The Kill Order (6 page)

7

Washington, D.C.

T
renton Stiles sat back in his seat, listening to the strains of Tchaikovsky’s
Sleeping Beauty
, while his driver maneuvered the streets of Washington, D.C., then pulled up in front of the offices of Wingman and Wingman, the law firm where he’d worked as a lobbyist ever since he’d left Congress more than twenty years ago.

Even though the firm was currently being investigated by the Department of Justice, Stiles wasn’t worried. They’d weathered the storm in the past, and they would again. Once he got his hands on the remaining copy of the Devil’s Key that was stolen more than twenty years ago, the entire DOJ investigation would take a new turn—one of his choosing.

This time, however, it was going to take a little more finesse, especially now that this latest threat had popped up in California, he thought as his phone rang. He looked at the number on the caller ID. Finally. He answered it. “Mr. B. This better be good news.”

“Depends. The hard drive we recovered from Bo Brewer was erased. But we found out
where
the information originated. A copy machine taken from the FBI’s office in San Francisco.”

“How did the FBI get it?”

“We think from Orozco.”

“Orozco?” he said, stepping out of the car, as the driver opened the door. Robert Orozco had been a former army black ops man, who had brazenly orchestrated the theft of the Devil’s Key from a safe at Wingman and Wingman more than twenty years ago. Their mistake had been hiring Orozco and his men to steal the thing from the government to begin with. Orozco must have guessed that his knowledge of the key’s existence meant his days were numbered, and so after Orozco turned it over to Stiles, he stole it a second time, then simply disappeared off the face of the earth.

Stiles had been searching for him and the key for the last twenty years with little luck.

Until now.

The morning was cold, crisp, with a clear blue sky overhead. He could see his breath as he talked. “How did you find him?”

“Surprisingly easy, which makes me wonder at the timing. We tapped into the military database. He decided to finally start withdrawing his pension. The only reason we can assume is because, one, he figured statute of limitations. Two, he no longer had the key. Three, maybe he was never aware of the kill order for possession of the thing, or now that he didn’t have it, no one would care.”

Stiles waved off his driver, but didn’t move from the sidewalk. There was more privacy out here. With the DOJ nosing around all the time, hoping to tie Wingman and Wingman into the theft of the key code, one was never sure if there were any bugs inside, even though Stiles made sure his men continually swept the offices. “And the FBI? Why would they have it?”

“Remember that FBI agent asking about W2 a few weeks ago?”

“Of course.” According to several sources, someone named Sydney Fitzpatrick had been making unofficial inquiries about the firm. “What about her?”

“She’s the daughter of one of Orozco’s partners. We think she might have been in Mexico back in October.”

“And you think this is how she got the key? How it came to be on their copy machine?”

“It fits. She worked in San Francisco at the time.”

“So Orozco gave
her
the list?”

“So it would seem.”

“Why would he do that? He knew how valuable it was.”

“Only valuable if you knew what to do with it, and he didn’t exactly get that part. Then again, it’s possible he still has the original.”

Stiles looked up at the door of the building, seeing the Wingman and Wingman sign in gold-leafed lettering. The firm had been on life support when they approached him for help more than twenty years ago. He’d worked hard to ensure its continued success, getting into bed with almost every White House administration since, facilitating those candidates who would best serve his purposes, all while keeping the DOJ wolves from getting past the gates.

This matter with Orozco didn’t help. If he had his way, he’d kill the man right now. “Find this FBI agent. If she’s got a copy, I want it.”

“And if she doesn’t have it? Because we know her partner didn’t have it. We already checked.”

“
Someone
made a copy or those numbers wouldn’t have ended up on a copier machine hard drive and popped up in the search. We start going down the list of who knew. In fact, since your men are on the West Coast, have them drop by for a chat with Mr. Orozco. Find out what he knows about the code he’s been holding on to for two decades, and what he told this FBI agent. And don’t leave any loose ends.” He took a frustrated breath, not happy that his morning routine had been interrupted. “Anything else?”

“One of those so-called loose ends might be an issue. A girl was at the scene. She may have seen me.”

“What the hell were
you
doing there?”

“If the Devil’s Key was there, you think I was about to entrust it to anyone else to bring it back?”

“Where is she?”

“Not sure. She disappeared right after my men made contact with her friend. They went looking for her, but she had help.”

“Government help?”

“Possibly. We have to assume they’ve been monitoring the Internet as well. And it fits, since the girl simply disappeared.”

“Disappeared? We may not have the key yet, but with the database you have access to, people do
not
just disappear.”

