by D. L. Wood
That dark blue emblem. The double encircled letter “I.” The one on the pillar in the parking lot. The one etched into the glass doors of the lobby. The one . . .
A shiver shot violently down Chloe’s spine as she gazed at the emblem, completely transfixed. She had seen it dozens of times while Tate worked for the company and at least a dozen since she had arrived that afternoon. But it wasn’t until she was sitting there on the roof with Renny, watching the sweat on his glass drip onto the napkin, that she remembered the last time she saw it before coming to Miami.
THIRTY-THREE
Chloe’s stomach swirled as she watched another bead of water follow the last onto the napkin, further soaking the already drenched paper. She became aware of Renny staring at her, and forced herself to breathe.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m . . . I’m fine.”
“Because you do not look fine, darling. Not at all.”
“No, I’ll—I’ll be okay. I’m just really tired.”
“I would imagine so. After all you’ve been through.”
Chloe eyes rocketed up to meet his. “What?”
“Chloe, darling, you really don’t have any idea what’s going on, do you?” he asked, lifting his perspiring glass to his lips, then lowering it onto the napkin. Onto the emblem.
And there it was again. That memory, that recollection that only seconds ago had thrown her into the tailspin she was still fighting her way out of. Her cottage on St. Gideon. The dark front room. A sliver of moonlight through the front drapes and . . . a stranger. The intruder. Slamming into her, throwing her to the floor. The loud crash of porcelain striking tile. He raised a fist, and she turned away to protect her face . . . and she reached up and tore something. His keys fell out, landing on the floor just feet away. She had glimpsed them only briefly, and somehow lost the memory in the aftermath. This was the runaway memory she had been chasing that morning in the hospital.
A set of keys with a key fob on the ring. The kind that you use to electronically unlock a door. Silver with a single, simple marking on its face. A blue, capital letter “I” encircled by a double ring.
Renny snapped his fingers in Chloe’s face. “Chloe, are you still here?”
Chloe’s gaze rolled back to him.
“Where did you go, darling? Seemed like I lost you for a moment.” His eyes were narrow, burning into hers.
Chloe rose smoothly out of her chair and began slowly backing away towards the elevator.
Renny sighed tiredly. “What are you doing?”
She pulled her gun from her waistband and pointed it at him as she continued stepping backwards. “I’m leaving, Renny.”
“Chloe. Be sensible. Do you really think I am just going to let you walk out of here after I have been looking for you all over the Caribbean?” He tsk-tsked. “After the ingenuity you have displayed recently, I would have expected much more. Of course, I had also expected you to keep as far away from me as possible, and yet,” he said, gesturing widely, “here you are.”
As if on cue, the elevator door slid open and Korrigan and Vargas, both armed, strode over to her, taking up positions on her right and left. “You’ve been rather elusive, you and your friend— Jack?”
Chloe pressed her lips together and tightened her grip on the gun, still leveled at his chest. “Darling, surely you realize there is no way off this roof for you, except, of course, as I see fit. So I suggest you hand that weapon over and sit back down.” His last words were cold and forceful, leaving no room for doubt that, one way or another, she would be returning to the chair.
In that moment she knew that it was over. She wanted to run, wanted to try something, anything to get away, but it was obvious she wouldn’t succeed. She felt like such a fool. She had risked her life, and Jack’s, to evade the very people she had ultimately come to for help. She had walked right into their hands. Voluntarily. Everything, all of it, had been for nothing. And that was simply more than she could bear. Defeated and drained of will, Chloe lowered the gun, dropped it at Vargas’s feet, and returned to her chair.
* * * * *
Jack’s cab sat mired in the late afternoon traffic as he pressed the disconnect icon on his cell again. Ever since Grabney had finally explained things, Jack had been trying to get Chloe on her cell. But she wasn’t answering. Worse, the “Find Your Cell” app they’d installed showed her phone as offline. Her GPS tracker, though, showed that she was still at Inverse.
The trackers had been Manny’s idea. We’ve got them on hand for our . . . shipments. Just to make sure we know where they are. If you get separated without phones you’ll need a way to find each other. The little GPS trackers were medallions about the size of a quarter, about half an inch thick. Manny had insisted they wear hiking boots—not normal footwear for Miami, but easy to hide the tracker in. He’d cut out enough of the rubber soles to accommodate the unit, completely hiding the thing under the shoe liner. They’d had to keep them in their pockets for their air travel, but after arriving in Orlando, they went right back in.
Manny had switched the trackers over to a separate account and showed Jack how to access the app through two old smartphones he’d given them to replace the cheap flip ones Jack had bought. Now Jack watched Chloe’s dot on a fifteen second update loop on his phone. Another fifteen seconds passed. Her dot remained at the Inverse offices.
“Can’t you go any faster?” Jack barked at the cab driver.
“Are you lookin’ at the same road I am, man?” the driver said. “No, I cannot go any faster. There’s probably som’ accident up ahead or somethin’. It’s bumper to bumper for sure all the way to Highland.”
