by Peter Sexton
She drove back to the Denny’s she had eaten at earlier and took her backpack into the ladies room. Since she had fallen asleep in the warm car, she wanted to check her hair and face before going into Earth’s Own.
She stared for a moment at the brunette with a bob and wire rim glasses, the woman looking back at her from the mirror on the wall. She considered her earlier thought about the age difference between her and Maren’s father. This new look tightened that age gap. At least by appearance.
After several minutes, satisfied with what she saw in the mirror, Miranda left the restaurant and returned to the parking lot outside Earth’s Own.
Miranda took her father’s Glock from her back- pack and placed it into a slim black-leather fanny pack she was wearing under her business coat. She reached into the backpack again and retrieved the access card she hoped would still get her into the executive offices. She took a long, deep breath before exiting the Town Car and moving to the side entrance of the building. She had used this entrance several times to visit her father during the time he was working here in Arizona, before Earth’s Own opened the research facility in California. Her father had laughed when he told her why this door was always propped open just enough to not allow the lock to engage. She could still hear his explanation: The smokers in this company would rather jeopardize security than have to go through the lobby and out the front to the designated smoking area.
Miranda’s plan hinged on finding this side en- trance open. But as she approached the door she found two men standing nearby. They both were smoking and chatting and didn’t notice her until she was almost right next to them. They halted their conversation and stared at her for a moment.
“Either of you spare a cigarette?” Miranda asked. “I thought I had another pack in my car, but I guess it wasn’t my lucky day.”
After another silent moment, one of the men produced a pack and tapped one out for her.
“It’s diet,” he said.
“What?”
He showed her the package and said, “Marlboro Light.”
“Diet,” Miranda said. “Cute.”
She took the proffered cigarette. “Thank you.”
“Light?”
She glanced at her watch, made a show of consid- ering it. “I’d better save it for later. I need to get back to my desk and make some calls before it gets too late.”
The man smiled and pulled the door open for her, and she thanked him as she strode into the building. She walked a short way down the corridor until she reached the service elevator. She pressed the call button and waited, all the while expecting the smoking men to hustle into the building and ask her to show some identification. They hadn’t come in by the time the elevator door slid open.
Once inside the empty elevator car, Miranda hesitated for a moment. She heard no sign of their approach, but she knew she wasn’t home free yet. She closed her eyes and crossed her fingers and passed the access card down through the reader on the button panel. When she opened her eyes she saw that the buttons for the top three floors of the building (the floors that required security clearance for access) were now lit and active. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding, then reached out and punched the button for the eighth floor. The door closed and the elevator car started its journey upward.
With the eighth-floor corridor empty and quiet, Miranda proceeded unhindered to Steven Trammel’s office. The fact that the access card had gotten her this far gave her a certain level of confidence and hope. She was as good as in, but there was still one more door ahead of her. She slid the card again, this time through the panel next to Trammel’s office door, and the little red light adjacent the door turned green. She twisted the knob and pushed her way inside.
It was a somewhat plain, typical executive suite: mahogany desk and bookshelf, desktop computer, photocopy machine, big black-leather chairs, and a small bar situated on the west wall. The room looked almost sterile: no pictures or plants, nothing whatso- ever hanging on the walls. There was only an area rug sporting the Earth’s Own logo. Miranda moved around to the desk and sank into Trammel’s chair.
She began to rifle through desk drawers. Four of the five yielded typical desk contents: phone directo- ries, files, pens, paper, staples and other supplies. The fifth drawer was locked. Miranda returned to the first four drawers. She pulled each one out as far as it would come, felt around the sides, and underneath, looking for a hidden key. Just as she was about to give up and figure out another way through the lock, her finger touched a key that had been taped under- neath the fourth drawer. Within moments she was removing the contents of the fifth drawer and setting it all down out of her way. There was a checkbook, a personal journal, a Glock (similar to though larger than her father’s), and an address book. Under the address book she found something that gave her pause. She stared at it for a long time before taking the envelope into her hand.
The destination address had been written by her father. The mechanical-looking strokes that Edward August referred to as his handwriting were as unique and identifiable as a pristine set of fingerprints. There was no return address. Miranda studied the face of the envelope for several moments before realizing it had no postal cancellation. Though it appeared to have been prepared for delivery, this letter had never traveled through the U.S. postal system. She checked the flap and found the envelope had once been sealed but the edge had been cut open. She removed the single sheet of paper she found within. Again she recognized her father’s handwriting on the bottom of the page.
Miranda froze when she heard movement outside. She reached into the fanny pack and placed her hand on the grip of the Glock. Its presence made her feel safe. But an instant later it was quiet again, and Miranda turned her attention back to the sheet of paper in her hand, now more certain that her intrusion remained undetected. She studied the paper carefully but couldn’t figure out what any of it meant. It was simply a small group of lists, each with a series of letters and numbers with nothing to indicate their possible significance.
