A groggy voice answered on the fifth ring.
"…Uh?"
"Cody?"
"…uh, yeah, who is this?"
"It's Kelsey. I'm sorry to bother you so early but I need your—"
He was suddenly awake. "Kelsey? Kelsey Coe?"
"Do you know any other Kelseys?"
"Uh, no, uh—I just figured the last person who'd ever call me is you."
"Why would you think that?"
"You made it pretty clear that you weren't interested and—"
"That doesn't mean I don't consider you a friend," I said.
Of course, it didn't help that we usually only saw each other in class, and coffee at the campus cafeteria was far from a regular thing.
"Anyway," I went on, "I've got a bit of an emergency and I need your help."
"What kind of emergency?"
"Life or death. Can I come over? I need to speak to you in person."
"It's like three in the morning. And I've only had two hours sleep."
"I'm sorry, Cody, but this really is life or death. I don't know who else to call."
"So I take it's a computer thing?"
"More of a hacker thing, really."
"Hacker?"
"I need you to break into someplace you don't belong."
There was just enough of a pause that I wondered if I had crossed a line of some sort.
Then he said, "Well, shit. Why didn't you tell me that in the first place?"
TWENTY-THREE
"Who the hell is this?" Cody asked.
He stood in his doorway, staring directly at Parker, who waited behind me in the apartment house corridor. Cody looked exactly as you might expect him to look after only a couple hours sleep.
I knew how he felt.
"He's a friend of mine," I said. "He's part of the reason I need your help."
"He looks like a cop. Are you a cop?"
"Used to be," Parker said. "Not anymore."
Cody shifted his gaze to me, his eyes so red you could use them to adjust the color on your television screen. "So let me get this straight. You want me to do something potentially illegal in front of this guy?"
"Not potentially," I said. "But don't worry, he's cool with it."
"Doesn't mean I am. Is he like your boyfriend or something?"
"I just met him last night." I thought about all that had transpired since then and felt a bit self-conscious, thinking Parker and I had the telltale look of two people who had just rolled out of bed. Or off a computer lab carpet. "Are you gonna let us in or not?"
Cody eyed us warily, then finally stepped aside and let us pass. "If I don't get at least one date out of this, I am the world's biggest loser."
"I'll go on a dozen dates with you if you can do what we need you to do."
He grinned. "Does that mean you'll sleep with me, too?"
I turned to Parker. "This was a mistake. Let's go."
Cody held up his hands. "Relax, all right? I was joking. But a guy can dream, can't he?"
I didn't want to think about what kind of dreams he had in mind, but I let it pass.
"Fine," I said. "Why don't we get down to business?"
He gestured. "Sure, have a seat. Tell me what you need."
We looked around the room for a place to sit, but the sofa and chairs were piled high with comic books in plastic sleeves. Every other surface, including the floor, seemed to be littered with miniature action figures. Across from the sofa was a computer desk, flush against the wall, with six computer monitors on top.
That's right. Six. Two rows of three.
Why on earth would anyone need that many monitors?
Cody hustled to remove a couple stacks of the comics off the sofa and again told us to sit. I took him up on the invitation, but Parker opted to shove his hands in his pockets and stay on his feet.
Cody glanced at him nervously, then spun his swivel chair away from the desk and sat facing us. "Okay, so what's the big emer…" He paused, frowning at my dirty bare feet. "What happened to your shoes?"
"Long story," I said, then pulled a thumb drive from my pants pocket.
Parker had procured it from the lab attendant's desk, located in a far corner of the Blue Ridge computer room. The desk had been locked, but Parker did a little maneuver with a pick he kept in his wallet that I'd found almost as impressive as his not so little deputy.
I held the drive out to Cody. "There's a picture of a woman on here. The name she gave me is Emily Finn, but she's also known as Mia Duncan. We figure that's probably an alias, too."
Cody took it from me and turned it in his fingers. "And what do you want me to do?"
"Run it through a facial recognition scanner," Parker said. "Try to see what you can dig up."
Cody frowned. "Do I look like cop central here? What makes you think I have facial recognition software?"
"We don't," I said. "But the Houston U.S. Marshal's office has it, and I figured if you've really got those mean wizard skills you're always bragging about, you can tap into their network and run the photo."
Cody looked offended. "I'm not always bragging about it."
"Really? Every time I talk to you, you offer to change my Econ grade and tell me nobody'll ever know you were in the system. Was that just talk or do you really have the skills?"
"Okay, so I brag a little."
"That doesn't answer her question," Parker said. "Are you capable of doing this or not?"
Cody puffed himself up. "Yeah, I can do it, but screw the U.S. Marshal's office. The Hunter City PD has the same software and a network that's so full of holes it's a joke."
"So you've done it before?"
"Once or twice. Just for a laugh."
Parker gestured to the computer screens. "Then let's get to it."
It sounded more like a command than a request and Cody bobbed his head affirmatively, then spun around and shoved the thumb drive into a USB slot.
