by Ty Patterson
She wriggled her toes, stifled a yawn and looked at her sister who was peering through the window.
‘We’ve got an appointment for tomorrow.’
‘I heard,’ Meghan replied, without looking back.
‘We’ll find her,’ Beth tried again.
Meghan didn’t reply. Beth looked at the back of her head and sighed. Meghan was the cool, analytical one of the two of them, whereas Beth was impulsive, she went with her heart.
She’s taking it harder than me, on this case.
‘You really need a boyfriend. He’d cheer you up.’
She got a middle finger in reply.
Bright sunshine greeted them when they landed at the small but busy Palo Alto airport. Meghan led the way outside, donned her shades and scanned the people outside the airport.
Many of them waited with name boards, some were family. A man hung at the edge of the crowd, his eyes on them. She caught his look, exchanged a nod, and walked towards him.
‘Laverne Marshall, ma’am.’ He shook their hands and walked with them to a line of vehicles. He pointed to a black Yukon and handed her the keys. ‘Call me when you don’t need it anymore.’
They had SUVs stashed all over the country, and in several international cities, at their disposal, stored in friendly auto garages. Each garage owner was an ex-serviceman, and in many instances, had been funded by their consulting firm.
Every vehicle was outfitted to the same specs as their rides in New York, and after every mission, the garage collected the vehicle, serviced it, and kept it ready.
Meghan thanked Marshall and when he had disappeared in the crowd of people, fired up the Yukon.
They went to Lian’s townhome on Ramona Street, in the evening, when the heat had lessened, and drove past. Meghan hung a right at a light, returned, and parked behind a Mazda.
Beth and she walked back to the townhome, maps in hand, smiled at a few joggers and cyclists. Just like tourists in a new town.
Lian Cheng Vaughn’s townhome felt empty. ‘She’s probably at work,’ Beth read her thoughts. ‘Lives alone.’
They walked the length of the street and on their return pass, Meghan looked at the townhome’s gate closely.
I could leap over that. No surveillance cameras visible.
Could be easier to talk to her tomorrow, she admonished herself.
‘It’s a mixup,’ the neatly dressed woman, Jenny, the nameplate on her chest read, looked up at them. ‘We have two Lian Chengs. The one you want is in Hong Kong.’
Meghan stared at the diminutive woman in disbelief. ‘Lian Cheng Vaughn, not Lian Cheng. She’s the one we want to speak to.’
‘Yes, ma’am. We have two Lian Cheng Vaughns. Our booking system got them mixed up. I’m sorry.’
‘We came three thousand miles for this?’ Meghan raised her voice. People turned around in the vast lobby of the air-conditioned, mirrored glass building that housed Hattexon Research.
She didn’t care. ‘We made an appointment yesterday. Your system could have alerted you; you could have called us and saved us the trip.’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’ Jenny looked contrite. ‘Is there anyone else who can help you? Perhaps someone from our marketing team…?”
‘No,’ Beth intervened before Meghan exploded. ‘When did Lian Cheng Vaughn move to Hong Kong?’
Jenny looked at them in surprise.
‘A long time back. She’s been in Hong Kong for nearly two years. She works out of our office there.’
Meghan climbed into the Yukon without a word, belted up, and gripped the wheel tightly.
‘Relax,’ Beth urged.
‘I am relaxed,’ she growled. ‘How did this happen?’
She didn’t wait for a response. She punched a number and after a few rings, Chang’s voice came on.
‘How can the NYPD help you?’
She ignored his attempt at humor and broke it down for him.
‘She was in California when Bennett and Johnson video-interviewed her. I’m sure about that. Hang on.’ He put them on hold and returned several minutes later. ‘Yeah, I spoke to them and checked their files. She was in Palo Alto, then. In Hattexon Research.’
Meghan ended the call and powered off without a further word. She floored it when they hit the open road, overtook a solitary pickup truck and slowed when she entered Ramona Street.
