There it was. Harmony watched from a safe distance as the smile died on Dima’s lips, blood draining from her cheeks. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on her brow as she set her flute down and said her apologies, extricating herself from the pack.
“Shit,” Jessie breathed, “think she’s headed for the—”
“Already there,” Harmony said.
She’d anticipated that problem. Dima was making a beeline for the employee washroom, just off the lobby. She got there to find Harmony standing in her path, all apologies.
“I’m so sorry, the ladies’ room is closed for cleaning. Someone had a”—Harmony dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“an accident in there. It’s all over the walls and you can’t imagine the smell—”
Dima clapped a hand over her mouth in mid-turn, her skin waxy and wet, and headed the other way. Her heels rapped out a rapid-fire Morse code distress call on the marble floor.
There was more than one flavor of a magician’s force. Sometimes you could get the job done by taking away every choice except for the right one.
“There she goes,” Harmony murmured. “Jessie?”
“Ready.”
* * *
Jessie watched Dima steam right past her, taking a hard left with her palm squeezed against her lips and tears welling in her eyes.
“Almost feel bad for her,” Jessie said, moving in pursuit.
“She’s a satanic serial killer.” Harmony’s voice crackled in her ear.
“That’s why I said ‘almost.’”
Dima broke away from the party and headed off down the western corridor, aiming for the executive suites. Jessie followed at a distance. She prowled under the blinded eye of a security camera. Around the corner, Dima’s key jiggled in the knob of her office door. She stumbled through the doorway, running now, no time to close it behind her, and Jessie froze until she heard the door of her private bathroom slamming shut.
Jessie slipped off her heels. She curled her finger around the ankle straps and let them dangle as she crept into Dima’s office, circling her ornate hand-carved desk and flipping up the lid of the accountant’s laptop. The screen lit up at the press of a button, and the welcoming chime of the operating system was muffled by gagging, splashing sounds from the far side of the bathroom door.
* * *
At the briefing, Kevin had handled the technical end, running down the electronic obstacles in their path.
“MK&B doesn’t just crunch numbers for hell’s aristocracy,” he explained. “They deal with banks, big pharma, oil companies, super-sensitive accounting records. As a basic security protocol, every partner’s personal computer is air gapped. That means no Internet connection. No Ethernet, no Wi-Fi, nothing. You can’t hack what you can’t connect to.”
“So we have to get you into Chakroun’s office,” Jessie said.
He shook his head and brandished a slender matte-black USB stick.
“I call it an ice pick. Slot it when you boot her system up, and it’ll automatically run through four different encryption cracks, from dictionary attacks to most-used-password lists. On top of that, thanks to the background intel you’ve gathered, we know every important name and date in her life: every friend she’s had since grade school, every pet she’s ever owned, birthdays. You know, the stuff that people shouldn’t use for passwords but usually do anyway. I’m putting together a custom list just for her.”
* * *
The ice pick slid into an open port. A window blossomed in the bottom left corner of the screen. Tight rainbow lines of text scrolled past, too fast to read, as the attack began. Jessie kept one eye on the office doorway. Judging from the agonized, wet noises behind the bathroom door, Dima wouldn’t be a problem for a while.
Seven more seconds and the ice pick struck gold. It typed out Dima’s password under a shroud of asterisks and the system welcomed Jessie inside. The firm had a standard system for naming QuickBooks files, arranging them under client numbers for anonymity, and Dima followed the rules. Jessie found Nadine’s work folder and slid it between windows with a click of her fingertip, starting the slow process of copying over twenty gigabytes of data onto a memory stick.
“Got it,” she whispered. “Couple more minutes, I’ll be back at the party, and Dima will never know she just got her financials jacked. Still wish we could have taken her down.”
“Once we start acting on that data,” Harmony said, “Nadine’s eventually going to figure out what happened. Neutralizing Chakroun ourselves would probably be a mercy compared to what Nadine will do to her. She’s got a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to failure. Kevin, are you clear?”
