by Julie Miller
Must have been the sun glinting off the snow, or the reflection from a windshield of a car along the street on the other side of the wall. She waited several seconds, spotting nothing unusual. And when she felt the grasp of Fiona’s hand tugging at her fingers, she turned toward the house and headed for the mud room entrance off the kitchen.
Until she saw it again. Reflected in the glass of the outer storm door. Another flash of light.
Miranda spun around, pinpointing some kind of movement in the distance. She picked Fiona up in her arms and jutted out her right hip to carry her toward the house while she pulled the walkie-talkie David Damiani’s men had assigned to her out of her pocket.
She was moving quickly across the snow toward the cleared sidewalk. She was hanging on to Fiona with one arm now, and the little girl was struggling to climb down. Miranda hitched her up against her side again and pressed the call button. “Holmes? You there? This is Officer Murdock.”
The man stationed at the monitors in the command center this morning answered. “I’m here, Murdock. What’s up?”
The radio communication amongst Damiani’s crew wasn’t as precise and polished as what Captain Cutler had drilled into her, but it was functional enough to serve its purpose. “I just saw a light, or reflection of one, on top of the north wall, west of the gate. I swear it looked like a camera flash. Or someone sending signals with a mirror.” Fiona was squirming again. “I need you to sit tight, sweetie.” The words meant nothing to the three-year-old and she squiggled free. “Fiona.”
Where was she going?
Fiona waddled back to the fort and Miranda changed course to hurry after her.
“West of the gate, you said?” Holmes asked. Although she’d met the dark-haired man Christmas Day passed out in the car with another guard and the bloody doll, they really hadn’t had a chance to get acquainted beyond basic introductions. Maybe the guy was hard of hearing.
“Yes. Approximately thirty yards. Can’t tell if it’s from the top of the wall or in one of the trees on the other side.” Something up there was definitely moving. And then the light flashed again. Son of a gun. Some perp was spying on them. Oh, for a pair of binoculars right about now. “I just saw it again. You want me to investigate?”
“I’ll have Rowley walk the perimeter and check it out.”
“Tell him to get there fast. This guy’s on the move. Murdock out.” Fiona was back at the fort, climbing over the wall again. “Fiona. Come here!”
“Petwa find me.”
“No.” It was time for the game to stop. “You need to listen to me.”
Fiona dived into the snow just as Miranda reached for her.
Just as a man stood up on top of the wall fifty yards away.
Miranda’s internal alarm kicked into overdrive. She glanced down at Fiona, half-buried in the snow. She glanced up at the man who was bundled up enough from head to toe to make it impossible to get a read on his face at this distance. Ah, hell. Was he climbing down inside the property?
Giving one more look to assure herself that Fiona was hidden from sight behind the wall of the fort, Miranda followed the urgency to meet the threat head-on that sparked through every nerve ending. “You stay here with Petra, sweetie. You hide and I’ll come find you.”
The man was scrambling to cling to the top of the bricks now. He must have slipped in the snow on top and was desperately trying to find a toehold and pull himself back up. But what was he doing here in the first place?
Miranda reached beneath her coat and pulled her gun. She clasped it firmly between her hands, barrel pointed down as she ran through the snow to the driveway. She crossed the creek and stopped at the last pylon of the bridge over it, raising her gun with a steady aim and raising her voice. “KCPD! You’re trespassing on private property! Put your hands up and identify yourself.”
With a heave that was all muscle, the man swung a leg up on top of the wall and pulled himself over. But something he was wearing caught in the ivy vines and pulled him off balance. He swore, a low, muffled sound.
“KCPD!” she shouted again. She fished the walkie-talkie out of her pocket and hit the call button. “Holmes! He’s getting away! Holmes! Rowley! Is anybody out front? Somebody talk to me.”
Miranda sprang to her feet as he jerked free and dropped down on the opposite side of the wall. The thing around his neck—the camera, maybe?—hit the bricks and tumbled down through the ivy on the wall. The instinct to pursue jolted through her legs, but he was already out of sight. She pointed her gun up above the treetops and fired a warning shot. “KCPD! Stop!”
