The Kill Chain

by Nichole Christoff

  “I’m in the area for a while. General Schneider’s putting me on the task force investigating the breach of the Maryland lab. We leave to go over there once the team’s assembled. I’ve got less than twenty minutes before we head out. But I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  “Really?” I teased. “What do you want to talk about instead?”

  To my surprise, Barrett got serious all of a sudden.

  He sat up straight, gathered both of my hands in his own.

  “If this investigation goes well, this temporary duty could lead to an assignment here in Washington. I could get my career back on track. We could finally be together.” Barrett smoothed a lock of my dark hair that had come loose from my ponytail, tucked it gently behind my ear. “Jamie, we could make this permanent.”

  When it came to him and me, of course Barrett had been thinking about permanence. Barrett was a permanent kind of guy. He was the marrying kind.

  Unfortunately, I’d been married before, and so had he. Neither relationship had gone well. Those marriages had crashed and burned and left us broken.

  In the long run, that heartbreak had motivated me to pick up the pieces of my life, to become everything I was today. I liked what I’d become. I liked who I’d become.

  And I didn’t want to have to become someone else—to please someone else—ever again.

  “It’s getting late,” I said, determined to avoid such a sticky subject. “We’ve both got places we have to be.”

  “We do,” Barrett agreed.

  I listened hard for disappointment in his voice, searched for it in his face. I didn’t hear and I didn’t see it. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  “Of course,” Barrett added, “there’s just one more thing before we go.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This.”

  That’s when Adam Barrett gathered me in his arms. He pulled me close. And then he kissed me.

  Chapter 9

  When I spotted two plain white panel vans parked crosswise on the busy Georgetown sidewalk in front of my building, and when I saw the cluster of hard-faced FBI agents loading boxes into the back, I didn’t bother with the elevator.

  I took the stairs two at a time.

  On the fifth floor, I bolted into my office—just in time to see Special Agent McIlvoy handing Laura, my office manager, a sheaf of receipts for the materials he’d confiscated.

  There sure were a lot of receipts.

  “Jamie!” Laura exclaimed.

  McIlvoy turned.

  He scowled when he spotted me.

  “Catch you next time,” he said, and fell in line behind the last of his search team to saunter past us into the hall.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” I told him.

  McIlvoy halted on my doorstep. I might’ve had a rough night, but so had he. He resembled an industrial accident, with his slick hair giving off an oily sheen and his five o’clock shadow rough enough to polish diamonds.

  “Look,” he snapped, “just because you have congressional connections doesn’t mean you’re above the law. This is a matter of national security, and if I find out you’ve been obstructing this investigation, I’ll see you in front of a judge.”

  I agreed wholeheartedly with that point of view. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. Instead, I said, “You know, McIlvoy, I was wrong about you when we first met. Your forehead really is your best feature.”

  McIlvoy’s face flashed purple.

  He stormed off, leaving me alone at last.

  “I’m so sorry, Jamie.” Laura locked our frosted-glass door on the agent’s retreating back. “I couldn’t stop him.”

  “Did he get the contracts?”

  “Nope.” Daniel Adair, world’s best lawyer, emerged from my file room.

  “What did they really want?” Laura demanded.

  She was shaking, but it wasn’t with fear. A petite blonde with piercing green eyes, Laura knew all about standing strong to defend herself. She’d been only twelve when her mother’s brand-new live-in boyfriend decided to make a midnight visit to her bed. Laura had stabbed him in the eye with the mechanical pencil clipped to her math homework—and he’d split her lip with his fist. Despite that glaring evidence of use and abuse, she was arrested for assault, convicted, and sentenced to juvenile detention.

  The next time her mother chose a man and his rent money over her own daughter, Laura ran away. A women’s shelter, a GED, and three part-time jobs in Minneapolis, Minnesota, got Laura an associate’s degree and then all the way to a bachelor’s. A diploma in criminology and a burning desire to make a difference for underdogs everywhere brought her to DC—and that’s where she met me.

  I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her tight, grateful that she’d gone to bat for me and my confidential client list, and then I embraced Daniel. He might’ve gotten Laura’s call in the wee hours of the morning, but as usual, he still managed to look as put-together as a Brooks Brothers ad.

  “Thanks,” I told them both, “for keeping the wolf from the door.”

  “Those feebs’ll be back before you know it, girlie girl.” Matty Donnelly, a retired soldier in his own right and my right-hand man, offered his opinion as he walked out of my inner office. My spirit soared to see him. “You mark my word.”

  “I called Matty,” Laura explained, “just in case we needed more eyes and ears while the FBI was here.”

  “Good thinking.”

  I threw my arms around Matty’s thick neck, too.

  Born and raised in an Irish neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia, Matty had joined the army as soon as he could—and he’d served under my father for most of his career. As long as I’d known him, he’d had the figure of a fire hydrant and the candor of a court jester. And aside from Barrett, there was no one I trusted more.

  “I don’t think we’ll see McIlvoy again anytime soon,” I assured my associates. “Rumor has it a variety of federal law enforcement officials have now teamed up to follow other leads.”

  Matty snorted. “Who told ya that?”

