The Widow File

by S. G. Redling

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2013 S.G. Redling

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  PO Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781477808610

  ISBN-10: 1477808612

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906096

  This book is for the Hitches—Gina, Debra, Tenna, Christy, and Angela—I wouldn’t trade one of you for hard black shoes.

  CONTENTS

  BOSTON

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOSTON

  Shooting people is so boring, Booker thought as Mazan dropped to the floor. Or maybe it was Jusef. He hadn’t paid much attention when they’d introduced themselves. The little one in the kitchen had been a fighter, nearly making enough noise to alert his friends before the garrote finished him. Now that was a job. That’s why he made the money he did and had the reputation he had—hands-on craftsmanship. Shooting goat-eyed fools who didn’t have the sense to run? Beneath him. They weren’t even armed. Yet.

  Booker unpacked the case the students had thought was research material from the university and began assembling the weapons. The calfskin gloves barely slowed him down at all. He shook his head.

  “Wouldn’t you think,” he said to the dead boy flipped over in the chair, “that you’d notice something like a man not taking off his gloves? You’re from Syria, for crying out loud. Aren’t you guys born knowing stuff like this?” He slid two AK-47s underneath the couch and rose to hide the smaller guns in the kitchen. Stepping over the bent boy on the floor, he tossed a 9mm into a junk drawer and then taped another under the kitchen table. From where he knelt, he could look into the young man’s bloodshot eyes.

  “But hey, maybe I’m just jaded. It’s good that people trust.” He laughed. “And for all I know, you may not really be from Syria. See? I trust too. What are you going to do?” He tapped the boy’s cheek and realized what he most disliked about jobs like this—the lack of conversation. It was worse than cold. It was uncivilized. He pulled out his phone and was happy to see a message waiting for him from his previous client. Why did he know he’d be hearing from them again? One job at a time, however. He hit redial.

  The current client answered with a terse “Yes?”

  “I’ve put the groceries away.” He rolled his eyes at the ridiculous code phrase the client had chosen. Why they made these things so complicated was beyond him. His last client had insisted he recite “Hey Diddle Diddle” so he supposed it could be worse.

  “Yes.” The client sounded like he was smiling. There was something off about the volume. He must have someone in the room with him. In trying to sound natural, he sounded to Booker as if he was twirling his mustache while kicking a puppy. “Why don’t you go ahead and finish the paperwork? Oh and thanks for calling. Uh-huh.”

  Booker tossed the phone in the open case. There were two laptops on the table. Unfortunately the one closest to him had been open during the hit and the keys were a mess. It was unlikely law enforcement officials would believe the young men had roused themselves from their death throes long enough to check their Facebook. Wiping the fingertips of his gloves inside his jacket pocket to remove any traces of blood, he lifted the lid of the other laptop carefully. The blood spattered across the top had already congealed enough to not run.

  The computer glowed to life and once again Booker shook his head. Not even password protected. “It’s a good thing you guys really aren’t terrorists,” he muttered to himself, clicking on the Facebook shortcut. “You would be terrible at it.” Like the computer itself, the social media opened with no need to enter the password he had memorized. He typed in the message he had also memorized and posted it as Jusef’s status. Before closing the page, he scrolled through the newsfeed. Most of it was in Syrian, in which Booker wasn’t fluent, but there was a video link of a baby penguin squealing as a zookeeper tickled it.

  “That’s adorable.” Booker clicked the “like” button.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Choo-Choo looked hung over. He threw down his headphones. “You know, if we’re going to get paid to sit around and do nothing, we should at least get to do it in our underwear.”

  Dani gnawed her thumbnail and prayed the blond analyst wouldn’t turn around and see the blush warming her face. She’d spent far too much time imagining those long, pale limbs sprawled and bared. Fay described Choo-Choo as “an obsessive compulsive nerd underwear model.” Dani just thought of him as Viking Porn.

  “Your underwear would be a damn sight more appealing than that mess you’re sporting now.” Fay dropped her bright orange Kate Spade bag on the desk across from Dani. She squinted at the blue shirt he’d wrapped himself in. “What is that? Flannel? Are you even allowed to wear flannel? I thought you’d burst into flames or get kicked off the society register.”

  Choo-Choo graced Fay with one perfectly arched brow. “Well we can’t all dress like escapees from a Caribbean brothel, can we?”

  “You wish you could pull this off,” Fay said with a laugh. She ran her long nails through the mountain of curls piled on top of her head, a chartreuse elastic band struggling to contain it. “I make this mess look sexy.”

  Dani giggled and Choo-Choo snorted. Everything about Fay was larger than life. Every inch of her nearly six-foot frame was draped in a rainbow of brilliant colors. And despite a profound lisp, Fay nonetheless peppered every sentence with as many S words as she could manage. After working together for five years, Fay was the best friend Dani had ever had.

  “Seriously,” Fay said, sprawling in her chair, “the way you two dress. You’ve got teeny tiny Dani curled up in her teeny tiny black clothes. What are you supposed to be? A comma?” Dani laughed out loud at her friend’s teasing. “And then you,” she waved at the blond man smirking at her. “I bet you sported something sexier than that last night for whoever she was. Or he was. Or they were.”

