Duel to the Death

by J. A. Jance

Right, Graciella thought. She had told her contractor to get rid of the body, and he had.

  “Anyway,” Isobel continued, “the cops found a valet receipt in the car and traced it back to the hotel.”

  Graciella didn’t bother asking which hotel, because everyone in the office knew the one Arturo preferred above all others.

  “They showed me a clip of security video from the valet stand out front. It showed Arturo plain as day. They wanted to know if I recognized the woman who was with him.”

  “And you told them it was Bianca.”

  “Of course. What else could I do? They left here to go talk to her. They’ll probably take her in for questioning. They might even arrest her. You don’t think she could have had anything to do with this, do you?” Isobel asked. “She always seemed so . . .”

  “Naive, maybe?” Graciella put in.

  “Exactly,” Isobel agreed, “naive and innocent.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Graciella said with an inward smile. “Just because Bianca looks innocent doesn’t mean she is innocent. Maybe she has a boyfriend or a brother who took exception to Arturo’s behavior. It’s about time somebody did.”

  Once off the phone with Isobel and feeling quite happy with herself, Graciella dished up her soup and then brought her laptop to the table to keep her company while she ate. When she logged in to the dark Web storage site, there was still no video link, but she was pleased to find several audio files queued up and waiting. With a real sense of satisfaction, she hit the play button, ready to listen in on the conversations of people who were unwittingly broadcasting every word from close to 6,400 kilometers away.

  Graciella had hoped that the first voice she heard would be Stuart Ramey’s. She needed to gain some insight into who he was and how he operated in hopes of figuring out how to handle him once they were in touch. Unfortunately, the only voice audible on the recording belonged to a woman—Ali Reynolds, maybe? Since no other voices were part of the conversation, she was most likely speaking on a telephone.

  Graciella heard the recorded voice say something about “surveillance cameras.” Unable to make it out, she ran the recording back and played it again. “Wait, we have surveillance cameras in here? Really? I never noticed them. Where are they?”

  A knot formed in the pit of Graciella’s stomach. Hadn’t Robby forwarded a message from Ron Webster claiming that there hadn’t been any interior surveillance inside High Noon? Hadn’t he told her that he’d gotten away clean? If there were cameras at work, that wasn’t true.

  Graciella returned to listening in time to hear the woman say, “I don’t see any camera.” A short time later the woman in Cottonwood exclaimed. “I’ll be damned! I never would have noticed that in a million years.” That exchange led Graciella to conclude that there had to be at least one camera present inside High Noon Enterprises—very probably more than one.

  If there were interior surveillance cameras, it was only a matter of time before her planted listening devices would be found and the whole exercise would be a total waste of time and money. She had been assured that Ron was a smooth operator. Obviously that wasn’t true. Not only had he not been smart enough to spot the surveillance, he had also failed to hook up the video link and had subsequently lied about it. It didn’t take long for Graciella’s shock to turn to anger and eventually to rage. She had no intention of tolerating that kind of bungling. If the cops took Ron into custody, how long before he gave up Robby? And if that happened, how long before they showed up on Pablo’s doorstep, since she had used her half brother’s account to pay the bill?

  For a long time after the audio file finished playing, Graciella sat there waiting to see if there would be another. Ali Reynolds had obviously left the building shortly after the recording ended. Finally, with no additional files available, a frustrated Graciella left the storage site and logged in to a different one. These days, when El Pescado required the services of a paid killer, he often turned to a group of assassins affiliated with MS-13, who filled that bill in any number of locations both inside the US and elsewhere.

  When Graciella set up the hit on Ron Webster, she was more than happy to pay extra for expedited service. Once again, and just for consistency’s sake, she paid good money out of Pablo’s account for “overnight delivery.”

  She’d been led to believe that Ron Webster was subtle and smart. Obviously he was neither, and that was why, although he was too stupid to realize it yet, he was on his way out. As for Graciella’s long-distance new hires? They were known to be thorough, lethal, and not the least bit subtle.

  Clearly the authorities in the US weren’t especially interested in solving crimes committed in the distant past, so she would offer up some Duarte Cartel-related crimes that were a bit more current. She would use the cops to bring her father down along with her two half brothers. Once they were gone, with any kind of luck, she, Frigg, and Stuart Ramey would be the only ones left standing.

  26

  A few minutes past three, Cami and Stu waved good-bye to Lance and his buddies and drove away from Irene Hansen’s mansion on Via Vistosa. As Ali had specified, Cami was at the wheel of the rental truck while an emotionally drained Stu sat slumped in the passenger seat.

  They were on Highway 101 and headed south when a text came in from Ali:

  Did you ever have a chance to check those surveillance feeds?

  “Crap,” Stu said aloud.

  “What’s wrong?” Cami wanted to know.

  “Ali asked me hours ago to check the interior surveillance feeds, but I got so caught up in the dismantling project that I forgot to do it.”

  “Do it now,” Cami said.

