Deadly Paths

by Jack Parker

  Victoria knew the stakes, knew deep down as soon as she shot that third man that they could never let her continue. She had just thought that somehow she might have more time.

  When was she going to learn that time would always be against her? Five years ago she had all the time in the world. She was going to be with Dean forever. They were going to retire from active operations and start a family. They were the envy of every agency couple, never once were they tainted with the sudden betrayal of sex with the hot new trainee. Never once did they have to dispel rumors of that sudden drunken game of Discovery channel mammal imitation with the random hottie from linguistics in the copy machine room during the office party. After being trained to lie so well, her time with Dean had been the most real thing she had ever felt.

  There was just supposed to be one more mission—one last operation to rid society of a clear and present danger to the United States. Then she was going to have all the time in the world. Carlo Benedetto stole that time. Somehow he was stealing time from her again.

  Victoria stopped pacing and felt her cheek. It was damp with moisture.

  "Focus, Victoria," she told herself. "There is still a lot to do."

  There was still time. The debriefing was at 8:00 am. She was tired, beaten down, but not out of this yet. But what did she possibly have time for?

  Think! She commanded herself harshly as she slapped a palm against her forehead.

  Fukazashi and his fiancé needed to be seduced into providing deeper information on their connection to Benedetto. There wasn't enough time for this lead. Even if she knew where to find them, her sudden appearance would not look natural now.

  The three that had attacked her—they would be in the morgue under crime scene investigation lock and key. If only she had been smarter with that last one. If only she hadn't had to hide them so hastily. If only she had not been forced by her cover to keep playing the game and go puttering through the streets of Vegas on that ridiculous . . .

  Victoria allowed a wry smile to creep onto her face. She knew where she needed to go. It was going to be a little tricky, as they were very serious about making sure contestants didn't get any extra advantages during the off time, but Victoria was quite confident in her ability to sneak away. She just hoped that sneaking off to go visit a jail did not somehow land her in one down the line.

  * * *

  He was supposed to be in his room—not that Jake had ever been much of a rule follower. Rule bender, rule ignorer, rule obliterator were all accurate descriptions of him.

  He peeled the label from his beer and started an origami fold sequence that would turn the thin paper into a tiny sailboat. Jake refused to feel like a camera was recording his every infraction outside of his room, and if he wanted a drink at a bar in the Bellagio he was going to have one damn it. It wasn't as if he was going to go making new alliances with some random contestant. They were all too busy following the rules. His time on the show was probably already finished anyway. He wasn't sure which rule he had broken that would get him executed, but Jake was sure they would take their pick. Meanwhile Jake figured a good buzz would remind him of who he really was—not some flashy super spy, but a free spirit the world loved to punish.

  Somehow, he had finished high school, despite his best class coming from the inside of the principal's office and his greatest accomplishment of those years being that he still held the record for most suspensions in a single year without being expelled. Jake couldn't remember if it was fifteen or sixteen. It didn't matter. A record was a record.

  Even now, Jake was on suspension . . . from his own home. His boat carried at least thirty infractions against the rules set by the snobby powers that be in the Port of Seattle Commission, and Jake was sure that was some kind of record too. Right now theElphaba, an old 1966 Cal 40 sailboat, was being held against her will by the port authority in impound.

  She was his baby. Fully paid for. They had no right to say she wasn't good enough when the best job he could find was just off the docks. He could have taken her to some place less pretentious like South Bend on the coast, but he would never have found a loadmaster position that didn't make him want to quit outright. At least at the job he held now there was no arrogant ass of a boss that he felt like tossing into the drink like he did that asshole of a boss Vickerson from his last job. Besides, why should he have to be so inconvenienced in his career and living choices just because Elphaba was a little low in the water to leeward when it got a teensy bit too windy and needed a few dozen coats of paint? It's not like the few inches of water she was taking on was going to sink her. Elphaba wasn't the wicked one in this story, but like the poor misunderstood Witch of the West, she would be punished just the same.

  It was only by some stroke of luck, and just in time, that he had even been accepted onto the show. It was supposed to be his chance to get his boat back, fix her up all nice, and maybe even cruise on down to Baja for the all the women and freedom he could handle. He could probably afford to have a bike in three ports too, though eventually he would probably still have to go back to worked. And the game was going great too, but now, thanks to that woman . . .

  A woman who was quite literally haunting him. Somehow, she had just walked right through his field of vision, headed through the Casino maze at a brisk pace and dressed in a grey woman's business suit.. That couldn't be. Victoria was way too practical to risk . . .

  Jake dipped his fingers into a glass of water that did not belong to him, and slashed some drops onto his face as he shook his head to clear it.

  "Hey!" exclaimed the plump owner of the water. "What the hell?"

  Jake ignored the annoyed woman as he slowly got up and made to follow the woman he had seen. Even with her hair tied up a little more neatly in a French braid, even with her wearing shiny gold-rimmed glasses, he could tell it was her—Nova. There was no mistaking the way those curls bounced high while the booty rocked down low. Every man that saw her coming or going sucked in the beer gut as far as it would go. Jake didn't blame them either.

