“As long as they’re safe that’s fine for right now,” I agreed. He looked surprised again. “We’ll need them later, but not for a few days. No, I think right now you need a shower, a couple days in a clean bed and some real food. My associate and I have some work to do.”
Q and I stood to leave, Jennifer materialized in the doorway as if by magic.
“You’re leaving? Just like that?” Donnie Meadows asked incredulously. “Where am I going?” he added after a moment. “How do you know I’m not going to kill the crew and steal the boat?”
“We have things to attend to and we need to get you out of Dodge,” I explained. “It’s not safe for you here.”
“As you mentioned,” the young man observed.
“Right, we’ll be in touch in a few days,” I continued. “In the meantime you’re going on a cruise and Jennifer here will see to your needs. If you need to contact me for anything, just tell her,” I gestured at Jennifer, “and we’ll call you.”
“This is the goddamnedest thing,” he mumbled.
“That it is,” I said, turning to leave. “Oh,” I began over my shoulder, “our crew is pretty capable. Killing them might not be so easy. Show him, Jen.”
Jennifer scooped up the Beretta and one of the mags off the table, slapped it home and chambered a round in one smooth motion. She held the gun in a shooting stance, not quite pointing it at the young man’s balls, but not pointing it too far away, either. After a moment she de-cocked the weapon, ejected the mag, racked the slide to clear the chamber and locked the weapon open all with the practiced ease of a professional shooter.
“Here you go,” she said tossing the gun to a rather surprised Don Meadows. “You can keep it, I like mine better.”
“You people are all fucking crazy,” Don Meadows observed bewilderedly, staring dumbly at the gun in his hand, half-empty beer bottle in the other. A man who no longer with the energy or will to fight anyone.
“Some of us more than others,” Q injected with a sly, sideways look my way.
“Pfft. Cat calling the kettle black,” I said defensively.
“I don’t think that’s how that saying goes,” Q observed.
“We should bounce,” I suggested, “it’s going to be a long night.”
We made our way to the dock as the MP’s big diesels thundered to life. The mate and engineer cast off the lines the second we were safely ashore. Mackey used the thrusters to the move the big boat away from the dock and maneuver out into the channel with insolent skill. A minute later the big diesels were boiling the water as the MP headed for open ocean, the spinning radar mast just visible with the help of the navigation lights. Besides radar the MP was fitted with IR cameras, so it was a safe bet Mackey had a better view of the night than any of us.
“On station,” a familiar voice came through the earpiece.
“Welcome back, sweetheart,” I said with genuine warmth. Just because V didn’t like anyone didn’t mean we couldn’t like her.
“What are we doing?” she asked, all business as usual for V.
“We need to pay a visit to Mrs. Meadows’ law firm,” I replied. “Deek, send her the address. Q and I will be going in, I need you to be our eyes in the parking garage.”
“Affirmative,” came the clipped response.
“Didn’t you think it was odd?” I asked Q.
“I think the whole thing is odd.”
“I mean that when he was on the run he didn’t call his wife?” I clarified, turning toward the parking lot as the MP disappeared down the narrow Lake Worth channel.
“Maybe he suspects she was in on it,” he concluded, falling in step next to me.
“Maybe,” I agreed. “What’s even stranger is big law firms hate anything resembling a scandal.”
“And yet our lady friend still has a job,” Q observed.
“Not even paid leave,” I added. “Someone else there is involved, someone high up,” I guessed. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”
4
I ENJOYED THE walk in the warm humidity of a Florida spring evening. This was the best time of year in Florida, one of the two perfect months every year when the tourists and snowbirds were gone and the summer heat hadn’t settled in yet. In another four weeks it would be 80 degrees at 5:30 in the morning but, for now, the air was delicious.
Q drove, as usual, and V checked in before we were out of the parking lot.
“On station,” she said briefly. That meant she already found an out of the way parking spot in the garage of Mrs. Meadows’ office.
“Any trouble getting in?” I asked, somewhat surprised she was in position that fast.
“They waved me right through,” she said, obviously a little surprised herself. As I suspected attractive, exotic women coming in late and unannounced was not unusual and something a smart guard didn’t question.
“Deek, how we looking?”
Deek was using the special high tech options in V’s car to scan the local network.
“Guard shack is on wireless and they’re using the default password,” he scoffed. “Sloppy.”
“Can you get us--”
“I’m in,” Deek interrupted. “What names do you want?”
I gave him the names of two IDs we had in the car and a few minutes later we were pulling into the underground garage. I could just make out V’s car back in one dark corner. Where she was parked would give her a good view of the elevators but was out of sight of the security cameras. Normal people would have been scared to hang out in the dark corners of a parking garage at night but V was one of the things a normal person would be afraid of meeting in the dark.
We parked and waited.
“Okay, working through a wireless router is taking a bit of extra time,” Deek apologized. “From what I can tell their security is all external and supplied by the management company.”
“Good news,” I agreed. “Ninety percent of the management company’s job is keeping homeless people out of the bathrooms.”
“No interior cameras….at least none run by the building people,” Deek confirmed after a few minutes. “No key card on the elevator. The target has floors seven, eight and nine east.”