A moment later the screen blossomed with the photograph of a comely redhead wearing nothing but a pink barrette, her legs positioned in a way that suggested she was a lifelong contortionist.
"Whoa," Cody said. "Is this the woman you're talking about?"
Parker's face reddened and he shook his head. "That must have been on the drive already. Click forward."
Cody did as he was told and after several more shots of the redhead in painful poses (showing us more of her anatomy than any normal human being could ever want to see), he finally found the photo of Emily and me.
"That's her," I said. "Emily Finn aka Mia Duncan. We need everything you can find on her."
"You look like twins."
"And therein lies the problem," Parker told him.
"So what is this—like a stolen identity thing?"
"Something like that. How long do you think this'll take?"
Cody shrugged. "Getting in takes seconds, but it might be a few hours before we get a hit, assuming we get one at all."
"She didn't just materialize," Parker told him. "With her reputation, she's bound to have something on record."
Cody frowned. "Who exactly is this woman?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out," I said.
TWENTY-FOUR
It took nearly four hours to get a hit.
I had fallen asleep on the sofa and Parker had made room on a chair and stretched his legs out. He was dozing when Cody's computer started beeping, jarring us both awake.
Cody was nowhere in sight.
I got to my feet and looked at the monitors, but they were all blank. As the computer continued to beep, I turned, worked my way through the maze of junk and found Cody in the bedroom. He was sprawled across his mattress in a pair of tighty whities, his mouth open, drooling on the bed sheet.
I nudged his foot. "Cody wake up, your computer is beeping."
He stirred and mumbled something, but didn't wake.
I nudged him again. "Come on, Cody, I think we've got a hit."
He stirred again, but still n
o joy.
I climbed onto the mattress and got close to his ear. "Cody, get up. Your computer is beeping."
His eyes flew open. After a moment of confusion, he registered my face and smiled. "I wish every morning could start like this."
"And I wish you slept with clothes on. Now hurry up and get dressed. I want to see what it found."
When we got into the living room, Parker was standing at the computer, jabbing at keys on the keyboard, trying to get the beast to shut the hell up.
Cody—now wearing a ratty terrycloth robe—said, "You're wasting your time," then motioned him aside and pressed a thumb against what I assumed was a fingerprint reader to the right of the keyboard. A second later the beeping stopped and the screens came to life.
On the center top screen was the facial recognition software showing an enlarged version of the photo we'd given to Cody, cropped to isolate Emily in the frame. There was a translucent red grid superimposed over her face, and the words ACCURACY: 100% in the lower left corner of the screen.
That looked promising.
On the screen directly below this, was another photo of Emily—this one a somber mug shot, complete with slate marked AUSTIN PD, dated eight years earlier.
Eight years?
If she was the same age as me—as she had claimed—then that would make her sixteen at the time this mug shot was taken. But there was no way that Emily was younger than twenty in the photo, which would make her at least twenty-eight today.
So she'd lied about that, too.
"Is there a file attached to this?" Parker asked.
Cody hit a few keys and a document filled the screen. "Says here she was arrested for soliciting prostitution in downtown CS under the name Anastasia Brantov."
Parker and I exchanged a look.
The name sounded Ukrainian.
I thought about Taggart's friends in the black SUV.
"What else does it say?" I asked.
"Not much. Just that bail was posted and a court date was set."
"Who posted bail?" Parker said. "Her?"
Cody squinted at the screen and shook his head. "Some guy named Papanov."
Parker and I exchanged another look. "Anton Papanov?"
"That's the one, yeah."
In case you've forgotten in all the excitement, Anton Papanov was the businessman Emily had assassinated in Houston. Posing as a call girl, no less. And if she'd known Papanov well enough to be bailed out by him eight years ago, what was their relationship and why had she killed him?
And, assuming Taggart's friends were Papanov's associates, why didn't they know what she looked like?
Parker said, "Are there any other files attached to this one?"
Cody hit a few keys and scrolled through the pages. "Some court documents. That's about it. Looks like she was convicted and paid a thousand dollar fine."
"Can you do a wider search?"
"Sure. What are you looking for?"
"Anything you can find on Brantov after she made bail, and whether or not she's still using that name. I want to know everything there is to know about her, including where she lives."
"That's a pretty tall order," Cody said. "What exactly did this woman do to you guys?"
"You probably wouldn't believe us if we told you."
TWENTY-FIVE
In the movies it always takes the obligatory computer geek about fifteen seconds to find the exact information he needs.
My obligatory computer geek was the real thing, however, working in the real world. And in the real world it wasn't simply a matter of typing the name Anastasia Brantov into a search bar and hitting RETURN.
Cody was forced to wade through a sea of information to find anything specific, clicking from database to database, website to website, as he tried to trace Emily's activities since her arrest and conviction for prostitution eight years earlier, and assemble the puzzle of who she really was.
