A boop-boop echoed in the cement garage, and he walked toward it. He made the sound again and, turning to his left, saw where it had come from. A metallic navy blue convertible Corvette seemed to be grinning at him, as if it had just rolled off the assembly line and was hungrily waiting for him to rev the engine. He’d loved Corvettes ever since seeing a picture of his father gripping the wheel of a classic 1960 roadster. It seemed like a good omen to find one waiting for him. For the first time in days, he smiled.
‘‘Nice bracelet,’’ called a familiar voice.
‘‘Mm,’’ his shoulders drooped. ‘‘Swell.’’
He turned.
There she was again, leaning against a concrete pillar a few yards away. Maybe she has a shoe phobia . . . Wonder if there’s a name for that?
Eh, who am I kidding? I don’t care.
‘‘What’s the inscription say?’’ she asked, trying to make it out from where she stood.
‘‘None of your business. What do you want?’’
‘‘Well, if what I’m hearing is true, you’re setting out on a one-way street to badness. Not only am I not the only one who knows what you’re planning . . . but only fools rush in to a place like Inveo Technologies. It’s not a company; it’s a fortress. Comes with all the extras, including one of the most state-of-the-art security forces in the world. We’re talking guardapalooza. Even if you somehow managed to sneak in, the only way out of that place is with a tag on your toe.’’
‘‘And just exactly how do know what I’m planning?’’ Grant’s feathers were ruffling with every word she spoke.
‘‘Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. We all got our purpose.’’
‘‘And keeping up with my itinerary is yours?’’ he asked.
‘‘Hey, I’m the one who told you to leave town and not look back.’’
He frowned.
‘‘But your curiosity got the better of you. Don’t suppose I can blame you for that.’’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘‘By the way, for what it’s worth, it looks like you’re out of danger. For the moment. That is, aside from this big ‘storm the gates’ thing you’re working on.’’
‘‘Who are you?’’
She just smiled.
‘‘If you can’t tell me who you are, then why are you helping me?’’
‘‘Oh, you’re so cute,’’ she said as though she were admiring a friend’s baby. ‘‘Who said I was here to help you?’’
He frowned. ‘‘You helped me find my sister.’’
‘‘Did I?’’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘‘You sure of that?’’
He had seen her outside the UCLA police station, hadn’t he? Pointing the way to find his sister? Of course he’d seen her.
Right?
‘‘You’re really infuriating.’’ He massaged his forehead.
She nodded, unconcerned. ‘‘I get that a lot.’’ She squared her shoulders. ‘‘Look, I just stopped by to offer congrats, slugger, and a warning. Instead of this Inveo thing, you really should be looking into the other groups that are keeping an eye on you. There’s one in particular that frankly, I expected you to have already found . . .
‘‘But anyway, back to the big victory. That’s one down. Burned and buried alive. Juicy.’’ Her eyebrows popped up. ‘‘Of course, most of the others watching you have little interest in seeing you dead, so hopefully you won’t always knee-jerk into violence mode. But I should warn you that very few of these folks have your best interests at heart. And just because you defeated Konrad doesn’t mean that the ones who hired him won’t send somebody else to try again.’’
His eyes met hers, but she maintained a casual expression. ‘‘How many?’’
She didn’t answer. For a moment, he thought she might not have understood the question.
‘‘How many of these groups are there, keeping tabs on me?’’
She smiled without humor. ‘‘Lot more than you think, bucko. But if what you did to ol’ Konrad was just the warm-up . . . Can’t wait to see how you handle the rest,’’ she said, her eyes dancing.
Grant rolled his eyes and stalked to his car. By the time he checked his rearview mirror, she was gone.
Daniel and Lisa waited two days before visiting the burned-out Glendale apartment building. They figured the police and fire marshals would mostly be done by then and a curious bystander could get a look around easier. Only there wasn’t much to look at.
Daniel kept a bandana to his nose as he picked his way through the rubble of the burned down apartment building. He and Lisa had been here for hours and still couldn’t make head nor tail of anything they found. It was beyond recognition.
