Prologue
Some days are dull. Some really get your attention, and a few make you wonder what in the hell ever possessed you to get involved. Today is definitely already in that last category.
The sun isn’t up yet. I’m standing in the front yard, pinned by something like half a dozen spotlights on what feels like half the police cars in the
world. I’ve got my hands in the air and I’m about to get down onto the ground at the orders of the approaching SWAT team member. Over on the other side of the front walk, Alec is facing another half dozen or so spotlights and going through the same routine, which is anything but routine for either of us.
I’d just had my house shot up with automatic weapons, been shot at personally, and I’d put half a dozen rounds into the truck that had brought the shooters to my front doorstep. Trying to protect me, Alec had added his own. The dogs in the doorway I was desperately attempting to keep safe were upset, to say the least, and if they twitched the wrong way, they were likely to be killed by the cops.
So what in the hell had possessed me?
Chapter 1
People talk to me. Sometimes, usually, they do it with their voices, and they always do it with their body language. It’s partly a knack I was born with, and partly a skill I’ve worked very hard to develop. I usually have very little trouble getting people to open up and tell me all sorts of things, and I use that ability shamelessly, I have to admit.
Today, my professional life seems to be taking a serious turn for the better, as I’m expecting Raymond Escarton Fields, the Family CEO. That
may not sound like a big deal, but for me, as a Family member, trust me, it’s huge. The Family is simply that, a family. It’s very secretive, but it’s not any sort of crime syndicate or the like, simply a family that’s hundreds of years old, far older than the Rockefellers or even the Rothschilds. Think of thousands of cousins, all around the world. It’s organized as a corporation, so it’s got a CEO. He’s responsible for investing the Family fortune.
Just the idea of his coming to my office was unsettling for me. The office is in one of these little houses along East Speedway in Tucson, near the university. It’s a handy place to be, because I’m in the same neighborhood with a bunch of lawyers who, fortunately, utilize my services. The
sign out in front says A.M. Youngston, Investigations—that’s me. A.M. stands for Alannah Meav, which personally, I can’t stand. To my friends, at least, I go by Amy, from my initials. Have ever since before I started kindergarten.
Fields was due at two o’clock. By a quarter of, I was in the bathroom, checking the details of my appearance in the mirror; for the third
time, no less. I wasn’t going to change my usual wardrobe for him. I wear jeans and plain, oversized T-shirts virtually all the time. The outfit is nondescript enough in appearance to let me fade into the background most anywhere in or around Tucson, and the T-shirt is big enough to conceal the pistol that’s my constant companion, nestled under my left arm. I took a moment to run a comb through my hair. It’s dirty blonde and not quite down to my collarbones, with no particular style. The last person who called it dishwater blonde is buried out in the back yard. Well, not really, but I do have a major objection to that description. The length and lack of style is so I don’t stand out, all part of that ‘fade-away’ thing. No lipstick or anything like that. Makeup and I don’t have any acquaintance to speak of. I could have wished for more height, but I’ve been five foot six since I was in high school, so I doubted I was going to grow taller in the next several minutes. This is me, and it’s what he was going to get. He could damn well live with it.
The clock in the front room began to strike the hour just as the doorbell rang. One last pat for my hair and I headed to the door. Right on
time.
I hadn’t laid eyes on Raymond Escarton Fields since we were kids. He had been around fifteen, and I must have been, what? Ten? Eleven? He
wanted to read the Wall Street Journal, every page, every day, and I wanted to go out and run around in the woods. But I had to stay nearby, which really cramped my style and threw us together no matter what I wanted. In my opinion, which I’d formed back then in our very brief acquaintance, he’s an overbearing, self-righteous prig. Those are his good points. I won’t get into his bad ones. But he’s at least fair to middlin’ honest, so far as I know, and he manages the Family finances very well indeed, despite his relative youth. As a result, he’s highly respected in the Family for his investment judgment and abilities, even if his personality leaves something to be desired.
I hadn’t had any reason to change my opinion, at least not yet. Oh, he was older, yeah, but he didn’t seem to have changed that much otherwise. Still much the same sort of clean cut, preppie look. Still the same bright blue eyes, which are probably the only real outstanding feature he has—he’d never be picked out of a crowd as one of the richest men in the country. His suit had clearly never been on a rack in its life, and the overcoat probably hadn’t either.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Youngston."
"And a good afternoon to you, sir. Won’t you come in?"
He stepped inside the door and looked around the room. I didn’t miss the disdainful expression that flashed across his face for an instant before he controlled his reaction and shut it down. That didn’t get our meeting off to the greatest start. Of course, it didn’t exactly make me want to
change my opinion of him either, and it certainly didn’t do anything for my unease at this meeting.
After he turned down my offer of coffee, tea or whatever, I ushered him into my office. Bruno, my Belgian Malinois, hadn’t moved from his
bed in the corner. It had taken me several years of hard work to stop him rushing the door whenever the bell rang. He’s my guardian angel in the office, among other things. Very handsome, in my eyes, with his tan body and black mask, but I wasn’t worried about Fields attacking me. Just like the Malinois the police have, he’s built like a fine-boned, long-legged German Shepherd. No sign of Sasha, so she was probably still curled up in the footwell of the desk, looking kind of like a medium-sized white and brown bear hibernating there.
Fields took a seat in one of the chairs before the desk as I went around behind it. Yep, there was Sasha at my feet. I started the computers
recording and we passed a couple of minutes in small talk—his choice—before he got down to business.
Finally, he gave his head a short, sharp shake. "Well, I suppose I may as well get started telling you what this is all about."
That would be a pretty good idea, I thought, but said nothing, simply watching him. He seemed a bit tense. I wonder why?
"Someone is trying to kill me, and I want you to find out who’s behind it."
That could certainly explain the tension, although it struck me as an odd choice of words. Shouldn’t I be trying to put a stop to it? He had
originally made the appointment to come see me over the phone yesterday. I was sitting in my office killing a certain amount of time because it was a chilly February day, chilly, at least, by Tucson standards. Today isn’t a lot better. It was in the low 50s and overcast. I was wondering which divorce lawyer would be the next to call with a job for me. This definitely wasn’t the sort of phone call I’d been expecting.
By the time his call was over, he told me that he’d see me at two o’clock the next day. It almost escaped me that he didn’t ask whether that
would be a good time; he just told me when he was arriving at my office. There was more to it, but that was the gist of his side of our conversation. My, my, my, I thought. Raymond Escarton Fields himself, here, in my office.
Of course, we weren’t kids any more. Now he was the Family CEO and rich as hell—richer than that, actually, I suspected—and I’m only a
reasonably successful private eye. Should I be panicked or not? I decided not. At the time, I’d wondered why he needed a private eye,
specifically me. Now I knew. Did I like it? Well, it’s a job, and probably a pretty good one, financially, but...can I get back to you on
that?
Yesterday had started as a most ordinary day. I’d just finished one case and done a couple of service-of-process jobs. Before I got
back into the marketing, I was relaxing for the day, waiting for what would come in next. Raymond Escarton Fields wasn’t what I’d ever imagined, to say the least.
And now here he is in the flesh. I suppose I should be flattered. On the other hand, he doesn’t have a lot of choice, unless he wants to bring in an outsider, because as far as I know, I’m the only private investigator in the Family. I don’t think he’d do that, especially since this job is an intra-Family investigation. It’s going to be interesting to see whether there’s anything more going on here than the investigation he’s come
for. Shut up, girl, you’re yammering. Listen to him the way you look like you’re doing. Even if he doesn’t know you’re good, you do. Really listen to him and prove it.
"I’m not sure exactly when it started," he said. "It was probably sometime shortly after, well, around the time that Greg Casaday suggested that I involve the Family in shorting the yen. Forex isn’t an area I have all that much familiarity with, and I’ve tended to avoid it. But more importantly, neither he nor Jim Parkinston had any evidence that I thought was adequate to suggest an upcoming devaluation of anything Japanese at all, so it made no sense to me."
I nodded sagely, like I understood everything he’d said. Truth be told, he could have said it in Japanese and I wouldn’t have understood it any better.
I’m not normally used to murder mysteries, or attempted murder mysteries, other than written ones. Juicy divorces, errant spouses and
hidden assets, separately or together, are more my usual sorts of cases. But there was certainly no reason to pass up a chance to get Raymond Escarton Fields indebted to me. Maybe I could even get my profession accepted by the Family. Yeah, right. And pigs might fly. He was going on,
though.
"Everybody on the board was putting forth their investment ideas and analyses, pressuring me to invest in whatever...scheme they were pushing." He leaned forward, like he was trying to involve me in what he was saying, and began gesturing with his hands. "Understand that on the one hand, all investing has a degree of speculation, of risk. Some investments have a little, some have a lot. I can do whatever I want with my own money, but I can’t risk Family resources like that. My duty is to increase the Family fortune, not gamble it. As I see it, that limits the ways I can invest, and I felt that everything they were pushing me to get into was much too risky. Some of them I wouldn’t even have put my own money into." He leaned back.
Well, the Family fortune is pretty big. Make that huge. I think there are whole countries, and not necessarily poor ones, that are worth less than whatever the actual number is now.
Despite these little mental detours, I actually was listening to him.
He continued. "All the proposals were put forth in ways that made them seem superficially very reasonable. Since they came from different board members each time, I couldn’t figure out who was actually behind them. Perhaps if I’d been able to see how a proposed investment would have been to someone’s personal benefit, I might have had more of a clue. In most cases, I couldn’t, and even where I thought I could, it didn’t seem worth the risk if only because the potential benefit to the board member wasn’t going to be all that great. Each of these proposals would have meant a drastic reordering of the Family’s investment direction, and I felt that I had the appropriate investment mix as it was. Changing it like that would have been...a really bad idea, in my opinion."
