Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) (8 page)

Jennifer sat at her desk and unlocked her top right drawer. Mei heard the familiar rattle of a pill bottle before the drawer closed and locked again. It was the same sound she heard a half-dozen times a day. Mei wondered if anyone else had heard it, too.

There were eight other agents in the Computer Intrusion Squad, but the groups tended to work on cases in pairs, and for convenience, Mei was almost always paired with Jennifer. They were also the only two women. There had been a third—Megan Riggs—ages ago, but she was long gone. Every once in a while, Mei thought about how Megan and her son were doing, if they were still alive. She'd been in the Federal Witness Protection Program for a couple of years, but supposedly a leak had led to the Russian mob tracking her down. From what Mei had heard, the leak had come from the Office of Professional Responsibility and Megan had gotten away. Mei could only imagine where she was now.

Mei thought it was about the same time that Megan escaped the Russian mob that things with Jennifer started to go downhill. Jennifer and Megan had been close. Jennifer had looked up to Megan, almost like an older sister. And despite their insistence that Mei was a welcome member of the team, Mei had always felt like an outsider.

She had never mentioned Megan to Jennifer. Occasionally Jennifer would bring it up, worrying out loud about how Megan was coping, but only then did Mei ask if she'd heard anything. Jennifer never had.

Typical Chinese not to get involved in someone else's business, Mei scolded herself. But it wasn't just Jennifer's business. The constant pill popping, the long lunches that ended in her return in a cloud of alcohol fumes, made it hard for Mei to get Jennifer's input when she needed it. And yet none of it seemed to affect Jennifer's work. She was as detailed as always, as diligent and as respected. She was always the lead agent on every case, and Mei ended up doing more of the grunt work. She didn't mind it, but Jennifer remained as detached as she could, and Mei had felt as though they had stopped working as a team months ago. And worse, Mei didn't know who to talk to.

Their supervisor, Dennis Eaton, was not someone Mei could relate to. He traveled to meet with local law enforcement on projects while the agents worked from the extensive computer system at the Bureau. And he and Jennifer were much closer than he and Mei would ever be. She had broached the subject with him more than once, but with Jennifer's performance as good as it was, he'd been skeptical at best. Maybe the problem was with Mei.

Jennifer slammed something down and Mei tried her best to ignore it. They were working on a case that involved the disruption by hackers of service to several of the biggest internet service providers. Mei had spent the day sending information about the attacks back and forth with the companies' systems people, who seemed to work best at midnight Pacific time. Jennifer seemed unconcerned about the progress on the case, but Mei needed some assistance, so she brought it up anyway.

"We finished the filter process on case 282-CG-114230," Mei said, referring to their DDoS case, the Distributed Denial of Service that had targeted the highest-profile internet service providers. "We're still running the search on the trigger machine." The process the Bureau used to locate the actual hacker was done with a specialized filtering software that removed any normal message traffic and allowed the agents to focus on the suspicious traffic. Still, even when suspicious traffic was located, the process of trailing it back to one machine was like searching for a needle in a Chicago-size field of hay.

Jennifer didn't respond.

Mei waited patiently. She wasn't known to lose her temper—had done it only a very few times and never in her work. But Jennifer was pushing her toward the edge. "I assumed you'd have an opinion on this."

Jennifer shook her head. "Not really. You can handle it." Jennifer was hunched over something on her desk.

Mei crossed the room and stood beside Jennifer's desk. "What is wrong?"

"What do you mean?" Jennifer said, her voice slow and deliberate. Her face was hidden beneath the strands of blond hair. Mei could see a small patch of makeup on her neck. She stared and felt her irritation boil into anger. It looked like a hickey. They were swamped with cases and Jennifer didn't show up to work until evening because she was with some man.

"You missed the meeting with Eaton this morning. He asked where you were but I had to tell him I didn't know, that I hadn't seen you since yesterday." She blew out a flustered breath. "I think you need to tell me when you're going to be gone for so long. I feel stupid when I can't explain where my partner is."

Jennifer didn't look up, didn't respond.

"I'm trying to understand."

Jennifer's head dropped lower and Mei thought maybe she was coming around. "Fuck you," she finally whispered.

Anger traveled like a shock through her until she reached out and grabbed the notebook from in front of Jennifer and yanked it off the desk. The page was blank.

"What are you doing?" Mei demanded.

Jennifer shifted her head slightly, but still refused to face Mei. "Thinking."

Exasperated, Mei turned Jennifer's chair to face her. "Tell me what is going on."

Jennifer waved her hand at Mei and tried to turn back, but Mei held on to the chair. Though her face was heavily made up, Mei could see the bluish tint beneath her left eye.

"Oh, my God, Jennifer. What happened?"

"I fell coming out of my apartment last night—all the damn ice." She touched it gingerly. "That's why I wasn't in earlier." She waved it off. "It's so embarrassing." She scanned Mei's gaze and then focused on the far wall. "I should've called, though. I'm sorry."

Mei knew instantly that Jennifer was lying. If she weren't, she would have told Mei to bug off by now.

Instead of anger, Mei was struck by the heavy hand of guilt. They were partners; Mei should have known what was going on with her. "Who did this to you?" She looked at Jennifer's eye and saw a sprinkling of tiny red cuts around the bruise. "Was it about a case? Were you attacked?"

"No," she said, holding her collar shut in response to Mei's stare. "I said I fell. I'm fine."

Mei was tired of the bullshit. "You fell coming out of your place? What did you hit—someone's hand? Don't lie, Jennifer. You need help. I can help you. We should call Eaton."

