by Simone Sinna
* * * *
Ben Masterton was bored. He had been tailing this one guy for three weeks. Three weeks of nothing. Before that it had been an attempted child abduction that had been so badly executed his grandmother could have stopped it. Worse, returning the child to the father hadn’t given him any satisfaction at all. The man was more interested in scoring points against his wife than the child’s welfare. As far as Ben could see the wife’s country had granted her custody, so this was just time and money for the lawyers at the expense of what was best for the child. He was beginning to think private security wasn’t for him. He’d already tried being a bouncer while he had been recovering from injuries, but at best it was boring. At worst, his six-four frame and wall of chest muscle made him a target for drop beats trying to prove themselves. The scar across his chest was from a gang that had tried to take him on when he’d said no at the nightclub door. It added to the bullet wound in his thigh that had retired him out of the San Francisco Police Department.
He was being paid well enough, and his boss was convinced that something would happen soon, certain Corey Kincaid was the key to the whole operation.
Ben knew all about Corey. Knew he was born in South Carolina where he spent his early years, then later with his mother’s family in the Tennessee hills. His father had been a truck driver, killed in a fight when Corey was ten. After that Corey hadn’t done a whole lot of schooling and mostly drifted through his early twenties. Then he had gone off the grid until reemerging at thirty in San Francisco looking neat and clean, but only as far as not having a beard and what his official record said. After three weeks Ben knew he was one mean son of bitch who drank heavily and didn’t have much respect for the law or women.
Mostly Ben watched him going to the supermarket for liquor and the women leaving in the early hours of the morning, teetering on high heels going in, staggering and bruised with shoes in hand on the way out. Sometimes Corey had one or two buddies with him. Same ties back to Tennessee, same bad attitude, but one of them had a long record. Mostly offences for violence.
Ben had made the mistake of offering assistance the first time, and the woman had told him in no uncertain terms to fuck off. She dropped her card and later he’d called the agency to warn them. But they kept sending the girls. Which got him to wondering about where Corey got the money. Man sure didn’t seem to work. These days Ben left as soon as the girl arrived. Corey wasn’t going anywhere after that.
This particular day didn’t seem different to any other. Corey partied late so he was never up before nine, but Ben was always there at eight, with a thermos of coffee and plenty of donuts. He didn’t actually like donuts that much, but if he didn’t get a chance to get anything else, they kept well, and he had a lot of bulk to feed. He had just poured his first cup, strong and black, when his day started to get a whole lot more interesting. The garage door went up and out came Corey in his pickup.
Following him wasn’t hard. Corey wasn’t the brightest and had had no training. Ben had. His car was unobtrusive and he held back. It became clear where Corey was going as each time he took the well-marked turn-offs, so Ben held back even further. Just in case. Corey was heading to the airport. Ben rang the man from South Carolina who had hired him.
“This could be what we’re waiting for.”
“Yes siree,” agreed the man Ben had never met. He received orders via phone and e-mail, with payments going directly into his bank account. There was no indication from the Southern drawl that this was anything other than routine. But Ben heard his breath get heavier, guessed that his employer with the deep pockets had been waiting for this trip. “You know what to do.”
“Don’t lose him, and more importantly, don’t lose whatever it is he picks up,” Ben said, repeating the instructions his boss had given him weeks earlier.
“Yes siree. Call in when you know more.”
But Ben’s surprises for the day were far from being over. He followed Corey to the airport, propped his car in the five-minute pick-up zone and set up the camera. Then he waited. The officials looked to move them on but Corey, fifty yards ahead of him on the strip, got out of the car, gestured and glared. Never worked in Ben’s experience but then Corey pointed, waved a finger and the official stood, arms folded. Ben looked to where Corey had pointed. A slim woman in her late twenties, with a mop of dark curls, was standing alone with a backpack, looking lost. She was, Ben thought, seriously hot. He couldn’t drag his eyes away. He had been doing surveillance too long. It was time for a vacation and to find a girl. There hadn’t been anyone serious since Laura had left him back when he was a cop. This woman was gorgeous. He couldn’t see how she could have anything to do with a lowlife like Corey. He took a photo anyway. He could always dream of her during those long stakeouts.