I agreed, for what little—nothing—I knew of such things.
"Then the attempts on my life started."
I sat up a bit straighter. Even if this was something outside my past experience, it was something I understood. Right up my professional
alley, so to speak.
"One time, it was some sort of fireworks under my car. You know, some small explosive. A cherry bomb or the like, if you know what they
are."
I do. Daddy enjoyed them and got some occasionally.
"Another time, there was a whole string of firecrackers that went off when I started the engine."
I had to interrupt here. "Were these simply tossed under the car, or were they wired into the ignition?"
"Didn’t I say? They were connected so they’d go off when I started the car. It wasn’t kids. Couldn’t have been, they’d never have come that
far up the drive. The police...I called them at first, but they weren’t really interested. They just filled out their reports and said they’d get back to me. Another time, I was sitting in my study, and as I got up from my chair, somebody shot at me." He pulled a tiny plastic bag from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. Inside was what was still pretty obviously a .177 air rifle pellet. I suppose it could have hurt him, but judging from the minimal amount of deformation, it wouldn’t have done him any permanent injury unless it had hit him in the eye. It wasn’t even one of the pointed hunting pellets, but rather one of the flat-nosed target jobs.
"When the police made it pretty clear that my calls were regarded as nothing but nuisance calls, I quit calling them."
Of course, you don’t explain the Family to the police, even if it would have made a difference to them. For something like this, it wouldn’t
have. But there’s a different ‘feel’ to such things when it’s kids playing pranks than when it’s someone serious, someone trying to send you a message. If nothing else, repetitious or circular as it sounds, there is a professionalism to what’s happening when it’s being done by professionals, and that was the impression I was getting here. Everything that had happened to him, as he related it, was, I thought, carefully tailored to send a message: We have your number. We can do this for real and kill you any time. We have not decided to
kill you...yet.
Now, it’s probably pretty unnerving to be sitting on ground zero. I figured I was about to find out as soon as I became involved in this case. My back itched where my target was going to be. A lawyer acquaintance—not Alec—some years back, once described his job to me as having people come in and dump their garbage on his desk, expecting him to organize and fix everything. Now I know exactly how he felt, and why he didn’t like it.
There was another side to the coin too. I figured that if I could pin this on someone, or even several someones, potentially, with enough proof for Raymond Escarton Fields to bring before the Family board, he could, at the very least, boot his opponents off the board, and then he’d owe me big time. If I couldn’t, or if they decided to quit making thinly veiled threats to him and actually carried out one of them before I got to them, then I’d probably be history along with Raymond. If I died, it probably wouldn’t matter much to me whether he was killed with me or not. Oh, brother. That’s way too much thinking at this point.
The back of my neck was starting to itch as well, the way it does when I’m being watched. I was suddenly inordinately grateful for the pistol
nestled under my left arm. Normally, I no longer noticed it, but now, I surreptitiously pressed it with my arm to reassure myself: a .40 caliber
security blanket. At the same time, I’m not half as excited about this venture as I had been when Fields first called me. Somewhat excited, yeah, but more the kind of excitement that could lead some people to consider anti-anxiety medications. Not me, though. I’m tough.
These are a whole lot of lovely thoughts, especially the ones about someone trying to kill me. Regardless of my feelings about the afterlife, I had no interest in pondering it and I definitely wasn’t interested in facing it any time soon. Sasha seemed to catch my disquiet; she looked up from where she was lying. She liked it there in the footwell, all close, unless it was too hot and stuffy. I glanced at her and she laid her head down again. Bruno was still over on his bed, against the far wall of the office. His head was down too, but his eyes had been fixed on Fields the entire time. No other reaction, but then, Bruno was, among other things, trained to detect drugs, and Raymond Escarton Fields was hardly likely to be carrying cocaine, or heroin, or anything like that. If he’d had marijuana, Bruno wouldn’t have cared, which was why he was mine, instead of working for the police, but I couldn’t imagine that, either. Not Raymond Escarton Fields. His recreational drug of choice was green, folded in the middle, and had pictures of dead presidents on it.
At the same time as one track of my mind was running around like this, another was keeping a close eye on Fields’ body language. Not only is
body language a serious part of the whole listening thing, but being able to pick up on what people aren’t really telling you can be very valuable in my line of work. He was showing a bit of uneasiness, first and foremost. Big surprise, I thought sarcastically. Other than that one time when he had leaned forward, he was also closed, pulling away from me with his arms folded loosely. Why?
You’d think that if anything, he’d be more likely to be leaning forward most of the time, trying to convince me of what he’s telling me. Instead, he’s protecting himself, guarding himself, apparently against me. And he’s not comfortable about meeting my eyes. This is not the best sign of
honesty. No signs of indecision, but there are some serious suggestions that he isn’t giving me the entire story, or perhaps isn’t being entirely honest with me.
A couple of careful questions from me along the way made it clear that he wasn’t going to give me any more than he already had. What he was
saying about the investing itself was, to some significant degree, going right over my head, which is why I’m not putting it down, but since I was recording it, that gap in my understanding could, and definitely would, be fixed. Was there something going on here beyond what he was telling me? Likely. What was it? Damned if I knew. But it was going to be interesting to find out. Maybe like in the old Chinese curse about ‘May you live in interesting times’.
Fields finally stopped his explanation and looked at me. "Aren’t you going to take notes?" he asked.
I gestured at the microphone on the edge of my desk. "I’m recording it all, as I told you before we started. That way, I have the exact things you’ve told me, in your own words, not simply what I thought was important now." Actually, I was recording it twice, one copy on each computer. Suspenders and belt, so to speak. But he didn’t have to know that. And my security system would have a complete record, audio and video both, of this as well as everything else that happened in the house. That was something else he didn’t need to know. Three times, all told. Am I paranoid? Perhaps. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that somebody isn’t really after you. And just because that’s a well-worn cliché and an age-old joke doesn’t mean it isn’t true, as I suspected I’d probably confirm all too soon. That goes to show how little I knew.
Finally, his narrative came to an end. I actually didn’t have any more questions for him at that point; his account had been quite complete with very little prompting on my part. Like I said in the beginning, people talk to me, and Fields proved to be no different.
Then he asked, "Can you handle this?"
He didn’t ask me that, did he? Yes, he did. I thought an unkind thought about him. Even worse than what I’d already been thinking. Then I thought another one. I didn’t let either of them show.
"I’d be a sorry excuse for a private investigator if I couldn’t," I replied. "Besides, unless you want to go to some outsider, I’m the only one you’ve got." I smiled slightly simply to seem polite. He didn’t return it, so I continued. "We do have the matter of my fee. I need an advance retainer of,"—I named a figure I thought would set him back a bit, but he didn’t flinch at all—"for my expenses. There’s obviously going to be quite a bit of travel in this investigation, and ancillary expenses as well. I’ll need you to keep it up to that level monthly, as I use it. At the end, I’ll apply anything left over to my fee. For my fee itself,"—thought quickly, although I’d gamed this out in my head several times since yesterday—"I can do this for my hourly rate of $250." My heart pounded. I’d never asked anyone for anywhere near that amount of money
per hour in my professional life. Of course, I’d never had an assignment like this before, or such a client. "Or, we can lower that substantially, but it would depend on another consideration after I’ve found who’s after you and, hopefully, why."
I’ve got to hand it to him. He took it all deadpan as could be. Finally he spoke. "What ‘another consideration’ did you have in mind? I’m not really interested in buying a pig in a poke."
Well, he hasn’t blown me out of the water on this. Here was my big chance. Mentally, I crossed my fingers. Amy, step very carefully, but go
for it. Just don’t blow it. I had it all ready in my mind. I’d been working on this ever since he first made his appointment to see me, even before I knew what he wanted. I had all these ideas if whatever he needed was big enough. It was. His life? Oh, boy, was it ever. Now it only remained to see if I could deliver it as smoothly as I could imagine it.
"One hundred shares and a seat on the board."
He looked at me for a long moment. One hundred shares—an accomplished specialist doctor with advanced certifications and several years of
practice, might hold a hundred shares, I figured. Raymond, as the CEO, probably had several hundred, if not more. I had under twenty. It wasn’t bad as these things go.
I own both my houses free and clear, thanks to the shares I have and a gift from Daddy. Not money, directly. He assigned me the rights to
one of his books—his newest, actually, at the time. A couple of months later it had not only been sold to a publisher for a nice advance, but the movie rights were optioned as well. Nothing came of the option, but it was a very good deal for me and quite lucrative by my standards. A decent car, two dogs to keep me warm at night—at least some small part of the year—as well as letting me know of threats and helping me deal with them, a business that kept me off the streets and out of mischief, so to speak. I could have done lots worse. But if someone is going to voluntarily put himself in your debt, there’s no reason to let it slide completely.
I could see the wheels turning in his head. I could also feel my heart still pounding. I was asking for a lot, but I guaranteed that nothing would escape about the Family. If I could indeed find the real culprit, or culprits, it might be worth it to him. If I couldn’t, well, he probably wouldn’t
be worrying about it anyway. I might not be, either. His expression got a bit sour.
"I can get you the shares. I...the seat on the board might not be that easy. You know, the board members. You understand that they would
probably not agree to giving you a seat. And there’s never been a lot of turnover."
