Die Again to Save the World

by Ramy Vance

  Martha gave him a stern look. “Forgot?”

  Zach shrugged.

  She pursed her lips. “This is some gray area you’re working in here.”

  “It fell out of her bag,” he explained.

  “She’ll want that back.”

  Zach blushed again. “We’ve got a lunch date today. I’ll give it back then, but not before we find everything on it.”

  Martha’s eyes widened. “You know, none of what we find holds up in court.”

  “Of course not.” He shrugged. “Illegally obtained evidence. But it can give us some leads on how to find legally obtained evidence.”

  Martha grinned and grabbed the iPad. “No password.”

  “There is,” he said. “But I figured it out.”

  “What is it?”

  He made a face. “Carrie Bradshaw.”

  Martha made the same expression. “Ugh. How did you figure that out, by the way?”

  He cleared his throat. “Let’s just say there are some things a man learns when he’s with a lady.”

  Martha jumped up from her chair and gagged with disgust, and Zach dissolved into laughter. The image of Zach … Ugh. She couldn’t even complete the thought.

  “OK.” She composed herself. “Let’s check this baby out.”

  “Yeah, let’s.” He leaned over her shoulder, and they pored over the screen.

  “This is the appointment book,” he explained as he opened an app. “It’s synced to her work computer. It’s where I got the printouts. I came in here early this morning and printed it all out so that we have it after I give it back.”

  “Good thinking.” She clicked on the contacts tab in the app, and a screen of names and numbers popped up. “Everyone Alister Pout knows.”

  “It gets better.” He tapped on another tab. “He’s one of those fancy dudes who doesn’t make his own phone calls.”

  Of course. “Right.”

  “So he has her make them for him.” He scrolled down a call log. “This is a list of calls from his office.”

  Martha couldn’t believe it. “Oh my God. How could she be so careless?”

  “I don’t think she’s the only assistant,” he said. “I think she’s like the junior one, and so this isn’t everything.”

  “But it sure as hell is enough,” Martha said.

  They snooped through it a while longer.

  “Her emails,” she whispered as she tapped on the mail button. “This is so illegal.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “But it’s like Jake told me: sometimes you got to bend the rules to follow the rules.”

  “Right.” Martha felt a surge of guilt in her stomach like falling rocks. She couldn’t keep looking through this stuff. This was wrong on so many levels. They didn’t have any hard evidence against Pout, and she couldn’t go snooping through a private device.

  She shut the cover on the tablet. “We can’t do this,” she said. “This is wrong. You have to give this back to her. Now.”

  He stammered. “But I thought you wanted evidence?”

  She handed the iPad back to him. “We have to do this the right way.”

  “This,” he held up the tablet, “is a gift from the gods. You can’t just refuse a gift.”

  “Yes, we can, and we will.” She dropped the report on his desk. “Shred that.”

  Zach’s face fell. “Martha.”

  She shook her head and walked away, then bumped right into Captain Kenneth. “Sorry.” She blinked with embarrassment.

  “No biggie.” the captain winked. “How are you doing on the Canadian case? You getting anything?”

  She gave him a thumbs-up. “We’re working on it.”

  “Tell you what I want you to do.” He turned toward her. “I want you to partner with Sergeant Bramley on this.”

  Martha frowned, recalling the embarrassment his stint on camera had landed her in. “Bramley? From the investigative unit?”

  “Yeah, let him get his hands in the pot, find out where your holes are.” He sipped his coffee. “It will make the whole process go a lot smoother.”

  “A lot smoother?” Pride swelled up in her chest. “Sir, I’m on this project. I can handle it. I just need a little more time.”

  Captain Kenneth pursed his lips. “I appreciate your enthusiasm; I do. But I think your investigation might benefit from a little more experience.”

  “Sir, I don’t think this case needs the kind of media attention that Sergeant Bramley is in the middle of,” she said. “If this case goes like I think it will, it will draw its own media scandal. We don’t need to jeopardize an ongoing investigation or perhaps drag an innocent suspect through the mud on reality television.”

  The captain raised his eyebrows in agreement. “All right, I’ll give you till after the weekend. If you can’t get this Canadian character solved by Monday, I want it kicked upstairs.”

  She sighed. “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Kenneth walked away, and she went back to her desk. As she passed Zach’s desk, she grabbed the iPad.

  “If we’re going down, we’re going down fighting,” she said.

  Zach smiled. “We’ve got three hours before we have to give this back.”

  Martha nodded. “Let’s make it good.”

  They spent the next two hours going through everything. Appointment confirmations. Morning meetings. Flight reservations for people who weren’t Alister. There was so much there, she couldn’t begin to sort through it. And it was still synced to the woman’s work computer, so new emails were popping up.

  One in particular caught her eye. It popped up in a blue box on the side of the screen. Re: Alister Traffic Ticket.

  She clicked on it and laughed. It appeared that Alister didn’t even so much as manage to pay his own traffic tickets. He had his assistants do it. She scrolled through the email, snickering as his assistants discussed the logistics of paying the citation. They needed his driver’s license number and had to decide which of his cards to charge it to.