  “A credible source,” I said, thinking of Barrett and the task force on its way to the Maryland lab. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still plenty for us to do.”

  Over coffee and Danish carried in from the patisserie up the street, I told the trio about Madeline Donahue’s after-hours visit, her supposition that Stellar Unlimited’s network was being held for ransom by a disgruntled employee, and her fairy tale that she needed me to watch her back at the payoff point. I went on to describe how she’d pulled a fancy piece of high tech from her coat. And how the goons we’d ended up meeting had seemed more hard-core than your average, run-of-the-mill hackers.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” Daniel said, shaking his head.

  “Those chuckleheads are lucky I didn’t go with you,” Matty asserted.

  “I’m lucky the FBI didn’t arrest me,” I said, calling it as I saw it. “They thought I was hiding the hardware and so did the army.”

  “So, the feebs tossed your place,” Matty said, “and the office here, just to get their hands on the goods.”

  “Pretty much. But they also wanted any leads I could supply—intentionally or not—about Madeline Donahue’s real identity and her present whereabouts.”

  Laura said, “I did see one of McIlvoy’s guys downloading a copy of the building’s security footage.”

  “They dusted thoroughly and lifted every fingerprint in your office,” Daniel added, “no doubt looking for Donahue’s.”

  “She didn’t touch a thing,” I told him. “She wore gloves the entire time.”

  “Bet she didn’t put her real address on the contract, either.” Matty grinned. “Stupid feebs.”

  “At this point, they can have her contract and welcome to it.” Because I had another ax
e to grind. “I want to know why she tapped me to go with her.”

  “Where do we start?” Laura asked.

  I smiled. “We start at the beginning.”

  From the word jump, Madeline Donohue—or whoever she truly was—had been insistent and consistent about one thing: the involvement of a man named Robert Fraley. Her story had started with him. At the arboretum, she’d even asked the creep carrying the 1911 about him.

  Now all I had to do was find Robert Fraley before anybody else did.

  Chapter 10

  Tracking down Fraley took the better part of the day, and by late afternoon Matty and I still hadn’t laid eyes on the man. We were getting close, though. At least, that’s what my gut told me when Matty parked his beaten-up Bronco across the street from a shabby garage conversion.

  Peering at the place over his steering wheel, Matty said, “Congratulations, girlie girl. We got ’im.”

  Despite Matty’s confidence, I wasn’t so sure about that. Thanks to a professional profile on LinkedIn, several Virginia Tech alumni newsletters Laura had found online, and the Commonwealth’s Department of Motor Vehicles, we’d discovered a Robert Fraley lived in an apartment behind a single-family home in an older section of Fairfax, Virginia—but we still had no idea if the guy living in this refurbished detached garage was Madeline Donahue’s Robert Fraley.

  This particular subdivision had seen its heyday during the Kennedy administration. Its patched-concrete streets curved in and out of faded cul-de-sacs. Brush and brambles had grown up between the properties, and a glade of ornamental bamboo had run riot in several side yards.

  That probably gave the neighbors plenty to fight about.

  The house that fronted Fraley’s rental was a cantilevered ranch, popular in the 1960s, but a little tired-looking now. A jumble of rolled newspapers lay on the welcome mat like a campfire waiting for a match. Five skinny windows, running from foundation to peaked roof, must’ve marked the great room. A table lamp in front of the center pane snapped on of its own accord. Deep in the house, so did the whiny grind of some talk-radio station.

  “Hope those guys went somewheres nice for spring break,” Matty remarked.

  “I just hope they don’t come home while we’re confronting Fraley.”

  “Copy that, girlie girl.”

  “Cover me.”

  I opened the Bronco’s door and slid from the truck for a little reconnaissance.

  After my adventure in the arboretum, Matty had refused to let me seek out Fraley on my own. Consequently, it had taken some wrangling to get him to agree I looked a lot more at home in this neighborhood than he did. Being a thirty-eight-year-old female, I could pass for a soccer mom living nearby or a daughter checking on her empty-nester parents.

  Matty, on the other hand, usually looked like a burglar.

  I began my intelligence gathering by strolling past the house next door. Fraley’s garage was offset on its lot, making the neighbor’s home nearer than the owner’s. A thick scrim of shrubbery, grown tall enough to mess with the cable drop strung from the utility pole at the corner, offered a fair degree of sound insulation.

  Around back, in a narrow asphalt alley choked with weeds and disintegrating into gravel, dilapidated privacy fences blocked the view of the residents to the rear. But an ancient Toyota Corolla sat parallel parked against the fence directly behind Fraley’s place. A crack in the car’s windshield resembled the San Andreas Fault, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the slashed upholstery had been chewed up and spit out by mutant rodents.

  At this point, I had no idea if the car was connected to Fraley at all, but just in case, I jotted down its license plate number in my leatherette-bound notebook. I copied the vehicle identification number, too. With that done, I completed my reconnaissance and climbed into the Bronco beside Matty as the sun slipped low on the horizon and twilight found its way between the homes.

  We waited until full-on night descended.