I looked at him for several seconds before responding. "I understand that." I didn’t, not really. It felt like the right thing to say. "But it seems to me that if I find whoever is behind all this, then there should be at least one opening on the board. Maybe more than one." Being on the board
of directors was almost certainly additional shares each year, maybe a serious number, not to mention the prestige within the Family, and I saw this as my chance to make a serious move. "If I start digging into this, I’m probably painting as much of a target on myself as you have on yourself. Maybe more. If neither of us survives, I think it’s going to be, shall we say, somewhat irrelevant. But bluntly, I think I deserve to be paid something extra for choosing to make myself a target, and I feel quite certain that whatever is pointed at you will be pointed at me too as soon as I take this case on."
He grinned momentarily. I don’t think he did that very often. I had no idea how prophetic my comment would turn out to be.
Finally, he exhaled deeply. "All right. I’ll get you in. If you succeed." He sighed. "And I’ll get you the shares, even if I have to give you some of my own. If you succeed. Bill me directly. Don’t send this to the Family business office." A deeper sigh. "It’s not the money, you know. It’s not any of it. It’s only...I can’t do it myself. I haven’t any idea where to start."
"Not to worry," I said. "That’s my job. And if I don’t succeed, then there’s a good chance that neither of us will be worrying about any of it." I waited.
I was beginning to think that he must have liked or appreciated something about me when we were kids. Maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe he really didn’t like me any more than I liked him. Did it matter now? Nope, not at all. He had a job he needed to have done, he was here and he was hiring me to do it. That was all that really counted.
He stood up and shook out his overcoat. "You’re probably right. Do you have a written contract?"
Again, that slight smile. Just to look pleasant, not like the canary that ate the cat, even if I did feel a bit that way.
"Of course. I’ll have it for you in a minute. Would you like to sit back down? Or..." He remained standing. "Give me a second." Luckily, I’d
already drawn up the hardest part, the payment clause, before he came, just in case. Some cut and paste, then I quickly typed in the remaining necessary information and sent it to the printer. "Sign here, please."
He signed with his usual flourish. I’d seen that signature often enough, but never saw him make it before. It looked a lot simpler as he did it than the finished product suggested. I added my own signature and turned to the copier on the other side of the office near Bruno. He noticed the dog for the first time.
"Don’t you think it looks a bit unprofessional to have a dog in your office?" He actually looked a bit snooty as he asked.
"Bruno is my assistant, my bodyguard and my friend," I replied. "Here, he does several things I couldn’t do for myself. If I left him locked up in the house, he’d only be a pet." I hoped I didn’t sound as annoyed by his question as I suddenly felt. Bruno hadn’t bothered him one bit; Bruno was none of his business. How I ran my business was none of his business either.
His right eyebrow arched. I’d never been able to do that and it irritated me that he could when I couldn’t. "Assistant? He’s just a dog."
I leaned down and gave the dog a quick pat. "I’m sorry, Bruno, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about." Bruno lay there, watching both of us. He didn’t care what Fields thought of him. Smart dog. I turned back to Raymond and handed him a copy of the contract. "Bruno is a walking detector for hard drugs as well as a trained guard dog. Damn right he’s my assistant. If you’d been carrying cocaine, heroin, or any of several other drugs, he’d have alerted me the moment you stepped inside the door. Quietly, but clearly. Because some people who come in here are carrying drugs, and when they are, I need to know. If you tried to attack me, he’d beat you to it and keep you far too busy to continue or even think about continuing to attack me. Because sometimes, people who come in here do try just that. And he also guards things, like my house when I’m there with him." I picked up the fanny pack I use as my purse, walked over and set it on a table about two feet in front of Bruno while
I shut off the copier. Quietly, I said, "Bruno, watch!" His head came up.
I stepped through the door. Looking back over my shoulder, I asked Raymond if he’d bring me my purse. I heard him take a step or two, then I
heard Bruno start to rumble. Not a growl, just a rumble deep in his chest. Hm. That put Fields probably not less than four feet from the pack. Bruno didn’t start to actually growl until the subject was about three and a half feet away from whatever he was supposed to guard. Then he stopped. Fields must have stepped back.
"I think you better get it yourself." He didn’t sound pleased. "But I guess I see what you mean." He appeared in the doorway shrugging into his coat. Sasha was now out from under the desk, but he had his back turned and hadn’t seen her. "I’ve got to get back."
"Very well, sir. It’s been a pleasure meeting with you, and I hope our relationship proves to be productive for both of us." I shook his hand. "Can I offer you a lift to wherever you’re going from here?"
"No, thank you. I’ve got a car." And sure enough, he did, waiting out in the parking area in front of the house. Not a rental; he had a limousine waiting outside, so help me God. Mentally, I shook my head. Must be nice to have that kind of money. Perhaps if I could solve this mess, I could
find out for myself. At least a bit, but I’d pass on the limo. Maybe, for now. Though a part of me did like the idea. The rest of me figured it was overkill. My car gets me places just fine.
* * * *
TO: D
FROM: HB
Primary target, Youngston, acquired. REF seen to arrive at primary location, Youngston’s office, at 1400 local, remained inside until 1707 local before departing. Youngston left her office for secondary location, her residence, at 1718 local. Will emplace surveillance devices in Youngston’s
office after nightfall.
TO: HB
FROM: D
Very good. Continue with plan.
Chapter 2
Closing the door behind him, I looked at Sasha. She smiled and waited for a pet, but I knelt down and gave her a hug instead. "If I get through this one, it’s going to be prime steak for all of us, pretty girl," I said as I straightened up and plucked a dog hair from my lip. Long-coat Akitas have a lot of hair, and it was way too early in the year to clip her. I mean, even without shearing her, I get enough hair from her every spring to weave a couple of puppies.
The day that Fields had called was also the day of my weekly date for drinks and dinner with my best friend. Becky Swan is a psychologist professionally, but we’ve known each other since we were both knobby-kneed girls with freckles from too much sun and scratches all over ourselves from running around in the woods together. Well before that, actually. We’ve been very best friends as long as I can remember—she’s my fourth cousin—and since we lived near each other growing up. It’s probably been even longer than that.
My parents enrolled me late into school and she took a whole bunch of courses in high school, so we graduated together and then roomed
together all through undergraduate school. We’re really more like very close sisters than simply friends, however good ones. She’s tall and outwardly willowy, at least at first glance. I’m more compact and solid. She’s still got a stunning figure, while I’ve got enough of a figure to show when dressed as female. Don’t let appearances fool you. She and I sometimes go to the gym together, and while I can outdo her, it’s not by a lot. She’s also a lot more formal than I, at least on weekdays. When we go hiking or camping together, we’re both in jeans and T-shirts, but when she’s working, she’s always beautifully dressed. I normally don’t need to when I’m working. I’m told I clean up nice, but I don’t do it very often. No real interest, and other than occasionally with Becky or Alec, nobody to do it with or for. Looks and style aren’t my issues.
Becky and I are probably the only two Family members in Tucson, as far as we know, other than maybe a doctor or two. Being the sort of long-time friends we are, we like to get together every week to catch up, talk and be with each other: dinner, drinks or, usually, both. It’s so nice to
have someone to talk to with whom you don’t ever have to be careful of what you say.
We sat down together last night and I must have looked like I was about to bust. She got the first words out.
"Okay, Amy, you look like the cat that ate the canary. Out with it. What’s going on that you can’t wait to tell me and astonish me with?"
I leaned back with exaggerated casualness and a slight, but insufferably smug, smile. "I got a phone call today." Long pause. I should really stop it. Being insufferably smug from time to time is one of my worst habits. But Becky loves me anyway.
"I presume there’s something special about this phone call? Something you intend to tell me so I don’t have to come across this table and
shake it out of you?" She smiled as she said it.
"Well, duh. It was a very special phone call. I mean, you’ll never guess who it was." Another long pause. I definitely need to quit this.
Becky leaned over the table toward me and reached across it. I leaned forward and she took my chin in her hand. "Amy, if you don’t quit
playing games with me, I am going to become very angry with you. You don’t like me when I’m angry. Now give." She wasn’t exactly smiling
now.
I was. "You are not going to believe this. His imperial highness, Raymond Escarton Fields himself, called me for an appointment."
Now she was the one to lean back. "Come on, Amy, you can find a better way than that to pull my leg." I shook my head slowly. Her eyes got
even bigger. "You’re not pulling my leg. Calling you? Calling you? For an appointment? Not to give you an audience?" I was nodding now. "Holy...oh my God!" At which point we both broke down and giggled uncontrollably.
She and I rarely talked about the Family to each other anymore. We’d pretty much talked ourselves out about it back when we were kids and first found out about it. Back then, of course, it was all so very new and exciting, but now it’s just something that’s part of our lives. Oh, well, at
least I could talk about the Family with Becky. I couldn’t do this with anyone else in my life, not ever. Well, Daddy and Becky’s mom, sure, but they weren’t here and I rarely saw either of them anymore.
Anyway, back to the present. With Fields gone, it was time to close up the office and even a bit beyond. I sent a copy of the security system record of his visit to the house computer before packing up the laptop, lowering the shades and setting the alarm. It’s not the simplest procedure; the keypad inside the back door is a trap, and trying to use it actually triggers the alarm. There is another keypad in a concealed location, and there are two different code numbers, depending on whether or not a special key is used in the process, to arm and disarm it. It’s probably overkill, but I designed and installed the system and it was fun as well as a challenge.
As the system beeped toward its final activation, Bruno, Sasha and I headed out the back door. Bruno trotted off to his favorite grass clump to water. Sasha moved off in the other direction and stuck her nose in the corner of the yard wall.
