by Mary Stone
“Great. Okay. Well, Sun, you’ve got a phone call to make.” Noah looked disgusted. “I don’t envy you this one. Bull, you need coffee. You guys want to go get that while Sun makes her phone call?”
They each got up and left the room without speaking. Bull was shaking his head on the way out.
Winter glanced at Sun, who was staring daggers back at her. “It’s not my fault,” Winter pointed out, turning to face her nemesis head-on. “It was your decision not to tell anyone about that. How far are you willing to go to get in the spotlight you accused me of hogging?”
Sun didn’t answer. She pulled out her phone as Winter left the room, her expression miserable.
17
“I can’t believe she got away with it,” Bull said mournfully. “We’ll have to start calling her Teflon. That shit just slid right off of her.”
It was true. They didn’t know how she’d done it, but Sun had managed to not only not get fired, but she was still in charge of the case, and she and Noah were in the air, on their way to Los Angeles.
“Doesn’t matter,” Winter said. “She’s got Noah with her, so that’ll keep her out of trouble. I really don’t think she’s going to find what she’s looking for in California, though. I think it was a false trail to keep us chasing our tails.”
“I’m a good tail-chaser,” Bull grinned. “Ask anybody.”
Winter rolled her eyes. He was annoying but harmless.
They were on their way to the armored truck depot in Manhattan. Winter had been told to follow her lead while Sun did her thing. She had a feeling bets were being placed on whose would pan out. She didn’t care. She did believe in gut feelings, and hers was telling her she was on the right track. They might finally pull out ahead of the suspects.
“That’s the place,” Bull muttered. “I can think of easier places to rob. Shit looks like Fort Knox, with all that fencing.”
“Well, let’s get in there and see what we can find out.”
They were buzzed through the gate by a guard, and at the sight of his uniform, Winter was sure that these were the uniforms she’d seen. She shuddered, hoping that the vision could be changed. So far, they’d all ended up coming true, but why would she get them if she couldn’t do anything about them?
They entered the offices, where a receptionist invited them to have a seat while she called out the manager, Mike Garofalo. He only kept them waiting a few moments.
“Welcome!” The word was said in a voice a shade too cheerful to be sincere. Mike was a short man, probably about five-four without the lifts that made him an inch or two taller. His thinning, dyed black hair was combed over to one side to hide a gleaming bald spot. It wasn’t working.
She heard Bull snort. He’d obviously embraced his own baldness and had little respect for anyone else who didn’t do the same.
She shook Mike’s hand, finding it warm and damp. She wiped her palm on her pants, not liking the feeling the man had left behind.
“Come on back into my office. Becky, hold my calls, will you?”
The receptionist wrinkled her nose. “It’s not like he gets any,” she muttered as Winter walked by her.
Mike’s office was untidy, piles of paperwork stacked around. He moved a couple of stacks from a chair. “Sorry, guys, I only have one extra,” he said. “I don’t get a lot of visitors.”
“No problem,” Bull replied, sitting down.
Winter wanted to laugh at his complete oblivion to basic manners. That was fine—he could sit. They’d decided to let him take the lead, anyway. She leaned forward and brushed an invisible piece of lint off the shoulder of Bull’s jacket. That was their signal.
He gave her a surprised look and a subtle nod.
They’d planned on warning the manager that his facility was a possible target. It had been Winter’s idea to come up with a second story, just in case it didn’t feel right, or the manager started acting suspiciously.
Bull obviously hadn’t noticed Mike’s nervousness, but he started in with their cover story anyway. “We’re here because we think one of your employees might be involved in a kidnapping case from a few weeks back.”
Mike’s eyes widened. “I hadn’t heard about any kidnapping cases.”
“No.” Bull nodded, looking wise. He lowered his voice, as if imparting confidential information. “It’s been kept strictly on the DL. We’re thinking we might be on to a whole ring of kidnappers, and we’re trying to bring down the kingpin. We need to swear you to secrecy on this.”
Tone it down, Bull, Winter thought to herself, looking around the room. It sounded like he was reciting the plot of a TV episode. It was fortunate that Mike was eating it up. He looked relieved at the line of questioning. As Bull explained that they wanted to walk through the facility, take a look at who was working, she studied the stacks of papers. One stack, on top of Mike’s desk, drew her eye.
There was just a faint reddish light toward the bottom of the stack, as if the papers were covering something.
Bull and Mike were winding down, with Mike offering to give them a tour of the facility.
Winter started coughing.
Bull looked at her first, his brows drawn together in confusion. She coughed harder, the initial fake coughs taking on a life of their own. Bull started looking concerned. They hadn’t talked about this, and she could tell he was teetering on the line between wanting to think this was a signal and wanting to leap up and pound his hand on her back.
“Water,” she gasped out between hacks.
Finally, the lightbulb went on over Bull’s head.
“Asthma attack?” he asked, getting to his feet.
Close enough. She nodded.
“Can you get her a glass of water?” he asked Mike. “She does this sometimes.”
“Sure.” Mike edged around the room, as if Winter’s coughs could be contagious. “Uh, hang on. I’ll be right back.”
