Shelter From the Storm

by Peter Sexton

“You’re kidding.” Miranda ignored her toast and looked over at the paper. “What are they?”

  “I’ll bet even money that the second and third column of numbers correspond to product batches.”

  “What are product batches?”

  Sarah leaned forward and used her pencil as a pointer. “This F could be the F in Faber’s, the EO could be Earth’s Own. My guess is that these are specific lot numbers. Food companies use numbers like these on their products so they can keep track of batches, shipments and destinations.”

  “How sure are you that’s what they are?”

  “Pretty sure. A quick trip to the grocery store will confirm it. I’ll compare the format of these numbers to the ones on the actual products.”

  “But they’re pulling it all off the shelves. There won’t be anything to—”

  “They’re only pulling Faber’s off the shelves. Earth’s Own isn’t currently part of the recall; it should still be in stores. All I really need is one to compare to, anyway.”

  Miranda managed a smile, then took a drink of her juice. “You weren’t kidding when you said you work better to music.” She took a small bite of her toast, struggled to force it down. She wasn’t going to be able to eat after all. She set the slice of bread down and pushed the plate away. “What about the last list? Any ideas?”

  “Evading me for the moment,” Sarah admitted. “Little bastard. But I’ll bag it. Puzzles aren’t very hard to figure out. It’s not that different from when I’m trying to figure out ways to hack into a computer system.”

  Miranda nodded. Sarah was one of the most gifted hackers she had ever known. Miranda relaxed a bit as she watched her friend labor over the remaining list.

  She felt safe here. Safe and comfortable. For the moment, at least. She felt like she could take a deep breath and stop running for her life.

  Twenty-Four

  “How much do the police know?” Toni Lee asked, the morning following the shootings. Lee sat across from Robert Anderson in his temporary office on the fourth floor of the Earth’s Own Flavors building.

  “Not much,” Anderson said.

  “How much is ‘not much?’ What exactly do they know?”

  “I told you, they know very little. I made sure of that. They know only what I want them to know.”

  “You told them it was Miranda August who was here last night?”

  “Everything the media is reporting they got from the police. And everything the police know, they got from me.”

  “You’re certain it was the girl?”

  “Certain enough. No one else has any reason to be snooping around.”

  “The police seem to be agreeing with you.”

  “They’ve cooperated with us in the past on different matters. There’s no reason to suspect they won’t continue to cooperate now.”

  “Any other casualties besides the two guards?”

  “No.”

  “How did you explain your man Meyers? Why’d she let him live? If she executed the other two, why not him as well?”

  “I explained that the building was in lock-down and that the only phone that would work for out-going calls was the switchboard phone in the lobby. I told them he was down there calling 911 when the shooting started. Meyers will corroborate.”

  Lee nodded. “You think they bought it?”

  “Absolutely,” Anderson said. “Like I told you, they’ve cooperated with us in the past.”

  Lee thought about it for a minute. Then she asked, “Where’s Meyers now?”

  “I told him to take a couple of weeks off.” Anderson paused, staring hard at Lee. “He under- stands he’s not to talk to anyone, especially not the press.”

  “He staying at his home, or did you send him somewhere?”

  “I saw no reason to send him anywhere. He’s not going to talk to anyone.”

  Lee made a mental note to retrieve Meyers’s home address from his personnel file before she left the building. Anderson was beginning to leave too many loose ends.

  “What is it?” Anderson asked.

  Trying to keep her interest in Meyers from her face, Lee ignored Anderson’s question, and said, “From how they played it out on the evening news, it looks like everything can be pinned on August and his daughter.”

  Anderson smirked. “It couldn’t have worked out better if I’d planned it.”

  Lee thought Anderson looked pretty proud of himself. She watched his face crumble as she burst his bubble.

  “So what did Miranda August get while she was here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  His response came back too fast. Instinct told Lee that Anderson had hoped she wasn’t going to ask about this.

  “From within this building. What did she get? She obviously came here with an agenda. What did she get?”

  “Nothing.” Another quick response. “I don’t think she was here long enough to get anything.”

  “You don’t think?”

  Anderson was offering an explanation when the door to the office opened and Puckett strode in. Anderson immediately redirected his attention to the young man. “Since when do you just barge into my office unannounced?”

  Puckett stopped halfway across the floor, eyes now locked on Lee, apparently confused by her presence. He turned back to Anderson and said, “What’s going on? What the hell’s she doing here?”

  “We’re having a meeting,” Lee answered before Anderson could speak. Her body remained absolutely still, apart from the movement of her lips. “Get out.”

  “Fuck you!” Puckett snapped. “You don’t give me orders. I called you in. You work for me.”

  “That’s enough!” Anderson said. “Go on, leave us.”

  Puckett shook his head in defiance. “We need to talk; we need to talk right now.”

  Lee said, “I told you to get out.”

  Puckett turned on her, nostrils flaring. “And I told you to fuck off, bitch!” He reached under his coat, presumably for his weapon.