Jack slammed a hand hard into the back seat and grunted loudly. She was there. At Inverse. “Come on!” he yelled indiscriminately at the traffic.
“Hey, man, there’s nothin’ I can do about it, so you might as well relax. Chill.”
“Why don’t you just focus on moving us out of here,” an incensed Jack snapped, then peered out the window, feeling helpless. What’s going on, Chloe? he wondered, and tried her cell again. She still didn’t answer.
“At this rate it’ll be an hour until we get there!” Jack complained, banging on the front seat again in frustration.
“Lay off the car!” the driver shouted. “If you’re that hot to get there, maybe you should just get out an’ run.”
Jack looked up the block. “How far is it?”
“I don’t know. Eight, nine, blocks—”
The thump of the rear door slamming interrupted the driver, and he whipped his head to see Jack sprinting down the sidewalk towards the next intersection.
“Hey, man! Hey!” he yelled, sticking his head out his window. “What about my fare!”
* * * * *
Chloe was done. It was over. Lost. As soon as she’d sat down again, Renny had asked for her cell, then removed the battery. Now the two thugs that’d stepped off the elevator stood guard just feet away. She was not walking out of here and had no way to let Jack know what was happening.
“I am glad you made it here in one piece. I was concerned you might end up getting yourself killed.”
“I thought that was the whole idea.”
Renny shook his head. “Hardly. You are no good to me dead.”
She glared at him from under her eyelashes. “And just what good am I to you alive? What do you want from me?”
Renny drummed his fingers on the table, watching her expression as if waiting for something. Finally he leaned in. “I want my twenty million back.”
Chloe choked. “Twenty million? Renny, I . . . I don’t have your money,” she stammered. “I didn’t even know,” she muttered under her breath.
“Oh, but you do. You do.”
“Renny—”
“Where’s your friend?”
Chloe’s body stiffened. “I don’t know.”
Renny slammed his fist on the table, causing her to jump. “Do not lie to me, girl!” he spat angrily
through clenched teeth, his eyes wicked, all traces of his charming personality gone.
“I’m not lying!” Chloe yelled back, aggressively leaning forward in her chair. “I don’t know where he is. He left me when we got here. I haven’t seen him since. He said I slowed him down, made bad decisions. Kept telling me his chances were better without me. Looks like he was right.”
Renny eyeballed her. “You are lying,” he said as he reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigar. One flick of a gold lighter ignited it, and he took several long puffs. “But, it doesn’t matter. We will find him eventually.” He watched her over the end of the cigar, waiting for a reaction. When he didn’t get one, he changed subjects. “So,” he asked, tapping ashes into a tray, “how did you get here?”
Chloe bit her lip, determined not to give him any information that might lead him to Jack. Renny looked away coolly and blew out a stream of thick smoke. “You know, Chloe, you can tell me now or you can tell me later, but now would be much less . . . stressful for you.”
Despite his not-so-veiled threat, she remained mute. In the face of her silence he changed subjects again. “So you have seen the video. No?”
“No.”
His eyebrows arched. “Really.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Why would you not?”
“I don’t know, Renny, you tell me.”
He smiled. “Actually, I believe you. Tate made it very clear that the person he stole from was me. I am quite sure that if you had seen that, you would not have come to see me. No?”
“No.”
“So I can only assume that you were unable to view the video, at least not in its entirety, before you lost it at the hotel.”
Chloe’s jaw dropped. “How did you—”
“We found it. Quite a stroke of luck for us.”
“So then, if you’ve got it, why do you need me?”
“Well, that is the rub, now isn’t it?”
Chloe looked at him blankly, still not understanding. Renny sighed. “When I first met Tate, I could tell that he was, well, something of a prodigy. What that young man could do with a computer—the Da Vinci of the information highway.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she retorted bitterly.
He cast a patronizing look in her direction. “Are you sure about that? It does not seem you knew him as well as you thought.” He took another toke on his cigar while he let the comment sink in.
“He had a certain drive, an ambition that, combined with his other talents, set him apart. From the beginning he made things—some very profitable things—happen for us. Changed the way we do, well, business. He was innovative, determined . . . reminded me of myself at that age. I suppose that is why I took to him so,” he said, swiveling his gaze towards the horizon. “Perhaps even against my better judgment. But at the time . . .” He shifted his stare back to Chloe. “Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”
“What happened, Renny?”
“Very simply—Tate stole from my clients. From me.” A reddish hue blossomed at the base of his neck and began to spread. His words were sharp and angry. “I do not suffer betrayal. Not by anyone. Especially not by those I have brought in close. Do you know I was actually considering promoting him?” He shook his head. “Never before have I been such a poor judge of character.”
“Why kill him, Renny? If you didn’t know where the money was, why get rid of the only person who did?”
“That was not my fault. Tate crashed into that divider as we were trying to intercept him. I wanted to catch him, not kill him.”
“At least not until after you got your money back.”
