“This is amazing,” said Alex.
Chapter 14
Lisa Frieze arrived at the FBI office bleary-eyed and hating life. Her body seemed to retain heat like a corpse, and her messenger bag felt like a ton of bricks. A half-glass of Chardonnay and another round of Chinese food the night before was all it took.
She was getting old.
She had to remind herself that this was the journey she had to endure to get to her destination. She was putting in the time. She hadn’t been around enough to have any kind of seniority. She was still the most recent addition to the department.
But heck if it wasn’t miserable all the time.
She forced herself to take the stairs, which took a little more forcing today, up to the Counterterrorism Division on the third floor.
She was greeted by Gus Loyola’s booming voice. “In the office on a Sunday, too?”
“Justice never sleeps,” she said, setting her bag down at her desk. “Here for a new assignment. Just got the call from Chambers.”
“You don’t sound too happy about that,” Gus said.
“I don’t know how you are so happy.”
“I credit that to psychiatric medication,” he said.
“Ugh,” she said, collapsing on her desk. “Chambers has got me on these piddling cases. Got a homicide. Open-and-shut case, except it had a thread connecting it to a potential terror case, which triggered our involvement.”
“Sounds like it could’ve been promising.”
“Yeah, if it wasn’t just some couch potato who likes to talk big on the Internet.”
“But he was murdered?” asked Gus.
“Home invasion,” said Frieze. “Home invasion gone bad. And I had the joy of going to a crime scene where the corpse had been stewing in a heated apartment for three weeks.”
“Oof,” said Gus. “Yeah, I’ve had my share of those. The worst was a lady who died in her bathtub. Was there at least a month before anyone—”
“Frieze!” This was Clement Chambers, Agent-in-Charge. Her boss.
“Sorry, Gus, this is truly a lovely conversation, but duty calls.”
“Good luck,” he said, sipping his coffee.
She knocked on the door to Chambers’s office. “Come in!” She pushed it open. “Are you done with the paperwork on the Coutu case?”
She pulled up a chair and sat down. “I’ve finished typing it up. I was going to input it into the system first thing this morning.”
“I have a new assignment for you. I want you on it as soon as your paperwork is done.” He tossed a folder in front of her on the desk.
She opened it and leafed through it. There were photos of a naked man hanging upside down against a building that looked like a medieval church. “What is it?”
“Chief Investment Officer at Springhaven University got kidnapped and left hanging from the roof of the school library.”
“Dead?”
“Alive and drugged.”
“So why am I getting involved?” she asked. “What’s the counterterrorism angle?”
“Turn to the third page of the file,” said Chambers.
“What is this?”
“An e-mail sent to the entire student body, faculty, and staff of the university,” he said. “Along with it was a document dump that’s supposed to show he took bribes to put the university’s money in shady funds and committed fraud to cover it up. The financial crimes division is looking into it.”
The e-mail read:
We do not forgive, we do not forget.
“Vigilantes. I guess we have competition,” Frieze said.
“What do you make of it?”
“A bunch of dumb kids playing hero looking to make a splash,” she said. “Got a little carried away.”
“What if I told you this name, Ekklesia, has been popping up all around the country? It’s going to hit the news very soon.”
“Yeah? Did they do anything worse than this?” Lisa asked.
“No,” said Chambers. “Kidnapping’s as bad as it got. It’s all in there. You can read about it on your way up there. Think you can handle this?”
“You know I can, Chambers. I came with you to Boston when you got transferred because you know what I can do. I just wish you’d trust me with something more than adolescent pranks.”
“A federal case is a federal case,” he said.
“Bitch work for the bitch,” she mumbled bitterly.
“You’re paying your dues, Frieze. Don’t give me that attitude. Do the work, be the agent I know you can be, and you’ll be having your pick of the cream of cases one day. You don’t make your career at thirty.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
“Don’t get cute. Do as you’re told. Springhaven University. Go. Today. Right now.”
Chapter 15
Lily kept an eye on Morgan’s gloved fist, held high to protect his face, while she strode on light feet in circles around him. She moved like a cat, quick and precise. He had her completely beat on raw power—she was a waif compared to him—but she had him on speed and agility.
Their fights usually took all her concentration. But this was a light spar, and the issue was burning in her mind ever since her night with Baxter. Plus, she hadn’t even begun to be short of breath. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
The overhead light flickered over the regulation boxing ring that graced the Zeta gym. Lily maintained her steady movement. She wasn’t tired, but the heat was still on the fritz. The temperature made her slow and stupid. Nearly suffocating. It didn’t help Morgan, either. Sweat beaded on his brow and his shirt was already half-soaked.
“How do you—oh, God, that stupid phrase. How do you have it all?”
He advanced and she stepped back, bobbing on constantly moving feet. “Do I?”
“Come on, Morgan. Somehow you have the job and the family. How do you pull that off?”
“You looking to get hitched, English?” He went in for a jab and she dodged.
