Benny’s clenched jaw ticked at her use of his childhood nickname and again at her vow. The last time she promised him something, she’d said she would wait for him forever. As far as he knew, that hadn’t happened. When he didn’t say anything, Ian took a step around him and extended his open hand to her. “Ms. Zimmerman, please come back to the conference room and we’ll talk this out.”
A growl from deep in Benny’s throat escaped his mouth and he ignored the warning look Ian sent him. “Her name is Maier, Katerina Maier, and you’re damn right we’re going to talk.” While the two of them walked back to the room, she heard him take several deep breaths before turning around and following them.
Upon reentering the room they had moments ago vacated, Ian took the seat he’d earlier planned on giving Boomer. The meeting had taken a dramatic turn before it even began, and he needed to take control of the situation before it blew up in their faces. Boomer sat in the seat across from Kate with his arms crossed and glowered at her. Sighing, Ian rolled his chair back a few feet to a small refrigerator in the corner and grabbed three bottles of water and put them on the table. They were going to be here for a while. “Boom? Why don’t you tell me how you two know each other and we’ll go from there.”
Benny waited a moment before his harsh words came out, his eyes never leaving hers as if she would disappear again if they did. “Boss, this is Katerina Maier. She was my best friend’s sister. She’s also supposed to be six feet under along with her parents and brother in a cemetery in Norfolk, so I don’t have the slightest fucking idea what she’s doing here. They were allegedly killed in a car accident a week before I left for basic training. Tell me, Kat—are all four caskets empty or just yours?”
She winced at his accusatory tone. It also hadn’t escaped her notice when he referred to her only as his best friend’s sister and not his friend as well. She heard the pain under the anger in his voice, but knew he’d never admit to it. Her own voice came out a little louder than a whisper as she stared at the table top in front of her. “Mom and Alex are there. The accident was real, but it wasn’t an accident. We were forced off the road and rolled down a hill. My dad and I barely managed to get Alex out before the car exploded, but my mom had been killed on impact. Alex died in my arms a few minutes later. Dad and I went into hiding afterward.”
She hadn’t realized she was crying until Ian put a box of Kleenex in front of her and she grabbed two sheets. When a sympathetic warm nose poked her arm, she gave Beau a scratch behind his ear as his master spoke. “I get the feeling this is leading to Witness Protection.”
Kate nodded at the man’s gentle and understanding statement. “Yes. It’s exactly where it leads to.” Not being able to look at Benny, she instead turned her gaze to the man who didn’t currently hate her. “My dad is…was a CPA with some questionable clients at the time. Mom, Alex, and I had no idea some of the people he dealt with weren’t on the up-and-up, but he drew the line at certain…crimes, I guess you can say. He said the money was too good to pass up, especially when he’d been starting his own accounting business, but his conscience wouldn’t allow him let some things slide by. He tried to know as little as possible about who he was working for because he figured the less he knew the better off he would be. It worked for him for over ten years.”
“What happened?”
She drew in a trembling breath, reached for one of the water bottles and took a few sips to quench her sudden thirst. “He found out he was doing the books for a member of a Russian organized crime family. Dad wasn’t the only one. They used several accountants and gave each the books to only a few businesses, so if one turned on them, he didn’t have access to all the accounts. There was one man in particular Dad was dealing with. He owned a few bars in Norfolk, Newport News, and Virginia Beach among other businesses, both legal and illegal.”
Ian raised an eyebrow. “Do you know the man’s name?”
Nervously nibbling on her bottom lip, she nodded. “Mm-hm. Sergei Volkov.
“Are you fucking kidding me! Sergei ‘The Wolf’ Volkov?” Kate flinched at Benny’s sudden outburst as he jumped up and sent his chair flying back into the wall. He started pacing the room, ignoring Ian’s angry glare. “Even I knew that bastard should be avoided at all fucking costs and I was a fucking teenager!”
She looked at him with eyes that begged him to understand something she, herself, had never been able to. When her father tried to explain it to her in the days after the crash, she’d been in shock and nothing would sink into her brain and stay there. After the U.S. Marshals gave them new identities and they began their new lives in hiding, her father never wanted to talk about it again. He didn’t want to be reminded how his stupidity and greed had cost him his wife and son, in addition to the life he and his daughter had known. “Dad swore he didn’t know who Volkov was until it was too late and he was in too deep. So he did what he was paid to do and tried to stay out of trouble. But then he accidentally found out they were selling teenage girls into white slavery. The summer and spring breaks in Virginia, the Carolinas and Florida were the perfect times for them to kidnap a girl and make her disappear.
“Dad got a bunch of receipts and stuff he was supposed to add to the books and he found an envelope with a list of…God…he said it was like a shopping list with the type of girls they were looking for. Specific hair color and eyes, fair skin, a certain build, that sort of stuff.” She shook her head at the thought of any girl being taken because of what they looked like. “There were also a couple of photos of girls tied up. Dad recognized one of them from the newspaper. Her parents were rich and were making a lot of noise about her disappearance. He found out later most of the girls who’d been taken were the type no one would be surprised about if they took off on their own. Mostly they were teenage hookers or runaways. He said when he realized what he had in his hand, he thought about how he would feel if one of those girls had been me. So he called the phone number in the paper and the FBI came to talk to him. They wanted him to wear a wire and get them more information, but dad refused. He was too scared for our safety. He told them that if he started asking any questions, Volkov would immediately know something was wrong because my dad only talked about the accounting when he met with him or his right-hand man.”