She slowed further and parked three homes away. She was out of the vehicle before Beth had unfastened her belt and strode to the townhome.
A quick look up and down the street. No one was visible. No curtains were twitching in neighboring homes. The wrought iron gate was her height. She vaulted nimbly over it, ignoring Beth’s cautionary warning, and landed inside Lian’s front yard.
Neatly kept garden. A small path leading to the house.
Probably a gardener on retainer who has access to the gate.
No alarms rang. No dogs barked.
She went to the front door and rang the buzzer. It stayed shut. There were no stacks of flyers or newspapers at the front. She went to the side of the house and peered through the first window.
Living room. Empty. Clean. No trace of dust.
She went down the side of the house and looked through another window. Kitchen.
Further down, an extension wall ran across the breadth, led to the neighboring home, and blocked her way forward. She returned to the front, and went down the other side. She had no better luck since the house widened and blocked any access.
She vaulted back and joined her sister who looked up from her phone.
‘Taxes and utilities are paid promptly.’
‘The house is in her name?’
‘Yeah.’
Meghan ran a finger through her hair, thinking of their next steps, when the first SUV appeared out of nowhere.
It rolled to a stop, a few feet away from them, scattering gravel over them. Two men leapt out.
What the…? Meghan shoved Beth away and dove to one side. Her right hand flickered, her Glock appeared, just as two more SUVs appeared.
More doors slammed. More dark suited men appeared, wearing shades. They spread out, drew their handguns, and surrounded the twins.
Meghan snapped a glance at Beth. Her weapon was out.
Outnumbered.
‘FBI,’ a voice shouted.
Chapter Fourteen
That voice. It’s familiar. Meghan’s gun arm lowered, not by much. She still remained crouched, alert, her eyes searching for the voice amongst the suited men.
A car roared past and its brakes squealed as its driver turned incredulous eyes to the scene. He sped up and disappeared when two grim-faced men looked in his direction.
Meghan gaped in amazement when a woman stepped in front of the men and commanded them to stand down.
Special Agent in Charge Sarah Burke! What’s she doing here?
‘You?’ she blurted. Way to go, Meghan, such a clever question.
Burke was dressed in a navy blue suit, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wrapped in a band. Her blue eyes were intelligent and a trace of humor was in them as she surveyed the twins.
‘We don’t need those, do we?’ she pointed at their Glocks.
Meghan holstered hers, Beth followed, a minute later, muttering something under her breath that sounded like, depends.
‘He’s not here. This is an FBI gig,’ Burke said when Meghan looked beyond her and guessed she was searching for Broker.
‘He said you’d be glad to see me,’ a ghost of a smile flickered over the FBI agent’s lips and disappeared.
The twins liked Sarah Burke. She was smart, as kickass as themselves, and gelled with all of them. She had surprised them both by revealing a wicked sense of humor, and that sealed it. She became Agency family.
Burke knew little of the Agency, deliberately so. She knew Broker, Zeb, the twins, and the rest, worked in some shadowy government outfit. She had met Clare once and knew that she ran the Agency. She also knew they undertook mission
s she hadn’t heard of.
‘It’s best you don’t know much of us. Don’t ask questions,’ Broker had told her one night, and she had agreed.
She was FBI. She had to go by the rules. The Agency didn’t have rules.
‘What the heck’s going on, Sarah? Why’re the heavies with you?’ Beth burst out, casually insulting the FBI agents with Burke.
Burke turned to the stony faced men. ‘It’s alright. I know them.’ She waited till they melted back into their vehicles and turned back to the sisters.
Her blue eyes lost their warmth, turned serious.
‘Calliope Minter was an undercover FBI agent.’
‘Cali was recruited by us when she was at Princeton, the first time, during her grad studies.’
Burke continued, when they gathered in Meghan’s hotel room, after most of the FBI agents disappeared in roars of engines and clouds of dust. Two men remained; they leaned against walls in the room, their shades catching the light as they moved their heads occasionally.