As soon as the loud pop of her gun rent the air, a high-pitched squeal sounded behind her. Miranda lowered her weapon and turned as Fiona, startled by the loud noise, burst into tears.
“Oh, sweetie.” Miranda tucked her gun in the back of her jeans. “Oh, no.” What had she done? She squatted down and reached for the girl. “Don’t. Don’t do that.” She scooped her up in a tight hug and the girl wrapped her arms around Miranda’s neck and bawled into her ear. “What are you doing here, sweetie? I thought you were hiding.”
Now she was tired of playing the game?
She stood with Fiona in her arms, cradling her head against her neck and rocking her from side to side. “That was a gun, sweetie. See why you should never play with one? It’s loud and scary and it could hurt you.” Fiona squealed again and clung even tighter. Miranda didn’t understand. “Do you think I’m hurt? I’m not hurt.” Then she turned her face away from the girl and shouted her frustration. “Somebody talk to me!”
“Who fired that shot?” Holmes’s voice buzzed over the walkie-talkie. “Do I need to lock it down?”
“What?” There was a loud thunk of metal on metal at the front gate, followed by smooth whirring noises, like the pulsing chirp of a million grasshoppers, from the entrance to the estate and the house behind her. “No!” They were engaging the reinforced steel gate while steel shutters were coming down over every door and window of the house. “Fiona will be stranded out here in the open. Stop what you’re doing and go after that guy!”
Over a second thunk and the whirring noises of the steel barriers disengaging, Miranda heard the snapping of twigs, a thump and a curse in the distance. And then she heard the distinctive sound of a door slamming and a car speeding away.
“I missed him.” Finally, Rowley reported in, after a punch of static from the walkie-talkie in her pocket. “The guy fell about halfway down the wall. He’s hurt, but I couldn’t catch him. The car came up out of nowhere.”
Miranda stepped into the snow on the far side of the creek and headed for the ivy wall as she pulled out the walkie-talkie. “Did you get a plate number?”
“A partial. He was already in the car by the time I reached him. He’s long gone now.” Fiona seemed to like the bumpy trip of being carried across the deep, undisturbed snow. Her cries had quieted to whimpers and sniffles, although her hold on Miranda’s neck was as snug as ever. “It’s not the same car you saw,” Rowley added. “It’s another black Beemer, but the first digits on the license I saw were different.”
Miranda was blind to events from this side of the wall, and she wasn’t sure she trusted the report. She would have given chase, shot out a tire, scaled that wall, if she didn’t have Fiona with her. Just what kind of incompetents did Quinn have working for him here? They’d gotten drugged. They let a suspect escape. They’d nearly locked her and Fiona out of the house. At least he’d gotten the make of the car and a partial plate.
She was at the wall now. She paused for a moment to wipe away the tears freezing on Fiona’s cheeks, and smiled. “Can I set you down now?”
Fiona shook her head and thrust herself against Miranda’s chest.
Miranda hugged her, stroked her back…and got an idea.
“Do you want to help me?” she asked. She made it sound like the adventure of a lifetime. “I need you to climb the wall.”
Boom. Just like that, the whimpers stopped and Fiona lean
ed back.
“That’s my girl.” Miranda pointed to the camera hanging in the torn ivy, just above her reach. “Can you get that for me?”
With an enthusiastic nod, Fiona let Miranda turn her in her arms and lift her onto her shoulders. Then she leaned against the cushion of ivy and pushed Fiona up. “Can you reach it?”
Like the closet monkey she was, Fiona braced one hand against the wall and grabbed the camera. When she tugged it loose, it crashed into the snow and popped open.
In spite of her tear-chapped cheeks, Fiona was all smiles when Miranda set her down. “I climb,” she said proudly.
Squatting down, Miranda hugged her to her side. “You sure did, sweetie. You did a good job.”
