“That’s Jack,” he answered, laughing at her astonished expression. “I programmed his phone’s SIM into that prototype to prove it wasn’t just a proximity reading,” Jaime informed her, looking mischievous and proud of himself.
Sam rolled her eyes. “Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to like that. God knows I wouldn’t.”
“What makes you think he’s not tracking you?”
She glanced up, expression darkening.
Jaime chortled, shaking his head. “Kidding! I’m kidding. I know you’d do far worse than hog tie me if I did that. That’s just a simple locater all phones with SIM cards have, so you can choose to use that as a double-back on clients you’re guarding provided they’re all right with it. We can test another locater chip by putting it on an object if you like, or we can have one of your team put it on for the day. Anyone you want to annoy?” Jaime asked benignly as he sat down next to her, opening his laptop.
“You’re asking who I want to tag besides the man I’m seeing?” Sam asked, bemused.
“Well, yeah. We need a test before we get to Rio, right?”
She thought about it and then buzzed her assistant in.
“Marvin, get me the nearest terrified intern,” she said succinctly.
Marvin nodded, unfazed, before stepping out of the office and shutting the door.
Jaime smiled. “You’re mean.”
“Well, yeah,” Sam answered, opening the second app. “Try growing up on a ranch with a bunch of guys and then going to the military. If that doesn’t make you a little mean, I don’t know what does.” She pointed to the screen. “I’m guessing these aren’t effective after a certain distance or depth or in extreme heat or cold?”
“I’ve got a meeting with a chip maker in Taiwan who’s been developing this technology. We’re looking at ways to waterproof it as well as improve the range through adjustments to the silicone casing. Right now, the silicone makes it lightweight and easy to place on clothes, but short of injecting a chip into your clients, this is a great way of keeping track of them or whatever they’re trying to insure.” Jaime held up the locater device, showing it to her. “It doesn’t require a battery, but it does require wireless or network signals to work, so it can be picked up regardless of the distance as long as they’re not being jammed or in one helluva dead zone. As for depth, let’s say they place the object in a vault, yes, you’d lose the signal, but the minute it’s out, you’d see it pop back up on your app. You can set up a trigger so that it alerts you if it gets out of proximity of that vault or secure location within a certain number of feet,” he explained.
“How do you activate it?”
“They’re all activated already. But you need to input the login IDs to see them. You just have to look at the ID on the chip to see it on your app.” He leaned over and tapped out a number. Jack’s dot blinked off the screen. “See? Now you see him.” He turned the dot back on. Then off again. “Now you don’t.”
“You’d better take that off my tablet. He finds out, I have a feeling he’ll skin your ass.” Sam smiled, shaking her head. “But seriously, you’re making me really happy right now,” she told him. “I always said my job was like herding cats amongst rocking chairs. This will make it so much easier keeping track of clients on missions. Wait ’til the other partners see what it can do for some of the high-dollar art and jewelry we insure.”
Marvin knocked, ushering a young, anxious-looking college intern into her office.
Sam stood, smiling at the intern. “Hi, I’m Sam Wyatt,” she said, extending her hand.
“I—I know who you are, Ms. Wyatt,” the terrified intern replied, accepting her hand.
“And you are?” Sam prompted. Marvin nudged the kid forward.
“Sorry! I’m uh, I’m Billy Denton, from University of Chicago.”
“Great school,” Sam nodded. “I went there.”
“I know, ma’am,” Billy nodded, looking flustered. “Um, how can I—how can I help you?”
“Billy, I need you to pick up some important documents for me. Can you do that?”
“Yes! Yes, ma’am,” Billy answered eagerly.
Sam smiled indulgently. “Great. High tail it to O’Hare now, and Marvin will send you the details of your flight and the pick-up.”
Billy blinked. “Wait. Sorry. What?”
“You’re going to pick up some documents for me, right?” Sam prompted.
