by Ty Patterson
Several years back, in Wyoming, where they had been living, Beth had been held hostage at her college as a gunman had run berserk.
Cops had stormed the building, and in the ensuing shootout, a bullet had lodged itself in her head.
She had survived but had lost all her memory prior to the shooting. Meghan had taken care of her and had been there for her in those trying times. Her sister had helped her rebuild her life.
‘Dissociative amnesia,’ Patten roused her from her memories. ‘That’s what you have. Memory may return, or it may not. I have the same. In your case, your sister supported you. In my case, there wasn’t any close family. Farrell’s law firm helped. In fact, they were the only ones who helped.’
‘You’ve done your research on us,’ Beth acknowledged drily.
Her shooting had been covered widely, but it had also been a long while ago. Only someone who was interested in them would have dug up the information.
‘My client didn’t become a billionaire just like that,’ Farrell didn’t hide his pride.
‘There are holes in your story, however,’ Beth said sharply, leaning forward, ignoring the lawyer. ‘Earlier, you said your father took you to the tunnels, to the restricted areas. You remember the tunnel collapsing. Then you were in hospital. You say you lost your memory, but you remember all that?’
‘I don’t,’ Patten answered. ‘That was what I was told, when I regained consciousness. In fact, I was found by a farmer outside the tunnel. I was dazed and confused. I don’t remember that either. My memory starts from when I woke up in the hospital.’
‘He is right,’ Farrell confirmed, seeing the skeptical looks on the sisters’ faces. ‘There are police reports, newspaper coverage, and hospital records. Cole doesn’t remember anything that happened before the hospital.’
‘You also said your father didn’t speak of the war. That you didn’t remember your mother very well. You described how the war shaped Billy Patten,’ Beth’s eyes flashed as she questioned the billionaire.
‘Ken Farrell,’ Cole Patten looked at his lawyer, ‘He filled in all those gaps for me. Told me the kind of person my father was. He spent weeks, days, telling me about my family. My not remembering my mother… that’s true. I don’t remember anything.’
Beth wasn’t swayed by the smile he flashed.
‘How do you know you are Cole Patten, in that case?’
‘That was the first name that came out of my mouth. I responded to that name. You know how that works. You and I, we lost our earlier memory, but somehow we know our identity.’
She found herself nodding. What Patten was saying was true. She knew she was Beth Petersen. She had always known that, despite her amnesia.
They kept questioning him, however. Got him to narrate his account several times, but Patten stuck to his story.
‘Look, my client has nothing to gain by lying,’ Farrell broke in finally, in irritation.
He’s right, Meghan thought. ‘If we take on your case’—Meghan pierced the billionaire with her gaze—‘we want access to all those reports. We want to speak to those doctors, that hospital, the Vietnamese police. We will need to know everything. Not just about you, but also about Chisholm Corporation. We’ll look into everyone associated with you. Even Mr. Farrell and his firm. You hide anything from us, you obstruct us, we walk away. We find you are Josh Patten, we’ll report you to the cops. We’ll actively help them take you down if you have knowingly indulged in criminal activity. Those will be our conditions. If we take you on.’
‘Of course,’ Patten said quietly, ‘You will probably find that not many doctors, police, Vietnamese officials from those days are around. Some would have died, some would have moved out.’
‘Why me? Neither I nor my firm are party to the investigation,’ Farrell blustered. ‘My client cannot reveal confidential Chisholm Corporation information.’
‘Those are our conditions.’
‘Accepted,’ Patten said, silencing his lawyer with a look.
‘We’ll let you know in a few days.’ Meghan rose, indicating the meeting was over.
Bwana and Roger joined the billionaire’s party as they went down the elevator.
The car could comfortably hold ten people, but their presence made it feel small and crowded.
‘I guess they need you around,’ Farrell said snidely, breaking the silence.
‘That was for us, sir?’ Roger drawled.
‘Who else?’ Farrell sneered.
‘You’re wrong, sir. Those ladies, they’re more than capable of looking after themselves. We were there just to make sure your thugs didn’t break any flower vases.’
The doors opened before Farrell could reply.
Roger waggled his fingers at them as Patten led them away, the lawyer glaring at them.
‘He doesn’t like us.’ Bwana scanned the street for threats out of habit.
‘Yeah. It’s not like we’re going to lose sleep over it. You think they’ll go for it?’
‘The sisters? Yeah. I could see they were interested, even though they don’t think much of Patten.’
‘Should be interesting times. We’ll hang around?’
‘We will.’
‘Discreetly.’
‘Yup,’ Bwana agreed. ‘Beth and Meg will tear into us if they suspect anything.’
Ever since the kidnapping, the rest of the operatives had an unwritten and unspoken rule.
At least one of them would always be around the sisters, when no missions were on the go.
The twins would rip into them if they found out, but that was a risk they were willing to take.
Bwana fished out his cell as he watched Patten and Farrell drive away. The goons didn’t go with him. They ducked into an inconspicuous vehicle and kept watch on the building’s entrance.
‘Looks like they want to know what the twins do.’ He spoke out of the side of his mouth, pretending not to notice the watchers.
His cell buzzed. An incoming text.