  Up and down the street, people returned home from work, yoga, and the kids’ karate classes. They parked their respective minivans in their respective driveways, checked their respective mailboxes, and headed into their respective houses without so much as a glance at us. Lights clicked on in kitchens and bedrooms. The lights came on in Fraley’s house, too. Someone drifted past the window mounted in the wall built in place of the garage’s original overhead door.

  At the side of his rental, an exterior sconce beside the entrance flicked on. A pizza deliveryman zoomed to the curb, got out of his car. Apparently, Fraley wasn’t much of a cook, or maybe he simply liked pepperoni pie on Friday nights.

  When the street was good and dark, Matty and I made our move. We stuck to the long shadows between the house and unruly hedge. While I peered in Fraley’s front window, Matty circled the place for a close inspection. Inside, I spied an abbreviated kitchenette, but no people. Like the rest of the neighborhood, the countertops and electric cooktop had been quite the thing in the sixties, but now were well worn and rather sad.

  Maybe such former glory made the rent about right for a disgraced robotics engineer.

  I rounded the corner, approached Fraley’s door. Matty met me there. He dropped flat to the aluminum siding, ready to give the bum’s rush if necessary.

  I pounded on the steel-core door with the side of my fist.

  Moments later, a man opened it.

  If he’d stood on tiptoe, he might’ve been able to look me in the eye through the thick lenses of his Coke-bottle glasses. He shoved them higher on his nose in a move that seemed all too familiar, and scratched the top of his head as he blinked at me. He’d gone bald except for a fringe of thick hair that ringed his noggin like a halo, and his potbelly put me in mind of a teddy bear’s.

  Just to see how he’d react, I said, “Robert, Madeline’s been looking for you for days.”

  “Madeline?”

  He peered past me like she might be standing in my shadow. That’s when Matty went to work, shouldered Fraley aside. Fraley fell back a step and we just cruised on into his home.

  “She thought you’d be at the arboretum last night, Robert.” I shut the door behind me, flipped the thumb latch on the lock. “Why didn’t you meet her there?”

  “I…I don’t know a Madeline.”

  “Oh, dear. I wonder if she’d be disappointed to hear you say that.”

  The living room of Fraley’s rental cottage was a cozy affair. His recliner and a short sofa that took its style cues from the Swedes were awash in the light of a television tuned to C-SPAN. That senator from Missouri—the one who always opposed my father despite being in the same party—had the floor. He nattered on about the Federal Communications Commission and his own personal plan to safeguard the nation’s communications infrastructure from harm.

  Across from the TV, a laptop balanced on the arm of the couch, mostly closed but not completely. Its screen gave off a luminescent sheen. On the coffee table, remnants of the pizza lay scattered across the open box. Two open cans of beer stood sweating on either side of it.

  “You’re not alone,” I said.

  Fraley’s head swiveled like he expected to see his best friend at his elbow.

  Matty hustled past him, stepped into a dim corridor that ran off the back of the room. He palmed open a door that proved to be a bathroom. Finding it empty, he disappeared down the hall.

  “Did Madeline send you?” Fraley asked me.

  “Madeline’s already sent me to do several things. I want to know why.”

  “She doesn’t tell me anything.”

  Fraley’s face folded in disappointment as he said that, and I believed him. But I wasn’t done with him. I hooked a thumb at the rectangular outline his smartphone made in the front pocket of his brown corduroy pants.

  “Are you saying you haven’t been in touch with her?”

 
“She told me to wait until she contacted me.” The corners of his mouth crimped in a frown. “She isn’t going to contact me, is she?”

  “Probably not. But you could call her. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  “No.” Robert blinked and shook his head frantically. “No, no, no. I can keep my end of the bargain.”

  “Well, after what happened to me last night, I’m not sure Madeline always keeps hers.”

  Fraley squinted at me through his thick glasses.

  “You’re telling the truth,” he said.

  “I am,” I promised.

  Jittery now, Fraley licked dry lips, but he wasn’t the only one feeling nervous. Matty hadn’t returned from the back of the house. If he didn’t put in an appearance soon, I’d need to go after him.

  “If Madeline doesn’t come through,” Fraley said, “can you make the deal?”

  All of a sudden, my palms got slick with sweat.

  I couldn’t screw this up.

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Tell me about the deal. And about everything you want done.”

  “I want to forget this ever happened,” Fraley blurted. “I want my own lab again. I’ll testify. I will. But I want immunity from—”

  Fraley didn’t get to say any more.

  Because, with a roar, a man charged at me from the kitchen.

  That room had been empty when I looked through the window only moments before. But that didn’t matter now. I set my feet in a fighter’s stance, registered that my assailant had a hard face, messy hair, and a maroon sweatshirt as he moved in fast.

  He tackled me with all the velocity of a freight train.

  We crashed into the coffee table, shattered it to splinters. I fought for leverage against the floor, tried to flip him, tried to kick him where it counts. I couldn’t do either. Forming a cat’s paw with my fingers, I jammed them into the soft bits of his face. He grunted.

  And clapped a thick cloth to my mug.

  Chemical heat burned my nose. It filled my mouth and made my eyes tear. My grip on him began to slip.

  My attacker sat up. He straddled me. He pressed the cloth into my face with both hands.