Lisa was wandering around, picking up various things and scanning for traces of a shimmer, but nothing spiked. The one part of the building still standing was the central stairwell, an old brick shaft that reached all three floors. Only the first-floor portion of it remained intact.
‘‘What are you thinking?’’ Daniel asked her as he continued to sift.
‘‘Well . . . it definitely strikes me as odd that nothing—not one single object—survived this fire.’’
He nodded. ‘‘Someone’s covered their tracks.’’
‘‘Didn’t the news say it was a gas main or something?’’ she said, still looking through the debris.
He eyed her. ‘‘Don’t believe everything you hear on the news.’’
She grinned.
‘‘If the police lied to the media about the cause of the fire,’’ Daniel said, ‘‘then I’d say there’s a good chance this Collin Boyd may not be dead, after all. . . .At any rate, I want to know who he is. Would you go round to the back of the building and jot down the license-plate numbers of the cars back there? We can check them later to see if one of them was his.’’
She nodded and was off.
He continued sifting for a moment before he noticed that a nearby shadow was moving.
‘‘And how did you know Mr. Boyd?’’ a booming voice said.
He looked up. A man stood to his right with an angry frown on his face. A large man whose bulging midsection protruded from a navy blue trench coat, though only his left arm went through one of the sleeves. His right was under the coat, held in place by what looked like a shoulder sling.
‘‘Old friend from college,’’ Daniel lied. He stuck out his hand to the detective. ‘‘Daniel Cossick.’’
‘‘Matthew Drexel,’’ the cop replied, refusing to take Daniel’s hand. ‘‘Do you contaminate the crime scenes of all of your college buddies’ mishaps?’’
‘‘Collin was the first,’’ Daniel said nervously. ‘‘My assistant and I— we were just . . . curious . . . about the circumstances surrounding his death. The damage here is just . . . mind-boggling . . .’’ his voice trailed off as he glanced around.
‘‘That kind of curiosity will land you in jail,’’ said the man, with a dour scowl. He adopted an authoritative swagger as he walked closer.
‘‘You’re a police officer, then?’’ Daniel asked.
The man flipped open a badge. ‘‘Detective. I’m investigating the arson/homicide on these premises, which I believe to be connected to . . . another case I’m working on.’’
‘‘So it was just the one death, then?’’ Daniel probed.
‘‘Just one body,’’ Drexel replied slowly, still warily watching Daniel.
The detective narrowed his eyes and took another step closer. They were standing in the sun, but to Daniel it felt like a third-degree heat lamp.
Drexel gestured with his chin toward Lisa. ‘‘You want to tell Ms. Moneypenny over there to stop rifling through my evidence?’’
‘‘What?’’ Daniel blustered, then caught on. ‘‘Oh! Lisa, this nice officer wants you to quit whatever you’re doing back there!’’
She appeared from behind the central stairwell wall. ‘‘You really a cop?’’ she shouted.
‘‘You really this guy’s assistant?’’ Drexel replied.
Lisa rolled her eyes at
his attempted joke, but then was all business. ‘‘You better come see this.’’
Daniel and Detective Drexel both circled the stairwell until they reached Lisa’s vantage point. Sticking out from the other side of the wall was a tiny foot with a black shoe on. As they continued to circle, the full body came into view: an elderly woman with graying purplish hair, her short frame lying facedown, unmoving. Her wrinkled face was turned too far to one side, her eyes closed. She still clenched a large, pearl-white purse with both knobby hands.
Drexel’s eyes became tiny slits, and he examined the woman for several minutes without approaching. Then he knelt and seized her hand. It was limp. ‘‘Hasn’t been dead long. And no burn marks, so she definitely didn’t die in the fire.’’ He pushed aside her hair. Dark bruises were visible along her neck. ‘‘Her neck is snapped,’’ Drexel concluded.
‘‘Either of you know this woman?’’ he asked softly.
Daniel exchanged a clueless glance with Lisa, but her eyebrows appeared knitted together.
