Better Off Dead

by Meryl Sawyer

  Shelby drifted in, late as usual. “Hi, there. Tell me what to do,” she said to Devon.

  “Start draping chairs. Keke will show you how.”

  “I found, like, this amazing, awesome tip,” Shelby responded. “Diamond engagement rings should be cleaned with vodka.”

  “Shelby, what do you get when you cross a Labrador and a Bloodhound?” Devon asked.

  “I give. What?”

  “A Blabador.”

  Shelby giggled, and Chad decided Devon’s jokes were her way of counteracting Shelby’s obsession with wedding trivia.

  “Now get to work,” Devon told the girl.

  Chad said goodbye to his sisters and left for the office. On the way there he decided to drive by Devon’s place. Call it morbid curiosity, but he wanted to see where she lived.

  The area wasn’t exactly the best part of town, but it was probably all Devon could afford. The street she lived on was more commercial than Chad had anticipated. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d driven along it. There were one or two rat trap apartment buildings, but it was mostly businesses.

  He slowed down his Porsche and double-checked the number Devon had given as her address. Son of a bitch! It was Mailboxes in Paradise, a chain of mail delivery stores that also sold office supplies.

  He parked his car and walked down to the Stop N Go Minimart. By using a pay phone, his caller ID wouldn’t show up on Devon’s telephone. That was assuming she’d given Eddie her correct home phone number.

  On the second ring, Devon answered, “Hello…hello.”

  Chad immediately realized she’d put down her cell phone number. Maybe she couldn’t afford another phone. Still it didn’t explain why she hadn’t given her home address.

  “Hello? Hello?” Chad was about to hang up, when she said, “Warren is that you? We have a bad connection.”

  Chad hung up and stood staring at the pay phone. Who in hell was Warren? He walked back to his car, trying to think of some reasonable explanation for her behavior.

  Devon was definitely up to something, he decided. She didn’t seem to be the dishonest type. Kicking himself mentally, he shoved the key in the ignition. How in hell did he know? The woman barely talked, to him or anyone else.

  By the time he’d reached his office, Chad had come up with a plan. It would be easy to hack into the databases of the water and power companies. He breezed by Ane, who had a few messages but nothing important, and went to his computer.

  The firewall was so outdated that it took him less than three minutes to access the power company’s files. Devon Summers’s name did not exist in their database. She didn’t exist in the water or gas company records, either.

  What in hell was going on?

  Maybe she had a roommate, he thought, or perhaps she rented a room from someone. That would explain not having accounts in her name. Somehow he saw Devon as a loner. He couldn’t imagine her renting a room, especially with a dog, and he couldn’t see her sharing quarters with another person.

  His gut instinct, fine-tuned during his years with Special Ops, told him Devon lived alone. He was right about this. He knew he was.

  DEVON HAD WALKED OUTSIDE Chad’s living room to answer her cell phone. The only person who had the number was Warren. When the connection malfunctioned, she tried calling Warren back, but was transferred to his pager. She IMed him to call her back ASAP.

  She walked across the yard to make certain no one could overhear her conversation with her handler. She’d never called him before, but she knew he was supposed to be available 24/7. Her phone rang less than a minute later.

  “Is there trouble?” Warren asked.

  “No. I thought you called me.”

  “Get back to me on a secure line.” Warren hung up.

  Devon knew how paranoid WITSEC was about using cell phones. What went out over the airwaves could easily be monitored by anyone with a cheap scanner from Radio Shack. She wasn’t sure where the nearest pay phone was but none were close. A big house like Chad’s had lots of telephones and a local call surely wouldn’t be noticed.

  She found a sleek black telephone in the kitchen and phoned Warren. She asked, “Did you call me about something?”

  “No.”

  “I guess it was a wrong number then. Someone called and hung up. I thought it was a bad connection.”

  Two beats of silence. “Probably was a wrong number.”

  “That’s it. Nothing else to report. I—”

  “How’s the job going?”

  “Great. We’re really busy with a big wedding. We’re holding it at Chad Langston’s beachfront home in the Kahala area. Do you know him?”

  “No. Should I run a check on him?”

  Devon told herself she didn’t want to know anything more about Chad. It was difficult enough to keep her mind off him as it was. “No.”

  “Your boss checked your references.”

  Puzzled, Devon asked, “After he’d hired me?”

  “A little strange but…”

  “I’m doing a good job—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Warren told her. “The Cress Creek Country Club and the Four Seasons forwarded the inquiry, and our people called back.”

  Eddie seemed too harried by the snafu with Inoye’s niece’s wedding to suddenly check her references, she decided. “Do you know what telephone number they called?”

  “I could find out. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just wondered.”

  After a moment of silence, he said, “I’ll get back to you with the number.”

  “Okay.” Devon stared around the enormous kitchen with the white lacquered cabinets and sleek black granite counters. It was hard to imagine Chad preparing a meal in here. “Is it safe to call my sister yet?”

  “This Saturday.”

  Relief surged through her. It had been almost four months since she’d spoken with Tina and her niece, Ariel. It had been over two years since she’d seen them. She shouldn’t get too excited. Saturday was Phaedra Natsui’s wedding. Devon would be on the run from dawn until God-only-knew-when. Her first conversation with Tina and Ariel would be a short one.