"Sasha." Nothing. "Sasha!" Still nothing. "SACHIKO!" I think that for dogs, their full name is kind of like a child’s middle name—it lets them know when they’re in real trouble, or at least cruising on the edge. She looked up at me and, unconcerned, strolled toward me, squatting halfway across the yard. I opened the gate for them and closed it behind us.
Alec was in the kitchen when I came in. The dogs’ dinners were sitting on the counter, ready, and he was watching something on the stove.
I gave him a quick peck on the cheek—he’s about six inches taller than I am, so it’s a stretch—brushed a lock of hair off his forehead and made the dogs sit and wait while I put their dishes on the floor. Then I released them and they dug in.
"So how was your day?" he asked. "I figured you’d be here pretty much on time since you didn’t call." Alec and I are kind of like a very
comfortable married couple without some of the window dressings, like sex or sleeping under the same roof. We’d tried the first—once—and never got to the second, except occasionally when we had no choice. Both of us agreed that we didn’t need to further complicate our lives by stressing our relationship. It was just fine the way it was. Well, I thought so anyway.
"Alec, glad as I am to see you and have dinner with you, if it’s not on the table in five minutes, I’m going to have to send you home. I picked up a huge case and I need to work late tonight. Really huge, really work, really late."
"Not a problem. It’s ready; I’ve just been waiting for you." He uncovered the pan and started dishing up. Yum. I love paella, almost as much as I do chili. "Does this job have anything to do with the limo I saw out in front of your office this afternoon? And I could stay if you like. Rub your
back, or maybe your feet."
Don’t push. Oh, God, don’t push. "Are you trying to escalate, Alec? I thought we had this situation settled a long time ago."
"Ah, well, just a thought. And it’s an honest offer just the way it sounds, nothing more. Thought perhaps you could use the relaxation."
I touched his arm lightly. "No, thanks, Alec. It’s a lovely thought, and you’re a very special friend, but let me take a rain check, okay?" Relaxation was not on the agenda for the evening.
The table was already set, wineglasses and all. The wine was open and breathing, so I poured as he served. "All right, Amy, what’s it about?"
I looked at him over the rim of my wineglass. Nice wine tonight. "I can’t tell you, Alec. Not one thing. If I did, I’d have to either marry you or kill you."
He grinned. "Do I get a choice?" I grinned back at him, but said nothing. I figured I knew what he’d choose. Having me kill him likely wasn’t it. And I really didn’t want to go there, either way. So why did I even bring it up in the first place? Idiot me.
I took a moment as I cut up a shrimp. "No, seriously. I need to work and do some major research and planning. I can’t do that if we sit around and talk or watch the tube. And this is a case that I really can’t talk about. Not to you, not to anyone. I’m sorry, but that’s just how this one is.
Utterly confidential. That was one of the conditions of the case. If I could share it with you, I would, absolutely. And no, you don’t get a choice. Not now."
"You’re keeping secrets from me? We’ve known each other...how long?" He was grinning. It was probably a rhetorical question, but I answered
him anyway.
"It was the third day of first-term Torts. You pushed your coffee cup off the edge of your desk with your notepad, and if I hadn’t caught it, it would have spilled all over my notebook, my jeans and my backpack. Probably all down your leg as well. Simple self-defense on my part."
He laughed. "Has it really been that long? Good lord, yes, it has. What secrets have you kept from me in all those years?"
Now it was my turn to laugh. "If I told you, then they wouldn’t be secrets I’d kept from you, now, would they?" Sasha came over to the table. I gave her a quick pet. "Sasha, you know better. Go lie down."
She walked over to Alec, who looked at her mock-sternly. "You were told to go lie down." Reluctantly, she did, although first, she went to get the lone squeaky toy she’d kept since she was a puppy. Funny dog.
We finished dinner in silence. I think he wasn’t happy about being booted out so early. No, actually, I knew he wasn’t. I know him much too well to overlook or misinterpret that. He was hurt, and I was very sorry to have to do that to him. Not that he hadn’t tuned me out whenever he was going into court the next day, but when he had to do that, we were still together, just not talking and not watching TV. No problem; I liked to read. This was definitely out of pattern. We normally spent our dinners and evenings together about every night except when I was out with Becky, and when we were together, we never broke up early. He put on a good face, but he was sending out some very unhappy and sour vibes. I couldn’t blame him.
Without any further discussion, he helped clear the table, pack up the leftovers and began putting dishes in the dishwasher.
"You really don’t have to do that," I said.
"I know." He kept on, making more noise than the activity required. He was definitely unhappy and also being a bit passive-aggressive, which is very unlike him.
"The sooner it’s done, the sooner I’m out of your hair. My place tomorrow night?"
"I honestly don’t think so. Or at least I can’t make any promises. I don’t know where this one is going. I’ll call you, okay?"
"Okay." He sounded as unhappy as I figured he was. A quick kiss, a pet and hug for each dog, and he was out the door. This was the first time in ages we hadn’t spent any time together after our evening meal. I did wonder what confused and hurt thoughts must have been going through his mind. Of course, that kept me from wondering what thoughts should have been going through my own mind, and that was fine with me. I think.
Well, it wasn’t that simple. I’d been married right around graduation from college, and it wasn’t something I’d planned out and spent time on. I should have. Daddy didn’t approve of him—Becky didn’t either, but I don’t take hints well—so we snuck off and did it on the quiet. His name was Robert, but now I think of him—when I bother at all—as ‘Robbie’, which he hated. Getting to that point in my mind was quite a triumph for me. Alec and I started off well, and all through law school, it was a platonic relationship. We were simply study partners, very close, inseparable, actually, in that regard, but nothing more, then.
After law school, when I was trying to start my own investigation business, Robbie started getting...abusive. Not physically; that I could have fought. Would have. Instead, he got psychologically abusive. Long story short, his sexual demands started to get further and further out there.
The last straw was, well, way too much, almost...no, it was repulsive. Let’s leave it at that. The first time I called him Robbie to his face was that
night on my way out the door. My business hadn’t really taken off, so I slept on the couch in my office, then spent the next two days packing up and getting a divorce lawyer. When I left, I came to Tucson and found the place on Speedway almost immediately.
Becky had just finished with her internship, so she came too, and we moved in together. We often slept in the same bed early on, like we had as kids. Nothing more than being a comfort for one another. It’s not sexual, never has been, but we’re very tactile with each other, and I really needed some serious comforting then. About two years later, both of us had going practices, and we decided it was time to move out. She bought her place up in the Catalina foothills, and I managed to get the house right behind the Speedway house, so my commute was nonexistent. I liked it that way.
Six months or so later, out of the blue, Alec called. He’d left his firm in Portland, gotten divorced and moved to Tucson. Was I free for dinner? Three dates later, we wound up in bed.
God, what a mess that was. Neither of us could get anywhere. I was too wound up in my own failure to help him through his, and far too terrified of what he would do to me, for my failure and his. He wouldn’t have done anything at all to hurt me, not Alec. I know that now, intellectually. He was just reacting, as I was, to a truly horrid marriage. But at that point, Robbie and his awful, cruel reactions were really all I knew. I was terrified of going through that again, and especially with someone I was responding to as strongly as I was to Alec. So I simply shut down.
We both dated around a bit after that. I had a couple of...well, the blunt term would probably be friendly screws, if not something even cruder. Simply making sure the equipment still worked, hadn’t rusted, that sort of thing, you know? Nothing worth a replay, or even spending the night. But without the emotional attachment, everything functioned like it should. Over time, though, something kept pulling Alec and me back together, so we gradually settled into the relationship we have now. Very close; we spend most of our free time together. Neither of us dates, although we sometimes go out together. Just no sex—I’m still terrified of that sort of thing with him, I have to admit—not to another living soul, other than Becky—and he lives a couple doors down Helen Street. His office is next door to mine.
And sometimes I regret not being closer to him. When I can bring myself to look at it, which isn’t often.
* * * *
I stretched and looked at the clock. Good lord, it was after eleven. I still hadn’t done my exercises and the dogs needed a last spin outside. Sourly, I looked at the laptop. I also still hadn’t finished taking notes on the account Raymond had given me. Eight board members besides Raymond, scattered round the world, although most of them were in this country and those, in fact, were all in the western U.S. Each of them was, according to his account, trying to push the Family’s investing in different directions. I’d finally gotten down at least the basic essential information on them from what he had given me, so I guessed, I could knock off for the night.
"Okay, guys, let’s go out."
Bruno came at a brisk trot; Sasha moved at a somewhat slower pace. I usually refer to her normal gaits as ‘stroll’ and ‘amble’. Tonight, she was set on amble. When she finally got to the door, we all went out and the motion lights came on.
The ones behind my office were already on. Odd. Was there a tree or bush moving in the wind that had set it off? Not that I could see. No alarm yet. Maybe someone had driven up the alley, although I usually hear when that happens. Maybe a bicyclist out late? I pressed my left arm to my side, feeling the pistol nestled securely in its holster under my armpit. Bruno looked alert, but unconcerned, as he did his business. That reassured me. His senses are a lot better than mine. After Sasha had finally relieved herself, we went back in and I set the house alarm. It’s less complex than setting the one in the office.
A half hour of draw and dry-fire drills later, I could go to bed with a clear conscience. I must have been tired, because I don’t think I was awake more than five minutes after my head hit the pillow. As deeply as I was sleeping, I almost wouldn’t have heard the alarm go off. Either alarm; they were connected. If one was set off, both would sound.
