by Fiona Brand
Dana gave her a direct look. “We can’t talk out here. I don’t have any appointments scheduled in the next half hour. How about we adjourn to my office and I can take you through some options.”
Seconds later, Dana pressed the security code for her door. Automatically, Esther watched her fingers, but they moved too rapidly for her to get all of the code. Suppressing the urge to roll her eyes at the ridiculous notion that even if she got the door code she would be in a position to do anything about it, she followed Dana into her office. A little spying was her limit, not B and E. If they had to physically break into the bank to get the codes, then that was in Xavier’s ballpark, not hers.
Esther preceded Dana into the room. The office was small but nicely appointed, with an original painting of the Bay area on the wall and a glossy plant occupying one corner. A large L-shaped desk took up most of the space, with two comfortably padded chairs positioned near the desk. The bad news was that even if one of the chairs was pulled up as close as possible to the computer, the keyboard was still inaccessible. To reach it, Esther would have to lean diagonally across the desk, and there was no way she could do that without Dana noticing.
To minimize the distance she would have to reach, Esther pulled her chair up as close to the keyboard as she could get on the pretext of needing a clear space to set her coffee down.
Dana frowned as she moved a computer printout, obviously not comfortable with the coffee on her desk, but too polite to insist that Esther remove it.
“Sorry about the mess.” Dana stacked the papers Esther had pushed to one side and found a clear spot for them at the end of the desk. “I’m in the middle of a systems rehash. I don’t need to tell you what a nightmare that is.” She made a face. “The managing director wants more detailed reporting. Although, I don’t know what more he expects to see, other than the color of our clients’ underwear.”
“Could be an interesting database.”
“It might be, if there was anything in it but Y-fronts.” Dana reddened, realizing she’d made a borderline offensive comment to a potential client. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I missed breakfast and I’m on late lunch. My blood sugar is way down.”
Esther forced a smile. “No problem. At a corporate level, Cesar doesn’t allow Y-fronts.”
Dana’s blush deepened. “You are kidding.”
“Unfortunately.” Esther rummaged in her handbag on the pretext that she was searching for something.
“I was sure I put business cards in here this morning.” Looking distracted and faintly annoyed, she set her bag down and leaned forward with enough swing that her elbow caught the coffee cup. Hot liquid splashed across the desk.
With a yelp, Dana shoved back in her office chair a split second before a wave of coffee slid over the side and dripped onto the carpet.
Already on her feet, Esther snatched a handful of tissues from a box on the desk. Apologizing profusely, she dropped them on the puddle, then, in a smooth motion, leaned over and lifted the keyboard away from a trickle of liquid.
The card was there.
Pretending to overbalance as she swiped at the coffee, she managed to flip the card around with the soaked tissue. The codes and the password were written in clear, bold black ink.
Dana grabbed at the card before a second stray trickle of coffee reached it. “Busted.” She flushed bright red as she slid the card in her drawer. “I guess you don’t have to remember access codes anymore. Not that you ever had a problem. They change them twice weekly here, Monday and Thursday. That was one of the reasons I left Bessel Holt, I couldn’t stand the twenty-four-hour turnaround and my supervisor was constantly breathing down my neck.”
She grabbed a handful of tissues, dropped them on the carpet and blotted more coffee. Her face was still flushed, her voice jerky with embarrassment. “I lived in fear of him checking beneath my keyboard. I’m all for security, but those people were anal.”
Esther resumed her seat and worked to control her own breathing and the steady pump of adrenaline that was making her hands shake. She was more than happy to listen to Dana’s nervy conversation, anything to distract her from realizing she had gotten a look at the codes. She didn’t think anyone but her immediate superior at Bessel Holt had known about her photographic memory, but she didn’t want to take any risks. It was an unhappy fact that somehow Xavier had found out about it. “Two years was enough for me. I couldn’t keep up with the young computer nerds.”
