If Looks Could Kill

by Andi Marquette

  “I haven’t seen anything quite like this elsewhere,” Tyler said. “So it will be noticed.”

  “Good.” Marya sat back, and Ellie wrenched her gaze to the layouts. Marya looked far too hot in that deep red blouse. “Let’s pay attention to what the competition is doing over the next few issues. Whatever it is, we will do it better.” She stood. “Thank you. And now, I have a lunch date. Tyler, I want to meet with you and design at two. These—” she motioned at the layouts—“need to be done today.”

  He nodded and gathered them up, and Ellie stood and followed the guys out, overheated even from this brief encounter with Marya. But she had a damn job to do, so she checked the time on her phone. Almost twelve. She went back to the coffee room and pretended to be waiting in line while she watched the corridor that led to Marya’s office.

  A few moments later, Marya strode across the lobby alone, and people murmured greetings to her as she passed, walking like an empress on her way to a state function. She exited through the glass doors to the outer lobby area where the elevators were, and at that point, one of her security guards got up from a bench and tapped the down button for her. They both entered when it arrived.

  Ellie went back to her office and shut the door. She called Rick.

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s got a lunch date. On the way down with one security guard.”

  “On it. Out.” He hung up, and she waited fifteen minutes before she picked up a few papers from her desk along with her phone and returned to Marya’s office. The door was closed. She tried the handle. It was unlocked. After a quick glance to make sure nobody was around, she slipped in and shut it behind her.

  She set the papers on the table and moved to Marya’s desk, which was one of those Swedish design things, all metal and glass, but there were a few drawers. Ellie tried them all and they were all unlocked. She glanced through. Marya kept organized but mostly empty desk drawers. A few pens, a couple of blank scratch pads, and a stash of British tea bags. She smiled at that. It gave Marya another humanizing touch. She picked up the scratch pads and examined them for impressions. It didn’t look as if they’d been used.

  Was everything Marya did online? No files? No instructions for meeting the international arms dealers? No gun inventory? Why couldn’t potential criminals make this shit easy?

  Her desk was an expanse of organization. A plain metal penholder that also held scissors. There was also a lamp that matched the desk, and Marya’s laptop. She checked the recycling and trash containers, as well. Then she tapped the space key on Marya’s laptop and the password screen came up. Dammit. No international gun inventory right there on her desktop to see. Ellie checked the time on her phone. She’d been in here for about ten minutes. She got up and put the chair back the way she’d found it and went to the closet, which was also unlocked.

  Not much in here beyond an umbrella and two long overcoats. One looked like a winter coat. Ellie checked the pockets on both and came up with a couple of cough drops and a pack of Kleenex. Kind of cute, that a fashion empress would carry stuff like that in her coat.

  Somebody knocked at the door, and she ducked into the closet, which was barely big enough for her. She pulled the door almost closed, keeping it cracked so she could watch the main door.

  Tyler entered, with what looked like layout sheets. He set them on the table then turned to go but stopped and looked at something else on the table. Ellie opened the door a tiny bit wider. Shit. The papers she’d brought from her office. What was on them? Anything identifying?

  He moved a couple of them, as if trying to figure out whose they were, then left, shutting the door behind him. She exhaled in relief but stayed put for a couple of minutes, just in case, and leaned back against Marya’s coats. She thought she could still smell a bit of her cologne on them. Wishful thinking, probably. This boundary between stalker and investigator was woefully permeable, especially with this damn attraction thing.

  She stepped back into the main office, closet jokes running through her head, and gathered the papers she’d brought in before she cracked the door to the corridor. A few people walked past, talking, and she waited a couple of seconds before she stepped out of Marya’s office and closed the door just as someone rounded the corner from the lobby. Ellie knocked on the door and made a show of listening.

  “I think she went to lunch,” the woman said who approached her.

  “Oh. I didn’t realize. Thanks.” She moved away from the door with a smile. Her phone buzzed with a text. Rick, wanting her to call him ASAP. She decided she should grab lunch, too, so she dropped her papers off at her office and went down to the main lobby and then outside to call.