  "Where the hell are you going, Super Nova?" Jake whispered to himself.

  A voice inside Jake's head was pleading with him to just let her go, that it was none of his business if she wanted to sneak away. On the other hand, if he got some photo's he might be able to use the evidence against her if the time game. The problem with that plan was of course finding a way to explain how he had gotten the pictures without demonstrating that he had also broken curfew.

  Jake almost lost sight of her as she wove through the crowd while he wrestled with himself. Nova was hard as hell to keep up with as smoothly as she was moving, let alone follow without being noticed. Periodically, she would double back around a row of gaming tables or dart in a weird vector down a row of gaming machines. Somehow, Jake managed to both keep his distance and follow her to one of the secondary exists. Jake hesitated as she headed outside.

  "Oh, you naughty minx!" Jake chuckled, quickening his pace.

  The woman was just too interesting not to follow. He simply had to know what she was up to now. Besides, there were bound to be missions in Spy Games where you were supposed to tail someone. Following the little harpy promised to be great practice. Jake hurried out the door and onto the strip in pursuit of the most fascinating rule-breaker he had ever met.

  Chapter Ten

  "Says here he already has an attorney," griped the court clerk, a middle aged Hispanic woman with a short crop of curly hair. Her beady little eyes peered at Victoria suspiciously through pink horn rimmed glasses. It was no surprise that the customer service on the late shift at the Clark County Detention Center was not the friendliest, but there was just something creepy about this woman.

  Victoria steadied herself. Her next words were going to be something of a gamble, with the assumption that the young punk in custody could not afford an attorney and that Benedetto was not feeling at all generous. She suppressed her Australian tambour into something more American as she spoke—educated but bland
with just a hint of the Midwest.

  "Oh he will no longer be needing the court appointed defense. Even though Ray did not want them to know, the Kim family got wind of the arrest and sent me down immediately. Hell of a phone call to be woken up to, right?

  Victoria gave a hearty laugh, but the clerk was humorless. Her bored eyes searched her computer screen as she typed in a few more commands.

  Victoria kept her fingers crossed behind her back. Creating a new cover for herself was sure to raise a few red flags at the agency. Right now she hoped only a few night shift workers at the cyber division would be involved. If she could just keep the right people from finding out what she was up to for long enough, she might be able to pull this off and save the whole mission.

  Diana King already existed as an alias on paper, and had been provided to Victoria should she need to roam Vegas independently of the show—just as she was doing now. It was a small matter to turn Mrs. King into a lawyer, but it was a much larger matter to get her into computer systems listing her as the new attorney for a young thug and gang member named Raymond Kim.

  The name of the arrest of the TV show crashers was not even making page six news right now, but arrest records were always made available to the press, and it had not been hard for Victoria to look up using unclassified press sources available to every agent. His background check and family connections had taken a little longer, but once she had all the information downloaded to her laptop and forwarded to the cyber division it was out of her hands. Victoria did not have time to wait around for confirmation that her request had been completed. She could only hope that it was by the time she had reached the detention center.

  The annoyed clerk shook her head after a moment.

  "There's no record of anyone requesting a new attorney be assigned. Perhaps you should come back during visiting hours tomorrow to confirm things. He's not going anywhere."

  Victoria folded her arms across her chest and gave an impatient huff. Victoria shifted her tone from bittersweet politeness to one packed with true disdain for the woman I'm front of her.

  "Well you are obviously doing something wrong. Didn't you try looking under Mr. Kim's Korean name? His family would still call him by that."

  "And how am I supposed to know—" the woman began.

  "Put the name Kim in like it was a first name and then Rae Choi," Victoria interrupted.

  The clerk glared at Victoria for a moment and then resumed typing. Victoria avoided watching the woman work by taking in her surroundings again. Every now in than another officer would come in with a detainee in handcuffs. Most of them were drunks being shuffled through the metal detector to end up at the breathalyzer station.

  "But I only had two drinks I swear!" complained a scruffy young man in a plaid shirt after breathing into the device. He tried to jerk away from his officer escort, but ended up falling over. He will be sleeping off those few drinks in a cell, Victoria thought.

  A trio hookers sat on a bench awaiting their fingerprints and mug shots. One wearing an outrageous pink haired wig and knee-high black boots felt Victoria's eyes on her and looked up.

  "What are you looking at, rich bitch?" sneered the prostitute.

  "Oh, nothing. Just wondering how you girls got caught. There are plenty of legal areas outside of the city for your, uh, profession."

  The prostitute flipped Victoria the bird. Victoria just smiled. This place is almost as good as Walmart for watching live shows of the strange and borderline insane.

  "Here you are," said the clerk tiredly at last. "You were filed under Raymond Kim, right where I looked the first time. Guess the computer was slow to update or something. Just fill out this form, please. And we'll need to see your driver's license and credentials."

  "Of course."

