Missing Lynx (8 page)

“Which means what exactly?”

“I guess it means I’m not done. I think the rat is Sylanos. So tell me, what happened to the information after you took it to Headquarters? Did they act on it? Obviously, Sylanos is out and about, not in a cell somewhere, because why else would Spyder say that Sylanos became a Hydra?”

“I don’t know what they did with your data – I wasn’t delegated to that case anymore. It got re-assigned when Spyder left. I can call Command to find out if they’re willing to share.”

“Spyder probably has a better idea what’s going on. I’ll talk to him about it tonight.”

Striker shot me a glance full of…something. What in the world was that?

Before I could ask, Striker whipped the car into an open parking space and jumped out. Huh.
I’m not so easily put off a subject, Striker.
I’d bide my time and bring this up later.

We parked about a mile away from the Treasury satellite office. Parking was always a bitch in the city – and I was seriously rethinking my pointy-toed heels. They looked great, but boy were they torturous on the cold cement. I had my coat pulled tight against the wind. I could smell snow in the air.

Once we arrived at the building, we flashed our credentials for the security guard and went through the metal detector. Our weapons were locked in the glove compartment of Striker’s Lexus RX400.

In the conference room, two men stood by the window in deep conversation. They wore brown, cheap, badly tailored suits. And the word “dirt” came to mind – bland, uninteresting, unremarkable just like dirt. It would be hard to describe these guys two seconds after meeting them. It occurred to me that I used my appearance to my advantage, and I wondered for a minute whether these guys did the same. Perhaps “dirt” actually meant “dirty”— as in not to be trusted. Hmmm.

“Ken MacNamaly.” Dirt-Guy One held out his hand.

“Striker Rheas.” Striker reached for the handshake. The dirt brothers’ eyes met, just for a second, in silent, intense communication. I didn’t like them. MacNamaly turned to me, his hand jutting out.

“Alex,” I said as I shook his hand.

Striker lifted his chin in the slightest of nods. Alex was code. Whenever I introduced myself as Alex, Striker knew I’d be disappearing from the scene, so I could watch unobserved à la Master Wang.

Master Wang was one of my earliest, and most beloved, un-schooling mentors. He taught me the martial arts that he had used as an elite soldier in China. I studied with him from the time I turned five until I was sixteen, and he moved away to Chicago. One of my favorite lessons was “shadow walking.” 

When I became a shadow, my goal was to disappear from sight, to be the proverbial fly on the wall, to vanish from a would-be attacker.

Shadow walking was a fairly easy technique in theory – it took loads of practice to make it work in reality. I stayed in the recesses and shadows, and kept the light in my opponent’s eye, the glare gave me excellent cover. I used everything in my environment to disguise my presence. Movement had to be sloth-like, even my breath became shallow and imperceptible. I colored my thoughts with the textures and colors around me, playing human chameleon. If I were standing in front of a tree, I used my imagination to project the rough texture, the grays, and the browns of the bark out in front of me.

The masters of this technique – like in the Japanese Ninjitsu training —could disappear from sight. I was a few levels below mastery, but still. . .

As a child, I practiced shadow walking all the time. I reigned as the hide-and-go-seek champion, and I got out of many a chore, and many a punishment, by perfecting this skill. When my parents told Master Wang about my antics, he would reprove me, but I always sensed a twinkle of amusement in his eye. Shadow walking served as an important arrow in my operative’s quiver; it got used frequently. And it impressed Striker – always a bonus.

“Alex, would you go out and find me some coffee?” Striker didn’t really want coffee; we had just finished our Starbucks. He wanted to make me his subordinate, ensuring that the Dirts didn’t think of me as a threat.

“Yes, sir.” I did my best “I’m a piece of fluff – don’t pay any attention to me” impersonation as I blinked vacantly at MacNamaly.

“There’s a kitchen to the left, down the hall. I’ll take one, too. I drink mine black.”

“Yes, sir.” I Mona Lisa smiled at Dirt Number Two.

“Yeah, black,” he said.

