It was the flashing eyes that got me. She hadn’t been afraid, she’d been fierce. Fierce women fascinated me. This fierce woman dared me to discover who she was.
I began with prosthetists in the Chicago area. There weren’t many, so finding a patient of theirs might not be such a needle in a haystack. I logged the information and then did a search for Dane Quimby on every online dating site I could find. He had accounts on several, but cross-referencing location, age, and interests didn’t bring up any women who looked like the lovely one I’d encountered on the bike path.
“Gabriel? Dan said you might be working in here.” Alex Greene, the information systems expert of Cipher Security entered the boardroom and gestured to a chair at the table where I was working. “Mind if I join you?”
“I’d be glad if you would. I’m capable of a fair amount of internet work, but I’ve heard you see the world in code.”
He scoffed. “If only the world was that easy to navigate.”
I believed he truly meant it. “I have a woman to track down. She was at the Northside Cafe around seven forty-five last night, slender brunette, about six feet tall, late twenties, wearing custom riding boots and fitted jeans.”
Alex quirked an eyebrow up. “Are you always so observant?”
“Saved my life more than once in Africa.”
“Right. Fiona said you were a Peacekeeper.” He opened his laptop and typed while he spoke. “Why Chicago?”
“My sister is in law school at the University of Chicago, and my mother moved here to take care of my nephew.” I shrugged. “The job was offered, so I took it.”
“This your woman?” Alex turned his laptop to face me. It was security camera footage from a pawnshop on the corner captured right after she left me standing in front of the restaurant.
“That’s her.”
I scanned every inch of the image, absorbing all visible details. No purse, no jacket, nothing in her front pockets, no rings of any kind, small hoop earrings – the kind that don’t get accidentally pulled out in a fight.
“Is there another image?” I asked him.
Alex took the computer back and scrolled through the footage. “Just the rear view.”
There was no “just” about her rear view. He turned the computer back to me, and I could see the outline of things in her back pockets. A phone in her right pocket, and possibly its battery in the left? Could that be? If she carried money or keys, they weren’t visible in the security camera image.
“She’s paranoid,” Alex said.
“The battery removed from her phone?”
He nodded and zoomed in, but the details were lost to pixilation.
“She left on foot? Let’s see where the nearest public transportation is.” He entered information into the search bar, pulled up two more screens, then scrolled through more camera footage from the closest bus stop. “There,” he pointed. “She got on the 74 bus toward …” He zoomed in on the front of the bus. “Halstead.”
“Can you follow it?” I asked. Alex glanced sideways at me, but scrolled through the camera footage at high speed.
After a few minutes of mouse clicks and otherwise silent searching, Alex spoke again. “She got off at Fullerton and Sheffield.”
“She’s headed for the L,” I said as I studied her confident stride captured on what looked like a storefront security camera.
“Fullerton station. Red, brown, or purple line?” Alex asked as he switched cameras and we scanned the footage.
“There.” I pointed to the woman on the screen. “Red line to Howard.”
Alex’s fingers flew over his keyboard as he changed cameras again. “Okay, now we go station by station.”
I was the one who spotted her a few minutes later. “Got her. Bryn Mawr station.” I knew her walk now, and I hadn’t imagined the slight hitch in her step. “She turned left out of the west exit. I don’t know the area.”
Alex was back on the keyboard, presumably cross-referencing security cameras with an area map. “It’s residential and starting to gentrify. Not high-end enough to have cameras at the doors, not criminal enough to have them on the streets.”
He closed the lid on his laptop and stood to go. “I’ll run the tapes at the Bryn Mawr station to see if your woman has a schedule. Maybe we’ll get an image that can be run through facial recognition.”
It wasn’t lost on me that Alex was calling her my woman. It also wasn’t lost on me that I hadn’t corrected him, or mentioned her prosthetic leg as an identifying feature.
I shook his hand. “Thanks for the time you’re putting into finding her.”
Alex shrugged. “Beats internet chess against Google.”
“Against … Google? The search engine?”
“Search engine is just the term people use to make artificial intelligence sound like it works for us.”
“Google is AI?”
“Biggest there is,” he said as he headed out.
“That is a remarkably disturbing thought.”
“Isn’t it?” There was a smile in Alex’s voice, and I wondered at the sanguinity of a man who played chess with the world’s biggest inorganic brain.
I pulled up a map of the neighborhoods around the Bryn Mawr L and studied the satellite imagery of the area to get a feel for who lived there. Large turn-of-the-century residential hotels seemed to anchor Bryn Mawr Avenue, and the commercial areas around the Historic District were shifting away from 1950s coffee shops to boutiques and cafes.
I decided I’d done enough satellite recon and certainly wouldn’t be finding my mystery woman from a conference table in a posh downtown high-rise. I packed up my computer and went in search of O’Malley. I finally found him getting ready to head out.
“Good, you’re here,” he said to me. “Quimby’s losing his shit, and we may need to go after the wife.”
“What has changed since this morning?”
O’Malley tossed me the keys to his favorite SUV and said grimly, “She’s missing.”
5
Shane
“Never let them see you sweat. Because if they see it, they’re close enough to smell it, and that’s just gross.” – Shane, P.I.
