by CL Hart
"The name of the company making the direct deposits to S. L. Etcher is not Trillium, but when you trace the transit number back, the money is coming out of their account." The judge read from a pad in his hand.
"So they were paying me?" The information only served to unsettle Kenzie further. "But why...and who?"
"The 'why' I don't know, but the 'who' is Palmer Tectonics." The judge slapped his pad of paper down in front of Cori and Kenzie. When they looked up at him in question, he continued. "It helps to be a federal judge when you're looking for information. Under all the paperwork and behind several dummy corporations, Trillium is owned by Palmer Tectonics...which is owned by...Winston Palmer." He waited for a reaction, but none came. "Winston Palmer?" Kenzie shrugged and Cori shook her head. "Senator Winston Palmer."
Kenzie's brow furrowed. "A senator? Are you sure?"
"He's a senior senator in the U.S. Senate," the judge went on as Cori turned back to her computer and typed in the name Winston Palmer.
"And he's worth millions," Cori added as she scanned the monitor in front of her. "He has his fingers in a lot of different pies, but mainly pharmaceuticals and real estate."
"So he owns Trillium and Palmer Tectonics," Kenzie repeated, trying to make sense of the information.
"Actually," Cori looked from her screen and leaned over to look out the window at the tall office building rising above the others, "he owns a lot more than that. He owns that entire building." Kenzie and the judge looked out the window to the skyscraper located a couple of blocks from them.
"Why would someone like that be paying the wages of someone like me?"
"And it wasn't just you, Kenzie. I saw other names on that list, too."
"Whose?" the judge asked.
"It doesn't matter, right now." Kenzie looked at the judge. "Right now I want to know why a senior senator, under the guise of being the government, would be paying an assassin?"
"I don't know, Katherine, but whatever it is, if he's mixed up in this, then so is your Colonel Manuck."
"But why? What are they up to?" Kenzie turned her attention back to the tall building towering above the Seattle skyline.
The senator's Bentley wheeled down into the underground parking of the Palmer building. The tires squealed as it turned the sharp corners, spiraling down, deep into the concrete parking structure. The further down they went, the fewer parked cars they saw. It was damp and cold, even for Seattle, but the occupant inside the Bentley was unaffected. On the last corner, at the very bottom, two cars sat side-by-side, waiting. There was no signal or outward appearance of recognition as the expensive luxury car pulled up next to them. The engine was turned off, leaving behind a cool silence.
"Keep it running. This won't take long," Palmer commanded from the backseat.
The driver restarted the car and watched in silence as the senator slid the solid, soundproof divider into place. Two men climbed from the first car: Colonel Manuck, wearing his military uniform, heavily decorated on the left side, and another man, wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket.
Terry Bucannon exited the second car, dressed in his usual dark suit thin dark tie. He looked around nervously before entering the rear of the car.
Manuck did not attempt to sugarcoat his annoyance. "Okay, we're all here. Let's hear what you have to say."
The tension in the car was palpable as the four men sat in weighty silence. The colonel looked at the deputy director, and then at the senator, but neither seemed to want to speak first.'
"Ah, for Christ sake, we're here. Isn't this what you wanted?" Manuck said.
"What I want is for your rogue agent to be found and disposed of. But since we can't find her and her computer hacking friend-"
"Did you bug the judge's house?" Manuck cut in.
"Yes " Bucannon said, "but he hasn't been back. There has been no action on any of his credit cards or his bank accounts, and he's cleared his docket for the rest of the week."
"What about any of her friends and colleagues?"
"She doesn't have friends or colleagues," Manuck snapped. "For all intents and purposes, this woman is dead. She does not exist. We have nothing to trace, nothing to follow, which is the whole principle behind an undercover black ops operative."
"So we just wait until she finds us?" Bucannon said.
"Because you said it yourself, it's what she does."
Manuck had no answer as he sat and seethed in silence. "Well, I for one am not waiting. I say we shut down Maquinar, get our money, and get out of town."
