Burning Bright

by Nick Petrie

  Lewis put the Escalade in gear. To Peter, he said, “Weapons on the floor, wrapped in the towel.” Over his shoulder to June, he asked, “Learn anything new?”

  In the car the night before, she’d told Lewis how her mother’s algorithm had ransacked Nicolet’s firm’s servers and found a contract with a company called Citadel Security, signed by Charles Dawes IV, for negotiating the purchase of unnamed intellectual property from unnamed owners. It was the lack of detail in a legal document that made her suspicious. Then Tyg3r had found a report from Nicolet to Citadel that noted four unsuccessful negotiation attempts. The dates of the attempts lined up with the dates of Nicolet’s emails to June’s mom.

  “You just wandered into a law firm’s internal network and started reading documents?” Lewis had asked, incredulous. “That’s like strolling into Fort Knox and slipping gold bars in your pockets.”

  “There’s more,” June had said. “Last month, my mom tried to use Tyg3r to do the same thing, but failed. The algorithm is learning. Quickly.”

  Now she said, “I looked at Citadel overnight. A corporate security firm, only six years old, but becoming a player very quickly. It specializes in defending companies against corporate espionage, both virtual and real.” She poked her arm forward, pointing. “Stay to the right here, then down the hill and across the bridge.”

  “Which means they’re probably also working the other side of the fence,” said Peter. “Defending companies, but spying for them, too.”

  “Did you get into their servers, too?”

  “For about five minutes,” she said. “Not long enough to learn anything. Then I lost the connection. Either they kicked me out or expanded the air gap.”

  “An air gap,” Lewis informed Peter, “is when sensitive information is kept disconnected from the Web, to prevent hacking.”

  “What, you think I don’t know that?”

  Lewis snorted and turned back to June. “What else you got?”

  “Citadel is privately held,” she said, “so they don’t have to disclose anything. Tyg3r did get me into the state tax website, which only lists twelve employees. It’s a subsidiary of a holding company based in Belize.”

  “And the shooters work for a different company called SafeSecure,” said Peter. “Owned by another holding company. Also based in Belize.”

  “The iceberg strategy,” said Lewis. “Mostly invisible, hiding below the surface.”

  “Exactly,” said June. “SafeSecure has sixteen employees.”

  “Now down to eight,” said Lewis. “At least in theory.”

  “Plus subcontractors,” said Peter.

  “Shee-it,” said Lewis. “I ain’t afraida no subcontractors.”

  The bridge was clogged with commuters. Approaching Fifteenth Avenue, they crossed over the railyard and passed the Interbay soccer fields. “Left here and merge,” she said. “Then your first right.”

  “Who laid out these roads?” asked Lewis. “This city is like spaghetti.”

  “Not if you know where you’re going,” said June. “It’s all about the shortcuts. That’s the ship canal on your left.” Now they were on Nickerson by the Fremont Cut, the funky old neighborhood on the other side rapidly converting to blocky new condos and office buildings, Seattle’s software wealth doing development on steroids.

  “How about this guy Dawes?” said Lewis.

  She flipped through her reporter’s notebook, reviewing her notes. “Charles Dawes the Fourth, goes by Chip. Comes from old New York money, but the last of the family fortune went to pay for Chip’s Ivy League education. His dad died of a drug overdose, so I’m guessing his investment decisions weren’t so hot, either,” she said. “Dawes’s accounting firm only has half-decent security, so Tyg3r did get me access to his financials. He’s making money by the bucketload, but it’s going out the door as fast as it’s coming in. So he’s either losing his ass or he’s laundering it overseas.”

  “Dawes’s bio says he was an operations officer in Iraq,” said Peter. “On the ground, making plays. So he can probably handle himself. He has a gun permit, too. Expect him to be carrying.”

  “Hell, I expect everybody to be carrying.”

  They passed the turn for the old Fremont drawbridge, then beneath the high sculptural arches of the Aurora Bridge as they angled southeast along Lake Union. Through breaks in the trees and the commercial buildings, she saw the elaborate houseboats tethered to long wooden docks, a floating neighborhood.