“Well, yes, but—”
“Great,” she smiled brightly as she patted him on the back, slipping the locater chip under the back of his shirt collar as she turned him toward the door. She thought she heard Jaime snicker. “Marvin will email you your flight information and the address so you know where you’re going. Keep your receipts and make sure to submit an expense report this week so you can be reimbursed for meals or whatever. Good? Okay,” she said, her tone friendly. She winked at Marvin, whose expression revealed nothing out of the ordinary as he whisked a disoriented Billy away.
“Oh, Christ!” Jaime gasped as the door closed. He rolled back, laughing. “Where are sending that poor kid, you heartless hell cat?”
Sam shrugged. “How far do you want to test the locater?”
Jaime blinked. “Are you shitting me?”
She crossed her arms, lifting a brow.
Jaime chuckled, shaking his head. “Send the kid to Seattle.”
“I’ll do you one better,” she responded as Marvin knocked again. “Marv, send Billy to Anchorage. Have someone meet him at the airport and hand him an envelope. Make sure Billy texts you when he lands and let me know.”
Marvin nodded. “What do you want in the envelope?” he asked, as if he was used to hijinks as a matter of course.
“I don’t care. You think of something good. I’m testing out the locater chip we just planted on him. Ask him to come straight back to the office when he returns. No deviations. I slipped it under his collar. Find a way to get it back without him noticing.”
Marvin shrugged. “No problem, boss.”
Jaime cackled into his fist as Marvin shut the door again. “You are so goddamn mean.”
Sam shrugged. “Nah. That’s just a little jaunt. Mean would be sending him to Abu Dhabi. You oughta stick one of these on Maddie,” she suggested.
“Who do you think was my test case?” Jaime said, an unrepentant grin on his face. “She’s the whole reason I developed the app in the first place. I kept turning around and she’d be up to no good somewhere. Keeping track of a five-year-old is no joke!”
“Just to warn you, she’s not going to like that when she’s sixteen,” Sam warned. She sat down next to him again, picking up her tablet. “What’s the ID on that locater I just stuck on him?”
Jaime helped her turn it on. The intern was already headed toward the blue line. Looked like he was going to hoof it to O’Hare on the “L”.
She smiled again, zooming the screen in.
“So who’s taking care of Maddie while you’re in Brazil?” Sam asked casually.
“Mom’s got her for a few days, but Jack will take over after she heads back to D.C. I’ve got a nanny who comes in during the day to help out, but she’s only part time,” Jaime explained. “Ma likes you, by the way,” he added.
“What’s not to like?” Sam replied with grin.
“She called you ingambatissima,” he informed her archly.
“Does that mean ‘bad-ass?’ Because if it does, then she’d be right,” Sam teased, though she felt unaccountably pleased that their mother had liked her. Lena was a wickedly intelligent woman and a tough customer, not prone to easy approval.
“Close. It means really on the ball,” Jaime answered with an approving nod. “She likes that you have your shit together.”
Sam glanced at him, expression casual. “I’m glad. She’s impressive. It was kind of your parents to let me crash your Thanksgiving like that.”
“You didn’t crash—”
“I meant to talk to you about what you mentioned a
fter dinner, by the way,” she interrupted, leading the back to the more comfortable topic of business.
Jaime’s brow creased in question.
“You mentioned Talvin Gupta will be with you on this trip,” she continued.
“Yeah?” he asked, perplexed. “He’s the CEO of Sentient Applications. Why wouldn’t he go?”
“I can’t disclose how I know this, but he’s been involved with some, shall we say, less than scrupulous characters. May I suggest you limit the time you spend with him in person?” she asked. “And may I also suggest you take my guys with you?”
Jaime looked doubtful. “What do you mean ‘less than scrupulous?’”
“Terrorists, Jaime. He’s been linked to terrorists,” Sam told him flatly. “How are you getting down to Brazil? You’re not traveling with him, are you?”
“No.” Jaime shook his head, looking dubious. “I was going to go out with Carter on his jet. We’re old friends. What do you mean ‘terrorists?’”
