Inherited Threat

by Jane M. Choate

  “I see nothing of the kind.” Jenni-Grace stood. “And I stand by my husband.” Though Laurel and Mace each topped her by several inches, the woman managed to appear to be looking down her nose at them. “I’ll thank you not to visit again. I’m sure you can see yourselves out.”

  Once they were in the car, Laurel turned to Mace. “She is either incredibly naive or she just doesn’t care that her husband is a murderer.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know what to think. The lady isn’t stupid.”

  “Not stupid. But unaware, perhaps.” But Laurel hadn’t gotten that sense from Jenni-Grace Winston. On the contrary, except for the instance of twisting her pearl necklace, the lady had appeared cool and completely in control of herself. There was keen intelligence beneath the polished exterior.

  A buzz from Mace’s phone interrupted whatever he’d been about to say next, and he answered the call. “We’ll be there in thirty,” he said before hanging up. “That was Shelley. Rachel has translated part of the ledger. Shelley said we need to take a look at it.”

  On the way, they stopped to pick up Sammy, who greeted them with an enthusiastic bark. After feeding the shepherd and taking him for a short walk, Laurel and Sammy returned to the truck.

  Excitement bubbled within her at the thought of actually reading the ledger. The ledger that had caused too many deaths, including that of Bernice. The ledger that had sent thugs after Laurel and Mace. The ledger that could put an end to the Collective once and for all.

  “Let’s do this,” she said.

  * * *

  “Tell them what you found,” Shelley said to Rachel.

  The former FBI agent looked from Laurel and Mace to Shelley and Jake. “It took some doing to decipher the code.” She darted a curious glance Laurel’s way. “The person who wrote this was too smart to put the information in a single binary code. She combined it with two others. In short, I had to excavate through three layers of encryption to decipher it.”

  Mace shifted in his chair.

  “We don’t doubt your skill,” Shelley said gently. “Tell us what you found.”

  “Maybe you should see for yourself.” Rachel tapped a few keys and pulled up a file from her laptop. “You may recognize some names.”

  Mace leaned in, then gave a low whistle. The encryption specialist was a master of the art of understatement. Three judges. Four city councilmen. A police chief. Police personnel from precincts all over the city.

  “From the way the names are arranged into sections,” Rachel said, “I think that each group pertains to a specific city. This one is probably Atlanta since I recognize a couple of the people listed. There are similar groupings throughout the book. Other cities. Other states. It’ll go faster now that I have the code. It’s just a matter of applying it to every listing and coming up with names.”

  “How many groupings are there?” Jake asked.

  “Thirty-five.”

  The intake of breath by Shelley, Jake, Laurel and Mace told its own story.

  “I knew the Collective had its hands everywhere,” Laurel said, “but this goes way beyond what I dreamed.”

  “It’s no dream,” Jake said. “More like a nightmare.”

  “How do we fight this?” Laurel asked in a stunned whisper.

  Mace had thought he’d understood the breadth of what they were dealing with in their mission to put an end to the Collective, but how could they fight something so pervasive? Something his CO had said came to mind: the only battles worth fighting are those you can’t win.

  He now shared it with the others, adding, “I don’t know if we can win or not, but we’re sure gonna try.”

  Laurel gave him a grateful smile.

  Once again, he thought of Ronnie Winston. They needed to cut off his line of communication. Only then could they take down the organization.

  “I think another visit to Winston is in order,” Laurel said, apparently on the same wavelength as he was.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Thank you, Rachel,” Shelley said. “Keep at it and let us know when you’ve translated more.”

  After Rachel departed, Shelley stood and walked to the office safe. “Before you go,” she said to Laurel and Mace, “there’s something else I want to show you.” She pulled the money from the safe and took out a packet of hundred-dollar bills. “As you probably know, the most difficult part of counterfeiting is using the right paper. I believe that each of these bills started as a one-dollar bill, was bleached and then printed as a hundred-dollar bill. It’s a common practice. These are some of the best I’ve seen.”

  Mace knew that Shelley had worked for the Secret Service before starting S&J. Though the Secret Service was now under the Department of Homeland Security, Shelley had no doubt learned about counterfeiting techniques from her contacts at the Treasury Department.

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  “If you look carefully, you’ll see that the printing on the bills is slightly off centered. It takes an incredible amount of patience and talent to position the engraving machine on individual bills. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d probably miss it.”

  “The whole lot of them is counterfeit?” Laurel asked.

  “I haven’t had the time to go through all of them, but my guess is yes. I think this is the endgame, to flood the Southeast with funny money. The resulting chaos will give the Collective the opportunity to put more people in its pocket and to seize control of the economy.

  “I’ve got a friend at Treasury,” Shelley continued. “He’s arranged for you to meet with Roberto Calzone, an agent who specializes in counterfeiting. Tell him what we’ve discovered. Show him the money.” She handed the packet of bills to Mace.

  “We can visit Winston another day,” he said. “I doubt we could have seen him today anyway, what with the hoops Shelley had to jump through the last time to get us in.”

