by Nic Saint
Yvonne sighed. “I know.” It wouldn’t take her dad long to find out she’d quit her job. In fact, he probably already knew. And that secret trash police thing? He’d never go for it. There wasn’t a thing about the DSNY Pop didn’t know, and he’d laugh her right out of the room if she tried that line on him.
“Oh, V! Matt just hopped the hedge. He’s in the park!”
Randall frowned. “Matt? Is that the trash thief’s name?”
“Yeah. Matt. He’s a regular. Steals garbage all the time.”
“Recidivist, huh?”
“Yeah. That, too.”
Randall pulled over, blocking all traffic and almost causing a pileup. When angry shouts reached their ears, he leaned on his horn. The thunderous roar of the souped-up car horn drowned out all other sounds.
Yvonne and Izzy quickly exited the truck, and slammed the door shut.
“Thanks, Randall. See you tonight!”
“Be careful with that trash thief!” Randall hollered after her.
“Will do!”
Inside the park, she didn’t see a sign of Matt, and neither did Izzy.
“We’ve got to split up,” she said, panting. “You go left. I’ll go right.”
“Right!”
They both took off, and Izzy hadn’t run three yards before she bumped into Frank.
“Oomph!” the latter cried as they went down in a heap of flailing arms and legs.
Yvonne would have loved to preside over the extrication process, but if ASS was right, Matt was about to meet his maker any minute now. No time to waste! So she hurried down the path, checking left and right for a sign of her new boss.
She didn’t like to admit it, but the leader of ASS had stirred deep feelings in her. He was resilient and cut from the right cloth. Only yesterday, she’d punched him in the face three times, and yet each time he’d managed to crawl back up. She didn’t know a lot of guys who could do that. Yvonne had always been a strong girl, what with wrestling eight brothers from an early age, and then hauling trash for the last couple of months. She wasn’t as strong as her brothers, but she was definitely stronger than most men.
In the bar the Assenheimer family frequented none of the patrons even wanted to arm-wrestle with her anymore, knowing they’d only face a humiliating defeat. And yet here was this man who got up each time she knocked him down.
Only that morning, he’d taken a severe beating, and yet here he was, up and about and taking care of business.
She wasn’t a girl easy to impress, but Matt had managed that unique feat two days in a row now.
She’d ignored the feelings tugging at her heart, but now that the man was facing mortal danger, she couldn’t deny that his demise would leave a hole in her heart the size of a dumpster.
And then she saw him. He was sitting on a bench on the other side of a large shrub. And he was talking to some skinny blonde.
She frowned, annoyed. Then she felt annoyed for feeling annoyed, and was about to walk away and let Matt have his little rendezvous with Miss Thin, when she thought she detected a weird whistling sound drawing near. Looking up to establish the source of it, she saw a small object homing in on her with considerable speed.
It wasn’t a bird, it wasn’t a plane, it was… a missile!
Without a second’s delay, she plunged into the shrubs and hurled herself at Matt and his female companion, then yanked them both into the small pond next to the bench.
A policeman had placed a blanket on her shoulders, but she still shivered. Then Matt came walking over, with the thin woman by his side.
Miss Thin stuck out a bony hand, and Yvonne reluctantly pressed it.
“Kathleen Harridan.” She gestured to Matt. “I’m Joe’s boss. I wanted to thank you for saving our lives, Miss Assenheimer.”
Yvonne’s eyebrows shot up. Joe’s boss? So she wasn’t his girlfriend. Immediately a hot flush mantled her cheeks. “Oh, that’s all right, Miss Harridan. Just doing my job, you know.”
The woman didn’t smile. “I know. I’ve heard a lot about you, Yvonne, and I want to tell you that Matt made the right decision when he hired you.” She gave Matt a curt nod, and then stalked off to talk to the police officer running the scene.
As she stood there with Matt, Yvonne was lost for words.
Finally, Matt broke the silence. “Coming from Kathleen Harridan, that’s high praise.”
“She… seems nice.”
