Page 83 of Reckless

“Bunker?”

“Yeah. My great-great-grandparents were worried about the atom bomb in the fifties. They built the bunker, thinking they might have to live in it for years. We don’t really use it since all our houses have a safe room, but we do keep supplies and odds and ends here.”

She switched on a light and then started down the stairs. “The last time I was here, I swept out the cobwebs and filled it with some other things.”

“Like what?”

Stepping onto the concrete floor, she flipped a couple of switches on the wall and said, “Take a look.”

Jazz stepped down beside Serena. The room was about the size of a small auditorium. And though she spotted some shelves at the end of the room filled with a substantial stash of canned food and bottled water, most of the space was filled with at least fifteen large, freestanding whiteboards that lined the walls. Over half of them were filled with writing.

“What is this, Serena?”

“I found him, Jazz.”

“Found who?”

Turning to face her, Serena’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “I found the head of the snake.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Stunned, knowing exactly what Serena was talking about, Jazz whispered, “The head of the Wren Project.”

“Yes.”

“Who is he? What’s his name?”

“Follow me. I’ll show you.”

They went to the closest board, and Jazz stared at the massive amount of information. Names, locations, and dates were connected with arrows. The biggest arrow led to one name.

“Lazarus? How do you know it’s him?”

“Remember that game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?”

“Yeah. Everyone in the world is somehow connected to him via six people?”

“Something like that. Players pick an actor and then try to connect that person to Kevin Bacon via other actors in the most direct way possible. So say someone challenged you to connect Henry Cavill and Bacon. Cavill played Clark Kent in the movie Man of Steel, and Diane Lane played Clark’s mother, Martha Kent. Diane Lane was also in the movie My Dog Skip with Kevin Bacon.”

“Okay. So this is like that?”

“Yes, except this is more like Seven Degrees of Lazarus.”

“Show me.”

“Okay. Here’s where I got started, since this was our first encounter with WP. You remember Nora Turner, the senator from Ohio?”

“Yes.”

That name was one that no one at OZ would ever forget. Because of Turner’s incredibly selfish act, many people had died. Ash had almost been one of them. He had been the lone survivor of an attack that had seen a bunch of politicians and business people load themselves onto a helicopter and abandon the men who had been protecting them, leaving them to fight an army. Ash had spent years trying to expose and bring Turner down, and in the midst of doing just that, they had learned there was a larger, more heinous group of people behind the corrupt politician.

With Serena leading her, Jazz followed the path from Nora Turner through events and people until it ended with the name Lazarus.

“Okay, but who?—”

Before Jazz could finish, Serena said, “Follow me.”

Trailing behind her, Jazz saw all the connections as if she were watching a movie. Aubrey, Liam’s wife, had discovered the connection between her uncle and the Wren Project. The uncle and Aubrey’s cousin Becca were both dead because of WP. Through all the intel she had unearthed, Serena showed Jazz the trajectory of events that led once again to Lazarus.

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