  “His boat slip is coming up,” she said. “You’d think a spy would be bright enough not to let a magazine writer tag along on his morning commute. Although it was probably good publicity.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ succeed like success.”

  She pointed. “This is it.”

  Lewis pulled off the road, down a ramp, and into a broad parking lot by the lake.

  She could feel her heart beating in her chest. She’d come a long way from digging through corporate records and worrying about fact-checkers. What the fuck was she doing here?

  It was seven-thirty in the morning. The water was the color of ash. The falling rain so fine it was almost a mist.

  • • •

  CHIP DAWES’S PRIVATE SLIP was on one of many piers jutting out into the lake. Its fifteen spaces held mostly sleek power yachts, a testament to the city’s wealth. Owner access was a gate at the northeast corner of the parking lot, not far from a blocky cement office building with a big seafood restaurant on the lowest level. At the southeast corner of the lot was a small rectangular building on the water, Kenmore Air’s seaplane terminal.

  Lewis backed into a parking spot at the near end of the seaplane offices, with a clear view of the water and down the fire lane to the gate. He cracked the windows an inch, but left the engine on. He shifted in his seat to look at her. “You got a picture of our guy?”

  June held out her open laptop. “This is the company website photo.”

  On the screen, Chip Dawes wore a blue-and-white seersucker suit and a blue bow tie. He had a sandy mop of hair over a tanned, clean-shaven rectangular face with a square jaw and a self-satisfied smile. He looked like a middle-aged East Coast preppy, maybe a successful insurance salesman or the vice president of a local bank. But he was a former CIA field agent. And he would be capable, she thought, of anything.

  Lewis only glanced at the photo for a few seconds before he turned back to the view of the gated pier. “You can pull that up on your phone,” she said. “If you want to see it again.”

  “No need,” he said. “I got him. When’s he due?”

  “According to that magazine article, anytime now,” she said. “Unless he took the floating bridge, or came early. Or stayed at the Four Seasons down the hall from you.”

  Peter unfolded the towel and picked up the pistols. “How you want to do this?”

  Lewis nodded at the office building. “You set up near the gate where you can see the pier. Try to blend in. I’ll range around, check for backup, spot you for any heavy lifting.”

  “What about me?” asked June.

  “You’re the getaway driver. Keep the engine running. You’ll hear shots, or one of us will text you. Can you do that?”

  “Sure,” she said. Her heartbeat rose yet again, and she could feel the heat on her cheeks. “Like Steve McQueen.”

  “Wait a fucking minute,” said Peter. “Protecting June is the whole point of this thing.”

  She put her hand on Peter’s arm. “I’ve already been the getaway driver twice. No reason to stop now.”

  He looked at her, controlled but intense. “We didn’t have a choice before.”

  “Of course we did,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “We could have just run away. Sold the skeleton key and retired to Bali. But that’s not me, and I’m pretty sure it’s not you, either. We decided to fight.”

  “This ain�
��t no movie,” said Lewis. “You gotta show up when we need you.”

  “I know,” she said. “I will.”

  Lewis nodded as if he’d already known what her answer would be, then looked at Peter. “Got any better ideas?”

  June knew Peter wanted there to be a better idea. But there wasn’t.

  “No,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Lewis opened his door and disappeared into the swirling mist, making no attempt to hide the assault rifle under his raincoat. He carried it barrel-down along one leg like some necessary prosthetic device. Today, she supposed, it was.

  She climbed forward into the driver’s seat and kissed Peter’s cheek. He handed her one of the pistols, tucked the other into a coat pocket, and got out of the passenger seat, pulling up his hood as he walked. He was wearing the armored vest under his jacket. It was compromised from the two shots he’d taken the night before, but they’d both agreed it was better than nothing.

  She watched him walk down the fire lane to the seafood restaurant and find a spot under the overhang by the service door. He wasn’t dressed like a kitchen worker, but he still managed to convey the temporary indolence of a prep cook taking a break. Blending in.

  She didn’t like the waiting.