“She’s not. What she is, is efficient.” He gave her a scrutinizing look. “You keep knocking the wind out of me, Assenheimer.”
“You keep showing up in my line of sight, Halloran.”
“You shoot?”
“Huh?”
Matt cleared his throat uncomfortably. “How about the gun range?”
“What about it?”
“Goddammit, Assenheimer. Do you want me to spell it out for you?”
“If you insist in speaking in riddles, that’s exactly what I want you to do.”
“Go with me to the shooting range. I’m testing out a new gun Friday night.”
Yvonne had no idea what the man was going on about, but if the feathers fluttering in her gut were anything to go on, she knew she wanted to say yes. “Gun range, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s a date, Halloran.”
Matt merely grinned, then stalked away to join his boss and the copper.
Izzy, who’d been watching the scene from behind the yellow police tape, now joined her.
“What was that all about?”
“I think Matt just asked me out on a date.”
Izzy squealed in delight, making all heads turn. “That’s great, V! Dinner? Movie?”
“Gun range.”
Izzy’s exuberance diminished slightly. “Oh-kay.”
Yvonne shrugged. “Maybe he just needs an excuse to shoot me after I managed to beat him up five times in three days.”
“Some men like to be beat up.” She gave Yvonne a slight shove. “Like Agent Frank. After we finally managed to get disentangled, you know what he did?”
Yvonne shrugged, still struggling with her feelings for agent Matt. “No. What?”
Izzy grinned. “He asked me out, too! Friday night.”
“Dinner? Movie?”
“He didn’t tell. Said it’s a surprise!” She squeaked again. “Isn’t it the most romantic thing!”
Yvonne gave her friend a shove back that almost landed her on her ass. “You lucky thing, you.”
“I know!” She clasped her hands together and Yvonne could have sworn twin hearts appeared in her eyes. “This is the best day ever.”
Yvonne looked at the demolished tower, Joe’s bedraggled form and the stern figure cut by Kathleen Harridan. The two of them were engaged in a heated discussion. Best day ever? Um. Not likely. And she had the distinct impression things were about to get a lot worse.
Chapter 18
“Listen up!”
Yvonne and Izzy sat a little straighter, their gazes fixed on Matt as he paced the floor. They were gathered in the conference room for an emergency briefing. Their first day on the job wasn’t even over yet, and here they were already being considered full-fledged members of ASS.
Yvonne couldn’t suppress a sense of pride. After their return to the office, Frank had quickly given them a tour of the facility and introduced them to the other members of the team—hurriedly, for Matt had asked everyone to gather in the conference room.
The compound, basically an old refurbished mill, consisted of several small offices on the ground floor looking out onto a central operations room, where a wall-sized screen dwarfed more desks holding more computer terminals. On the screen, a map of the United States was visualized, with small green dots indicating where crimes were possibly in progress, and small red ones announcing crimes yet to be committed. Below the map, several statistics were constantly refreshed. One of these had drawn Yvonne’s attention: it displayed the accuracy rate of the software, judging from police reports afte
r the fact. It currently stood at a whopping 99 percent.
So the software worked, there was no doubt about that.
Frank had introduced them to five more members of their team, all of them analysts. She’d wondered at the lack of actual field agents, but Frank had explained that the actual operational side of the project would be left to the respective police precincts dotted across the nation, and the many crime fighting agencies populating the US intelligence family. The only actual field agents were Brian and Frank, now joined by Yvonne and Izzy, with Matt also supplying backup if necessary.
It made Yvonne a little uncomfortable, knowing they had so little experience. But then again, if Frank, Brian and Matt thought they were up for it, they probably were.
“For now, though, we’re running all the operations ourselves, as this project is still in the early test stages. The moment we’re operational, we’ll only take the ‘special cases’.” Frank had wiggled his eyebrows at that, but had refused to divulge the nature of these so-called special cases.
Yvonne looked around the conference room. The five analysts, three men and two women, sat quietly watching Matt, while Brian and Frank had taken up position near the back of the room.
