Deja Vu (16 page)

Abner looked down at his Hugo Boss suit and knew he had to get it to the dry cleaners stat. Then he’d head over to the
Post
building and try to make peace with his unrequited love. Brad Pitt, eh?

Chapter 14

M
uttering to himself, Abner Tookus stepped into his private elevator, private because he was the owner of the renovated warehouse, which would take him to the spacious loft that he himself had restored. He had nine hundred square feet of actual living space, a bedroom, a luxurious sitting room, an outrageous bathroom, and a state-of-the-art kitchen that he never used. The remaining three thousand square feet of the loft were used for his business, which had no name. Other than “hacking.”

At a glance, any first-time visitor would have likened the huge room to that of NASA’s mission control. There were computers everywhere. Lights flashed, and muted pinging noises could be heard from all directions. A bank of televisions was mounted on one of the middle walls, each tuned to a different channel. The temperature was a controlled sixty-one degrees and never ever fluctuated.

Abner stomped his way into his bedroom, which resembled a harem gone wild. He did love veils and beads and bright colors. The art that hung on the walls had to do with voodoo, because when all his high-tech equipment failed him, which was hardly ever, he stuck pins in a wide range of voodoo dolls and laughed while he was doing so.

He was aggravated now as he stripped off his Hugo Boss suit and fired off a text to the person he was supposed to meet in New York. “Sorry, Trump, old boy, another time, another place.”

Five minutes later, Abner was in a pair of cutoff khaki shorts, grungy sneakers, and a muscle shirt. He ran his hands through what was left of his hair and spiked it up with some gel. Now he felt like Abner Tookus, hacker extraordinaire.

Abner stumbled when the words
Witness Protection
rumbled through his brain as he made his way to his workstation. He sat down on his swivel stool, hit buttons, scooted the stool across the room to punch more buttons. He repeated the process so many times in the following fifteen minutes his stool left scorch marks on the shiny wood floors he’d installed himself, all the while the two ominous words ricocheting around and up and down inside his head.

While he waited for results to flow through his computers, he started to text three of his closest friends, hackers almost on his own level. Within seconds, all three colleagues agreed to meet up with him within the hour.

That was good; he’d have Virgil Anders locked up tight, sealed in an envelope by the time they arrived. All he had to do was decide if he was going to hand deliver the envelope or messenger it to the
Post.
Well, damn, he hadn’t even agreed to do the job on Virgil Anders, and here it was all wrapped up. Well, damn again.

Abner had always prided himself on being nerveless, never allowing himself to get rattled. But he was rattled now, and he admitted it to himself. As soon as his friends got here, he would bounce everything off them and see what they thought.
Witness Protection.
No one but no one had ever penetrated their program. They’d never lost a witness, either, thanks to their security.

Abner sniffed and stuck his nose high in the air. The only reason the WPP had never been penetrated was because he had never tried. He
never
failed. Ever. Then why was his big toe itching? He wiggled his toes inside his smelly sneaker, but the itch wouldn’t go away.

Frustrated, he kicked off his sneaker. He watched as it sailed across the room. He really had to get some of those Odor-Eaters and put them in his sneakers. Or, horror of horrors, wash the damn things. He did, after all, have a fancy-dancy washing machine, complete with a rack specially for washing and drying sneakers. Worst-case scenario. Christ he was edgy.

Abner almost jumped out of his skin when the buzzer sounded to indicate his friends had arrived. He walked over to the elevator and sent it downward. He waited while it lumbered back up. He found himself grinning from ear to ear at his friends’ appearance. They all looked and dressed just the way he did. Tim, Bart, and Stella, the seniors of the group, were in their very early thirties, all computer geniuses, all with PhDs. The three younger men trailing Tim, Bart, and Stella were their trainees. All three trainees were in doctoral programs. They were here to observe, to listen, and to keep quiet.

They knuckled one another as they made their way into the climate-controlled work area. Abner fished out stools from under various counters. Everyone took a seat. Refreshments were never served in this area. Six sets of eyes looked at Abner like he was the Messiah ready to lead them …
somewhere.

