Kiana sat there in shock as she listened to their stories. She had never heard anything like them before.
“But anyway,” Beckman said, “getting back to the task at hand, the USIA has been concerned with Zander since he was fired due to the nature of his research and its possible implications, and we even contacted him to see if we could learn a little more about what he had done. As expected, he was uncooperative and defensive. And, much to our chagrin, he has now disappeared completely. As far as we can tell, no one has seen or heard from him for at least six months.”
“What do you want us to do?” Michael asked.
“Zander has several vacation homes in the US and Canada. One of them is in Whistler, British Columbia, and another is in San Diego. I want you to take a look at them and see if you can find anything that would tip us off to his current whereabouts. Start with the Whistler residence since it’s closer.”
“Do you have any reason to suspect any wrongdoing? Christine asked.
“Not really. And we may eventually learn he just went on an extended vacation and is sipping margaritas under a palm tree somewhere. But at the same time, I’d like to know just to be safe.”
“The San Diego residence,” Michael asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to send someone from the LA branch?”
“I already checked with them. Like usual, they’re overloaded and have no available agents. And I don’t want to request they transfer someone from another project since I’m not really certain what we’re dealing with here. It may be nothing. As such, it’s better if we handle this one ourselves. I want you to depart for Whistler immediately and when you’re done there catch a flight from Vancouver International Airport to San Diego. Alyssa has already taken care of your tickets and they will be waiting for you at the airport. Report back to me as soon as you are done in Whistler, then again once you’ve arrived in San Diego. Understood?”
They nodded, hopped up, and headed out the door.
Chapter 46
They returned home briefly, packed some necessities (mostly clothing and toiletries), and departed for Whistler shortly thereafter. It was a long drive, approximately two hours from Mill Creek to the Canadian border, then another thirty minutes to Vancouver, then another two hours to Whistler. They chatted along the way, took a couple of breaks when someone got hungry or needed to use the restroom, and took turns driving. At one point, when they were still in the US and Michael was driving, Kiana, who was sitting in the backseat, said, “I miss Olivia.”
Michael and Christine smiled at her from their places in the front of the car but neither said anything.
It was true. Olivia had only been gone for a few hours but already it seemed like an eternity. Kiana sent her a text, just to say hi and see how she was doing, but Olivia didn’t respond and Kiana assumed it was because she was still on her flight from Seattle to Sydney.
An hour later, just after they had crossed the border and were heading toward Vancouver, something else came to mind, something about the current mission that really bothered Kiana. After thinking about it quietly for a few minutes she decided to mention it to Christine and Michael.
“If this Zander was so unstable and if his experiment had gone wrong and he got fired, isn’t it possible he could have gotten depressed and killed himself? Maybe that’s why no one has seen him for so long.”
Michael nodded. “Anything is possible. And so far that’s as good an explanation as anything I can think of.”
Kiana groaned. “If we go into his house and find a dead body you two are taking care of it. I’m not going anywhere near it.”
Christine smiled. “Say it isn’t so. The mighty Kiana, fifth degree black belt, and the same girl who fearlessly jumped a moat in Chiang Mai on a scooter, is afraid of dead bodies?”
“They creep me out. Even in biology class, the dead frogs, I couldn’t handle it. I said I was sick and I went to the nurse’s office for the rest of the hour.”
Michael and Christine laughed.
“I’m serious,” Kiana said. “If I see a dead body, I’m out of there. Don’t try to stop me. You’ll just get hurt in the process.”
The voyage continued from there and they arrived in downtown Vancouver a few minutes later. Kiana had never been to Vancouver before and she was immediately impressed. At first glance it looked a lot like Seattle, since it was a dense grouping of skyscrapers that sat on the water, and it even had mountains in the background. In addition, traffic was really bad just like in Seattle. It took them about an hour to make their way through town and continue their voyage north toward Whistler. They stopped briefly at a mall in West Vancouver to get some food, and Kiana took over driving from there. To her, it was pretty cool since she had never driven in Canada before. About half way between Vancouver and Whistler it started snowing but luckily not too badly so the road stayed clear and driving wasn’t difficult at all.