  “Hey,” she said when he picked up.

  “Marya’s having lunch with Daddy.”

  “Where?”

  “Uptown. There was a car waiting for her when she came downstairs.”

  Of course there was. She leaned against the building. “Does it look legit? Like, you know, meeting in a public place and just hanging out?”

  “Or are they plotting world domination and random murders, you mean?”

  “Yeah. I guess. What does that look like, when you’re doing that?”

  “Probably like you’re not doing it. So that might be exactly what they’re up to.”

  “Or they’re just having lunch,” Ellie said, though she didn’t believe it. “Any sign of Laskin, by the way?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do me a favor. Run him and whatever aliases we have on him against fashion shows. See if anything comes up.”

  “See? I knew you’d be perfect for this assignment. Out.”

  She hung up. Nothing in Marya’s office. Maybe she kept stuff at home. But that was a whole other issue, searching that. Or maybe, if she was an arms dealer, she was just freaking careful about everything, and left nothing to chance. Maybe she had hidden hard drives all over the world that only she could access. And maybe Ellie should just go to lunch right now, because she was starting to sound like a Bourne movie again. Maybe Chinese today.

  * * *

  The dark, hulking shape of the Hellas Georgios moved slowly toward the pier, its deck stacked three to five levels high with different colored containers the size of boxcars. Lights blazed as a crane slowly swung into position, getting ready for the unloading. Even at night, this place was like a beehive. Ellie sniffed, catching the odors of river muck and diesel fuel in the breeze.

  She stood watching as the ship prepared to dock, port side to the pier, which in itself was a hell of a feat. The thrum of its engines drowned out a lot of sound this close to the pier, and she adjusted her hard hat so she could pull the knit cap down over her ears and earpiece, as if that would help. One of the team members stood nearby, talking to the Port Authority guy working with them. He had gotten them in here for the night shift.

  Rick hadn’t been thrilled with her request to get this close to the action, but he’d relented when she dressed up in her longshore outfit—black cargo pants, beat-up work boots, and dark tee and flannel shirt. A dark work jacket and knit cap completed her ensemble, along with a hard hat, and he agreed that she looked more like a young guy than a woman in this outfit. Besides, she could identify people from Marya’s inner circle at Fashion Forward if they ended up here.

  Somehow, she doubted they would. And she really, really hoped that Marya wasn’t here. Nobody actually knew where she was. She hadn’t come in to work, and Rick had called the main number to see if he could find out when she’d be in next. He’d talked to Tyler, who said that Marya was on a business trip to Boston, back on Friday. Ellie wondered if that was true, or if it’s just what Marya wanted Tyler to believe.

  The Port Authority guy started to move closer to the ship, still talking to the team member. Ellie tagged along, looking like the new guy Mr. Port Authority had said she was. This close, the ship was massive, like a horizontal skyscraper or some gigantic lumbering water beast, as it finally was close enough to anchor and get tied down. D
ocking ships like this in confined waters like Red Hook was a feat, and it had been almost an hour since the ship had arrived. A pilot tug aided the procedure. It had pulled close and disgorged a second pilot, who climbed up a ladder to the deck. This procedure was difficult enough that there needed to be a pilot aiding the captain.

  She checked her watch. Almost midnight, and so far, no sign of anybody she recognized. This was probably going to be a bust and they’d be no closer to figuring out what the hell was going on.

  And she still had to figure out how to navigate the waters around Marya.

  “Els,” came Rick’s voice through her earpiece. “We’ve got another tugboat on the starboard side.”

  “Copy that,” she said softly. She dropped back and moved farther away from the ship, trying to get a better angle. Yes, there was indeed another tugboat in the water that had pulled up near the pilot tug. “Looks like a pilot boat,” she said. And then she just made out what looked like two dark shapes that left the boat and climbed up the same ladder the pilot had a half-hour ago. “Movement. One, possibly two more boarding the ship.”

