Die Again To Save Tomorrow (Die Again to Save the World Book 2)

by Ramy Vance

  Zach mimicked ninja moves with jerky arm motions. Martha couldn’t tell him she knew CIA agents, and that was hardly what they were like.

  She explained it the only way she knew how. “This is our city and our jurisdiction, and we need to prepare and be on alert in case something does happen.”

  “Cool.”

  She could tell he didn’t buy her whole spiel, but he didn’t press further. He kept reading the promotional printouts. He tossed them back on the desk. “My buddy’s company is working on the pre-show events.”

  She collapsed into her chair. “Which pre-show events?”

  With virtually all the world’s political powers—and their wallets—congregating in one physical space for half a week, there was money to be made, and a whole lot of it. Everyone that was anyone was trying to cash in. Unofficial pre-pre-pre-pre-show events had been happening all month.

  Zach leaned forward. “Dude, it’s gonna be sick. You know, this whole thing is a big deal and all. Like, never has this happened quite like this.”

  Martha made a so-so gesture with her palm. “This is New York City. These kinds of things happen.”

  Zach blushed. “Oh, I’m from Alabama. So these kinds of things don’t happen.”

  “Right. Except at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, I assume.”

  He shot her a go-to-hell look, and she laughed. He cleared his throat and continued. “So there’s this official kick-off event happening in Times Square tomorrow night, after the first session.”

  She smiled wryly. “I think I’ve heard of it a time or two…or twelve.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Are you kidding? With all of this? No. I don’t really even know anything about it. Just that the city has blocked off Times Square for about a week.”

  “Are you kidding? Dude, it’s, like, a thing.”

  She studied attendee lists and ran background checks on all of Yolanda Martinez’s staff.

  Zach kept going. “They’ve got Bruno Mars headlining, and they’re going to do a fireworks show, there’s going to be cannons, tons of stuff. They keep talking about ‘surprise’ events. Tickets are, like, wicked expensive, but my buddy’s hooking me up. I’m thinking of taking that girl, Claire.”

  “Claire? Alister Pout’s assistant? Or former assistant now.”

  Claire and her misplaced iPad had been unwitting accomplices in bringing down the mogul earlier in the year.

  Zach smiled. “Yeah. We hit it off pretty well.”

  “After you stole her iPad to indict her boss?”

  “Well…I’ve glossed that over with a little finesse, so she doesn’t see it that way.”

  “Uh-huh. You haven’t told her, you mean.”

  He looked away guiltily. “Look, she’s way hot, and you know, I’m lucky a girl like that even looks at me. The only reason she’s with me is because she thinks I’m a crime novelist, so I have to keep that going, too.”

  “A relationship built on lies and deception. Sounds like a recipe for happiness.”

  “Fingers crossed.”

  She laughed. “So tell me about this pre-show.”

  “That’s about all I know. And that it’s going to be tomorrow night, two or three hours before the keynote speech. My buddy’s going to send me an e-mail with more details.”

  Martha perked up. The keynote? “Do you know what time the keynote speech is?”

  “7:30 p.m.”

  Shit. That was the time of the attack. “I want to know everything there is to know about this show. We need to be on top of what’s going on.”

  “Sure. I can call my buddy. He can hook you up with his boss or whatever. I’m sure they’d love to get NYPD on their side.”

  “Well, I’m sure we already have a squad assigned to the event for crowd control. What we need to be careful of”—she tossed the marker in the air and caught it, and made hard eye contact with the intern—“is that we don’t step on their toes.”

  She winked for emphasis, and he nodded slowly. “Right.”

  “The police force can be a very political place.”

  “I’ve seen it already.”

  “You piss off the wrong people, all of a sudden evidence goes missing, or you don’t get reports when you need them. This is a good lesson for you.” She tapped the marker on the desk. “You should write this down as part of your internship.”

  Zach erratically rifled through his papers and produced a small green leather journal.

  She held back a smile. She needed to keep him quiet because if word got out that she was investigating a possible terrorist attack with no evidence, it could have disastrous effects on her career. Not the least of which would be accusations of involving him.

  He found a page, and she paced the small space and toyed with the marker. “There is a thin line between playing politics and pandering. Successful officers know how to do both and get the job done.”

  She watched him draw an asterisk on her statement and knew she had gotten through. She sat on the edge of the desk. “Now tell me, who do you know?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sunday, May 21, 11:30 a.m.

  Martha drove the squad car around a corner while Zach sat in the passenger seat, simultaneously munching on a hot dog and scribbling notes in his green leather journal.

  She sighed. “Tell me about where we’re going.”

  He put the book away and talked around a mouthful of food. “So, the name of the company is One Republic Entertainment. They do major event planning, but this is a big deal for them.”

  Martha made a left turn toward the One Republic office as instructed by the GPS. “Planning the entertainment for the World Summit? That would be a big deal for anyone.”

  Zach sipped his drink and wagged his finger. “No, no. This is, like, different. So, you know the event company that usually does the New Year’s Eve thing?”

  Martha groaned with disgust. “Please.”