041302-A-5617
030702-A-9458
042202-A-4321
122301-B-6603
111901-B-3248
092101-B-5412
081701-B-1566
050201-C-9421
072501-C-7122
062201-C-2134
4632A6-F
4633B2-F
4711B2-F
4712B2-F
4742B2-F
4745B2-F
27-EO-5223
27-EO-5224
27-EO-5225
31-EO-1225
31-EO-1226
31-EO-1303
MRE.X2.7434
MRE.X2.7444
MRE.X3.6266
MRE.X3.6676
MRE.X7.3123
MRE.X7.3124
Under this grid, her father had written:
This is a very small sample. Refer to my notes from 12/23/99
And below that was an address. Using the machine in the corner of the office, Miranda made a photocopy of the document before returning the original to the envelope and putting it back into the desk drawer. She then replaced the rest of the contents and taped the key back where she had found it.
There was still one more thing she needed to do before she left the Earth’s Own headquarters.
Sixteen
“I ran diagnostics on the system twice,” Brian Meyers said across the phone line, “it’s not a mal- function.”
Robert Anderson considered what the supervising guard at Earth’s Own Flavors headquarters had just told him. He glanced at his watch and made a mental calculation. Trammel had not abandoned surveillance of Gillian Blackwell’s home until late afternoon. There was no way he could already be back in Arizona. Not yet.
“How many guards do you have on duty right now?”
“Three, counting me.” There was a slight hesi- tation on the phone line, before Meyers asked, “What do you want us to do?”
“You’re sure the
breach is in Trammel’s office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long ago was it detected?”
“Fifteen minutes ago. I wanted to run diagnostics on the system before I bothered you at home.”
“And there hasn’t been an exit swipe on Trammel’s entry panel?”
“Negative, sir.”
“All right. Lock down the building, then you and the other two men get up there. She may have gotten herself in, but I want to make sure she doesn’t get out.”
“She?” Meyers said. “You think it’s the August woman?”
“Has to be. And I want her held until I get there, understand? I’m on my way.”
“What if she doesn’t cooperate?”
“Make her cooperate. Tie her up and gag her if you have to. I need her to answer some questions.”
“And if she resists?”
“Don’t let her resist.”
Brian Meyers and the two other guards took the service elevator up to the eighth floor, weapons drawn. Anxiety buzzed around them like static electricity.
“You think she’s gonna put up a fight?” the second guard asked.
Meyers said, “She’s gonna be scared shitless when she sees us coming. Prob’ly piss her pants when she spots a gun.”
The second guard gave a nervous laugh.
“Do you know if she’s armed?” the third guard asked.
“Mr. Anderson said she prob’ly is.”
They were out of the elevator now, nearing Trammel’s office, taking positions on either side of the door. Meyers counted down from three on his fingers, access card poised above the security entry panel. He saw perspiration on the forehead of the third guard, a worried look on his pale face. On “one” Meyers slid the card through the slot, pushed the door open, and rushed inside.
But there was no one there.
Miranda heard a commotion coming from Trammel’s adjoining office, as she sat at Robert Anderson’s computer, searching through his email files. She glanced at the door, then the clock on the wall, then the false-wall passageway she had just come through that allowed secret access between the two executive offices. Judging from the amount of noise coming from Trammel’s office, Miranda estimated at least two or three people. Probably guards, certainly armed.
She was running out of time.
Miranda removed a high-capacity flash drive from her pocket and plugged it into Anderson’s computer. Then she dragged the folder with the electronic files she wanted onto the new icon that popped up on the screen and started the copying process. The transfer was only halfway complete when Miranda heard movement from directly behind the secret access panel. She removed the Glock from her fanny pack and quietly placed it on the desk next to the keyboard.
Fifty percent complete.
Miranda knew she needed to switch to Plan B. Exiting into the main corridor was no longer an option, and now it sounded like the secret passage back into Trammel’s office was out too. When she heard the two-way lock slide back on the hidden panel, she picked up her father’s gun.
Seventy-five percent complete.
She took her locket between her fingers and caressed it. She thought of Maren as she continued to look back and forth from passageway to computer screen. She willed the computer to speed up and finish duplicating the files. If the guards got in before it was done, she would have no choice but to try and shoot her way out of it.
Plan B.
She felt beads of perspiration begin to dot her forehead. Her head swung from passageway to computer screen, praying she had enough time. The guards would be in the office with her in seconds.
Copy complete.
She removed the flash drive from the computer and pushed it into the pocket of her slacks. Then she moved away from the desk and quickly lay face down on the floor, the pistol in her hand under her belly.
