They climbed out of the trunk and onto the blacktop. It was like any other office park in any other part of the world: a homogeneous hunk of glass and steel surrounded by utilitarian landscaping and pavement marked with parking places for employees. The place was deserted, at least on this side of the building, and Alain closed the trunk and waved them toward a small door.
He removed a key card from his pocket and slid it through the reader on a digital keypad backlit with red light. The light turned green, and the door clicked softly from within. Alain turned the knob and ushered them into a concrete stairwell.
“This is one of the few entrances not covered by cameras,” he said, already starting up the stairs. “The Executive Level is at the top.”
They had already discussed their plan to use the computer in the offices of Edgar Rousseau, the man listed as the company’s COO. According to Alain, it was one of the only places in the building that had a computer not monitored by the security feed. It wasn’t ideal. No one was crazy about the idea of magnifying their crime — and their exposure — by sneaking into the executive offices. But according to Alain, cameras were everywhere, including the server room. Even if they managed to get in while the guard was on his rounds, away from the bank of monitors that displayed the view from every camera, Alain would be seen sneaking strangers into the building after hours if someone went through the feed later.
Edgar Rousseau’s office was their best bet. And still no guarantee.
They crept quickly but quietly up the stairs, trying not to make noise on the metal treads that might be heard by the guard patrolling the building. When they reached the sixth floor, Farrell and Jenna waited inside the stairwell while Alain checked the hall. He waved them forward a moment later and they made their way down a hallway lined with plush taupe carpet.
The hall was long and wide, wood doors lining either side and a large glass enclosed conference room beckoning from the end of the hall. They turned right when they reached it and entered another small hall, then stopped at a set of carved double doors that marked the end of the line.
Alain had told them there were no keypads in the executive offices — an effort to maintain the air of moneyed elegance no doubt — but Jenna was still relieved to see that he was right. It didn’t make sense to her; weren’t these offices most important of all? But Farrell hadn’t been surprised. According to him, people made all kinds of mistakes to preserve and feed their ego. Still, Jenna couldn’t help but think it was weird for such a low budget office complex to be topped by something close to luxury. It might not be proof that CBT was into something else, but it was definitely something to think about.
Alain opened the door and they stepped into a large corner office lit by the city’s lights beyond two walls of glass. An elaborately designed carpet that looked strangely out of place in the modern building sat atop gleaming wood floors. Bookshelves lined one of the remaining walls, and an imposing, carved desk sat near the big windows. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the laptop resting there. Alain hadn’t been sure Rousseau would leave the computer overnight.
“Good, it’s here,” Alain said.
They followed him to the desk and he sat down gingerly in the giant leather chair, as if afraid it might contain some kind of trap designed to capture anyone who wasn’t its owner. He opened the laptop and started typing.
“What am I looking for?” he asked.
Farrell removed the piece of paper Erik Karlsen had given them from his pocket. “Anything you can find on the origin of these wire transfers. I’m guessing the trail will be layered. Take it back as far as you can.”
Alain nodded, his eyes hidden behind the reflection of code scrolling across the computer screen. Now he seemed less like the shy man she’d met for coffee and more like someone in command. This was his world. Maybe the one place he felt in control. It was apparent in the confident set of his shoulders, the aggressive tapping of computer keys, as if he didn’t even have to think, as if his fingers were mainlining instructions from his brain.
His hands flew over the keyboard for a full ten minutes before he sat back in the chair.
“Did you find anything?” Jenna asked.
“We will see,” he said. “I’m running a program to trace these transfers through their IPs.”
“Strange,” Farrell said quietly.
“What’s strange?” Jenna asked.
Farrell’s eyes were on the surface of the desk. “No pictures of the wife? The kids?”
Jenna followed his gaze. “Maybe he’s a private person.”
“Maybe he’s a lying motherfucker who’s using this company to shuttle money around for the purpose of killing millions of people.”
“Or that,” Jenna said.
Farrell’s mouth turned up slightly at the corners as he opened the drawers to the desk.
“What are you doing?” Alain asked, obviously alarmed.
“Seeing what other secrets Mr. Rousseau has for us.”
“Please be careful,” Alain said. “Monsieur Rousseau must not know we have been here.”
“I’ll be careful,” Farrell said, pulling out the bottom drawer.
He fished around inside, then closed it and went for the next one. Jenna looked around the office while he fished, but he was right; it might have been a hotel for all the personal touches it contained. Even the art looked like it had been bought wholesale. The office was nice, even luxurious, on the surface. But now that she looked closer, it reeked of something temporary. Edgar Rousseau was either in on the scam, or he’d already been given his pink slip. Either way, she wasn’t surprised when Farrell shut the last drawer with a grunt of disgust.
“Think he’s in on it?” Jenna asked.
“I have no idea,” Farrell said. “At this point, I don’t know if any these people are who they say they are.”
Jenna was opening her mouth to suggest Alain run a background check on Edgar Rousseau when something slammed out in the hall. They froze, and Farrell withdrew his gun as he walked stealthily toward the office door. He flattened himself against the wall, his eyes alert. A moment later, another slam sounded from the hall. Farrell rushed toward them.