Did they agree?
Not yet, but Rog and I feel they will.
You’ll hang around?
Yeah. He’s put men at the entrance.
I noticed. Maybe I’ll pay them a visit.
Don’t. Beth or Meg might find out. I wouldn’t want to face a raging Petersen sister, let alone two of them.
He dropped his cell in his jacket pocket and hurried to catch up with his friend, who was heading to a coffee shop.
‘Where is he?’ Roger queried.
Bwana shrugged. ‘You know Zeb. He could be anywhere. That dude’s like furniture. You could walk past him and not notice him.’
Zeb was slouching on a bench, several car lengths behind the thugs’ vehicle. Shades and a ball cap concealed his face, and a loose jacket hid his lean figure.
An ice cream that he occasionally licked and a camera by his side gave him the appearance of a tourist.
He had returned from the Middle East, but hadn’t come back to the office.
After the sisters’ ordeal and rescue, he had reduced the time he spent in their building, trying to distance himself from the rest of the operatives.
He was a magnet for danger. He had enemies who would go to any lengths to get to him. That put his crew at risk. It didn’t matter that his team knew of the danger and worked with him because they wanted to.
Beth and Meghan didn’t know of his return. He had taken the rest of the operatives into his confidence, insisting despite their vehement protests that he would stay away for some time. Allow for any blowback from the Middle East mission to show itself. If it did, he would neutralize it, and only then would he show up at the office.
‘Chernobyl will look like a walk in the park if Beth or Meg finds out,’ Chloe had warned him.
Zeb hadn’t replied. He knew. However, protecting the sisters came first.
He discreetly watched the heavies in the car. They made no attempt to look like part of the street. They darted occasional glances at the building’s entrance and
spoke to each other.
The thugs didn’t bother him. They were close protection specialists who had been tasked with a job unfamiliar to them.
Surveillance was a specialized art. It required skill and guile, which they lacked.
It was the yellow cab ahead of their car that interested him.
The driver of that cab was reclining in his seat, a newspaper covering his face. To all appearances, he was asleep.
Zeb had strolled past the vehicle once and had noticed the tiny holes in the paper, through which the driver could see the building.
On a second pass, he had spotted the small camera jutting above the bottom of the window, pointed at the entrance.
Who are you, friend?
He noted the cab’s number and queried Werner on his cell.
No such cab number existed, the program replied.
Zeb had spotted Patten the moment he had arrived at the building. Roger had messaged him the billionaire’s purpose as he was making coffee for the visitors.
Is the cab driver Patten’s man? If so, why would he post his bodyguards too?
Zeb gave up trying to figure it out and decided to wait and watch.
He was good at both. Those were just two of the many skills he had.
‘What do you think?’ Meghan asked her sister as they washed and put the cups away in a display cabinet.
‘I don’t like him. Don’t trust him either.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ she smirked. ‘I can see you’re intrigued, however.’
‘Yeah,’ Beth admitted, ‘it’s a unique case. Proving who he is or isn’t, when there’s no proof.’
‘Let’s take it. It’s not like we have a lot on our plate. Zeb’s still away, and the rest of the team are on downtime.’
‘And, we can’t pass on the opportunity to mock Patten. Farrell, too,’ her sister added solemnly before cracking up.
Meghan high-fived her, grabbed her jacket and put on her shoulder holster.
‘We going somewhere?’ Beth asked, puzzled.
‘Yeah. To the cops.’
Chapter Five
Pizaka and Chang were their contacts in the NYPD.
The two men headed a special task force that investigated high-profile crimes that often included terrorism. They were high up in the NYPD’s hierarchy and had the commissioner’s ear.
The Agency had helped the cops’ careers by cracking several cases for them and allowing them to take the credit. The two cops had never forgotten and always helped out when they could.
That didn’t mean both of them got along well with the operatives.
Chang, who was laid-back and looked as if he had just gotten out of bed, was thick with the twins.
Pizaka, however, was a different story.
The taller cop was always impeccably groomed and had become a minor celebrity after writing several books. He thought the operatives were vigilantes, and despite the help he had received, he treated them with disdain.
His attitude suited the twins. It gave them the opportunity to rib him mercilessly.
Despite Pizaka’s prickly attitude, their relationship with the cops worked. They got fast-track access to NYPD resources and intel, whereas the cops got the credit for any cases the operatives closed in the city.
Meghan raced out of their building in their custom-built SUV. Black, with bulletproof glass and armored exterior, a souped-up engine under its hood.
‘We’re meeting Chang and Zak at One PP.’ Beth clutched the roof handle tightly as her sister careened around a truck and shot forward. ‘Not in heaven.’
Meghan blew hair out of her eyes, pursed her lips, and coaxed more speed out of the vehicle.
It was just past noon. The ever-present traffic parted for them as she raced down Seventh Avenue.
Until she let up and allowed the vehicle to slow down.
‘What’s up? I thought you were in a hurry.’
‘We have a tail,’ she replied tersely, her eyes flicking between the mirror and the vehicles ahead.
‘Brown car, looks like a Toyota, two men in it,’ she added as Beth extracted a battery-operated device from the glove compartment.