Dana tossed soiled tissues into the trash. “Tell me about it. There’s a kid almost young enough to be my son running this place. Not,” she said quickly, “that he isn’t qualified, he is, but—”
“I know what you’re saying. It’s hard to credit it.”
Her smile was relieved. “Exactly. Kids seem extra bright these days. The way their minds work is frightening.” Her gaze lingered on the ring. “I hear you’ve got a daughter.”
“That’s right, Rina. She’s ten.” Esther extended her hand so the sunlight slanting through the window flashed off the diamond, more than happy to change the subject. “Cesar gave it to me when Rina was born.”
“Tiffany’s?”
“Cartier.”
“Nice.” Dana brandished her own wedding band and diamond solitaire engagement ring. “I’ve got a twelve-year-old, going on thirty. While her father was around, he didn’t give me anything but trouble.”
“Divorced?”
“I would have been if he hadn’t widowed me.”
“I’m sorry.” Dana’s personal circumstances explained what Dana was doing at RCS. With a bad marriage behind her and a daughter to care for, she hadn’t had the luxury of choosing where she worked.
Feeling uncomfortable at the glimpse into Dana’s personal life and guilty at the way she had used her, Esther gathered up soiled tissues and the empty cup and tossed them in the trash. Seconds later, the desk restored to order, she checked her watch. Only fifteen minutes had passed since she had walked into Dana’s office, but now that she had the codes all she wanted to do was leave. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to go. Time’s gotten away from me and I’ve got a lunchtime meeting.”
After a brief discussion, Esther confirmed an appointment time she never intended to keep and walked quickly out of the office. She hadn’t enjoyed manipulating Dana or flaunting the ring, but she hadn’t had a choice.
When she reached the sidewalk, San Francisco’s midday heat hit her like a wave. After the dry chill of air-conditioning, the humidity made her break out in an instant sweat. Fumbling in her bag she slipped dark glasses on the bridge of her nose and made her way to her car. Hot air blasted out of the interior as she opened the door. Sliding into the driver’s seat, she started the engine and turned the air-conditioning on full. For long minutes she simply sat there, waiting for the shaking to stop.
She had done it. She couldn’t believe it. She had the access codes and a time schedule and it had all gone more smoothly than she’d ever imagined. All she had to do now was act. It was Tuesday, which meant Xavier had a window of one and a half days. If RCS followed the same procedure as Bessel Holt, the codes would be changed at the beginning of the new business day on Thursday.
An hour after passing the codes on to Xavier, he rang back.
“There’s a problem.”
The amount in Lopez’s account was so huge the bank had slapped extra security precautions on the account. Any movement of funds over five figures needed verbal approval from Lopez.
Xavier’s solution was simple. “We steal his phone.”
Or, more precisely, he would steal Lopez’s phone number for a very short time. What he needed her to do was supply a recording of Lopez’s voice.
When Xavier hung up, she pressed the rewind button on the answering machine and skipped through the messages. Alex Lopez’s recorded voice floated over the phone, so real adrenaline shot through her veins.
She set the phone down, ejected the tape and slipped a fresh one into the cassette.
It wasn’t much. She didn’t know if Xavier would be able to get an actor to do a realistic impersonation based on a few clipped words, but unless she called Lopez herself and recorded the call, it was their only option.
There was no way she could risk calling Lopez. He already knew she disliked him. If she rang, no matter how smoothly she handled the call, he would know something was up. His next step would be to talk to Cesar, and Cesar, in his current shell-shocked state, wouldn’t be able to hold out against Lopez.
Gripping the edge of the desk, she forced herself to breathe until the pressure in her chest loosened and her pulse evened out, but there was no way she could banish the sense of raw panic that underscored every waking second.
With the extra security checks on Lopez’s account, the funds transfer couldn’t take place until tomorrow. That meant another twenty-four hours in the Sea Cliff house: twenty-four hours she couldn’t afford, because time was running out.
It had been two days since she had confronted Cesar about Lopez. According to her most optimistic timetable, she had one day left at most before Lopez discovered that she knew.