  At least she was getting to talk to them. Sometimes the weight of her memories of those happy days when she could hop on a plane and visit her sister was unbearable. She longed to feel safe again. To sleep one night without fear.

  “There is some good news,” Warren told her. “We’re transferring your things from your condo in Santa Fe to your apartment here. They should arrive within the week.”

  “Great,” she replied halfheartedly. She had clothes and office stuff WITSEC had sent after she’d left Houston. The clothes were too heavy to wear here, and since she couldn’t work in accounting, the disks and software weren’t of much use. Worse, they’d just take up space in her small studio.

  “WITSEC rigged it to have your condo go into foreclosure. That way we can remove your belongs and sell the place without attracting too much attention.”

  “Good. I can use the money.” Wait, she thought, remembering the disaster in Santa Fe. “Don’t transfer the money here. I think that may be the way they found me last time.”

  “I doubt it. We do double blind transfers.”

  “I don’t care. Keep the money for now.”

  “You owe WITSEC for the cosmetic surgery.”

  “Fine,” she said with sarcasm. “Deduct that amount. Then let the rest sit. I don’t want to take any unnecessary chances.”

  “Okay. It’s your call.”

  She hung up and went back to draping the serving tables. A few minutes later, her telephone rang again. “Call me back on a secure line.”

  Devon wandered into the house and hoped no one noticed. Chad’s sisters were too busy draping chairs and chatting about their children to pay attention to her. She called Warren, and he rattled off the number WITSEC had called to give her references.

  “That’s not the number of our office,” she said, a frission of alarm waltzing across
the back of her neck. “I guess it could be Eddie’s cell phone.”

  “Christ! Lemme get back to you.”

  She gave him the number on the kitchen telephone, then hung up. She wondered how reliable WITSEC was. Someone inside the system might be leaking info to her former bosses. If she’d known then what she knew now, she would have anonymously contacted the FBI, left PowerTec, and found a new job. Then she would still have her life, her family.

  The phone rang a few minutes later, and she answered it before the first ring was over.

  “It’s a cell phone number,” Warren told her, his voice brusque. “It belongs to Chad Langston.”

  Devon wasn’t surprised. Chad was interested in her, and he had access to Eddie’s records.

  “What do you know about Langston?”

  “Not much.” She explained what she knew about Chad Langston

  Warren was silent for a moment. “I’ll run a background check on him.”

  It was less than an hour later when Warren called again and had her use the secure line.

  “This sucks,” Warren said. “Langston was with Delta Force during the Gulf War.”

  “So?”

  “So! So they are the best of the best. It’s a multiservice unit that culls the top guys from all the branches of the military for Special Ops. You know, covert operations.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Not only can he survive behind enemy lines with nothing, but he knows how to use all sorts of high tech equipment. He can find out a lot about you that a regular guy couldn’t. He did research for DARPA after his military tour was over.”

  “DARPA?”

  “It’s the advanced research division of the Department of Defense. Top secret stuff. They employ the best scientists in every field. Not just any Delta Force guy works with them.”

  “Interesting.”

  Now she knew why she found Chad so attractive. He acted like a jock but a brilliant mind glimmered through. He’d gone to Stanford and had made Delta Force. She’d always found bright men incredibly attractive. Of course Chad took this to a new level. He was way sexier than most men she’d been drawn to.

  Sexier than Tyler, she decided. A twinge of hurt pierced the armor she’d erected around her emotions. She tamped it down. Tyler had never really loved her or he wouldn’t have found someone else so quickly.

  She told herself to forget the past, forget how attractive Chad was. Concentrate on the clear and present danger. Her life depended upon it.

  “Langston’s going to figure out you aren’t who you say you are in no time. You need to have a cover story ready or I’ll have to relocate you.”

  Relocation. She honestly didn’t think she could face another relocation. She loved Hawaii. The astounding beauty and the rich heritage of this place had captivated her. When the trial was over, she planned to return here to live.

  If they moved her again, it would be months more before she was allowed to speak to her sister. She honestly didn’t think she could survive another relocation.

  She told Warren, “I’ll have a good cover story ready.”

  “Clue me in so I can backstop it.”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAD PICKED UP the telephone on his desk. He expected his buddy, Rafe Kalama to be calling him back with the info on Devon Summers’s DMV application. It wasn’t Rafe on the phone. Instead he heard Archer Danson’s terse voice.

  “Yo, Langston call this number from a secure line.” Danson rattled off a number and hung up.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Chad told Ane as he left.

  Across the street at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor, he used the public phone booth to call Danson. Undoubtedly he was at a public telephone, too, so no one could trace their calls.

  “We’ve got trouble,” Danson announced the second he picked the telephone. “Big trouble.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “I had another operative testing the device.”

  Chad wasn’t surprised. The “device” which had yet to have a name was too revolutionary to leave the testing to one person.

  “Like you, he was no longer in the military, out-of-the-loop,” Danson continued. “Last night someone slit his throat and stole the device.”

