Right to the Kill (Harmony Black Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  Right to the Kill

  Harmony Black, Book Five

  by Craig Schaefer

  Copyright © 2019 by Craig Schaefer.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC.

  Author Photo ©2014 by Karen Forsythe Photography

  Craig Schaefer / Right to the Kill

  ISBN 978-1-944806-16-3

  Contents

  The Story So Far

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  Afterword

  Also by Craig Schaefer

  The Story So Far

  The Vigilant Lock program was created in the late 1960s, drawing upon consultants in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement, and the military. It operates without oversight or legal authority. Its mission is to track, hunt, and exterminate occult threats to the United States and its people.

  It is also a lie.

  On the trail of a dead man, Vigilant agents Jessie Temple and Harmony Black discovered the truth. Their organization was created by a conspiracy within the courts of hell. The courts of the East Coast, too weak for open warfare, created Vigilant Lock as a deniable weapon. They used human agents as proxies, sending them to destroy their rivals while keeping their own hands clean. Those who learned the truth were quietly eliminated.

  Harmony, Jessie, and their team managed to turn the tables. They took over Vigilant from within, assassinated the demonic infiltrators, and sent a message to the occult underground: the lie just became real. Vigilant Lock is under new management, and no one is safe.

  That was seven months ago. Vigilant Lock has been rebuilt from the ground up, recruiting new agents and establishing a secure network of contacts and safe houses. Their first real test was a trial by fire as they went head to head with an interdimensional syndicate called the Network, as part of the operation now known as the Wisdom’s Grave incident.

  Vigilant survived. And the courts of hell are waiting, pensive, wondering who their next target is going to be.

  Tonight, they find out.

  1.

  The spire of Takahashi Tower rose above the Los Angeles skyline like a barbed spear, brutal and sleek. Its spike-tip pierced the veil of roiling yellow smog, gouging a bloodless wound, while its curved walls of mirror and chrome drank in the setting sun.

  In the belly of the twenty-eighth floor, a span of cash-green carpet and Italian marble had become the staging ground for a feast. Caterers lined up tables and set out deep dishes with Sterno heaters; their blue flames kept a steady heat beneath under-spiced meatballs and vegetarian lasagna. Music was playing over the company PA system, a mix of the safest and most forgettable hits of the ’90s, but the acoustic guitars struggled to ring out over the din of conversation as the minions of Mortensen, Keppner, & Burr LLP gathered for their mandatory reward. Some tugged at their ties as they sipped from plastic flutes of cheap champagne, waiting for the moment they could leave without raising any eyebrows. Others endured the party gamely, loading up on free food and coming back for seconds and thirds.

  Harmony Black drifted through the crowd with a frozen smile on her face and a serving tray in her outstretched hands, offering fresh drinks and taking the empties. Her burgundy vest and ivory blouse marked her as a member of the catering crew; they mostly hired temps, so it was easy to get on the payroll in time for tonight’s party. She’d had it easier than her partner Jessie, who had to earn her invitation the hard way: applying for an entry-level job and putting in the hours, three and a half weeks of on-site surveillance as she laid the groundwork for tonight’s operation.

  Jessie passed her in the other direction, sleek in a strategically low-cut emerald dress that clung to her rich dark skin like shimmering forest leaves. No eye contact, but a moment later the plastic bead nestled in Harmony’s left ear thrummed with an annoyed sigh.

  “You don’t know how bad I want some of that champagne,” Jessie said over the secured channel.

  “You really don’t,” Harmony murmured. Her fake smile brightened as she passed out another glass. “This stuff is, like, three dollars a bottle.”

  “Nobody ever accused me of being a classy drinker. Tell me again why I had to spend a month in nine-to-five purgatory when you’re the one with the accounting degree?”

  Harmony slipped off to the side of the crowd. She whispered her response, her lips barely moving as she leaned over a recycling bin and off-loaded her empty plastic flutes.

  “Because this was an infiltration op, and you’re good with people. Besides, you made me do all your work anyway. Got eyes on the target?”

  “She’s hard to miss. Check behind you, seven o’clock.”

  Harmony chanced a look while she set out a round of fresh flutes on her tray. She grabbed a warm bottle from the small army concealed under a linen tablecloth and twisted the wire cage over the cork. Jessie was right: Dima Chakroun stood out from the crowd, dressed to impress in French couture and white lace. She had big, bright eyes and a runway stride, and vintage pearls cradled the olive hollow of her slender throat. A pack of hangers-on followed wherever she walked, hungry for her attention, for her smile, for anything she might offer them.

  A couple of the men looked like they’d follow her, drooling, all the way to the gates of hell. They didn’t know how close they were.

  * * *

  “Dima Chakroun,” Harmony had said at the briefing. “French-Lebanese, multiple degrees in accounting and finance from Villanova University, senior partner at MK&B—”

  “And a clinical psychopath,” Jessie added. “Who, at the tender age of fourteen, cut her boyfriend’s heart out and offered it up to Satan. She’s gotten more ambitious since then.”