He left the door open behind him.
Winter kept coughing, just in case he could hear her from down the hallway and moved to the pile of papers. Lifting them, she nodded at Bull to pull a datebook out from beneath. It was the source of the red glow she’d seen. He grabbed it, and she set the papers down. He slipped it beneath his butt just as Mike came back with the water. Winter had gotten back to her original spot in the corner of the room.
She took the paper cup he held out and sipped at the tepid liquid. “Thanks. I hate it when that happens.”
“I’ve choked on my own spit before,” Bull put in helpfully. “Sounds just like that.”
“Well, if you’re sure you’re okay.” Mike eyed her in doubt.
“I’m fine.” Winter smiled, handing him the paper cup back. “Lead the way.”
He headed out into the hall, and Bull followed close behind, using his bulk to give her the cover she needed to grab the book and slip it into her bag. She tried to ignore the fact that it was warm from Bull’s ass.
The depot itself wasn’t impressive. It just looked like a very secure loading dock, with trucks backing up to be unloaded. But instead of skids of building materials or car parts, their delivery product was money.
“As you can see,” Mike said, “we’ve got everyone on camera all the time.” He pointed out the CCTV cameras posted every few feet. “This is a secure facility. Just like Fort Knox.”
“Told you,” Bull said, nudging Winter’s arm. “Fort Knox.”
“Everyone who works here goes through a rigorous background check.” Mike preened with pride. “We don’t let just anybody get a job here. That’s why I’m so surprised that—” He stopped short as one of the employees walked by in uniform, pushing a dolly with lockboxes loaded on it. “That’s why I’m surprised to hear why you’re here,” he continued in a stage whisper after the man had walked on.
“Well,” Bull said, his tone equally secretive. “You never can tell with people. You should hear about this one case I had. This little old lady was…”
Bull was buying her time to look aroun
d. She tuned out the old lady story and studied the exits, the docks, the offices, trying to memorize the layout. They needed to have as much information as possible so they could try and plan out how a heist could be pulled off at this location. They kept moving, and Winter kept her eyes open for anything else that might stand out, either glowing red or just unusual.
She might have some weird form of enhanced intuition, but she didn’t want to rely on anything that mysterious. She wanted to enhance her normal intuition too, just in case the enhanced version left as quickly as it had appeared.
Lagging behind Bull and the manager, Winter studied everything carefully.
The employees, too, all blended together. No one looked particularly sinister or nervous to see black-suited strangers—who were obviously law enforcement officials—in their workplace.
Mike wrapped up the tour, keeping things brief. “I’ve got some pressing work to take care of,” he said, striving to sound important. “I’m going to head back to my office. You keep looking around as much as you want. Let me know if you find…you know. Anyone.”
He walked away, his heels clicking a rapid beat on the concrete floor.
“Looked a little eager to get away from us all the sudden,” Bull muttered.
“Almost like he wanted to go call someone?” Winter asked.
Bull scratched the back of his bald head. “Maybe.”
Mike Garofalo was sweating hard underneath the heat-trapping polyester suit jacket he wore. If he played his cards right, though, he wouldn’t be wearing cheap polyester for long.
He passed Becky at the reception desk, ignoring her curious look. Closing his door to block out her nosy eavesdropping, he looked around. The agent’s coughing fit had struck him as weird, but he couldn’t see where anything was disturbed. Still. It seemed like too much of a coincidence.
He picked up his phone and dialed the number he’d been given. When he reached the voicemail, an automated message told him to state his business after the beep. He spoke quietly. “I have FBI agents here.” He licked his dry lips. “They say they’re looking for a kidnapping suspect, but something feels funny. Just giving you a heads-up.”
Hanging up the phone, he looked around the office again. He still had an itchy feeling. One of his sticky notes had fallen to the floor. Those little yellow bastards were always getting everywhere.
He picked it up and put it back on top of the stack where it belonged.
Then he froze. His breath was coming out in rapid gasps as he picked up the stack of papers and moved it to one side.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered. Frantically, he moved other papers, dropping them to the floor in his hurry.
It was gone.
His fucking datebook was gone.
He sank down in his chair, feeling the sweat pooling in his armpits. Dampening the top of his head. He wiped at his upper lip, where nervous sweat had gathered.
Think, Mikey, he told himself. What had he written in the book? He’d never put down anything about the person that had come to see him a couple of months ago. It wasn’t like he’d write that. He wasn’t stupid.
After thinking through every possible scenario, he felt sure that there was nothing in there to tie him to what was about to go down. He relaxed a little. The only possible incriminating thing was written in code. There was no way anyone could link it to him.
And, he thought, brightening a little more, if the FBI agents really had taken the book, they’d see he had nothing to hide. And if they did find something, they’d taken the date book illegally. Even the dumbest attorney could have that illegal seizure tossed out in court by even the dumbest judge.
He was okay, either way.
He couldn’t have anything to do with something that happened while he was out having dinner at his favorite restaurant. Everybody knew him there, and his cousin was the maître de. Plus, they were going to a friend’s house for a party afterward. Very public things they were doing that night. Alibis in every direction.