  Laurel nodded. “You’re right.” She turned to Shelley. “Okay if I leave Sammy here? He’s been cooped up in the cabin all alone. I think he’d like to be with you and Jake rather than go with us to a stuffy government office.”

  “Fine by me.” Shelley patted her leg. “Come here, boy. You and I can get better acquainted.”

  Mace reviewed what Shelley had just told them. This whole thing was bigger than he ever expected. For the first time, he doubted his ability to keep Laurel safe. For the first time, he doubted himself.

  SIXTEEN

  Laurel went over all she’d learned about the Collective. It came back to Winston. He hadn’t struck her as particularly intelligent. So how was he able to devise a system so complex that he could communicate with the outside without tripping any of the safeguards in place to monitor him?

  Maybe he wasn’t.

  She chewed on it and felt the shift and slide of pieces falling into place. Was she on to something? She recalled working on a jigsaw puzzle she’d dug out of the neighbors’ trash when she was ten. The pieces refused to fit until she looked at them from a different angle. Was that what she needed now? To look at the problem from a different perspective?

  The warden had insisted that Winston couldn’t be involved. At the time, Laurel and Mace had dismissed that, believing that the man was deceiving himself out of a certainty that nothing could get by when he was in charge. Pride had been the root of more than one man’s downfall.

  But what if Winston wasn’t the one running the operation? What if he was only a figurehead? What if someone else, someone close to him, was the true head of the Collective?

  The idea circled in her head. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Winston hadn’t given off a vibe of great intelligence. On the contrary, he seemed of average intellectual ability, if that. He had a blustering bravado, but she hadn’t seen anyt
hing to make her believe that he had the leadership skills, much less the intellectual horsepower, to run a vast organization.

  But, if not Winston, then who was giving the orders? One of his lieutenants? That was the only thing that made sense, but something still didn’t feel right. She recalled something she’d picked up from a neighbor’s garage sale years back. A chess set. Laurel had taught herself to play. One maxim had stood out. The queen held the power.

  Jenni-Grace?

  Laurel shook her head in answer to her unspoken question. The woman came from money, had the requisite breeding and background to earn her a place on the boards of numerous charities, even when her image had been tarnished by her marriage to Ronnie Winston. No way could she be involved.

  Mace threw her a quick look. “What’s going on in that big brain of yours?”

  Laurel shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said and told him of her hypothesis.

  “Is this a guess or is it your gut talking?”

  She didn’t have to think about it. “My gut.”

  “Your gut always knows before your head figures it out. If you’re right, we’re back at square one.”

  The depressing thought hung over her as they arrived at the federal building. A quick check of the building’s roster gave them the floor and number of Calzone’s office.

  After introductions had been made, Laurel went through the story of what had brought them there.

  “The Collective continues to grow and is infiltrating more and more areas,” Mace added. “We think the counterfeiting is part of their endgame. If they control the currency, they control the economy.”

  “This is indeed troubling,” Calzone said, hound-dog wrinkles emphasizing heavy jowls.

  The man’s response came across as forced to Laurel. The way he spaced the words out caused her to wonder why he was so deliberate in his speech. And why didn’t he appear more concerned about the possibility of counterfeit money flooding the Southeast?

  Calzone scratched his nose and covered his mouth in a more or less continuous rhythm, both micro-expressions of lying.

  “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll take the money now,” he said, holding out a hand. “Don’t want it accidentally getting into circulation.” The last was said with an attempt at humor. It felt false, as did the rest of his words. Before she could respond, he added, “What about the rest of the bills? It was my understanding that there was approximately ten thousand dollars.”

  Knowing that they had no legitimate reason to refuse, Laurel reluctantly handed over the pack of hundred-dollar bills. “We’ll get the rest of the money to you.” She gave him a last doubtful look. “You’ll look into this?”

  “You can count on it.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to leave. Not yet. “What will you do?”

  “We’ll handle it. No need to...” He broke off. “It’s in the hands of Treasury now.”

  She feared he’d been about to say ‘No need to worry your pretty head over it,’ as so many men had said in the past. If he had, she couldn’t have spoken to his safety.

  Just as she and Mace were about to leave, Laurel noticed that Calzone sported a green tattoo on his wrist. Though she could make out only a portion of the image beneath his shirt cuff, something about it triggered a memory.

  On their way back to S&J headquarters to report on the meeting, Laurel said, “Something’s off about Calzone.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He didn’t seem very upset about the fact that the Collective is counterfeiting money. In fact, he didn’t even seem surprised.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that, too. Wonder why.”

  Could Calzone be one of the organization’s plants? According to Rachel’s translation of the ledger, dozens of people in Atlanta were implicated in the Collective. Why not Calzone?

  And then there was his tattoo. She’d finally placed it. Unless she was very much mistaken, it was a match to the one Dresden sported. She was about to say as much to Mace when two motorcycles appeared behind the truck.