* * * *
TO: D
FROM: HB
Primary target Youngston and secondary target Trevethen met in her residence; separated after meal. Surveillance devices emplaced in
Youngston’s office. It has an impressive security system, but no trace of our efforts remains on it. Will attempt to cover her residence and additional locations as indicated in immediate future as circumstances allow.
TO: HB
FROM: D
You appear to be doing an excellent job. Continue.
Read more by purchasing the book from Amazon.
Some days are dull. Some really get your attention, and a few make you wonder what in the hell ever possessed you to get involved. Today is definitely already in that last category.
The sun isn’t up yet. I’m standing in the front yard, pinned by something like half a dozen spotlights on what feels like half the police cars in the
world. I’ve got my hands in the air and I’m about to get down onto the ground at the orders of the approaching SWAT team member. Over on the other side of the front walk, Alec is facing another half dozen or so spotlights and going through the same routine, which is anything but routine for either of us.
I’d just had my house shot up with automatic weapons, been shot at personally, and I’d put half a dozen rounds into the truck that had brought the shooters to my front doorstep. Trying to protect me, Alec had added his own. The dogs in the doorway I was desperately attempting to keep safe were upset, to say the least, and if they twitched the wrong way, they were likely to be killed by the cops.
So what in the hell had possessed me?
Chapter 1
People talk to me. Sometimes, usually, they do it with their voices, and they always do it with their body language. It’s partly a knack I was born with, and partly a skill I’ve worked very hard to develop. I usually have very little trouble getting people to open up and tell me all sorts of things, and I use that ability shamelessly, I have to admit.
Today, my professional life seems to be taking a serious turn for the better, as I’m expecting Raymond Escarton Fields, the Family CEO. That
may not sound like a big deal, but for me, as a Family member, trust me, it’s huge. The Family is simply that, a family. It’s very secretive, but it’s not any sort of crime syndicate or the like, simply a family that’s hundreds of years old, far older than the Rockefellers or even the Rothschilds. Think of thousands of cousins, all around the world. It’s organized as a corporation, so it’s got a CEO. He’s responsible for investing the Family fortune.
Just the idea of his coming to my office was unsettling for me. The office is in one of these little houses along East Speedway in Tucson, near the university. It’s a handy place to be, because I’m in the same neighborhood with a bunch of lawyers who, fortunately, utilize my services. The
sign out in front says A.M. Youngston, Investigations—that’s me. A.M. stands for Alannah Meav, which personally, I can’t stand. To my friends, at least, I go by Amy, from my initials. Have ever since before I started kindergarten.
Fields was due at two o’clock. By a quarter of, I was in the bathroom, checking the details of my appearance in the mirror; for the third
time, no less. I wasn’t going to change my usual wardrobe for him. I wear jeans and plain, oversized T-shirts virtually all the time. The outfit is nondescript enough in appearance to let me fade into the background most anywhere in or around Tucson, and the T-shirt is big enough to conceal the pistol that’s my constant companion, nestled under my left arm. I took a moment to run a comb through my hair. It’s dirty blonde and not quite down to my collarbones, with no particular style. The last person who called it dishwater blonde is buried out in the back yard. Well, not really, but I do have a major objection to that description. The length and lack of style is so I don’t stand out, all part of that ‘fade-away’ thing. No lipstick or anything like that. Makeup and I don’t have any acquaintance to speak of. I could have wished for more height, but I’ve been five foot six since I was in high school, so I doubted I was going to grow taller in the next several minutes. This is me, and it’s what he was going to get. He could damn well live with it.
The clock in the front room began to strike the hour just as the doorbell rang. One last pat for my hair and I headed to the door. Right on
time.
I hadn’t laid eyes on Raymond Escarton Fields since we were kids. He had been around fifteen, and I must have been, what? Ten? Eleven? He
wanted to read the Wall Street Journal, every page, every day, and I wanted to go out and run around in the woods. But I had to stay nearby, which really cramped my style and threw us together no matter what I wanted. In my opinion, which I’d formed back then in our very brief acquaintance, he’s an overbearing, self-righteous prig. Those are his good points. I won’t get into his bad ones. But he’s at least fair to middlin’ honest, so far as I know, and he manages the Family finances very well indeed, despite his relative youth. As a result, he’s highly respected in the Family for his investment judgment and abilities, even if his personality leaves something to be desired.
I hadn’t had any reason to change my opinion, at least not yet. Oh, he was older, yeah, but he didn’t seem to have changed that much otherwise. Still much the same sort of clean cut, preppie look. Still the same bright blue eyes, which are probably the only real outstanding feature he has—he’d never be picked out of a crowd as one of the richest men in the country. His suit had clearly never been on a rack in its life, and the overcoat probably hadn’t either.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Youngston."
"And a good afternoon to you, sir. Won’t you come in?"
He stepped inside the door and looked around the room. I didn’t miss the disdainful expression that flashed across his face for an instant before he controlled his reaction and shut it down. That didn’t get our meeting off to the greatest start. Of course, it didn’t exactly make me want to
change my opinion of him either, and it certainly didn’t do anything for my unease at this meeting.
After he turned down my offer of coffee, tea or whatever, I ushered him into my office. Bruno, my Belgian Malinois, hadn’t moved from his
bed in the corner. It had taken me several years of hard work to stop him rushing the door whenever the bell rang. He’s my guardian angel in the office, among other things. Very handsome, in my eyes, with his tan body and black mask, but I wasn’t worried about Fields attacking me. Just like the Malinois the police have, he’s built like a fine-boned, long-legged German Shepherd. No sign of Sasha, so she was probably still curled up in the footwell of the desk, looking kind of like a medium-sized white and brown bear hibernating there.
Fields took a seat in one of the chairs before the desk as I went around behind it. Yep, there was Sasha at my feet. I started the computers
recording and we passed a couple of minutes in small talk—his choice—before he got down to business.
Finally, he gave his head a short, sharp shake. "Well, I suppose I may as well get started telling you what this is all about."
That would be a pretty good idea, I thought, but said nothing, simply watching him. He seemed a bit tense. I wonder why?
"Someone is trying to kill me, and I want you to find out who’s behind it."
That could certainly explain the tension, although it struck me as an odd choice of words. Shouldn’t I be trying to put a stop to it? He had
originally made the appointment to come see me over the phone yesterday. I was sitting in my office killing a certain amount of time because it was a chilly February day, chilly, at least, by Tucson standards. Today isn’t a lot better. It was in the low 50s and overcast. I was wondering which divorce lawyer would be the next to call with a job for me. This definitely wasn’t the sort of phone call I’d been expecting.
By the time his call was over, he told me that he’d see me at two o’clock the next day. It almost escaped me that he didn’t ask whether that
would be a good time; he just told me when he was arriving at my office. There was more to it, but that was the gist of his side of our conversation. My, my, my, I thought. Raymond Escarton Fields himself, here, in my office.
Of course, we weren’t kids any more. Now he was the Family CEO and rich as hell—richer than that, actually, I suspected—and I’m only a
reasonably successful private eye. Should I be panicked or not? I decided not. At the time, I’d wondered why he needed a private eye,
specifically me. Now I knew. Did I like it? Well, it’s a job, and probably a pretty good one, financially, but...can I get back to you on
that?
Yesterday had started as a most ordinary day. I’d just finished one case and done a couple of service-of-process jobs. Before I got
back into the marketing, I was relaxing for the day, waiting for what would come in next. Raymond Escarton Fields wasn’t what I’d ever imagined, to say the least.
And now here he is in the flesh. I suppose I should be flattered. On the other hand, he doesn’t have a lot of choice, unless he wants to bring in an outsider, because as far as I know, I’m the only private investigator in the Family. I don’t think he’d do that, especially since this job is an intra-Family investigation. It’s going to be interesting to see whether there’s anything more going on here than the investigation he’s come
for. Shut up, girl, you’re yammering. Listen to him the way you look like you’re doing. Even if he doesn’t know you’re good, you do. Really listen to him and prove it.
"I’m not sure exactly when it started," he said. "It was probably sometime shortly after, well, around the time that Greg Casaday suggested that I involve the Family in shorting the yen. Forex isn’t an area I have all that much familiarity with, and I’ve tended to avoid it. But more importantly, neither he nor Jim Parkinston had any evidence that I thought was adequate to suggest an upcoming devaluation of anything Japanese at all, so it made no sense to me."
I nodded sagely, like I understood everything he’d said. Truth be told, he could have said it in Japanese and I wouldn’t have understood it any better.
I’m not normally used to murder mysteries, or attempted murder mysteries, other than written ones. Juicy divorces, errant spouses and
hidden assets, separately or together, are more my usual sorts of cases. But there was certainly no reason to pass up a chance to get Raymond Escarton Fields indebted to me. Maybe I could even get my profession accepted by the Family. Yeah, right. And pigs might fly. He was going on,
though.
"Everybody on the board was putting forth their investment ideas and analyses, pressuring me to invest in whatever...scheme they were pushing." He leaned forward, like he was trying to involve me in what he was saying, and began gesturing with his hands. "Understand that on the one hand, all investing has a degree of speculation, of risk. Some investments have a little, some have a lot. I can do whatever I want with my own money, but I can’t risk Family resources like that. My duty is to increase the Family fortune, not gamble it. As I see it, that limits the ways I can invest, and I felt that everything they were pushing me to get into was much too risky. Some of them I wouldn’t even have put my own money into." He leaned back.
Well, the Family fortune is pretty big. Make that huge. I think there are whole countries, and not necessarily poor ones, that are worth less than whatever the actual number is now.