“His company has been linked to terrorists in Pakistan. I can’t tell you more than that, but I’d like you to consider bringing a couple of my guys with you for security on the flight, and I’ll have more down there to meet you for coverage,” Sam offered.
“You don’t think I need K&R, do you?” he sputtered. “I’m just a tech developer.”
“Who happens to own a multi-million dollar company that produces locater apps that would be incredibly useful to any number of individuals and organizations who’d rather not pay for them outright,” Sam finished.
“Sam, I really don’t think that’ll be necessary—” Jaime started.
“Jaime, with all due respect, you’re wealthy, you come from a big-name family, and you have a great deal to offer and to lose. You’re traveling with men who are also wealthy and well-known and have a great deal to offer and to lose. You’ll be in a country you are both unfamiliar with and have no real power in. One of your colleagues is known to associate with some highly corrupt and remorseless individuals who are on the watch list of multiple governments. I’d say security is not simply necessary. In fact, I’m saying it’d be insane for you not to consider being prepared for any possible outcome.”
Jaime was quiet for a moment, absorbing the information.
“Look at it this way,” Sam said, changing tact. “You need to meet up with my people anyway to test the locaters on the network crew. You could try it out yourself with the guys I assign to you the first few days—work through some of the kinks. It wouldn’t be a massive security detail. Just enough to ensure you’ve got coverage, and I’m offering this pro-bono.”
Jaime chewed on his lip. She could sense him coming down on the right side of the decision.
“Are you thinking of Rush and Talon?” he asked.
Sam shook her head. “They’re already assigned to the network client down there, but you’ll see them. All my guys are great. Best of the best. You don’t need to worry,” she assured him, covering his hand with her own. “Think about it, Jaime. Wouldn’t your family feel better?”
He looked up at her, his light eyes, so like Jack’s, flashing with concern.
She patted his hand, standing. “I’ll email you the details tomorrow. You can meet the guys I’d like to fly down with you if you like.”
Jaime looked a little bemused. “I never really had a choice in this, did I?”
Sam grinned.
*
November—Same week
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
W E S L E Y
It was already 1:00 a.m.
Wes eyed the digital clock on the bed as he adjusted the laptop on his legs. He looked back at the screen. A frozen still of Vicki Hendricks interviewing one of the leaders of today’s teachers’ protests was paused mid-frame. He pressed play again.
“Maria Melo represents just one of over ten thousand teachers who took to the streets in Rio today in peaceful protests for educator wages and the limited resources Brazil has allocated toward nationwide schools while it spends billions to fund marketing and infrastructure for the upcoming World Cup and Olympics—”
Wes fast forwarded the footage to an interview with a teacher from Sao Paulo who was talking about how difficult it was to regulate drug use at schools now that dealers were targeting kids as young as nine or ten with crack and other cocaine byproducts. It was awful, just shocking, and some of his stories were so saddening that they made Wes cringe to hear them, imagining children chasing their dealers like they would an ice cream truck down the streets in favelas. Let CNN and BBC cover the misallocation of funding and resources…this was the gritty reality Wes wanted to focus his lens on.
He had an editor on the crew who was pretty good, but he always liked to review all the raw footage himself first, culling through the best parts right after the interviews, sifting down to the most substantial pieces while everything was fresh. He’d go through it again and again over the next weeks, cutting, editing, refining, consumed with getting it just right, just so until go-time. But tonight, in the peace of the silent hotel suite, he went through the film like he used to go through his negatives on a makeshift light box somewhere west of whatever hell he’d gotten himself to in order to nail the shot.
They’d already been on the ground a week, systematically working through the segments, lucky enough to hit the ground right when the teachers’ protests were starting to gain momentum near Candelaria, in downtown Rio. He’d figured out early on that sometimes you needed to be not only in the right location but in the most uncomfortable areas you could imagine to get to the heart of the most eviscerating stories. Although he’d been uncomfortable with it early on, preferring to remain an observer, he’d forced himself to get right in the mix, getting closer to the truth of the moment, no matter how badly he’d wanted to step back, remaining aloof and unmoved while he filmed or photographed silently in the background.