The only problem was Esther wasn’t an optimist; she was a realist. Even if Cesar didn’t cave, Lopez would unmask her. He had already demonstrated his predatory brilliance in the business arena. To achieve that result he had concentrated all of his attention on Cesar, not her, but the dinner party had signaled a change. She realized now that Lopez had been there specifically to observe her.
The second he focused that cold, precise intellect on the years she had spent in Bern, he would find out what Bessel Holt had employed her to do. He would realize that she had been instrumental in blocking a huge transaction made by his father and facilitated by Perez; that it had been her job to identify criminals.
That, potentially, there was no one more dangerous on American soil to the Chavez cartel.
Five
The tape in her purse, sealed in an envelope, ready to be dropped off at an address Xavier had given her, Esther slid behind the wheel of Jorge’s aging Chevy and nosed down the drive. Maybe she was paranoid, but her own silver-gray Saab was distinctive, and it had passed through her mind that Lopez could be having her watched or even followed.
Cesar was out all day, supposedly at a meeting at the construction site of the development that had fallen through. Before she had left the house, Esther had checked with his secretary and found out that he hadn’t showed. In fact he hadn’t made an appearance at the office at all. If she had needed any further confirmation that she was out of options, that had been it. Cesar didn’t normally let any detail of a business deal slip by unchecked, let alone miss appointments.
After dropping off the package in the lobby of an anonymous block of apartments, Esther drove around the steep, picturesque suburbs of Russian Hill until it was time to pick Rina up from school. The slow circling of blocks, aside from filling time, had also given her the opportunity to check if she was being followed. So far, she hadn’t noticed anything suspicious. Minutes later, with Rina strapped into the front passenger seat, Esther took a left onto Leavenworth instead of turning onto California Street, heading for the expressway and home. According to Cesar’s file on Lopez, he lived barely five minutes from Rina’s school.
Checking out Lopez’s address was a risk, but it was one that needed to be taken. Just because Lopez claimed he lived at an address didn’t mean he actually did. She needed to find out for certain where he lived so she could give the details to the police. Once Xavier transferred the funds out of Lopez’s account, the window for physically apprehending Lopez would be small. If the police didn’t move quickly and raid the right address straight off, Lopez would slip the net.
There was no guarantee that doing a drive-by of his house would enable her to verify anything but she had to try. At this time of day, with the streets crammed with cars ferrying children home from school and driving Jorge’s Chevy, she would be close to invisible.
Esther took a turn onto Hyde and slowed as she counted numbers. She wanted to get a good look at the property as she drove past, and she could only risk doing it once.
Slowing even further as the number loomed, Esther craned, looking over Rina’s head in an effort to see a vehicle or anything else that might indicate that Lopez actually lived there.
An ornate set of wrought-iron gates guarded the entrance, but otherwise, the property wasn’t what she had expected. There was no fortress-style house, no high walls and no sign indicating there were roving guard dogs. It looked like any one of a hundred expensive addresses, with nicely landscaped grounds and tantalizing glimpses of a pool area. While the house was large and sprawling, it wasn’t in the extreme-wealth bracket; it could have belonged to any number of prosperous families.
She took in the proportions of the house again. Oh, he was clever. He wasn’t making a splash; he was blending.
The garage was closed, but she glimpsed the rear of a black truck parked at the side of the garage, almost obscured by a shade tree. It was the unexpected second vehicle she had seen the night Lopez had come to dinner.
Rina craned around, her expression openly curious. “Who lives there?”
Distracted, Esther took her gaze off the house and concentrated on the road. She should have done the drive-by before she picked Rina up, but she hadn’t been able to risk it until she had been certain she wasn’t followed. “Alex Lopez.”
There was no point in not telling Rina that, and in a way it made sense. A little foreknowledge would prepare her for what was going to happen.
Rina settled back into her seat and dragged her Walkman out of her schoolbag, which was propped on the floor by her feet. “So that’s why we’re undercover.”