Despite these little mental detours, I actually was listening to him.
He continued. "All the proposals were put forth in ways that made them seem superficially very reasonable. Since they came from different board members each time, I couldn’t figure out who was actually behind them. Perhaps if I’d been able to see how a proposed investment would have been to someone’s personal benefit, I might have had more of a clue. In most cases, I couldn’t, and even where I thought I could, it didn’t seem worth the risk if only because the potential benefit to the board member wasn’t going to be all that great. Each of these proposals would have meant a drastic reordering of the Family’s investment direction, and I felt that I had the appropriate investment mix as it was. Changing it like that would have been...a really bad idea, in my opinion."
I agreed, for what little—nothing—I knew of such things.
"Then the attempts on my life started."
I sat up a bit straighter. Even if this was something outside my past experience, it was something I understood. Right up my professional
alley, so to speak.
"One time, it was some sort of fireworks under my car. You know, some small explosive. A cherry bomb or the like, if you know what they
are."
I do. Daddy enjoyed them and got some occasionally.
"Another time, there was a whole string of firecrackers that went off when I started the engine."
I had to interrupt here. "Were these simply tossed under the car, or were they wired into the ignition?"
"Didn’t I say? They were connected so they’d go off when I started the car. It wasn’t kids. Couldn’t have been, they’d never have come that
far up the drive. The police...I called them at first, but they weren’t really interested. They just filled out their reports and said they’d get back to me. Another time, I was sitting in my study, and as I got up from my chair, somebody shot at me." He pulled a tiny plastic bag from his shirt pocket and handed it to me. Inside was what was still pretty obviously a .177 air rifle pellet. I suppose it could have hurt him, but judging from the minimal amount of deformation, it wouldn’t have done him any permanent injury unless it had hit him in the eye. It wasn’t even one of the pointed hunting pellets, but rather one of the flat-nosed target jobs.
"When the police made it pretty clear that my calls were regarded as nothing but nuisance calls, I quit calling them."
Of course, you don’t explain the Family to the police, even if it would have made a difference to them. For something like this, it wouldn’t
have. But there’s a different ‘feel’ to such things when it’s kids playing pranks than when it’s someone serious, someone trying to send you a message. If nothing else, repetitious or circular as it sounds, there is a professionalism to what’s happening when it’s being done by professionals, and that was the impression I was getting here. Everything that had happened to him, as he related it, was, I thought, carefully tailored to send a message: We have your number. We can do this for real and kill you any time. We have not decided to
kill you...yet.
Now, it’s probably pretty unnerving to be sitting on ground zero. I figured I was about to find out as soon as I became involved in this case. My back itched where my target was going to be. A lawyer acquaintance—not Alec—some years back, once described his job to me as having people come in and dump their garbage on his desk, expecting him to organize and fix everything. Now I know exactly how he felt, and why he didn’t like it.
There was another side to the coin too. I figured that if I could pin this on someone, or even several someones, potentially, with enough proof for Raymond Escarton Fields to bring before the Family board, he could, at the very least, boot his opponents off the board, and then he’d owe me big time. If I couldn’t, or if they decided to quit making thinly veiled threats to him and actually carried out one of them before I got to them, then I’d probably be history along with Raymond. If I died, it probably wouldn’t matter much to me whether he was killed with me or not. Oh, brother. That’s way too much thinking at this point.
The back of my neck was starting to itch as well, the way it does when I’m being watched. I was suddenly inordinately grateful for the pistol
nestled under my left arm. Normally, I no longer noticed it, but now, I surreptitiously pressed it with my arm to reassure myself: a .40 caliber
security blanket. At the same time, I’m not half as excited about this venture as I had been when Fields first called me. Somewhat excited, yeah, but more the kind of excitement that could lead some people to consider anti-anxiety medications. Not me, though. I’m tough.
These are a whole lot of lovely thoughts, especially the ones about someone trying to kill me. Regardless of my feelings about the afterlife, I had no interest in pondering it and I definitely wasn’t interested in facing it any time soon. Sasha seemed to catch my disquiet; she looked up from where she was lying. She liked it there in the footwell, all close, unless it was too hot and stuffy. I glanced at her and she laid her head down again. Bruno was still over on his bed, against the far wall of the office. His head was down too, but his eyes had been fixed on Fields the entire time. No other reaction, but then, Bruno was, among other things, trained to detect drugs, and Raymond Escarton Fields was hardly likely to be carrying cocaine, or heroin, or anything like that. If he’d had marijuana, Bruno wouldn’t have cared, which was why he was mine, instead of working for the police, but I couldn’t imagine that, either. Not Raymond Escarton Fields. His recreational drug of choice was green, folded in the middle, and had pictures of dead presidents on it.
At the same time as one track of my mind was running around like this, another was keeping a close eye on Fields’ body language. Not only is
body language a serious part of the whole listening thing, but being able to pick up on what people aren’t really telling you can be very valuable in my line of work. He was showing a bit of uneasiness, first and foremost. Big surprise, I thought sarcastically. Other than that one time when he had leaned forward, he was also closed, pulling away from me with his arms folded loosely. Why?
You’d think that if anything, he’d be more likely to be leaning forward most of the time, trying to convince me of what he’s telling me. Instead, he’s protecting himself, guarding himself, apparently against me. And he’s not comfortable about meeting my eyes. This is not the best sign of
honesty. No signs of indecision, but there are some serious suggestions that he isn’t giving me the entire story, or perhaps isn’t being entirely honest with me.
A couple of careful questions from me along the way made it clear that he wasn’t going to give me any more than he already had. What he was
saying about the investing itself was, to some significant degree, going right over my head, which is why I’m not putting it down, but since I was recording it, that gap in my understanding could, and definitely would, be fixed. Was there something going on here beyond what he was telling me? Likely. What was it? Damned if I knew. But it was going to be interesting to find out. Maybe like in the old Chinese curse about ‘May you live in interesting times’.
Fields finally stopped his explanation and looked at me. "Aren’t you going to take notes?" he asked.
I gestured at the microphone on the edge of my desk. "I’m recording it all, as I told you before we started. That way, I have the exact things you’ve told me, in your own words, not simply what I thought was important now." Actually, I was recording it twice, one copy on each computer. Suspenders and belt, so to speak. But he didn’t have to know that. And my security system would have a complete record, audio and video both, of this as well as everything else that happened in the house. That was something else he didn’t need to know. Three times, all told. Am I paranoid? Perhaps. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that somebody isn’t really after you. And just because that’s a well-worn cliché and an age-old joke doesn’t mean it isn’t true, as I suspected I’d probably confirm all too soon. That goes to show how little I knew.
Finally, his narrative came to an end. I actually didn’t have any more questions for him at that point; his account had been quite complete with very little prompting on my part. Like I said in the beginning, people talk to me, and Fields proved to be no different.
Then he asked, "Can you handle this?"
He didn’t ask me that, did he? Yes, he did. I thought an unkind thought about him. Even worse than what I’d already been thinking. Then I thought another one. I didn’t let either of them show.
"I’d be a sorry excuse for a private investigator if I couldn’t," I replied. "Besides, unless you want to go to some outsider, I’m the only one you’ve got." I smiled slightly simply to seem polite. He didn’t return it, so I continued. "We do have the matter of my fee. I need an advance retainer of,"—I named a figure I thought would set him back a bit, but he didn’t flinch at all—"for my expenses. There’s obviously going to be quite a bit of travel in this investigation, and ancillary expenses as well. I’ll need you to keep it up to that level monthly, as I use it. At the end, I’ll apply anything left over to my fee. For my fee itself,"—thought quickly, although I’d gamed this out in my head several times since yesterday—"I can do this for my hourly rate of $250." My heart pounded. I’d never asked anyone for anywhere near that amount of money
per hour in my professional life. Of course, I’d never had an assignment like this before, or such a client. "Or, we can lower that substantially, but it would depend on another consideration after I’ve found who’s after you and, hopefully, why."
I’ve got to hand it to him. He took it all deadpan as could be. Finally he spoke. "What ‘another consideration’ did you have in mind? I’m not really interested in buying a pig in a poke."
Well, he hasn’t blown me out of the water on this. Here was my big chance. Mentally, I crossed my fingers. Amy, step very carefully, but go
for it. Just don’t blow it. I had it all ready in my mind. I’d been working on this ever since he first made his appointment to see me, even before I knew what he wanted. I had all these ideas if whatever he needed was big enough. It was. His life? Oh, boy, was it ever. Now it only remained to see if I could deliver it as smoothly as I could imagine it.
"One hundred shares and a seat on the board."
He looked at me for a long moment. One hundred shares—an accomplished specialist doctor with advanced certifications and several years of
practice, might hold a hundred shares, I figured. Raymond, as the CEO, probably had several hundred, if not more. I had under twenty. It wasn’t bad as these things go.
I own both my houses free and clear, thanks to the shares I have and a gift from Daddy. Not money, directly. He assigned me the rights to
one of his books—his newest, actually, at the time. A couple of months later it had not only been sold to a publisher for a nice advance, but the movie rights were optioned as well. Nothing came of the option, but it was a very good deal for me and quite lucrative by my standards. A decent car, two dogs to keep me warm at night—at least some small part of the year—as well as letting me know of threats and helping me deal with them, a business that kept me off the streets and out of mischief, so to speak. I could have done lots worse. But if someone is going to voluntarily put himself in your debt, there’s no reason to let it slide completely.