  Rising from his chair, Anderson shouted, “Puckett!”

  But Lee was already on her feet, her tall, muscular body moving swiftly and effortlessly. With one fluid motion, she had Puckett on his knees. Then, with both hands grasping his hair, she slammed his face down onto her knee and broke his nose.

  Puckett howled in pain. He tried unsuccessfully to pull himself away from Lee.

  Two more swift movements and she had thrust his gun into the waistband of her slacks at the small of her back and had a combat knife pressed against his throat.

  “Lee!” Anderson shouted, “that’s enough. I’ll handle this.”

  Toni Lee ignored Anderson. She had Puckett on his back, the blade pressed a little harder against his neck. When she pulled the knife away, there was a thin line of blood visible just above his shirt collar.

  “I told you we were in a meeting,” Lee said, concealing the knife as swiftly as she had drawn it. “And I told you to get out.” She had her left hand resting on Puckett’s chest, holding him down with her weight. “Next time you think about fucking with me,” she said, patting the side of his face with the palm of her right hand, “think again. Because next time I’ll rip out your fucking throat.”

  She slapped him hard to illustrate her point before she rose to reclaim her seat. She wasn’t even out of breath. If not for the up-turned chair and Puckett staggering to his feet, anyone entering the office at that moment would never have suspected what had just taken place.

  Anderson threw Puckett a handkerchief, which he used carefully to dab at his face. Then he pulled the bloodied cloth away and stared at it for a moment.

  “You broke my fucking nose,” he snuffled. More blood dripped onto his shirt.

  Lee didn’t respond to Puckett’s declaration.

  Anderson said, “That’s quite enough. Now leave us to our meeting, Puckett. I’ll call for you when we’re done here. Go get yourself cleaned up.”

  Puckett hesitated. He turned to Lee and said, “You gonna give me ba
ck my gun?”

  She looked up at him without moving her head, an absolute economy of movement.

  “I haven’t decided.”

  Puckett stared at her, then turned back to Anderson.

  “Mr. Anderson?”

  “Just go,” Anderson said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Puckett threw one more glance Lee’s way. He looked about to say something, but seemed to think better of it and left without another word.

  Anderson sat back down behind his desk.

  “You were about to tell me what Miranda August took from this building,” Lee continued, as if the interruption had not even occurred.

  Anderson flinched, tried to recover.

  Lee stared at him and waited.

  Finally, Anderson reached into his briefcase and brought out a single sheet of paper. He set it down in front of Lee.

  “She might have gotten a look at this,” he said, “maybe even made a copy of it.”

  Lee took the paper into her hand, scanned the data found on it, then looked back at Anderson.

  “Where was this?”

  “Drawer in Trammel’s desk. He said this letter had been under his address book, but when I found it it was on top of the book. He’s adamant that someone must have moved it.”

  “What the hell was Trammel doing with it in the first place? And what was he hanging onto it for?”

  “Must have gotten it from Edward August.”

  “He never thought it might have been a good idea to destroy it?” A brief pause. “Do we need to worry about him?”

  Anderson didn’t respond.

  “What about your computer? She get into it?”

  Anderson, deflated, nodded. “I’m fairly certain she did, yes.”

  “Fairly certain?”

  “I found some duplicated files on the hard drive when I went through it.”

  “Explain.”

  “Duplicate files in a separate folder, as though she was gathering them together to copy.”

  “Did she?”

  “There’s no way to be certain. Maybe she copied them but didn’t have time to delete the folder from my computer. I have to assume that she did,” Anderson conceded.

  “So what did she get? What were the files?”

  “Nothing damaging,” Anderson said. “Some lists, phone numbers, some emails. Nothing she can put anything together from.”

  “What lists?”

  “Lot numbers for some of the altered baby food product, both brands. But the lists themselves will tell her nothing. There was no text or legend explaining what exactly those lists were. To her they’d be nothing more than a bunch of random letters and numbers.”

  Lee looked down at the sheet of paper still in her hand and studied it a moment longer.

  “Anything else she could have gotten?”

  “I doubt it,” Anderson said. “Like I said, I don’t think she had very much time before her presence was detected.”

  Lee rose and dropped the sheet of paper onto the desk. She gave Anderson a long, pointed stare.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She reached behind her back and produced Puckett’s handgun. Anderson appeared to have for- gotten that she had taken the weapon away from the young man. She moved it this way and that in her hand, studying the light reflecting off the blued steel.

  “Can you believe that coked-up little prick actually tried to pull this on me?” she asked.

  Anderson said nothing. He continued to stare at the pistol.

  Lee finally set the weapon down on the desk with the barrel pointed directly at Anderson, then took a step back and said, “I hope you’re telling me everything about what the girl might have gotten. You know I hate surprises.”

  Twenty-Five

  “I don’t think I like what you’re telling me,” the voice on the other end of the secure cell phone said. Toni Lee didn’t like what she was telling her caller either. She continued to listen as she walked across the concrete parking structure to her car, phone up to her left ear.

