Second Chances (Athena Group Novel Book 1)

by C. W. Stokes

Chapter Twenty Four

  Several days later they were all gathered around the conference room outside of Liz’s office. In front of them were several files, photos and the thumb drives that Shelby had processed. She pulled up photos of Natasha Sokolov.

  Shelby began. “Natasha is twenty nine years old and grew up in the Ukraine. She previously worked for the Federal Security Services in Russia. That was before she decided to go rogue and work for the highest bidder. It would appear that honor now belongs to Aleksei Yakov.” She pulled up additional photos. “Natasha is now one of his assassins. We thought Ivan Petrovsky was the assassin, but it appears that he is something altogether different.” She paused.

  Liz asked. “What do you mean?”

  “We know Ivan Petrovsky as an assassin and an eraser. He has been making people disappear for many years, but he has been tailing Aleksei Yakov.” She paused.

  Tabby interjected. “What else do we know about Petrovsky?”

  “From what I can gather by tracking his activity over the past year he doesn't work for Aleksei. Who he works for is something I’m trying to figure out. Every time he shows up it’s usually to cover up an incident. My gut instinct is that he works for the SVR Foreign Intelligence Agency.” Shelby paused. “If he’s not SVR Foreign Intelligence, then he’s a Spetznas MVD. I’d bet my life on it. There’s a unit of the Spetznas that it is almost impossible to obtain information on them.” She stopped. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service is responsible for intelligence and espionage activities outside of the Russian Federation. The Spetznas are the special forces for the Russian military.

  Alex spoke. “Do we have any information on Aleksei?”

  “Aleksei has been elusive to say the least. There are no pictures of him anywhere.” Shelby told her.

  “So why would Petrovsky cover up for Aleksei if he works for the SVR?” Alex asked.

  “I believe that he was there to retrieve Natasha and to cover up anything she may have done. After spotting him in the club the other night we should have known that Natasha was in the area. He would retrieve her and put Douglas Oleg out of business.” Liz said.

  “Right. Oleg has been a thorn in their side ever since he left four years ago. He was the reason that one of Aleksei’s men was arrested and clearly he wasn't going to go underground as they had hoped. So they sent someone to get rid of him and Petrovsky was there to intervene. Natasha just happened to get there first.” Shelby said.

  “Do we have any additional information on the girls in the files that Jo was able to retrieve?” Alex asked.

  “As of right now, I haven't been able to locate them. It’s like they don’t exist. I ran their information through the databases with no hits, and without pictures I can’t run their images through the facial recognition software. I'll go through the thumb drives and extract each one into a photo still that will allow me to scan for those images, but that will take some time.” Shelby said.

  “Ok, Shelby get started on that and let us know as soon as you have anything.” Liz told her.

  “Certainly” Shelby gathered all of the information and started shutting down the multimedia equipment.

  “Tabby, I want to see you in my office.” Liz spoke before turning to Shelby. “Are you alright? I know you haven’t been feeling well, and I don’t want you making yourself sick. Please take care of yourself. You don’t need to work into the middle of the night and early into the morning to try to solve this. It'll still be there in the morning.” Liz looked her over.

  “I’m fine Liz, really. Just an upset stomach, and it’s probably a bug of some kind.” She told her.

  “Alright” Liz turned and walked out. Tabby followed her. Jo and Alex were looking at her.

  “What?” she asked them.

  “Oh. Nothing” They both just grinned at her. She gathered all files and walked out. Walking into her office, she laid the files onto her desk. No matter what she did or how long she worked, her thoughts of Max always seeped into her days. At night, he tormented her in her dreams. She wanted to call him, but she figured if he wanted to talk to her, he would have called. He had called the night that he left, but she hadn't been ready talk to him. What if that had been her only chance? She couldn’t think about that right now. She had plenty to occupy her at the moment.

  She pulled up the information from the first thumb drive that Jo had retrieved and began to extract the images from the file into individual pictures. She had a total of twenty three images. She scanned the faces into the facial recognition program and began the scanning. Who were these lonely looking faces?

  She spent the next six hours going through each thumb drive extracting images and feeding them in to be scanned. She rubbed the back of her neck and realized how tired she was. Her back had ceased to hurt several hours ago, and her stomach decided she was never going to eat again. She got up and closed up the console. The programs would work over the next several hours and send her a notification if it came upon a match. She went upstairs to try to get some rest. A nice long hot bath might be a good thing too.

  She walked into her apartment, and Amanda was lying on the couch watching TV. “Hey Manda.” She sat down next to her daughter. Amanda paused the show she was watching.

  “Hey Mom. You're working late.”

  “Yeah, I got caught up in doing some research.” She hugged Amanda and got up to go into the kitchen. “I have a sudden craving for ice cream.” She called out to her daughter. Amanda came bounding into the kitchen.

  “We have everything we need to make sundaes.” Amanda chimed as she opened the freezer and pulled the ice cream out. She pulled out the whip cream, chocolate syrup and cherries, while Shelby got the nuts out of the pantry.