“The guard is checking the offices on this floor. Get down.”
They ducked behind the desk, and Farrell gestured for Jenna to scoot back into the foot well. They had assumed perfectly still positions when Alain reached a hand to the top of the desk. Farrell’s reflexes were lightning fast; he had a hold of Alain’s wrist before it ever cleared the top of the desk. His eyes were like steel even from Jenna’s positioning under the desk.
“The computer,” Alain hissed.
Farrell looked up, then let go of Alain’s wrist so he could close the laptop. He had already withdrawn his hand when Farrell’s gaze slid to the desk’s surface.
He cursed under his breath. “It’s not closed all the way.”
He reached out to finish the job, but a split second later the doorknob rattled and the guard entered the office.
Ten
“Motherfucker,” Farrell whispered, withdrawing his hand.
The door shut with a soft click as the guard made his way into the office. He'd hidden Jenna in the footwell of the desk because it was the safest place, but now he couldn’t help second guessing himself. If the guard looked down and saw her there, they were done. And while he had no doubt he would get Jenna out alive — nothing would ever stop him from doing that — it would come at the cost of exposing their breach of the CBT offices.
But it was dark in the office. Hard to see anything beyond the furniture and the lights of Paris in the distance. Any job became automatic when repeated, and he had to imagine this was especially true of being a nightwatchman in an out of the way office park that looked like all the other office parks in the surrounding area. More than likely, the man would give the place a cursory glance and be on his way. He kept his gun at the ready anyway.
Just in case.
He listened as the guard
continued forward, then stopped. He sounded close. Like he was right next to the desk. Had he seen light leaking from the open laptop? There was no way to know from Farrell’s vantage point, and in some ways it didn’t matter. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t nervous. He was simply calculating, planning for the possible moment when the guard would take one step too many and they would be revealed. It wasn’t the end of the world. He would act fast, kill the man if he had to, finish what they’d come to do and get out.
But it would come with consequences.
He tried to sense the guard’s movement’s beyond the desk, half expecting the man to rush forward at any moment. Instead, the guard’s footsteps were slow as he continued to approach the desk.
What the fuck was he doing?
A moment later, the guard stopped so close to their hiding place Farrell got a whiff of the man’s cologne. This was it. The guard had seen it. He’d seen the computer, and now he was going to investigate. He was going to investigate and he was going to see them hiding behind the desk and Farrell would have to kill him.
He heard something rustle near the leg of the desk and looked down to see a hand — the guard’s hand — fumbling a foot away from the edge of the desk.
What the fuck…?
He prepared to aim his weapon. Maybe it would give the guard enough of a scare to keep him quiet. Maybe there was still some way to salvage the mission. He was debating the possibility of the guard making them for the fugitives they were when his hand closed around something on the carpet near the desk. Farrell narrowed his eyes, trying to get a better view of the object in the man’s hand, but he couldn’t make it out. Whatever it was, the guard dropped it on the desk with a small clink, then quickly left the office.
Jenna exhaled loudly from under the desk. “Jesus…”
“That was close,” Farrell admitted, rising to his feet.
He reached under the desk and took her hand to help her up, then picked up the object shimmering on the desk.
It was a pen. They’d almost been discovered because of a gold pen that Edgar Rousseau must have dropped earlier in the day.
Close indeed.
Alain opened the computer, wiping a fine sheen of sweat from his upper lip as he inspected the code on the screen. His hands began to move, his fingers flying over the keys as he tabbed between several screens.
“I don’t want to rush you,” Farrell said, “but I’d also like to avoid another visit from our friend.”
“Almost… done,” Alain said.
Another minute passed before he leaned back, pointing at the screen. “There.”
“H. Chevalier?” Farrell said.
“That’s as far back as I can trace the money, which means it was either transferred by this person, or the person who transferred it to Chevalier hid their tracks very, very well.”
“Where is this IP address?” Farrell asked.
Alain tapped a few more keys, then switched to Google maps, magnifying the image until it was focused on a large swath of open land near Arbois, France. Jenna leaned in, reading the words near the red dot marking the address.
“La Maison des Chevalier.” She looked at Farrell. “What is it?”
“That, my love, is a winery.”
“A winery transferred money to fund development of the virus?” she asked.
“Someone at the winery,” Farrell said.
“I didn't say that,” Alain protested. “It is possible there are other levels of encryption. But this is all I can do to help you.”
“It’s more than we had this morning,” Farrell said. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Shouldn’t we run a search for Morse or Hewitt, or even Petrov?” Jenna asked, emboldened by their deception of the guard. “Maybe we can find a connection to CBT.”
“They’re not that stupid,” Farrell said. “And we don’t have time.”
She nodded. He was probably right.
“I would like to run a… cleansing program on this machine before we go,” Alain said, studying the machine.
Farrell looked at him. “A cleansing program?”
“He wants to wipe it,” Jenna said. “To hide what he did.”
“How long will that take?” Farrell asked.