"That's easy for you to say, Mister CIA spook man. I m a senior senator in Washington, D.C. I can't exactly disappear like you can"
"No one is disappearing," Manuck cut in. "And we aren t shutting down Maquinar."
"Actually, I agree with Terry on that one, Colonel, at least temporarily. Shut it down and get our money out of it. And then once this problem is taken care of, we can start again, only this time - no women."
"How would you propose we solve this problem, Senator?" Manuck asked. "Because if you have any suggestions, I'm listening."
The argument continued back and forth amongst the three. Viper remained silent, feeling a little uneasy about what he was hearing. He knew who they were after, but he was not a hundred percent certain as to why. He assured himself it didn't matter. He had not liked that bitch from the moment he met her, feeling even then that she was a risk to the operation. Nevertheless, he was interested in what this Maquinar was.
"Viper, what do you think?" Manuck asked, interrupting the assassin's thoughts. "About what, sir?" "You have the same training, the same background. How would you find her?"
He hesitated for a brief moment, staring stone-faced at his superior. "You got a file on her?" he asked without emotion.
Bucannon pulled a brown manila envelope from his briefcase and handed it to him. "In depth, on every level."
Flipping briefly through the papers, Viper was confident it was all he was going to need. "Consider it done."
"Don't call me until it is," the colonel said as he opened the car door, signaling the end to Viper's involvement in the meeting.
The door closed and Manuck laid into Bucannon, "Are you crazy? You mention Maquinar in front of him!"
"Do you really think your men don't have a clue as to what they're doing?" Bucannon shot back.
"If they knew, we wouldn't be sitting here."
Bucannon leaned forward and glared into Manuck's eyes. "What the hell have you gotten us all into?"
"You knew exactly what you were getting into, so don't hand me that crap. You sit in your fucking ivory tower, spying on the world with high tech gadgets, snooping through the trash, and screaming national security when you're caught with your hand in the proverbial cookie jar. My men are in the trenches, up to their asses in mud and squalor, doing what needs to be done so that the lunatics of this world never get the power to annihilate everyone and everything that we hold dear."
"Don't even try to convince me, or yourself, that you did this for God and country, Manuck. You did it for the goddamn money!"
"Gentlemen! Enough!" the senator said loudly. "We all had our reasons, and what's done is done. The question is, what do we do now?"
"Shut it down," Bucannon answered.
"Temporarily," Manuck said.
"I say we shut it down permanently." Palmer looked at the two angry men. "Two out of three, majority rules."
The colonel glared at him. "I wasn't aware this was a democracy."
"I want this over with," Bucannon said, ignoring the arrogance of the military man. "Let's liquidate what we have, divide it up, and be done with it."
"It isn't that easy," the senator said. "First we have to close down all the bank accounts, and that will take time. I'll have to go through the Maquinar file-"
Dumbfounded, Manuck stared at Palmer in disbelief. "You have an actual file?"
"Yes, at home in my safe-"
"You have a hard copy of all of this in your safe?"
Bucannon asked in shock.
"I'm sure not going to keep it on my computer. Do you know how much paperwork is involved," Palmer answered. "I'll close the accounts and divvy up the money. What about Viper?"
"I'll look after my men," Manuck said with resentment. "You just make sure we get our cut. And be smart, Palmer, get rid of the all the paperwork before you get us all thrown into prison."
Chapter 22
The tall office building loomed over the Seattle skyline with authority and grace. Its windows, shiny and bright, reflected the intrusive gazes of all those who dared to look in. Kenzie glared at the monument of power as she struggled with the information coming to the surface. "If I wasn't working with the government, then who was I working for? What did Colonel Manuck get me into?"
"I don't know but I can guarantee it's highly illegal. I say follow the money, Katherine. Where it comes from and where it goes," the judge said philosophically.