I could see the wheels turning in his head. I could also feel my heart still pounding. I was asking for a lot, but I guaranteed that nothing would escape about the Family. If I could indeed find the real culprit, or culprits, it might be worth it to him. If I couldn’t, well, he probably wouldn’t
be worrying about it anyway. I might not be, either. His expression got a bit sour.
"I can get you the shares. I...the seat on the board might not be that easy. You know, the board members. You understand that they would
probably not agree to giving you a seat. And there’s never been a lot of turnover."
I looked at him for several seconds before responding. "I understand that." I didn’t, not really. It felt like the right thing to say. "But it seems to me that if I find whoever is behind all this, then there should be at least one opening on the board. Maybe more than one." Being on the board
of directors was almost certainly additional shares each year, maybe a serious number, not to mention the prestige within the Family, and I saw this as my chance to make a serious move. "If I start digging into this, I’m probably painting as much of a target on myself as you have on yourself. Maybe more. If neither of us survives, I think it’s going to be, shall we say, somewhat irrelevant. But bluntly, I think I deserve to be paid something extra for choosing to make myself a target, and I feel quite certain that whatever is pointed at you will be pointed at me too as soon as I take this case on."
He grinned momentarily. I don’t think he did that very often. I had no idea how prophetic my comment would turn out to be.
Finally, he exhaled deeply. "All right. I’ll get you in. If you succeed." He sighed. "And I’ll get you the shares, even if I have to give you some of my own. If you succeed. Bill me directly. Don’t send this to the Family business office." A deeper sigh. "It’s not the money, you know. It’s not any of it. It’s only...I can’t do it myself. I haven’t any idea where to start."
"Not to worry," I said. "That’s my job. And if I don’t succeed, then there’s a good chance that neither of us will be worrying about any of it." I waited.
I was beginning to think that he must have liked or appreciated something about me when we were kids. Maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe he really didn’t like me any more than I liked him. Did it matter now? Nope, not at all. He had a job he needed to have done, he was here and he was hiring me to do it. That was all that really counted.
He stood up and shook out his overcoat. "You’re probably right. Do you have a written contract?"
Again, that slight smile. Just to look pleasant, not like the canary that ate the cat, even if I did feel a bit that way.
"Of course. I’ll have it for you in a minute. Would you like to sit back down? Or..." He remained standing. "Give me a second." Luckily, I’d
already drawn up the hardest part, the payment clause, before he came, just in case. Some cut and paste, then I quickly typed in the remaining necessary information and sent it to the printer. "Sign here, please."
He signed with his usual flourish. I’d seen that signature often enough, but never saw him make it before. It looked a lot simpler as he did it than the finished product suggested. I added my own signature and turned to the copier on the other side of the office near Bruno. He noticed the dog for the first time.
"Don’t you think it looks a bit unprofessional to have a dog in your office?" He actually looked a bit snooty as he asked.
"Bruno is my assistant, my bodyguard and my friend," I replied. "Here, he does several things I couldn’t do for myself. If I left him locked up in the house, he’d only be a pet." I hoped I didn’t sound as annoyed by his question as I suddenly felt. Bruno hadn’t bothered him one bit; Bruno was none of his business. How I ran my business was none of his business either.
His right eyebrow arched. I’d never been able to do that and it irritated me that he could when I couldn’t. "Assistant? He’s just a dog."
I leaned down and gave the dog a quick pat. "I’m sorry, Bruno, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about." Bruno lay there, watching both of us. He didn’t care what Fields thought of him. Smart dog. I turned back to Raymond and handed him a copy of the contract. "Bruno is a walking detector for hard drugs as well as a trained guard dog. Damn right he’s my assistant. If you’d been carrying cocaine, heroin, or any of several other drugs, he’d have alerted me the moment you stepped inside the door. Quietly, but clearly. Because some people who come in here are carrying drugs, and when they are, I need to know. If you tried to attack me, he’d beat you to it and keep you far too busy to continue or even think about continuing to attack me. Because sometimes, people who come in here do try just that. And he also guards things, like my house when I’m there with him." I picked up the fanny pack I use as my purse, walked over and set it on a table about two feet in front of Bruno while
I shut off the copier. Quietly, I said, "Bruno, watch!" His head came up.
I stepped through the door. Looking back over my shoulder, I asked Raymond if he’d bring me my purse. I heard him take a step or two, then I
heard Bruno start to rumble. Not a growl, just a rumble deep in his chest. Hm. That put Fields probably not less than four feet from the pack. Bruno didn’t start to actually growl until the subject was about three and a half feet away from whatever he was supposed to guard. Then he stopped. Fields must have stepped back.
"I think you better get it yourself." He didn’t sound pleased. "But I guess I see what you mean." He appeared in the doorway shrugging into his coat. Sasha was now out from under the desk, but he had his back turned and hadn’t seen her. "I’ve got to get back."
"Very well, sir. It’s been a pleasure meeting with you, and I hope our relationship proves to be productive for both of us." I shook his hand. "Can I offer you a lift to wherever you’re going from here?"
"No, thank you. I’ve got a car." And sure enough, he did, waiting out in the parking area in front of the house. Not a rental; he had a limousine waiting outside, so help me God. Mentally, I shook my head. Must be nice to have that kind of money. Perhaps if I could solve this mess, I could
find out for myself. At least a bit, but I’d pass on the limo. Maybe, for now. Though a part of me did like the idea. The rest of me figured it was overkill. My car gets me places just fine.
* * * *
TO: D
FROM: HB
Primary target, Youngston, acquired. REF seen to arrive at primary location, Youngston’s office, at 1400 local, remained inside until 1707 local before departing. Youngston left her office for secondary location, her residence, at 1718 local. Will emplace surveillance devices in Youngston’s
office after nightfall.
TO: HB
FROM: D
Very good. Continue with plan.
Chapter 2
Closing the door behind him, I looked at Sasha. She smiled and waited for a pet, but I knelt down and gave her a hug instead. "If I get through this one, it’s going to be prime steak for all of us, pretty girl," I said as I straightened up and plucked a dog hair from my lip. Long-coat Akitas have a lot of hair, and it was way too early in the year to clip her. I mean, even without shearing her, I get enough hair from her every spring to weave a couple of puppies.
The day that Fields had called was also the day of my weekly date for drinks and dinner with my best friend. Becky Swan is a psychologist professionally, but we’ve known each other since we were both knobby-kneed girls with freckles from too much sun and scratches all over ourselves from running around in the woods together. Well before that, actually. We’ve been very best friends as long as I can remember—she’s my fourth cousin—and since we lived near each other growing up. It’s probably been even longer than that.
My parents enrolled me late into school and she took a whole bunch of courses in high school, so we graduated together and then roomed
together all through undergraduate school. We’re really more like very close sisters than simply friends, however good ones. She’s tall and outwardly willowy, at least at first glance. I’m more compact and solid. She’s still got a stunning figure, while I’ve got enough of a figure to show when dressed as female. Don’t let appearances fool you. She and I sometimes go to the gym together, and while I can outdo her, it’s not by a lot. She’s also a lot more formal than I, at least on weekdays. When we go hiking or camping together, we’re both in jeans and T-shirts, but when she’s working, she’s always beautifully dressed. I normally don’t need to when I’m working. I’m told I clean up nice, but I don’t do it very often. No real interest, and other than occasionally with Becky or Alec, nobody to do it with or for. Looks and style aren’t my issues.
Becky and I are probably the only two Family members in Tucson, as far as we know, other than maybe a doctor or two. Being the sort of long-time friends we are, we like to get together every week to catch up, talk and be with each other: dinner, drinks or, usually, both. It’s so nice to
have someone to talk to with whom you don’t ever have to be careful of what you say.
We sat down together last night and I must have looked like I was about to bust. She got the first words out.
"Okay, Amy, you look like the cat that ate the canary. Out with it. What’s going on that you can’t wait to tell me and astonish me with?"
I leaned back with exaggerated casualness and a slight, but insufferably smug, smile. "I got a phone call today." Long pause. I should really stop it. Being insufferably smug from time to time is one of my worst habits. But Becky loves me anyway.
"I presume there’s something special about this phone call? Something you intend to tell me so I don’t have to come across this table and
shake it out of you?" She smiled as she said it.
"Well, duh. It was a very special phone call. I mean, you’ll never guess who it was." Another long pause. I definitely need to quit this.
Becky leaned over the table toward me and reached across it. I leaned forward and she took my chin in her hand. "Amy, if you don’t quit
playing games with me, I am going to become very angry with you. You don’t like me when I’m angry. Now give." She wasn’t exactly smiling
now.
I was. "You are not going to believe this. His imperial highness, Raymond Escarton Fields himself, called me for an appointment."
Now she was the one to lean back. "Come on, Amy, you can find a better way than that to pull my leg." I shook my head slowly. Her eyes got
even bigger. "You’re not pulling my leg. Calling you? Calling you? For an appointment? Not to give you an audience?" I was nodding now. "Holy...oh my God!" At which point we both broke down and giggled uncontrollably.
She and I rarely talked about the Family to each other anymore. We’d pretty much talked ourselves out about it back when we were kids and first found out about it. Back then, of course, it was all so very new and exciting, but now it’s just something that’s part of our lives. Oh, well, at
least I could talk about the Family with Becky. I couldn’t do this with anyone else in my life, not ever. Well, Daddy and Becky’s mom, sure, but they weren’t here and I rarely saw either of them anymore.
