by Ty Patterson
‘I’m shaking,’ Joe chuckled and rushed at the sisters.
Meghan stepped wide of her twin.
Joe is Beth’s. I’ll deal with the other.
Her attacker came fast, his fist swinging, his eyes narrowed and mean.
She ducked under the blow. The next moment, she was sprawling when a hard left sank into her belly and knocked her sideways.
Her assailant laughed. ‘Didn’t expect that, did you, honey?’
Honey. No one calls me that.
She rolled and got to her feet swiftly, wincing slightly at the blow. He had hit hard, but beneath her jacket and her tee was an armored vest that felt like fabric. It had cushioned most of the impact.
You got overconfident and paid the price for it, she berated herself.
The assailant had followed her and was readying for another assault.
She glanced to her left. Beth had Joe in an armlock and was forcing him to the ground.
She kept her eyes on her sister for an extra moment and swiveled only when she felt the rush of wind. Her attacker had charged, seeing that she was distracted.
My turn for a fake move.
She met the incoming right fist with her left forearm. Deflected it. Went inside her assailant’s stance, her body turning sideways.
She dropped to a crouch, her left leg shooting out to brace herself, and rammed her right shoulder into the man’s midriff.
The man’s breath left in a whoosh, his guard dropping momentarily. Meghan’s right arm flowed up smoothly, turning inward, and her elbow smashed his nose.
His gasp turned into a hoarse cry, and then became a scream when her left palm crashed into his throat. She grabbed him by the left arm and heaved him over her hips, down to the hard floor, bringing a knee to his chest.
‘We went easy on you this time,’ she panted. ‘If we ever see you again…’
She stepped back, not finishing her words, and assessed him. The heavy was beyond causing her any more trouble. He was curled on the concrete, his knees to his chest, moaning softly.
Joe wasn’t in any better shape. He had split lips and bleeding cheeks, and from the way he was favoring a side, a broken rib. Or two.
Meghan bent over her attacker and searched him swiftly. She relieved him of his gun, and when she straightened, Beth had taken away Joe’s weapon.
They removed the magazines and tossed the guns deep inside the garage before going back to their vehicle.
‘You okay?’ she asked her sister as she nosed the vehicle out of the garage.
‘Yeah. He was less trouble than yours. How about you?’
In response, Meghan parked the vehicle in an empty space on the street, closed her eyes and breathed deeply several times.
The blackness that was threatening to engulf her receded, the nausea abating.
‘He hit me hard,’ she admitted. ‘Never been struck like that.’
She winced when her sister raised her tee and inspected her stomach.
The bruise had reddened and was turning dark. She sucked in a breath when Beth touched it lightly.
‘No ribs seem to be broken.’ Her sister felt her sides. ‘Let’s get that checked, in any case.’
Meghan would live, their doctor pronounced drolly. Her clinic was a block away from their office, and she was used to wounded Agency operatives coming in.
‘Try not to walk into concrete walls,’ she said slyly as the sisters walked out under the night sky.
‘We should tell Patten,’ Beth suggested as they stood outside and watched the city flow by.
‘Nope. If he fired those men, then their attack had nothing to do with him. If he was lying, then let him squirm, wondering how we’ll react.’
‘And how do we react?’
‘We find out which twin died. And go through anyone who tries to stop us.’
Chapter Nine
On TV shows, clues were easy to find. A trail was quickly put together, and by the time the commercials got out of the way, the case was neatly solved.
In Beth and Meghan’s world, an investigation took longer and was a lot less glamourous than Hollywood portrayed it to be.
They made a timeline of events the next day.
Billy Patten had married Rachel in 1960. He had gone to Vietnam in 1966, returned after a year, and then went back for another tour late 1967. He came back for good in 1969. He’d bought his mine in Chisholm in 1970. The Patten twins were born two years later, and in 1979, he’d taken them back to Vietnam, where the accident happened.
They stared at the whiteboard on which Beth had written the dates. Nothing leaped out at them.
They turned to Werner and spent the better part of the morning writing algos.
The algorithms were complex programs that searched, or made linkages between disparate events, people, objects—anything that the sisters wanted them to do.
The programs started looking into Chisholm’s board, Farrell and his law firm, Patten’s friends and his current girlfriend, Valentine Gorbunov and his associates. The sisters cast their net wide and let the supercomputer get on with the job.
They turned their attention to the list of family and friends that Farrell had provided. Dividing the names between them, they hit the phones.
By the time they broke for lunch, no progress had been made.
Every person they had spoken to said the same.
That they assumed Cole Patten was who he was. Nope, most of them said, they didn’t remember the brothers when they were younger. The few who did claimed it was hard to distinguish between the two. And that was a long time ago.
What was intriguing was that no detailed financial records existed from back when Billy Patten had been alive.
There were audited financial statements, but that was all that existed.
No bank statements. No ledgers. Nothing.
There was a record of the first steel mine’s purchase. Five million dollars changing hands.
There were entries of the steel and hotel businesses going into trust after the Vietnam vet’s death. There were records after that, but none before.
Ken Farrell had no answers either.
