Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows

by Tom DeLonge

  People managed, she told herself, as she boarded the British Airways flight to Heathrow. She was educated, accomplished. She would be able to find work, good benevolent work that paid enough that she could cut her ties to her father and still put enough bread on the table to get by. It would be an adjustment, but she could do it. If it meant losing her fiscal safety net, it also meant she would gain her independence.

  She extended her pod-like recliner all the way back, reveling in its luxurious privacy, comfortable knowing this was the last time she would do so. From here on, Jennifer Quinn would fly coach, and rarely.

  She landed shortly after dawn, on a typically cold, damp English morning. She felt strange, returning to her past, considering all that she had gained and lost since she was last home. Maybe she would go for a run in the rain after she got home. Clear her head. She normally ran every other day without fail and the cramped confinement had left her body feeling like a compressed spring.

  She had not left her flight details on his voice mail so he wouldn’t be able to send a car to get her. Her plan was to take a series of trains and busses like an ordinary person. So she was surprised to see Reg Deacon, her father’s personal assistant, waiting for her just beyond customs and immigration.

  For a second, she watched the man her father called “his old retainer” as he scanned the faces of passengers emerging from customs and immigration with something like contempt. Then her surprise at his being there at all deepened and grew more complicated. Deacon was a chief of staff, and his duties spanned a range of responsibilities, both domestic and professional. They did not, however, include chauffeuring.

  Deacon was in his early sixties, a tough, unreadable man who had ghosted Jennifer’s entire life but who gave little away. As a girl, she had liked him, but she had distanced herself from him more and more over the years, seeing him as another cog in her father’s great machine. This morning, he looked tired, drawn, and there was something in his face she had never seen before.

  Then the man’s eyes found her and locked on. A flash of recognition was immediately replaced with a kind of sigh as his body sagged, his face hollowing, his eyes full of sadness and apprehension.

  Something had happened. Something bad.

  For a moment they just stared at each other, oblivious to the milling travelers, and something passed between them. Jennifer’s anger evaporated in the sudden absolute certain realization that her father was dead, and then the world went away, and she was not aware of herself enough to be amazed by her own tears.

  DEACON HAD BOUGHT HER A CHEESE AND ONION PASTY for breakfast, because she had loved them when she was a kid. Sitting in the car parked outside Heathrow’s terminal 3, she took a half-hearted bite, and then, though it tasted of nothing, devoured it hungrily, washing it down with a bottle of orange juice.

  “Now, before we go home,” said Deacon carefully, floating that last word uncertainly, as if he didn’t know if it would comfort or distress her, “I wanted to ask how you would like to handle some legal matters.”

  She gave him a blank look, as if he were speaking Siswati or Zulu and she had to grope around for a mental dictionary.

  “Legal matters?”

  “Though we could not reach you, your father’s unfortunate demise …”

  “Suicide,” she interrupted, trying the word out to see if it sounded more plausible when she said it. It didn’t.

  “Quite,” said Deacon with studied caution. He was treating her like a bomb that might go off at any moment. “It has … set things in motion. Which is to say …” he hesitated. “When ordinary people die, the world goes on, and those who knew the deceased are given time to grieve. But your father was anything but ordinary. A great deal of important business depended upon him. His absence—particularly since it was so sudden and unexpected—has left many matters in need of resolution …”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” she said, flatly, watching the rain, which had begun to streak the car’s tinted windows.

  “Which is understandable,” Deacon said, “but a lot of other people do. I don’t need to remind you of the scale of your father’s business involvements.”

  “I said …”

  “You don’t care, I know,” Deacon pressed. “But wheels are already in motion to resolve those matters left in limbo by your father’s absence.”

  She looked at him.

  “His death,” Deacon conceded.

  “So?” she said. “What does this have to do with me?”

  It was a stupid remark. She had always avoided thinking about what she would do when her father’s money one day became hers, and she had always assumed that was about defiance, a refusal to be interested in what he had worked so hard to accumulate. Suddenly she wondered if she had avoided the subject because it meant acknowledging that he would die and she would be alone.

  “You are his sole surviving heir,” said Deacon. “Though I’m sure your father’s business dealings are of little interest to you, you must be present at the opening of the will, which is going to explicate those dealings. As well as more personal matters. The lawyers are already assembled at Steadings. I am happy to send them away for today, but matters must be dealt with in a reasonably prompt …”

  “It’s fine,” said Jennifer quickly.

  “Fine?”

  “I’ll do it today. As soon as we get home.”

  Deacon considered her gravely.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said, forcing a smile, which almost buckled into something else before she could turn her face to the window. “Best to get it over.”

  BUT READING THE WILL GOT NOTHING OVER. QUITE THE contrary.

  Jennifer sat in the drawing room at Steadings, the Hampshire mansion, its French windows looking out over formal gardens and a ring of trees, which shrouded the house from prying eyes, avoiding the eyes of the formally dressed lawyers and the watchful businessmen who had been assembled to hear what Edward Quinn had thought fit to do with his numerous, weighty assets. Some of the men were known to her. Two or three had been shadowy features of her life from as long ago as she could remember, but they had all become part of the world on which she had turned her back and she met their murmurs of condolence with chill politeness.

