by E B Corbin
“You get in the middle.” Sam controlled her growing annoyance at the woman’s attitude as she boosted herself into the truck. When Stacy was finally settled near the gear shift, Sam tried to find a comfortable position on Henry’s lap.
“Quit squirming,” Henry whispered in her ear. He grinned at her as he wrapped his arms around her waist to hold her in place.
Sam felt trapped but she couldn’t do anything about it. Thanks to her insistence that Stacy not suspect their true purpose, she was stuck with Henry’s vexing behavior.
As they passed the Manor House on their right, Sam spotted a black van parked behind the building, close to the lake. She poked Henry in the chest gently and he squeezed her arm to signify he saw it too. Sam sat up straight in Henry’s lap to block Stacy’s view. They didn’t need the realtor to become hysterical again.
Slowly turning her head, Sam held her breath, fearing the van would follow them. She watched till the Manor House was a speck in the background, but didn’t see the van pull onto the road. She hoped that would be the last they saw of the vehicle, though she didn’t think they would be that lucky.
Chapter Five
Sam pulled up the Uber app on her phone to find that a car was already blinking at their location. The driver happened to be filling his car with gas after having just dropped a fare at Nike headquarters. Relieved, they approached the driver before he had a chance to hang up the hose at the pump.
Henry helped a reluctant Stacy into the front seat then climbed in back with Sam. The buzzing in his head eased and finally stopped. The tension in his jaw loosened as his neck muscles relaxed.
“Who is this person? How do you know it’s safe? I’m not sure about this.” Stacy’s voice quivered.
“The Uber app knows we’re with him.” Sam held her phone so that Stacy could see a small car showing on the map at their location.
“I doubt I have enough cash to pay for a ride back to the city.” Stacy started to open her door to exit the vehicle. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I’ll catch a bus at the corner.”
“No, no need for that,” Sam said. “My credit card will be charged at the end of our ride. Besides, we need you to direct the driver. We’re not familiar with the area and don’t know the way back to your office.”
Stacy paused with her door hanging open. “You don’t need to come back to my office. It would be better if you didn’t.”
“We need to pick up our car.”
“Oh.” Stacy slumped against the seat and closed the door. “I guess I should at least get you back to where we started.”
The driver finished gassing up and slid into his seat. Stacy gave him their destination and they were the last words she spoke until they pulled up next to the tiny Spark. She opened the door before the driver had come to a complete stop.
“Ma’am, please wait,” the driver said.
“Sorry. I’m a bit anxious to get to my office.”
While Sam finalized the tip, Henry jumped out to help the realtor to her feet. He felt her shaking when she took his offered hand.
Sam came around from the other side of the car and signaled the driver he could pull away. “So should we meet you sometime tomorrow?”
“Meet me? Tomorrow? No, no. I think we’re done.”
“But we need to discuss the properties we saw today.”
“You can call me if you decide you want to make an offer on one of them.”
“What if we want to look at more? We didn’t get a chance to see everything today.”
“I…I don’t have a car. I can’t show you more.”
Sam glanced at their Spark sitting next to them. “I guess our car is too small for all of us. It’s only a rental. We can trade it for something bigger.”
“No . . . please. I wouldn’t feel right with you driving me around.” Stacy’s head jerked about the parking lot like a pigeon looking for crumbs. “If you insist on going tomorrow, call me in the morning. I’ll see if I can borrow a car.”
Henry felt no humming or throbbing in his head. He knew the black van was no longer a danger for the time being. Not relying on only his senses, he’d kept an eye out when they pulled away from the gas station. No one followed them. He leaned against the hood of the Spark and waited for Sam to finish convincing the realtor to see them again.
Sam continued to push Stacy to work with them. “I hate to have you do that. We can get a bigger car.”
Finally, Stacy gave in. She sighed and hunched her shoulders. “It’s all right, I think I can borrow my father’s car.” As she spoke, Stacy began backing away from them. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She turned and ran across the driving lane to her office door.
Henry looked at Sam. “Seems to me that was her way of saying, ‘Don’t call me. I’ll call you.’”
“Well, I’m not going to let her avoid us. I’ll call her in the morning.”
“She might not answer the phone.”
“If she’s trying to run a business, she’d better.” Sam walked to their waiting car. “Let’s go back to the apartment. I’m exhausted.”
“I’m hungry,” Henry said.
“You’re always hungry.” Sam fastened her seat belt and pulled out her phone. Her stomach growled as if in agreement with Henry. The salad for lunch had done little to appease her appetite.
Before she could pull up a list of restaurants in Portland, Henry swung into a parking lot filled with cars. He squeezed their little vehicle into a space between a dumpster and a Cadillac.
Sam looked up from her phone screen. “What are you doing?”
“I think we need dinner. It’s almost eight o’clock and this is parking for a place called Nell’s Diner.”
“Okay…” Sam would have preferred a place other than a diner, but she’d go along for now.