  With powerful engines, twin Ducatis closed in on Mace and Laurel from either side. These were obviously no low-level foot soldiers, but lieutenants or even higher-ups in the Collective hierarchy.

  They would have to be to afford such expensive motorcycles. One of the motorcyclists aimed a gun and took a shot. Fortunately, he missed the tire, but it didn’t matter. A tractor trailer barreled toward Mace and Laurel, the rumble of its huge engine deafening as the vehicle was nearly upon them, the acrid scent of diesel heavy in the air.

  “Hold on,” Mace said. “We’re going to take a hit.”

  A hit didn’t begin to describe the tractor trailer’s massive weight plowing into their truck, sending it spinning. Their vehicle did a one-eighty before flipping over.

  When she got her breath back, Laurel looked around for Mace and didn’t see him. Had he been thrown clear of the truck? Slowly, with every movement sending shafts of pain through her, she undid her seat belt and extricated herself from where she was wedged between the airbag and the seat. She spied Mace lying on the pavement.

  When she started toward him, she saw a black-clad man coming at him. She drew her weapon and fired, and the man dropped to the ground.

  Laurel ran to bend over Mace. A gash on his forehead was bleeding profusely. She tore a sleeve from her shirt to press against the wound. Bruising hands lifted her off the ground, causing her to drop her weapon.

  She whipsawed her arms, breaking the man’s hold, and, in the next second, kicked out backward, planting the sole of her foot flat against his chest. He floundered for a moment before slamming to the pavement.

  There was no time for self-congratulations as he instantly jumped to his feet and turned to face her, his mouth twisted in an ugly parody of a smile.

  “You shouldna done that, girlie,” he said.

  She didn’t waste time answering and braced herself for the next attack.

  She’d noticed that before each attack, he wet his lips. He did so now, his intention as clear as a neon sign. He came in low, using his head as a battering ram. She knew if he got her to the ground, it was all over.

  Just as he would have hit her, she twisted to the side. His momentum carried him to the ground. When he picked himself up this time, rage distorted his features. He probably wasn’t accustomed to being bested.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and she understood that the preliminaries were over. She was in for the fight of her life. If only she could reach her piece, but it lay two feet away. It might as well be two miles for all the good it did her.

  He made a move to the right, and she did the same. Mirroring his moves might confuse him. It seemed to have worked, for he paused, looked about as though trying to understand why she’d done the opposite of what he’d expected.

  The driver climbed down from the semi. “Keep it up and your friend’s dead,” he said, aiming a modified MP5 at Mace’s head. The 9mm submachine gun was a lot of weapon. If the man fired, Mace would be killed.

  It was that simple. And so was her choice.

  Instantly, she went still.

  “Good move.”

  Mace hadn’t moved. Blood continued to seep from the wound at his temple.

  “You two are worse than useless,” the driver said to the man who remained standing. “You can’t even take down a lone woman.”

  “She’s not just any woman,” the other man tossed back. “She’s a Ranger, man. You try taking her on.”

  “She’s a woman,” the driver said insultingly. “Quit whining and take care of her.”

  The other man zip-tied her hands behind her and tossed her into the truck. He then proceeded to hog-tie her, looping a length of rope from her hands to her feet, and placed a cloth hood over her head. She fought it, feeling helpless without the sense of sight,
but her struggle was futile.

  She had to depend upon her hearing to know what the men were doing. A bounce on the trailer bed told her that the man must have hopped down. Another commotion ensued.

  “He’s done for.” She recognized the driver’s voice. “No sense putting a hood on him.”

  Mace.

  The sound of metal scraping against metal followed. She deduced that the men had put the motorcycles in the trailer and secured them somehow.

  “Mace, can you hear me?” she asked after the men had closed the door to the semi’s trailer.

  Not even a grunt.

  Laurel kept her chin up. Not because she was trying to prove something, but because she’d discovered if she did so, she avoided having it bang against the bed of the truck. She tried rolling to her side only to find it was next to impossible.

  The position was an extremely awkward one, designed to cause her as much pain as possible. Her shoulder screamed in agony with every bounce and shudder of the vehicle. Laurel gave up the struggle to hold back the tears and let them roll down her cheek unchecked.

  But she wasn’t beaten. The words of a favorite scripture came to mind. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.

  “Mace? Mace, do you hear me?” she asked again. She willed Mace to regain consciousness. “Please wake up.”

  Only silence greeted her.

  With nothing she could do at the moment, Laurel considered what had happened, going over her and Mace’s steps that had brought them to this place. A visit to Jenni-Grace Winston, a meeting at S&J and then the meeting with Calzone.

  The men on the motorcycles and the truck driver had known her and Mace’s location. Obviously they’d been set up. Again. There were no tracking devices on them; she and Mace had made sure of that. So where did that leave them?

  Calzone. He could easily have called the men who had staged the attack, told them when and where she and Mace would be.

  They were in a tight spot, with no weapons and with Mace likely concussed.