“No. But I’m tired of pretending to want the endless parade of creeps and assholes that comes with the job.” Morgan maintained a holding pattern as she spoke, keeping her at arm’s length. “I used to think it was fine, that I could rise above it. That I could set myself apart from the character I play, and let her be abused, not me. But I’m not sure that’s possible. It’s wearing on me.”
She came in for a high kick. Morgan deflected it with his left glove.
“Sometimes it does. That’s why it’s always been important to have something that kept me grounded. Reminded me who I am. For me, that’s Jenny and Alex.”
Lily came in for a punch. Morgan tried for a grab, but she wrested free.
“You’re faithful to Jenny,” she said.
“Have been from the day I met her.”
“Does that ever get in the way of the job?”
“It’s hard to be away,” he said.
“That’s not what I mean. What about—don’t you ever have to have any . . . intimate involvement with any marks?”
Embarrassed by the question, she tried to take it out through violence, kicking at Morgan chest high and hitting his solar plexus, maybe a little harder than she should have.
“Oof,” he said. “Got me.” He smirked. “To answer your question, I did, back in the day,” he said. “I suppose I ended up graduating from that.”
“Will I ever?” she asked. “I mean, what am I, other than my face, my body, and my sex appeal? That’s my whole game as an agent. What do I have if I lose that?”
“Your brains, crack shooting skills.”
Her glove landed on his right cheek.
“And even if you ever lose that, you’ve still got a hell of a left hook.” He took a few steps back and let his arms fall to his side.
“Throw in the towel?” she asked.
“I think I might die of heat exhaustion if we keep at it for another minute.” He drew off his gloves and splashed water from a bottle onto his face. They s
tepped over the ropes and sat side by side on the edge of the ring.
“So, do you have any regrets?” Lily asked.
“Some, but they never stick. I’m doing what I’m meant to do.” He ran a towel through his hair. “And I meant what I said about Jenny and Alex keeping me grounded. They give me a reason. Keeps me sane. Keeps me one of the good guys.”
“I can never imagine you not being one of the good guys.”
“I think you’d be surprised.” He stood, pushing off the platform. “I’m gonna hit the showers.”
“Thanks for the talk,” she called after him. She went to the women’s locker room to take her own shower—wonderful, refreshing cold water—lost in thought all the while.
She emerged out into the Zeta War Room with purpose, which was almost immediately diverted by Lincoln Shepard.
“Just who I’ve been waiting for. I’ve got something for you. For the next time you see Baxter.” He held it up.
The object was tiny. It looked like a pill, but inside there was something small and plastic. “It’s a wire,” he said. “Smallest money can buy.”
She took it in her hand.
“You be careful with that,” he said. “This baby cost a small fortune. Had to put in a special requisition.”
She tossed it in the air and caught it again, just to mess with him. Then she hid it away in her pocket.
“Just put that in the threads of his jacket,” said Shepard. “I suggest any pocket that’s been sewn shut. It’s specially designed to grab onto the fibers like a burr.”
“And you can listen in from here?”
“That’s the idea,” he said. “We’d get only half his phone conversations, but we’d get both sides of anything in person. Nailing him on gunrunning could be the key to bringing the whole company down.” He turned back toward the table. “There’s something else that I had engineering whip up in the lab for you.” Shepard handed her a small cylinder that fit in the palm of her hand, colored in chrome and a deep crimson.
Lipstick. “I appreciate the effort, but this just isn’t my color.”
He took it back and demonstrated that, at the push of a button, two prongs stuck out from the bottom. A second button caused a snapping arc of electricity to form between them.
“Stun gun,” he said. “It’s small, so it only really has the juice for one good shock. But it’s a good one. Will drop a full-grown man in two seconds flat.”
She pressed the button to get a feel for it, looking at the bright miniature lightning. “Lovely.”
“Bloch wants you to tell us about your next—assignation, she called it—with Baxter.”
“I know,” she said, looking at the lipstick to avoid looking him in the eye. What the hell was happening that she was ashamed of this all of a sudden? “Will that be all?”
Shepard held up his hands to say he had nothing more for her.
She left through the garage and got into her car. Once she emerged into the street outside, she took out her phone and dialed a number she never had before.
“Hello?” came the tentative reply from the other line.
“Hello, Scott? It’s Lily, from the other night. Remember me?”
He chuckled, and she felt foolish. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have called.”
“No. No, don’t hang up! Of course, I remember you. I just can’t believe you’re calling me.”
She laughed. “I guess I can’t, either.” They shared a moment of acknowledgment. “So,” she continued, “when’s the next time you’re coming to the East Coast?”
Bloch was waiting for Morgan as he emerged from the Zeta showers. “We have something for you.”
He followed her toward the War Room, his T-shirt and khakis in counterpoint to her pressed navy blue blazer and alligator skin Manolos. “From Watson’s laptop?”
“Shepard hasn’t cracked security on that yet,” she said. “No, from the Acevedo servers.”
They walked out into the War Room. “I thought that hadn’t worked.”
