He glared at her and then licked his lips and grinned.
“Haven't had a real fight in a while, babe.” His voice sounded deep, gravelly, with a hint of surfer.
“Well, here you go, babe!” She had learned his pattern now and spun into a set of feints, kicks, and elbows that gave her four more good strikes to his head and kidneys. He came up from the last one with his De Lisle pointed at her.
“Enough, bitch! If you want to survive this—”
“Screw survival. I want satisfaction!” Alice sang under her breath as she re-directed the barrel of the carbine, dancing in with her elbow to the gunman's jaw. She grabbed the stock of the weapon out of his hands and stepped back with the barrel in her left hand and the stock in her right. As the gunman shook his head to clear it, she aimed the weapon at him, dropping back enough so he couldn't pull the same trick on her.
Charging, he tried anyway. The subsonic bullets punched him backward, two striking his vest and knocking him down, but the last one punched through his throat and out the top of his head.
Shoot! She had meant to keep him alive. The De Lisle’s trigger took less force to pull than she expected, firing three shots when she meant for only two. Wow, this is a quiet gun.
Then, her legs shaking, she collapsed in a heap to the floor as the adrenaline rush gave way to the sudden realization that she'd killed a man—with skills she barely knew she had. Shaking badly, she stayed seated on the floor. She could not stand. Jenny said the seizures that occasionally froze various parts of her body might come less frequently as her brain healed. At least her brain had waited until after the fight to have its internal electrical storm.
When she got her legs working again, she stood up and searched the man. Inside his flak jacket, she found a wallet. A little money, credit cards, license. Jake Hannover. California, Los Angeles. Federal ID. FBI badge. She'd killed a federal agent! Not a good way to end the day. Wait, these guys don't work alone, do they? She thought she better get moving.
Alice went back into Sara's room and took the photo out of the frame. That could be useful. On the back of the photo she saw a handwritten note:
"One Particular Harbor,” and a one-word signature, “Sam.”
She had no idea what the words might mean, and she needed to get moving, so she rolled the picture up and stuck it in her shirt.
Dead Jake carried three extra magazines for the De Lisle on his belt, but it would not be easy to carry the long weapon around without people noticing. She remembered a canvas shopping bag crumpled in one of the closets. She got that, partially broke the carbine down, and put it in.
In Jake’s pocket she found a fine-looking, slim smartphone. She made a few tries at guessing the pass code, looking at combinations of his address, birthday, and city from his ID. Most people used those. Jake apparently did not. She thought about putting the phone in her bag to deal with later. Then, she heard leave it, in her head. It can be tracked. Alice dropped the phone.
She took Jake's money and his wallet to make it a little harder for whoever found him to discover his identity. She realized she had left too many prints in here to clean them all up. Burn the place down? A fire would just attract attention. Other than the mess she and Jake made, the building looked as though no one had been inside for some time. The bills must be on auto-pay. It could be a while before anyone found Jake here. No one had ever cleaned up the blood in the medical room, after all.
She shouldered her bag and went to the door to look out. The rest of the office park appeared deserted. She carefully opened the door and walked out into the night.
After the fight at Moore’s office, Alice felt exhausted. She asked Ami to find her a cheap, anonymous hotel, and Ami led her to one on Thirty-Fourth Street in St. Petersburg. Seeing the room, Alice talked with Ami about what the star ratings on Google search might mean. “Next time tell me whether the review says ‘reminds me of a total crack den’—that is not a good review. We don’t want to stay at motels people say are like crack dens, Ami!” Ami thanked Alice, saying she needed feedback to improve her recommendations. And they call this a smartphone!
The next day, still tired and shaken, somewhat more from the battle with Jake than from the dirty, noisy motel, on the bridge that heads south from St. Petersburg and over Tampa Bay, Alice found a rest area where she pulled off into a space right next to the sparkling waves. She parked there, staring back at the bridge’s span in awe. After all the traumatic events of the last twenty-four hours, she needed to sit quietly, stare out over the azure water, and breathe.
The Sunshine Skyway stretches over four miles across Tampa Bay from St. Petersburg to Terra Ceia. Two triangular sheets of steel like the sails of a huge ship hold aloft its span. With the noontime Florida sun on them, they appeared to Alice to be shining white ships crossing a wine-dark sea, like the boats of the Elves in a book called The Silmarillion. Jenny had given it to her to read while she recovered, and the thick book had left its own deep gash in her mind. Some of the Elves in the book returned to try to fix the world they left behind. That noble effort did not turn out well for them. Maybe I should take Jenny’s advice and go back to the slopes of Mount Hood while I still can!
After a time, she needed to pee, and she left her car and went into the public bathrooms at the parking area. When she returned, sweating from the noonday heat and with a cold Pepsi from the machine, she decided to figure out her next move. She picked up her phone and pulled the folded photograph from her pocket. The four people in the photo stared back at Alice. Two were dead, Sara and Peter. The other two were the only clues she had. She thought about how she had gotten Moore’s address from his phone number. If only there was a way to get that kind of information from a photograph!
Then she remembered something from the book she read on the plane from Portland.