But then instead of her joining Corey, the woman turned to the city bus. This made no sense. Corey must have gotten the wrong woman, or more likely, was just trying to get rid of the official.
Ben frowned. Corey got into the car and started it up. And then, even more confusing, he followed the bus.
Chapter Three
Savannah had never been overseas. She left her home state for the first time at eighteen and had worked around Australia, mostly in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, with a stint at Uluru, doing anything and everything from waitressing to dog-washing. The job as a chicken-sexer was the weirdest but she was pretty much prepared to give anything a try, once anyway. She knew her own country well, but now her mind was open to new sights, and she drank San Francisco in with more enthusiasm than she could remember since waiting in a queue for Bon Jovi tickets. The weather helped. Brilliant sunshine meant the bay glittered. Even Alcatraz didn’t look ominous.
After being left in the city center, she dumped her pack in a hostel and went walking, relieved to be able to stretch her legs after the long flight, grateful she was no taller. She took a circular route, trying to take in everything on the map that rang some bell, walking the hilly streets where the old cop series she had watched re-runs of as a child had been set. She tried to recall its name as she passed the zigzagging street lined with flower beds, another filmic memory, jumped on the tram and finished by the Bay. The place was full of international visitors and she was in no hurry. This morning she was going to be a tourist. Her appointment with the San Francisco Ballet administrator wasn’t until 3:00 p.m.
She was too engrossed in the beauty of a town that with its bay reminded her of Sydney, to notice the white pickup truck crawling behind her. Or the black sedan some way behind that. She didn’t see the pickup park and the brute of a driver get out and lean against it as he lit a smoke, but vaguely saw him there out of the corner of her eye. She did see the tall, fit, sandy-haired man with a broad chest surveying the menu on a takeout along the wharf area. She had been looking at the same menu when he had stood off to her side. He looked at her.
“I can recommend the clam chowder if you’ve never had it.” His voice had a deep timbre, and when she looked at him his smile dominated. It looked like he thought she was the only woman in the world.
“It’s meant to be a classic, isn’t it?”
The man smiled. “Judging from that accent you aren’t from around here, so seems like you might not have tried it.”
“Fresh off the plane,” admitted Savannah. “How about you? I thought this was tourists only here.”
“Pretty much. I’m from the East, New England. Our clam chowder is white like they serve here.”
Savannah stepped closer to the takeout and watched the server doll out a large spoonful of thick, creamy, steaming liquid into a roll that had had the insides removed.
“Smells good. I’m not sure what time my stomach thinks it is, but soup seems to feel right.”
“Where are you in from?”
Savannah paused, looking at him. He seemed a harmless enough guy. Her instinct said he was dead straight, but she was jet lagged so maybe shouldn’t trust it fully. “Sydney, Australia.”
&n
bsp; “Ben,” he said, extending his hand.
She paused, but took it, and introduced herself. The warmth of his touch confirmed her feelings weren’t to be trusted. He was altogether way too nice and she couldn’t be that lucky.
* * * *
“It’s got to be a mistake.”
There was silence at the end of the phone, then “You’re saying she’s Australian? Twenties?”
“Yes,” said Ben. “And if she’s anything to do with Hezekiah’s lot then she’s the best actress I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll have my people run her name and photo. Keep with her until I say otherwise.”
It’d be a nice change from Corey’s drunken evenings.
It wasn’t going to be easy though. He’d blown his cover to get her name and Corey might have seen him. Corey wouldn’t have thought twice about it at the time, but he would if Ben kept popping up. It would depend on what she was planning. Maybe he could risk a second chance encounter, but there had been a wariness about her, a wariness that came from being smart, rather than trained or with an agenda.