I hustled down the hall, grabbed the three mugs of coffee and hurried back with a tray. When I got to the conference room door, I tapped lightly and entered quietly, putting a mug and napkin in front of each of the men. I made sure to go around the table in such a way that I ended up close to the window. When I laid down the last mug and the tray, Striker coughed loudly to create a distraction. I simply took in a deep breath and slid seamlessly into the shadow. My breathing slowed. My mind conjured up the industrial-blue, dimpled texture of the walls. I used my imagination to project this out in front of me, just like Master Wang taught me to, and settled in to wait.

Right away, the Dirts forgot I ever existed. They never looked around for me. Striker had them focused. As the Dirts told their story, under the table they tapped their feet, and swiped their palms down their pants, trying to hide their nervousness from Striker. And, they were lying.

Forty-five tedious, uncomfortable minutes of dry information went by before Striker stood up to go to the men’s room. I used the distraction of his movements to turn on my digital recorder and went still.

As soon as the door shut, the Dirts exhaled loudly. MacNamaly pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and mopped at his face.

“Fucking hell! They sent us Striker Rheas as our contact? What the fuck are we going to do now?” MacNamaly demanded.

“We’re going to follow the plan. Get your shit together. You look like you’re headed for a heart attack.”

“Fuck that. I think we should bail. Rheas. Fuck. Why do you think they sent in their A-Team? Do you think they know?”

“They don’t know shit. They sent in Rheas because we’re making first contact. Rheas isn’t gonna keep this case. He’s gonna go back to the office and assign it to some low-level newbie who’ll bumble through and do exactly what we want him to do.”

“Man, you’d better be right. You’d better be right about this, man. I’m not gonna spend my life in no jail cell. I’m fucking ready to bail,” MacNamaly whisper-shouted, wiping his face some more and shoving the handkerchief back in his pants’ pocket.

“We’ve passed them the bait. They’re going to go after this like a dog on a steak bone. Iniquus will be marching home in victory, and we’ll be there to catch them red-handed. They’ll be implicated in the crime, take the fall, and we come off like heroes and retire with our bags of money. Easy peezy.”

“Easy peezy, you shithead, unless we don’t get the newbie, and we get Rheas. Then what?” asked MacNamaly.

“Then, we come up with Plan B. Plan B might not be too good for Rheas’s longevity, if you know what I mean.”

Striker opened the door, I turned off the recorder and stepped to the side. I was visible. Striker focused over at me. I gave him a nod.

“Alex, did anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

“Little bit.” The Dirts whipped their heads around to look at me. I gave them a little finger wave and walked toward Striker. The men turned their heads following me. Their mouths gaping like trout.

“How long have you been here?” MacNamaly growled.

“I never left. I’ve been here since I brought you coffee. Maybe I should give Commander Rheas a blow-by-blow of what transpired, so he’s up to speed.”

Both men stammered incoherently. They had no way to protect themselves, as I repeated their conversation verbatim. 

“Your secretary is out of bounds, Rheas. Get her under control,” MacNamaly was all but foaming at the mouth.

I waved my recorder at them, and MacNamaly lunged. I jumped out of his reach. Striker had him face down. Dirt Bag Two got up and made for the door. He stopped when he heard the ratcheting sound of me chambering a bullet. He reached for his weapon only to find an empty holster.

“Before I joined Iniquus, I aspired to be a Vegas magician.” I smiled, aiming his gun at his center mass.

The Dirts were handcuffed and taken into custody. Treasury could handle the case from this point. Striker shook his head on the elevator ride down. “Lynx, you’ve
got
to start making this look harder. I’m telling you.”

Ha! That’ll show Command what I’m made of.
“You want to know what’s hard?” I asked, looking down at my feet. “Walking a mile in pointy-toed shoes. Can you go get the car without me? Maybe pick me up out front? “ I glanced at my watch. “We need to head right over to Burdock. The team is probably taking up their positions.”

Eight

S
triker pulled into the underground garage of the Mason Building. The enormous glass skyscraper loomed above us with its marble front steps. Ralph Lauren clad executives passed each other on the sidewalk with curt nods.

Thoughts of leopards filled my head. “After the mission do you want to go with me to visit Spyder?” I asked.

“No.” Striker shot me a glance then followed the car ahead of us through the ticket gate.

That seemed abrupt. I frowned at his tone. “Okay, I’ll go myself, then.”