Q popped the trunk and we picked out the tools we’d need for the job. These days our tools were so light and portable there was no need for the infamous black bag. Lock picks and the camera detector fit easily in a jacket pocket, the digital tools were already loaded on our phones. The wonders of modern technology.
We walked to the elevator and selected the ninth floor. The building was constructed in three sections, with the east and west wings topping out at nine floors and the central tower extending several floors higher. The design of the building always reminded me of bookends and it was all shiny glass, glittering steel and concrete. Real estate was expensive in downtown West Palm and this was the cream of that exclusive crop. The ninth floor was the one with the most windows, a sheltered deck and a rooftop garden. That’s where the executive offices would be.
“So what are we looking for?” Q asked as we entered the upscale elevator.
“No idea,” I confessed. “It’s a long shot anyway. It’s not like they’re going to leave a plot to steal $65 million sitting out on an office table.”
“Probably not,” Q agreed, “but that would be convenient.”
“Bad guys are always so obtuse,” I complained dryly as we passed the fifth floor. The lights clicked up to the top floor. It was a fast trip; the elevators were the high-speed type that gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach.
The doors opened and Q held the door without stepping out. I extended the camera scanner out into the hallway and panned it around. The infrared laser in the unit scanned the area and confirmed there were no surveillance cameras.
“Let’s put ‘em on, gentlemen,” Deek had been blocked by the thick elevator walls but now we were live again. Q and I put on our headsets fitted with small, wireless cameras. Deek could monitor and record everything and go over the footage later. W
e stepped out in the hallway.
“Pan around, please,” Deek asked. We obediently panned around the darkened offices behind heavy glass doors in front of us.
“I’m going to guess no one is storing their gold in that office,” Deek quipped. There was a motion sensor in one corner and contact alarms on the doors, probably an alarm panel around the corner on the wall.
It was true; we were looking at pretty minimal office security. They weren’t worried about anyone breaking in because there was nothing to steal. The case files and paper would be in one of the lower levels and not much of that in the modern world of e-filing legal documents. Up here everything was digital and the real security was probably at the network level.
“The alarm code is 4-3-3-6,” Deek said through our earpieces. I was used to Deek pulling magic out of the air but this one surprised Q and I.
“It was in an email to the secretaries,” Deek explained. “It’s an old email, let’s hope they didn’t change it.”
I had a sudden thought. “Deek, when was the last time you slept?”
There was a moment of silence. “I don’t remember,” he said with a surprised tone. “Maybe a couple days.”
“Okay, as soon as we’re outta here, you’re off grid for 24 hours,” I ordered. “V can cover for you from the beta site.” We had redundancy in all our major systems and V could keep tabs on our universe at the backup command center. She wasn’t good as Deek, or as fast, but V was a quick study and, despite the fact she didn’t like Deek, she learned from him.
“Yeah, okay,” Deek agreed, somewhat meekly for him. He must’ve really been tired.
“Copy,” V responded, always the sparkling conversationalist.
“Let’s see what we can see,” I said, with a nod to Q who stepped forward and used the zip pick on the heavy door locks. Modern pick tools make door locks seem almost worthless as a security device. Although some of the newer locks were getting harder to pick, these weren’t the newer models and, in just a few seconds, Q was holding the door for me, the alarm console beeping a warning in the dark around the corner. I entered the code and two beeps indicated all clear.
“Where do we start?” Q asked.
The way the building was constructed made the office wide but not deep. The reception center was just to the left of the double doors we entered. On the far side was a hallway that led to a row of offices, behind was a single, large office with a separate secretary station.
“Might as well start at the top,” I suggested.
Surprisingly the senior partner’s office wasn’t locked, the reason quickly became obvious. The big guy’s office was spacious and well appointed. There was a meeting room with a long table along the windowed side of the room in front of an absolutely fabulous view across the Intracoastal and the lights of Palm Beach. To our right were couches around a coffee table and a bathroom in the back corner. The desk was sleek and modern, a glass top contoured around a high-back executive chair.
There were some family photos on the desk, a pen holder and an award from the Palm Beach County Chamber of Commerce and that was it. The pictures were the standard family shots, a head shot of the trophy wife, and a family photo taken with a horse with a blue ribbon clipped to its halter. Other than that there was no computer, no phone, and no office equipment of any type. The office wasn’t locked because there was nothing to steal.
“Takes his laptop home,” Q observed.
“And phone,” I added. “Lovely. Deek?”
“I’m into their file server but this is going to take time,” he confessed. “Most of it’s just what you’d expect. Trusts...a lot of those, wills, a handful of divorces, a property rights case over a retaining wall...it’s just rich people legal stuff, boss. Nothing that’s really standing out. There are a shit-ton of files in the corporate section. Going to take a while to sort through those.”
“What’s this?” Q asked, looking at small model on a table on the far side of the meeting room.
What Q found was a scale model of what at first looked like a theme park but the fences and fields gave away its true purpose.