“All clear, boss. Locked up behind me, wiped down the key card and dropped it into a recycling bin in the break room. I’m ready to take off.”
“Not until the end of the party. Jessie heads out first. We clean up and leave with the rest of the catering crew. No room for mistakes tonight. If my hunch is right, we just got our hands on the ammunition to bring down Nadine’s entire network.”
The progress bar inched its way along the screen. Jessie bounced on her stockinged feet, toes curling, counting under her breath as she watched it work.
Kevin’s voice whispered in her ear, tight as a tourniquet.
“We have a problem. We have a big problem.”
“Talk to me,” Jessie said.
“Party crashers,” he said. “Nadine just showed up.”
* * *
On the far side of the room, concealed behind a small mob of hungry partygoers at the row of catering trays, Harmony craned her neck to follow Kevin’s wide-eyed line of sight.
Nadine was here. Draped in Prada, stiletto heels clicking, flanked by a pair of gorillas in tailored suits as she sauntered into the room like she owned it. Harmony’s catering getup was barely a disguise; one glance and Nadine would recognize her in a heartbeat. One glance was all it would take to burn this operation to the ground. Harmony turned, ducking her head, moving to stay on the edges of Nadine’s periphery. She had to get away from the party, out of sight, and fast. The closest exit was the one Jessie had left by, the corridor to the executive wing.
“Coming your way,” Harmony said. “Files?”
“Almost done,” Jessie said. “Thirty seconds, forty tops.”
“We can still salvage this. All we have to do is get out without being seen. Kevin, you okay?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “I mean, she knows you and Jessie, but she’s never seen my face. I mean, I don’t think she has. I’m safe as long as she doesn’t suspect anything.”
“Hold it together. Slip away as soon as you can, get some privacy, and find us an exfil route. We’re not going home empty-handed.”
* * *
Hold it together, Kevin thought. Yeah. Easy. Just pretend I’m not standing ten feet away from a face-eating torture demon who looks like Taylor Swift.
Nadine was arguing—more like dictating terms—with a red-faced executive with a bad suit and a comb-over. He was trying to tell her that it was after office hours, and certainly they held themselves to the very highest standards of customer service, but—
“But,” Nadine said, “despite wanting to confirm an extremely important transaction with my accountant, you’re telling me to come back in the morning. Is this an elite financial-services firm or a strip-mall bank?”
“The highest—highest possible standards, but as I said, this is well past office hours—”
Nadine reached out and curled her fingers beneath his chin. Gentle, holding him fast, her eyes locked and unblinking. The tip of her thumb slowly stroked his jawline.
“I’m a hands-on manager,” she said. “And I expect to be obeyed, without question, by those who serve me. Now…are we going to have a problem here?”
The fire in his eyes sputtered and died. His breathing slowed, his jaw going slack.
“No,” he said softly. “No problem here.”
She let go of him.
“Good. Now then
, where is Dima Chakroun?”
“She, ah—” The man swallowed hard, eyes glazed as he gestured behind him. “She went back to her office. She wasn’t looking good, think it was the food.”
Nadine’s eyes narrowed at the catering spread. Her pert nose wrinkled.
“If she ate any of that pig slop, my faith in her good judgment is going to be sorely tested.” She reached up and curled her fingers around her thugs’ shoulders. “Boys? Go and fetch Dima for me, would you please? I’ll wait.”
As the two men turned toward the executive wing—they’d clearly visited in person more than once—Kevin stepped to one side. He had to get distance, whisper out a warning. A half-drunk executive with a marinara-stained tie got in his way, deliberating over Kevin’s tray of drinks as if they weren’t all exactly the same. He kept his cover intact, stood still despite his feet wanting to walk on their own, and moved along as soon as the guy picked a glass. He pivoted toward the edge of the crowd—and found himself standing face-to-face with Nadine.
You flinch, you die.
He poured the rush of nervous energy into a big, bright smile, scooped a flute of champagne from his tray, and offered it to her.