He had interviews with some of the Black Bloc anarchists tomorrow, but he could sense something brewing. In the middle of the crowds, he could feel peaceful protests shifting to something darker, the intentions and motivations morphing into something more violent and chaotic.
Vicki would be up for it. She’d gone prime time a few years ago, but she wasn’t so far gone into the corporate network bullshit that she couldn’t still roll her sleeves up and get in there. She’d want to keep her street cred alive as a frontline journalist.
“And miss the chance to work with you again, asshole?” Vicki had joked after she’d arrived with the crew on the NBS jet. “Never. How the hell have you been?” Wes liked that about her. She was as beautiful as some of the all-American cheerleaders you grew up fantasizing about during high school, but she had grit, and she could flip the switch on cool professional anchor to beer-guzzling roughneck in seconds flat. He’d watched her do it as she’d switched back to polite professional when he’d introduced her to Evan Rush and Simon Michaelson. Wes also didn’t miss the glint in her eye as she checked out Simon when he turned away to speak to one of his men. Wes shook his head in amusement at the memory, shifting his laptop onto the bed and rubbing his eyes. Some things didn’t change. Vicki was like a guy in that regard. She enjoyed herself, didn’t get too entangled, and then moved on to the next.
They’d had a brief thing in Gujurat, what seemed like eons ago now. He could barely remember anything about the affair past the tumble of sheets and falling off the bed one of the few times they had access to a hotel. He remembered laughing with her, almost as excited about the hot shower as he was the sex. He recalled fighting over the shampoo with her. It had been easy and fun—and apparently forgettable, since he could barely recall what she felt like. He’d resigned himself to that reality after Sammy. Once you got close enough to fire that hot, everything else sort of seemed…lukewarm.
Wes stood, stretching as he pushed his shoulder length hair back. He’d been editing for a couple hours. He’d picked at dinner, distracted over the footage from the demonstration, talking to the team about
the Black Bloc, mulling over the rumors they might evolve the demonstration into an anti-government orgy tomorrow. Now Wes wondered briefly if it would be too late to call for room service. His stomach grumbled at the thought.
He could hear Evan and Simon in the living room area separating their rooms. Wes hadn’t been in love with the idea of sharing a two-room suite with Evan when they’d discussed logistics, thinking it would feel like he was under constant surveillance, but it hadn’t been bad. Evan watched him like a hawk, yes, but he was respectful and surprisingly helpful to the process. He’d been with Wes every step of the way since they’d started, making suggestions and providing alternatives if the locations or shots got too risky, but he didn’t actually hamper or hinder the process in any way. Evan also had a better-than-passable grasp of Portuguese that had come in handy daily. And Wes was relieved that Evan just looked like another journalist, though he toted serious firepower in the camera case rather than an actual DSLR. He suspected Evan had more heat on him than Wes wanted to know about.
“How was check in?” Simon was asking Evan as Wes wandered out.
“Good,” Evan answered. “Carey says Sam is sending down some more guys with Jaime Roman. She wants us to meet to try out the tech he’s been helping us develop.” Evan glanced up when Wes stepped out of his bedroom. “Hey. Couldn’t sleep?”
Wes looked down at the coffee table in front of Evan. He had one of his hand guns disassembled the way Wes would have one of his cameras taken apart to clean the lens and the body. Wes shook his head in a mock-grimace. “You routinely stay up polishing your guns in the middle of the night?”
Evan shrugged. “Beats counting sheep.”
“You guys hungry? I’m calling room service. See if I can wrangle us up something,” Wes said, reaching for the phone.
“I’m always hungry, mate,” Simon answered, knocking back a bottle of water.
“Yeah, whatever you’re getting is fine,” Evan agreed, going back to his weapon.
Complicated Creatures: Part One Page 33