The minute they got to Whistler, Kiana wished they had come for a vacation, not an assignment. The place was amazing, a winter wonderland filled with shops, restaurants, fancy hotels, and gorgeous parks. They even saw the park that had the sculpture of the Olympic Rings from the 2010 Winter Games. Like many ski resorts Kiana had been to in the past, Whistler was very modern, but it had a nice, old-world charm to it and in some ways it looked like villages in Germany or Austria. Men, women, and children were everywhere, wearing heavy sweaters and jackets, and most had ski gear with them. Not too far in the distance, just beyond the downtown area itself, Kiana could see ski runs with gondolas filled with people heading up the city’s two massive, snow-covered mountain peaks (one was called Whistler and the other Blackcomb).
Christine pointed at a small shop along the side of the road. Its front window was filled with knickknacks, porcelain figures, China dishes, and other neat collectibles. “Kiana. Check that out.”
“That looks awesome. We should head over there for a couple of minutes.”
Unfortunately, Michael would hear none of it, and he snapped the two of them back to reality. “Ladies. We’re here on an assignment. We’re not here to do some shopping.”
Kiana hated to admit it but he was right, so she continued driving.
Zander’s house was about fifteen minutes from the downtown area in a heavily wooded, largely isolated area with few other houses nearby. It sat at the end of a long driveway and had a nice view of downtown Whistler in the valley directly below it. The house itself was modern, but not overly fancy, but no one appeared to have been there for quite some time. They parked their car, took a look around the yard, which was completely covered in snow, and Kiana noticed there was a large, detached storage shed to one side. It was a nice day and the sun was out but it was cold nonetheless (especially for a girl from southern California), so Kiana went back to the car briefly and got her coat and gloves. Michael knocked on the house’s front door but no one answered so he removed a small bar from the car’s trunk and pried the door open. On the inside, the house was nice and well decorated, but just like the exterior, it showed no signs of recent occupation.
“This looks like a dead end,” Kiana said.
“Not necessarily,” Michael responded. He walked into a small room that looked like it was an office of some sort. It had a desk on one wall with a computer sitting on top of it. He took a seat at the desk, turned on the computer, then hooked his phone to it with a mini USB cable.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to see if I can get access to some of Zander’s files. This is only one of his vacation homes, so I doubt he will have much information of importance here, but you never know. You’d be amazed how much you can learn from a person’s computer.”
He used one of the apps on his phone (one of Walter’s inventions, no doubt) to crack whatever security software Zander had placed on the computer. From there, he started to copy the computer’s contents into the phone’s internal memory.
“I’ll let the analysts back at headquarters take a look at this and they’ll figure
out if there’s anything useful here. But I’ve already noticed one thing of interest. Look at this account.”
He pointed at the screen, to a line on a spreadsheet. It had an entry that read, “June 15 EFT $1,500,000.”
“What does EFT mean?”
“Electronic funds transfer. Someone paid Zander 1.5 million dollars on June 15.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t say. Nor does it say what the payment was for. But it’s noteworthy nonetheless, just because of the amount involved.”
He was about to say something more when he looked out the window and saw something of potential interest - the detached storage shed Kiana had seen upon their arrival.
“It’s gonna take a few minutes for me to transfer this data. While I’m doing it, why don’t you head outside and take a quick look at that shed. I doubt there’s anything of interest inside but I want to know anyway.”
“What should I look for?”
“Anything out of the ordinary. And especially be on the lookout for dead bodies.”
It was clearly meant to be a joke, intended to take advantage of the comments she had made earlier while they were in the car, but she was not amused at all, not in the least. “Very funny.” She stuck out her tongue at him and headed outside. As expected, the shed was locked and it had a large, metal deadbolt on its door. Luckily for her, however, she had no problem opening it since she had the tube of lip balm Walters had originally given her. Using one of her fingernails, she popped the tube’s bottom off and ever so carefully poured its contents onto the deadbolt’s underside. She then stepped back and watched as it did its magic. A few seconds later, there was a loud hissing sound and some thick, black smoke, then the deadbolt fell to the ground.
