I picked up the phone and dialed the number for Detective Snider. First things first, I needed to look at the surveillance footage of this robbery.
***
“There,” Snider said, reaching over to tap his finger against the computer monitor. “That’s the girl.”
I watched as a pretty blond woman walked into the lobby of the business office where the robbery took place. The building had five floors, the top two belonging to Tilford Technology. The woman crossed the polished floor, pausing when the security guard behind the bank of monitors showing the footage from the many security cameras in the building spoke to her. I could almost imagine what she was saying, probably something about a broken down car or a missed bus. She didn’t seem frantic, but she was clearly trying to get the man out from behind the monitors. And he fell for it, stepping around the desk and crossing to her, taking her arm in one hand as he turned her and tried to lead her back to the main doors. But then she said something that made him stop, pausing in the center of the lobby to discuss whatever was so important with her.
She kept her face turned from the cameras at first, but as they spoke, she absently turned, her face clear enough in the black and white footage that the cops had made several still photographs from it. I was absently holding one to add to my collection of information on this case.
“Have you identified her yet?”
Snider nodded, handing me another piece of paper. “Samantha Rivera. She’s a clerk for a law firm downtown.”
“A law firm?”
Snider snickered a little. “Obviously didn’t absorb anything from her bosses.”
I nodded a little as I continued to watch the footage.
“The thief cut the security feeds coming from the top floor?”
“Yeah. Here,” he said, touching the screen. “Do you see how she looks over at the elevators there? We think she was watching for her partner.”
I reversed the footage and watched that portion again. Then I toggled the focus on the screen, enlarging it a little. I could see the lights on the top of the elevator change, the numbers for the floors moving upward.
“Is there a basement?”
“No.”
“How did he get on the elevator without anyone seeing him? Why would he use the elevators?”
“We think he might have been hiding on one of the lower floors. Most likely the third floor because it’s partially empty. The business that was up there moved out three weeks ago.”
“He cut the security cameras from the fifth floor?”
“We think he used a laptop on the third floor to gain access to the computer system, cutting the feeds from there. Then he took the elevator up to the fifth floor, broke into their research vault, and then took the elevator back down to the third floor. We’re not sure how he left the building from there, but we think he waited until morning and dressed like a mail room employee and just walked out in the flow of executives coming and going.”
“The Tilford people didn’t notice the missing equipment right away?”
“Not until nearly noon. They told us that they don’t routinely enter the research vault unless retrieving something that is scheduled for testing. They just happened to have a test scheduled that afternoon.”
“If the thief knew that, he might have thought he had days before they would notice the theft.”
“It’s possible. We were also told that the test they had that afternoon had been rescheduled because of an unplanned visit from the client it was being developed for.”
“Brilliant.”
Snider shrugged. “I don’t make a habit of admiring criminals, but this guy is pretty smart. We also have reason to believe he had buyers for the specific items he took. We’re told by Matt Tilford himself that there were several items in the vault that were worth millions, but the thief left them untouched.”
I found myself watching the woman on the security footage. She was clearly agitated. She kept looking over at the security desk and then at the elevator. I don’t know how the security guard didn’t realize what she was up to. She was giving herself away with her body language, but he didn’t seem to see anything past her great pair of tits. And it didn’t hurt that it was raining that night, so her blouse was soaked through. It couldn’t have been a better distraction if the thief had arranged for the rain to fall that night.
“The security guard…did he have any information that might be helpful?”
“All he knows is that she had double Ds.” Snider snickered.
I didn’t find it all that amusing.
The woman stood in the middle of the lobby for nearly ten minutes. She suddenly turned and walked away, leaving the security guard to chase after her. He disappeared for a minute, then returned, brushing rain from his short hair as he walked around the counter. He glanced at the monitors, then settled back in his chair, clearly disgusted with himself for allowing the beautiful woman escape. But he didn’t register anything out of the norm, which meant that the thief turned the security systems back on for the fifth floor when he was done.
Why?
Obviously it was so that he could escape at his leisure the next day. But was there another reason? He had to have known that when the missing technology was discovered that the police would scour the security camera footage and would catch sight of his beautiful helper. It had happened in all his other capers. Why didn’t he turn off the cameras in the lobby? Why didn’t he go that extra mile to protect his accomplice? Did he get off on playing with the cops? Did he want his female accomplices caught? If so, why?
“You said there were others?”
“Yeah. Seven in all, including this one. Three in Houston, two in San Antonio, this one here in Austin, and one in Dallas.”
“All technology companies?”
“No. Two in Houston were oil companies. He stole financial records that were later released to the media via anonymous email messages and snail mail packages. Resulted in the destruction of over a dozen executive careers. One in San Antonio was a real estate office. He took the plans for some government building that was supposed to go up downtown, but after he released portions of the design to the public via social media, it was voted down at the local bond election. And the one in Dallas was at the office of a financial planner. He stole credit card information on all their clients, forced them out of business, but he never used the information as far as we can tell.”
