by Adams,Claire
I finished writing the tiny little program and installing it just as the hands on the clock told me it was time to get going. I pulled my laptop out of my bag, opened the case and logged into my TriCorp account using the dummy account I'd set up on the desktop. The bug had worked and I was able to sneak past the company's security walls to get into the server. I quickly downloaded the first email onto my laptop and then snapped the case shut. I didn't want anyone to see me working on my laptop and raise suspicion about what I was doing.
I deleted the email from the desktop computer and logged out of the company's website for the last time before I pulled all of my personal effects from the desk and shoved them in the box that Ruth had given me on the way out of Mr. Baines's office. I double checked Dr. Powell's office and noticed that his copy of The Art of War was lying in the middle of the floor. I picked it up and tossed it in my box uncertain why, but feeling like it was important.
Then I returned to my desk, picked up my things and took one last look around the office that had been my professional home for the past six years. It was a terrible way to leave, but what other choice did I have?
"You ready, Echo?" Butch said quietly. I simply nodded as I tried hard not to let the tears fall. "It's okay, kiddo. You'll be fine. I just know it."
"Thanks, Butch," I said as I swallowed hard and waited for the elevator doors to open. Once on the ground floor, I set the box down and gave Butch a hug before heading out to hail a cab.
Something at TriCorp was very wrong, and I needed to find Ryan and ask him about it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ryan
I hopped the subway up to 42nd and Lexington and arrived thirty minute early for my appointment, so I walked down 42nd and found a small hardware store where I had a set of keys made from the ones that Echo had given me. I marveled at her willingness to share space with me given the fact that I'd come close to really hurting her in my sleep. I knew it wasn't my fault, but the nightmares scared me. Maybe she was right, and maybe I needed to talk to someone.
I paid for the keys and walked back over to the lawyer's office. I took the elevator up to the thirtieth floor and got out in front of a huge glass wall that had Gates, Weller and Markham, LLC. etched in it. I told the secretary who I was and watched her precisely sculpted eyebrow go up as she said, "I didn't know Dr. Powell had a son!"
"I'm the black sheep of the family," I winked as I wondered why this news was surprising to her.
"I see," she chuckled. "I'll tell Mr. Weller that you're here, Mr. Powell."
A little while later, another impeccably dressed young woman came out into the waiting area and called my name. She led me back to a large conference room that looked out over Grand Central Station and the Met Life Building. I politely refused her offer of coffee or tea, and sat down at the table.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and when I pulled it out, I found a message from Echo:
Got fired. On my way back to the apartment. Something strange going on. Meet me ASAP.
I started to reply when Jack Weller entered the room and said in a booming voice, "Well, I'll be damned! If it isn't Ryan Powell!"
He held out his hand and pumped mine up and down as he repeated how surprised was to see me. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I smiled and played along. My SEAL training had taught me that at least half the game was simply looking like I belonged.
"I'm so sorry about your father," Weller said looking genuinely sad. "It's a tragedy to lose someone so brilliant and productive."
"Yes, it most certainly is," I said watching him closely. He was dressed in a way that looked vaguely familiar. He was wearing an expensive tailor made suit, large gold rings on several fingers, and his slicked back hair reminded me of the Sopranos.
"And your father, of course," he quickly added.
"Of course," I replied.
"So, how can I help you, Ryan?" Weller asked. He'd come in with a stack of papers that he'd set down and pushed to the side when he'd first come in, but now was inching them closer as he waited for me to tell him what I needed.
"For starters, I'm concerned about where my father's body is," I said.
"Where is it?" he asked.
"That's just it, I have no idea," I replied as I felt my phone vibrate again. I had the urge to pull it out and check to see if Echo had sent me information that I could use, but instead I waited for Weller to give me an answer.
"I believe he's been transferred to the Blake and Sons Funeral Home in SoHo, per the wishes of your stepmother," he said pulling a sheet out of the stack and looking at it. "Yes, here it is."
"He didn't want a funeral," I said.
"Mrs. Powell said that she'd decided to have Blake and Sons handle the cremation," he said as he quickly scanned the sheet and pushed it across the table for me to see. It indicated that my father's body was to be delivered today and cremated tomorrow. The bottom of the sheet had been signed by the person named as the executor, but I couldn't read the signature.
"Who is this?" I asked pointing to the signed line.
"That's the executor your father named in his will," Weller said.
"And who is it?" I asked.
"His business partner, Julian Baines," Weller said after consulting another sheet in the stack.
"Wait, what?" I said doing a double take as I looked more closely at the cremation order. It looked like it had been signed and dated the day my father died. "Julian Baines is my father's executor not me or Eva?"
"It seems that your father appointed him in 1983 and never altered his will," Weller said as he pushed forward more documents.
"This isn't right," I said looking at the signatures on the sheets in front of me. "He could not have appointed Julian to take care of his personal business. That doesn't make sense."