  Victoria gave the woman a polite smile and nod as she fished the Nevada driver's license that identified her as Diana King. It would be problematic to use Harmony Mitchell of Florida for her purpose here. The credentials posed an interesting, but not unsolvable problem. Victoria slapped her forehead with her palm.

  "Oh, crap! I left my BAR association ID in my briefcase at home. I'm sorry it really was late when I got this call. Can you do me one favor and log onto the website for me? I'll give you the password and you can bring up my credentials there."

  "Don't worry about it," said the clerk, who obviously would rather not go through all the trouble and wanted Victoria out of her hair. "Just fill out the forms and I'll have someone bring him down to the visitor's booths in the north tower. Do you know how to get there?"

  "Yes," Victoria lied. "I've been here before."

  "Please remember all conversations are recorded, as this isn't an official attorney visit yet, and you have to leave your cell phone or any other electronic devices in the bins provided at the entrance. Is there anything else I can do for you?

  Vaguely, Victoria wondered if the woman would lose it if she said yes, or just give her another icy stare. But she told the woman no and thanked her for her time.

  She filled out the forms and made her way to the north tower visitors are by simply following the signs. A tan-clad prison guard sitting on the other side of a Plexiglas window buzzed her through a security door as she made a show of dropping off her cell phone, but not all of her electronic devices. The task of concealing the electronic scrambler hidden inside her cellphone was made quite easy by the fact that the prison didn't seem to have any actual scanning devices in the visitor's area.

  "He's waiting for you in booth four Mrs. King," said the guard over an intercom as she went on through. "Please keep it under twenty minutes, huh?"

  Victoria nodded with a small smile as she went on through and found the designated booth. She saw him first, as he was looking down, his eyes covered by long bangs that drooped down over the front of his face. He looked uncomfortable in his navy blue prison jumpsuit, and raised tired eyes as he scratched at his collar. Ray Kim's eyes went wide immediately at the first sight of his new lawyer. He stood up, pointing, about to call for help. Victoria switched on her jamming device and quickly pressed the button on the microphone on her side of the bullet proof glass between her and the gang member.

  "Sit down, Ray. I'm here to get you out of here."

  Ray hesitated. She could see his mind debating. He very much still wanted to sound the alarm on her, but the prospect of getting released, even if she was only lying, won out. He sat down slowly, his dark eyes full of caution, and activated his microphone.

  "And how exactly are you going to do that? I know you ain't no lawyer."

  "Well, that should be obvious, ya bloody lair." Victoria said, no longer bothering to hide her accent. "You an your mates learn your lesson about assaulting me I trust?"

  "What the hell you call me? Gaurds!" Ray called, starting to stand up again. "Guard's there's a crazy—"

  "Sit down!" Victoria commanded harshly. Her voice shut him up, but he kept standing. "Let's have a chat, hmm? Tell me what I want to know and I'll make sure you get out on bail."

  Ray leaned forward and activated his mic. "And why should I trust you?"

  "Ray, think about it," Victoria said in a tone not unlike a mother would use in reasoning with an upset child. "If I'm not a lawyer, how am I seeing you after visiting hours? If I can do that, what else do you think I can do?"

  Ray showed a scrap of intelligence as he thought it through and sat down.

  "Just who are you?" he asked.

  "What? The people that hired you to come after me at high speed didn't tell you?"

  "They came to our gang looking for guys that wanted to mess up the show and maybe get to have a little fun with a hot chick. Wait. Isn't this being recorded?"

  "Don't worry about that Ray," Victoria said casually as she increased the power on her jammer enough to make the microphone system between them screech. Ray threw his hands over his ears in irritated surprise. "Nobody is allowed to listen in since I am your . . . lawyer."

  Ray nodded slowly, his eyes j
ust a little wider. He seemed speechless. Victoria helped him regain his train of thought. She growled her next question, lacing it with warning.

  "What was that you were saying about having fun with a hot chick?"

  "Oh! Oh I wouldn't have done nothen to ya, I swear. But the pay was real good. We was just gonna grab you and hold you a while. Ok?"

  "Right," Victoria let her accusing gaze linger on him for just a moment before continuing on to more important matters—just enough to watch the young man squirm.

  "Who hired you? What was his name?"

  "I don't really remember. Tall Mexican dude dressed all nice."

  Victoria stared at him for a moment, then took a short breath as if she had just thought of something important.

  "You know, now that I think about it Ray, you have a lot of outstanding warrants. I think it's going to be too difficult to get you out after all. Sorry for wasting your time."

  Victoria started to stand.

  "W-wait!" Ray said hurriedly. "Ok, ok yeah, I remember he came to us before for something else. My buddy Dan told me he was big time money. I think his name is Juan or Julio Montoya or something. You know all those name sound alike to me."

  "You mean like how all those Korean names sound the same to me?" Victoria shot back.

  Ray just shrugged.

  "So, Montoya, huh? If that checks out I think you'll find yourself free. You said he hired your gang for something in the past? What was he after the first time you met him?"

  "What are you some kind of cop?" Ray asked after narrowing his eyes. "There supposed to be some kind of official paperwork for a deal like this, right?"