‘You recruited her? Why?’ Beth sat up straight and glared at the FBI agent.
‘Not me, personally. I’ll get to the why in a moment,’ Burke replied, unperturbed by the interruption.
‘You’ve heard of Chinese espionage in this country, haven’t you?’
Both sisters nodded. It was well covered in the media.
‘Corporate spying, hacking into government servers, we know of all those activities and in most instances, we’re able to close down those rings.’
‘About six years back, we became aware of a new kind of espionage.’
‘Stealing university research?’ Meghan got there before Burke finished, and got an approving nod.
‘Yeah. Especially those programs that are funded by the DoD. We became aware of leakage of classified research; it was only when we arrested the first student, a Chinese spy in California, we realized what was happening.’
‘We decided to be proactive, have our own agent embedded in university research programs. Cali fit the profile perfectly. She was multi-lingual, smart, and she had an inclination for further studies.’
‘You knew her research group had a spy?’
‘No,’ Burke replied and smiled briefly when Beth snapped her fingers,
‘You’ve got several such agents in place, all over?’
‘Yeah, but none of them discovered any espionage activity.’
Meghan’s brow furrowed as she thought of another angle. ‘This must have taken time, however. Cali fit your profile, but she still had to be trained…’ her voice trailed off.
‘We had time,’ Burke replied simply. ‘It wasn’t as if we were up against a time line. The odds would swing in our favor eventually, with the undercover network we were building.’
‘Cali traveled frequently to Virginia–’
‘We spotted that,’ Beth interrupted her again, looking at Meghan, ‘it was way before her disappearance, so we ignored it.’
Burke’s eyes took a faraway look. ‘Nothing happened during her grad studies program. The second time, she had Lian in her research group.’
‘Lian had Hong Kong connections. You suspected her?’
Burke nodded. ‘The research was of vital importance to the DoD. Lian’s presence rang a few alarm bells at our end. Her Chinese connections, frequent travel to that country. We thought we had something here.’
One of the agents swung his head and his shades rested on Burke for a moment; she resumed when he didn’t speak.
‘Cali got close to all the researchers in her group. We knew about Tiemann and tipped the cops. They didn’t act on it.’ A fleeting smile made an appearance on her face and transformed it. Made it youthful. ‘She became friends with Lian, visited her home in California a few times.’
‘We know all that, too,’ Meghan urged her on with a hand motion.
‘Cali called me one night, after her return from the last visit. She said she might have something for us. On Lian.’
‘What was it?’
Burke ran a hand through her hair in frustration. ‘We never found out. Cali was going to verify a few more details before we mounted surveillance on Lian.’
‘She was due to meet me in three days. Then she disappeared.’
Something doesn’t add up. She knows a lot of Cali’s life. Cali didn’t strike me as one who shared personal details. Meghan thought, as she watched Burke.
‘You had Cali followed, didn’t you?’ she guessed.
Burke jerked her head at the two agents. ‘Clem and Peters. They had eyes on Cali once she flagged Lian. To keep her safe. Just in case.’
‘You followed her the night she disappeared?’ Meghan asked the two men.
‘Yeah,’ the one who was Clem answered.
A phone buzzed. Burke’s. She held a finger up, wanting silence, glanced at it, grimaced, and left the room to take the call.
Clem straightened and drifted closer to the sisters. ‘We shadowed her, one behind, one ahead, or both of us on either side of the street. Frequently alternating.’
Standard tradecraft. How did they lose her?
Clem seemed to read Meghan’s thoughts. ‘That night, I was behind her. Peters was ahead. We followed her from her lab. No traffic. No pedestrians. It was easy to keep her in sight.’
‘She knew about you?’ Beth asked.
‘Nope. We were insurance.’ He didn’t glance in her direction, as if sensing her anger. ‘An ambulance roared past, lights flashing, siren sounding. The full works. I lost sight of her for a few seconds.’
