She took one step forward and then a second, pretending to sweep the sidewalk with her gaze but in reality keeping a sharp eye on the first kid. His hand was still in his pocket.
“You should learn to stick with your own kind,” the leader said, seeming to grow bolder as Marshall stayed in the background. “Maybe you’ve never dated the right white boys, but Me ‘n’ Paul will be happy to change all that for ya…”
“Ah, there it is,” Tracie said, bending at the knees and leaning forward as if preparing to pick up her earring.
The moment she began to bend, the first kid stepped forward quickly, removing his hand from his pocket. A soft snick told Tracie she had been right about the knife, and as he started to step around her and move toward Marshall a small blade flashed in the light.
She made a ball out of her fists, wrapping her left hand around her right, and drove them upward as he passed. The surprised thug tried to leap sideways but he was much too slow, and Tracie made solid contact between his legs.
The switchblade clattered to the sidewalk and the kid let out a shocked gasp before dropping like a felled tree. He landed on his side, moaning and swearing and thrashing.
Tracie turned her attention to the second kid, who had frozen in shock but was now advancing as if to rescue his friend.
She stood and in one smooth motion stepped toward the second kid and punched him in the throat. She intended to pull the punch, to hit him just hard enough to put him down, but she misjudged his forward motion in the half-light. He joined his friend on the sidewalk, choking and gagging.
Oops, she thought. Oh well, serves the son of a bitch right.
She bent and plucked her earring off the concrete. Stepped over the two downed men. Stared at the leader until he met her gaze. Then she smiled coldly. “The guy I’m with is twice the man either of you will ever be. And by the way, you should learn to keep your ignorant opinions—meaning all of them—to yourselves.”
She turned without another word and strolled back to where Marshall was standing. He had watched the entire episode unfold in a matter of seconds, and his dazzling smile was clearly visible even in the darkness.
“That was fast,” he said as she took his arm again and they turned toward his car.
She flashed him a grin. “I told you it wouldn’t take long. That didn’t even qualify as a workout.” Then she examined her right hand and swore softly. “Ah, dammit.”
“What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
“Worse. The second punk was wearing what looked like a gold necklace, and I guess I chipped a nail on it when I hit him.”
“Well, that’s better than the fate he suffered.”
“Yeah, but still. The one time in my life I get a manicure, and I break a nail within six hours. Figures.”
By now they had reached Marshall’s beat-up old 1979 Buick Regal, and he unlocked the passenger door and held it open for her. “You could break every last nail and you’d still look damn fine to me.”
Tracie smiled crookedly. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
2
Allan Nesbitt lay against the headboard on his fluffed-up hotel pillows, eyes half-closed, and breathed deeply. Raggedly. The cocaine and champagne he had been indulging in to excess were beginning to take their toll.
As president and chief executive officer of National Circuit Corporation, Nesbitt was due downstairs in the Washington Arms Hotel ballroom in less than thirty minutes for the board meeting/dinner that in reality was to be the triumphant annual celebration of the company’s rebirth.
He was starting to wonder if he would be able to make it.
Founded in the late 1940s, National Circuit’s original mission had been to provide vacuum tube circuitry, and later on, electronic components, for radios and television sets. As TVs exploded in popularity, the resulting surge in orders carried NCC through its first decade on a wave of ever-increasing sales, the resulting profits permitting research and development into new products on a massive scale.
Government contracts soon followed, including what seemed like a relatively innocuous agreement to manufacture miniature circuitry for a concept being pioneered by the U.S. military known as the “Global Positioning System.” The experimental system utilized the concept of triangulation between satellites in constant orbit over the earth to pinpoint the location of receivers on the earth’s surface.
Scientists theorized that once enough geosynchronous satellites had become operational, it would be technically possible for commanders to determine the location of any soldier anywhere in the world at any time. And the positioning would be accurate to within astonishingly precise parameters—six feet or less—provided the soldier in question was provided with a special electronic device, similar to a tiny radio transmitter.
For more than two decades, the defense department GPS circuitry contract was responsible for just a small percentage of NCC’s overall sales, even as satellites were launched and tests were conducted and various branches of the U.S. military began making use of the technology.
But four years ago, as NCC was suffering through its eighth consecutive year of declining profits and sluggish sales, a tragic event occurred that would single-handedly turn the company’s fortunes around: the Soviet Union attacked and shot down a civilian airliner, Korean Airlines Flight 007.
September 1, 1983. The Boeing 747 carrying 269 people was on a flight originating from JFK International Airport to Seoul, South Korea after a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska. The mammoth passenger jet strayed into Soviet airspace and was fired upon by a Soviet Su-15 supersonic interceptor, with tragic and deadly results: Flight 007 crashed into the Sea of Japan, killing everyone on board.
The incident resulted in some of the tensest moments of the Cold War since the Cuban missile crisis. The Soviets accused the Americans of spying and even of attempting to provoke war, and the White House responded in kind, accusing the Russians of obstructing search and rescue operations, as well as of initially denying responsibility for the crash and then hiding evidence relating to it.