“I have been offered a job, guys. Then a second later the job was withdrawn because the person who offered it said they thought I couldn’t do it.” A gasp went up from the little crowd that clearly stated that was the next thing to blasphemy.

No one asked a question, because Abner was their leader, and disciples never questioned their leader. “We all know there is nothing out there we can’t crack. That’s such a given it doesn’t even bear thinking about, much less discussing. However, this assignment is a little outside the norm. What would you say if I told you my client wanted me to hack into the Witness Protection Program?”

One of the big three said, “I think the question here is, do you
want
to do it? That then brings a second question, which is how much is it worth? Then the granddaddy of all questions is, if you or we, as the case may be, get caught, and I am not saying that will happen, who takes care of you or us if we all work on this?”

Abner dropped his head to stare at his one bare foot. Did he want to do it? Hell, yes, he did. Cracking the WPP would be like an Olympian’s winning the gold medal. “Yes, I do want to do it. And I’m smart enough to know I need your expertise. This particular job, I think I can say with confidence, is a ‘name your own price’ deal. As to who would come to our aid … the name I was given on past jobs was Miss Lizzie Fox. I would assume that still holds. I will confirm all of this once we all agree that we want to do it. A show of hands will do. Not the trainees, but if they have any input I’d like to hear it. As always, their fee comes out of your share. We still on the same page here?” Six hands shot into the air.

It was never about the money with these guys, Abner knew. The money wasn’t important to him, either. He pretended it was with Maggie because he loved to haggle and walk away the winner. The thrill, the high, came from doing something no one else was capable of doing, then walking away free as the breeze. The cherry on top was laughing all the way to the bank.

“We’re in,” Stella said. Five heads nodded in confirmation. “Is this just a meeting to feel us out or do you want us to start to work? Just tell us what to do.”

“Yeah, yeah, I want you to start on this. I have to go crosstown to deliver a package and talk to our client. I will broker the best deal I can, you all know that. I also have to garner a little more information. This is what I know so far….”

Abner was almost to the door when one of the trainees tossed him his sneaker. Abner caught it, made another mental note to buy some Odor-Eaters, and was in the elevator, his heart pumping like a racehorse.

Abner arrived at the
Post
on the stroke of noon. The security guard frowned at his attire as he handed over a visitor’s pass on a lanyard. His face grim, Abner stalked to the elevator and rode it to Maggie’s floor. When he exited the elevator, he could see her getting up from her chair the moment she spotted him. She had the strangest look on her face, one that he’d never seen. He stomped his way to her office, slapped the envelope down on her desk, and said, “It’s three million dollars. Take it or leave it.”

Maggie almost broke her hand signing a chit for him to take to the accounting office. She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. She waited.

Abner leaned over her desk. Maggie rolled her chair backward so she could see him better. “I’ll take the job. Give it to me in five sentences.” Maggie did in such a shaky, so-unlike-her voice that Abner felt pleased. He was doubly pleased to see that her hands were shaking.

“Three million bucks, and Lizzie Fox defends me and whoever else I might involve in this. I want it in writing right now, and I want half the money up front, like in
now.
Before you agree”— he leaned even farther across the desk—“I want you to know I hate your guts!”

Maggie knew she was going to choke any second. Her eyes burned with tears. A dozen witty comebacks flitted through her mind. Wisely, she kept them to herself. “I have to get authorization, you know that,” she managed to squeak out.

Abner backed away from the desk and stood in the doorway. He watched as a single sheet of paper worked its way out of the fax machine. Lizzie’s agreement. Maggie motioned for Abner to pick it up. Abner didn’t move. He wiggled his fingers to indicate Maggie was to get up and hand it to him. She did, her hands trembling even more. Abner pretended not to notice.

Maggie looked down at her BlackBerry. She read the brief message and nodded. “Your new employer has authorized payment. You are to go to the Sovereign Bank, and they will issue a bank check. All you have to do is show your ID. Thank you, Abner,” she said, her eyes shiny with tears.

“This finishes us, Maggie.”