“Ami, is there a way to get a person’s name from a picture of them?”
“There is an app called Facesearch. You take a picture of the picture with my camera. It only works if there is a news article, public record, or social media site with the person’s name on it.”
“Fantastic!” Alice downloaded the app and then carefully took a picture of the photograph. She focused in on the woman first. The app ran for a few minutes, and then made a sad phweet sound.
“Aw, that didn’t work, Ami!”
“We discover the limits of the possible.”
“What?”
“Sorry. You also modified my irony setting when you changed my hotel search preferences.”
“Ah, I’m still getting used to your touchscreen!” Alice took a picture of the unknown man and fed it to the Facesearch thing.
“I hope it works this time, Ami.”
“It will be indistinguishable from magic if it does!”
“Ami, how do I disable that irony thing?”
Just then came a cheerful ding ding ding from the phone.
A photo appeared on the screen with the caption, “Tomas Guzman secures funding to open new restaurant in the Harbor Tower.”
“Yes!” Alice did a little dance in her seat. “Ami, where’s this located?”
“The Harbor Tower is at fourteen twenty-nine Brickell Bay Drive, Miami, United States. That is four hours and fifteen minutes away from here.”
Alice looked at the time. Twelve fourteen. “Ami, is there a hotel about halfway?” She would need some time to prepare.
“There is a Holiday Inn in Fort Myers. It has a rating of four point five out of five with six reviews. A room will cost—”
“Awesome, Ami, you learn fast!” Alice had done enough thinking for today. She wished she could find a beach and swim in the warm sea right now, yet she wanted to put as much distance between herself and the dead body at Moore’s office as she could.
“Ami, take me to that hotel.”
Chapter 7, The Hardest Part
Faith
Faith Parcy sat in one of the smaller meeting rooms of the Wardman Park Marriott hotel. She had just given
a presentation to potential investors in her private security company. It didn't go well. She had already let her staff and her offices go. She had money in the bank for only two more months’ rent on her apartment.
“Are you Faith Parcy?”
She looked up to see a man in an expensive-looking suit, well tailored to his unusual form. With broad shoulders, a large waist, and tiny, useless legs, he rolled up to the door of the room.
She looked at him again, seeing red hair, a bumpy nose, and a wheelchair. A very expensive wheelchair—she recognized it as one of the Segway-derived contraptions that could rise up and roll on two wheels, though the man kept it in the conventional format now, on all four wheels.
“That's my name. Yours is?”
“Trevor. Trevor Martel.”
“Trevor? Your parents have an unusual sense of humor.”
The man actually smiled at that. “Ha, yes Faith, my father is very unusual. I could tell you stories. But that isn't what I'm here for.”
“What are you here for?”
The man grinned up at her. “May I come in, Faith?”
“Why do you want to come in?”
“Well, I’d like to stop blocking the door, as I suspect that makes you uncomfortable. Also, I have a job for you if you are interested. I’d like to tell you about it.”
Faith thought a moment. What did she have but a rented meeting room, one she would be leaving soon, empty-handed? She swept her hand to the side.
He rolled in. “So how did the meeting go?”
“To hell in a bucket.”
Trevor’s grin grew deeper. “I saw Jerry sing that in Berkeley, in eighty-three, great song.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Martel?”
Trevor pulled out a bag from somewhere in his chair. Faith reached under her vest where the .45 in her bellyband rested.
“Relax, Faith, I'm not going to pull a bazooka out of my wheelchair. This is Gran Centenario Leyenda and two shot glasses.”
That shocked Faith a little. Not only was Centanario one of her favorite tequilas, but a bottle also cost a great deal of money.
“I'm not sure the hotel allows liquor in here.”
Trevor looked pained. “I’m quite sure it will be fine, Faith. I’ve stayed here before, and I am an extreme tipper.”
He put the shot glasses on the conference room’s table, opened the bottle, and poured two shots of the caramel-colored liquid.
“Please, Faith, let us toast.”
“I haven't heard the offer yet.”
“I haven’t made an offer yet. Toast not to an offer I might make, but to fine tequila on a fine day.” He raised his glass. “To the things we know we have.”
“Well, when you put it that way…” Faith picked up the glass nearest to Trevor and sipped it. Trevor smiled broadly at that and picked up the other glass. He raised it to her and then took a sip of his own. “Mm, I love the taste of agave.” Trevor closed his eyes and tilted his head back, and all of a sudden Faith thought of a cat with a bowl of cream.
His eyes snapped open. “Faith, I’d like to hire you for a job.”
“Which is?”
Trevor took another sip and put the half-empty shot glass down. “Sadly, the job is not tasting fine Tequila. No, I need you to find something that’s been stolen.”
“Call the police.”
“This isn't the kind of thing the police are good for. Faith, I want you.”
“Recovering stolen property isn't something I do, either, Trevor. I keep people from being killed.”
“Among other things. Recently, I know you found something that a thief took from an Arab diplomat. Something stolen right out from under his security, and even the FBI couldn't recover it. You found who was behind the theft. With your underworld contacts, you located the… baby. You then revealed who committed the crime to that diplomat, Abdullah Mishari, and the kidnapper was killed by an assassin.”