“Put it this way. She never returned to her apartment.”

“Find her. Make sure that she never does. When the time comes, we’ll take care of anyone else who had access to the code.”

Stiles disconnected, then dropped his phone into his pocket. He hadn’t lasted this long by being careless, and when it came to loose ends, his philosophy was to eliminate them. Unfortunately, it was becoming more difficult to eliminate anyone who posed a risk to his plans without drawing undue attention.

Certain people would have to be killed. The girl, for one. Others . . . ? This would definitely take some creativity on his part to make sure they didn’t get in his way.

8

The following morning

A
lthough Sydney had wanted to begin her investigation of the files Scotty had given her the moment she got home, she didn’t want to open them on a computer that she used to connect to the Internet. Unfortunately, finding her old laptop proved harder than she expected. She spent her time looking through several boxes in her spare bedroom, digging through things she hadn’t yet needed, therefore hadn’t bothered to unpack. In fact, she only ventured into this room on the rare occasion she did need to search for some long-missing item. Thinking that the laptop would be in the one marked “Old Office Equip,” she shuffled the boxes, pulling it out from the bottom. It wasn’t there.

Her eleven-year-old sister, Angie, had helped her pack when she’d made the move from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. Maybe she’d be able to remember which box it might be in. It was nine-thirty here, six-thirty back home. Angie would be up, getting ready for school, and Sydney called, figuring it would be faster to ask her sister, rather than emptying every single box.

Her mother answered. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine, Mom. I was just sort of hoping Angie might remember which box she packed something in.”

“
Angela
. . .” Sydney heard Angie’s footsteps as she bounded down the stairs. “Your sister’s on the phone.”

“Sydney?”

“Hey. You remember which box you packed my old laptop in?”

“Yeah. The one marked ‘Doodads.’ Why?”

Sydney glanced at the box marked in her sister’s writing at the very bottom of all the others. Apparently Angie considered a half-working laptop as odd. “I just need a backup computer.”

“But the wi-fi’s broken, and—
Oh
. . .” she said, her voice taking on a conspiratorial tone. Angie was all about mystery, and wanted nothing more than to grow up and follow in Sydney’s footsteps, much to their mother’s regret. “You don’t
want
to connect to the Internet. I get it. What kind of case are you working?”

“None of your business, squirt. And what makes you think it’s related to any case I’m working?”

“Because you wouldn’t have called home first off, and second you wouldn’t have said it’s none of my business.”

“It just so happens I need an extra laptop. That’s all.”

“Yeah, right, because—”

“Angie . . .”

“Your secret’s safe with me. Here’s Mom.”

“What secret?” her mother asked.

“Nothing, Mom. Angie’s just being her usual silly self.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t finished unpacking. I could fly out there some weekend to help—”

“Gosh, look at the time, Mom. Don’t you have to get Angie to school?”

“She’s fine.”

“But I’m running late. Have to go. Love you, bye!”

She hung up before her mother had the chance to pin her down for some visit she wasn’t ready for. Not in the midst of this can of worms. She turned to the closet, saw the box on which Angie had scrawled, “Doodads, Odd Items.”

Most of what was in the box was junk, she realized, after hauling it to the bed, opening it, finding the laptop, then digging around for the power cord. Hating any sort of mess, even in a room she didn’t use, she repacked all the boxes, returned them to the closet, then finally carried the bulky laptop to her kitchen table. The thing was as slow as molasses, the battery had long since given out, and, as Angie had mentioned, it was not wi-fi capable. That, however, meant no one was going to tap into this machine unless it was hardwired to the Internet via Ethernet. And since she wasn’t about to do that, it was probably the safest machine she had to look at the files Scotty had given her.

She only hoped it still worked. She plugged it in, then made herself a cup of tea while the thing booted up.

There was only one folder on the thumb drive and she double clicked.

A list of case files. Or rather the face sheets, which included names and a few lines stating what was in the original report, which was not attached. She read the first one, an anonymous report that the lobbyists at Wingman and Wingman were paying off lawmakers to curry favor for certain bills.

Nothing new there. Wasn’t every lobbyist and lawmaker guilty of that? In fact most of the older reports were of a similar type, she found, after quickly scanning several.

Her stomach knotted as she read the next report’s synopsis. Even though Scotty had warned her, she hadn’t expected that seeing her father’s name as a suspect on an actual case file would still hurt.

He and Robert Orozco were accused of breaking into a travel agency in Washington, D.C., that was suspected of being a front company for Wingman and Wingman’s lobbyists. Apparently the FBI had been investigating the company, because they’d received a tip that the travel agency was giving congressmen bribes and gifts of stays at exotic locations, all expenses paid. The company closed down shortly thereafter, and the matter was dropped after they inexplicably declined to press charges.