Maybe she could still get out of here alive.
“What the hell?” one of the guards said, as they hustled into the room where Miranda August was lying in the middle of the floor. Someone knelt next to her.
“She’s alive,” the kneeling guard said, as he rocked her gently by the shoulder, possibly trying to turn her over. Miranda kept her body as limp and heavy as she could. There was more movement around her, more chaos.
“What do we do?” another guard asked.
“I don’t know.” There was a brief pause. Miranda heard an anxious tremble in the voice. “I need to get back on the phone with Mr. Anderson and see how he wants us to handle this.”
Miranda remained quiet. She heard the kneeling guard rise and a single set of footsteps start to leave the immediate area.
“Meyers, where you going?” the other guard asked. “There’s a phone right there.”
“The building’s locked down. No outgoing calls from anywhere but the switchboard at the security desk in the lobby.”
“Oh, perfect!”
Miranda heard the sarcasm in the second guard’s voice.
“I’ll radio back when I find out what Mr. Anderson wants us to do.”
The footsteps exited. A nervous silence followed.
Then: “Who is she, anyway?”
“I’m not sure.” A third guard.
“She doesn’t look like the picture Mr. Anderson showed us. That woman was younger and had long, blond hair. This ain’t her.”
Neither guard spoke for a time. If Miranda had any chance of getting out of here, she had to move fast, do it now before the first guard returned. If she could get out of this office she could leave the building through the emergency exit at the south end of the main corridor. Getting down to the side door she had come in through was too much of a gamble. She didn’t want to risk being trapped coming out of the stairwell or the elevator.
Miranda shifted her weight very slightly, stroked the trigger guard of the pistol with her index finger.
“Shouldn’t we do something?” one of the guards asked. “What do you think’s wrong with her?”
“We don’t do nothin’. We’re just supposed to watch her.”
“She ain’t going nowhere.”
Miranda moaned, then gasped as though she were struggling to breathe.
“Holy shit!” There was fear in the voice. “She’s fucking dying, man! What should we do?”
“She’s not dying.” Louder than the other voice.
“All of a sudden you’re a paramedic?”
And then Miranda started to convulse.
“Oh, fuck, man. Maybe you’re right.”
“I’m getting Meyers on the radio. He needs to get back up here.”
When one of the remaining guards knelt next to her and touched her arm, Miranda swung around and got to her knees and had her weapon pointed at his head before he knew what was happening. She was surprised by the swift precision of her own move- ments, hopeful that her new Plan C might actually work and save her life. Save all their lives.
The guard with the gun to his head pulled his own gun from his holster and tossed it aside even before being instructed to do so. The other guard froze with his hand inches from his two-way radio.
To him, Miranda said, “Take the radio off your belt and throw it over there,” nodding toward the corner of the room.
The guard complied.
“Now your gun.”
But this time he shook his head. “I ain’t gonna do that.”
The guard with the gun to his head said, “Do it, man.”
The armed guard hesitated, looking from Miranda to his partner. Now on her feet, Miranda lifted her elbow as she pressed the muzzle of the gun directly to the side of the guard’s head, careful to keep her finger off the trigger. She hoped he wouldn’t realize how badly her hand was shaking.
“Don’t make me do this,” she said.
“Fuckin’ do what she says, man.”
“No way, Pruitt. I drop my weapon and we’re both dead.”
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Miranda said truthfully. “I just want to get out of here a
live.”
“We’re just supposed to believe you?” the guard with the gun said. “How do I know you won’t kill us both as soon as I toss down my gun?”
“You’re gonna have to trust me.”
The man hesitated.
Pruitt said, “Just throw down your fucking gun, man. We don’t get paid enough for this shit.” Then after a beat of silence: “This ain’t a movie, man. Come on!”
The other guard nodded, held up his left hand, fingers splayed wide, and slowly began reaching to- ward his weapon with the other hand.
“All right,” he said, “you win. I’ll get rid of my gun.”
“Do it slow,” Miranda told him, remembering how they do it on TV cop shows. “Thumb and index finger only.”
Just as his fingers had almost reached his gun belt, a voice barked from the radio in the corner.
“Unit one to unit two.”
Startled, Miranda turned toward the sound. The instant she took her eyes from the armed guard, she knew she had blown it. She had gotten this far, had almost made it out with new information she hoped would prove to be vital, and was now going to die because she lost her focus, because of a stupid mistake. Miranda felt heat from the sudden surge of blood pulsing through her veins. She swung back toward the armed guard and caught only a flash of light from his weapon as she heard the deafening explosions of gunfire.
Seventeen
From the security desk in the main lobby, Brian Meyers heard a crackle over his two-way radio. Then two loud pops that sounded like gunshots.
Through the phone, Anderson yelled, “What the hell was that?”