  “Jesus! Any idea how they found him?”

  “There’s a leak at the DARPA. I’ve got an operative on it, but nothing much so far.” Obviously frustrated, Danson huffed. “Where’s your device?”

  “At home.” He didn’t add that it was sitting on his night-stand where anyone could grab it, if they searched his house.

  “Lock it up when you’re not testing it.”

  “I have a safe,” Chad replied. “If they have the tracking device, why would they bother to steal another?”

  “It’s like the drone.”

  “Son of a bitch! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  DARPA had developed the Predator drone in total secrecy. Only one set of plans for the unmanned aerial vehicle had existed. It was tested in total secrecy. When DARPA revealed it, the military was astonished. The Predator became a huge success, saving untold numbers of lives.

  “Langston, you worked at DARPA. I assumed you would know this device is every bit as revolutionary as the drone.”

  “I expected it to have flaws,” Chad admitted, “and to be years in the testing.”

  “This is the final round of tests.”

  “Are the plans safe?”

  “Absolutely. Couldn’t be safer. But whoever took the tracker may want to disassemble one to see how it’s set up while leaving the other intact. If that’s the case, they’ll go after yours.”

  “Makes sense. Any idea who ‘they’ are?”

  “Terrorists probably, but I could be wrong. Could be a rogue military group.”

  Chad took that to mean the CIA. Friction between the Central Intelligence Division and the Defense Department ran high.

  “They could only know about me from the payroll records. Right?”

  “Yes. Your military service file has been deleted from the deactivated database. The only record is in the payroll department. It shows you’re a private at Fort Hood.”

  “I guess that would throw them off track. To be safe, forget paying me. I’ll do it free. Just say it’s my way of paying back the country.”

  “Great. I’ll delete your name from the payroll and delete from the system the records of the payments we’ve already made,” Danson told him with a smile in his voice. “I want you to watch your back just the way you did in Black Ops.”

  Chad resisted the urge to correct Danson. He’d performed a number of covert operations, but he’d been trained to call them Special Ops. Black Ops sounded like the CIA, when it was up to no good.

  “There wasn’t any need to kill my operative in order to get the device. It was done for sport or something.”

  “Uh-oh.” Chad wondered if he knew the guy. He was probably ex-military, too. Danson wouldn’t tell him, but if he watched the news, he might find out.

  Chad hung up, cursing himself. Years in laid-back Hawaii had blunted his well-honed instincts. He couldn’t blame Danson for not warning him. He knew DARPA didn’t go to outside sources for testing often. He needed to hunker down into military mode again.

  Think danger.

  Think death.

  If he didn’t, he could be the next guy with his throat slit.

  By the time Chad returned to his office, Rafe had called. Chad could have hacked into the DMV database himself, but it was cleaner to have a policeman log in his badge number and get the information. Since the police routinely checked DMV records, there was little chance the inquiry would ever be noticed.

  He dialed Rafe’s cell, and his friend answered immediately. “Can you talk?”

  “Sure. I’m just filling out paperwork. Here’s what was on the driver’s license application Devon Summers filled out.”

  Chad jotted down the info, then asked, “What
’s the date on the application?”

  He listened, thinking Devon had lied to them. She had been in Honolulu a full month longer than she’d told them. What had she been doing?

  He thought about the way Devon had come out of nowhere to apply for a job, when she undoubtedly could have gotten a job at one of the resort hotels for more money. Why? Had she known his office was opposite Walt’s? Could she be after the second device?

  If Devon Summers was after him, she had more talent than most. She had him believing she didn’t give a damn about him. He thought about what Keke had said. Sometimes playing hard-to-get worked wonders. Female operatives were often much more successful than men because they had a gift for deception.

  He thought about Danson’s warning. Watch your back. One man had already been killed. That should justify what he was about to do.

  It took him a few minutes on his computer to remember exactly how to access the major credit reporting agencies. It was illegal, of course, but it could be done. DARPA and other government agencies did it to check on terrorists and drug kingpins who usually paid for everything in cash, people who didn’t have credit histories like hardworking Americans.

  “Hey, what do you know,” he muttered under his breath.

  There was Devon Lynn Summers. Charge accounts at Marshall Fields and Bonwit Tellers. A car loan on a Beamer. An American Express Card. A Visa. A student loan that had been paid off several years ago.

  Conscious of not breaking the law for any longer than possible, he exited the program and shut down his computer. She had an excellent credit history—back there—but she hadn’t done anything here. Why not?

  THE FIRST DAY of the show was almost over, and Brock managed to smile at the group clustered around his Gull Wing, but his gut was churning like a snake pit. Three times as many people were crowded around the caper-green Gull Wing across the way from him. Horst was standing beside Jordan, preening as if he owned the one-of-a-kind car.

  Shit! What if Jordan sold the Gull Wing to Horst? Brock wouldn’t allow that. He wanted that car as much as he’d wanted anything in his entire life.

  His cell phone vibrated, and he pulled it off his belt. It was Operative 77, the up-and-coming agent he’d sent after the gadget DARPA had developed. He walked away from his Gull Wing toward an open space where he could talk without being overheard.