“I had begun the data dump when they kicked me off.” It was Shepard, sitting at the table, shoveling Cheetos into his mouth. “We didn’t get it all, but we got something.”
A few chairs down was Paul Kirby, gray suit, red tie, used-car-salesman smile. “Specifically, what jumped out at us was a certain high-priority shipment currently on the way from Mumbai, India, to Abidjan, in Ivory Coast.”
“The weigh-in at the port doesn’t match their records.” O’Neal, completing the picture. “And it’s supposed to be consumer electronics, but the volume doesn’t match the regional market. There’s something in that shipment that’s definitely not consumer electronics.”
“So I got in touch with some of my contacts in the CIA,” said Kirby. “And we have this man who got on a private jet in New York early this morning. Shepard.”
Shepard brought a picture up on the big screen. A thin, bony face, giving the general impression of a skull under a balding head of hair.
“That’s him,” said Morgan. “That’s Mr. White.”
“Bertrand Whitman, to be precise,” said Kirby. “Special consultant to Acevedo International. Made seven figures from the company in the past year. Currently on a flight path to Abidjan.”
“I’m sending you with tactical,” said Bloch. “Smith is working on some local assets to provide you with in-country support. Let’s try to keep this one on a low profile, okay?”
Chapter 16
It took two hours for Lisa Frieze to arrive at the Springhaven campus. She hadn’t eaten anything since the leftover takeout from the night before, and it hadn’t been much then, just something to keep the hunger from distracting her as she did paperwork. That same hunger was starting to tug at her insides, but she stamped it down. She had work to do.
The sun was low in the sky, but about as high as it was going to get on a midwinter day. She parked in a lot near the visitor center and used her phone to navigate the campus pathways toward the library. Within sight of the building, she saw a college girl on crutches making her way along the path. An insistent pinprick of recognition poked at Lisa’s mind. Then it dawned on her.
“Alex Morgan.”
The girl’s pixie-like features scrunched up before her eyes widened with surprise. “Lisa? Wow, it’s been so long! What are you doing here?”
“Working. You go here?”
“Freshman year.”
“Have you picked your major yet?”
“Still undeclared,” she said. “But leaning toward criminology.”
“Oh really? I could arrange for you to visit a Bureau office, you know. Check out what the work is all about.”
“Sure, that’d be great,” she said, as if Lisa had just invited her to her community theater production of Annie.
Lisa Frieze cleared her throat. “So, apparently a university staffer was strung up on the school library. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
“Only what everyone else knows. I saw him up there, actually, right before they took him down. And I got the e-mail. That’s about the long and short of it.”
“How has the student response been?”
“Mixed,” said Alex. “Some people think it’s awful. Others think it’s great. It’s actually really dividing the campus. People are up in arms about it. Angry editorials in the Inquirer and all that. You should check out today’s issue, I think they’re pretty representative. You can get a free copy at the entrance of most campus buildings.”
“I see. Thanks, I think I will. So what side are you on?”
“I don’t bother picking sides. I mean, what difference would it make if I did?” said Alex, not wanting to show her interest to the FBI agent.
“You’re wise beyond your years, Alex.”
“I, uh, need to head to class.” Alex adjusted her crutches. “See you around, I guess.”
“Make good choices!” Lisa called out, mentally kicking herself for being so lame. She walked the short distance left to the campus library
and saw a small cluster of cops at the pointed arch of the door. The whole library had been deemed an active crime scene. A student pleaded with an unyielding policeman that she needed access to her research. Another cop moved to stop Frieze until she showed her badge.
A plainclothes officer, a black man with a shaved head and a well-tended goatee, stepped forward. “Bryce Vickery. Detective on the case. Thanks for coming down.” He was gap-toothed in a way that made Frieze look twice. Hello, Detective.
“So, tell me I didn’t come all the way down here for a prank.”
He put his hands on his hips and squinted against the sun. “I’ve seen kids pull a lot of pranks. Some of them stupid, some very, very clever. But nothing like this.”
“How did they get up there?”
“Library stacks,” said Vickery. “You know, where they actually keep all the books. The big tower in the back.”
“Who’s got access?”
“The stacks are closed after eleven-thirty. After that, library and maintenance staff only.”
“Until what time?”
“On a Sunday, eleven,” he said. “They would’ve been alone in there.”
“But how’d they get out? If they lowered him from up there in the morning, in full view of anyone passing by, how did they manage to escape?”
“Beats me,” he said. “Why don’t we go inside? I’ll show you around.”
The inside of the library had a much warmer feel than its stony exterior would suggest, all carpeted, painted in warm beiges with wooden railings on the stairs and balconies.
Frieze looked up at the corniced ceiling. Cameras.
“Did you get the video off of those?”
“I requested surveillance from the campus police,” he said. “First thing I did when I got on the scene.”
“And?”
“The files are gone.”
She frowned. “What do you mean, gone?”
“The files were either wiped from the campus security systems or they were never recorded,” he said. “I’ve put my digital forensics guy on task to discover which one.”
Arch Enemy Page 8