  Choo-Choo feigned offense. “What are you implying, Fay? That I’m a th-lut?” Fay threw her head back, letting out a loud barking laugh. Dani settled in. They could go back and forth like this all day, getting funnier and funnier and never getting offended. She never tired of the show. Then she saw Choo-Choo turn his pale eyes toward her. She shrunk down in her chair.

  His voice was a purr. “Why are we always talking about my sex life? How come Dani never tells us of her exploits with her latest conquest? Bob? Ben?”

  Fay snorted. “Ben’s a dick.”

  “Ben? A dick?”

  “Ben-a-dick!” Fay laughed at her own joke. “Ben-a-dick Arnold—‘I regret that I have but one small penis to give to my girlfriend.’”

  “Fail.” Choo-Choo threw a pen at her. “Patrick Henry had but one small penis to give.”

  Dani spoke up. “That’s Nathan Hale.”

  “Nathan Hale had a small dick?” Fay asked.

  “No, he had but one life to give for…” She
saw them both laughing at her and she buried her hot face in her hands. “I hate you guys. I really do.”

  “You adore us. Well, me, at least,” Choo-Choo said. “Fay is take it or leave it.” He dodged the pen Fay hurled back. “In any event, you’re stuck with us since you’re unfit to work anywhere but here. Just like us.”

  Here was Rasmund, a private security firm specializing in corporate espionage, extortion, and threat assessment. Many of Rasmund’s clients could be recognized by their well-known NASDAQ codes; the rest operated at a much lower profile and a much higher profit margin. Rasmund didn’t advertise in trade magazines. The people who needed their unique services operated within an information network that needed and desired no publicity.

  Dani and Fay made up a small part of the team currently working on assignment for their latest client, Swan Technologies. Internally, their crew went by the designation Paint, so called for their ability to cover every inch of a scene without being noticed, blending into the background. Choo-Choo was their audio analyst. They waited in the well-appointed room for another part of the assigned team, the part known as Faces.

  Faces were just that—the public face of Rasmund, or as public as such services demanded. The Faces went into the businesses and situations being investigated with cover stories and artificial backgrounds. They were operatives trained at information retrieval and, due to the high-end lifestyle of most of their clients, their personal styles had to reflect the same. Faces got to go to parties and galas and travel in private jets and on yachts. Faces also risked personal safety, often finding themselves on-site when questionable situations turned dangerous. Dani couldn’t think of anything she would want to do less than be a Face.

  Not that there was much chance of that had she so desired. Coming in at five feet tall and showing a distinct lack of fashion sense, Dani didn’t mind that she fit perfectly the company’s stereotype of Paint. Her short black hair stuck up in erratic tufts, trained in an unruly pattern by her habit of wrapping rubber bands around random locks while lost in the data. She spent more evenings than she liked to admit untangling the tiny hair prisons before heading out into public. As for her habit of doodling on the insides of her wrists, all she could hope for at this point was that people assumed they were tattoos.

  The door swung open and a perfectly dressed couple strolled into the room. Fay let her head loll on the back of her chair, stage-whispering to Dani, “Thank God the Faces have made it. We’re saved.”

  Todd Hickman ignored her. He slouched into his chair and sighed, picking nonexistent lint off of a blue cashmere sweater that Dani knew cost more than Fay’s shoes. (She’d run some background on a previous client’s shopping preferences last year.)

  Evelyn Carr had slithered into her seat beside him, followed by her ever-present cloud of Chanel No. 5 perfume. Dani didn’t know how the bony redhead managed to saturate herself so thoroughly with the fragrance but the result was an eye-watering funk that lingered long after the Face had left the room. Between that and Evelyn’s permanent sneer, it was a wonder to Dani that Hickman could stand working with her. When Fay had learned that Evelyn’s birth name was actually Twyla Dawn Cruickshank, Dani had sworn her to secrecy. That was the sort of tasty morsel that could come in handy should the arrogant team member need a touch of mortifying.

  “Anyone else coming in?” Hickman asked.

  Choo-Choo said, “Phelps is supposed to be on the golf course with a couple of Swan’s VPs. I sent out the call. Don’t know if he’ll make it. Eddie’s transfer came through. I don’t want to say he was anxious to get out of here but his office was cleaned out when I got here.”

  “Wow, tough gig for both of them,” Fay said. “Golfing at the Greenbrier or picking your office in Miami. They’ll miss all the excitement of going through another megaton of intercepted e-mail that says absolutely nothing. Does anyone else think this job is weird?”

  “You mean sitting in a dark room and listening in on half a dozen conversations you don’t care about?” Choo-Choo asked.

  “No, I mean this job. The Swan job. Nothing seems to be adding up to any kind of tech leak or industrial espionage. And now that that guy is dead.…”

  “Marcher,” Hickman said, twirling his gold signet ring. “His name was Eduard Marcher. He was my contact. He was a good man.”

  Evelyn made a show of examining her nails. “That remains up for debate.”

  “He’s dead, Ev. How about a little respect?”