Nice, she thought. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
The inside of the shed was dark and cold and it was filled with various yard tools and ski equipment. She stopped for a minute to take a look at a nice snowboard and an equally nice pair of skis, with boots and poles sitting nearby. Had it been a vacation, and not an assignment, she could have had some real fun there.
But then she heard something. It came from outside of the shed, in the house’s front yard, and at first she thought it was either Christine or Michael. But it wasn’t either of them and instead it was a man dressed in a white coat and boots, and he was making his way stealthily toward the house’s front door, which Kiana had left slightly ajar when she had gone through it a few minutes before. Through the door, she could see Christine in the distance, in the house’s living room, attempting to open a safe she had found built into the room’s far wall.
Kiana’s eyes got big and her heart skipped a beat as she realized Christine was so intent on her task she did not hear the man approaching. And the scariest thing of all was the fact he had a gun in his left hand and he was raising it in an attempt to aim it at her.
Kiana did the first thing she could think of. She screamed as loud as she could. Christine, immediately upon hearing the scream, dived to the right, and it was a good thing she did because a bullet hit the wall right next to her. The man turned and fired a quick, wild shot at Kiana, but she was already safe from harm because had ducked back into the shed for cover. She pulled her gun from her shoulder holster, stepped back outside, and fired a quick shot back at him. Her shot missed him but sent him fleeing away from her down the driveway. He jumped onto a snowmobile he had parked at the end of the driveway, started it up, and raced into the surrounding wilderness.
Michael ran from the house with his gun drawn. “What happened? Where’d he go?”
“That way,” Kiana said. “Through the woods.”
Michael shook his head. “We need to catch him. If we do, we can question him. But we’ll never be able to catch him on foot.”
Kiana thought for a second and quickly verified he was correct. They’d never be able to overtake a snowmobile on foot and they couldn’t use their car, either, since it would get stuck the minute they left the main road. But then an idea came to mind.
“I know what we can do.” She raced back into the shed, then emerged a few seconds later with a bunch of ski gear in hand. “I get the snowboard. You take the skis.”
Michael smiled. “Good girl.”
Less than thirty seconds later, the chase was on.
Chapter 47
For the most part, Pavel Voronov thought the world was a worthless, wretched place, filled with people who did little more than take up space. But every once in a while, and much to his surprise and delight, he found an exception.
He was sitting in his office, at his desk, reading Dr. Charles Zander’s most recent progress reports when Dimitri walked in. At his side was a young woman, probably in her mid-twenties but possibly younger, who was arguably the most attractive woman Voronov had ever seen. She was tall and shapely, with long, ebony hair and sparkling eyes. Everything she wore was skin tight and solid black.
He turned to Dimitri. “Whom do we have here, Dimitri?”
As always, Dimitri’s answer was immediate and straight to the point. “This is Olivia Livingston. She’s a former MI6 operative who has been handling assignments for me lately.”
“Interesting. You’ve done the necessary inquiries?”
“Her story is legit. She started working with MI6 immediately upon her graduation from high school and was stationed in their Sydney branch for the duration of her time with them. About six months ago there was a disagreement and she left the agency. She’s been working freelance since, mostly for me, and her performance has been exemplary.”
Voronov turned to Olivia. “What was the disagreement?”
“Excuse me?”
“The disagreement you had with MI6. The reason you left them.”
The woman’s answer was curt and directly to the point. “They were upset because I killed a man. They felt it wasn’t justified and didn’t need to be done. I disagreed.”
Voronov smiled. “Hopefully it wasn’t someone I know.”
“It was a low-level thug named Logan Smythe. A true waste of skin. The world is a better place without him.”
Voronov smiled. He definitely liked her attitude. “What skill sets can you offer me, Ms. Livingston?”
“Like all field agents, I went through the standard MI6 training. Hand-to-hand combat is my favorite. I’m a fifth degree black belt in taekwondo. I’ve also done a little training in karate and jujitsu.”