  “Right? So, everyone originally assumed they would do this event. But, One Republic outbid them for the account. It was cutthroat, dude. One Republic eventually won, but this is a make-or-break moment for them. From what my buddy says, they’re going broke on this account, thinking they’ll make it all back.”

  The GPS directed her into downtown, and she navigated through the city traffic. “So, who are we going to see?”

  “So, my buddy got me in contact with his boss, Lucas Cameron. I talked to Lucas, and he’ll be in the office all afternoon. He’s totally into talking with cops. I played it all like, ‘Well, you never can be too safe.’ He was totally on it. So, we can drop in anytime.”

  “Good work.”

  “Thanks.”

  Zach finished the last bite of his hot dog and wiped his hand on the side of the paper bag. “Can you be honest with me about something?”

  “Shoot.”

  “You think I’d make a good cop?”

  She looked him over, a clean-cut and freshly scrubbed intern. Zach was a good kid. Too good for all of this. He belonged in a cubicle somewhere, not out here in the trenches of daily police work. She gave him the most honest answer she had observed about him. “You don’t want to be a cop, Zach.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. You think you want to be a cop because there’s some once-or-twice-in-a-career payoff that makes it all worth it. But bottom line, this is gritty work. Long hours with oftentimes no recognition. And sometimes people shoot at you. You’re…too smart for that.”

  He sipped his straw until it gurgled. “You sound like my parents.”

  She smiled. “Go work for some lawyer’s office as an investigator or something. You’d be good at that and make a hell of a lot more money. Would make great fodder for your crime novels too.”

  He contemplated that, and she snapped for his attention. “Tell me everything about Lucas Cameron.”

  “Oh, right, right.” He pulled up a page on his phone. “Okay, so he was a record producer for a while and lost a lot of money in the digital
music revolution, I think.”

  “Record producer? All right. So he’s a music business type.”

  “Yeah. From what my buddy says, he’s kind of a dick.”

  “Good to know.”

  Zach skimmed the page on his phone and summarized as he read. “Once he went belly-up in music, he used his old music contacts to create an event planning company, and now it looks like they do pretty good. Some Hollywood music premiers, a lot of big music festivals. Ooh…they were somewhat involved in the Met Gala…”

  “Not a bad resume.”

  “Not bad at all.” He looked puzzled and tapped around on more pages. “It looks like he’s invested in some kind of science company? I don’t understand.”

  “Science company? What would an event planner want with a science company?”

  “I don’t know. But it looks like there’s a lot of little ties to this place. Global Research Initiatives, out of Palo Alto.”

  She pulled out her phone and texted Buzz while she drove. What do you know about Global Research Initiatives in Palo Alto?

  They arrived at the office, a tower downtown. She pulled into the parking garage. “Here we go.”

  He frowned. “So, what exactly are we going to ask this guy?”

  She hadn’t gotten to that part yet. They exited the vehicle and started through the garage toward the tower. “Mainly, we want to find out what his security plans are and see if anything sounds out of the ordinary.”

  Zach didn’t look convinced. “What do you mean ‘out of the ordinary?’ What could be wrong?”

  She stopped and looked him over. She couldn’t tell him the truth about Pete and Rueben, but he had gotten her Lucas Cameron, so he deserved a tiny slice of the pie. “All right. I have an unconfirmed—repeat, unconfirmed—and anonymous tip that there might be a terrorist attack on the summit.”

  Zach’s eyes widened, and he ruffled his hair. “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. We get these reports all the time, and that’s one thing you’ll have to learn as an officer—how to give these threats the ‘attention they deserve.’”

  He pursed his lips in thought. “Right.”

  “Because we can’t divert all our resources into investigating every teenage prankster on the phone.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “We can’t ignore them, either. So right now, with how flimsy this report is, it could be a bunch of hacks looking for attention, and they chicken out or get high and sleep right through it.”

  Zach laughed. “I could see that happening.”

  She amazed herself at how logical she sounded. “Right now, I want to find out if this event has any security weaknesses that terrorists could possibly take advantage of.”

  She resumed their pace through the garage, her boots resonating against the concrete.

  He wrote in his leather journal as he walked. “Is this how you found Pout?”

  “How?”

  “Following an anonymous tip?”

  They arrived at the elevator leading up to the building. “Something like that. Now, enough questions for me. What about Cameron?”

  “Right, right.”

  Martha and Zach stepped off the elevator and into a world they had only seen on television. One Republic Entertainment occupied the entire sixtieth floor, designated by a glossy silvery plaque that took up the main wall.

  It was an expansive open-plan office, all done in contemporary minimalist design. The furniture was all sleek white, bathed in natural light with shimmering chrome and glass walls. Young, sexy, upwardly mobile New York business types flitted around, occasionally typing on MacBooks.

  Zach scrawled in his leather journal, then turned to Martha. “So this is all that gritty police work you were talking about, right?”

  She didn’t reply but grabbed the attention of a tall Swedish-model type in Jimmy Choos. “Excuse me?”

  The blonde stopped dead in her tracks as soon as she saw the cop uniform. “I just work here. I don’t know anything.”

