Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Evolution - Brian Freeman Page 0,22
you and make you do whatever they want.”
Jason switched off the recorder.
The interview confirmed what Miles Priest and Scott DeRay had expected, that Abbey had a source who knew about the data hack. The question was who and whether that person could help him infiltrate Medusa.
He needed a name.
Bourne dug deeper, sifting through folders and notepads on Abbey’s desk. She was prolific and had multiple projects under way, but he didn’t find any research notes that were connected to her profile of Sofia Ortiz. There was nothing to tell him who her source might be. If she had other materials about Ortiz and Big Tech, then she hadn’t left them in the office. He’d have to find her and talk to her himself.
Jason checked his watch. He’d been inside the offices of The Fort for ten minutes, and he couldn’t stay much longer. But he wanted to see if he could access Abbey’s computer. He found the CPU tower on the floor and switched it on, and the monitor on her desk bloomed to life. The login asked for a password, and he didn’t have time to crack it. However, he was intrigued by the wallpaper photograph she’d chosen for her screen.
It showed the hills of Red Rock Canyon outside Las Vegas.
The picture sent a chill up his spine. Las Vegas.
Bourne knew it might be a coincidence. Millions of people went to Las Vegas as tourists, and Abbey Laurent going there might not mean anything at all. But this was also the city in which Nova had been murdered.
He logged into the computer as a guest. He couldn’t access Abbey’s files, but he could load a search engine and search the web. He typed in: Abbey Laurent Las Vegas. What came up first in the results took Jason’s breath away.
THE MURDERER NEXT DOOR:
Inside the Bland Life of America’s Worst Mass Shooter
Abbey had done a profile of Charles Hackman.
She’d done a profile of the man who had killed Nova, along with sixty-six other men, women, and children.
Bourne felt his breathing accelerate. Another flashback paralyzed him. In his head, he heard the bullets, the screams; he saw the panic as people ran. But they had nowhere to go. They were easy targets for a man in a hotel window.
And he saw Nova, dead in the middle of the chaos, her body being carried away by a man he knew.
A Treadstone agent.
Jason didn’t have time to read further. He glanced at the monitor on the desk in front of him and saw a web camera clipped to the frame. The green light on the webcam glowed. It was active.
Someone was watching him.
He grabbed the camera and yanked it out of the computer port and then kicked the power plug from the wall. He didn’t have much time. Seconds. He ran for the office door of The Fort and took the stairs to the first floor two at a time. Rather than use the front door again, he followed a dusty corridor to the rear of the building and found another exit that led out to a side street. He cracked the door and looked out. The neighborhood was empty. He ran across the street, where an iron fence built atop a stone wall led into the rear yard of an upscale residential house. He leaped for the fence, propped his foot on one of the crossbars, and threw himself to the other side. Then he flattened himself against the wet green lawn and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Headlights shot down Rue d’Auteuil. An SUV stopped outside the building where The Fort had its offices, and three men jumped out. They all wore beige raincoats. One man headed for the side street and the exit where Jason had just left, and another charged toward the front door with the broken window.
The third man, who was obviously in charge, hung back. He was tall and sleek, with a neat, polished look that Bourne recognized from long experience. It was the look of a killer. The man wore gold-rimmed glasses that he took off and cleaned as he stood outside the building. Then he examined the area around him with the eyes of a hawk, as if he could sense that Jason was still close by. His eyes were so intense that Jason sunk lower into the grass to make sure he couldn’t be seen, even under the shroud of night.
Almost a full minute went by before the man with the gold-rimmed glasses joined his