He watched her meander through the streets back to the hostel, watched Corey lay the seat back in his pickup, windows down as he worked his way through the packet of cigarettes and then lumbered down to the store to get another packet. Corey had only just gotten back when Savannah James came out and walked purposely up the street, past them both. Ben would hardly have recognized her. Her black curls were pulled back hard and she was wearing a white blouse that he was certain didn’t have a bra underneath, with a skirt that stopped just above her knee, high heels making her legs look like they went on forever. Ben watched Corey’s leer and felt worried for the first time.
* * * *
The ballet administrator was in fact the liaison officer, an elderly woman who acted as if she owned the company. Savannah watched her dismissing people perfunctorily with an annoyed little click, repeating herself, “No, Madam, I am not the right person to talk to if you wish your daughter to audition.” “No, Madam, I am not going to bother the director with your complaints. There is a proper process. I suggest you follow it.” Wearing ballet pumps, stick-thin and head held regally, she glided rather than walked, her smile tight until Savannah greeted her.
“You must have been a dancer! Were you with the San Francisco company?”
It didn’t take much more, a little flash of the green eyes, and Savannah was being led to a hall full of photos. “That,” the woman said, “was me in Giselle.” The photo was labelled 1980. Not so long before the time Savannah was interested in. The picture was of a group, the woman one of the corps.
Savannah listened to her stories in between phone calls, aware that the person waiting in the lobby was becoming increasingly impatient. Finally, Savannah pulled out her photo.
“My mother was Audrey James. Did you know her?”
The woman put the reading glasses that hung around her neck on a chain back on, and looked at the photo. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Is there an archive I could see?”
“We have archives of course. But you must have an appointment.”
“Oh.” Savannah channeled her most disappointed look. It wasn’t hard. “I wouldn’t be any bother. I could just sit in a corner and go through it.”
It was her eyes that did it. That and the photo that the woman looked back at before returning it. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.”
The woman nodded, and ignoring the tapping of the foot by the woman with the next appointment, led Savannah through to a gilded room accessed by a key on a chain at her waist. The door swung open and the room, cluttered with photos on every available wall space, also had a bookcase jammed with yearbooks documenting every ballet the company had ever performed. Savannah thanked the woman, and in the next two hours, with Tchaikovsky in her head, she relived her mother’s six months being on loan to the USA company from The Australian Ballet.
When she left she wasn’t sure she was any closer to understanding the meaning of what else she had found in the box. But she knew she wasn’t going to give up. She walked back to the hostel deep in thought. Where to next? The man in the photo clearly wasn’t a dancer himself. Could he have been a musician? How had they met? Was he even an American? He could have been a tourist just like her, meeting her mother accidentally. Or could he have known Audrey from Australia and followed her to see her performances?
She was so deep in thought she nearly stepped out onto the road without looking. Or rather, she looked automatically, but in the wrong direction for traffic in the States. The car horn blaring woke her out of her daze, and from the corner of her eye she caught a man who had been half out of his car quickly duck back in. She recognized him. Ben, the soup man. Uneasily she tucked the photo in her back pocket and hurried along the last streets to her hostel. Entering, she looked around and couldn’t see him, and telling herself she was being oversensitive, ordered in pizza with some of the other tenants and went to bed early.
* * * *
Hezekiah said he wanted the photo, in fact her whole bag. Sooner rather than later. Corey hadn’t been able to get anything out of the bitch ballet woman, but the other one, the one talking to the bitch, was more than happy to say she had been kept waiting while they reminisced. Cory didn’t know what the photo was or why it was important, and didn’t really care. But he did need to do what his uncle ordered because he knew from experience his uncle wasn’t someone to cross, and he was paying the bills. But he was bored with surveillance, and wondered if he could combine some entertainment with the task. The idea grew on him, but the hostel was too busy so it wasn’t going to be tonight. Too risky. But tomorrow maybe. He smiled, catching his grin in the rearview mirror, minus the tooth that he’d lost in his early twenties fighting his cousin. He remembered the thrashing his uncle had given him later, but dismissed the memory. He was as big a man now as Hezekiah. Besides, what his uncle didn’t know wouldn’t bother him.