"It makes more sense than you might think, Ryan," he said. The way he spoke to me like I was a child was starting to get on my nerves. "Often times people will appoint business partners or associates to be executors of a will because they are close enough to the deceased to look out for their interests, but they aren't grieving the way that family members often do. It's often easier for them to make decisions that are too painful for the family to make."
"But my father knew I would take care of things for him," I murmured as I studied the papers in front of me. "This doesn't make sense."
"I think your father knew that it was possible that you might not be around to take care of this, Ryan," he said gently.
"Goddamnit, don't talk to me like I'm a child!" I shouted. "My father chose his business partner over me to ensure that his affairs were taken care of, that's the bottom line. So what do I need to do?"
"There's nothing for you to do right now," he said as he looked over a checklist of things that needed to be done. "Your father's will is in probate until a judge can verify that it's authentic and that the assets are, indeed, his."
"If you have to verify authenticity, then why is Julian allowed to function as executor?" I asked. Suddenly I wondered what Weller's investment in this was.
"Your father and Mr. Baines signed the paperwork naming Baines as executor separate from the will," he said. "That's not in question, only the will itself."
"I see," I said. This all sounded fishy to me, and with the foreclosure on the apartment, I wondered what was going on. "Then I need to check with Mr. Baines about my father's body?"
"Yes, exactly!" Weller cheered as if excited that I had grasped a difficult concept.
"What about his accounts? How is Eva going to live, if she has no money?" I said avoiding mentioning the fact that I had no place to live.
"Mrs. Powell has been well taken care of," Weller said. "I assure you that she will not want for anything while the will is being moved through the probate system."
"Very well," I said. "Is there anything else I need to know about my father's will? I don't want any surprises."
"Well, I'm not sure how to tell you this, Mr. Powell," he said looking nervously a
t the sheet in his hand. "But you've been disinherited."
"What?" I was stunned by this news.
"Your father eliminated you from his will when he married Mrs. Powell, it seems," he said as he pushed another paper toward me. I looked at it and immediately knew something was fishy, but I said nothing.
"I see," I nodded. "Well, I guess those are the breaks, aren't they, Mr. Weller?"
The surprised look on Weller's face was worth the struggle to keep my emotions in check. I wanted to throttle the guy and make him tell me what was really going on, but I knew that this was something larger and that if I played my hand now, I'd never get the information I needed to make it right.
"Well, win some lose some, right, Mr. Weller?" I shrugged. "I guess I'm going to have to check in with Eva and see what I can do to get something from her."
"That sounds like a solid plan," Weller nodded looking relieved that I wasn't going to push the issue. "If there's any way I can help you, please don't hesitate to let me know."
"Oh, I won't," I said as I shook his hand and held his gaze. "I definitely won't."
As I left the office, I thought about how I was going to deal with the problem of my father's will. None of this was adding up, but I didn't have enough pieces to put the whole puzzle together. As I stepped off of the elevator and headed across the lobby, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I stepped out into the warm afternoon sunshine and checked it. There were four messages. The first one said "Meet me downstairs at Nemo's" and the other three read: "Come home now. Urgent."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Echo
I took a cab back to my apartment before I remembered that I'd given Ryan my keys. I texted him from the cab and told him that I'd gotten fired and was headed home. Aside from the fact that I had no job, I was glad that I'd gotten out of there. In the three days since Dr. Powell's death, it had become obvious to me that the only reason I enjoyed working at TriCorp was because he was my boss.
We pulled up in front of my building and after I'd paid the driver, I hauled my things into Nemo's. They'd just opened up for the early lunch crowd, and I grabbed a table in the back and set my stuff down. Mando came out from the back with a questioning look on his face.
"I got fired," I said gesturing at the box and bags.
"What the hell?" he said. "What happened?"
"My boss died and the guy in charge is convinced that I'm hiding something," I said. Mando looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.
"Your boss died and his boss thinks you're doing something illegal?" he asked.
"Well, I might be," I grinned. "Now."
"Do I even want to know any of this?" he laughed.
"Not unless you want to be called as a material witness in a trial," I said.
"Then don't tell me anything except why you are camping out here instead of going up to your apartment," he said.
"I gave my keys to the guy who is staying with me because I thought he'd be back before me," I said.
"You've got a boyfriend now?" he asked as a wounded look crossed his face. We'd been down this road a couple of times and while I'd been perfectly clear about the fact that we were not going to wind up as anything more than just friends, Cece told me that Mando harbored fantasy thoughts of sweeping me off my feet and riding off into the sunset.
"No, not a boyfriend, just a friend staying with me," I said. I didn't want to encourage him, but he was my friend and I wasn't going to lie to him.
"How did you meet this friend?" he asked.
"What is this, twenty questions with Mando?" I laughed as I lightly slugged his shoulder.
"I'm just looking out for you, Echo," he said looking at me very seriously. "New York is a dangerous city and I don't like the idea of a stranger staying in your apartment."