“So he’s a thief with a social conscience?”
Snider shrugged. “Or a thief who provides his services to the highest bidder. We don’t know for sure. We can only guess to his motivations until he’s caught and we can ask.”
“Do you have the security footage of the other robberies?”
“All but the one from Dallas. We’re having some trouble getting the local police to cooperate with us. Territorial struggles and all that.”
Snider dug through the accordion file he had in his lap and handed me the flash drives containing the other footage. Each one was basically the same as the one I’d just studied, just different buildings and different women. The first two from Houston were blondes who were clearly uncomfortable with what they were doing. The third was a dark-haired Latina woman, who looked as though she did this every moment of every day. The same with the two in San Antonio.
“He doesn’t have a type.”
“No. Just women who’re willing to do anything to please him.” Snider stood, sighing heavily as he walked over to a corner of his small office to pour himself a cup of coffee, his third since my arrival. “The girl here, Samantha Rivera, she told us that he was a guy she met in a bar downtown. Said he swept her off her feet, bought her flowers and expensive meals, and made her feel like a queen. She said they dated a little over a month before he asked her to do this, telling her that he had a college buddy he played a monthly poker game with and this guy cheated him, winning the title to his car with a card up his sleeve sort of move. All he wanted was to get the title back before the guy tran
sferred it into his name and that he kept it in his office.”
“Sounds harmless enough.”
“She claims she had no idea what he was really up to. But she faces five to ten years in prison on a third degree felony charge because of the value of the items stolen.”
I tried to imagine the kind of woman who would take a risk like that. I couldn’t. No woman I’d ever known would put that much at risk for me or any man I knew.
“He must be something else.”
Snider shrugged. “He’s romantic. Knows just how to wine and dine these women. That’s all.”
“You think? It’s all in the roses and chocolates?”
He took a big gulp from his coffee as he nodded. “Just don’t tell my wife that.”
“Can I take these with me?”
I held the flash drives in my palm as I stood, gathering my iPad and the paperwork he’d given me.
“Sure. But make sure you get them back to me.”
“Of course.” I headed for the door, but then paused. “Was it that way with all of them? Did he meet them all in a bar?”
Snider nodded. “All the ones we’ve found and spoken to.”
“And wined and dined them all?”
“Lots of fancy dinners and flowers.”
“Even the first ones?”
“Yeah.” Snider glanced through his accordion file and pulled out a legal pad, leafing through handwritten notes. “Alicia Morgan. She said she met him at a bar not far from her work and that he bought her a bottle of Cristal just because he could.”
“Expensive.”
Snider studied me through slightly narrowed eyes. “Yeah…?”
“This wasn’t his first job, just his first with this modus operandi. If it was, he likely wouldn’t have been able to afford the champagne.”
“What if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth?”
“Possible. But I doubt he would take these bleeding heart jobs if that was the case. This is a business to him. This is how he makes his money. But he also has a conscience. Most thieves don’t.”
Snider tilted his head slightly. “You didn’t used to work for the FBI, did you?”
“No. I just find myself watching people quite often. They’re surprisingly easy to read if you know how to pay attention.”
I walked away, feeling Snider’s eyes on me as I went.
Chapter 7
Pepper
I was distracted as I helped Ricki sit up to eat her lunch. I scratched her arm as I helped pull her to a sitting positon, quite by accident, but you’d think I’d done it on purpose the way she reacted.
“Damn, Pepper! Cut your fingernails!”
“They’re not that long.”
“That’s the third time you’ve clawed me since you came here.”
“Maybe it’s subconscious.”
She glared at me as I picked up the tray and set it over her lap. “What did I ever do to you?”
“That’s a question I should be asking.”
She looked away, not really acknowledging what I’d said. There was nothing new about that. She’d gone out of her way not to acknowledge a lot about me since I got here.
I settled in a chair and picked up a magazine. I started leafing through it, fully aware that Ricki was staring at me as she picked at her ham sandwich.
“Where were you before you came here?”
I glanced at her. “Lots of places.”
“The most recent.”
I shrugged, not really wanting to tell the truth. So I fudged it a little.
“I was in Round Rock for a while.”
“Before that?”
I shook my head. “Around. I move around a lot.”
“Why?”
I snorted. “I thought you had that all figured out. Because I’m too much like Momma.”
A pained expression crossed Ricki’s face at the mention of our mother. I never understood why she hated her so much, but now didn’t seem like a good time to ask.
“Are you in trouble?”
There was this little part of me that stiffened, thinking maybe she’d figured it all out. But then anger raced through me like thorns piercing through flesh.