‘‘I think . . . she’s the landlady,’’ she said.
Drexel swore. ‘‘You sure about that?’’
‘‘No,’’ Lisa answered honestly. The way she effortlessly held the larger man’s gaze . . . It occurred to Daniel that Lisa wasn’t intimidated by Drexel. Not at all.
While he had become unhinged the moment the large man had spoken.
But then, she has no reason to be anxious around a policeman. I, on the other hand . . .
‘‘I’m going to need you both to come with me,’’ Drexel was saying, rising to his feet. ‘‘Your knowledge of the victim may be . . . useful to my case. And frankly, the fact that you knew him at all means that you may not be safe—’’ The detective’s phone rang, interrupting his speech. ‘‘Excuse me,’’ he mumbled, and turned away, moving back toward his brown sedan. He was trying to keep Daniel and Lisa from hearing, but it was a quiet Sunday morning in the old neighborhood. They clearly made out the words ‘‘cut off his head?’’ as Drexel’s voice rose involuntarily as he said it.
Lisa carefully and innocently walked to Daniel’s side.
‘‘You’re white as a sheet,’’ she whispered. ‘‘You all right?’’
Daniel wiped sweat from his brow with one hand while whispering back to her. He eyed the cop again, who was now speaking on his car radio, the cord snaking out through the side window.
‘‘I think things just got a lot more complicated.’’
12
Three days later, Grant sat with Julie in a diner across the street from the Inveo Technologies corporate headquarters, trying not to look nervous. It was one of those tiny truck stops stuck in the middle of desert sprawl like a ship bottomed on a dry lake. They were the only non-regulars in the ramshackle building, which looked like it could collapse in on itself at any moment.
But Grant’s attention was elsewhere. The barefoot girl had been right again. This was no simple facility he was looking at. It was a campus.
Grant and Julie had spent every waking minute carefully considering his covert entry into Inveo. Hours upon hours they pored over books at the local library, on the computer, digging up old architectural plans from county and district records. It wasn’t easy, but they needed every last detail they could find. Of particular interest was the structure’s layout and security.
The campus was located well outside of L.A., cozied on the gentle slopes of a mountainside, on a big plot of undeveloped land north of Big Bear Lake. A modest town had sprung up around the Inveo plant, but the town was dwarfed by the scale of the plant itself. The entire Inveo property struck Grant as akin to some kind of modern citadel.
And here he was, about to David his way into this Goliath.
Grant and Julie ate breakfast in silence, both nervous at what waited ahead of them. After leaving cash on their table, they stepped out into the arid wind and squinted across the road at their target. The mammoth complex, dozens of high-rise buildings, sprawled over four square miles of land at a sloping angle, essentially a city unto itself. An enormous manufacturing plant was situated in the middle, with other buildings of all sizes surrounding it. The plant was clearly the oldest of the buildings on the grounds, with metal siding, a flat roof, and add-ons stretched outward in every direction. Many of the other buildings were much newer, with sparkling glass on all sides, or modern brick façades.
Grant’s eyes fell upon the tallest of these buildings, which was situated closer than any of the others to the diner, only a few hundred yards across the street and behind a tall perimeter fence. It was the executive building, his target.
Julie sat in the driver’s seat of the car and Grant knelt next to her, door open.
‘‘What’s your job?’’ he asked Julie.
‘‘Surveillance. Keep the car ready,’’ she recited, steeling herself.
Grant nodded then retrieved a shopping bag out of the blue convertible’s trunk. Carrying the bag, he strolled down the street to an abandoned gas station. It was here that he and Julie had struck gold during their research. Yesterday, while surfing the Net, one of their searches turned up a site on urban legends, which contained an entry about Inveo Technologies and a secret exit built long ago as an executive escape. They were about to write off the legend as a myth when another entry claimed to have proof that it really existed, providing step-by-step details on how to access it from the outside. A few urban explorers even claimed to have snuck into the plant and caused a little mischief. The plant being so big, once you were inside, it wasn’t hard to blend in with all of the employees if you could simulate their look, they explained.