He was in there somewhere.
I stood in the downtown plaza outside Cipher’s building and looked up at the windows that reflected the puffy white clouds of a beautiful spring day. I told myself I’d gone to the business district to do a property records search for a client, but standing outside the imposing offices of one of the top private security firms in the country, I knew I was there hoping for a glimpse of him. I just wanted to make sure he hadn’t been badly injured the night before. I even convinced myself that I could walk in and charm his name out of the front desk personnel, and then I’d send flowers or something.
I scoffed at myself. Or something.
I didn’t feel guilty about taking Dane Quimby’s money. He had cheated on his wife, and he’d hidden money from her – money she was entitled to according to the law. A lot of money, granted, but that was the wife’s problem now. I hadn’t spent a lot of time talking to Denise Quimby when she hired me, but I knew the number it did on a person’s self-esteem to be cheated on.
I also hadn’t technically broken the law – at least not in any way that was traceable back to me. The money transfer had been done from Dane’s device to Dane’s wife. Those two salient facts meant the difference between something mischievous and something criminal, and no matter how annoying mischief might be, it wasn’t enough to trouble my conscience.
I did, however, feel guilty about causing a very sexy Cipher agent to fly ass-over-teakettle off his racing bike. I was sipping coffee from a to-go cup, wincing because I’d let it go cold while I stood outside the office building trying to decide exactly how chicken I actually was, when the man himself walked out of the building.
My breath caught, and I once again had the insane instinct to wave at him. Fortunately, years of acquired habit kicked in, and I froze in place and studied him.
He was in a well-cut, dark gray suit, and he wore a heavy, waxed canvas bag or maybe photographer’s case, with the strap slung diagonally across his chest. Nothing about the bag fit the fine material of the suit, but it fit him somehow, as though he’d always carried a bag like that.
He walked with another man – the one with the neck tattoos I’d caught a glimpse of outside the Northside Cafe – to a big SUV parked at the curb. My guy unslung his bag, tossed it in back, and then got into the driver’s seat. A moment later they’d pulled away into traffic.
I watched the SUV until it was out of sight, trying not to obsess about the fact that I’d mentally called the man my guy, then dumped my cold coffee into a nearby bin, took a breath, and entered the Cipher Security building.
The lobby had the warm tones of modern money and good taste, and it smelled like wood polish and leather furniture. I was still running through all possible scenarios for information extraction as I approached the desk, and it wasn’t until the man behind it spoke that I finally settled on my strategy.
He was all business, with no trace of flirtation or friendliness in sight. “Yes?” he said. He didn’t ask, despite the implied question mark of his tone – it wasn’t “tell me how I can help you,” but rather “what do I need to do to see you on your way.” He had just taken the lid off a Dark Matter Coffee cup, and judging by the opened sugar packs, had just dumped four sugars into the black coffee and was stirring it carefully.
This man was leaner than my agent, and darker-skinned, and his accent was pure Chicago. His badge said Van Hayden, and he looked vaguely annoyed in a way I recognized as defensive. Attempting to flirt or charm him would probably backfire spectacularly.
I took a deep breath and exhaled shakily as I braced my hands on the desk. “The two guys who just left – the Brit and the one with the neck tattoos – they said I should see you for their contact info. My purse was just stolen by a guy on a bike, and they took off after him in their SUV.”
The guy studied me, looking for telltale flickers of lies, I supposed. “Are you hurt?” he finally asked.
I shook my head. “I had the bag off my shoulder to get my sunglasses, so it was easy to grab from my hands. I tried to run after the guy, but the Brit said they were on it and I should come and see you.”
He pulled out a slip of paper and a pencil, and I held my breath. Then he slid them across the desk to me, and my heart sank. “Write down your name and contact info. I’ll have them call you when they get back.”
Damn! This one would have none of my damsel in distress nonsense. I sighed and wrote the name Sophie on the paper. It was the name I’d used in my online dating profile, and hopefully the only one he had for me.
I tried one last tactic. “What’s with the bag the British guy carries? It looks like something from a surplus store.”
The guy behind the desk snorted with something that sounded suspiciously like derision. “Probably military. Looks like shit with the suit, but he doesn’t care.”
“What is it, a briefcase? Photographer’s bag?” I asked, trying to sound casual as I debated what number to write down. My friend the bankruptcy specialist? A proctologist’s office I saved for persistent drunks? The combo to my high school locker?
“Eze doesn’t keep an office, so he carries all his crap with him in that bag everywhere he goes. He’s a walking target for a messenger jack, just like what happened to you.”
Ayzay? Was it a nickname? Last name? I wished I could see it spelled. Impulsively, probably stupidly, I wrote down my own cell phone number on the paper and slid it back across the desk. I instantly wanted to snatch it back and throw it away, but somehow I didn’t think Van Hayden was the type to let suspicious behavior go unnoticed, and I definitely didn’t need that kind of interest from another Cipher employee.
Just then, two men exited the elevator and strode toward the front door. They were both ridiculously handsome, but where one was tall, dark-haired and lean, the other was pure power, and I fought the instinct to duck away from his gaze. He wasn’t looking at me though.