"I don't get it," Kenzie commented, pulling her jacket off. She didn't like the feeling of confinement. She hung her jacket on the back of the chair behind Cori and began to pace. "I haven't been working for the government after all. I've been working for Trillium, or rather Palmer Tectonics?" Kenzie ran her hand through her curls and pressed her fingertips hard against her temples. It was all too much. "Why the hell would a senator be paying me to kill people?" The volume of her voice carried over the other conversations in the cafe and several heads turned to look in her direction.
"Easy, Kenzie." Cori placed a hand on her back. The attention Kenzie was drawing concerned Cori. She turned to the judge with a silent plea for help.
"Katherine, take a breath and calm down. We don't know who's behind this. It might be the senator, or it could be anyone inside the company. Let's not go off half-cocked. We need to look into this further."
"Does it really matter? I thought I was working for the military and I'm not!" An overwhelming sense of desperation ignited her anger. "I murdered those people," Kenzie said, loud enough for everyone in the cafe to hear.
"Katherine, we've only scratched the surface here. Please, let's not jump to conclusions." The judge's voice was calm and even as he quietly attempted to quell her rising fury. "Right now, you need to calm down. The last thing we need is to call attention to ourselves." He reached for her arm but Kenzie pulled back, her hands up in surrender.
Cori saw a flash of panic in her lover's eyes. "Kenzie?"
"I murdered those people. Orders or not, I murdered them." Looking at the faces of the only two people she cared about in the world, Kenzie felt the foundations of her universe crumble. What did she know? Who could she trust? She had put Cori and the judge into mortal danger. She looked at the customers of the cafe, who were staring back at her, and she saw fear. These people feared her. She felt the walls of the cafe closing in on her.
"I-I gotta get out of here," she said, pushing quickly past Cori.
"Kenzie," Cori cried out as she rose to follow her.
Judge Woodward stopped her. "Let her go."
"I can't, she needs me." Cori attempted to move past the judge, but he blocked her way.
Placing his hands on her shoulders, he looked Cori in the eye. "She does need you, but not right now. Right now, she needs to find herself. Give her some time to digest all of this. For someone like her, this is devastating."
Cori felt helpless as she watched Kenzie storm out of the cafe. She wanted nothing more than to be there for her, but the judge was right. With an audible sigh, she sat back down and returned to her search on the computer.
Kenzie burst out of the cafe and onto Pike Street. The rains had stopped, but the air was still cool and damp. It felt good on her flushed face. Looking up at the gray skies and the glass archway that covered a block of Pike Street, she still felt as if everything was closing in on her. She had no idea where she was going, but wherever it was, she was moving fast. She wanted to run away from it all, away from the truth that was plying its way into her conscience.
Viper perused the papers Manuck had given him. It made him a little uneasy to see everything they had acquired on her. He knew with little doubt there was a file just like it with his name on the envelope. He was not surprised to see that she had no family, neither did he, and neither did his colleague, whose body would go unclaimed in San Diego. Cobra's death had angered him. They had worked together only a few times, but Cobra was the closest thing to a friend Viper had.
Without lifting his eyes from Kenzie's dossier, he pushed open the glass door and exited the building. His plan was to go over the information until he found something the others had missed. He was not as confident in his ability to find her as Manuck had been, but then again, he was not all that concerned about it, either. If he found her, he would kill her. If he didn't, he could just disappear and no one would ever find him. "That's what you should have done, LeGault, just disappeared," he said to her picture as he flipped a few more pages. So far, there was nothing for him to go on. But then again, he was only skimming the documents.
The afternoon rush had started, and the sidewalks were overcrowded. Oblivious to where she was going, Kenzie bumped into several people. She neither stopped nor apologized. Horns honked beneath the fists of impatient drivers and tires screeched over wet roads, but the sounds barely permeated her thoughts. Kenzie was not aware that she was heading in any set direction until she found herself across the street from Winston Palmer's office tower. Her eyes scanned upward over the tall building with the shiny glass windows.