Faith’s jaw dropped open. “How…” she sputtered.
“My… boss hired the assassin, but the killer did only part of the job. He took a computer tablet from the thief. We think this tablet contains information, such as the reason Mishari's baby was kidnapped, and we need to know that.”
Stunned by what he had just said, Faith managed to croak, “So you work for Mishari?”
“Let’s just say he’s a friend. You stopped a terrible thing from happening. We'd like to hire you to for a similar job. The information on the tablet could hurt some people I care about if it doesn’t get returned to us.”
Faith looked around. If she didn't come back with a solid investment from this meeting, then the dream ended. After Mishari, she had gotten overconfident and expanded too fast. Taken jobs she shouldn’t have. Things had fallen apart. Maybe she could earn enough from this man to begin to rebuild.
She looked at him. “So what’s this all worth to you?”
“You came to this meeting looking for what—five hundred thousand to fund you for a year?”
“Something like that.”
“Find the tablet, Ms. Parcy, and you will have it.”
“That easy?”
“One third when you accept the job.”
“When?” Leaving the glasses, Trevor picked up the bottle and turned his chair around. “If you could follow me, I’ll fill you in on the way.”
Faith looked around one last time. Then she followed the soft electric whine of the chair down the hall.
The stretched Escalade took up three parking places outside the hotel. It looked like a beached battleship among the svelte Porsches and Lexuses. Trevor rolled in front of her, and the side door opened sideways like a clamshell, lowering a platform. He turned to her, “I know it's a bit ‘Tupac’s Back,’ but I need the height to get my chair in.”
Faith thought that an Econoline would be tall enough also but kept it to herself. She got it; this man was so wealthy that he just did what he wanted without worrying.
As she stepped inside, rich leather mixed with a clean, piney smell wafted over her. Not cheap air freshener piney, this scent reminded her of actual trees by a river on a summer day. It has been a long time since I smelled the real thing! She sat down into the cloud-soft seat as Trevor did something that closed the doors up. “Hello, Ms. Parcy,” said a booming voice from the seat opposite her. “I’m Laird, Laird Northwin, head of Apple Creek’s Guardian Security division.” Trevor lifted himself from his wheelchair and sat next to Laird, looking like a dwarf beside him. “This is the man I represent, the one who wants his tablet back.”
As her eyes adjusted, she studied Northwin. Though he was seated, she could tell he stood over six feet and looked to be built like a block of iron. He had a craggy face with a nose that appeared to have been shattered several times. Short, dark hair shot with gray. It looked dyed. She thought that strange, but then the whole scene seemed strange.
“Thank you for trusting Trevor here enough to speak with me.”
“Well, I'm not sure if it’s trust of Trevor or the tequila I’m feeling now.” She grinned.
“Ah, yes, that is good sh—a good vintage. Martel, we should have another round.” Northwin gestured at Trevor.
“Well, okay, sir, but shouldn't we conduct business before pleasure?”
“Nonsense, Gran Centenario is business!”
Trevor reached over to his chair and retrieved the bottle. Fresh glasses stood in the mini-bar on his right.
“Ms. Parcy, are you interested in another?”
“Sure!” Faith had lasted eight years of the army, the last three as a female operator in Delta’s Funny Platoon, followed by five years in the FBI until that bastard Stoddard did his housecleaning. You didn’t do all that with a weak stomach. She knew fine liquor to be an essential part of how some men discuss business deals. With the quality of this bottle, that bothered her not one bit.
Trevor poured and raised a toast. “To the queen!”
Faith laughed at that, as did Northwin, and they all sipped the amber
liquid as the hidden driver pulled the limo out into traffic.
After a bit, Faith looked at Northwin. “So your tablet got stolen?”
“Yeah, my stolen tablet has stolen information on it. Our thieving friend gathered it in secret, using unauthorized access to our systems and files. The assassin we sent took it. I tried to pay him extra for it. He keeps raising his price and won’t settle.”
Faith thought Northwin seemed a bit robotic in his repetition of this story, as if he had rehearsed it or repeated it many times. She decided it must be the latter. I am not the first one he’s asked for help.
“This data is on the tablet? Are you sure that’s the only place it is? It seems as if everyone keeps their stuff in the cloud these days.”
Trevor spoke then, “The thief would not have trusted any Google or Oracle server. This is much too sensitive, too important to load onto even the most heavenly cloud. No, we think the data is stored directly on the tablet and encrypted there and well protected as such things go.”
“Well, wouldn’t the assassin have copied the data onto another location by now?”
“He can't,” Trevor snapped. “To view or even to move the data, he needs a key that he doesn't have.”
“How do you know that?”
“Our thief ordered the tablet on his credit card. We tracked it and ordered the same one. The tablets come with a hardware key. They make them to look like necklaces. There are several styles you can choose from.”
Faith found it odd that while Trevor worked for Northwin, Trevor took the lead in this discussion. Maybe he was more technical than Northwin.
She leaned back. “I’m still not sure I am the best one for this job.” Let’s see how much they want me!
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