  A humming projector clicked. The slide changed, painting a new woman’s face on the glowing square of the briefing-room wall. A golden bob of hair, deep blue eyes, and a mean little smile. Harmony gestured to the photograph.

  “Chakroun is currently the personal accountant for this woman. Calls herself Nadine, previously Nadine Ashton; she burned that identity and the charity foundation it was attached to, but not fast enough to stop us from getting a foot in the intel door. A couple of stray emails led us to Chakroun’s doorstep.”

  “Can’t overstate this enough,” Jessie said. “Nadine is an incarnate demon. If you see her in the field you do not, under any circumstances, engage. She’s not as combat-oriented as some of her kin, but that doesn’t mean she can’t rip your throat out without breaking a sweat. Also, she’s previously demonstrated mind-control abilities. All she has to do is get her hands o
n your exposed skin, and you belong to her. So, don’t get close and don’t get seen. Harmony and I went toe-to-toe with her once before, and we’re damn lucky to still be here in one piece.”

  “We’re not hunting heads on this op,” Harmony said. “We’re following the money. Access to Nadine’s financial trail could expose a vast amount of infernal activity all across the Midwest. Targets we can flip or take down one by one.”

  A member of the support team, a fresh recruit straight out of Quantico, raised his hand.

  “So what’s the plan?” he asked. “Snatch the accountant and put the squeeze on her?”

  Jessie shook her head. “Interrogation—even enhanced interrogation—is worthless on a true believer. Dima Chakroun actually wants to go to hell when she dies. Not much we can threaten her with. We can’t flip her to our side, either. She’s damned, so no matter what happens here on earth, the second she kicks the bucket she’s going to be standing down in Nadine’s throne room to answer for her sins. Nadine tortures her own people for fun. You don’t want to know what she does to her enemies.”

  “And she scours her trail every time she thinks she’s been compromised,” Harmony said. “So we won’t give her the courtesy of a heads-up this time. Our objective is to penetrate Dima Chakroun’s office, gain access to her accounting files, steal a copy, and exfiltrate without being detected. We leave the accountant in play. If we do this right, we walk away with a map of Nadine’s dirty money, everybody who’s paying her and everybody she’s paying, and nobody ever knows we were there.”

  * * *

  Champagne splashed into a plastic flute. Droplets clung to the sides and glittered like diamonds under the hard office lights. The dregs of the bottle filled the last glass three-quarters of the way. Harmony set it aside, keeping Dima and her pack in her peripheral vision.

  “Kevin?” she murmured. “Are you in position?”

  The young man’s voice crackled over the ear bead, soft and faintly surly.

  “Over by the break room, boss. Damn, these catering outfits are itchy. This shirt is more starch than…shirt. I think I’m getting a rash.”

  “You’re the one who wanted more field assignments,” Jessie said. “Welcome to the glamorous life of a spy. Harmony, I’m ready to move as soon as you are.”

  Harmony’s hand hovered over one of the plastic flutes at the edge of her tray. She wore a ring on one finger, a Victorian-styled design with seed pearls and pewter, small and unobtrusive.

  Her hand turned as her thumb slid between her fingers and pushed open a clasp. The ring’s face dangled open on a concealed hinge, and tiny grains, like golden sand, rained down into the champagne. She gave her hand a practiced flick, closing the secret compartment before anyone noticed.

  “Ready,” she said. “Initiate phase two, green light.”

  Harmony picked up her tray of drinks, put on a smile, and went hunting.

  * * *

  On the other side of the party, Jessie had a target of her own. She’d spent most of her sojourn at MK&B learning the lay of the land, playing the role of a fresh-faced new recruit looking to make a name for herself in the accounting big leagues. All the while, studying her coworkers, learning their weaknesses, how to bend them. How to hurt them if she needed to. The work came naturally to her. Jessie Temple had the eyes of an apex predator; she kept them concealed behind custom-made contact lenses, turning their inhuman turquoise tint to a muted amber.

  Egon Bakowski was dead ahead, invading one of his interns’ personal space as he maneuvered her between his cologne-drenched bulk and the wall. Jessie had pointed him out to Harmony when he arrived. Making sure he was over-served to the point of slurring his speech was easy; she kept feeding him fresh glasses, swooping in to swap out his empties every fifteen minutes or so. He’d just progressed past the “photocopying his butt” stage of office-party intoxication and was headed straight for “fistfight the boss” territory. Right where Jessie wanted him.

  She slipped in between him and the intern. Her fingers curled, making a shooing motion. The intern vanished with a look of gratitude.

  “Egon,” Jessie purred, reaching up to smooth the rumpled lapel of his jacket. “Just the guy I’ve been looking for.”

  He gave her a bloodshot leer, primed by two weeks of careful and subtle flirting. He was too unsteady on his feet, rocking like a sailor in a gale-force storm, to handle subtle tonight. The man was a walking human-resources violation when he was stone cold sober, which—along with his managerial position in the IT department—was exactly why Jessie had picked him.