When they circled the building and entered, they found an intimate place with outdoor seating as an option. Not at all the diner Sam expected.
They preferred to be seated indoors rather than brave the chilly, damp outside patio. A server brought a menu and asked if they wanted drinks.
Sam chose the sauvignon blanc while Henry ordered a beer. After the waiter left, they studied the menu.
“Christ! They want $15 for a hamburger.” Henry slapped the table. “I think I just lost my appetite.”
Sam smiled over her menu. “Don’t worry about the prices. We’re on an expense account.”
“Yeah, but we’re also the ones who will end up paying the account.”
“Order whatever you want. I’m getting the grilled Pacific salmon. We’ve had a rough day.” With that, Sam’s thoughts turned to the events of the afternoon. She grew silent while pondering the black van. Possibilities tumbled through her mind so fast she never noticed the server waiting patiently for her order until Henry grabbed her hand and nodded toward the waiter.
As soon as he left, her thoughts returned to the afternoon.
“You’re mighty quiet.” Henry took a swig of his beer.
“Sorry, I was just thinking.”
“Anything I should know?”
Sam took a sip of wine before she answered. “Since we arrived we’ve encountered a dead woman in the condo next to our unit; the victim of my father’s scam is under arrest for another murder; and we were nearly killed this afternoon while with his daughter. Do you think it’s all coincidence?”
Henry took time to think it over. “I don’t see how the murders are connected to us.”
“We should have been here yesterday. If that flight out of Milwaukee hadn’t been canceled, we would have been right next door when that poor woman was killed.”
“But you didn’t know her, don’t have any connection to her. And you didn’t have any inkling that Norman Bledsoe would kill his wife.”
“It was probably a mercy killing,” Sam said. “And it might have been prevented if Norman knew he was going to receive close to $600,000 in a matter of days.”
“I don’t see how you could have known. You’r
e not responsible for the man’s desperate actions.”
“I know that. It’s just sad that we didn’t arrive sooner.”
“Look, I can understand your mission to return the money to the former owners, but I can’t see why you should feel bad about what they do before you get to them. They’re adults, they have choices to make, just like we all do. If they make a bad decision, it’s on them.”
“They made a judgement call when they gave their money to my dad.”
“It was the wrong call, but how were they to know that at the time?”
“Weren’t you angry at your father when he lost your college fund?”
Henry started to raise his glass, then stared into the beer and lowered it. “I was a teenager, full of rampaging hormones, and I wanted to kill him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Never had the chance. He disappeared before I could act on my stupid impulses.” Henry stared into space. “All things considered, I got lucky. I couldn’t go to college, so I joined the Navy. Better than spending the rest of my life in jail for murder.”
“It was my father’s fault more than yours.”
“Oh yeah. I wanted to kill him too.” Henry scoffed. “I guess I was a violent little bastard.” He drained his beer. “Still am. Look at the way you and I met.”
“You acted a bit crazy,” Sam said.
Henry was not ready to tell her about his premonitions. He discovered his ability in Afghanistan on his first tour. His prescience had never steered him or his team wrong. It still didn’t. But he kept it to himself. Sam didn’t need to know. She’d probably laugh at him the way his teammates did when he tried to warn them about impending danger.
Finally he said, “I realized I was acting like a damned fool.”
She smiled at him over her wine glass. “Well, I’m glad you came to your senses.” She paused. “But I don’t care for what happened to us this afternoon. I can’t understand why the passenger in that black van shot at us. Probably just kids, but still…”
“Kids joyriding shouldn’t carry guns,” Henry said.
“Do you know that was the first time I ever pulled the trigger at a human? I’ve shot the head off a snake, and put a hole in a beer can a couple thousand yards away, but never a living, breathing person.”
Henry’s gaze traveled around the room. “I wish I could say the same.”
“It was different for you. You were in a war zone. You had no choice.”
Their conversation stopped when the waiter brought their meals. Sam realized she was starving and cleaned her plate with no inhibitions. Henry grumbled about an egg on his hamburger and scraped it off before he took the first bite. They ate in silence, Sam thinking about the van, and Henry worried he’d told his boss too much.
It was almost ten o’clock before they climbed into their toy car and headed back to the rented apartment.
The trip to Stay Andrew’s place was shorter than she expected. Without rush-hour traffic, bicyclists, and skateboarders, the streets breathed easier. Still, Henry kept his attention on the road. Sam was happy to sit back and close her eyes. Let him get them home without running over any of the seemingly millions of pedestrians crossing at the traffic lights even at this hour of the night.
Except for the yellow crime scene tape on apartment 810, the hallway was quiet. Just as well. Sam didn’t feel like making small talk with neighbors. Her mind teemed with thoughts about the black van and what it meant.
This time, Henry had only a slight buzzing in his head when they stepped off the elevator. More than likely leftover from the vicious events from two nights ago. He glanced around at the other doors. They all looked the same to him—plain steel doors with a peephole. None had numbers on them and he wondered how visitors found the correct apartment. If it weren’t for the fact their entrance was one door past the one with crime scene tape, Henry would have a hard time recognizing their temporary abode. And he was trained to be observant.