"It's okay, Mando," I said as I soothed his bruised feelings. "He's my boss's son, and he's a Navy SEAL. He's honorable. I promise."
"A Navy SEAL, no shit?" Mando said shaking his head. "Wait, if his dad was your boss, why doesn't he have a place of his own to stay?"
"Long story," I said. "Can I get something to eat while I wait for him to get back and then I'll introduce you guys?"
"I'm not sure I want to meet the Navy SEAL sleeping in your apartment," he grumbled as he walked back to the kitchen to fix me a plate. I knew he was half acting the hurt feelings and that he understood why I would take a complete stranger into my home. He and Cece had done the same thing a million times, and I was one of the beneficiaries of their largesse.
I moved my box to the floor and took a seat at the table facing the door. If Ryan came in, I wanted him to be able to see me right away. I picked up my phone and texted him to meet me at Nemo's when he got back. Then I pulled out my laptop and began working on the project I'd begun before I left TriCorp.
It wasn't that I wanted to hack into their system and do any damage; I just wanted to retain my ability to get email from their server. So, I checked the bug I'd left and found that it had maintained the open space in the server just the way I'd intended; however, there was a good chance that it would be recognized by the IT department when they did a sweep, so I set to work coding a hiding place that they'd be unlikely to find.
With that taken care of, I went back to the original message from Dr. Powell. I re-read it several times and I understood his instructions as asking me to hold the files until he could safely retrieve them, but now I wondered whether I should open up the attached file since we already knew he was dead. I wavered until Mando brought my food, and then I set the computer aside to eat. Mando sat with me as I declared my lunch the best lunch he'd ever made and then smiling, he returned to the kitchen to prep for the lunch rush.
I pulled out the computer and flipped through the email one more time, and this time I saw something I'd previously missed. There was a small link underneath Dr. Powell's signature on the note he'd written to me. I hadn't seen it before because it was white lettering on a white background. I clicked the link and watched as my computer quickly opened a browser tab. When I saw what was on the page, I picked up my phone and began urgently texting Ryan every ten minutes saying: Come home now. Urgent.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ryan
The cab ride back to Echo's felt like it took hours even though the driver was kind of a maniac. I spent the ride texting Echo trying to find out what was so urgent.
Ryan_SEAL: what's going on?
Echo_Frost: can't tell you. hurry back.
Ryan_SEAL: just tell me
Echo_Frost: listen SEAL, no intel, got it?
Ryan_SEAL: sarcasm not appreciated
Echo_Frost: duly noted. hurry. @Nemo's
Ryan_SEAL: gotcha be there soon
When I walked through the door and saw her, I felt my jeans get a little tighter. She sat in the corner furiously typing on her laptop with a serious expression on her face while her long blond hair fell in waves around her face. She looked like a tech version of a DaVinci painting, and I couldn't help but stop and admire her.
"Ryan, what are you doing?" she called as she waved me over to the table. "Get over here!"
I walked over and sat down on the opposite side of the table and watched as she pounded on the keyboard for a few seconds then looked up.
"What's up?" I asked.
"I got fired, and then I got an email from your father," she said.
"Come again?" I said as I looked at her then looked around at the restaurant trying to decide if I was having another nightmare.
"Baines fired me this morning," she said. "He told me my services were no longer needed and that I was being relieved of my duties. He then told me to clean out my office and warned me not to take anything before he had me escorted off the premises."
"Baines fired you this morning? As soon as you went into work?" I asked. Suddenly the meeting with Jack Waller became even more suspicious than it had been an hour before.
"Yeah, but here's the weird part," she continued as she tapped a few keys and then tur
ned the laptop around to face me. "I went to check my email one more time and I found a message from your father."
I took a minute to read the message and then looked up at Echo before saying, "He knew."
"Knew what?" she asked as she turned the computer back around and then tapping at the keys again.
"He knew that Julian was up to something," I said. "He knew he might not be able to prevent it from happening, but he knew that he could trust you with the information in case his worst fears came true."
"I think they did, Ryan," she said as she turned the computer back around and showed me a web page that looked like a bunch of military training videos. There was no sound but the men who were men running around were obviously exerting a lot of energy as they completed tasks and trained. The video cut off after twenty-seconds, and Echo pulled the screen back.
"Ryan, these are live training videos of the Russian troops near the border," she said.
"How do you know they're live?" I asked as she turned the computer back around and showed me a whole new batch of footage.
"Because there is a camera there recording everything they do and it refreshes ever thirty- seconds," she said. "Your father knew that they were prepping for something big."
"That's just training footage of one area," I said as I waved her off. "If you took footage of any military base in the States you'd find the same thing, don't read too much into it."
"Ryan, there are thousands of links to training areas all over the country and they are all doing the same thing," she said as she pointed to the list running down the right hand side of the screen. "They are preparing for war."