“But they found out about the information he gave the feds, didn’t they?” Boomer gritted his teeth as he sat down again and grabbed one of the bottle waters.
She nodded. “Yes, right before the accident. Apparently the FBI thought my dad knew more than he was telling them, or he might lead them to Volkov. They were following us to my grandmother’s that day. It was her sixty-fifth birthday and we were going to take her and my aunt out to dinner to celebrate. The agents were using a tracking device, so they could stay further back, and weren’t close enough to stop a car that came out of nowhere and forced us off the road.”
A shudder went through her at the memory. “All I remember is everyone yelling and screaming as the car rolled over and over down the embankment, and then silence. Dad and I got our seatbelts off and crawled out of the car. It was upside down. We managed to get Alex out through the window with the help of the two agents who’d been following us. They saw the dust and smoke and realized what happened. After we got him out and far enough away from the car, they went to get my mom. I remember wondering why they came back without her, shaking their heads and then the car exploded. I tried to run back to get my mom, but they stopped me. I was screaming and hitting them, but they wouldn’t let me near it. I found out later she’d died instantly from a broken neck.
“A few minutes before the ambulance and police got there, Alex took his last breath.” She swallowed hard, trying to clear the thick lump in her throat, while wiping away the flood of tears rolling down her face. “I-I don’t remember much of what happened over the next few days. I guess I was numb. Dad and I ended up being moved from one safe-house to another until the FBI decided we could never return to Norfolk and put us in the Marshals’ Wi
tness Protection Program. We changed identities and locations three times before we settled in Portland, Oregon. We’ve been Joe and Kate Zimmerman for the past eight years.”
At some point toward the end of telling her tragic story, Kate had closed her eyes, but her tears were still falling. Her voice had become little more than a hoarse whisper and she swallowed again, trying to regain her composure. Slowly she raised her lids and was relieved to see some sympathy in Ben’s hardened gaze. At least he knew she was telling the truth. “I wanted so badly to talk to you, to explain what happened, but they wouldn’t let me. When they came to give us new identities, I told them the only way I would agree to go was if our handler kept tabs on you and let me know how you were doing. He followed your career for me as best he could since a lot of it was classified. When I heard you were in the Naval Medical Center in Maryland with a bad leg injury, the only thing that kept me from flying to see you was my father had just been diagnosed with liver cancer. It wasn’t long before it spread and…”
Her words trailed off and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had gone unspoken. She was surprised when Benny spoke in a gentle, sympathetic tone. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Almost two months ago. The chemo and radiation did a number on him, but he lasted longer than the doctors expected.”
There was silence in the room for a few moments as what she’d been through over the past twelve years hung in the air. Finally, Ian cleared his throat and spoke. “You told our secretary you needed to hire us. Was it just a ruse to see Boomer or do you need our help? There’s obviously a lot more to your story we’re not aware of, but I would hope with your father’s death, it would be safe for you to come out of hiding.”
“I thought it would all be over after my father passed away,” she told them with a shake of her head. “But then I noticed I was being followed, and my condo was broken into and trashed.”
Benny had been looking down, but at her words his head jerked back up. “What? When the hell was this?”
Looking back and forth between the two men, she told them the details. “All last week, I was getting the feeling I was being watched. Then Friday afternoon, I got home from work and found my condo in shambles. The police said whoever it was had picked the lock. A few things, like my laptop, camera and jewelry were missing, so they assumed it was just a random burglary, but I didn’t think it was. Saturday, I tried to contact my handler at the Marshals, but was told he was killed in a car accident two days earlier. A new handler had taken over and wanted to meet with me, but with everything that happened, I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone there. So I grabbed a few clothes and money, and came to the one person I knew I could trust to help me.”
Anger returned to Benny’s face as his gaze flickered toward his boss. “Someone was looking for something.”
Ian nodded and rubbed his chin with his index finger. “But what? Why now and how did they find her after all these years?”
She cringed and whatever Benny had been about to say was lost as his eyes narrowed, focusing on her face. “How did they find you, Kat?”
“It was an accident.” She sighed, knowing she had to explain a few more things. “Dad couldn’t work as a CPA anymore when they changed our identity. In the beginning, we both worked odd jobs because we never knew when would have to change cities and names again. But after we settled down in Portland and two years went by without any trouble, our handler helped dad get his teaching license and he taught high school math. When he got sick, the teachers and students held fundraisers and stuff to help me pay for whatever his insurance didn’t cover. They were a big help to me. His students were always stopping by and visiting him.”