‘I inherited this law firm. It was well run, legally run, audited thoroughly,’ he insisted when Meghan asked.
‘Wouldn’t your father have kept records? Your firm was the company’s law firm, after all. Those records couldn’t have disappeared just like that.’
‘Nothing disappeared.’ His voice rose. ‘What I know of Billy Patten is that he kept his financial transactions separate. We didn’t handle all that.’
‘Who did?’
‘He did.’
‘Billy Patten handled his finances, his accounting, himself?’
‘Yeah. There was an external accountant who did the audits, but they weren’t involved in the running of the business. Billy Patten did all that.’
‘Where’s that accountancy firm?’
Farrell mentioned a name. ‘They went out of business. A long time ago. His bank, a community bank, has folded too. Trust me, I looked into that. No one exists from that period. There’s no illegal money trail.’
‘No one to confirm if it exists,’ she replied pointedly.
He hung up.
The sisters went to their favorite hangout, two blocks from their office.
They were alert, keeping an eye on their six, wearing the special shades that Broker had designed.
Those goggles had tiny rearview cameras in the stems that projected in a corner of the lenses. Perfect for discreet countersurveillance.
There was no threat. It wasn’t just the heavies the sisters were watching out for, however.
That time when they had been grabbed and taken to Syria, it was on a street like this one that they had been snatched.
They had learned from that incident. Vigilance became part of their DNA.
‘We widen the search. Speak to people in Chisholm,’ Meghan mumbled over a mouthful of food as they discussed the case and its peculiarities.
‘We have to take Farrell at his word. That there was no financial impropriety.’
They had checked out Farrell and his firm. It had a good reputation, and the lawyer himself was well known for his honesty and fair dealing.
‘We don’t like lawyers, but that’s a different matter. Farrell’s not the focus of our investigation. Let’s concentrate on the boys.’
‘We should check with their school. The local PD, hospitals, anyone in authority who might have had contact with the Pattens.’
‘Even a few people stepping forward to say Cole is Cole will be good,’ Farrell had claimed, in another call with him.
‘Why didn’t you reach out to anyone?’ Beth had asked him.
‘We didn’t take Gorbunov’s claims seriously,’ Farrell had replied. ‘And by the time we did, the damage had been done. No one wants to get in the way of billionaires’ feuds. The rest of the world doesn’t really care what happens to Cole or Chisholm Corporation. Besides, we suspect Gorbunov has threatened any witnesses.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘If I was, I would be filing lawsuits.’
‘If there’s no one to step forward,’ Beth said, toying with her food, ‘then there’s nothing to be proven.’
‘Prove what?’ Roger dropped into a chair next to her, Bwana occupying one near Meghan.
Beth eyed them suspiciously. ‘You two are tailing us?’
‘Not me. I have better things to do. I was sleeping in the office. My looks—the more rest I get, the better they become,’ he replied grandly.
Bwana raised his hands defensively. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I was in the office too. You saw me. Both of us were.’
‘And you didn’t follow us?’
‘Why would we do that?’ Bwana asked, all innocence.
‘Oh, maybe because you thought we needed following. Protect us from the evils in the world.’
‘Nope.’ Roger tucked into his meal. ‘That’s not us. R&R in between missions. That’s what our doctor ordered. We aren’t shadowing you up and down as you save billionaires.’
‘If we find you—’
‘We get it. You’ll heap all kinds of trouble on us. We aren’t shadowing you,’ Roger replied solemnly.
If either of the sisters had glanced under the table, they would have seen him cross his fingers.
‘What proof were you talking about?’ Bwana asked them.
‘Cole Patten. If there’s nothing and no one…’ Beth broke off and stared at her sister, who had a faraway look on her face.
‘What?’
Meghan didn’t answer.
‘Meg.’ Beth pricked her hand with her fork. ‘What’s up?’
‘Bwana and Roger,’ Meghan replied.
‘Yeah, what about them? They’re right here.’
‘They served together.’
‘So? Where are you going with this?’
‘They served together,’ Meghan repeated again, rising.
‘Of course.’ Beth caught on quickly and rose too. ‘Billy Patten was a Tunnel Rat. The men he served with—that’s a different bond. He’d have been closer to them than to anyone else. He’d have told them anything. Those men could have met the young twins. They would know.’
Bwana looked at their departing backs, mystified, and turned to his friend. ‘You know what they were talking about?’
‘About me,’ Roger replied confidently. ‘It’s my looks. Women can’t help talking about me.’
‘Fifth Infantry Division, Mechanized,’ Beth read out from Billy Patten’s dossier. ‘He held the rank of sergeant when he left the Army and returned to the US.’
She brought up a photograph on her screen and zoomed in on it for her sister to see.
Billy Patten was a short man, about five and a half feet in height. He was smiling in the picture as he was descending into a hole in the ground, a handgun in his right hand, a flashlight in the other.
He was bare-chested, and on his chest, there seemed to be the faint marking of an old wound.
Beth scrolled through more photographs that Werner had dredged up from various archives and personal email accounts. The supercomputer went where the sisters asked it to, hacked into the accounts that they ordered.