Yvonne and Izzy, like the good pupils they were, were seated in the first row.
“You might have heard about the attack that took place a little earlier today? It has now been confirmed a drone was responsible for the attack.” Joe’s face was grim. “Not just any drone, mind you. A special prototype developed by EYE. Somehow—we don’t know how—someone—we don’t know who—has managed to take control of this drone, and launch a missile at Director Harridan and myself. I’ve spoken to Aaron Chinn, and he’s doing everything in his power to find out more. In the meantime we need to be extra vigilant.”
He directed a probing look at Yvonne, who felt a jolt of anticipation setting her belly on fire.
“Furthermore, we need to plug this hole in our software ASAP! Perhaps it’s only a hunch, but my gut is telling me this attack has something to do with Oswin Grant. We need to figure out what he is up to and we need to figure it out now. So drop whatever you’re working on, and get on Grant like white on rice. This is now a level six priority operation.”
With a quick nod of the head, he indicated the meeting was over. The five analysts, along with Brian and Frank, filed out of the conference room. Yvonne and Izzy stayed put.
Yvonne eyed her superior officer with a thrill of anticipation. “What do you want us to do, Agent Matt?”
“We’ve got an operation running that tracks Grant’s whereabouts and activities 24/7. So far they haven’t been able to come up with anything—except that little scuffle this morning with the Goriamanese. I want you to join that operation, and try to find out what Grant knows, what he’s up to, who his supplier is… the works.”
He raked his hands through his thick mane of hair, and Yvonne thought he suddenly looked tired. Well, being shot by a missile probably does that to a man. He gave them a weary grimace. “I’m counting on you. Find out whatever you can on Grant, all right? And report back to me when you’ve got some decent intel to share.”
Izzy, galvanized by this little pep talk, sprang up. “Aye, aye, sir!”
Matt gave them a lopsided grin. “Dismissed.”
Walking down the corridor to the main operations room, Yvonne couldn’t help thinking they were extremely unqualified for this type of work. “How are we going to pull this off, Iz? How are a bunch of sanitation workers going to find out something an entire team hasn’t been able to find out for months?”
Izzy shrugged. “Easy. By going through his trash, of course. Don’t you ever read detective novels?”
“Going through his trash? Don’t you think they tried that already?”
“Don’t know and don’t care. I just know that you can find out a lot about a person by going through his trash. So why don’t we start there?”
Yvonne was still dubious. This elusive ‘team’ that’d been tracking Grant for months had apparently never discovered a single clue, except for the meeting that morning that Yvonne and Izzy had so brutally disturbed. Then she remembered something. “Yesterday morning when we ran into Matt and Frank, they were also trailing Grant, right?”
“Right?”
“Then why didn’t he show up?”
“Because, erm, he changed his mind?”
Yvonne slapped her head. “Of course! He knew they were going to be there. Matt told me they got a solid lead Grant was meeting his contact. But instead, he never showed up. So either the intel was wrong, or Grant was tipped off.”
“Just like the meet this morning was sabotaged by sending us there.”
Yvonne nodded and chewed her lower lip. “This entire operation is being compromised from within.” She directed a look at the five analysts working their computer consoles in hushed silence. “Someone is feeding information to Grant. Someone from the team.”
Chapter 19
“What do you think, Iz?”
“I think he’s got a cute butt.”
Yvonne followed her friend’s gaze and saw she was staring at Frank’s tush as he navigated the analysts’ desks. Yvonne frowned. The cuteness of Frank’s butt escaped her for the moment, but then her eyes were drawn to Matt, who stood conferring with Brian. Now he had buttocks you could figure skate on. She giggled as a hot flush spread across her bosom. She huffed. “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”
Izzy, whose cheeks were also flushed, concurred. “It is hot in here. Let’s get out.”
“Let’s.” She checked her watch. Three o’clock. If they’d still been on the Department of Sanitation payroll, they’d be home by now. “I wonder when it’s time to go home. Did Frank say anything about that?”
