Winter Frost (A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery Book 2)

by Lauren Carr

  Remaining in their vehicle, Burnett and his partner watched them cross the lot to the main entrance.

  As they entered through the double doors, Sterling’s ears stood up. With a bounce in his step, he swerved to where a woman was sitting in a wing backed chair in the waiting area. Dressed in a faux fur coat with a matching fur hat over a blue dress with a pencil skirt, she resembled a movie star from days long past. She covered her face with big rhinestone sunglasses.

  Sterling wasn’t as interested in the woman as the blue sheltie in the arms of the young man who appeared to be her assistant. Chris hardly recognized Tristan Faraday without his glasses. His hair was slicked back off his face.

  Chris yanked Sterling back to his side. “Don’t blow your cover,” he muttered to the German shepherd.

  With his official looking briefcase in hand, Bruce ushered Chris and Sterling to the clerk in charge of the safety deposit boxes. “Excuse me, …” He read her name from the nameplate on her desk. “Marilyn. I’m Bruce Harris, attorney-at-law. My client here is Ethan Nesbitt. I’m sorry to say that his wife has recently passed. She had, among her effects, a safety deposit box here at this bank.” He took the necessary paperwork from his pocket and gestured for Chris to present the key.

  As Chris reached into his jacket pocket, he turned to casually take note of who might be watching them too closely. There was Tristan and the woman in the fur coat in the waiting area.

  There was a man with a red bandana wrapped around his head at the counter filing out a deposit slip. A motorcycle helmet rested on the counter. When he looked up, his eyes met Chris’s. It was Murphy.

  At the next counter, Chris spotted a woman with reddish blond hair in a denim jacket over an oversized dress. She was talking into her sleeve. When she saw Chris look in her direction, she turned around.

  Bingo! Their inside person.

  “Ethan.” Bruce cleared his throat.

  Startled, Chris handed the key to clerk. “Box number zero-six-two-eight-zero-four, mate,” he said in his best Australian accent. It was so good that even Bruce seemed taken aback.

  With a coy grin, Marilyn took the key and went to work on her computer to bring up the necessary online forms for him to sign.

  While she brought up the form, Chris turned his back and whispered, “Murphy, behind you, eleven o’clock. Women in denim jacket. Talking into com. Is she one of ours?”

  Murphy stepped over to a display about small business loans. “Not one of ours,” he whispered back. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  Chris returned to the desk and signed the online form with his finger while the clerk selected a key from a collection in a locked box. She escorted Chris and Bruce down the stairs and a corridor to the safe where the safety deposit boxes were stored.

  After finding the box, Chris used his key to unlock the first mechanism. Marilyn then used her key to unlock the second. She opened the door and pulled out the box, which she handed to Chris before walking out of the room to allow them privacy to explore the contents.

  “It doesn’t feel very heavy,” he told Bruce before placing it on the table and opening the lid.

  “You got it?” Murphy asked.

  The box looked empty except for a brown padded envelope. The front was labeled with black marker:

  Chris

  Eyes Only

  “That’s a government classification,” Bruce said.

  Chris broke the seal of the envelope and peered inside. He could feel Bruce holding his breath while waiting next to him.

  “What’s in it?” Murphy asked into his ear.

  “Nothing.” Chris frowned. “She left me an empty envelope.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Bruce snatched the envelope out of Chris’s hands and peered inside. Seeing nothing, he turned it over and shook it.

  There was a small click.

  Sterling followed the object with his nose when the red and gray object bounced off the tabletop to the floor. It was a micro SDHC memory card— so tiny that they almost missed it.

  Chris raced to pick the card up before Sterling could eat it, which he was likely to do. “It’s a memory card,” he said for the benefit of those who could hear through the ear com. He handed it to Bruce, who had slipped his laptop from his briefcase.

  “No hardcopy?” Murphy asked.

  “Too risky to smuggle out of the embassy,” Chris said. “Bruce, do you have a port in yor laptop that’ll read this?”

  With a slim grin, Bruce inserted the disc into an adaptor and slipped it into the port on his laptop.

  Tristan’s voice came through the ear coms. “Bruce, be sure to turn the wi-fi off on your laptop before you open the disc. We don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Good thinking.” Bruce pressed the button to disconnect the internet connection.

  Chris took a seat at the table and put his fingertips on the touchpad. He moved the curser to the file explorer to search for the drive containing the disc, which was labeled simply “Switzerland.” He positioned the curser on the drive and clicked to open it.

  The disc contained three files. One was a document named “Cross/Slade Industries.” The other two were mp4 files. One was labeled “Les Monroe.” The third was entitled, “To Chris.”

  He selected the one to him.

  Without saying anything, Bruce left the room and closed the door behind him.

  Sterling laid his head in Chris’s lap.

  As the movie file opened, Blair came into view. She was sitting on the edge of a bed. Her hair was dyed a dark brown, which contrasted with her fair complexion. She looked pale and sickly. Chris guessed that her fragile condition had been the result of stress.

  She brought up her hand in a slight wave. A weak smile crossed her face.

  “Hi, Chris.” She let out a breath. “Well, you were right. I never should have gone to Switzerland.” She giggled. Tears formed in her eyes and she sobbed.

