattered blood from my forehead, holding out my fingers for both of them to see.