  Shelby took the whip cream can. “Manda turn around and open your mouth.” Her daughter turned and looked at her with suspicion. When she saw the can, she opened her mouth and Shelby squirted whip cream into it. She couldn’t help but laugh at her. She hadn’t done that since Amanda had been little. Then she squirted it into her mouth, and they couldn’t help but let out the giggles. No matter how tired she was Amanda could always lift her spirits. They finished up their sundaes and cleaned up the kitchen.

  Amanda went off to bed, and Shelby decided it was time for her long hot bath. She went into her bedroom and took off her clothes. She walked into the bathroom and started running the water into the tub. She sprinkled some bath salts into the water. Lighting candles around the bathroom, she turned the lights off. Pulling her hair up into a clip, she sank into the warm water resting her head on the back of the tub she was able to relax and let the scent of peppermint and vanilla swirl around her. The warmth seeping into her made her think of Max. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the warm feeling.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  A month had gone by since the explosion at The Entropic Club and she still hadn't heard from Max. Liz had told her that they were able to find more evidence despite the explosion. They found Douglas Oleg and Patricia Young’s bodies inside the club. Douglas had been shot in the head execution style just like Patricia. There was no sign that Natasha or Ivan had even been there. They were still not sure where they had escaped too.

  Shelby decided to track down and figure out what Roger had been using the $25,000 for each month. Her virus was working its way through his network and as long as there were no problems there she could concentrate on the money trail. She pulled up the information that she retrieved from Oleg’s thumb drives. There was a list of names and dates. The names didn’t mean anything to her so she fed them into their database. There were a few hits. The girls appeared to be inpats from other countries working for Hawk Enterprises. She looked into his corporations but didn't see any records for any of the women in his global employment services. All the girls were the same age and she had a sinking feeling.

  Corporations all over the world contracted with different companies to provide expat/inpat services. These services allow foreign nationals to live in another country for a period o
f time and work. For all intents and purposes Hawk wanted it to look like these girls were inpats, but there was no paper trail. For tax purposes there must be extensive documentation of all expatriate services.

  She called Liz. “Hey Shelby, what’s up?” Liz asked.

  “Liz, I’ve been looking at the money transfers that Roger has been making over the past year. The information on the thumb drives appears to be a list of names that are for inpats from other countries. However, I can’t find any employees in his global employment services with these names. Nor have I found any recent inpats into Hawk Enterprises.”

  “Shelby, how old are the girls?” Liz asked warily.

  “They all appear to be in the age range of eighteen to twenty. But that’s not a definite. I wasn’t able to find any information in the databases for these women.” She told her.

  Liz sighed. “Do cross references of the other women on the thumb drives and see if there is a match between Oleg’s other clients. I’m afraid that Roger was one of his clients. He couldn’t get anyone locally, so he branched out. The question is what happened to these girls?”

  “Alright I’ll go through the information and let you know what I find. I have the same feeling you do. That’s why I called. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t letting my opinions cloud my judgment.” She hung up.

  She was feeling queasy and just couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that was hanging over her. She turned to her console and pulled a picture of her sister up on the screen.

  ###

  Monica had just graduated high school and getting ready for college. She got a scholarship from Hawk Enterprises to work in his office that summer and would intern while she went to school. She was guaranteed a job once she graduated from college.

  She had been so excited that she was on the fast track to having the career she had dreamed. Within a few months she noticed some changes about Monica. She was working late hours and wouldn’t come to family dinners. She insisted that she was working and it was important to maintain her scholarship.

  Shelby had been so dedicated in her college career at MIT that she understood why Monica felt it necessary to work so hard. But when school started in the fall Monica had decided not to go. She was assured by Roger Hawk himself that she would have a lucrative career right there at Hawk Enterprises working with him.

  Monica had also fallen in love with someone. She couldn’t stop talking about him. He was someone that she worked with so she wouldn’t tell anyone who he was. He bought her gifts and took her to fancy restaurants. The night that Monica had lost her virginity she knew that she was in love. That’s what she told Shelby.

  Within six months of working with Roger, Monica was dead. She had been killed in a car accident. That’s what the authorities had told her parents, but Shelby hadn’t bought that. They told them that she had been drinking and lost control of her car. Her car had gone off the bridge into the cold lake in late December. What the authorities didn’t know was that Monica didn’t drink.

  At the funeral, Roger Hawk showed his condolences and had actually offered her a job. Monica wasn't even cold in the grave, and he had offered her sister a job to replace her. Shelby knew there was something wrong and immediately took a dislike to Roger Hawk. He had a sense of entitlement to him. But the way he looked at Monica’s casket, she knew immediately that he was the one she had been involved with.

  She had watched him after the funeral. He had a beautiful wife, but there was no affection there. They both seemed so cold, and she knew that night that he had something to do with her sister’s death.

  ###

  She closed the picture of Monica and got busy cross referencing the names on the thumb drives and there it was. He had been paying Douglas Oleg for a new girl each month. Why a new one every month? Where were these girls now? Definitely something she will figure out.