“Hey Van. Did Gabriel and Dan just leave?
“Just missed them.” Van said.
“Get them on the phone, would you?” The powerful one said. “They’re after Quimby’s missing wife, but Alex needs to get whatever they know to look for her online.”
Van nodded and picked up the phone. I was torn between wanting to watch his fingers dial and needing to get away before someone actually noticed me.
“Dan, Quinn and Alex are standing in front of me. Alex needs info from you to work on finding Quimby’s wife.” He paused while the person on the phone spoke, and I took that as my cue to leave. I backed out of direct view of the two men standing at the counter, then turned and started toward the door. Van must have seen me leave, because I could just hear his next question into the phone. “Hey, by the way, did you guys catch the thief?”
I pretended I’d heard nothing and left the building without a backward glance, although I didn’t really do too much breathing until I was outside and around the corner. The smart move would have been to leave the area altogether, though part of me wanted the handsome Brit to come screeching around the corner looking for me.
Did I really want that?
Was I actually insane, or did the camera just put ten pounds of crazy on? And by camera, I meant the memory of the way the man had studied me. People didn’t usually see me. They saw my face and my height if my prosthetic was out of sight, or they saw the fake leg and only the fake leg if it wasn’t. I hadn’t really felt seen as a whole person in a very long time, and this guy had taken his time perusing me from head to toe and back up again.
The novelty of it was a little bit thrilling.
It was also incredibly disconcerting.
I had a couple of names to check out now. My guy was either Gabriel or Dan “Ayzay,” though the last name could probably be spelled any number of ways. He was British and had spent some time in the military, and I had a vivid physical description to match against photos.
I stopped and sighed. I also apparently had a missing client whose cheating husband had just been relieved of half his disposable cash. I needed to get to a secure computer to determine if a: Denise had contacted me, and b: if the money from Dane’s secret stash was still in her new account.
To top it all off, my walking leg was starting to hurt, and it made my limp more pronounced, which in turn made me more noticeable to strangers and people who might be looking for me. I changed direction and headed west toward the warehouse district. I could use Sparky’s computer while he worked on my leg, and maybe if I was busy trying to find Denise Quimby, I wouldn’t be waiting for my phone to ring.
6
Shane
“You wouldn’t trust an engineer to cut off a real leg. Why the hell would you trust a doctor to fix a fake one?” – Bill “Sparky” Spracher, prosthetics inventor and engineer
“So, this is more of a pull-up condom instead of the roll-on kind.” Sparky demonstrated on his own fist with a completely inappropriate thrusting gesture. This, of course, caused me to spit-take the milk I’d just gulped, which led to the inevitably giggled comments about the wisdom of swallowing. Despite his physical age, which was twenty-five, and his engineering genius, which was off the charts, Sparky had the sense of humor and sensibilities of a Comic-Con-aspiring, fourteen-year-old Marvel superhero fanboy.
He was also my best friend, prosthetist, and all-around MacGyverist.
“Quit putting your sweaty fist inside my new leg liner,” I snorted as he continued to point out the benefits of the new silicone.
“Seriously though, this stuff doesn’t tear. Some little company in Santa Barbara has figured out how to add nylon to the silicone. I want their recipe.”
“I like their logo,” I said, checking out the package the new liner, socket, and sleeve had arrived in. “AMP’D Gear. One of the owners is an amputee stuntman, and his partner designs all his movie legs,” I read.
“Kind of like us,” Sparky grinned. “Except you’re Nebula, only not as mean, and I’m like Rocket, but less hairy, if Rocket looked like Star-Lord.”
“Because you look like Star-Lord,” I deadpanned.
“Well, yeah.” Sparky wasn’t kidding, and I was going to lose the battle to keep a straight face.
“I need your computer.” I changed the subject so I didn’t laugh out loud, though to be fair, Sparky did look a tiny bit like the Parks and Rec version of Chris Pratt, or like the teddy bear version of Star-Lord.
He absently waved me toward his gaming laptop which was, I knew, possibly even more secure than my own. Gamers are pretty life-and-death about their security. They have to be, in a world where swatters – people who make 911 calls about fake crimes to bring police down on innocent people – have the technology and social engineering skills to find the addresses of their virtual enemies.
“Can you put me on your VPN?” I asked him.
He scoffed, not looking up from the silicone into which he was attempting to poke holes. “It’s always on. I have it routed through double encryption unless I’m gaming and I need the speed, so if you’re streaming, I’ll take it off.”
VPN servers mask a computer’s IP address so activity can’t be traced, and I knew the server that Sparky used was in Panama and didn’t log its users’ activity.
I checked my e-mail and found nothing from Denise Quimby – no message, no payment for services, nothing. I sent her an e-mail, then checked her social media accounts for any recent activity. Nothing had been posted for more than a week, and unless I paid for a credit card search, hacked my way into her bank, or went out and canvassed her neighborhood, my search for her was limited by her own willingness to communicate.
So instead I began looking for Gabriel or Dan Ayzay.
“How would you spell a last name that sounds like ‘ayzay’?”
Code of Conduct (Cipher Security Book 1) Page 4
