“I don’t mind, but I also don’t know where this is going.”
“Do you have a place to stay?” Dawkins asked.
“Not yet, but we have one more thing we have to do tonight.”
“When you’re done, if you’re not all shot up, come to my place. I got spare bedrooms and good scotch. How can you do better than that?”
Jonathan turned to Boxers. Big Guy said, “He had me at good scotch.”
As they turned right out of the lot something in the street caught Jonathan’s eye. “Wait, wait,” he said, pointing past the windshield. “That thing in the road near the curb.”
Boxers brought the Suburban to a stop.
Jonathan jogged through the beams of the headlights to go and pick Roman’s flip-flops up off the street.
* * *
Finding a vehicle through computer software on unintentional loan from the NSA was more difficult than finding a person—people were unique, after all—but it wasn’t impossible. The trick was to endure the fire-hose flow of information while paring down the data to a manageable size.
“Silver BMW sports utility vehicle” sounds specific until you factor in the number of styles and model years. In the current model year, the company produced the BMW X4, 5, 6, and 7, each of them classified as an SUV. But to a commoner’s eye, the X1, 2, and 3 might also look like an SUV. The fact that it was silver helped some, but silver looks a lot like gray or even soiled white. Plus, not all the security feeds captured color, so Venice needed to weed those out.
Using a commercial mapping site, she determined the search area around the water park to be roughly ten blocks square. She considered searching only on the main streets but decided that to be counterproductive. Any search that begins with the notion that you know what you’re looking for and where is doomed to failure. You let evidence drive assumptions, not the other way around.
Even when you’re looking for your little boy.
Forty-five minutes evaporated from Venice’s world as she manipulated the parameters, working every angle she could find to locate the suspect vehicle.
While Digger’s witness swore that the encounter happened at two o’clock, people never knew what real times were. Anywhere from 1:45 to 2:15 was routinely rounded to straight-up at the hour. Especially when the testimony came from someone who was supposed to be at a certain place at a certain time. Accordingly, Venice set her initial search to the sixty minutes that began at 1:30.
“Thank God I’m not looking for a Chevy or Dodge pickup,” she mumbled. She’d have never been able to winnow the number down.
She bolted upright in her chair as a thought smacked her out of nowhere. How did they know to grab the kids at the water park? Roman and Ciara weren’t supposed to be there at all. How did the kidnappers—she could bring herself to call them that now—know to lie in wait at the Shady Sun?
She quickly saved what she was searching, then shifted her focus back to camera-rich downtown El Paso. Back to 11:43 A.M., the last pictures she had of Roman and Ciara as they climbed into Mr. Alvarez’s RoadRunner car.
How long had she stared at this scene before, without ever seeing anything but Roman? Even Ciara had been invisible to her. Now she saw that there were other pedestrians on the street. An old guy on the corner appeared not to have any legs, and he seemed to be panhandling to passersby who made a point of not seeing him. A bus hovered around the top left of the screen. Venice wondered if that was the bus where Roman’s classmates were gathering with no one noticing that he was gone.
Ciara was standing inappropriately close to Roman, she thought. Were they holding hands? He was not quite fourteen, for heaven’s sake. Way too young for an unaccompanied date.
What about the other cars on the street? There were SUVs and pickups everywhere, but all she could see by toggling in and out with the zoom were American brands, plus one big Toyota.
Less than a minute into the video feed, Luis Alvarez showed up with his all-too-familiar Ford, driving right-to-left on her screen. He stopped at the curb, the kids got in, and the Ford drove away.
And there was the BMW. Only five seconds after the Ford left the screen, a silver SUV cruised through. She froze the image. The mounting bracket for the license plate was clearly visible, but the angle was wrong for the numbers. She progressed the video slowly, hoping that the image would clarify, but by the time the BMW cleared the frame, nothing came into focus.
Now she was on familiar turf. She’d already tracked Alvarez’s Ford through the streets of El Paso and the surrounding area. She knew exactly which cameras to switch to in order to keep the RoadRunner car in the frame. Now, she just needed to wait a little longer before switching. Had she not known already to look for the Beemer, she would not have been able to tell from the video that it was pursuing the kids. It was too straight a shot down at-grade roads that had no curves.
No, scratch that. The RoadRunner pushed a yellow light to get through, then the BMW raced through a red to keep up. Definitely the action of a vehicle in pursuit. Venice stopped the action repeatedly to try to get a read on the license plate, but it never worked.
New camera. Once again, the Ford with Roman and Ciara rushed a yellow light. This time, the light wasn’t even pink when they went through. Luis Alvarez plowed straight through a deep red light. And nearly got hit by an eighteen-wheeler that was rushing a left turn ahead of them. She imagined horns blaring.
But the BMW got cut off. At the top of the screen, Venice saw the Ford make a turn onto a side road, but there was no way the Beemer could have seen it.
The question remained, then: How did the kidnappers know where to find their prey?
That was obvious, wasn’t it?
She picked up the phone and pressed the speed dial for Digger.