At first glance the event seemed entirely unrelated to the declining fortunes of a minor player in the electronics manufacturing sector. But everything changed in a heartbeat with President Reagan’s decision to declassify the U.S. military’s GNSS system, the forerunner of the modern GPS system, and to allow worldwide civilian access.
The civilian possibilities for the technology were nearly limitless, and as the patent holder for a critical electronic component in the GPS receiver, National Circuit would be involved in the production of every GPS unit manufactured. Almost overnight, the company was transformed from a washed-up relic sliding into obscurity, into a worldwide leader in electronics manufacturing.
That had all occurred four years ago.
In the tumultuous months following the KAL 007 disaster, even as NCC was being reinvigorated, company founder James Nesbitt suffered a massive heart attack and died, leaving day-to-day operations in the hands of his only son, Allan. Though groomed for the succession since early childhood, Allan Nesbitt had possessed neither the business acumen of his father nor the man’s drive to succeed.
Allan would be the first to admit, even if only to himself, that the phenomenal success of NCC was due more to sheer, blind luck than to intelligent stewardship on his part, but nevertheless, he had found himself in charge of a hugely successful corporate entity, and the recipient of far more wealth than he would ever be able to spend.
That didn’t stop him from trying. In the three-plus years of his tenure as CEO, Allan had blown millions on houses, cars, drugs, alcohol and women. Many of the women were the sort to whom love was nothing more than a financial transaction, often a short-term one of twenty-four hours or less.
All of which had led to this: Allan Nesbitt stretched out barely conscious on the bed in his hotel suite after overindulging in expensive champagne and sharing cocaine snorted through rolled-up hundred dollar bills—he knew it was a cliché but didn’t care—wi
th a high-priced call girl named Melani.
Allan was savvy enough to know Melani was her hooker name and not her real name, but he didn’t care about that, either. As far as he was concerned, she could call herself whatever the hell she wanted. At fifteen hundred bucks a night, she was pricey, but Hooker Melani was one of the most beautiful and alluring women Allan had ever seen.
And the best part, the absolutely kickass part, was she had been a total surprise.
He had checked into his room earlier this afternoon, prepared to shower and dress and be bored out of his mind at tonight’s self-congratulatory gathering of company bigwigs and ass-kissers, and instead had been greeted by the sight of the petite, fine-boned, vaguely Mediterranean-looking young woman dressed—more or less—in black leather short shorts, fishnet stockings, and a red velvet leather vest working overtime to contain her perfectly sized assets.
Melani refused to divulge who had hired her to be Allan’s guest for the evening, and if he was being honest with himself Allan didn’t much care who was paying her. He knew what rate she was charging because he asked her, and in his considered opinion—one he arrived at before even sampling her services—Melani would be worth every penny of…whoever’s money had been shelled out.
So now, rather than being bored out of his mind all night at a white-bread company gathering, Allan Nesbitt was stoned out of his mind. He lay back and contemplated the suddenly daunting prospect of dressing and attempting to navigate the hallway, and then the elevator, to the downstairs banquet room.
He looked up at Melani through bleary eyes. “Good God, but you’re beautiful,” he muttered. “And the best surprise of my life.” At least, he thought he had said it out loud. He was so toasted right now he couldn’t be sure.
If he had said it, though, he was glad. It was the God’s honest truth. Not only did she look better than anything he had ever slept with, not only was he receiving her services for free for the evening, not only had she filled him in on all of the things she would be doing for—and with—him tonight after the company gathering, but on top of everything else she had supplied the coke they had just finished sharing!
Of course, “sharing” might not be the most accurate description of the last couple of hours,” he thought. He had inhaled a hell of a lot more of the drugs than she had.
Now that he thought about it, Allan couldn’t exactly recall her ingesting any of it. Melani had sipped champagne and teased him relentlessly with her killer body, all the while encouraging him to snort more of the high-quality coke. Through his haze of confusion and impairment he began to think he might have used it all himself.
And that was okay, too. She was a professional, after all, and it was important she stay more or less sober, if for no other reason than to follow through on all of the things she promised to do the minute the banquet was over downstairs.
He lurched off the bed and staggered toward the bathroom, aware of Melani watching him through narrowed eyes. He attempted to smile at her as he passed. Based on her reaction, he guessed the smile more closely resembled a grimace.
“Be right back,” he said, wobbling on his feet and trying not to slur his words. Even after a lifetime of practice talking while impaired, it was almost impossible to pull off. “I gotta pee.”
Now that he was no longer flat on his back, Allan Nesbitt realized he really didn’t feel very well. Maybe he had overdone it a little with the coke, although he had snorted more than this on plenty of occasions in the past and it had never hit him this hard.
He took one struggling step and then another, and he realized he was sweating like a pig. Perspiration rolled down his face like he had just run the New York Marathon despite the fact that he had turned the room’s thermostat down so low he could see the goosebumps on Melani’s exposed arms.
The hooker stepped back to let him pass, her expression indecipherable, and as he stumbled forward a crushing pain gripped his chest. It was as though some invisible attacker had wrapped a studded steel band around his heart and was even now tightening it mercilessly.