Sam punched in the key code and flipped on a light switch near the entry. Henry followed at her heels.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Henry asked as he closed the door and made sure the deadbolt kicked in.
“What?”
“Who you think was in the black van.”
“I don’t have a clue. I don’t see how they could have been after me. My father doesn’t know where I am.” Sam plunked into one of the club chairs. “At least not yet. He’s in jail, for God’s sake. How can he track me all the way across the country?”
“A good hit man could.”
“But you and Stacy could have been killed too.”
“Collateral damage.”
“I think an experienced hit man would try to avoid that.”
“Maybe so, I’m not all that familiar with the thinking of someone who would hire out to kill another person.” Henry perched on one of the stools and leaned his elbow against the counter separating the living area from the kitchen. “How would your father pay a hit man, anyway? I thought you moved all his money.”
“Most of it,” Sam said. “I located sixteen different accounts, but he could have had more. I thought I found them all but maybe I missed one or two.”
Henry whistled. “Sixteen? How long did it take you to find them?”
“I stayed with the FBI for five years after my father was sentenced. I wanted to have access to top-notch computer security on my end so my movements couldn’t be traced.”
“Didn’t the FBI care that you didn’t turn the funds over to them?”
“They would have if they knew. I kept it hidden from them.” She kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs beneath her in the chair. “I almost got caught but managed to wiggle out of it. That’s when I decided I had to leave the agency.”
“So you stopped looking when you left?”
“It was getting harder and harder to locate more accounts. After a year of searching and not finding any additional ones, I decided it was enough. I moved one as soon as I found it, but then I realized I had better wait to move the others until I was sure I’d located them all. I moved them my last day at the bureau. And then I moved them again every day for six months.”
“How could your father keep track of them?”
Sam laughed. “He didn’t. He hired a nerd genius to set everything up. Julian Stein was his name. He was a friend of mine from college before my father turned him to the dark side. Jules taught me almost everything I know about hacking.”
“That’s good and bad,” Henry said. “This Jules fellow is familiar with whatever footprint you leave behind. He knows it’s you.”
“And I know when it’s him.” Sam glanced at the laptop sitting on the coffee table. “We even had our own secret chat room. I haven’t gone there since I left the FBI ’cause I’m afraid he can trace my location if I log in. The first account I moved, Jules retrieved and moved it somewhere else within a few days. I decided to wait until I had access to all the others before I drained them again. So far, Jules hasn’t been able to find them.”
“How did you manage that?”
“It wasn’t easy. I combined them into five accounts that I still move around every few days.”
“So you run the risk of losing at least one-fifth of the money at any time.”
Sam shrugged. “Yeah, but I’ve invested all of it and it’s growing in this market.”
“You invested in the stock market?” Henry sounded incredulous.
“I want to return each mark’s money with interest, so I had to do something to earn it.”
“It still seems shaky to me.” Henry was no financial wiz, but he tried to steer clear of stocks and their volatility.
“It’s the best I could come up with after rejecting several possibilities, including simple savings accounts in Switzerland. It’ll be fine as long as I can stay ahead of Jules. I’d love to check the chat room to see if he’s left me any messages but I haven’t worked up the courage to do so without the agency’s computer capabilities
.”
“You should be okay if you route through someone else’s computer and make it appear that you’re in several different locations at once.”
“I could but…” She stopped and stared at Henry. “How do you know that?”
“Part of my training was in cyber security. The Navy was one of the first to see the value of onion routing. They used Tor for intelligence gathering, long before you geeks at the FBI. I also know a lot about how to remain invisible and write self-destructing code.”
Sam lifted an eyebrow. “So you’re multitalented.”
“I have many skills.” Henry grinned.
Sam ignored the implication, not willing to go there. Henry was an employee; an important one. She didn’t want to spoil their dynamic with double entendres. She’d made that mistake with Jules before he started working for her father, and she’d regretted it every day since. “I’ve been hesitant to log in to the chat room because even if I hide my identity, Jules is familiar with the way I write code. He’ll be able to track me immediately.”
“He doesn’t know me, though. I think we should give it a try. You’ve been depending on reports from the prison, which could be nowhere near current or reliable.”
“Let’s do it.” Sam carried the laptop to the counter in front of Henry. She stood next to him as he gained access to Tor, then onto the dark web. She gave him the information for the chat room but left him to configure his own path. In a few seconds, they were in.
Chapter Six
Sooner than expected, a message popped onto the screen.
JS: Hello, ST, haven’t heard from you in a while.
ST: I’ve been busy.
JS: Naughty too. The boss is angry.
ST: I can’t help that.
JS: You’re in trouble.
ST: ??
JS: He issued a contract.
ST: ??
JS: To kill
ST: Should I worry?
JS: I would if I were you.
ST: I’ll be careful
JS: Where r u?
ST: Someplace safe