Her father was implicated with Orozco in a second burglary, this one being at Wingman and Wingman.

This was six months before her father was killed. That knot in her stomach tightened, and she felt nauseous.

Scotty was right. She didn’t like seeing it.

Reading her father’s name on that type of case made her feel as if he’d somehow betrayed her by pretending to be someone other than the man she thought he was.

This was
not
the father she had loved her whole life.

And even though this wasn’t the first time she’d been faced with this fact, she knew that if she let it, the knowledge would tear her apart. She couldn’t let that happen again, not after the emotional toll it took when she’d first looked into his decades-old murder, and she told herself that the man listed on these FBI files was what her father did when he went to work. It was
not
who he was when he came home at the end of the day.

That man had truly loved her, and after all, wasn’t that what counted in the end?

Exactly what counted, she told herself. When she finally managed to look at this with clinical detachment, she realized Scotty was right. Her father
was
connected to Wingman and Wingman.

The list of numbers she had locked in her desk drawer were the numbers her father and Orozco had stolen from Wingman Squared.

And all these reports were somehow connected.

But apparently not enough to have made a case to go after Wingman.

Somehow there was a thread in here that connected them . . .

Brilliant thought. Of course there was a thread. Her father had also been involved in the theft of money from a bank called BICTT. The acronym stood for Bank of International Commerce Trade and Trust but was better known in the intelligence world as the Bank of International Crooks, Terrorists, and Thieves. It was operated by a group called the Black Network, a cabal of criminals, politicians, and businessmen involved in a number of enterprises such as arms trafficking, drug money laundering, even terrorist funding if it furthered their own ends.

Everything she knew about the Network was from working with Griffin and ATLAS, and they had also implicated the Network with the BICTT scandal. What she knew very little about was Wingman Squared.

Her father, she was sure, had somehow been involved with both. Which, in her mind, at least, meant they were connected.

So why was Wingman and Wingman still up and running if it was a Network firm?

Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell from reading the face sheets of these cases.

But then, at the end of the file was a list of names with no explanation. Some were listed as witnesses on the cases she’d just read, others not listed at all. Curious, she wrote the names down on a sheet of yellow legal paper, tore it from the pad, then set it by her purse, wondering how to research this without using the Internet or her work computers.

A knock at her door startled her, and she glanced out the peephole to see Scotty and two other FBI agents she recognized as working for Pearson standing beside him.

She opened the door, noticed the tense expression on Scotty’s face. “What’s going on?” she asked him.

“Pearson needs you down at the office.”

Her heart started a slow thud. She knew what for, and she was acutely aware of the laptop sitting behind her, along with the flash drive connected to it. Scotty’s flash drive. No wonder he looked upset. “Why?”

“Is it okay if we come in?”

Sydney didn’t move. “For what?”

Scotty took a deep breath. “Permissive search for the list of numbers you recovered from Mexico.”

She told herself to remain calm. “I can save you the trouble of searching. They’re locked in my desk drawer in my office at Quantico. Have at it.”

“Pearson would like to search your apartment, as well.”

“Do I need an attorney?”

He looked her right in the eye and lowered his voice. “You know I’d tell you if you did. It’s . . . more a matter of national security. And your safety. Pearson will explain when we get to his office. He’s asked that I escort you.”

Still she didn’t move. It wasn’t because she didn’t believe him. She knew Scotty enough to realize he wouldn’t lie about something that important. If he said they were searching as a precaution, she believed him. Her concern, at this point, was for the laptop with the files on it. Actually not the laptop, which could only be traced to her. If, however, they were to discover a flash drive in its port that might very well have Scotty’s fingerprints on it?

“Fine. Let me get my phone and my keys. I’ll drive myself. You can follow me.”

She turned around, knowing they’d be watching her like a hawk. She walked straight to the kitchen table, keeping her back to them, hoping she could palm the flash drive without them seeing.

“Don’t touch the computer,” one of them said.

“You need the flash drive?” She pulled it from the port, smeared her thumb and forefinger across it to smudge any prints, then held it out.

The dark-haired agent closest to her reached over, took it from her. She eyed the notes she’d made from the flash drive files, wondering if they’d take that, too. Maybe they wouldn’t connect it to the flash drive. Losing the laptop, she could handle. Losing the notes?

Unfortunately one of the investigators looked at it at the same time, then picked it up along with the laptop.

She wondered if her day could get any worse.