  Man, she thought, one day I’ll be so rich, I can have someone else pay my traffic tickets. It didn’t say what the ticket was for, and so Martha logged into the police database and looked up his name. She found the record easily enough. But her face paled when she saw it. It was with the Detroit police department. He was speeding, right at the Detroit-Windsor border.

  Three hours before the maple syrup shootout.

  Reuben—Friday, February 10, 1:22 p.m.

  Reuben finished telling Aki the situation. “I need your help.”

  He leaned against her desk and let his story sink in. Well, certainly not all of it. He knew damn well better than that. But what he did tell her was enough.

  “OK.” She narrowed her eyes. “Let me get this straight. Sven wants you to find this kid Julian Schaeffer because he thinks he’s behind the alert from this morning.”

  Reuben nodded. “Right.”

  “He’s from Des Moines, and he was an erased passenger on a Delta flight to New York three days ago, but you tracked him down on the security footage doing a shady business deal with…Alister Pout?”

  He nodded again. “Correct.”

  “OK.” She furrowed her brow in disbelief. “I think Alister Pout has better things to do than hang out on street corners with nineteen-year-olds.”

  “You would think, but I’ve got the footage,” he said. “And it was erased from the CCTV reel. Only somebody with some serious connections could do that.”

  “Same with erasing a passenger off a commercial flight manifest,” she thought aloud. “How does he even know this guy?”

  “Julian is dating Stephanie Dwyer, whose brother is Tom Dwyer, who owns S-Wire Media.”

  Aki frowned. “S-Wire Media? They manage that weird RedBook thing that no one can figure out the point of, right?”

  “Actually, it’s a social media platform designed to aggregate information during a crisis event like a… You know what? Never mind. It’s not important. What matters is that Alister Pout is
invested in it.”

  “I read an article where he was talking about it,” Aki told him. “He came off like a real asshole, with this Swedish model hanging around on his boat or something.” Her phone pinged with a text, and a shadow passed across her face. She read it, and her mood darkened.

  “Mike?” Reuben asked.

  She didn’t reply, but he could see it on her face. “You know, you’d have to find some harder evidence than what you’ve got. You’re just chasing mirages, and it’s not going to get you anywhere.”

  Reuben pursed his lips. “That’s why I’m asking for help. This kid is suspected of experimenting with homemade bombs back home. Due to materials found in a dumpster.” Reuben was hesitant to mention the microwave bomb at this point for two reasons. One, she might not know what one was—he certainly hadn’t until he was killed by one. Two, she might ask questions as to how he knew such specific information.

  Aki eyed him conspiratorially. “From what you tell me, this kid can’t write a five-paragraph essay. I highly doubt he can hijack a VW van, let alone steal the experimental weapon from that Interpol alert.”

  “That’s my point,” Reuben insisted. “He’s on our suspect list and only rising higher. We need to clear his name and find out who did.”

  “You know, I’m so swamped with high-security cases.” She gestured toward her computer, flickering with dozens of open windows, and the printouts on her desk. “I’m not saying it’s not a compelling case. It’s a good one to start out with if you’re trying to rise as an agent.”

  Reuben’s hopes fell. “But you won’t help me.”

  Aki shook her head, smiling. “Thank you for thinking of me. Let me know if the alert level rises, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Yeah.” He turned and walked away, his legs feeling like lead.

  She had been so easy to talk to that one day, but she was sickly-sweet aloof the rest of the time. Where was the easygoing, free-spirited, intelligent, driven agent he had met in the previous timeline?

  “Reuben,” she called after him.

  He whipped around. “Yes?”

  “All the same, link me in on your case,” she told him. “I may not have time to pursue it, but I could give you a pointer or two.”

  “Sure, thanks.” He could feel the smile on his face expand exponentially. “Will do.”

  He went back to his desk and immediately added her permission in the access pane. He updated all his notes, adding in the new information about the looped CCTV footage. He also copied the relevant Hurley’s Chicken footage and linked it to the case file. He was almost done with his notes when he glanced up and saw her.

  Aki stood at his desk, wild-eyed. “You’re serious about finding out what this guy knows?”

  “I am,” he answered earnestly.

  She gave him a big smile. “Then let’s go get him.”

  “We’d have to fly to Des Moines,” he stated.

  She laughed. “No, silly. He’s still in New York.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t catch that update I just added?”

  “No.” He clicked on his screen and refreshed it.

  She leaned over his keyboard, and the scent of her perfume made his head cloud and his heart race. He was acutely aware of how close she was and tried not to stare at the reflection of her cleavage on the computer screen.

  “See?” With a few clicks, she brought up a hospital document. “There was a Julian Schaeffer from Des Moines, Iowa, who showed up in the emergency room last night with alcohol poisoning. He was released this morning, and the bill was paid by Tom Dwyer at this address.”

  With the mouse, she highlighted the Long Island address on the form.

  “He’s staying with Tom Dwyer,” he said.

  “Yep,” she said. “That’s why there’s no hotel bill and very little digital footprint. The Dwyers are taking care of his food, probably lent him a car, too.”