Chapter Seven
Gail rapped on the heavy glass door to the War Room, and Venice beckoned her to come in. Gail took a seat at Venice’s right. “Patrick Kelly is a cipher,” she said.
Venice moved to close the lid on her laptop but didn’t. “Talk to me.”
“From what I can tell, he just sort of left a hole in the ether.” Gail opened the speckled notebook that had been her version of a personal digital assistant for as many years as she’d been in law enforcement. “I scoured the internet for the guy, and I went into some of the off-book sites that you’ve given me. He owns a bunch of companies, but the companies don’t seem to do anything.”
Venice shifted her gaze back to her laptop. Good thing she didn’t close it. “Give me some names.”
Gail ticked off the names of three companies.
“That’s enough to start,” Venice said. “Do you have EINs?” Employee information numbers were the corporate equivalent to Social Security numbers for tracking IRS data. They were also public record.
“I didn’t think to get them.”
“Not a problem.” As Venice typed, the commands and results were projected onto the 106-inch screen on the far wall to Gail’s right. In under a minute, they were inside the IRS tax records database.
“How did you do that?” Gail asked.
“Would you understand if I told you?”
“Good point. Isn’t this illegal?”
Venice gave her a look. Another good point. Security Solutions rarely colored inside the lines of the law.
Once inside, Venice took her time perusing the tax returns on the screen. After ten minutes, she said, “Give me the others you have. The other companies.”
Gail read from her notes. Eight companies in total. With that done, she sat quietly and waited for Venice to work her magic.
“Okay,” Venice announced with a final flourish of a keystroke. “Between the eight companies, Patrick Kelly makes seventy-three thousand dollars a year. Less than sixty after he pays his taxes.”
“If I read correctly, all of the companies are some form of consulting firm, right?”
“Yes.” Venice rocked back in her Aeron chair and folded her hands behind her neck. “Care to gue
ss what I pay for Roman to attend Northern Neck Academy?”
Gail waited for it.
“Sixty-three thousand.”
Gail’s jaw dropped. “A year?”
Venice arched her eyebrows. “And because Digger’s on the board, I get the friends and family rate.”
Gail regarded the screen again. “Kelly can’t afford that.”
“Not even close. Not from real business dealings, anyway. Maybe a different Patrick Kelly? It’s not exactly a unique name.”
“It’s unique at the address where he lives,” Gail said. “I already searched for others. Can you tap into the records of the Academy to see how he pays his bills?”
Venice shook her head. “Sadly, no. They are doggedly old-school. All records are manual. They don’t even have an email address, other than for marketing purposes. All communications are done the old-fashioned way.”
“Why on earth would they do that?”
Venice opened her arms to the screen on the wall. “Because of people like me. The Neck attracts students from many different backgrounds. Kids whose parents don’t relish publicity. When you think about it, keeping manual is kind of a smart strategy.”
“So, what—”
“Wait!” Venice lurched forward in her chair, and her eyes widened. “The application process for the Neck is pretty arduous. The administration is paranoid about getting jammed for tuition, so you have to submit all kinds of financial data. It’s almost like qualifying for a mortgage.”
“But all on paper.”
“In person,” Venice corrected. “It’s part of the interview process. The Neck keeps all the records.”
“But they’re in file cabinets. “How are you going to get access?”
It was Venice’s turn to wait for Gail to connect the dots.
Gail gasped. “Burglary?”
“You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”
Gail coughed out a humorless laugh. “Oh, my God, Ven. Seriously?”
“He’s my son.”
The number of reasons why this was a bad idea stacked up like dominoes in Gail’s head. Start with the fact that the school was in their own community. And that one of the chief benefactors was her boss. “What about security?”
“I can get past that,” Venice said. “Their electronic security is only slightly more advanced than their online record keeping.”
“Don’t they have a physical security guard, too?”
“You and the boys deal with that kind of thing all the time.”
Gail brought her hands to her head. “We can’t immobilize some old guy making minimum wage in a school.”
Venice hesitated. “We?”
“Hell, yes, we. If this is the way we have to go, I’m sure as hell not going to do it all on my own.”
Venice shook her head. “I’m not a . . . what does Digger call it? I’m not a tradecraft kind of gal.”
“Then think of another plan. If I’m going to do something stupid and against my better judgment, I sure as hell am not going to do it alone. Your idea, your burglary. Call it.” It was too easy for people with no skin in the game to command others to—
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
Suddenly, it felt as if there wasn’t enough air in the room. “What do you mean?”
“How many meanings to okay, I’ll do it are there? I’ll break into the school with you. It’ll be exciting. I’ve never done fieldwork before.”
Her words triggered a new pang of anxiety in Gail. She hadn’t thought Mother Hen would call her bluff. It was true. Venice had never done fieldwork before, and she’d had no training for it. There were nuances to entering and leaving a building in a way that left no traces that anyone had ever been there.
“When do we go?” Venice pressed. She looked genuinely excited.
The more Gail thought through the details, the more concerned she grew. “First of all, we can’t just go in there blindly. We need some form of intel. Whatever we can dig up.”