Voronov raised an eyebrow. He liked the sound of that, and he liked it a lot. If this woman were to be his new bodyguard, he needed to make certain she was capable of doing the job.
“Show me what you can do. Dimitri, get a couple of your buffoons in here. Tell them to attack Ms. Livingston.”
As always, Dimitri did as he was told. He stepped outside, rounded up a few of the compound’s guards, and brought them inside. In the meantime, Olivia removed her jacket and nonchalantly waited for the guards to take their places across from her. Voronov noticed she was completely calm and did not seem concerned at all about what was going to happen once the test began.
But then again, apparently she had no reason to be concerned. The ensuing fight lasted less than a minute. Per Dimitri’s instructions, the guards attempted to attack and subdue her. Their efforts were fruitless. One of them received a kick to the face, another got a punch to the stomach, and the third got a roundhouse to the side of the head. All three ended up face down on the floor in front of Voronov’s desk.
Voronov could hardly contain his excitement. He had never seen anything like it, especially from someone so young. Olivia was incredibly fast and absolutely lethal. He was tempted to see how she would fare against Dimitri, who was the best warrior he had ever met, but decided against it. With his luck, the two would kill each other and then he would be out two good assistants.
“Delightful, Ms. Livingston. Welcome to the team.”
Chapter 48
Kiana and Michael raced through the trees, down the side of a steep, snow-covered
hill, and past a frozen pond as fast as they could go. Kiana was on the snowboard she had taken from Zander’s shed and Michael was on the skis, and even though the man on the snowmobile had gotten a big lead on them, they were gaining on him quickly. If he had been wise, he would have circled around and gone back up the hill, where they would have had a hard time following him, but instead he continued downward, back toward downtown Whistler. Kiana dug the board into the snow briefly and swerved to the right, narrowly avoiding one tree, then leaned to the left to avoid another. In the meantime, to her side, Michael hit a small mogul and went flying through the air. Being an expert skier, he landed perfectly and continued the chase.
Kiana had her gun in hand and she wanted to use it since she knew she could put an end to the chase quickly if she could just get a shot off. Michael, by contrast, did not want to use his since it wasn’t a tranquilizer and he did not want to risk hurting the man badly or killing him. As such, his intent was strictly to slow the man down and it was up to Kiana to get him. Once she got within range, she gave it a go. Unfortunately, her first shot was low and missed him completely and her second shot bounced harmlessly off of the back of his snowmobile.
Shooting a gun accurately was a pretty difficult task. Shooting one while flying down the side of a mountain on a snowboard was nearly impossible.
But she had to do it. She had to find a way. If only she could hold her hand still just long enough.
And then it happened. She was so intent on taking the next shot she didn’t see the piece of stone that was jutting from under the snow in front of her. She hit the edge of it and it took her down instantly. She landed face first on the ground, then rolled over and over at least ten times. When she finally came to a halt, she was shaken badly but luckily not hurt in any way. But then she realized one crucial (and heartbreaking) thing. During her fall, she had lost her gun. She had dropped it the second she had hit the ground and it had gone flying to the side. She tried to scramble after it, where she thought it had landed, but she couldn’t find it anywhere. She knew it had to be nearby but it was probably covered with snow. She then realized she had to abandon it, because she would probably never find it anyway, and even if she did it would take too long and she’d fall too far behind to be of any assistance in catching the man on the snowmobile. As such, she jumped back up and resumed the chase. Because of her fall, she was quite a ways back but she could still see Michael and the man in the distance. Much to her delight, Michael had overtaken him and had moved to his right. The man pulled his pistol out and tried to aim it but Michael knocked it away with one of his ski poles. Like Kiana’s gun had done a few seconds earlier, it flew into a nearby snowdrift and disappeared completely from view. Growing desperate, the man swerved hard to the right in an attempt to smash into Michael and knock him off of his skis but Michael veered quickly away, then zipped back and tried to knock the man from the snowmobile by striking him repeatedly with one of his poles. The man swerved away and Michael was forced to angle hard to the side in order to keep up with him.
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