Jennifer scoffed. "I don't need help, Mei." She pulled a compact from her purse and looked at herself in the mirror without the slightest bit of reaction. With a small circular sponge, she applied makeup under one eye.

Mei refused to back down. "You didn't fall, Jennifer. You were hit. Someone hit you. Whoever he is, we can call Lieutenant Vilke and have him picked up."

Jennifer shook her head.

"He'll do it. I know he will. I've worked with him before."

"Stay away from me."

"It can't go on like this," Mei said, both frustrated for herself and scared for Jennifer. "You're not yourself; you're not acting as a team."

"I am too. Don't tell me how to do my job."

"You're never here. I've been making joint decisions on my own and I can't keep doing it."

Jennifer's eyes narrowed. "Don't you try it, you bitch."

"Try what?"

"To steal my job. I know all about you and your perfect family and your perfect record." She motioned back to herself. "I'm the senior agent here, not you."

"I don't want your job, Jennifer. But if you don't get your act together, I'm going to talk to Kemper." She threw out Kemper's name, hoping it would cause a reaction. Eaton might be a pushover, but his boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alan Kemper, was a shark. Not that Mei would ever have the guts to go to the ASAC.

Jennifer jumped up from her desk. "Tell whoever you want. No one here trusts you anyway, you Chink bitch."

Mei watched as the door slammed; then Jennifer was gone. Jennifer's comments were meant to hurt, she reminded herself, though she couldn't deny that they had worked. Mei
was
trustworthy. If she told Eaton what had just happened, he would believe her. She paused and looked across the room, shaking her shoulders as though she could rid herself of Jennifer's anger as quickly. Mei wasn't going to let this go on.

Mei opened the office door and looked in both directions. The hall was empty. Closing the door again, she turned the inside lock and crossed the room to Jennifer's desk. She'd been wanting to try to figure out what was going on with Jennifer, but she'd felt guilty at the idea of looking through Jennifer's things. Now she was too angry to feel guilty. If Jennifer was going to treat her like crap, Mei at least deserved to know why.

She pulled on the top desk drawer, suspecting it was locked. It was. She picked up the container of pens and lifted the contents out of it. The bottom held two safety pins and a paper clip. She returned the pens and set the container back down. The only decoration on the desk was a picture of a beach at sunset in a small wooden frame.

She picked up the frame and opened the back, looking for anything hidden there. There was another picture behind it, one of a beautiful couple with a small girl. None of them was Jennifer, but from the appearance Mei guessed the woman might have been Jennifer's sister. Mei realized she'd never heard Jennifer speak of her family. Mei avoided conversation about her own family for many reasons, but what were Jennifer's?

Mei sat down in Jennifer's chair and stared at the thin black blotter that covered the surface of the metal desk. Piles of case files and documents covered the two right corners. The far left was occupied with her computer monitor, propped up on a 1998 Chicago yellow pages. Mei ran her fingers over the corner of the blotter. Feeling a small bump, she lifted the blotter and pulled out a key.

She stared at the key and then at the desk. She unlocked the door and checked the hall again. It was still empty. Gathering her courage, she went back to the desk and pushed the single gold key into the lock and turned it left. The lock clicked and the drawer loosened. Mei pulled the drawer open and saw the almost empty pill bottle in the front. The small triangular pills were unfamiliar. She read the prescription: Ativan. She'd never heard of it.

She pushed through the contents of the drawer, looking for something that would explain Jennifer's condition today. There were a few unlabeled disks, a Rolodex, and several loose business cards, nothing that looked significant. She flipped through the Rolodex and saw a listing for Megan Riggs and stared at it. Beside Megan's name was a series of little doodles in different colors. The entries were clearly outdated.

Lifting the Rolodex, she searched beneath it for anything that she might have overlooked, but the rest of the drawer was empty. Whatever Jennifer's problems were, Mei couldn't find any evidence that they were related to the job.

Mei relocked Jennifer's drawer and returned the key to its spot beneath the blotter. She scanned the desk to make sure nothing was out of place, unlocked the door, and headed back to her desk as the phone was ringing. It was after midnight. When would her mother leave her alone?

Frustrated, she snatched the phone and said in Cantonese, "This is my workplace. You cannot keep calling me here."

"Ling Mei?" a male voice said with a Cantonese accent. He spoke her name in the traditional Chinese format, surname first.

"This is Ling Mei," she responded in Cantonese.

"I am surprised to find you here at this hour of the night."

"Bin go a?"
she asked.
Who is this?

"My name is Lieutenant Andy Chang of the Office of Professional Responsibility," he introduced himself in English. "I was going to leave you a message. I thought maybe I could come by sometime so we: could talk. Are you going to be in tomorrow? Or when is a good time?"

Her face flushing, she looked at Jennifer's desk and wondered if somehow she'd been caught on tape. "I was just working late this evening on a case in California. I am usually gone by now. I should be in about nine tomorrow, though," she said, wishing immediately that the call had been her sister to yell at her about red eggs and ginger.

Chapter 7

Oskar Kirov's breathing grew louder and louder as he watched his sons eat dinner at the long, narrow table. His fingers itched to rub at the pain in his gut, but he didn't move. He knew it was getting worse. He had less time without the pain, and when it came, it was steely cold, like death itself. Plus, he was sick all the time—nauseous and hunched over—and even the medication didn't help. He'd grown thin and he felt weaker. He focused on his boys, pulling his thoughts from the symptoms of his own mortality.