  Hauling out his laptop, Stu did exactly that. Since the cameras only functioned when there was movement, once he was logged in, it took no time at all to locate the images. He quickly scrolled through the segments where he had picked up Ali’s and Alonso’s presence earlier that morning. The previous series of segments featured the two-person cleaning crew who had come in and vacuumed, dusted, and emptied the trash shortly after nine on Friday night. The time stamp on that footage indicated that the cleaners entered the building at 9:02 and locked up at 10:10.

  The file just prior to that one showed Shirley letting herself out through the front door. Then the shutters closed, leaving the screen in darkness with a time stamp of 5:07. At that juncture, Stu skipped back several segments until he found one with time stamp of 3:56. Shirley had evidently been away from her desk. Filming resumed when she returned to the reception area. For a time, the feed showed her in profile. The movement of her fingers as she typed something into her keyboard was enough action to maintain the video feed. Then, at 4:03, she looked away from the screen toward the door, where a male figure wearing a hat was now visible through the clear glass. A moment later Shirley reached toward the intercom button.

  There was no audio component with the system. As a consequence, Stu was unable to make out any of the verbal exchange that followed. Eventually, however, the door opened, and the man entered the building, removing his hat as he did so. When Stu and Cami had created the system, they had opted for high-resolution cameras with far more pixel capability than that found in most CCTV systems. So when the newcomer paused directly in front of the reception area to sign the visitor log, Stu froze the feed long enough to enlarge the image and send one screenshot to Ali and another to himself. When Stu studied the photo, the man wasn’t someone Stu recognized. When he returned to the feed he discovered that shortly after signing the visitor in, Shirley moved out from behind the counter to lead him to the lab. There were no bookshelves in the hallway, and hence no cameras, either.

  The next segment of footage showed Shirley and the newcomer arriving in the computer lab. Stu watched while the man set down a small toolbox and a clipboard. Again, there were some inaudible verbal exchanges before Shirley left the room, presumably to return to reception. Sure enough, a second feed soon appeared showing her back at her computer. Meanwhile, in the first one,
the visitor opened his toolbox, retrieved a screwdriver, and then removed something else—a small box of some kind, maybe? Since this was a building inspector, Stu expected him to go straight to the newly installed electrical panel, the one the electrician claimed was tough enough to power three hundred toasters at a time. Instead, and without giving the panel so much as a passing glance, the man disappeared into the new lab space where, once again, with no bookshelves or books available, there was also no camera coverage.

  When the feed resumed again, the visitor came into view and approached the toolbox briefly before once again going out of frame. At no time in any of the footage did he go anywhere near the electrical panel he was supposedly there to inspect. In fact, the next segment showed him messing with something inside the light switch next to Cami’s desk and directly behind Stu’s.

  “Why that SOB!” Stu exclaimed.

  “What?” Cami demanded. “What’s going on?”

  “I think he’s bugging the place.”

  “Bugging?” Cami repeated. “Are you kidding?”

  “Not at all. I think he’s installing listening devices and/or cameras throughout the building.”

  “No way!”

  “Way,” Stu replied. “And if that guy’s a building inspector, I’m a monkey’s uncle!”

  A moment or two passed before Stu spoke again, his voice trembling with outrage. “He just went into my apartment. What the hell? If I ever lay hands on the guy, I’m going to wring his damned neck.”

  Sure enough, the next feed showed the intruder in the main living area of Stu’s studio apartment, this time messing with the cover plate on the light switch next to the front door where he worked for several minutes before shaking his head. Evidently something had gone wrong. He returned to the toolbox once again before reappearing inside the apartment and finishing whatever he’d been trying to do.

  The next-to-last clip, filmed by the camera located over Cami’s workstation, showed the guy drop to his hands and knees and crawl under Stu’s desk until only the soles of his shoes were visible. Shirley’s arrival in the frame caused him to emerge from under the desk in such a hurry that it looked as though he had creamed his head on the desk drawer. As Shirley neared the toolbox, he hurriedly reached over and closed the lid, only to have to reopen it a moment later to slide the screwdriver inside.

  The next clip, back in the reception area, showed the so-called inspector signing the visitors’ log and exiting the building. A few minutes later, Shirley finished gathering up her things before she, too, left the building, closing the shutters behind her. By the time Stu’s screen went dark, he was on the phone to Ali, with the speaker turned on so Cami would be part of the conversation.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he announced. “Is B. there?”

  “We both are,” Ali replied. “You sound upset. What kind of problem are we talking about?”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the house and about to sit down to dinner. Where are you?”

  “We’re locked and loaded, in the truck, out of Santa Barbara, and headed home, but turn on your speaker. I want to talk to both of you. We’ve had an intrusion, and I think we may have been hacked.”

  “Hacked?” B. demanded. “Did your scans show up something?”

  “I don’t think he touched the computers,” Stu answered, “but someone sure as hell got inside and was messing around in our building.”

  “Who are we talking about?” B. asked.

  “That so-called building inspector Ali was worried about was totally bogus. He wasn’t there to sign off on our permits. I believe he was using the inspection gig as cover so he could install some kind of electronic surveillance system inside our offices.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t access any of our computers?” B. asked.

  “He didn’t go anywhere near the computers, at least not that I saw,” Stu answered. “He was mostly messing with cover plates for some of the light switches and electrical sockets.”