  Turning to the pier, she saw three empty slips. It didn’t matter which was Chip’s, she’d know the man when she saw him. They all would. There weren’t many boats on the water anyway, not on this cool, damp morning.

  A wide, T-shaped dock stuck out into the water by Kenmore Air, with a sleek yellow-and-white floatplane tied up inside the shelter of the crossbar. At the bottom of the lake, an old yacht was just putting off from the Center for Wooden Boats. A dented silver Jetta rolled into the parking lot, parked near the restaurant, and four men got out wearing kitchen whites and plastic clogs. Each man nodded or raised a hand to Peter as they walked past him to the service door.

  It was one thing, she thought, to deal with a dangerous situation when you were forced to react. When you had no choice. It was another thing entirely to create the situation, to step forward into the danger, like they were doing now. Although that was what Peter, and she presumed Lewis, had done overseas. In the war, she told herself. He’d fought in a war. She still had trouble wrapping her mind around it, what that might have been like.

  A few fishermen were puttering around now. A pair of sea kayaks paddled down from the north end, not minding the weather. Probably from the houseboat neighborhood they’d passed on the way. She wondered if Peter might live on a houseboat. They were small, but they had a lot of windows, and long views.

  More cars, more people, more boats. No Chip Dawes. She couldn’t see Lewis, either. But she was pretty sure he was out there. Then she saw a small white spot at the far end of the lake, coming from the Montlake Cut and growing larger by the second. A fast boat and its wake.

  A floatplane appeared in the sky, coming from the north, its engine muted by the rain. It made a wide, slow turn, dropping down and down, ungainly and graceful at the same time, like a goose over a pond. The plane was boxy and antique-looking, something she could imagine a bush pilot flying in Alaska, something out of another time. She watched as it touched the water, throwing spray, then slowed, settled, and began to taxi toward the T-shaped dock.

  She got out of the car. The incoming boat was more than halfway across the lake.

  The pilot cut the engine and let the plane drift the last few feet to the mooring cleat. He got out and tied up the plane before the wind could move it from the dock. He wore a leather jacket and jeans and a baseball hat.

  Then the passenger door opened and a big man stepped onto the pontoon, the float dipping visibly as he did. He was at least a head taller than the pilot.

  He wore a faded blue climber’s rain shell, rumpled green pants, and hiking boots.

  He had long white hair and a bushy white beard.

  She couldn’t believe it.

  Her fucking father. The Yeti.

  43

  PETER

  While the floatplane had landed and taxied in, the fast boat had powered up the lake. It was a sleek red runabout with an inboard motor and a canvas cover over the cockpit to keep the rain off the driver. Small enough to be fun on the lake, but big enough for the Pacific coast.

  Now it coasted in toward the T-shaped dock as the white-haired giant, who could only be Sasha Kolodny, the Yeti, stepped lightly from the plane’s float to the weathered decking. He walked toward the boat, and its driver threw the Yeti the bowline. He tied it to the dock.

  The pilot came over and gestured at the boat, probably unhappy that it had moored at the floatplane dock. The Yeti wheeled to face him and the pilot raised his hands and took a quick step back. Peter thought about Hazel Cassidy’s restraining order. The man was truly enormous.

  The boat driver climbed onto the dock and the two men began to talk.

  From forty yards away, Peter couldn’t see the boat driver’s face clearly, but it was Chip Dawes, Peter was sure of it. The man wore sunglasses in the rain and a long khaki trench coat belted at the waist. Either Dawes was a walking cliché or it was calculated for his image, which was more likely for a private spy who’d invited a magazine writer to follow him on his water commute.

  The conversation between the Yeti and the boat driver became heated. The big man waved his arms, then jabbed his finger at the boat driver’s face. The sound of shouting drifted over the water. The boat driver shook his head and put his hands on his hips until the Yeti, moving faster than anyone his size and age should be able to move, took a single long stride toward the boat driver and shoved him hard in the chest.

  The boat driver flew off the dock and struck the water ass-first with a splash.

  The Yeti watched the boat driver flounder for a moment, then untied the boat’s bowline, put one foot to the hull, and pushed it away from the dock. It moved slowly, but its momentum carried it farther from the shore, where the wind caught the boat’s profile and began to push it into ever-deeper water. The boat’s name, written in black on the stern, was Spooked.