  Martha smiled. “No one’s in trouble. We only want to talk to your boss. Lucas Cameron?”

  The blonde nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah.” She scurried off to another blonde, a strikingly beautiful woman in a red dress.

  The woman met up with them, looking them up and down with disdain. “What can I do for you, officers?”

  Martha raised an eyebrow and refused to let this woman intimidate her. “We want to talk to Lucas Cameron.”

  Her tone was condescending and cold. “Do you have a warrant?”

  “No. He’s expecting us.”

  Zach jumped in. “I called ahead. We want to make sure everything’s good with summit security.”

  The woman looked at Zach like he was an insect, and Zach smoothed his sweater and stuffed his journal into his blazer.

  She pursed her lips. “Charming. I’ll get him.”

  The woman left, and Zach turned to Martha. “What was that?”

  “That is what some people think of cops.”

  “Geez.”

  He adjusted his hair in the glass reflection on the wall. It bothered Martha. “Stop.”

  “My hair gets—”

  She ordered him more forcefully. “Zach, don’t do that.”

  He froze with his fingers still in his hair. “Why not?”

  “That’s part of her game, to throw us off.”

  “Throw us off what? We don’t have anything on her.”

  “No. It’s a power play. She’s trying to show us that she’s rich and invincible, and we don’t have any real jurisdiction over her. We’ll be intimidated and stay out of her way.”

  “Well, the whole intimidation thing is kind of working.”

  “Don’t give in to it. You’ll have to know how to handle these New York society types if you want to be a good cop. They all think police only have authority under certain tax brackets.”

  Zach clasped his hands in front of him and tried to look serious. He was an intern, so he didn’t get a uniform. Right now, he wore his characteristic style: an argyle blazer, khakis, and Converses. He was right. He didn’t fit in.

  The woman in the red dress floated back up to them with a plastic smile. “Mr. Cameron will see you now. Right this way.”

  Martha and Zach followed her down a long hallway full of glass offices, Apple-designed workspaces, beanbag conference rooms in bright pastels, and a kitchenette with brick walls, low track lighting, egg barstools, and artisan coffees offered from a touchscreen.

  Martha pointed at a worker making notes on an electronic wallboard that looked like a high-tech Etch A Sketch. “See, this is where you belong.”

  Zach smirked with disdain. “You don’t think I know that?”

  Martha raised an eyebrow. There was more to Zach than met the eye.

  Finally, they reached the corner office. “Mr. Cameron?”

  “Ah yes, Allison. Show them in.”

  Allison gestured into the room, and Martha and Zach stepped inside. The floors were polished concrete with a brick wall rising to a high, vaulted ceiling. Paper lantern-style lamps hung from the ceiling on long silver poles dotted at intervals like abstract art installations. A large white table served as a desk, and the whole sidewall was a window overlooking the city. An industrial staircase in metal and glass rose behind the desk and led to a loft area, where Martha saw the rim of a pool table.

  Lucas was an attractive man in his early thirties. He had carefully disheveled dark hair, intense blue eyes, and a dimpled smile showing off a row of perfectly pearl-white teeth. He wore black slacks and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his mid-forearm, and Martha glimpsed a tattoo peeking out.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and smiled as he approached them. “Hi, come in, come in.” He gestured them toward a black leather sitting area, and they shook hands and introduced themselves. “Sit. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, water?”

  Martha sat, and Zach followed. She pulled out a notepad. “No, we’re all right.�
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  He sat opposite them. “Are you sure? We make a mean boba tea.”

  Zach perked up. “Boba?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got a great kitchen. In fact—” Lucas pushed a button on the phone next to him. “Molly, could you send Zach here one of those new boba teas?”

  Martha sighed as the voice came through the intercom. “Absolutely.”

  She was a little annoyed at Zach. They weren’t here for snack time. She took a moment to make notes of anything she saw around the office.

  “What flavor?” Lucas asked.

  “Uh, I don’t care.”

  He winked and made the “perfect” gesture with his fingers. “Watermelon’s our new flavor. We got it in from the vendor this week. Terrific. You’ll love it.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  Lucas popped back on the intercom. “Make it a watermelon. And—” He pointed toward Martha. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? I mean this new flavor, it’s great.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  He narrowed his eyes and pointed toward her. “I’m going to take you for a strawberry, right?”

  “I—uh… I’m not thirsty.”

  “Molly, get Officer Dragone a strawberry tea. Blended. Whipped cream.”

  “Got it.”

  Lucas got off the intercom. “You’re going to love this new drink. We’re getting a great deal on the machine, demoing it for inclusion in events. Our staff is going crazy about it. It’s boba-mania around here. We’ve already set up stations at the One Response.”

  Martha was a little agitated that he’d ordered her a drink anyway but let it go. “One Response?”

  “That’s the name of the show we’re producing for the World Summit in Times Square. But you knew that. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know the name.”

  He made a banner title motion in the air. “We’re calling it ‘One Response’ because it’s the global celebration of the people whose leaders have come together as one world. We’re celebrating taking the first step toward the end of wars, global famine, poverty, and economic inequality. It’s a cultural celebration of unity and hope.”