“Why is that your first thought? Why would you assume—?”
“Because I talked to Terence, and he said that that’s what you do. You get in trouble and you run to the nearest family member. Him. Mom. Me.”
“Terry doesn’t know shit! I haven’t seen him in two years.”
“Yeah, since you got in trouble with that married man and had to leave Hartford before his wife found you.”
“That’s not what happened. We weren’t involved.”
“You weren’t?”
She was clearly skeptical even though she knew absolutely nothing about me.
“He was my boss. He had a thing for me, but I never felt that way about him and made it painfully clear to him. It was all in his head.”
“Yet, his wife still ran you off.”
“And that’s my fault?” I dropped the magazine and jumped to my feet. “I’m not like Mom. I don’t sleep with every guy who looks twice at me. I don’t ditch my kids and move clear across the country because some guy made promises he couldn’t keep. I’m careful with the kind of guy I become involved with.”
“Yeah? You think it was a man’s touch that got Mom into so much trouble?” She scoffed at the thought. “Think again, Pepper.”
“Then what was it?”
“Mom had a pathological need to be cared for. The idea of working for a living scared the crap out of her. It wasn’t about love or sex or anything like that. It was having a man who had a job.”
“Like my dad.”
“Like your dad. If mine hadn’t died—”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t have to put up with my presence.”
Ricki’s eyes narrowed slightly. “That’s not what I was going to say.”
“You didn’t have to. I know you don’t want me here, Ricki.”
She didn’t argue. She just sat there, all swollen and beautiful, the untouched lunch tray across her quickly disappearing lap.
“If it weren’t for Chase, I probably would have left days ago.”
“If it weren’t for Chase, I wouldn’t have you here.”
The truth was there, brutal and plain. I inclined my head slightly, trying to pretend that I didn’t feel as though she’d just delivered a powerful blow to the small of my back.
“Perhaps while I am here, we could find a way to coexist. Maybe avoid talking about the past?”
Ricki sighed softly. “I worked hard to get what I have. I fought to make a life for myself, turned my back on people who would have done just about anything for me in order to go straight, to be a good person. And then I met David and…” She let her voice trail off, her eyes pleading with me to understand. “If anything you brought to our doorstep blows up in our faces…”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“You quit everything you ever started.”
“But not this.”
She lowered her head slightly, her dark blond hair falling over her thin face. “Not this.”
“I won’t hurt your family.”
“Okay,” she said softly, disbelief still clear in her voice. But she didn’t say another word.
It should have been something of a triumph. The only problem was, I was in trouble. Bigger trouble than I’d ever been in, trouble that could follow me here, that could bring thunder down on everyone’s heads. I thought I had outrun it, thought I was far enough ahead of it that I’d have time to figure out my next step before it caught up to me. But I was wrong.
I should go. I should leave this place before someone innocent got hurt. But when she looked at me with such doubt and distain in her eyes, when she suggested that I was quitter who couldn’t stop walking away from everything that got hard, I couldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing she was right.
It was like watching an acci
dent happen and being powerless to stop it.
Chapter 8
Nolan
The woman leading the way down the hall was wearing a tight, pencil skirt and a loose white blouse that flattered every curve God had given her. I was almost embarrassed to be walking behind her, given the perfect opportunity to look at all those curves. I never knew quite what to do in these situations. Do you look and risk being seen as lecherous? Or do you look everywhere but and risk offending the woman’s ego?
I chose to speed up a little and walk beside her so that I wouldn’t have to make that choice.
“What’s he like?”
“Mr. Tilford?” she asked.
Whom else would I be asking about?
She shrugged, a soft, flirty smile touching her lips. “He’s generous to his employees. He gave everyone huge bonuses last year.”
“That’s nice.”
“And he sponsors company picnics and family nights where employees are encouraged to go home early to spend time with their family.”
“Generous.”
She nodded. “Not that many people take advantage of it. The people here are so driven by their work that they’d much rather be here than anywhere else, even at home with their families.”
“What about Mr. Tilford? Does he have a family? Does he leave early to be with them?”
“That’s the irony of it. He’s divorced precisely because he spent too much time here, building this company.”
We arrived at the alcove that led to Mr. Tilford’s office. The woman smiled politely, leaving me with his personal assistant.
“If you’ll follow me.”
This woman was just as beautiful as the last, a dark beauty where the other had been a blonde. She led the way through double doors into the inner sanctum. It was a large office with the usual photography on the wall of Mr. Tilford shaking hands with giants in technology: Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg. The furnishings were modern, the desk all glass and chrome, but not a bit of computer hardware in sight. Obviously this was where he met with clients and financial backers, not where he worked. I found it interesting that he would choose to meet me here.
CHASING PEPPER (Gray Wolf Security, Texas Book 5) Page 5