  Chris fought to not stop the painful video. A quick check of the time on his phone revealed that Daniel Cross’s confirmation hearing would begin in less than half an hour.

  As if she sensed the urgency, she took in a shuddering breath and continued.

  “Since you’re watching this, most likely I’m dead. I mean, I’m really dead now. For the last couple of weeks, I have been fighting for my survival. You know all those stories you’ve told me about cases and situations you’ve gotten yourself into. Well, I’m glad I listened. Yes, I did listen to you. It seems like every day I have to ask myself, ‘What would Chris do?’ Then I’d remember something you told me that you’d done in a situation like mine and I’d do it. It saved my life. Really. Seriously.

  “A couple of weeks ago, I saw a murder. You’ll learn more about that. I was hiding in the closet and they were searching the house. I had no where to go. Then, I remembered when you told me about a time when you were hiding in a closet and this gang was looking for you. You climbed through the access panel into the attic.” She giggled through tears. “I looked up and there was the access panel. You saved my life, Chris. Really, you did.”

  Her face was filled with sadness.

  “I guess the first thing you want to know is why didn’t I call you. Anne Kidman, the CIA operative who saved me in Switzerland, told me not to. Anne was assigned to the embassy. I didn’t even know she was CIA. She got wind that something was going down and let me know that if I needed anything to call her. Boy, am I glad I did. She got me out of Switzerland.

  “These people who are trying to kill me, they’ll do anything to get the report that I found on the computer mainframe from Lithuania. The director of intelligence at the CIA, Daniel Cross shot my boss in the back. Then he ordered Ned Schiff, the chief of station, to cover it up. Last I heard, they called it a suicide.

  “Please, Chris, understand, I couldn’t risk them coming after you and our girl
s to flush me out. When I found out that the state department had mistaken Anne’s body for mine, I let everyone go with that.

  “Ivy agreed to let me start over living with them as Hannah’s nanny. I had to tell her a big lie. She’d never understand what happened to me in Switzerland. So I told her that I was hiding from you. I figured that would keep her from blabbing to anyone about me being alive.”

  She combed her fingers through her hair. “How do you like me as a brunette?” She frowned. “I don’t like it either. I was afraid Hannah would recognize me and give me away.”

  She looked directly into the camera. “I wish I was more like you, Chris. I wish I was brave enough to do what I have to do with these files. I know you will. You’ll know just what to do. You’ve always been brave enough to do what is right and still protect those you love.”

  She sighed. “Let me tell you about the report that is on this disc.”

  Her tone was direct when she said, “It’s a bomb. This report was written by Samuel Goldman, the chief of station in Lithuania, back seven years ago. He had addressed the report to the director of the CIA. In it, he states that he had discovered that the deputy chief of station, Daniel Cross, had been selling government secrets to Slade Industries. I know, Leban Slade isn’t a foreign government. Why would he want government secrets? Well, according to Samuel Goldman, based on his own investigation when he started to suspect what Cross was up to, he found that Leban Slade had put together a whole network of spies in the intelligence community. They’d give him all types of information. Some were classified government secrets. Other information would be personal stuff on influential people that Slade would use to extort favors. Slade would use that information to give him an advantage when submitting for government contracts or striking deals with foreign countries via one of his shadow companies. He has a huge enterprise going. Goldman also found proof that one of the major dealers selling parts to North Korea for their nuclear missiles is owned by Leban Slade. He’s an American and he’s making billions helping a country who wants to blow up our allies and us.”

  She gestured toward Chris through the camera. “You’ll notice on this disc that the date on that report is the day before Samuel Goldman was killed by the car bomb. The night that Cross shot Les Monroe in the back, he admitted that he planted that car bomb. The target wasn’t Ambassador Brown. It was Goldman. Then, Cross used the tragedy that he had created to make himself the hero by framing an extremist group and going after them. When he took Goldman’s place as chief of station, he deleted the report and every copy of it, but he didn’t know that there was still a copy on the mainframe, which I found while archiving the communications.”

  She fell silent. Tears rolled down her face. Slowly, she raised her eyes to the camera.

  “That’s what happened, Chris.” She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I was such a fool. I love you. I love my girls. Can you tell them that for me? I’ve missed my girls. I think about all of you every day. Now, I’ll never be able to see them again. See them grow up. I got so wrapped up in trying to have it all—a career and everything that I didn’t notice that I already had it all. Now, I’ve lost everything.”

  She reached for the camera. “I’ve missed you. I am so very sorry for hurting you, Chris. Please forgive me.” She cried. “When you think of me, and everything that has happened, remember this one thing. I love you. I really do.” She blubbered. “Good-bye, Chris.”

  She stood up and turned off the camera.

  The screen went blank.

  Chris sat in silence—staring at the home screen on Bruce’s laptop.

  “Chris?” Murphy’s voice was soft through the ear com. “Are you okay?”

  Chris copied the contents of the disc to Bruce’s laptop before ejecting the disc from the drive. Sensing they were on the move, Sterling stood next to him.

  “It’s takedown time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Keeping Sterling at his side, Chris and Bruce climbed the stairs to the bank’s main floor.