  The Georgios was finally being tethered, and the gangplank lowered, so Ellie went toward that. She glanced around for her team members, but didn’t see them in the knots of people preparing to unload. She moved closer to the ship, checking the crowd, and caught sight of a familiar face, but not one she expected.

  “Yuri Laskin is here,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Rick asked through her earpiece.

  “I blendered the dude’s knee. Of course I’m sure. And I’m ten feet away.” She moved a little closer. Definitely Laskin.

  The ship’s crew and dock workers secured the gangplank—which was more a portable staircase along the ship’s side—and Laskin walked toward it. She followed him, keeping a safe distance between them.

  “Laskin is boarding,” she said as he started up the steps. “I’m going in.”

  “Wait,” came Rick’s voice. “O’Donnell—”

  “Give me ten minutes to find out who he’s meeting.”

  “Let me get backup into position—”

  “No time. He’s almost to the deck. Going to observe.” She was at the foot of the gangplank. No time like the present, so she ascended, hoping she looked like she fit in. She made it to the deck without anyone commenting, either from below or above, so she continued to act like she belonged, and strode purposefully away from the stairs and moved quickly into the maze of stacked containers, which weren’t as much of a labyrinth as she thought.

  They had been loaded with narrow passages between the rows, but if someone was claustrophobic, this was definitely not a place to be. With lights ablaze on the ship and the dock, though, it wasn’t as creepy or claustrophobic as it might have been. She moved between two high rows of containers toward the starboard side, playing a hunch that Laskin was headed toward the people who had come aboard after the pilot did.

  She had to be close to the starboard side by now. Somebody was talking up ahead, and she moved forward slowly, trying to listen. From the cadence of the voices, it was an intense—angry?—conversation. She heard a thump and a grunt and then the clang of metal on metal. She drew her own pistol and peered carefully out from between the containers. Two guys were beating the hell out of each other a dozen feet away.

  One of the guys hauled the other up and slammed him against a container. The guy who got slammed was big, and he punched the other guy and said something that sounded a lot like Russian. Ellie stayed put, and then the smaller guy body-slammed the bigger guy, and the latter stumbled backward and landed face-up so close to Ellie that she could have touched him. Even in the dim light, Ellie recognized Lyev Koslov.

  The other guy hurled himself on top of Koslov. Something glinted in his hand. A knife. He shifted and…Laskin. Shit just went completely sideways, and she acted on instinct. She tossed her hard hat off to keep it from obstructing her vision and stepped out from between the containers.

  “Freeze,” she said in a hard, clear tone as she leveled her gun at Laskin’s temple.

  He stopped, surprised. Koslov did, too, from his position on the deck, and all three of them seemed to be holding a collective breath when a voice Ellie knew only too well sounded behind her.

  “Hands up,” Marya said.

  Her heart sank into her knees. Hell.

  “Please,” Marya added.

  She almost laughed out loud at that. So polite, the British. “Well,” she said as she put her hands up. “This is awkward.” She relaxed her fingers so Marya could take her gun.

  “But you do have good taste in weapons,” Marya said. And then she added something in Russian—Jesus, she spoke Russian, too?—and Laskin got off Koslov and dropped the knife. He put his hands up. Koslov then got up and picked up Laskin’s knife.

  “I see we’ve had a change in plans,” said someone else and Ellie recognized Jonathan Hampstead’s voice. She turned her head. Both Marya and Jonathan were dressed in dark clothing and Marya looked like a natural, holding both guns.

  “Slightly. Turn this way, please,” she said to Ellie.

  She did, hoping that Rick could hear what was happening.

  “Thank you,” Jonathan said as he zip cuffed her wrists. After that, he removed Ellie’s earpiece and stomped it on the deck. Then he checked all her pockets and pulled out her work cell and stomped that on the deck, too. Three rhythmic times, as if that was a magic stomping number for phones. He picked up the wreckage of the earpiece and the phone and put them in his jacket pocket.

  Shit was not only sideways, it was completely blown out of the water.