Miranda dug the broken camera out of the snow. It was an older model, one that made instant snapshots. She pulled out the last photo that had gotten stuck in the mechanism and shook the snow off it. Moisture dotted and smeared the image, but the subject was clear—it was a picture of her and Fiona playing in the snow.
The guy must have been watching them for at least twenty minutes. And the guard at the gate hadn’t noticed him?
“Murdock?” Holmes was calling her on the walkie-talkie again. “You there? Are you and Fiona safe?”
She pushed the button to answer. “We’re safe. Go ahead and call Captain Cutler—and your chief, Damiani—to report the guy taking pictures. Ask if there’s any follow-up we need to do.”
“I’ve already got Damiani on the line. Say, Murdock?”
“Yes?”
“You know, you didn’t have to panic like that.”
Panic? Miranda steamed. That nincompoop of a snail was accusing her of panicking at the intruder?
“If you get locked out of the house, there’s an override on the second-story windows. The boss designed it that way in case there was a fire, so no one would get trapped inside. The steel shutters up there are built on a flexible hinge. Just jimmy it with something small like a screwdriver, and the shutter will pop open.”
“Jimmy it with a screwdriver. Got it.” It might have been nice to let her know that before this place locked down like a prison. Weren’t they all on the same team, trying to protect this family? “Murdock out.”
She looped the camera strap over her shoulder and picked up Fiona, taking care to hold the picture so it didn’t sustain any further damage and there was some chance the crime lab could analyze it. With each step back to the house, her pace slowed as her protective temper abated and those familiar doubts crept back into her head. Did she really have room to complain about the quality of Gallagher’s security force?
She hadn’t noticed the spy until he’d already taken several pictures, either.
“WORKS LIKE A DREAM, BOSS.” Ozzie Chang hit the print command and rocked back in his chair in the GSS computer lab. “In theory, anyway.” He pulled a pen from his spiky black hair and marked a couple of reference points on the printout. “Although, I still don’t get why you wanted to run a simulation program on the old electronic locks. Are we really going to start building these again? This is like two models and a whole bunch of out-of-date source codes ago.”
Quinn squeezed Ozzie’s thin shoulder as he checked the time on the clock. 11:32. Just in time before the noon deadline. He needed to get someplace private and send the updated design to the anonymous email address. “Thanks, Oz. I’m just feeling sentimental,” he lied. There was no need to involve anyone else in this game he’d been forced to play. “I wanted to see if there was any value in revitalizing the old program.”
“Yeah, but over Christmas? I figured you were a workaholic, man, but even I took the day off to play a marathon of ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ with my buds online.”
To each their own way of celebrating the holidays. Although he was anxious to be on his way and get the job completed by the deadline, Quinn grinned at the young man. “Did you win?”
“Kicked their butts into the New Age, sir.”
Quinn breathed out a reluctant sigh and pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. Had he ever been that young and carefree? Growing up had been about working to help his mom make ends meet. It was about learning to outrun the bullies, then learning to outwit them as he got older. A few times, it had been about a four-eyed kid learning how to fight—to defend himself, and to defend his mother from some of the desperate choices she had made.
It had rarely been about holiday celebrations and playing games where the biggest consequence was developing sore thumbs from too many hours at the game controller.
There was a lot to envy about Ozzie’s young-at-heart attitude. He was glad to have that kind of young energy working at GSS. “Would you email the data to my office address?”
“Sure thing, boss.” With a spin of his chair, Ozzie was typing at the keyboard again. “Email sent. Anything else?”
Quinn swiped his key card and punched in the code to leave the lab. But he paused at the open door. “Yeah. Go home. Call your folks. Call your friends. Do whatever it is you do that makes you happy. I don’t want to see you again until after the New Year. And look for a bonus in next month’s paycheck.”
“Sweet.”
“Can you lock up the shop?”
Ozzie grinned. “Yes, sir. Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year to you.”