“Would you care for a drink, ma’am?”
“Well,” she said, smug as a cat with a saucer of milk. “Such courtesy. Someone at this party has proper etiquette. Too bad it isn’t an actual employee.”
As she took the flute, her silky-soft fingertips brushed over his. A ripple of raw pleasure snaked along his arm. He felt like he was slipping into a warm bath, his head wreathed with steam, his muscles unclenching and all his anxiety draining away.
“I might have to take you with me when I leave,” she said with a wink. She sipped from her glass, grimaced, and put it back on the tray. “And that…is dire. Darling, would you do something for me? I want you to find the nearest sink and empty every single one of these glasses down the drain. Just pour them all out, so no one else has to suffer drinking that plonk. Can you do that? For me?”
Of course he could. That was more than reasonable.
* * *
The progress bar inched toward its final destination, copying the river of evidence onto Jessie’s USB stick. Ten seconds remaining, nine—
Harmony appeared in the doorway. She nodded up the hall. Jessie held up eight fingers, then seven, counting down. Dima had mostly gone quiet in the bathroom.
“Shit, sorry,” Kevin’s voice said in their ear beads. “You’ve got company. Two of Nadine’s guys coming your way, looking for Dima.”
Transfer complete. Jessie snatched the USB stick, powered down Dima’s laptop, and shut the lid, snuffing the rectangle of light. Harmony crouched down. She pulled up one leg of her slacks and plucked a palm-sized .22 from her ankle holster. Her other ankle had a custom rig for a vital accessory: the stubby black tube of a sound suppressor. She screwed it onto the gun’s barrel, fingers finding the thread and working in a practiced rhythm while she watched the hall at her back.
“What’s our route?” she whispered.
“I—shit, sorry. Sorry, I’ve been pouring out this champagne—”
“Did she touch you?”
“She just brushed my hand. I had no idea. I didn’t even realize she did anything.”
Harmony’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“That’s how she works,” she said. “Breathe. Focus. It’s a psychic neurotoxin, but it wears off fast. Right now, you need to find us a way off this floor.”
Jessie hustled around the desk and out into the hallway, slipping her heels back on. She hadn’t left a trace behind. Dima was still in the bathroom, and if they made it out without raising any alarms, they were home free.
“Bad news,” Kevin said. “That wing dead-ends another two hundred feet past Dima’s office. Your way out is your way in.”
Harmony hid her gun behind her back. She looked to Jessie. “Bluff.”
As Nadine’s men rounded the corner, walking side by side, Jessie leaned against Harmony and threw her arms around her shoulders.
“Oh God,” she drawled, “he left me, Becky. My man did me wrooong.”
Harmony gave the men an apologetic smile as she pulled Jessie along, step by stumbling step. “My friend, uh, had a little too much to drink. Don’t tell anyone we’re back here, okay? I’m just trying to sober her up before we go back to the party.”
“Try coffee,” one of the men grunted, barely giving them a second glance.
The other froze in his tracks. He stared at Harmony, rusted gears turning behind his piggish eyes until something clicked.
3.
Everything happened in the space of a second.
The thug with the broad shoulders and beady little eyes knew Harmony’s face. Maybe he’d been with Nadine’s posse—the few who survived—last time they squared off. Maybe he’d just been smart enough to pay attention to his briefings. No matter how he knew, he knew. His mouth opened to shout as Harmony’s free hand poked the small of Jessie’s back, three quick taps to warn her. Jessie broke left, and Harmony’s gun hand swung up to take aim.
He was faster than he looked. He lunged in, swatted her weapon aside, and hooked his arm around her throat, spinning Harmony around and squeezing her neck like a python. His buddy had barely registered that something was wrong, coattails flaring as he turned, just in time to meet the heel of Jessie’s shoe. She leaped up, snapped out a kick, and hit him square in the belly, slamming him back against the mahogany wall.