  Jonathan zip cuffed Laskin, too. Marya said something else to Koslov and gestured at the starboard side of the ship. Ellie recognized his response as an affirmative.

  Jonathan stepped back a few paces with Marya, and they exchanged a hurried conversation. When it was over, he addressed Ellie.

  “Now we’re going to go down a ladder. I’ll be right beneath you. If you try anything, or shout, I’ll have you know it’s hard to swim in cuffs, especially after you fall a few dozen meters into cold water. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal,” she said, and she glanced at Marya, who was studying her, sizing her up.

  “Excellent. I’ll go first.” To Marya, he said, “Take care of this.” And he switched one of her guns with a pistol and silencer. That couldn’t be good. She didn’t have time to ponder who was going to get the business end of that because Jonathan pushed her along the ship’s walkway a couple dozen feet and stopped. Marya was right behind her, Ellie knew. And she had two guns, one with a silencer. Oh, shit. Would she use it on her?

  If that was the case, why not just shoot her on the deck? She relaxed a little. They wouldn’t have wasted time cuffing her and having her leave the ship if that was the deal.

  She waited for Jonathan to swing himself onto the ladder that she knew would take them down to the second tugboat below.

  Marya’s hand was on Ellie’s shoulder, and she pushed her gently toward the ladder. Ellie managed to get herself onto it, but this was not going to be easy, going down a ladder with her wrists like this. Slowly, she started down, Jonathan’s hand at the small of her back. Marya watched them for a few seconds, her gaze locked onto Ellie’s, and then she moved away from the ladder. It was just Ellie and Daddy Hampstead on a ladder at least fifty feet above the water.

  Should she just go for it? Try to swim with zip cuffs? She’d been able to make it almost a quarter-mile once like that, but she hadn’t been wearing this much clothing. That should be a new requirement for training, she thought. Being able to swim with zip cuffs while dressed as a longshoreman.

  She lowered herself another couple of rungs, knowing that she could probably kick Jonathan right in the face and make him take a dip. But then what? Then she’d be stuck on this ladder, and Marya would shoot her or knock her into the water, too. At least she would be polite about it. “Pardon me, Ellie. I must shoot you now. Cheers.”
/>   After what seemed like at least another hour but was probably only about ten minutes, Jonathan stopped. Ellie’s shoulders ached from the slow, awkward way she’d had to descend.

  “Well done,” he said. “I’m going to pull you onto another boat. Please do not resist. Remember, the water is cold.”

  She let him help her onto the deck of a tugboat and at that point, he pulled out a roll of masking tape.

  “Seriously?” she said.

  “Yes.” And he taped her mouth and led her below deck to a small room where he removed her zip cuffs but applied another set, this time with her arms behind her back. He also had her sit on the floor so he could zip cuff her ankles, then he turned off the light and shut the door behind him, its click loud and ominous in the dark.

  Shit. She lay still for a few moments, remembering the layout of the room before Jonathan turned the lights out. There were two typically narrow crew bunks bolted into the back wall. There was a porthole opposite her and once her eyes adjusted, she could see part of the Manhattan skyline. A very narrow, constricted part, but at least it helped her to orient herself.

  She hadn’t seen anything else in here, but if she had to, she could probably work her way onto the bottom bunk and get a little more comfortable. She groaned behind the tape.

  Rick was going to be so pissed at her.

  CHAPTER 14

  Within about ten minutes, the tug’s engines started. It was hard for Ellie to tell if they were actually moving, but she got the sense they were. She glanced at the porthole. The view was slightly different. They were definitely moving. The engine’s vibrations came up through the floor as the boat picked up speed.

  She adjusted her position, still seated against the wall, and debated if she should try to somehow work her hands to her front so she could get the tape off her mouth. She’d done it once before, but it had taken her a while, and it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. Well, why not? Might as well. She moved again to get into a better position but someone opened the door and turned on the light. She squinted in the sudden change. Marya kneeled in front of her, dressed in black BDUs, boots, and sweater. Oh, hell. Did she have the pistol with the silencer?