“Oh, yes, he did. He said ASS personnel works long hours and only goes home when the job’s done.”
“But when is the job done?”
As they traversed the narrow corridor that led to the exit, Izzy said, “As far as I can tell, never.”
That’s exactly what Yvonne thought. With garbage, it was easy: once the trash was gone, your shift was over. With ASS? Fresh trash just kept popping up left and right.
“Let’s go over to Grant’s place, shall we? The sooner we find out how he figures in all this, the sooner we can go home.”
“I’m starting to understand why ASS pays triple salary. They expect us to put in triple time.”
Once outside, they decided to take a cab to this Grant person’s place. They could have taken the bus, of course, but that would only take them longer, and Yvonne’s feet were hurting. She wanted this day to be over already.
The taxi ride was short, and Izzy carefully pocketed the receipt. If they’d figured out one thing, they needed to collect payment slips so they could get their expenses reimbursed.
Exiting the vehicle, they discovered that Jackson Lane 33, the official address of Oswin Grant, was a three-story colonial-style building, the white stucco immaculate, the porticoed front door standing a ways back from the street, a ten feet high wrought-iron gate preventing easy entrance and a fence lining the neat front yard.
Yvonne squinted at the keypad inserted into the gate. “Four-thirty. The guy is probably still at work.” She checked the smattering of garden gnomes dotting the smooth turf of Grant’s lawn. “He likes gnomes.”
Izzy eyed the little guys censoriously. “I bet they’re bugged.”
“Huh?”
“I bet his gnomes are stuffed full of cameras and listening devices and stuff.”
“I bet you’re right. So what do we do now?”
“We sneak in the back door and check the fellow’s trash.”
“Oh, right.” She’d forgotten about the trash. The trash was key. “After you, honey.”
Izzy took a firm grip on the gate, and started pulling herself up. “Give me a lift, will you?”
Yvonne placed her hands on Izzy’s legs, and gave her a shove. Five seconds later, Izzy was lying am
ong the garden gnomes, looking a little dazed.
“You all right?”
“Uh-huh.” Izzy removed a crushed gnome from beneath her, and studied it carefully for any sign of bugs or other surveillance equipment. “Don’t see nothing.”
“Maybe he bugged the wheelbarrow instead.”
Izzy searched round until her eyes rested on a jolly-looking garden gnome shoving a wheelbarrow. She picked it up, and crashed it down, severing the bond between gnome and barrow. Then she peered inside the hollow gnome, then the wheelbarrow. “Nope. Nothing here.”
“Great.” With a grunt, Yvonne heaved herself onto the gate, and found herself stuck, her legs dangling on one side, her torso on the other, the pointy thing of the gate pressed into her belly. “Ugh. A hand?”
Izzy scrabbled to her feet, and started pulling Yvonne’s arm in a bid to topple her over. “You’re stuck, V.”
“Dammit.” She wiggled furiously, swinging her legs while Izzy kept pulling her arms. The upshot was that whatever the hell Grant had placed on top of his gate was now digging deeper and deeper into her diaphragm. “Oomph. I’m gonna throw up.”
Just then, Izzy gave her a strong pull, and she felt something give way beneath her. There was a crunching sound, and suddenly the entire gate came crumbling down beneath her.
She was sent flying. “Aaargh!” Toppling onto Izzy, the two women rolled onto the flagstone garden path as the entire gate crashed down with a clang.
“Oomph!”
“Hrumph!”
They stared back at the hole in the fence where the gate had once been and both sighed.
Izzy shrugged. “Well, at least we’re in.”
With some effort, Yvonne scrambled to her feet and rubbed her tummy. “Right. Mh. What do we have here?” She bent down to check the part of the gate that had nearly speared her. It was a nice rendering of the letters F and G, kind of curling into a circular shape and painted gold. She gave the thing a vicious kick and it broke off from the top of the gate. Picking it up, she shoved it into her pocket. “Souvenir,” she explained.