“We are not undercover. My car’s being serviced, so I borrowed Jorge’s.”
Rina flipped the Walkman open and examined the tape. “I would have taken Dad’s ’Vette.”
“Maybe the ’Vette was out.”
“The ’Vette’s in the garage.”
“How did you know that?”
“Dad got picked up this morning. I saw him leave from my bedroom window.”
Esther frowned. Cesar did use a driver occasionally, usually if he had a lot of stops to make in places where it was difficult to get parking, but according to his secretary he had had just the one meeting today, which he had missed. “How come you know so much about the ’Vette, anyway?”
Rina’s expression was smug. “Dad’s already let me drive it.”
“What?”
Rina grinned. “Uh-huh. I’m on the road.”
“Not with me you’re not. And I’ll be having a word to your father about that.” The words were automatic, but with a pang she realized she wouldn’t be having a word with Cesar about Rina, or anything else, in the conceivable future. For the next twenty-four hours, she would be staying quiet and keeping her mouth shut. Every ounce of energy she had would be directed into helping Xavier pull off the funds transfer and making arrangements for both Rina and herself to disappear.
Grief she hadn’t had time to feel hit her like a fist in the chest. She had been so busy trying to find out what had gone wrong and figure a way through the mess, she hadn’t had time to count the personal cost, and it was huge. She and Cesar had had twelve good years together. The pull of those years, of living and working side by side tugged at her, sharp enough to cause actual pain. At times they had fought—each as stubborn as the other—but the relationship had been exhilarating and Esther had been satisfied. Rina had completed them, filling the gaps that occasionally loomed, bringing softness and the sense of family she craved.
She turned a corner and accelerated away from the barbed territory of Lopez’s house, shoving the misery down somewhere deep and dark until she had the time and the privacy to deal with it.
“Lopez is a problem, isn’t he?”
Esther’s gaze was sharp. “What do you mean?”
“I heard him and Dad talking.” Rina made a face. “Don’t look so sur
prised. Just because it looks like I’m not listening, it doesn’t mean I’m not. Anyway, they thought I was listening to my Walkman, but I wasn’t. Lopez was talking about the mall project that Dad’s been worried about, the one that’s threatening to go down the tubes. He owns the company that wants to pull out. Dad didn’t look happy.” She glanced at Esther, her gaze sharply adult. “I wasn’t, either.” She settled back in her seat. “He’s got no color—he looks dark and flat—and his eyes aren’t right.”
And Rina would know, she’d stared at Alex Lopez for long enough. He had eyes like a shark, dead and cold. The skin at the back of her neck tightened, a sense of premonition that added to the urgency to simply cut and run.
“Do you want to hear?”
Esther braked for an intersection. “Hear what?”
Rina rummaged in her bag again. “The tape. I told you I wasn’t listening to music, I was taping.”
A horn sounded behind her. Jerkily, Esther accelerated through the intersection and pulled over. “You were what?”
“Taping.” Rina pressed the rewind button on the Walkman then pressed Play.
Lopez’s dark cold voice filled the car. Esther’s skin crawled as she listened to evidence that Lopez was blackmailing Cesar, using the threat of bankrupting a company he had recently procured in order to collapse the Pembroke development, a run-of-the-mill project that had been solid.
The conversation must have happened while she was away from the table. Lopez had obviously thought he was safe in delivering the threat because he thought Rina was deafened by music. He had probably also made the mistake, like a lot of people, of assuming that because Rina looked disconnected she had no interest in what was going on.
Not for the first time Esther was reminded that beneath the disconnected façade, Rina had always worked to her own agenda. The only time she was really dreamy was when she was painting. The rest of the time she used the faintly “out to lunch” expression to buy herself leeway to do exactly what she wanted, and the tactic worked. She had Cesar wrapped around her little finger and she had outmaneuvered Lopez. Like Cesar and herself, Rina was a player, but on a whole other level entirely. If she ever got into business they would all be in for a wild ride.