Wanting nothing more than to confront the man who had put her into this position, she sought him out in every window, even though she knew he wasn't there. According to the judge, as a senior senator, Palmer was not permitted on the premises of his own business - something to do with a blind trust, the ethics committee, and financial disclosure - but she didn't care as she stood rooted to the sidewalk.
A man reading a newspaper and carrying a briefcase bumped her hard in the side, sending a wave of pain through her. It was enough to bring her attention back to the present and she stepped out of his way, but that moved her into the path of two women discussing the recent activities of a cheating boyfriend. Stumbling slightly, Kenzie saw their looks of annoyance as they continued on their way. Trying to avoid any further collisions, she moved from the bustle of the middle of the sidewalk to the edge, closer to the shop windows. In an attempt to collect herself, she took several deep breaths, releasing the air slowly through her nose, until she saw him.
Kenzie's breath caught and she held it for a moment. It was Viper and he was here. She watched him as he flipped through some papers in a brown manila envelope. Only then did it occur to her that Viper had just exited the Palmer Building. A flash of anger blasted through her and Kenzie reached for her gun. It wasn't there. Kenzie had taken her jacket off and left it at the cafe. She had no weapon - no offense and no defense. She stepped back into the flow of the sidewalk, keeping her eyes on Viper.
A woman, her arms filled with shopping bags, was too busy trying to hold them and talk on her cell phone to notice Kenzie moving into her path. The two collided. The woman and her bags and her cell phone landed on the sidewalk while Kenzie stumbled to stay upright. The woman's shocked silence was quickly replaced by a stream of loud profanity, causing passing pedestrians to give her a wide berth.
The commotion drew the attention of almost everyone on the block, including Viper. He stared in disbelief at the target nobody had been able to find. The two trained killers locked eyes. The world around them became a blur as each assessed the other.
Kenzie knew what he was thinking, the same thing she was thinking. Neither moved as the throngs of people walked past them. The angry woman collected her shopping bags and cell phone, and continued on her way, but not before calling Kenzie a few more sexually inappropriate names. It didn't matter. Kenzie's full attention was on the man across the street. Many questions rose to the forefront of her mind, but they were all forgotten when Viper made the first move.
He stuffed the papers he'd been reading back inside the manila envelope, folded it in half, and casually slid it into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. She didn't have to see the gun to know it was there. When he stepped toward her, it set her body in motion. Turning back in the direction of the cafe, she heard a car braking hard on the wet road. The blast of a car's horn told her Viper had attempted to cross the street. Kenzie took several steps and then stopped. The last thing she wanted was to lead him right to Cori and the judge. Spinning around and changing directions, she saw Viper stop to let a honking car pass him.
Pushing people aside without a thought, Kenzie ran down the sidewalk in the direction opposite the cafe. Viper had now made it across the street and was hot on her heels. With each step, she waited for the sound of a gunshot, but none came. Her feet slapped hard against the concrete as she zigged and zagged her way through the people. It didn't take her long to realize that the damage done to her body since Guadalajara had taken a physical toll. After just one block of running, her body was screaming in pain. She dared not glance behind her. She knew Viper was there, and she knew he was gaining. Few people seemed to show any interest in the two people racing down the sidewalk. As she turned the corner, Kenzie dug deep for what little energy reserves she had and almost ran into one of the many trees lining the city street. Viper was catching up and the only way for her to avoid being caught was to use her brain rather than her unreliable body.
Risking serious harm, Kenzie cut into the oncoming traffic, creating instant chaos. Cars skidded and collided with a flurry of horns, crunching metal, and harsh angry words. She slid across the hood of a car that had slammed into the rear of a truck in the other lane. Chancing a quick glance behind her, she was alarmed to see how close Viper was. Scrambling back to her feet, she took off running in and out among the stopped cars. The next block was not that far away, but neither was her pursuer. Turning quickly, she crossed the street and ran into the first open door she saw.