  There was a knock on her door and Alex walked in. “Hi Alex.” She picked up a package on the table and handed it to her.

  “Thank you Shelby. This means a lot to me.” She told her.

  “Alex, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Hopefully this will be the information that I need.” Alex turned to walk out.

  “Did you know that Ross had a twin brother?” Shelby asked her.

  Alex stiffened as she turned to look back at Shelby. “No, I didn’t.” She was visibly shaken. She turned and walked out the door.

  Shelby shutdown her console, and went upstairs to fix something for her stomach. She hadn’t been able to eat and she was tired all of the time. As she got on the elevator she was thinking that she never got sick. She figured that it was just the stress, but there was only one other time that she had been sick like this. That was when she was pregnant with Amanda. She stopped suddenly. No way! Oh, no….the night that Max had left when they were in the training room. She dropped her forehead on her desk and just sat there.

  The next day she scheduled an appointment with her doctor. She arrived early for her appointment. She was sitting in the waiting room and saw all the young women. She was feeling old compared to them. She was only thirty five years old. The nurse called her back into the examining room. Dr. Tompkins came into the room and examined her. She instructed her to go into the bathroom and pee into a cup so she could do a pregnancy test. What was she going to do? She was scared and excited all at once. She had a feeling of déjà vu and she instinctively put her hand on her stomach.

  A short time later the doctor confirmed what she already suspected. She was pregnant. What was she going to tell Amanda or Liz for that matter? The doctor left her a prescription for prenatal vitamins and something to help with the nausea. She went downstairs to find Liz and break the news to her.

  ###

  “Shelby, are you happy about this?” Liz asked her a short while later.

  “At first Liz I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I mean Amanda will be going to college soon and I’ll be raising another child as a single parent.”

  “Shelby, you have to tell Max.”

  “I know I do, but I can’t right now. He hasn’t bothered to call or contact me in any way since the night he left.” She rubbed her temples. She had the beginnings of a raging headache.

  “You know that they have been busy with the investigation and internal affairs breathing down their neck.” Liz told her.

  “Yes, Liz. I’m aware of that. Apparently he can’t get over what he saw in my office. I just don’t get it. John has some idea of what we are doing, doesn’t he?” she asked.

  “John knows what I want him to know. Sometimes less is best, especially when dealing with straight laced bureau employees.” Liz said.

  “Maybe so, I’ve just never given a second thought to what we are doing. I’m going to go back upstairs and lie down for a little bit.” She went upstairs to her apartment.

  ###

  When she walked into her bedroom, she lay down and began to cry. She hadn’t cried since the night that Max walked out. Now she had a part of him growing inside her. Amanda walked in and sat down on the bed. “Mom, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  She sat up and looked at her daughter. How was she going to react to the news? She dried her tears and scooted next to Amanda. “I’m pregnant.” Amanda started laughing. She had expected several different reactions but laughter wasn't one of them. “What are you laughing at?” she asked her.

  “Mom, I figured you were pregnant. You’ve been sick and not sleeping well. Hello? It doesn’t take a genius.” Amanda was teasing her. “Besides the way you and Mr. Taylor were always together and looking at each other. P-lease.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Did you just roll your eyes at me?” She poked her in the arm.

  “Mom, I’m seventeen years old. We’ve had the talk, the school has had the talk and besides I think it’s great. I’ve always wanted a brother or sister. Of course it’s a little late, but I still like the idea. You are an awesome mother and this kid is going to be spoil
ed rotten.” She jumped off the bed as she said. “R.O.T.T.E.N!”

  Shelby watched her run out of the room and could only shake her head in amazement. Her daughter had grown up and was a wonderful young lady.

  ###

  Over the next several months she finally got back into her old routine before Max came into her life. Before she knew it the holidays were around the corner and her morning sickness had subsided, but now she was eating everything in sight. Tabby, Jo and Alex all declared that they would be the godmothers of this child. Again, spoiled rotten.

  Amanda was getting ready for the Thanksgiving Holiday with Steven’s family. This would be their first Thanksgiving apart and she was feeling a little lost. They were closing TAG for the week so everyone could go visit families or take vacations. She hadn’t decided what she was going to do this year. She would probably stay in and watch a marathon of Murder, She Wrote and veg out on the couch. They rarely got the occasion to do just that. They were always busy working, training or on an assignment.

  Liz walked in, “Hey Shelby, what are you doing for Thanksgiving since Amanda is going to be gone?” she asked her.

  “I am just going to stay here and take it easy.” She told her.

  “I tell you what, why don’t you go to Progresso for the week. The weather is still nice. The warm sun will help rejuvenate you and I can guarantee that no one is staying in the house next door.” She smiled.

  “How can you guarantee that?” she asked.

  “Because I bought the house.” she quipped.

  “Nice, actually that’s not a bad idea. It would give me a chance to get away from everything and think.”

  “Good, I’ll make the arrangements.” She watched Liz walk out of her office. She felt relief and was glad that she was going to be away from all of this during Thanksgiving. She really didn’t want to be here and reminded of what she didn’t have.