Maggie gulped and nodded. Somehow or other, she managed to say, “I know.”

The moment the elevator door closed, Maggie rushed to her desk and burst into tears. Her thoughts were all over the map. Even before she realized what she was doing, she removed her engagement ring and dropped it into her desk drawer on top of a pile of candy wrappers. She cried harder and didn’t know why. She didn’t know why she took off her ring, either.

On his way to the Sovereign Bank, Abner kept swiping at his own burning eyes. The worst feeling in the world had to be loving someone with all your heart and soul and that person not returning or acknowledging that love.

His banking done, the money deposited to his money market fund, Abner left the bank. When he returned to his loft, he’d write checks to his three colleagues, then transfer the rest to one of his secret offshore accounts.

Life was going to go on no matter what happened. Abner picked up his feet, his smelly sneakers slapping at the pavement as he jogged to his loft instead of taking a taxi. He concentrated on the monumental task that was ahead of him as his feet continued to slap at the hot pavement.

While Abner was jogging his way home, Maggie, tears rolling down her cheeks, perused the papers that Abner had slapped on her desk. She rifled through them and nodded miserably. A perfect job. As always. Abby had come through for her once again. But at what cost? She stacked them neatly into the fax tray, pressed in the number, and within seconds they were on the way to Pinewood, where Charles would pluck them out of the machine, make copies, and give them to the Sisters.

“Yeah, Maggie,” she whimpered tearfully.

“Oooh, here comes Charles. He looks like he’s been sucking on a lemon,” Yoko whispered.

“Ladies! I come bearing information, compliments of Maggie. It seems her source for gathering information has some magical sources of his or her own. Her source was able to locate Virgil Anders. Even with all his records being erased or expunged. As I said, magical.” The sour lemon was in his voice as he handed out stapled files to each of the women. “Once you read through this as I have, tell me what your next plan of action is. In the meantime, I will make us fresh lemonade and some sandwiches.”

The Sisters finished reading Maggie’s report at the same time. Nikki whistled appreciatively. “This is amazing. How in the world does her source do this?”

“I don’t think we want to know that, dear,” Annie said. “We have it all, that’s what’s important.” There was no way she was going to tell the Sisters the papers in their hands had cost three million.

“So, Virgil Anders lives in Cresfield, Maryland. The town is a Mecca for seafood lovers with the best blue crab and oysters, bar none. Small town with a hometown feel to it. Anders lives in a gated community on the water. He’s lived there in the same house for the past thirty-five years. He’s right on the Chesapeake Bay, off Tangier Sound. We can get there easily from here in a few hours. Just this past spring, I heard a commercial on the radio calling Cresfield the Crab Capital of the World,” Nikki said.

“Virgil Anders is handicapped. He lives in a wheelchair. He has a specially equipped van with a hydraulic lift to get him in and out. His house, which is a Tudor according to Google Earth, is valued at $1.5 million. He has no visible means of income, but monies are deposited into his bank account on the fifth day of every month. The sum is always the same, $10 thousand. Out of that he pays for his food, a housekeeper, a male nurse, his car expenses, and his taxes at the end of the year. The money comes from an annuity. There is no mortgage on the house. He owns the specially equipped van outright. He has one credit card with a limit of $25 thousand. He appears to use it a few times a year, mostly for online shopping, some clothes, books, videos, that type of thing. His bank balance, or maybe his money market account, shows a balance of more than $600 thousand. I guess that’s money he saves from his monthly checks that come out of the annuity,” Kathryn said. “What kind of annuity pays that kind of money for all these years? This isn’t making any sense.”

“The annuity is Hank Jellicoe would be my guess,” Myra said. “Mr. Anders was simply too young back when this started to have any kind of annuity that is so robust. My guess would be blackmail. Oh, girls, we really need to go and talk to this man, and the sooner the better.”

“He’s not married,” Yoko said. “This picture of him standing in front of the
Baltimore Sun
’s building shows he was a handsome man in his youth. Did he become crippled when he dropped off the face of the earth, or did that come later?”