Quinn didn’t wait for the door to close behind him. He jogged to the bank of elevators and got inside to press the penthouse office button.
As soon as he was in his office, he logged into the company server and pulled up the email from Ozzie. Then, with a grim sense of foreboding, he emailed the file to the anonymous email address he’d been given and waited.
He wasn’t quite sure how updating the design specs on an old security system, and proving it still worked, would make things “right” for his tormentor. He had a feeling the task had been more about busywork, a diversion of some kind. But he wasn’t going to argue the inanity of the task. He was simply going to do it and pray it would be enough to remove Fiona as a target in this anonymous bastard’s scheme.
His phone vibrated in his chest pocket and he inhaled a deep, steadying breath before answering it. There were still four days to go until the New Year. He’d been threatened by too many bullies growing up to believe this was actually going to stop without some kind of major fight.
He read the text message on his phone screen.
Nicely done, Mr. G. Your daughter gets to live for another day. You will be hearing from me tomorrow. And trust me, the message will be loud and clear.
Chapter Eight
3 Days until Midnight, New Year’s Eve
Louis Nolan paced the sitting area of Quinn’s office. The receding points of his hairline wrinkled with the tension radiating off him. “Nervous investors are bad for business, especially when we’re about to start a new fiscal year. We’re talking millions of dollars here, Quinn. He’s come all the way from Europe. The least you can do is hear him out.”
“I’m a little busy right now, Louis.” Quinn glanced up from the printout where he’d been reviewing the simulation data provided by Ozzie Chang. He’d been an idiot—a full-fledged, too-smart-for-his-own-good-so-he’d-overlooked-the-obvious idiot. The reason for the busywork and the noon deadline yesterday was hidden right here, in the thousands of lines of code that ran the program. He and Ozzie had provided the means for a talented hacker to get into the GSS network.
It was impossible to tell how successful the break-in had been from this printout. He’d already made certain that the thousands of home security systems they monitored hadn’t been compromised, so this wasn’t about a spree of pending burglaries. And it would be a long, painstaking process to go through all of GSS’s data files and employees’ personal computers to see if any of them had been tapped into, downloaded or stolen.
This was his own damn fault. He’d been so distracted by the Kalahari explosion and the trespasser taking pictures of his daughter and the sick threats against his family that he’d made an ama
teur mistake. The hacker had tapped into the GSS mainframe through the trapdoor created when he’d run that simulation program. Now he needed a way to backtrack to the source and eliminate any other inroads into GSS and its systems.
You will be hearing from me tomorrow. And trust me, the message will be loud and clear.
Tomorrow was now today, and Quinn didn’t want any more surprises. If he could figure out the target inside the GSS mainframe, then maybe he could finally get ahead of this creep and stop him. “This is where my talents are best put to use today. I trust you to handle the situation with Titov.”
His attention drifted to the tiny brunette playing at the far end of his office, and the tall blonde sitting dutifully still while Fiona listened to her heart with a plastic stethoscope and put bandages all over Miranda’s dark blue sweater. He’d hired the best security in the city—heck, he’d invented and developed some of the best security technology in the world. And yet he couldn’t shake the irrational fear that letting Fiona out of his sight meant not being able to protect her.
Finding out who’d dared to threaten his family, and stopping him, were the only things on Quinn’s to-do list right now.
Louis slapped his palm on Quinn’s desk the moment he returned his attention to the printout. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t know that I can handle it. I’ve reassured him every way I know how, but Nikolai insists on talking directly to you.”
“You’re the one who has the rapport with him. You’re the one who brokered the deal to keep his money in GSS after we closed the plant in Lukinburg.” No matter how influential an investor was, or how much clout he carried in the European market, nothing was more important than his daughter’s safety. Until Quinn could determine whether or not the attack on the GSS security network was part of that threat, or another distraction that was diverting his attention from his daughter, his focus needed to be right here. He summoned up a reassurance for his COO. “You’re my right hand in this company, Louis. I know you can handle Nikolai Titov.”