“I’m sorry, Lynx, but no,” Commander Striker Rheas said in his full-on I’m-in-charge-so-don’t-mess-with-me voice. “I planned to tell you about this after we’re done with today. Command says Spyder’s no-contact until he can be debriefed.”

“What? But I haven’t spent any time with him. I need to talk to him. And what about Sylanos?”

“Exactly. Spyder’s bringing in highly classified intel, and he needs to be no-profile until he’s safe. Command is running covert surveillance. They don’t want anyone associated with Iniquus anywhere near that hospital, calling attention.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I worked to keep my lower lip from pouting.

“I didn’t want you emotional. Your full attention has to be on the target. This is one of Command’s pet projects, so they’ll be watching the outcome with a microscope. No room for error.” He swiveled to back the car into a spot near the elevator. “You need your head in the game.”

“You don’t think I know how to focus?”

“Precaution.”

“Mrs. Nelson’s up at Suburban.”

“I told them. Command says keep it to a minimum and don’t go anywhere near Spyder. You’ll put more than the mission in jeopardy.”

“But…” I thought the honed edge on the look he sent me was unduly sharp.

“Seriously, you aren’t to whip out the shadow walking or anything else from your bag of tricks. Command gets wind that you’re ignoring a direct order, and I won’t be able to help you. You’ve got to wait until Spyder’s stabilized and back at headquarters, then you can have your reunion. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” I gave him a sarcastic salute.

He released his seat belt and popped open the car door. His gaze slid over to me. When I raised a sardonic brow, he seemed to re-think what he was going to say and got out. Smart boy, he knows when to leave me the hell alone.

Striker took the elevator. I stomped out of the garage and around to the front of the Mason Building, which housed Burdock and Associates on the top three floors. It ticked me off when Striker treated me like a child. Head in the game. I’ll show him head in the game.

I gave myself a shake, lifted my chin in a corporate-confident way, clacked up the stairs, and pushed through the revolving door to the UBT National Bank that took up the ground floor. As I walked across the lobby, I felt insects crawling over my skin and too many eyes on me. I scanned the space for anything out of place, but everything looked the way I would expect. The heebie-jeebies — my personal-warning system — made me want to turn around and run. Huh. That didn’t bode well. I forced my feet in the direction of the elevator bank and rode up to the executive floor.

When I stepped out, the receptionist glanced up at me with cheerful professionalism. Before she could ask me my business, I gave a terse, “Good Morning, Andrea,” and checked my watch. “I’m running a little late. Did Seph beat me in?”

Andrea seemed confused. She nodded. “Yes, ma’am. He came in ten minutes ago.”

I slipped into Richy’s office. His briefcase and coat lay on his desk, Richy himself was nowhere to be found. I examined the briefcase lock – keyless, the kind where you rolled in a PIN. I’d have to figure out the numbers, but breaking the combination would take time. I shrank back into the shadowy corner behind an enormous jade plant. The blinding sunlight streaming through the window would help protect me from detection. I hoped Richy would spin the numbers for me to read.

Seph Richy launched himself into his office and flung his coat across the side table. He took a seat in his leather chair behind the massive, carved ebony desk and watched the door expectantly. Moments later, a tall, well-endowed brunette followed him in. She eased the door shut behind her and leaned vampishly against it, batting her eyelashes. With a satisfied grin, she turned the lock and slithered her way over to Richy.

Seph Richy wasn’t an attractive man by anyone’s standards. He was fat and bald with a skin condition. A road map of broken capillaries crisscrossed his bulbous red and purple nose. But that didn’t stop him from chuckling and trying to look sexy for this woman.

“I’ve missed you, Daddy,” the brunette cooed and postured.

“Come here and show Daddy how much.” He wiggled a fat sausage finger in a come-hither gesture. Brunette slinked over, slid her pencil skirt up to her hips, and sat her fanny on his desk. She planted her high-heeled shoes on the arms of his executive chair like she would on a gyno exam table. Richy reached over and pressed a button on his phone.

“May I help you, sir?” a crisp voice asked.

“Hold my calls. I’m not to be disturbed.”

“Yes, sir,” the voice replied.

Richy turned his attention back to Brunette. “You are a very naughty little girl. You’re not wearing panties today.”