‘When the street cleared, she was gone.’
Chapter Fifteen
Clem’s cell rang before Meghan or Beth could question him further. He turned his head and listened quietly and slid his phone back into an inside pocket when the call ended.
‘Burke wants us downstairs. Nope, she didn’t say why,’ he answered Beth’s questioning look.
The sisters filed behind the two agents who went down the small hallway to an elevator door. Peters jabbed the button to summon it and stood staring at the stainless steel doors.
‘You didn’t see the grab?’ Beth addressed his profile.
‘I wasn’t looking behind. I figured Clem had her in his sights.’ A muscle beneath his ear twitched, as if irritated by Beth’s piercing gaze.
‘How difficult is it to shadow a woman, a fellow agent?’ Beth muttered.
A dull flush flooded Peters’s face as he swung around angrily, jabbing a finger at her. The hallway was narrow, crowding the four of them; Peters’s finger poked Beth’s chest.
He withdrew his hand quickly, though not fast enough as Beth slapped it away, with a cold, ‘Don’t touch me.’
The red on Peters’s face darkened. His left hand half flickered toward the inside of his jacket, to where a Taser was holstered.
He didn’t get to complete his action.
Beth lunged forward, so fast that he couldn’t react, couldn’t even blink. She came inside his open stance, shoved him back with her left palm against his chest and grabbed the Taser with her right. She released it smoothly even as his hand was grasping at empty air, and pointed it at the FBI agent.
She heard the whisper of steel on fabric behind her and flicked her eyes at the steel doors. Its polished surface showed Meghan in her familiar crouch, her Glock aimed squarely at Clem who had one hand inside his jacket, the other raised above his head.
Peters stood frozen in disbelief. Anger and fear hadn’t reached his eyes. Not yet. Clem didn’t move.
The elevator came to a sliding stop and its doors whooshed open. It was empty. The mirror at its back looked on in mute silence at the tableau in front of it.
Beth waited a beat and then relaxed and whirled the Taser in her palm and handed it to Peters. Grip first. ‘We won’t talk of this.’
Peters’s shades looked at her and then down at the device. His face was white, his hand had the faintest tremble as he took the Taser and holstered it. He gave a short nod and entered the elevator. H
e had his game face on by the time he turned around and faced the doors. If it was normal practice for him to be easily disarmed by a woman, it didn’t show.
They went down the floors in silence and when the doors opened again, Beth stepped out first and then Peters.
Clem gestured courteously to Meghan who thanked him with a regal nod and walked out. Clem’s lips twitched. It could have been a smile.
Burke was waiting for them in the lobby, on a couch in the corner of the vast room, her presence and body language creating an island of privacy.
‘It was the director,’ she addressed her agents. She looked past them, at the twins. ‘Another case.’
The sisters seated themselves opposite her, waited for her to collect her thoughts and resume.
‘There isn’t much more to tell,’ Burke began, after a swift glance at the twins and her agents. ‘We suspected the ambulance to be the heist vehicle, but Peters and Clem were too far from their ride to give chase. They called it in. Informed the cops. But the ambulance got away.’
‘What of Cali?’ Meghan broke the short silence that followed Burke’s narration.
‘She’s still missing. No ransom notes, no contact from her kidnappers, but you know all of that. What you don’t know, what the wider public doesn’t, is that the FBI wasn’t contacted either. None of our undercover agents were compromised. No case was sabotaged, and Cali had knowledge of a few.’
They would’ve been, if Cali had been grabbed by another intelligence agency. They would’ve sweated her. Or worse, Meghan surmised.
‘So the Chinese weren’t involved?’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Burke agreed in resignation. ‘Not in Cali’s research program.’
‘What of Lian though?’ Beth asked curiously. ‘You had cause to suspect her. Of being a plant.’
Burke’s professional mask dropped. She turned her back on her agents and let an expression of weariness cross her face.