He dropped to his knees, suddenly unable to breathe, and then toppled onto his side. His chest was on fire and he felt like he was about to puke, and that would be the worst thing in the world because everybody knew after you puked you had to breathe—had to pant like a dog, actually—and Allan simply COULD NOT BREATHE.
He rolled onto his back and locked eyes desperately with Melani, the beautiful little dark-skinned call girl. She stood over him without moving, staring at him like a butcher eyeing a prime cut of meat.
With what little air he had left in his burning lungs, he gasped, “Call…ambulance…heart…attack…”
Melani didn’t move.
“I…I…I…”
Melani didn’t move.
He opened his mouth to scream, to tell the stupid goddamn bitch to call the front desk, to run and get help, to do any goddamn thing, but he still couldn’t breathe and he had nothing left inside, and the pain was so goddamn bad and she wasn’t moving and his mouth opened and closed like a trout caught on a fishhook, and the last thing he saw before everything went black and his goddamn heart exploded inside his goddamn chest was a tiny smile of satisfaction as it crept across the face of his killer.
3
Edison Kiley hated gatherings like this. He hated anything that took him away from his laboratory and the research and development work he so enjoyed, but he especially hated dressing up in a suit and tie and…mingling.
Even though the people he was being forced to mingle with were, for the most part, men and women he had known and worked with for years—decades, in some cases—his familiarity with those coworkers didn’t make the torture any easier to bear. In some ways, that only made it worse. Hell, he saw these very same people eight, ten, twelve hours a day, five or six days a week! What in God’s name was the point of getting together on their off time just to have a few drinks and tell stories?
The annual event was pretentious and ridiculous.
But it was also necessary, or so claimed the company big shots. “It’s only once a year, Edison,” they said.
“Our stock is flying high, Edison, we have a lot to celebrate,” they said.
“You’re vested in the corporate profit-sharing plan, Edison, you have to join us,” they said.
So, here he was—reluctantly—necktie strangling him like a stylish garrote, the wool from his trousers causing his inner thighs to itch continuously, his eyes practically glued to his watch as he observed the sweep second hand, waiting impatiently for a couple of hours to pass so he could press a hand to his mouth in a false yawn and go home to bed.
But as distasteful as all of those things were, they didn’t even qualify as the worst part of the night. The worst part was that the good-for-nothing CEO, Nesbitt—the young punk who had taken a quality company and done his level best to drive it straight into the ground after his old man died, only to be saved from his own incompetence by sheer luck—had yet to show up.
The damned fool was late.
It figures, Edison thought to himself. He’s either doing it on purpose, keeping everyone waiting so he can make a grand entrance, or he’s face-first in a whiskey bottle and has simply forgotten all about everyone else. It wouldn’t be the first time.
One of the perks—if you could call it a perk—of being a thirty-year veteran of National Circuit as well as the R&D genius who developed the critical refinements to the GPS receivers that had saved the company’s bacon, was that for the last four years he had been seated at the head table during this annual waste of time and money. Now he listened as the typical business-related chit-chat—stock and bonds, housing market, cost of living, not a one of them anything Edison gave a damn about—gradually died away and turned into impatient grumbling about their leader’s absence from his own party.
“What’s taking him so long?” The man seated to Edison’s left was Chief Financial Officer Kirk Moreland. As far as Edison knew, Moreland had never set foot i
n the R&D lab; Edison doubted he even knew where it was located. The CFO leaned forward and looked past Edison as if he wasn’t even there.
“Well, he’s definitely not tied up working at the office. I don’t think he’s gone home later than two p.m. in the last six months.” This from the man on Edison’s right, longtime VP Chris Nuñez, who had been stuck in his position for years, thanks to Allan Nesbitt’s bloodline. Nuñez undoubtedly made good money, but his lust for corporate power was so strong that even Edison, who tended to be oblivious to those types of things, could clearly sense it.
“Is he even here?”
“He’s here. I saw him go upstairs to his room a couple of hours ago as I was paying the catering crew.”
The financial guy shook his head. “The rest of us have to drive home after dinner and drinks, and His Majesty reserves himself a room at one of the most expensive hotels in DC.”
“And you know who’s paying for that room.”
“The company,” the two men said simultaneously, and then shared a chummy laugh.
The VP made a show of looking at his watch. Then he sighed. “I suppose I ought to go upstairs and find out what’s taking so long.”
Neither of the two men had so much as acknowledged Edison Kiley as they carried on their conversation with him seated between them. Instead of being annoyed, he was glad. He had nothing in common with either man and absolutely no interest in making small talk.
He did, however, recognize an opportunity to escape when he saw one, even if only for a few minutes. He decided to take advantage of it. “You gentlemen seem to be enjoying your cocktails,” he said, surprising even himself with his smooth delivery. He wondered where that had come from. “I’ve known Allan since he was a boy. Why don’t I go upstairs and find out how much longer he’s going to be?”
The two men shared a surprised glance, eyebrows raised. It was obvious neither had expected to be addressed by the odd-duck researcher who had been employed by NCC since they were in diapers, and neither seemed to have any idea how to respond.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 51