* * * *
Ben watched the lights go out in the hostel, watched Corey start the truck and breathed easier. But he knew they’d both be back in the morning, and that for whatever unknown reason, the stakes had increased. His employer was suddenly, uncharacteristically, not forthcoming. He hadn’t answered the first call and then called back, ordering Ben not to call, that he was to wait for instructions. He claimed to not have had time to follow up with his immigration contacts, so after hanging up Ben decided to follow up his own contacts, taking advantage of being an ex-cop whose colleagues still liked him. The information was easy to access because Savannah had only just entered the country. She was on a three-month vacation. Mother Audrey James, father Sal Mazzola. None had police records in the US. Her parents had been to the USA but nearly thirty years earlier. Sal had been back twice. He wondered why Savannah was using her mother’s name.
Mazzola was more interesting. Mob, maybe? Not that the Mob had any time for nut jobs like Hezekiah. But money talked. If Hezekiah wanted guns maybe the Mob was the obvious place to turn. Trouble was, Mazzola couldn’t have been doing much if he hadn’t been in the States for more than a few weeks in thirty years. Still, family ties ran deep. Which got Ben thinking. He hadn’t spoken to his stepbrother for a month, didn’t like to use the connection unless he had to. But something didn’t feel right here. His years with the police department gave him a sixth sense. Maybe it was just the way Corey looked at Savannah. Maybe he was placing too much on his first impressions, impressions that had him wanting to see whole lot more of the Australian. But overall his instincts suggested there was a deep reason for the attraction.
“Zac.”
“Hi kid. You thought I couldn’t sleep, right?”
Shit, he’d forgotten the time difference. “Didn’t think FBI men ever sleep.”
“We don’t. Not on a case. But remember I just dust desks these days?”
Yeah, like Ben believed that. Zac had always been ambitious, ruthlessly so. He had never had time for a w
ife or family, and was pretty much married to the government. Ben wasn’t sure exactly what he did. Zac joked that he’d have to kill him if he found out, which just told Ben what he already knew. Zac was high up. Very high up.
“Yeah well I need you to go dust a particular desk.”
“We talking DV here or terrorist threat?” Zac’s question sounded idle, but Ben knew his stepbrother well enough to know that nothing was ever idle. His brain solved problems in his sleep.
“Don’t know,” said Ben. “But I’ve been dealing in grubby little fundamentalist militia and suddenly an angel with a Calabrian dad pops out of the sky and causes a lot of interest.”
Ben could almost hear Zac’s mind at work. But the relaxed response was just to send him details and he’d see what he could do. Zac was like that. Asleep one moment and a knife at your throat the next. Well, at the bad guy’s throat. Ben had never thought it was a good idea to make an enemy of Zac, but even when his mother had married Zac’s father when they had been teenagers, Ben, though younger by several years, had been the heavier of the two. Ben’s own father had died of a heart attack three years earlier and he had welcomed his stepfather but been more tentative about a new brother. But after the broken leg—Ben’s—when he’d given in to the dare from his stepbrother to jump out of the bedroom window, they had against the odds become great friends and mostly ganged up together. They made a formidable team. After he was thirteen, no one had been game to take them on.
Ben slept fitfully, was up early and had had his second coffee when Corey arrived. Corey had changed cars, and was wearing a cap. This car, a small truck, was more noticeable with its air-conditioning advertising along the side, but Ben was worried about the why. An hour later his contacts told him the plates were stolen. This worried him even more.
The thing about surveillance was you never knew what was ahead. Mostly not much, but Ben was on full alert because he had no idea what he was dealing with. Savannah went for a jog, but as much as he enjoyed the view, the lithe, long legs and her tight butt moving rhythmically, Ben was anxious about Corey also enjoying it. She went back to the hostel and showered, changed, and was out on the street again at lunchtime. With her entire pack. Ben frowned. Even more so as he realized where she was heading. To the train station.