He sat back in his chair.
Everything would be fine. While shit blew up around here, he’d be hanging out with his girlfriend.
He thought about calling the number back that he’d memorized, letting them know the Feds had his datebook too, but there was no point. It was in code. No one would be able to crack it. It wouldn’t do to make anyone annoyed, and maybe blame him for the loss of the datebook. It wasn’t his fault.
Besides, everything was going to be just fine.
After tomorrow night, anyway.
18
“So, you really think he had something to do with it?” Bull asked after they’d gotten back to the rental car.
“Just a feeling.” Winter gave Bull a sideways glance. “You’ don’t have a problem with that, do you?” she asked, referring back to Sun’s outburst.
Bull laughed. “Hell no. I don’t care what a guy’s gotta do to solve a case. As long as it gets the job done, you can dance around naked for all I care.” He paused, considering. “Hey, you don’t want to dance around naked by chance, do ya?”
Winter snorted, putting the car in gear. No matter how far equal rights and sexual harassment had come to make the workplace a bit safer, she didn’t think it would ever keep testosterone driven men from flirting, at least just a bit. She’d just have to keep verbally neutering them until shooting them was legalized. “Keep dreaming.”
Still grinning, Bull shot her a glance. “Well, you went next level with that coughing shit. Good job. I thought you were going to keel over or honk up a lung, for a minute there.”
She laughed as she pulled out of the parking lot. “Hopefully, I didn’t just throw some guy’s life organization system into chaos for no reason. But I have a feeling there’s something in the datebook. We’ll find out.”
“You know you can’t use that in court, right?”
Winter nodded. “I’m more interested in stopping the murder of innocents at the moment. I’ll deal with prosecution later.”
“Sounds about right.” His stomach growled loudly, and he patted it with his hand. “You mind if we find out over a beer and some chicken wings? Or nachos. Nachos sound really good right now.” There was hope in Bull’s voice.
She grinned. “I’m used to working over food. Dalton is a bottomless pit that thinks better on a full stomach. Find me a restaurant around here that sounds good.”
Bull pulled one up and set the GPS on his phone.
“Hey…” She could feel his eyes on her as he spoke, his tone curious. “You got a thing going with Noah? It’s fine if you do, but everybody in the unit wants to know.”
“Everybody in the unit should mind their own business.”
Bull snorted. “You know if you say that, it just makes it sound like you’re saying yes, right?”
“No. It doesn’t make it sound that way at all.” Winter grimaced, feeling his eyes still on her. She glanced in his direction, and sure enough, he was staring, a little grin playing on his mouth. Bull was still clearly waiting for an answer. “No, Bull,” she huffed, enunciating the words. “Dalton and I don’t have a thing going on.”
Bull snapped his fingers. “Damn it. Miguel is going to take the pool. Me and…” he caught the glare she threw him, “ah, me and everybody else said yes.”
At the restaurant, Winter flipped through the pages of Mike Garofalo’s calendar. He wasn’t Mister Popular, as far as she could tell.
She flipped to the weekly schedule layout. It still wasn’t very interesting. Doctors’ appointments. Cosmetic dentist visit for a capping consultation. Work meeting. And then there was tomorrow’s date, written in what looked like a coded message.
“What do you think of this?” Winter asked Bull, who was shoving nachos down his throat like he was afraid someone was going to take them away from him.
“I think,” he said after a moment, spraying a crumb onto the calendar, “that looks like a bunch of letters and numbers.”
“A code,” she prompted patiently. “D
oes it look like a code to you?”
Bull squinted, like that would change what the words looked like on the paper. “Maybe. Are there any more on any other dates?”
She shook her head and flicked the crumb back at him, where it stuck to his wrinkled white shirt. Turning the book around, she looked at it again. She tried a couple of different simple letter/number substitutions, like A for 1, B for 2 and so on, but nothing fit.
“Do we have somebody at the office who specializes in codes?” she asked Bull.
He nodded, taking a swig of PBR. “Bobby Goldsboro. Text it to him.”
She did, using the number Bull rattled off.
“Even if we don’t know what it means, it seems significant, doesn’t it?”
Bull took another long drink. “Maybe it’s the day they change the Wi-Fi password in the office. Doesn’t mean somebody’s going to rob the place on Tuesday.”
Winter shrugged. “You could be right, but I don’t know. Seems unusual to me.”
“Eat your chicken fingers, Prognostico, and wait for Bobby to text back,” Bull advised. “Unless you want to give those to me instead.”
Yep. Working with Bull was just like working with the Neanderthal version of Noah.
Mike Garofalo wasn’t very bright, or at least not very good at designing uncrackable codes. Bobby Goldsboro, Richmond’s resident code specialist, called them before they’d even left the restaurant. He sounded disappointed that she hadn’t sent him something more difficult.
“It says ‘Molly, 7:00 p.m.’”
“That’s it?” Winter was a little disappointed herself that it didn’t just translate to “Armored truck depot robbery.” That would be enough for her to go to the NYPD for police presence.