He nodded at her, a non-verbal touché.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because, to be blunt, in the long run your knowing will not present any risk to me. It is not the way I want it, Chloe, but sometimes we do not get what we want. Even me. I like you. I did from the first time we met, here on this roof. And I do not blame you for any of this. So, I see no reason why you should spend the rest of your time wondering why all this has been visited upon you. Perhaps telling you will make it easier for you to accept the inevitable.” His eyes glazed with warped warmth. “If I had any other choice . . .” His voice trailed off, leaving her to fill in the blank.
“But why pursue me in the first place? I had no idea what was going on.”
“I do not doubt that now. But you were the only lead we had. There were two possibilities. Either you were involved in this with him—”
“But I wasn’t—”
“Or,” he said, drowning her out, “you knew nothing about it. After Tate’s death we watched for some sign that you knew what was going on, some clue to where he’d squirreled away the money. It didn’t take long to figure out you were not working with Tate, but still, you remained our only lead to the money. So we followed you to the island. Then we noticed an entry on his calendar—you were right about that by the way. We missed it the first time, but, upon re-evaluation, two lunches with an ‘H. Rohrstadt’ drew our attention.”
Chloe gasped involuntarily, making the terrible connection that explained why Rohrstadt’s office was closed.
“Yes,” he said, confirming her unspoken, but obvious conclusion. “Well, the only information Mr. Rohrstadt had to share was that Tate had arranged for a flash drive to be sent to you upon his death. One that Rohrstadt vehemently insisted he had not perused. At any rate, there was no copy. So we set about recovering the one that had been sent to you.”
“So you killed him?” she asked boldly.
“We eliminated a potential threat,” he said callously, then extinguished the cigar in the ashtray and took another swig of his martini. “Speaking of threats, you have been very lucky, with this . . . this partner of yours. Jack.”
“He’s not my partner. I told you, he left me.”
He ignored her protestations. “Did he tell you he was ex-military? Special forces?”
Chloe worked to keep her expression even, to not give anything away. Inside, however, her hopes for Jack plummeted. They know who you are.
“Did it occur to you that if he lied to you once about who he was, perhaps he is lying still? It would not surprise me to learn that he had an agenda in this. After all, it is quite possible that I am not the only one after the funds.”
“What are you suggesting? That he’s working for one of your clients?”
Renny laughed. “My clients? No, dear, no. My clients have no idea that their investments have been tampered with, and I have every intention of keeping it that way. I have myself replaced their stolen monies with my own, leaving them none the wiser. No, I am thinking more along the lines of someone who knew exactly what Tate was up to. Maybe a partner. Maybe someone he became loose-lipped with. There are any number of possibilities.”
He left the thought hanging there, egging her to come to Jack’s defense. When his provocation had no effect, he exhaled heavily. “In any event, I believe that is enough storytelling for now. I have told you more than I should, even under the circumstances.” He pushed his chair back and stood.
“We need you to do something for us,” he said matter-of-factly. “Korrigan will explain it to you shortly. Be cooperative and . . . well, we’ll see how things go. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to ask for anything you might need.” He took several steps towards the elevator, then turned back to her. “Chloe, I wish that things had turned out differently. But unfortunately, your brother saw to that. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some things to attend to.”
He started to turn.
“You’re a monster.” She spat the words at him and he stopped momentarily.
Then, seeming to absorb the insult without effect, he turned his back on her and walked to the elevator, his Gucci loafers softly slapping the floor as he went. “I told you, my dear,” he said dispassionately as the doors began to slide shut. “I am what I am.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Jack scrunched down in
the back seat of the cab, just high enough to keep an eye on the Inverse building directly across the street. He had arrived on foot, but wanting to have an escape ready, he had hailed another cab and instructed its driver to park and wait. Nearly ten minutes had passed since then, and he had spent every one of them internally debating what to do.
Should he stay in the car and gamble that she would come out, either on her own or under Inverse’s control, and grab her then? Or should he charge the building and take his chances? Based on what Grabney had told him, he knew they needed her alive, but for how long? Every second that passed was one less chance to get her out of there safely.
But he also knew that going inside was akin to suicide. And I can’t help her if I’m dead. Prudence dictated a wait-and-see strategy, but he didn’t have that kind of time. He had nearly decided that it was time to call in the Feds, get her out of there, and just take their chances with the authorities—when he noticed that the dot representing Chloe had moved on the app’s map. He looked toward Inverse’s garage, where, after a few seconds, the nose of a long, black SUV materialized at the entrance.
Jack slunk further towards the floorboards.
“Hey, what’s the deal, man?” the cabbie asked, unsettled by Jack’s behavior. “I ain’t tolerating nothing illegal in here.”
“No, no, it’s just—I think my girlfriend may be in there,” Jack said. The driver rolled his eyes and grabbed his paper again. The SUV pulled out of Inverse’s garage then turned right, coming towards the taxi. Jack checked the dot. It had moved down the street too. As the SUV drew close, Jack squinted, trying to see into it, fighting the urge to rise up for a better look. But it was several lanes away, and the windows were tinted. He glanced down at the dot. It had moved in keeping with the SUV.