Alain considered the question. “A half hour. Perhaps one hour.”
Farrell shook his head. “We can’t risk having the guard come back.”
“How difficult is it for someone to see what you just did?” Jenna asked.
“A little bit difficult,” Alain admitted. “One would need to install the program, name the files to be inspected, run the program…”
“That doesn’t sound like stuff Edgar Rousseau would think to do,” Jenna said.
Alain sighed. “You are probably right.”
“Good,” Farrell said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Alain returned the computer to its home screen, then closed it, this time all the way. They did a quick search around the desk to make sure they hadn’t dropped anything, then headed for the door. Farrell listened until he was satisfied the hall was quiet, and Alain exited and waved them through when he’d confirmed they were in the clear.
They backtracked the way they’d come — down the shorter hall, past the glass walled conference room, down the longer hall — all while listening carefully for the sound of footsteps. Then they were back in the stairwell, descending as quickly as they dared without making a racket on the stairs. They had one close call when they stepped outside and saw the guard turning the corner on his rounds, but he was walking away from them and was gone a moment later.
Farrell and Jenna climbed back into the trunk, and they were again wrapped in darkness as Alain started the car, turned around in the parking lot. They didn’t pause at the gate this time, and less than five minutes after they’d left CBT the car stopped. Alain opened the door and they stepped out into the cool night air in the parking lot of a petrol station where they’d left Farrell’s car nearly two hours before.
Alain looked pale, and Jenna felt a surge of sympathy for him. She had gotten used to being scared. She rarely noticed it anymore.
Farrell reached out to shake his hand. “Thank you.”
“You did not give me a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice. You did a good thing. I know you’re not sure whether to believe that, but I’m telling you it’s true.”
Alain nodded.
Jenna smiled at him. “No hard feelings?”
“No hard feelings, although I am sure this man would not have allowed us to have our romantic dinner.”
“You got that right,” Farrell growled.
Jenna laughed and leaned in to embrace Alain. “Thank you for helping me keep my daughter safe.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
Farrell opened the passenger side door of the Saab for Jenna, then shut the door. He walked around the car to the driver’s side, then looked at Alain before he opened the door. He didn’t need Jenna to hear what he was going to say next.
“Check your account tomorrow,” he said to the other man. “I think you’ll find you have more than enough to weather a few weeks of unemployment when you get the news from CBT.”
“My account… But how do you know my bank…?”
Farrell smiled and got into the car. He shut the door and looked at Jenna.
“How do you feel about white wine?” he asked her.
She smiled. “I like white wine.”
He started the car. “I know a place.”
Eleven
In another life, they would have taken Farrell’s private jet and landed less than an hour after leaving Paris. Now it was too risky, the likelihood of being identified as the fugitives they were far greater near an airport where there was always extra police presence. They drove through the night instead, past landscapes that were little more than shadows in the distance once they left the city behind. Farrell told Jenna she should sleep, but she was too amped from the break-in at CBT, their ne
ar discovery by the guard.
She’d been surprised by the calm she’d felt when the guard was approaching the desk. She shouldn’t have been. It was the calm that came with knowing that she would always be okay as long as Farrell was there. That she would make it out alive even if the guard saw the computer, even if he saw Jenna.
Because Farrell would have killed him.
She waited for the old swell of fear, of disgust, to roil through her, but there was nothing. Nothing but gratitude and a kind of steely resolve that mirrored Farrell’s. She’d once crouched in a wardrobe as Adam Denman and his men invaded the Cornwall estate, as they’d threatened her daughter. She’d visited Mrs. Hodges’ flat shortly after the woman who had been like a mother to her had been killed by the men looking for her father’s papers. She’d felt helpless as they escaped Erik Karlsen’s cabin, leaving him to die, knowing there was nothing they could do to help the mortally wounded man.
She would have taken a gun in any one of those situations and killed the people who had committed those crimes before they could do the same to the innocent. She knew it without a doubt, the knowledge of it as sure as the love for Farrell and Lily that resided under her skin.
She just didn’t know what it said about her.
The sun was coming up over the horizon when she got her first glimpse of Arbois in the distance. It was so picturesque she had to blink to make sure it wasn’t a mirage. But no, there it was, a small town set amid towering trees and painted gold by the rising sun. Fields were a patchwork in every direction beyond the town, some of them smooth and green, others lined with rows of the Chardonnay and Savagnin grapes that had made the region famous for its sherry-like wine.
“Tired?” Farrell asked as he navigated the car through the town’s winding roads.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Want to place bets on how long you last once your head hits the pillow?”
“I’ll pass.”
“That’s what I thought. Chicken.”
They pulled up outside a stone building that looked like it had been in the town for centuries. Old growth trees stood sentry, and blue shutters framed small windows graced with flower boxes. It could have been ripped from a storybook, and not for the first time, Jenna felt that she’d left her real life behind in favor of one wrested from a book. Except this time it wasn’t an edge-of-your-seat thriller but a beautiful fairytale.
Eternal (London Mob Book 3) Page 6