  She was the youngest person in the room by a good two decades and the only woman. They were all, of course, white. Herman Saltzburg, who she remembered hiding from as a kid because his almost skeletal face and hands had given her nightmares, was eying her with vague surprise as if he had forgotten her existence entirely. He was still hollow-cheeked and lean to the point of cadaverousness, and when he offered her a hand to shake it was dry as paper and she could feel every bone and sinew, so that for a moment she was eight years old again and desperate to run back to her room and close the door. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Ronald Harrington-Smythe, a man so large he seemed to fill an entire corner of the drawing room all by himself. He was bald and his bullet-shaped head emerged from the collar of his massive shirt like the tip of a great cone.

  There were plenty others she didn’t know, including one who came in just as proceedings were about to begin, younger than the rest, with raven black hair which—at least by the standards of the room—was positively disheveled and gave his finely cut suit a rakish look. His eyes flashed around the room, lingered on her for a fraction of a second, then moved to where Deacon, flanked by lawyers, had begun to speak.

  “We are here today,” he began, sounding like a minister, “to consider the last will and testament of our friend, colleague, and—to Jennifer—father, Edward Quinn, a special proviso of which is the deceased’s request that you all be here, whether or not you stand to benefit directly.”

  Jennifer caught an elderly man stealing a glance in her direction. She ignored it.

  Let’s just get this over with, she thought for the fiftieth time that morning, and we can all go our separate ways …

  Deacon continued with the formalities. To her right
a man with diamond-studded cufflinks shifted in his seat, and then one of the lawyers was unsealing a large envelope and reading in a thin, wavering voice.

  “Edward Quinn’s will, spelling out all of his holdings, is a long and complex document because his interests were numerous,” the executor said, “but at its core, it is remarkably simple because Mr. Quinn made a substantial codicil to amend it, three days before he died.”

  There was a subtle change in the room, as if the air had been charged with electricity. Brows furrowed, spines stiffened, pens, which had been scribbling on paper, stilled, and all eyes locked onto the lawyer. They had not expected this, and Jennifer, to her surprise, found herself interested, even amused. It seemed the old man had one last trick up his sleeve.

  “We will go through the details in a moment,” said the lawyer, “and I’m sure you will have a lot of questions, but the core change is summed up in the introductory sentence to the codicil, witnessed by myself and one other, which reads thus. I, Edward Quinn, being of sound mind and body, as attested by competent authorities and witnesses, do hereby bequeath, excepting those few gifts made to my staff and in particular to Reginald Deacon, all my possessions, all capital, stocks, shares and properties, all assets, partnerships and business interests under my ownership, including those seats on executive boards which are mine to control, and retaining to them the full executive power I have wielded in life, to my daughter, Jennifer.”

  8

  TIMIKA

  New York

  MARVIN LED TIMIKA BACK TOWARD THE OFFICE WITH his usual, bobbing gait, jiving vaguely to some private soundtrack only he could hear. They were met on the sidewalk outside the door by Audrey Stanhope, Debunktion’s pit-bull reporter. She looked excited.

  “Bomb scare,” she announced, delighted. “We’re supposed to clear out for the day until the premises are rendered secure … and yeah, that’s a quote.”

  “From who?” Timika demanded. She adjusted her crimson coat, feeling conspicuous. It made her feel like a stop sign.

  “Hunky bomb squad guy,” said Audrey. “Didn’t give me his name. Yet.”

  She fluffed her blond hair hopefully.

  “Bomb scare?” Marvin whined. “Oh, man. Harsh. We really can’t go in?”

  “Really,” said Audrey. “But they want to talk to us before we leave.”

  “They?” Marvin echoed. “You mean … cops? Oh, man.”

  Like a lot of stoners, Marvin had a deep-seated paranoia about the police.

  “I’m going nowhere,” said Timika. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “Don’t tell me—tell him,” said Audrey, nodding to a clean-cut young man emerging from the building. He was wearing a navy blue sweater, matching slacks, and a heavily padded jacket, which looked like it covered body armor, marked “Police HSI.” Audrey snapped on her most radiant smile and gave him an absurd wave that made her look like a distressed starlet from a fifties screwball comedy.

  “You gonna shout ‘yoo hoo!?’” Timika asked. “Complete the picture.”

  Audrey stuck her tongue out at her, but recovered the smile as the hunk swaggered into earshot.

  “The boss,” said Audrey by way of introduction. “Timika Mars. I don’t think I caught your name.”

  “Miss Mars,” said the young man, apparently immune to Audrey’s charms. “I’m Agent Cook with Homeland Security Investigations’ Special Response Team. Mind if I ask you a few questions?” He was addressing the three of them.

  “Here?” asked Timika, considering his badge.

  “We can sit in the park if you like,” said the policeman. “It may be some time before the building has been cleared. The team is already in.”

  Timika glanced up and down the street. Mrs. Singh, at the nail salon next door, was arranging a special offer display in the window.

  “Sure,” she said. “What do you need?”