“I already told you I can knock out the security alarms.”
“I don’t worry about electronics,” Gail said. “I know you can take care of those like nobody’s business. It’s the human element that I worry about.” She thought for a few seconds. “What do we know about the staff?”
“I know the names of Roman’s teachers.”
Gail scowled. “That’s not going to help.”
“The headmaster?”
“We already know him. Washington, right? And he’s still in Texas.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Ideally, I’d like to know who the security guards are,” Gail said. “Can you imagine what would happen if someone tried to burgle our offices? They’d be shot to pieces.”
Half a second after she’d asked the question, Gail wished she could take it back. The reason they had the heightened security was because of an attack against Venice.
“Sorry.”
Venice literally shook it off. “You meant no harm,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I’ve seen their security people. They are not a polished group of tactical operators. They’re guys in blue uniforms and clipboards. I don’t even think they carry guns.”
“But they carry radios and cell phones.”
“Who are they going to talk to? During the day, a secretary in the main office is on the other end of the radio.”
“Maybe they have two guards at night,” Gail suggested. “Do you even know where the financial records are kept?”
Venice turned back to her computer and typed. “Watch the screen,” she said.
The projector blinked, and the image of a grand stone edifice filled the wall. Built to resemble an antebellum mansion, the front of Northern Neck Academy featured tall pillars supporting a roof that provided cover for an ornate set of stone steps that led to carved double doors.
“This is what expensive tuition buys you,” Venice said. “The administration trolls for diplomats’ kids, and that’s largely what they get. I guess this is what the world envisions when they think of America.”
Gail didn’t mention that the school building actually looked a little smaller than the mansion that served as the headquarters for Resurrection House, the residential school for the children of incarcerated parents that was anonymously endowed by Jonathan. and also served as Venice’s home.
The image blinked again, and they were inside an equally grand circular lobby that was dominated on the far end by a curved double staircase to the second floor. An elevated desk sat in the foreground on the right—more lectern than desk, really.
“That’s where the security guard sits,” Venice said, pointing with the arrow on her mouse.
“What’s that on the walls?” Gail asked. Someone had painted a giant mural, but she couldn’t tell what it depicted.
“That is the history of the Commonwealth in pictures,” Venice explained. “From John Smith to the Cold War, when I think the thing was painted.”
“Is it ugly up close?”
“As sin.”
“Where are these images coming from?” Gail asked.
“This is their marketing literature. The finance office is at the top of that staircase and to the right. See those double doors on the ground floor? Beyond those is the lower school, for the elementary-age kids. There’s another set of doors just like it on the second floor that leads to more classrooms for the little kids. The middle school and high school are in different buildings beyond this one. As far as I know, those are strictly academic buildings. All the administration works out of the main building.”
“And the headmaster? Where is his office?”
“Top of the stairs to the left. The office is amazing. Fortune Five Hundred CEOs work in closets compared to Dr. Washington.”
Gail chuckled. “Again, high tuition put to good use.” She scowled and leaned in closer to the screen. She pointed. “Click on that Information icon in the top right.”
Venice clicked it and a menu dropped down. Headings arr
anged horizontally, superimposed over a riding ring and three horses. ABOUT. ADMISSIONS. ACADEMICS. CAMPUS LIFE. SUMMER. SUPPORT.
“Click Support,” Gail said.
She’d hoped that the menu item would show support staff, but instead, they got a list of links to ways to donate money to the school.
“Nope, not it. Try Academics.” Security guards weren’t teachers, but she couldn’t see any other heading where she might find faculty and staff.
A waterfall of subheadings dropped down. Second on the list, just below ACADEMIC OVERVIEW, there it was: FACULTY AND STAFF.
Venice clicked the link. Administrators came first, then teachers and teaching assistants. Athletics got top billing over liberal arts and science, with security guards holding the rear.
“There they are,” Gail said, pointing to pictures and short job descriptions. “Cameron Castro works days, Carlos Palma’s on nights. I’m not sure what Desmond Pryor does as a contingent.”
“It says and weekends,” Venice pointed out. “He must work the off-hours and fill-ins.”
Gail leaned back into her chair and inhaled deeply. An idea was forming. She clapped her hands together once. “Okay,” she said. “We need to know everything we can find out about Carlos Palma and Desmond Pryor.”
“Not the other one?”
“We’re not going to go in during the day,” Gail said.
Venice smiled. “So, we’re really going to do this?”
Gail pointed to the computer. “Do what you do.”
* * *
For what Gail had planned, Desmond Pryor was a potential problem. He lived alone in a mobile home park in a unit that he rented by the month. He’d only recently moved to the area from Oak Brook, Illinois, and his only debt was a reasonable car payment and his rent. His credit score was better than most, and he had no criminal record.
“I’ve never seen anyone with so little to leverage,” Gail said.
“Well, he is the long shot,” Venice pointed out. “Carlos Palma is the one who should be on duty. Let’s see what we can find.”
Stealth Attack Page 7