  The Yeti turned to the pilot and shooed him toward his plane with the back of one hand. The pilot climbed back into his seat and the engine started up again. The Yeti untied the plane and stepped onto the pontoon, pushing the plane out into the lake as he did, then stepped up into the passenger seat and closed the door. The plane taxied around the swimming man and his drifting boat, turned into the wind and came up to speed, skimming across the water until it lifted into the air.

  Peter looked down the fire lane and saw a female figure standing by a silver Escalade, looking out at the lake.

  She’d seen it all. The whole thing. Her father and Chip Dawes.

  He turned back to the water, where the man was swimming after his boat, clumsy in his trench coat. Dawes appeared to have lost his sunglasses. For a moment, Peter wondered if the wind would blow the boat faster than the man could swim. Apparently the man was concerned about the same thing, because he stopped for a moment to shed his coat and his shoes, leaving them to sink behind him as he struck out strongly for his drifting boat. He’d swum at least a quarter of a mile in foot-high chop before he finally got a hand on the swimmer’s deck and climbed aboard in shirtsleeves and socks. Not bad for a corporate spook.

  Peter looked down the fire lane. June was gone.

  The fast boat’s engine fired up with a growl. Peter couldn’t see the driver in the covered cockpit as the boat cranked around in a tight circle, its wake spreading as it headed back to its slip. The boat disappeared from view behind larger boats, but he heard the snarl of the engine as it reversed hard into the slip.

  Peter figured Chip Dawes IV was cold and wet and pretty unhappy.

  Dawes came through the gate a few minutes later wearing a crisp black fleece jacket, fitted training pants, and sandals. He carried an elegant leather briefcase in one hand and a wide black um
brella in the other, held up to keep the rain at bay. His unruly mop of hair was damp, but looked towel-dried and surprisingly fashionable, as if he’d stepped out of the locker room rather than fished himself out of an urban lake. He had the same tanned face as his photo, the same square jaw, the same smug look of the cat who swallowed the canary.

  But there was something else there that the photographer had missed. A distance to the eyes, a harshness in the lines bracketing the wide, mobile mouth. Peter had known many men who’d gone to war. It changed you inside. It made you someone new, or revealed who you had always been, sometimes a little of both. Sometimes for the better, eventually. Sometimes not.

  Peter was pretty sure which way things had gone for Chip Dawes.

  He angled away from the restaurant service entrance to intercept Dawes at the edge of the parking lot. Dawes turned to look at him, basic threat assessment. He didn’t stop walking, and he didn’t free up his hands.

  Twenty feet and closing. “Nice day for a swim,” said Peter. “Unhappy client?”

  “You have no idea,” said Dawes.

  “Oh, I’m starting to figure it out,” said Peter.

  Dawes’s mobile mouth formed a mocking smile while those distant eyes flickered across Peter’s face. “No, truly,” he said. “You actually have no fucking idea whatsoever.”

  Peter shrugged. “Maybe not,” he said. “But here’s what I think. You hired the lawyer, Nicolet, to negotiate the purchase of some software from Hazel Cassidy. I’m thinking you were hired by her ex-husband, Sasha Kolodny, who is not quite right in the head.” Dawes’s smile had lost some of its gleam. “How’m I doing so far?”

  Dawes did something to the U-shaped umbrella handle with his thumb, not taking his eyes from Peter as the black cloth folded itself up with a soft slither. He tucked it under the arm carrying the briefcase.

  Peter brought the Glock from behind his back and raised it to point directly at Dawes’s face. “Stop moving,” he said pleasantly. “Anyway, Hazel didn’t want to sell, and she didn’t bow to any of your attempts to intimidate her by pulling her grant money or getting a former student to accuse her of sexual misconduct. So you killed her, thinking you’d just take the software. But you couldn’t find it. So you tried to kidnap her daughter. Repeatedly. And failed. Maybe that was Kolodny’s idea, but by his recent reaction, I’m thinking it was yours.”