  Marvin’s face was pale, and he was breathing shallowly.

  “Have you had any threats lately?” asked the cop. “I believe you run a controversial website.”

  Timika gave her principal reporter a look. Controversial was an Audrey word, designed to make the journalism sound edgy.

  “No more than usual,” she answered. “Nothing serious.”

  “Any unexpected deliveries?”

  The agent had plucked out a notepad and chose this moment to look down at it. It was probably nothing, but for a split second, Timika felt sure he had avoided her eyes.

  She shook her head, feeling the weight of the strange notebook in her coat pocket. Marvin opened his mouth, his face a comic mask of confusion, but said nothing. “Nothing yesterday,” she said. “Bills and junk. The usual.”

  “And today?”

  “It’s ten o’clock in the morning, man,” she said. “Mail doesn’t arrive until two.”

  “Right,” said the cop. “And no hand deliveries?”

  “Hand deliveries?” asked Timika with more hauteur than she felt. “What you think I’m running here—a trading post?”

  “No ma’am,” said the agent, offering her a card. “My number, if anything occurs to you. We should have you in again in two or three hours.”

  “Two or three hours!” Timika said. “What am I supposed to do until then? Can I at least get my laptop?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Like a laptop,” she said, marching toward the door. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  “Can I get a card too?” Audrey cooed. “In case anything occurs to me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the cop, fishing in his jacket pocket as Timika opened the door and made for the stairs. As she walked, she stared straight ahead, saying nothing, but thinking furiously.

  Timika was used to sniffing out BS on a daily basis, and Dion said she was naturally suspicious, untrusting. But it had to be more than that. Everything about this felt wrong.

  Letting a civilian back into a building that was being searched for a bomb? Not closing down the street? Not leading the people in the vegetarian restaurant, or the optician’s, or the nail salon to safety behind a perimeter of brightly colored police tape? Two guys performing the inspection with no support team, no vehicles, no protective gear? Either they didn’t really expect to find a bomb—in which case she was being messed around for no good reason—or something else was going on entirely.

  Whatever it was, she sure as hell wasn’t about to leave her computer behind.

  She entered the office without apology, hearing Cook clattering up the stairs behind her. Another uniformed man, broad-shouldered and sporting a crew cut, stood up quickly behind Audrey’s desk, eyes lasering in on her, his right hand moving to the holstered pistol at his hip. He froze when she saw him, not relaxing until agent Cook said, “She works here. Just getting her laptop.” His voice was careful, as if he were saying more than the words alone suggested. Timika suddenly felt uncomfortable with him behind her.

  What the hell was this?

  For a moment she felt panic encroaching at the edges of her consciousness. She half turned and gave him a smile, as if nothing could be more normal. She made a show of folding the laptop closed and slipping it into its case, like a magician showing his audience he has nothing up his sleeve. The handwritten notebook that had been dropped that morning—that was what they were looking for. She was sure of it. Why, God knew, but this was no bomb squad.

  “When can we get back in?” she asked, as perky as she could muster. “I’ve got a ton of stuff to get through.”

  “We’ll be done by noon,” said Cook. “Hopefully sooner, so stay close.”

  “Great,” she said, holding up the laptop like a shield as she made for the door. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  “Hold it,” said the man by Audrey’s desk.

  She felt the urge to run, but stifled it and turned.

  “Your coworkers need to get any of their stuff too?” asked the second man.

  Timika breathed. “No, and they aren’t my coworkers,” she said, f
inding a little swagger as she marched out. “This ain’t no damn commune. They work for me.”

  Marvin and Audrey were waiting for her on the pavement outside, watching the building warily, as if half-expecting it to erupt into flames any minute.

  “Is it me,” said Audrey, “or did that feel really weird?”

  “It’s not you,” said Timika, cinching her long red coat a little tighter. “Let’s take a walk.”

  It was early spring but still cold, the trees were bare and stark, as if all color had been drained from the square. At least there was no snow on the ground.

  “So what do we think?” Marvin asked, scared out of his stoner glaze. “Not cops, right?”

  “Right,” said Timika, flicking the absurd wig out of her face. She wished she hadn’t worn it. It had been a private joke with Dion. That seemed like a very long time ago now.

  “Daily News? The Post?” Audrey suggested.

  Timika scowled but said nothing. It wouldn’t be the first time a tabloid had tried to poach a story from her, but she knew most of their reporters personally, and these two were new to her. She pictured the way the one with the crew cut had watched her from behind her desk, the way his hand had strayed to his gun when she walked in. No. She didn’t know who they were, but she was prepared to bet her last dollar that these guys weren’t reporters.

  She was also prepared to bet she knew what they were looking for.

  Though she complained about them from time to time, Timika trusted Marvin and Audrey completely.

  “They want this,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I’m not going back until I‘ve read it. See what might be worth a stunt this crazy.”

  Audrey nodded.

  “First things first,” Timika said. “Let’s find a copy shop. If someone’s going to try to steal it, we could use a backup. And since I work best with caramel macchiato inside me, I suggest East Side Copy on thirteenth, and then Joe’s.”