  “Hey, brown sugar,” he mumbled. Jessie had found it was easy to keep a smile on her face by imagining what his head would look like torn off and impaled on a stick. It was one of her favorite coping mechanisms. She sidled closer to him, hips swaying like she was slow-dancing to the music, a little body language to get his clammy hand on her waist. His eye-watering cologne clung to a thin film of sweat odor, like he’d decided to bathe in Drakkar Noir instead of taking a shower.

  “I was thinking,” she said, “we should get to know each other a little better.”

  “I like that idea,” he said.

  Bet you do, asshole. She put her hand on his hip and leaned close to whisper in his ear.

  “Not here, people are watching. Someplace…private. How about that broom closet, near the print shop? Meet me there? Ten minutes.”

  As she whispered, her fingers dipped into his pocket. He always kept his key card in the left front side, on top of his wallet; she’d watched him take it out and put it away for days. Her fingertips curled against the glossy plastic rectangle and snaked it into her palm.

  “Baby,” he said, “I’m gonna rock your world.”

  She watched him trundle off. With any luck, he’d fall asleep in the broom closet, making the world a little safer for interns everywhere. And come tomorrow morning, by the time he noticed his card was missing, he wouldn’t have a clue where or how he’d lost it. She kept it palmed as she prowled between knots of conversation. Kevin was dead ahead, a string bean of a twenty-year-old with ruffled hair and a hangdog look on his face, draped in a catering outfit with sleeves half an inch too long. Jessie moved close and reached for a flute of champagne. She slid the stolen card onto his tray and took the glass in one smooth motion, walking away without a word.

  “All right,” she said under her breath, “you’re up at bat.”

  * * *

  Kevin took the long way around the room, trading full glasses for empties, invisible in his caterer’s uniform. He made his way to the lip of an open hallway.

  “How do I look?” he whispered, gripping his tray tight.

  Harmony had moved to the left of the hallway’s mouth, Jessie to the right, both of them checking the crowd. They watched for turned faces, anyone looking in Kevin’s direction.

  “Wait for it,” Harmony said over his ear bead. “Wait for it, and…now. Go, go, go.”

  He slipped up the hall and out of sight, leaving the party behind. His brisk stride carried him to the security door of the IT department, nothing but dark shadows beyond the glass. He whisked the stolen card across the little black reader; it chimed, flashed a green light, and the door clicked.

  He couldn’t risk turning on the lights. Jessie’s recon work had yielded a floor plan, and they rebuilt it at headquarters using folding chairs and card tables to mimic the tall cubicle walls. She made him run the gauntlet again and again, first in the dark and finally blindfolded, until he could cross the department floor at full speed without bumping anything or making a sound. Every second counted. He could feel them draining away as he navigated to a windowless door in the back. The second key reader chimed, the door surrendered, and he made his way into the icy blue glow of the server room.

  Kevin crouched down and unloaded his tray, racking up champagne flutes in a row at his side. He flipped the tray over. A thin tablet, fixed to the underside with angled strips of duct tape, lit up with two sharp taps and cast his
face in hard-edged shadows. A mini-USB plug jutted from one side of the tablet; he gave it a tug and it unspooled on a tether of retractable black cord.

  He found the server he was looking for, plugged in his tablet, and got to work. He’d finished ninety-five percent of the hack days ago, commandeering the office’s systems—and most of Takahashi Tower’s while he was at it—with the help of Jessie’s inside connections. The final five percent needed him to be on-site. He ran intrusion protocols, slipped around barricades, his fingers dancing a flamenco across the tablet’s face.

  A flood of scrolling text erupted into a spread of camera feeds. He found the one he needed, tapped it twice and made it blossom to fill the tablet screen, and executed his custom patch. The camera was fixed on an empty corridor, overhead lights gleaming off polished Italian marble, and lines of closed doors adorned with brass nameplates.

  “Three, two, one, and…you’re good,” he said. “I’m feeding a static five-second loop of footage to the security monitors. The executive wing is officially blind.”

  “One more door in the way,” Jessie whispered. “Harmony?”

  “My turn,” she said.

  2.

  Magicians called it a force. The art of giving someone freedom of choice while staying in near-total control, guaranteeing they picked the choice you wanted them to make all along. Harmony’s force began with a bit of subtle feng shui, arranging her serving tray so that one particular flute was right at the front, easy to grab, while the others were pushed back and nuzzled up against some strategically placed empties to make them less appetizing.

  She infiltrated a knot of conversation, zeroed in on Dima Chakroun, and offered her a drink. The fashion plate favored her with a smile and a slight lift of her flute as she took it in her slender hand. Harmony inclined her head, subservient, and passed out drinks to her party of hangers-on. Then she faded back to the sidelines.

  This part wouldn’t take long. Dealing with supernaturals was touch and go, but Dima was just a human with friends in low places. Part of operational planning involved stealing the results of her most recent medical checkup; they had her blood work, allergies, body mass, and weight, everything the chemists in the Basement needed to whip up a custom-made devil’s brew.