  Dani sat still in her chair, watching the two teammates. This wasn’t the easy bickering she enjoyed with Fay. Todd’s and Evelyn’s body language spoke of a long-running argument even while their well-modulated tones sounded casual. At Rasmund, few people worked together long. Faces paired up and switched out job by job, the nature of their tasks requiring them to be fluid and adaptable. Paints tended to work alone—Fay and Dani being a notable exception.

  “There’s definitely something going on in that lab.” Hickman kept spinning that ring. Dani knew that gesture. It was as close to fretting as the man ever got in public. “We don’t know any more than you guys do. Swan’s convinced someone in his organization is leaking information, maybe selling their tech, and I’m inclined to agree.”

  “Well you’d know,” Ev said. “You’ve spent enough time in that lab.”

  This wasn’t the first case with an uncertain directive. Despite Rasmund’s reputation for complete discretion, many clients’ operations were so covert in nature that the teams often worked with a minimum of information. This served not only to protect the privacy of the clients but also to minimize the legal implications for Rasmund itself. Mrs. O’Donnell and her superiors held plausible deniability at a premium. But Dani agreed with Fay and could tell the rest of the team did as well. Something about the Swan case felt off.

  “We know they’re gearing up for a big announcement on some new tech,” Fay said, twisting the end of her hot pink scarf through her fingers. “Standard R&D gag order is in place. It doesn’t appear that Marcher’s death has slowed anything down.” This last bit of information seemed to irk Dani’s partner. “All communications suggest that the lab is operating at situation normal.”

  “Hmm,” Ev said, crossing her legs, “maybe Marcher’s death brought everything back to situation normal.”

  When Hickman spoke, the edges of his lips whitened. “I thought you were the one who kept insisting the police were correct, that the wreck was an accident. Completely coincidental.”

  She shrugged. “There are coincidences and there are coincidences. I’m just saying there was suspicion that someone was stealing research from Swan and selling it. Swan has several defense contracts. It would be safe to assume whoever wanted to steal from them would be dealing with dangerous people—people who would know how to fake a car accident. Maybe the situation straightened itself out without our interference.”

  Hickman’s voice rose, control abandoned. “So you’re saying that his death convicts him of industrial espionage?”

  “There really isn’t any sign,” Dani spoke up, making everyone in the room turn to look at her. Dani rarely jumped into conversations but she liked Hickman. She did more jobs with him than with any other Face at Rasmund. More important, she trusted his instincts. “Nothing in the materials suggests there was any information leak from the lab, much less from Marcher. He spearheaded the team; they seemed to really like him.”

  “Like he’s going to leave a receipt of sale,” Ev said. “Maybe you should look in his garbage disposal, Dani. Maybe he chewed up the evidence.”

  “There are signs,” Dani said, ignoring Ev’s dig at her unconventional analysis style. “People who are trying to cover something up leave trails; they make mistakes. That’s what Fay and I look for. That’s what we get paid to do.”

  “You have to excuse Ev,” Fay said. “It’s hard for her to imagine actually working, not spending all day dashing around in designer clothes hobnobbing with the elite.”

  Choo-Choo let out
a long, exaggerated sigh. Nobody could express exhaustion quite like Choo-Choo. “Why don’t we save the class warfare until our reigning monarch has held forth? She called us in for a reason. Let’s save the bloodletting until we know how long we’ll be on the killing field, all right?” He draped himself across the silk chaise like a cat.

  The room they occupied looked more like an aristocratic drawing room than the conference room for an information retrieval company. Sprawling across the second floor of a graceful antebellum estate in Falls Church, Virginia, nothing about the room or even the building itself suggested any security measures were in place, much less the state-of-the-art shielding and monitoring that secured the perimeter. The gates that opened onto the long, curving driveway in the front and the narrow, rutted service road in the back only looked antique. The closed-circuit monitors and electronic keypads hidden among the filigree ensured that nobody wandered onto the premises. A helicopter pad took up the southern edge of the roof and a tunnel ran from beneath the four-car carriage-style garage to a private airstrip two miles down the river. Rasmund’s clientele expected efficiency and discretion, all wrapped in an elegant facade of luxury. Rasmund delivered.

  Choo-Choo and several other audio analysts had a bank of rooms on the third floor beneath a squat turret lined with listening equipment of every variety. Fay, Dani, and other Paints in data analysis sequestered themselves in suites of rooms across from Audio. Some Paints preferred desks, some rooms with long tables and file cabinets. Dani and Fay had furnished their room in a combination of styles that included dorm room, head shop, and rabbit warren. Mrs. O’Donnell and the powers of Rasmund didn’t care how the Paints chose to work. All that mattered were results, and Fay and Dani had an impeccable track record.

  Unscheduled team meetings like this one meant one of two things: either the client had information that had to be disseminated immediately and in one go or, as was more often the case, the job was being terminated. Dani hoped it was the former. Even though she could find no signs of the suspected thievery, something about the materials gathered from Swan niggled at her. She’d been infected by Hickman’s determination to stay on the job. Dani didn’t know what she thought she might find but she hoped she’d have a chance to keep looking.