  “He was probably tapping into the wiring,” B. suggested. “That way he’d have access to a steady power supply with no need for batteries.”

  “Exactly,” Stu said. “Without batteries, he can use equipment that’s small and difficult to detect. My gut instinct says we’re probably dealing with audio only since some of the locations have limited sight lines, but they’re positioned in such a way I doubt they’d ever be spotted by a real building inspector.”

  “What a nightmare!” B. declared.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Stu agreed.

  “Okay,” B. said urgently. “Ali and I should probably head for Cottonwood right now, find out what’s been planted there, and get rid of it.”

  “There’s no point,” Stu said.

  “No point?” B. objected. “What do you mean?”

  “If whoever installed the bugs has been monitoring our feeds, they most likely heard everything that was said earlier this morning when Ali and Alonso were there. That means they know we had cameras running and that we’re most likely aware of their presence.”

  “You’re saying we just leave the bugs in place?”

  “For right now,” Stu replied. “Whoever’s behind this can monitor the hell out of us, but as long as no one’s in the office, they’re not going to learn anything useful. In the meantime, give me a while to go to work and try to figure out who’s behind this.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “I’d rather not say,” Stu answered.

  “I take it we’re talking about one of your backdoor operations?” B. asked.

  Stu said nothing, which, as it turned out, they all understood to mean yes.

  “And how long a while are you talking about?” B. asked.

  “Long enough for us to get home,” Stu said. “As I said, Cami and I are on the move right now. If we drive straight through, the GPS says we should arrive sometime after one a.m.”

  He looked over at Cami who had both hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road. “Are you good to go?” he asked.

  “As in all the way home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You bet,” Cami said, “as long as you ply me with enough coffee.”

  “Wait,” Ali said, breaking in on the conversation. “You two are talking about driving straight through even after doing the load-out? That’s nuts.”

  “It’s not nuts because this is an emergency,” Stu replied, brushing aside her objection. “High Noon is under siege, and we need to get to the bottom of it. From what I saw on the tapes, Shirley interrupted the installation. The guy didn’t get any further than my apartment and the two computer labs. Just to be on the safe side, though, any talking we do at the office should be done outside the building rather than inside.”

  “No one has tried to spy on us before,” Ali said, “at least not as far as we know. So why would something like this happen now? What’s changed?”

  “I’m about to reactivate Frigg,” Stu said quietly. “What do you want to bet that’s what’s changed?”

  “The AI,” Ali breathed. “Is someone after the AI?”

  “An incredibly smart AI,” Stu replied.

  They all took a moment to digest that.

  “So who all knows about that?” B. asked.

  “The four of us and Lance,” Stu answered at once.

  “And Alonso,” Ali added. “I told him about it this morning. What about the guys who helped you with the load-out today?”

  “I doubt Lance gave them very many details. As far as they knew, we were moving a bunch of blades and that was it.”

  “What about that woman in Panama?” Ali asked. “The one who wrote to you. She said Owen Hansen was her client. What if she knew about Frigg and has figured out that reactivating the AI is probably the only way you’ll be able to access those Bitcoin codes?”

  “She certainly qualifies as a possible candidate,” Stu agreed. “It’s also reasonable to assume that we’re dealing with some kind of bad actor. That means we
need to take as many precautions as necessary to keep Frigg from falling into the wrong hands.”

  “And you,” Ali said. “If someone’s targeting Frigg, we don’t want you falling into the wrong hands, either.”

  “What kind of precautions are we talking about?” B. asked.

  “I say we turn Frigg on long enough to get those codes and then shut her down again—for good this time. No kernel file—no chance of reactivation. But where do we put her in the meantime?”

  “We can’t use the new computer lab,” Ali put in, “not until a real building inspector signs off on the permits. End of next week at the earliest.”

  “Wait,” B. said. “How’s this for an idea? Ali and I have been renting out my old place on the golf course in the Village of Oak Creek. Right now, the house is vacant. The tenants moved out two weeks ago. Back when we were using it as our corporate headquarters, I upgraded the electrical service. What would happen if we unloaded the truck and installed the GPUs there long enough to reactivate Frigg and lay hands on those banking codes? I know that calls for a lot of effort in terms of loading and unloading, but it saves us a whole week of waiting around for the building department to get its act together.”

  “Can you get Internet access?” Stu asked.

  “It’s already there,” B. answered. “All I’d need to do is log on.”

  “But we’re talking eight hundred GPUs,” Stu said. “Do you think the electrical service at the house has enough capacity? And won’t that much traffic overwhelm the router?”

  B. laughed. “As long as no one turns on the microwave while all those GPUs are running, I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine. Are the racks contained and cooled from the inside?”

  “No cabinets,” Stu told him.

  “All right, then. We’ll need to use the AC to keep the temperature low enough. And you’re right, the speeds on the Wi-Fi connection are bound to be slower than we’d like, but I’m pretty sure it’ll work.”

  “Who’s going to do all this unloading and moving?” Ali asked. “And how big a crew did Lance bring along to Santa Barbara?”