It had two lenses and projected the rear view onto a small screen.
She powered it on, raised it over her shoulder inconspicuously, and adjusted the focus without looking back, her eyes on the screen.
‘It’s them. The two heavies with Patten.’
No sooner had the words escaped her lips than Meghan braked hard, bringing the vehicle to a stop amidst New York’s traffic.
She leaped out of the SUV, disregarding the honking and swearing as drivers swerved past them.
She ran past a truck, and another truck, and approached the Toyota.
Her Glock appeared magically as she stopped and flowed naturally into a fighting stance, her gun covering the startled goons.
‘Raise your hands!’ she commanded.
‘You brandished your weapon in broad daylight, on a busy street,’ Pizaka sneered at them an hour later.
The cop looked like he had stepped out of the cover of a men’s magazine.
He was in a dark blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. The jacket fell straight, and his trousers’ edge could cut through butter.
His hair was parted neatly, not a strand out of place.
He looked down through his ever-present shades at the twins, who were sprawled out in their chairs in a conference room at the NYPD headquarters.
‘They nearly had an apoplectic fit,’ Meghan chuckled, unabashed.
Three NYPD cruisers had surrounded her and the Toyota within minutes of her drawing her weapon.
She and Beth had been escorted away, as had the thugs.
Chang and Pizaka had arrived half an hour later and had cleared matters up with the cops. They had then driven the twins back to OnePP.
‘Those cops could have shot you,’ Pizaka scowled. ‘It’s not a laughing matter. Shots fired on a New York street!’ He shuddered delicately.
‘And if you had been wounded, or killed’—a horrified look crossed his face—‘your friends would have gone to war.’
Chang looked sleepily at his partner and waited till he had finished venting.
‘It didn’t happen. Meghan dropped her weapon the moment our cruisers showed up. She did it to put the fear of God in them. Beth wasn’t even at the scene.’
‘Don’t you encourage them.’ Pizaka shook a warning finger. ‘They behave as if they own the NYPD.’
‘In a way, we do, Zak,’ Beth replied snarkily. ‘Know who’s good friends with the commissioner?’
Pizaka glowered at her, his lips tight. He didn’t need reminding. Zeb and Broker were tight with the NYPD Commissioner.
‘What were you trying to achieve?’ he bit out.
‘Putting them in their place. They’re Cole Patten’s men.’
‘Cole Patten? As in the billionaire?’ Chang’s eyes widened. ‘They said they were security people from some firm.’
‘Yeah, but employed by Cole Patten.’
She broke it down rapidly for the cops, and for a few moments, there was astonished silence in the room.
‘He really has no proof of his identity?’ Chang asked, amazed.
‘Well, he’s got the standard stuff. Driver’s license. Passport. Social Security number. But nothing like DNA or fingerprints to say he’s Cole Patten. No birth records. No blood records. Nada.’
Chang wandered out of the room almost lazily, and when he returned fifteen minutes later, he was clutching a sheet of paper.
‘No arrest record for him. Nothing for his brother, father, or any member of the family. There was one incident, when a few neighbors complained about noise levels at his home. Some kind of party. But that’s the only record we have of him. He’s clean.’
‘He has a good lawyer.’ Beth snatched the sheet from him and read it swiftly.
‘That makes a difference,’ he agreed.
‘Did he approach the NYPD with th
is allegation?’
Chang and Pizaka looked at each other and shrugged. ‘Not us. We don’t exist for him. Want me to check if he went to the commissioner?’
He drew out his cell and turned away before she could reply.
‘Wendy,’ he spoke softly, ‘I need to speak to the boss.’
‘It’s about Cole Patten. Yeah, him.’
He held the phone to his ear and straightened instinctively when the commissioner came on the line. His voice dropped even further as he asked his question.
He turned around when his call had ended. ‘Patten did speak to the commissioner. About a different matter, however.’
‘You know who the Russian is? The one who made the accusation?’ He paused theatrically.
Meghan sighed. ‘Tell us, Chang, before we beat it out of you.’
‘Gorbunov. Valentine Gorbunov.’
‘Yeah.’ He grinned slowly at their expressions. ‘The same guy who’s supposed to head the Russian mafia.’
Chapter Six
Gorbunov had an imposing build. He was close to six feet four, with wide shoulders, black hair that fell to his shoulders, and a craggy face.
His hook nose curved over lips that were twisted in a permanent sneer.
A long time ago, his face had been scarred in a knife attack. He bore the scar proudly on his left cheek, not attempting to remove it with surgery.
He was in his sixties, but looked fifteen years younger. A rigorous regimen of diet and hard work kept flab away from his body.
His black eyes glittered as he listened, his phone held close to his ear, and played with a paperweight.
‘Buy some more,’ he grunted when the caller had finished.
‘You heard me.’ His voice rose when the caller protested. ‘The price will fall some more today. Don’t. Question. Me. I. Know,’ he roared and crashed the phone into its cradle.
‘Yuri,’ he bawled.
The door to his plush Central Park office opened, and his assistant hustled in.
‘Release a press statement. The man who calls himself Cole Patten is an impostor. He is a fraud. All business contracts with him are void.’