  With a quick glance, Chris saw that the woman in the jean jacket was lingering near the brochure case. She turned to follow them when they proceeded across the lobby to the main exit.

  Bruce switched his briefcase from one hand to the other to open the door.

  At the same time, Jacqui, dressed up in a suit, briefcase and all, swept in to grab the same door handle. “Thank you very much for your time,” she said over her shoulder while colliding into Bruce.

  Both briefcases fell to the floor.

  “Oh, I am so sorry! How clumsy of me,” Jacqui said loudly. “I really need to look where I’m going.”

  “No problem, ma’am.” Bruce picked up his briefcase and handed it to her. “Have a nice day.”

  Thanking them, Jacqui shot out the door. Bruce picked up the briefcase she had dropped, and they left the bank.

  The woman in the jacket rushed ahead of them to see Jacqui climb into the passenger seat of a dark blue Malibu sedan. The tires squealed when Doris hit the gas pedal to speed out of the parking lot. Not far behind them, Murphy raced out of the lot on the black motorcycle. Gesturing wildly at the sedan, the woman jumped into the passenger seat of a black SUV and they took off in hot pursuit.

  Burnett and his partner remained in their vehicle while watching the action.

  The roar of the motorcycle was still fresh in the air when Sterling jerked his leash out of Chris’s hand and galloped to where the woman in the fur coat was climbing into the back of the white limousine. An enormous man in a chauffer’s suit held the door open for her and Tristan, who had Spencer on a leash.

  Barking and yapping joyously, the two dogs circled each other until their leashes became entangled. Tristan fought to part the two dogs.

  “Can you please control your damn dog!” the woman called to Chris, who opened the door of his truck and whistled to the German shepherd from across the lot. “Sterling! Come!”

  Sterling spun around and raced toward the truck. Several feet away, he launched himself to become airborn and landed in the passenger seat.

  “That is no service dog!” the woman complained loudly. “Did he soil my dear princess?” she was asking Tristan when he joined her in the back seat.

  The chauffeur slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He turned left to head for the toll road leading to Washington.

  In the truck, Chris noticed that Burnett and his partner remained in their vehicle—waiting for them to make their next move. “Looks like Burnett is sticking with us,” he said into his ear com while turning on the truck.

  “Tristan, tell me you got it?” Murphy asked over the roar of the motorcycle.

  “Got it,” Tristan said. “I’m going to upload the files to Nigel now.”

  “They never look at the service dog.” Bruce reached into the backseat to pat Sterling on the head.

  Chris focused on Burnett in the vehicle across from them. The two men’s eyes seemed to meet.

  “He can’t let you go,” Bruce said in a low voice. “You know too much.”

  “Fasten your seat belt, Bruce. We’re going for a ride.” Chris shifted the truck into drive.

  In the rear seat of the sedan, Francine shouted out directions to Doris while referring to a satellite map of the busy suburban area on her tablet. “Turn right up here.”

  Seeing no roads to the right, Doris spun the steering wheel to the left. Multiple horns blew at the car speeding across the crowded intersection.

  “Right not left!” Jacqui tightened her seat belt.

  “You have an SUV moving in fast on your left,” Ray’s voice came from the speakers on the tablet.

  “Which one?” Jacqui turned around to look at what seemed like a fleet of SUVs behind them. “They’re all SUVs, Ray!”

  The black motorcycle fighting to stay with them looked like a mouse going up
against a herd of stampeding elephants.

  “I don’t know,” Ray answered. “The one filled with bad guys. He’s moving up on your left.”

  Without warning, Doris shifted to the right lane and turned onto a two-lane road. The car fishtailed and wiped out a collection of garbage cans on the corner.

  Murphy weaved around the trash and garbage cans and sped up to close in behind them.

  The vehicle with the woman in the denim jacket crushed the trash cans and anything else that got in its way in its pursuit of the sedan.

  “That SUV I told you about just turned right the next block down,” Ray said. “He’s going around the block to intercept you at the end of this road. You’re going to want to turn right again.”

  “That will take me back to where we started,” Doris said. “We need to get to Washington.”

  “You won’t get to Washington if they catch up to you, Doris,” Murphy said while checking on the vehicle closing in on his tail.

  The passenger side window rolled down. Murphy saw the barrel of a gun emerge and take aim at his back. He swerved to the right as several gunshots pelted the trunk of Doris’s car.

  “They’re shooting at us!” Jacqui spun around in her seat. “They’re trying to kill us!”

  “I think that’s the idea,” Francine said.

  Tristan tried to ignore CO’s eyes, hidden behind the dark glasses, staring at him from where she sat across from him in the back of the limousine. Her intimidating persona made time move at a snail’s pace while he brought up the files from the disc onto his tablet. The process took less than a minute. With her drumming her fingers on the armrest, it seemed to take forever.

  Laying next to her, Spencer was unintimidated. In the sheltie’s world, everyone was pleased at all times and everyone got along.

  If only that were so.

  CO cocked her furr-capped head at him.

  “I’ve got the secure connection,” Tristan said. “All I need to do now is to transfer the files to Nigel.”