Harmony strained for breath, black spots blossoming in her vision as the arm squeezed tighter against her windpipe. She drove her elbow into his gut, then again, hearing him grunt and finally he buckled as he lost his grip on her. She spun and grabbed the lapel of his coat, yanking him close, and put the tube of the sound suppressor against the base of his chin.
She pulled the trigger. The .22 let out a pair of muffled pops. The crumpled slugs lodged somewhere inside his brain. He twitched and shook, eyes rolling back until there was nothing but bloodshot white, and crimson syrup guttered from his gaping mouth.
Jessie didn’t give his partner time to recover. She threw sledgehammer punches into his chest, her otherworldly blood driving her muscles harder than a heavyweight champion. His ribs shattered, jagged shreds of bone puncturing his lungs. His body rattled against the wall then slowly slumped to the marble floor. She grabbed hold of his neck as Harmony shoved her own opponent down, bracing her gun and stepping over his body.
“No witnesses,” she said. Jessie nodded. She wrenched the other thug’s neck to one side, sharp and fast, snapping his spine.
“Are you guys okay?” Kevin whispered over the comm line. “What just happened?”
“Mission just went south on us.” Jessie looked to Harmony. “Scrub it, cut our losses? I’ll kick that door in and take Dima out right now. Nadine’ll burn her financial trail when she sees the carnage, but it’ll take her a while to get her operations back up and running, and without her favorite accountant to help.”
“No,” Harmony said. She stared at the bodies, then to the open office door. Dima still hadn’t found the strength to leave the security of her private bathroom, and the party was far enough away, the music covering the sounds of impact, that nobody was running to investigate.
They still had an intact cover. What they didn’t have was an excuse for a couple of dead shooters. As soon as Nadine found her men’s bodies, she’d put two and two together and know she’d been compromised.
For a moment, everything went quiet.
Harmony’s mind shifted inside itself. The rhythm of her pounding heart, the rush of blood-pulse in her ears, all faded to a distant drumbeat as her emotions receded like waves and turned into a wintery flatline. The hallway, the bodies, the building became a wash of data points. She saw the world in mathematical equations. Alchemical formulas. This interaction plus this interaction equals mission failure. She ran through the possibilities one by one, tossing aside the failure points, until she found the equation that
fit.
“April. Are you on the line?”
April Cassidy’s warm Irish brogue gusted into her ear. “On overwatch as always. How can I help?”
“Kevin, leave the party, find some privacy, and get us an evac route. April, there’s one way we can salvage this operation. One reason for an outbreak of random violence that doesn’t connect to Dima Chakroun or Nadine’s financials.”
Harmony looked to her partner, her eyes gleaming with a flash of insight.
“We’re turning this into a heist. A heist that just went violently, tragically wrong, and these men were in the wrong place at the wrong time. April, find us something to steal.”
* * *
Kevin abandoned his post and his drinks. He kept the tray, cradling it close to his chest with the concealed tablet still taped to its underbelly. He barged into the men’s room, locked himself in the farthest stall, and squatted on the toilet seat with the tray balanced on his knees. The tablet glowed under his fingertips. He swiped through blue neon schematics, floor plans and maintenance specs drawn in trails of light.
“Might have something,” April mused. “Two floors directly above you. There’s a small office belonging to a firm called Hollywood Memories; they authenticate and sell film and sports memorabilia. Among other recent catches, two days ago they posted an ad for the upcoming auction of a baseball autographed by Ty Cobb. Bidding is expected to open in the low five figures.”
Jessie’s low whistle carried over the comm line. “I’d steal that. Kevin?”
Outside the stall, a urinal flushed. Kevin scrambled, fingers tapping, calling up a new window and activating a back door he’d implanted over a week ago. Someone was humming, washing his hands. Kevin didn’t speak until the bathroom door swung shut again.
“Okay. Found a way. Harmony, Jessie, take a left and get into the third office from the end. That puts you directly under Hollywood Memories.”
Right to the Kill (Harmony Black Book 5) Page 2