  Inside the cockpit of her black 1996 Chevrolet Impala, she said, “So what do you want me to do now?”

  Lee waited out a long silence before the caller said, “Tell me precisely what files the girl got from Anderson’s computer.”

  “I can’t say with any certainty what she got, or that she actually did get any. All I know is what Anderson had on the computer. She may have taken all or none of it, depending on how much time she actually had before they detected her presence. Anderson seems to believe she wasn’t in there very long.”

  “Then tell me what files she may have had access to.”

  Lee ran her caller through a detailed list of every relevant file Anderson had on his computer.

  The caller said, “What kind of password pro- tection did he have?”

  “None that I could see.”

  “Jesus!” A sigh. “That dumb careless son-of-a-bitch.”

  Neither said anything more for a long moment. Lee turned the key and the powerful V8 engine roared to life. She drove away as she waited for her caller to say something more.

  Finally: “Any reason to believe our operation has been compromised?”

  Lee hesitated, unable to decide how best to answer. She thought about Meyers and the damage he could do if he decided to talk to the police. Or to the media. She thought about Miranda August out there running loose, uncertain of exactly what infor- mation she carried with her. Lee didn’t know what to say.

  “Oh, hell! We have less than a week before we commence the final stage of the operation, and now you’re telling me the whole thing might just blow up in our faces.”

  “There’s a good possibility—”

  “I don’t want to hear about possibilities, Lee. I want to hear about certainties.”

  “Yes, sir. I believe I can get this all cleaned up without the need to abort the operation.” Lee was confident she had spoken the truth.

  After waiting through a long, silent minute, the caller said, “Anderson goddamned assured me he had everything under control; he said everything was going according to plan; he guaranteed me that the product would be delivered on schedule.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Lee said, because she could think of nothing better to say.

  “And then I get a call from Edward August, during which he outlined our operation almost step-for-step. An operation Anderson assured me August had absolutely no knowledge of. The fact that August even knew to call me, or had obtained the number to my private line, should have indicated to me how wrong Anderson had been.”

  “I know.” She had heard most of this complaint before.

  Lee spotted a Starbucks and pulled into an open parking space. She remained in her car and listened to more silence before her caller finally continued.

  “How confident are you that you can clean this all up before the delivery date?”

  “I can handle it,” Lee assured him.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good.” A beat. “All right. You do what you have to do to make this headache go away. We need the operation to proceed as scheduled. We need the product delivered, and we need that troublesome little bitch out of the picture. I’m finished pussy- footing around with her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Lee,” the caller continued, “if Anderson impedes your progress in any way, any way at all, put a bullet in his fucking brain.”

  Twenty-Six

  Sarah Gustafson was still working at her dining room table, with several empty soda cans crowding her workspace. Miranda’s flash drive was plugged into Sarah’s laptop computer. Beside the computer was the photocopy with the four lists. A business name and telephone number had been written on a PostIt attached to the sheet of paper. Miranda wondered if her friend ever slept.

  “Okay, so what is Your Postal Partner?” Miranda asked, reading off the PostIt.

  “A postal box rental place in California. You know, ship and r
eceive packages, pick up your office supplies and stuff.”

  “That was their address on the bottom of the paper with the lists?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “How’d you find their phone number?”

  “The Internet,” Sarah said. “The world at your fingertips.”

  Miranda simply nodded. “How do you think that place figures into all this?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah admitted, “but it must.” She lifted the sheet of paper, studied it as she spoke. “It has to be important otherwise your father wouldn’t have written the address here. I’m going to call them in an hour when they open and see what I can find out.”

  “What about the reference to his notes from 12/23/99?”

  “The day Maren was born,” Sarah said, obviously recognizing the date.

  Miranda nodded.

  Neither woman spoke for a moment.

  “My father didn’t even start working for Earth’s Own until February of 2000.”

  “I still don’t know the importance of the date as it pertains to these lists, but I’m going to figure that out, too. First thing, though, is to learn everything I can about Your Postal Partner. Most of those places are online so customers can pay rental fees and manage account information. It’s child’s play to hack into systems like that. I’m going to do a little digging around before I call them.”

  Twenty-Seven

  At 10:13 a.m., approximately thirteen hours after the shootings at Earth’s Own headquarters, the last of the crime scene technicians had packed up and left, and the members of the media no longer seemed com- pelled to linger. Lee had been gone from Anderson’s office for ten minutes.

  Robert Anderson leaned forward and took a caramel from the dish on his desk and unwrapped it while waiting for his call to be answered. Puckett came on the line after the fourth ring.

  “Come into my office,” Anderson instructed him. He hung up without waiting for a response, then popped the candy into his mouth. Within a minute there was a knock on his door and Puckett walked in. Though he’d washed away the blood and changed his shirt, his nose remained red and swollen. He glanced tentatively around the room before entering further.