Knowing that this would take awhile, Parker opted to save some time by heading out to pick up his rental car. He had parked it downtown near the bus stop, so it was possible it might not even be there. But he had promised to return with transportation of some kind, in anticipation of tracking Emily down.
"You sure you don't want to cuff me to a chair?" I asked as we said goodbye at the door. "You know—just in case."
"I'd much rather pin you to the floor again. But there'll be time for that later."
"Let's hope so."
Strange how the entire dynamic of a relationship can change in just a few short hours. But I wasn't complaining. In fact, I was starting to think that all those romance books that talk about love at first sight might not be so far-fetched after all. When the chemistry is there, it's there. And I would have been foolish to ignore it.
Parker smiled and we kissed. "Make sure you lock up after me. Be back soon."
Now, an hour or so later, Cody was finally at a point where he thought he could share some useful information with me. I sat on the sofa, leafing through one of his comic books, thinking that only women with gargantuan boobs were allowed to apply for super hero status, when he finally looked up from his collection of screens and gestured.
"I think I have this figured out."
I tossed the comic book aside and got to my feet. "What've you got?"
"I'm not gonna go through every step and show you all the cross-references and detours, but I know where you guys can find Anastasia Brantov."
"All right, where?"
"The Memorial Garden Cemetery in Austin."
"What?"
He pointed to a newspaper clipping on the top center screen. "She died in a motel fire about three months after the mug shot was taken, along with six other people. Turns out they were all members of a Ukrainian prostitution ring."
"And how does Anton Paponov fit in?"
"He doesn't, other than the name in the bail records."
"Which means he was probably part of the ring, but managed to escape the fire."
"Assuming he was at the motel at all."
"But what about Anastasia? We know she escaped, too, so what happened to her?"
Cody smiled. "That's where things get a little tricky, but I decided to run the facial scan again, narrowing the time and location data and compensating for any changes in appearance, like hair and eye color."
"And?"
"I got a hit on a woman who applied for and received a Texas driver's license at the Townhurst branch of the Houston DMV two months after the fire."
Cody jabbed a key on his keyboard and Emily's face filled the bottom center screen, a Texas driver's license showing her with short, dark hair and brown eyes. The card had been issued to Natalie Tevis.
Emily, Mia, Anastasia, Natalie.
How the hell did she keep track of all these names?
"I ran a check and there's a Natalie Tevis in Dallas who died twenty-four years ago when she was only two. So our girl used her birth certificate to get a Social Security number under that name, then opened bank accounts and applied for this license."
I tapped the image on screen. "You think the address is current?"
"No," he said. "It's a fake. I did a Google search and it points to a vacant lot. But when I ran a check on the social security number, I found loan documents for a condo purchased two years ago in downtown Houston. They also show that she's employed as a software training manager for a firm with offices all over the world. And based on her travel records, she spends a lot of time bouncing from location to location."
"The perfect cover," a voice behind us said.
Both Cody and I jumped in surprise and spun around.
Parker stood in the doorway.
"Jesus," I said. "Don't do that. You scared the hell out of us."
"Then you should've locked this door like I told you to." He closed and locked it behind him and came into the room carrying two bulky plastic bags. "You've gotta be more careful, Kelsey."
I nodded, feeling like an idiot. "You're right. I'm sorry. I must'
ve gotten distracted."
He gestured to Cody. "I'll bet if you check her travel records against the dates of any contract killings or suspicious deaths in those locations, you'll find a lot of matches."
Cody's brows went up. "So she's like a hit woman?"
"That's exactly what she is."
Cody turned to me. "What the hell are you getting me involved in?"
"Don't worry," I said. "She isn't after any of us. It's actually the other way around."
A look of complete bafflement washed over Cody's face. "You're trying to catch a hit woman? A freaking hit woman?"
"That's what it boils down to, yeah."
"I told you you wouldn't believe it," Parker said, as he gestured to the screens. "What's in the newspaper clipping? What did I miss?"
I caught him up on the Ukrainian prostitution ring and Anastasia's supposed death in a motel fire.
He said, "What do you bet that was her first hit. And she was so desperate to get out of there, she didn't care who she had to kill to do it." He thought for a moment. "It also puts a whole new spin on the Papanov assassination. If he was part of the ring, killing him may have been personal instead of business."
"But why wait so long?" I asked.
"We're talking organized crime here. The more distance she puts between her so-called death and Papanov's, the less chance the Ukrainians will figure it out."
"Especially if she can pin it on someone like me," I said.
Cody's bafflement deepened. "Could somebody please rewind and tell me what's going on?"
Parker shook his head. "The less you know, the better. What we need from you right now is the address of that condo Anastasia bought."
Cody looked at Parker, then at me. "Why do I get the feeling I'm never gonna get that date?"
TWENTY-SIX
It was almost nine a.m. when we climbed into Parker's rental car.
As he started the engine, he handed me a cell phone. "I bought a couple of cheap burners. My number's stored in the memory, in case we get separated again."
Identity Unknown (A Parker & Coe, Love and Bullets Thriller Book 1) Page 8