“It’s a horse park,” I said after a minute. “A big one, thousands of acres.” The display was divided into sections which appeared to be different phases of development. The homes were expansive, with horse barns attaching to one end of the opulent homes. The display depicted stables and barns that would have been the envy of any race horse breeder in Kentucky. A long runway was built along one side of the complex, much longer than you’d need for a private jet.
“Where do you suppose it is?” Q asked.
“Brazil.”
“How’d you know that?” he asked.
“It’s right there on the tag,” I pointed out. “Céu Cavalo no Brasil.”
“Horse heaven,” V translated for us, “in Brazil.”
“Sixty five million worth of horse park?” Q asked.
“Not even close,” I shook my head. “Even in Brazil that would be the down payment. It would barely cover the construction of this first section.”
“Two people at the elevator,” V announced. “Man and a woman.”
“This time of night?” I wondered out loud. “Shit!”
“On their way up,” she announced a moment later. Of course this place had the world’s fastest elevators.
“Boss?” Q inquired.
“In there,” I pointed to a small closet away from the meeting room windows, probably where they stored extra chairs and projector screens. Maybe we’d get lucky and they’d be going to a different floor.
The elevator dinged the announcement of our bad luck and we quickly discovered getting us both into the tiny closet was not going to be easy. We were way inside personal space and only a thin sliver of light leaked in between the flimsy doors.
“If you get a boner I’m quitting,” Q hissed.
“Did he say ‘boner’?” Deek asked over the comm link.
“If I get a boner for you I’ll shoot myself,” I countered in a hoarse whisper. “Even if I was gay I could do better than you.”
“Could not,” Q insisted. “If I was gay I’d have a hot boyfriend. Not some old guy.”
“You two want some privacy?” Deek asked.
“Shush, pervert,” I said for the benefit of both Deek and Q as a key rattled in the lobby door.
We could just make out a man and woman’s voice; they were louder than they needed to be, probably drunk. They seemed to be wondering why the alarm wasn’t set. He asked whether they should call the cops, she said something unintelligible. A minute later they came through the door laughing.
“You want a drink?” the female voice asked as they stumbled into the room.
“I still can’t believe Christie didn’t set the alarm,” the male voice intoned. Rich, sophisticated that was definitely the boss.
“I’ll talk to her about it tomorrow,” the now familiar female voice insisted. There was the clinking of glasses followed by the sound of pouring liquid.
“There’s no ice,” the woman observed, Not just any woman but the unmistakable voice of Mrs. Meadows. I could just make out Q’s arched eyebrows in the dark.
“Is that our client?” Deek inquired, knowing we couldn’t say anything back.
“5’10, reddish-brown hair, trim,” V added. That was our gal but what she was doing here we didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“Come here,” the man commanded. There was a stifled cry, a grunt, a glass hit the floor and shattered. Q reached for the Sig in his shoulder holster. I shook my head and held up a finger, the gesture barely visible in the closet.
“Over here,” the woman’s voice coaxed. “I love the view from up here.”
The pair groped their way into the conference room, losing clothing at every step. There was a lot of rough kissing and she let out a small gasp when he lifted her onto the table. We could just make out their breathy exertions through the crack in the door. Q and I kept head-jousting for the right angle that gav
e us the narrowest of glimpses through the thin crack in the door. There was a lot of grunting.
“Whoa!” Deek blurted over the comm link as one of our wearable cameras finally gave him a peek through the crack. “Pan back over that!”
Q held up three fingers, just visible in the closet. I countered with two and had to crank my head sideways so I could see and record the momentous occasion.
“He’s really going at it,” Deek laughed. “Boo-ya, buddy! Ask him to move so we can see her boobs.”
“Do I want to ask?” V had been with us long enough to know sometimes she didn’t want to have all the answers.
“They’re doing the meeting table mambo!” Deek clarified. “Horizontal and superimposed.”
V sighed heavily enough it was audible in the earpiece. “At least somebody’s getting laid,” she conceded.
Two minutes and 30 seconds later the festivities reached a crescendo.
“Figures,” V groused as the dramatic conclusion was loud enough to be heard through the link.
“Does this count as ‘inappropriate material’ on company time?” Deek questioned jokingly. He was having way too much fun and getting punchy from a lack of sleep. It was all I could not to hiss at both of them to shut the hell up.
The pair lay on the table for a few moments, heaving together. Finally the man said, “I shouldn’t be here.”
“I wanted to see you,” Mrs. Meadows insisted with a groan, wrapping her muscular legs around him.
“This business with the police…” he said, grunting himself free of the grip of her legs.
“I know,” she said defensively. “I told you I’d take care of it.” She pulled her blouse around herself and sat up as he hurried back into his pants, his Florida tan making his ass look even whiter than it probably was.
“This whole thing is a mess,” he went on. “The other partners don’t like it, not one bit.”
“You said you could keep them in line,” she reminded him.
“For a day or two, certainly. But if this drags out…” he let the thought trail off, zipping up his slacks.
“I get it,” she insisted. “The complications will be resolved in a couple days.”
The Rogue Horse Recovery: Book One of the Recovery and Marine Salvage Inc Series (Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc.) Page 4