A small smile appeared on her face as she recalled how his students were always able to lift her father’s spirits. “They loved him. Anyway, when he died, I had him cremated and told everyone he was going to be buried back east with my mom and brother, but didn’t give them any details. I told everyone it was my dad’s wish to not have a funeral and I didn’t put an obituary in the paper, even though it would be in his new name. But the students arranged a memorial at the school for him. At first it was just supposed to be his students and fellow teachers at an assembly during school hours, but then it grew and they posted it on Facebook. A local reporter saw it and ran a story about the death of a well-liked teacher. It included a picture of dad taken at a school basketball game last year before he got too sick. I think one of his students took it not knowing my dad avoided having his picture taken because the Marshals told us to. By the time I saw it, it was too late. It was in the print edition as well as online and Facebook.”
“Shit. Any facial recognition program could have found it.” Boomer rolled his eyes and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Sometimes technological advances could be a bitch.
Nodding his agreement, Ian leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “But the question remains—what are they looking for?” His gaze went to Kate’s face. “Any ideas? Did your father keep something as evidence in case he needed leverage down the road?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “Not that I know of, but he gave me this,” she pulled a key out of a small inside pocket of her purse, “just before he died. He was kind of out of it at the end. Hospice had him on morphine, so half of what he was telling me didn’t make sense. When he gave me this key, he told me to go home again. I asked him what he meant and he just kept saying it was ‘the key to the wells’. I couldn’t get him to explain it.”
Ian took the key from her and inspected it. “It looks like a safety deposit box key. Did he have one at his bank?”
“I checked, but they had no record of it. Maybe I should have checked another branch or another bank. But there’s so many banks in Portland, it would take days to check them all. Should I start calling them? Would they give me the information over the phone?”
“No, you don’t need to call them. It’s not in Portland.” Ian and Kate both looked at Boomer in confusion. He grabbed the conference room laptop, pulled it toward him and booted it up. “It’s in Norfolk. You’re dad said ‘go home again’, so that had to be what he meant. I remember your family used Bank of America, like mine did, but…” He paused as he tapped a few keys. “Here it is. Not far from your house is a Wells Fargo Bank. ‘The key to the wells.’ That’s where we start looking.”
‘Your house’ he’d said, but the colonial was no longer hers. Some other family was living in it now. A strange girl or boy was sleeping in what was once her bedroom and some other parents were joking with their children at the dinner table. Did they change the color of the walls? Her mother had painstakingly picked out just the right hues to go with the furniture. Was some other teenager reenacting the scene from Risky Business, when Tom Cruise slid across the wood floor lip-syncing to Bob Seeger’s ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’? Alex always made her laugh when he did it. She shook off the bittersweet memories. “So what should I do? Just walk into the bank and ask if my dad has a box there? Will they let me open it?”
Ian tapped his fingers on the table. “Not yet. They won’t let you near it without proper ID and a death certificate in your father’s name…his real name. And even then, it might take a court order if your name isn’t attached to the box’s account.” He eyed Boomer. “I’ll give Larry Keon a call and get what we need. The court order might take longer to get, but we’ll worry about that if it turns out we need it. I’ll also have him get me everything the FBI has on this Sergei Volkov.” Having the deputy director, the number two man of the FBI, on speed dial came in handy at times and this was one of them. “In the meantime, we have to keep Kate…I’m sorry, but I have to ask…do you prefer I call you Kate or Katerina? After this is over, if it’s possible, are you planning on going back to your real name?”
She gave him a wistful smile. “I hadn’t given it a lot of thought. I never thought…I’d like to be me again, Katerina Maier. I miss her and the life she was supposed to have.” A life whi
ch was supposed to include Benny Michaelson. “But you can call me Kat, if you’d like. It was the one habit my father was never able to break. I was always his Kitty Kat.”
He returned her smile with an optimistic one. “Then ‘Kat’ it is and we’ll do everything we can to try to get your life back. But for now, we need to keep you out of the public eye. Are you sure you weren’t followed from Portland?”
“Actually, I was.” When she saw their surprised expressions, she quickly added, “But I got rid of them. About an hour out of the city, I started thinking about all the movies I’ve seen about people being followed by the bad guys or cops. And then I remembered about the agents who had a tracking device on our car and I got a little paranoid. So I pulled into a truck stop and convinced a couple of truck drivers that I was afraid my ‘abusive ex-boyfriend’,” she made finger quotes in the air with both hands, “may be using a device to stalk me. They looked under my car for me and found one by the trunk. One of the drivers was nice enough to take it with him and it’s somewhere in Southern California now.”
“Smart girl.” Ian dipped his head in approval of her survival instincts. “Good. Then until we get you the paperwork you need for the bank, we have to keep you hidden for now. There are bunkrooms and bathrooms upstairs here, and the compound is secure.”
“She’ll stay with me at my condo.” The look on Boomer’s face told them not to argue with him.
The corners of Ian’s mouth twitched, and Kat realized he’d figured out there was more between Benny and her than just the memory of a teenage boy and his friend’s sister. “Fine. But to be on the safe side, I’m calling Tiny and having him sit outside your place.”
Benny nodded his head. “Works for me.” At her confused look, he added, “Tiny is one of the bodyguards we use when we need one. He’ll watch our six…our backs.” He turned back to Ian. “I’ll double check her car for trackers then leave it here in the garage so it’s out of sight.”
Waiting for Him Page 3