Behind the decrepit gas station, Grant hefted open a set of wooden storm doors. A set of stairs inside led down to a cellar, where he tugged on a cord overhead to turn on a lone light bulb. He quickly stripped and put on the gray jumpsuit that was inside the bag, along with a matching pair of gloves. His heart pumping like mad, he stuffed his street clothes into the bag and stowed it under the stairs. A tiny earpiece went into his left ear, completely hidden from sight once inside; Julie had acquired a set of them rush delivery from an online store.
‘‘Okay, I’m set,’’ he said.
‘‘You’ve got eight minutes until shift change,’’ Julie said.
Grant found the door to the tiny closet on his left, just as the Web site had described. Following the instructions exactly, he stepped inside and shut the door behind him, which left him in the dark. To his right, he felt for and found a set of old wooden shelves attached to the wall. So far the instructions were dead on. Counting down, he grabbed the third one from the top and pulled it straight out. It only gave an inch. He pulled similarly on the top shelf, and then pushed it back in.
Straight ahead, a dim light appeared as the wall suddenly swung open.
‘‘Did it work?’’ Julie said, her voice clear but a bit tinny in his ear.
‘‘Think so,’’ he replied.
‘‘What do you see?’’
‘‘A really long hallway. Dark. What should I expect at the other end?’’
She was silent a moment. ‘‘I’m not entirely sure . . .’’
‘‘You can’t tell from the floor plans?’’
‘‘Collin,’’ Julie deadpanned, ‘‘my expertise in this area is summed up in the number of times I’ve seen Tom Cruise dangling from that wire in Mission: Impossible. Give me a break, okay? Hey, you better hurry— there’s less than five minutes.’’
Abandoning stealth, Grant sprinted down the narrow corridor. A stench like rotten potatoes filled the hallway, which was lit only by individual light bulbs dangling from the ceiling every thirty feet. A few minutes later, following a couple of turns and some more running, he came upon the next door and opened it. Out of breath, he pulled out a tiny flashlight and turned it on.
Stretched out before him was an enormous basement that looked like a vast warehouse. Wooden crates, cardboard boxes, and assorted shelves stacked floor to ceiling filled with more boxes, consumed t
he space in every direction.
‘‘What do they make here again?’’
‘‘New technologies, according to their website. Whatever that means.’’
He looked to the far left wall and saw his next door. Beyond it, he found a stairwell. So far, so good.
He glanced at his watch again: 5:30.
Time’s up.
He bolted up the stairs.
Opening the door to the first floor, he was met by an enormous, bustling lobby, complete with cherry wood accents, marble and carpeted floors, hand-crafted lounge chairs, and a giant glass façade that stretched from the floor to the vaulted ceiling, over three stories high. A behemoth of a receptionist desk stretched forty feet long, with no less than six employees seated behind it. All of them appeared to be speaking into headset telephones. The Inveo logo was emblazoned behind them in a monstrous 3-D art piece that stretched upward the entire three stories; it was a gaudy melting pot of Greek and Roman symbols mixed with high technology, with a stylized ‘‘I.T.’’ at the top.
Employees entered and exited the vast atrium, most of those entering making for one of the eight elevators at the far end of the lobby. Grant watched them come and go for a moment, considering how normal their lives were. They were grazing through their day like cows, casual, unconcerned.
Normal.
He’d forgotten what that was like.
This certainly didn’t look like the command center for an identity-theft conspiracy.
Grant blended in with the crowd moving toward the elevator, his jumpsuit vaguely resembling that worn by the janitorial staff. As long as no one made a close inspection of his appearance, he’d be fine. The outfit was the least of his worries.
His heart skipped a beat as he approached the crowd inside the concave elevator foyer. This was possibly the riskiest part of his plan. If this didn’t work just right, the game was over before it had even begun.
Two sets of elevator doors opened at once and Grant intentionally entered the one that seemed to have more people on board. He squeezed through the tiny, congested space and stood at the back of the elevator.
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