There weren’t that many images, however, and Meghan sent a message to Cole Patten to send more photographs, if he had any.
‘There’s a blog here somewhere. I came across it when I was researching Patten,’ Beth muttered under her breath as her fingers danced over keys. ‘There!’
The blog was by the son of another vet, who was chronicling the lives of Tunnel Rats. He had extensively interviewed several veterans, one of whom was one Leroy Duhan.
‘Billy Patten was the one of the first to volunteer,’ Duhan had told the blogger. ‘He didn’t know any fear. You should remember, the tunnels were new to us. We had never experienced combat like that. That didn’t deter Billy. He signed up right away. He was the first of the Tunnel Rats.’
Beth looked away from the screen to her sister, her eyes shining. ‘We should talk to Duhan.’
It turned out that Duhan was from the Fifth Infantry too and had served in the same unit as Billy. Him and eight other men.
Ken Farrell emailed a black-and-white photograph of Patten with his buddies. It had been taken in Vietnam two years before his return to the US.
Ten men, looking straight at the camera, some of them in their uniforms, the others more casually dressed. Patten was resting his hands on two men on either side of him. One of them was Duhan; the other was one Pete Garrett.
Billy, Duhan, and Garrett were to the left in the picture. Beth read out the other names from Cole Patten’s email as Meghan wrote their last names on top of each person. Bartley, Ezell, Munoz, Deering, Bielecki, Wolfgram, Paschall, and Vollmer.
‘Those two.’ Meghan pointed at the men on either side of Billy. ‘Let’s talk to them first.’
That turned out to be easier said than done. The ten men were from the same unit but came from different states. Neither Farrell nor Patten had any idea where the men were, or if they were alive.
‘Where are his belongings? He must have kept his letters, ribbons, his personal effects, somewhere.’
‘In Chisholm,’ Cole Patten replied. ‘In the family home. It’s locked up. We left it there once I moved to New York. I’ve hardly been there.’
‘You haven’t gone through whatever’s in that house?’
‘No. Farrell’s people went through it, catalogued everything. They would have told me if there was anything important. There wasn’t.’
Billionaires, Meghan shook her head. She scrawled a reminder to herself—Visit Chisholm. However, a lot could be done without leaving the city.
The sisters resorted to old-fashioned detective work.
Meghan looked up records of death, while Beth called the Department of Veterans Affairs.
There were several deceased Duhans and Garretts, but after an hour’s search, Meghan found out that none of them were the men they were seeking.
That’s good. These records aren’t comprehensive, but hopefully they’re still alive.
She turned to Beth, who seemed to have run into a bureaucratic wall.
Call Clare, Meghan mouthed at her.
Beth nodded, spoke briefly, and hung up.
She called Clare and put the phone on speaker.
Their boss listened without interruption for a while, while Beth outlined the case and the information they were seeking.
‘I’ll get those details to you. Shouldn’t take long,’ she replied when Beth had finished. ‘Sounds like an interesting case.’
‘Yes, ma’am. That’s why we took it on.’
‘Billy Patten. That name rings a bell. Hold up a moment.’ She returned after a moment. ‘Found it. The FBI and the IRS were interested in him for some time. Source of funds for the first acquisition. It got cleared up. They said he got an investment from his wife’s family?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘That’s correct. The case was closed.’
‘The IRS was satisfied, ma’am?’
‘Yes. Beth, Meghan?’
They could hear a smile in her voice.
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘Try not to kill Gorbunov. We’re watching him. He’s of more value to us alive than dead.’
‘We’ll do our best, ma’am.’
They met the Russian sooner than they expected.
He came for them.
Chapter Ten
They had stepped out for a break in the evening when a limo drove up in front of them.
Three suits moved towards them, all smartly dressed, moving with the same liquid ease that their friends had.
A fourth man came around the vehicle.
Meghan shoved Beth away, started reaching inside her jacket, when Fourth held his hand up.
‘No harm.’ His voice was guttural, thick.
Feels like a Russian accent. Meghan looked around swiftly. There was no one nearby, just the four men.
I can take two of them, Beth the rest. If it comes to shooting.
‘We want you to meet someone.’ Fourth was calm, unconcerned by the Glock that showed beneath her jacket.
‘Who?’ Meghan asked warily.
She was looking for signs of a trap but couldn’t spot any. The remaining suits were relaxed, their legs spread wide, hands empty, dark shades on their faces, all looking in the twins’ direction.
All four men were in grey suits, polished black shoes, confident in themselves.
These aren’t like Patten’s heavies. These dudes are way better.
‘Valentine Gorbunov,’ Fourth replied. ‘We will bring you back. Alive.’ There was the barest smile on his lips.
‘We aren’t bothered about that,’ Beth snarked. ‘You need to think about whether we’ll leave you alive.’
The smile left Fourth’s face. He moved to the limo, opened its door and gestured stiffly at them.
Meghan followed Beth, pressing the button on her left cuff as she climbed inside.
Her cuff buttons were alarms that linked to Werner. The supercomputer in turn broadcast the message to the operatives who were around.