  “That’s why the Uber was in Gina’s name,” he figured out. “Tom’s wife Ubered him from the airport, and instead, he added his own card to make his own stop.” Reuben reflected again on his quick thinking and how he'd found Gina among Julian's Facebook friends and connected her with the Uber charge.

  Aki’s smile was infectious. “Let’s go pay him a visit.”

  “It’s that easy.” He laughed. “I’ve been chasing this guy for all this time, and the answer is right there.”

  “Let’s go, silly,” she said. “He won’t be there forever, you know.”

  He smirked. Little did she know.

  “How did you get this bill?” he asked as they headed toward the door. Medical records were practically impossible to get, even with security clearance. Even if an agent with high clearance like Aki could get them, why didn’t they get them before?

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “Based on what you wrote about him, I figured the chances that he added the New York nightlife scene to his agenda were an absolute certainty. I used to know those kinds of people, so I sent out a mass text asking if anyone had seen or heard from a Julian Schaeffer. I put out a picture. Someone said that they thought they saw someone who looked like that leave the Exit Room in an ambulance. So, I called an old boyfriend who works at the ER and asked him to look him up, and he found him. Sent me the records.”

  Reuben laughed. People do what they have to do to get the job done. They left the building and stepped into the cold February air.

  Aki pulled her keys out of her pocket. “We’ll take my car.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Reuben—Friday, February 10, 1:45 p.m.

  Reuben couldn’t stop thinking about how improbable it would have been before the warp that he would be alone with Aki, going out to her car. What the hell was happening to him? He wished Buzz were here to see this. Or even Marshall. Although, he was sure Marshall would figure out how to use it to insult him.

  They arrived in the parking garage, and Aki clicked the remote in her hand. A sleek black Porsche sprang to life, and Reuben tried not to be intimidated.

  “Nice car,” he said breezily.

  “Thanks,” she said as she got in the car.

  He opened the door, and the thick smell of new leather greeted him as he folded his frame into the tiny vehicle.

  “You ever been inside a Porsche?” She smiled coyly as she slipped on her shades. He noticed the Versace label on the side. Of course she would have Versace shades.

  “Ah, not to question you or anything, but how many pay grades above me are you?” he stammered as he buckled his seatbelt.

  She threw her head back and laughed. “A lot. But most of this stuff belongs to the CIA. I, um, signed it out.”

  Reuben laughed. “Got it. For a moment, I thought you were a part-time model.”

  She gave him a pointed look. “Model?”

  Reuben blushed. “Yeah. They’re paid a lot, and you’re pretty.”

  Aki’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Is that all I am to you? Tits and ass?”

  Reuben was lost for words. “No…no! You’re…you’re—”

  “What am I, Reuben?”

  Flustered, Reuben said the first thing that came to mind. “Smart, strong, sexy. You've got all the Ss. Not to mention special agent. So all the Ss and an A.”

  Did I really just say that?

  Aki burst out into laughter. “First off, I’m just messing with you. Secondly, that was the best response I’ve ever gotten from a guy when putting him on the spot.” She gave him a long hard look. “As in ever. Good under pressure. Witty. There may be more to you, Reuben, than meets the eye.”

  “Thanks.” He wasn’t quite sure if he liked the compliment. He didn’t know how he’d made her laugh. He wasn’t even trying to be funny.

  She lurched the car into gear, and with a squeal of tires, they burned rubber through the streets of New York.

  Reuben—Friday, February 10, 2:06 p.m.

  Reuben and Aki arrived at Tom Dwyer’s address on Long Island. It was a s
mall cottage, a one-story gray brick building with a white door and modest porch. She pulled into the drive, where two young girls in winter hats and coats ran around outside.

  She unbuckled her seatbelt. “Dwyer’s a family man.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He couldn’t tell by her inflection whether she approved or didn’t approve of being a family man. Should he say he wanted to raise a family? Should he scoff at Tom Dwyer for being domesticated and tied down? He didn’t care what he had to say, as long as he said the right thing in front of Aki. She drove a Porsche and had an all-consuming job. It wasn’t like she wanted to be June Cleaver or anything. But a man who didn’t want kids sounded like a selfish asshole. His mind screamed for an answer. What should he say?

  “All right.” She slipped the glasses off. “Here’s our cover story.”

  Phew. The family man moment had passed.

  “We’re government agents, and we’re investigating Alister Pout. We know he had something to do with Dwyer, and we want to know what.”

  Reuben was taken aback. “How is that a cover story? That’s just the truth.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Minus a few details.”

  They exited the vehicle and walked up the garden path to the front door. A wooden birdhouse hung from the porch, and potted plants filled the entryway with greenery. It reminded him of when he was little and his mom was still around. He had forgotten what a difference those subtle feminine touches made to a home.

  She knocked on the door, and it opened quickly enough. There in the flesh, standing before them, was Julian Schaeffer. Reuben just about had a heart attack. He wore an oversized t-shirt and dark jeans and had a silver stud on his chin.

  Julian glanced back and forth at the two agents. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” Aki let loose a thousand-watt smile, and Julian grinned and rubbed the back of his neck. “Julian Schaeffer?”

  He eyed them skeptically. “Yeah…”