Anyway, back to the present. With Fields gone, it was time to close up the office and even a bit beyond. I sent a copy of the security system record of his visit to the house computer before packing up the laptop, lowering the shades and setting the alarm. It’s not the simplest procedure; the keypad inside the back door is a trap, and trying to use it actually triggers the alarm. There is another keypad in a concealed location, and there are two different code numbers, depending on whether or not a special key is used in the process, to arm and disarm it. It’s probably overkill, but I designed and installed the system and it was fun as well as a challenge.
As the system beeped toward its final activation, Bruno, Sasha and I headed out the back door. Bruno trotted off to his favorite grass clump to water. Sasha moved off in the other direction and stuck her nose in the corner of the yard wall.
"Sasha." Nothing. "Sasha!" Still nothing. "SACHIKO!" I think that for dogs, their full name is kind of like a child’s middle name—it lets them know when they’re in real trouble, or at least cruising on the edge. She looked up at me and, unconcerned, strolled toward me, squatting halfway across the yard. I opened the gate for them and closed it behind us.
Alec was in the kitchen when I came in. The dogs’ dinners were sitting on the counter, ready, and he was watching something on the stove.
I gave him a quick peck on the cheek—he’s about six inches taller than I am, so it’s a stretch—brushed a lock of hair off his forehead and made the dogs sit and wait while I put their dishes on the floor. Then I released them and they dug in.
"So how was your day?" he asked. "I figured you’d be here pretty much on time since you didn’t call." Alec and I are kind of like a very
comfortable married couple without some of the window dressings, like sex or sleeping under the same roof. We’d tried the first—once—and never got to the second, except occasionally when we had no choice. Both of us agreed that we didn’t need to further complicate our lives by stressing our relationship. It was just fine the way it was. Well, I thought so anyway.
"Alec, glad as I am to see you and have dinner with you, if it’s not on the table in five minutes, I’m going to have to send you home. I picked up a huge case and I need to work late tonight. Really huge, really work, really late."
"Not a problem. It’s ready; I’ve just been waiting for you." He uncovered the pan and started dishing up. Yum. I love paella, almost as much as I do chili. "Does this job have anything to do with the limo I saw out in front of your office this afternoon? And I could stay if you like. Rub your
back, or maybe your feet."
Don’t push. Oh, God, don’t push. "Are you trying to escalate, Alec? I thought we had this situation settled a long time ago."
"Ah, well, just a thought. And it’s an honest offer just the way it sounds, nothing more. Thought perhaps you could use the relaxation."
I touched his arm lightly. "No, thanks, Alec. It’s a lovely thought, and you’re a very special friend, but let me take a rain check, okay?" Relaxation was not on the agenda for the evening.
The table was already set, wineglasses and all. The wine was open and breathing, so I poured as he served. "All right, Amy, what’s it about?"
I looked at him over the rim of my wineglass. Nice wine tonight. "I can’t tell you, Alec. Not one thing. If I did, I’d have to either marry you or kill you."
He grinned. "Do I get a choice?" I grinned back at him, but said nothing. I figured I knew what he’d choose. Having me kill him likely wasn’t it. And I really didn’t want to go there, either way. So why did I even bring it up in the first place? Idiot me.
I took a moment as I cut up a shrimp. "No, seriously. I need to work and do some major research and planning. I can’t do that if we sit around and talk or watch the tube. And this is a case that I really can’t talk about. Not to you, not to anyone. I’m sorry, but that’s just how this one is.
Utterly confidential. That was one of the conditions of the case. If I could share it with you, I would, absolutely. And no, you don’t get a choice. Not now."
"You’re keeping secrets from me? We’ve known each other...how long?" He was grinning. It was probably a rhetorical question, but I answered
him anyway.
"It was the third day of first-term Torts. You pushed your coffee cup off the edge of your desk with your notepad, and if I hadn’t caught it, it would have spilled all over my notebook, my jeans and my backpack. Probably all down your leg as well. Simple self-defense on my part."
He laughed. "Has it really been that long? Good lord, yes, it has. What secrets have you kept from me in all those years?"
Now it was my turn to laugh. "If I told you, then they wouldn’t be secrets I’d kept from you, now, would they?" Sasha came over to the table. I gave her a quick pet. "Sasha, you know better. Go lie down."
She walked over to Alec, who looked at her mock-sternly. "You were told to go lie down." Reluctantly, she did, although first, she went to get the lone squeaky toy she’d kept since she was a puppy. Funny dog.
We finished dinner in silence. I think he wasn’t happy about being booted out so early. No, actually, I knew he wasn’t. I know him much too well to overlook or misinterpret that. He was hurt, and I was very sorry to have to do that to him. Not that he hadn’t tuned me out whenever he was going into court the next day, but when he had to do that, we were still together, just not talking and not watching TV. No problem; I liked to read. This was definitely out of pattern. We normally spent our dinners and evenings together about every night except when I was out with Becky, and when we were together, we never broke up early. He put on a good face, but he was sending out some very unhappy and sour vibes. I couldn’t blame him.
Without any further discussion, he helped clear the table, pack up the leftovers and began putting dishes in the dishwasher.
"You really don’t have to do that," I said.
"I know." He kept on, making more noise than the activity required. He was definitely unhappy and also being a bit passive-aggressive, which is very unlike him.
"The sooner it’s done, the sooner I’m out of your hair. My place tomorrow night?"
"I honestly don’t think so. Or at least I can’t make any promises. I don’t know where this one is going. I’ll call you, okay?"
"Okay." He sounded as unhappy as I figured he was. A quick kiss, a pet and hug for each dog, and he was out the door. This was the first time in ages we hadn’t spent any time together after our evening meal. I did wonder what confused and hurt thoughts must have been going through his mind. Of course, that kept me from wondering what thoughts should have been going through my own mind, and that was fine with me. I think.
Well, it wasn’t that simple. I’d been married right around graduation from college, and it wasn’t something I’d planned out and spent time on. I should have. Daddy didn’t approve of him—Becky didn’t either, but I don’t take hints well—so we snuck off and did it on the quiet. His name was Robert, but now I think of him—when I bother at all—as ‘Robbie’, which he hated. Getting to that point in my mind was quite a triumph for me. Alec and I started off well, and all through law school, it was a platonic relationship. We were simply study partners, very close, inseparable, actually, in that regard, but nothing more, then.
After law school, when I was trying to start my own investigation business, Robbie started getting...abusive. Not physically; that I could have fought. Would have. Instead, he got psychologically abusive. Long story short, his sexual demands started to get further and further out there.
The last straw was, well, way too much, almost...no, it was repulsive. Let’s leave it at that. The first time I called him Robbie to his face was that
night on my way out the door. My business hadn’t really taken off, so I slept on the couch in my office, then spent the next two days packing up and getting a divorce lawyer. When I left, I came to Tucson and found the place on Speedway almost immediately.
Becky had just finished with her internship, so she came too, and we moved in together. We often slept in the same bed early on, like we had as kids. Nothing more than being a comfort for one another. It’s not sexual, never has been, but we’re very tactile with each other, and I really needed some serious comforting then. About two years later, both of us had going practices, and we decided it was time to move out. She bought her place up in the Catalina foothills, and I managed to get the house right behind the Speedway house, so my commute was nonexistent. I liked it that way.
Six months or so later, out of the blue, Alec called. He’d left his firm in Portland, gotten divorced and moved to Tucson. Was I free for dinner? Three dates later, we wound up in bed.
God, what a mess that was. Neither of us could get anywhere. I was too wound up in my own failure to help him through his, and far too terrified of what he would do to me, for my failure and his. He wouldn’t have done anything at all to hurt me, not Alec. I know that now, intellectually. He was just reacting, as I was, to a truly horrid marriage. But at that point, Robbie and his awful, cruel reactions were really all I knew. I was terrified of going through that again, and especially with someone I was responding to as strongly as I was to Alec. So I simply shut down.
We both dated around a bit after that. I had a couple of...well, the blunt term would probably be friendly screws, if not something even cruder. Simply making sure the equipment still worked, hadn’t rusted, that sort of thing, you know? Nothing worth a replay, or even spending the night. But without the emotional attachment, everything functioned like it should. Over time, though, something kept pulling Alec and me back together, so we gradually settled into the relationship we have now. Very close; we spend most of our free time together. Neither of us dates, although we sometimes go out together. Just no sex—I’m still terrified of that sort of thing with him, I have to admit—not to another living soul, other than Becky—and he lives a couple doors down Helen Street. His office is next door to mine.
And sometimes I regret not being closer to him. When I can bring myself to look at it, which isn’t often.
* * * *
I stretched and looked at the clock. Good lord, it was after eleven. I still hadn’t done my exercises and the dogs needed a last spin outside. Sourly, I looked at the laptop. I also still hadn’t finished taking notes on the account Raymond had given me. Eight board members besides Raymond, scattered round the world, although most of them were in this country and those, in fact, were all in the western U.S. Each of them was, according to his account, trying to push the Family’s investing in different directions. I’d finally gotten down at least the basic essential information on them from what he had given me, so I guessed, I could knock off for the night.
"Okay, guys, let’s go out."
Bruno came at a brisk trot; Sasha moved at a somewhat slower pace. I usually refer to her normal gaits as ‘stroll’ and ‘amble’. Tonight, she was set on amble. When she finally got to the door, we all went out and the motion lights came on.
The ones behind my office were already on. Odd. Was there a tree or bush moving in the wind that had set it off? Not that I could see. No alarm yet. Maybe someone had driven up the alley, although I usually hear when that happens. Maybe a bicyclist out late? I pressed my left arm to my side, feeling the pistol nestled securely in its holster under my armpit. Bruno looked alert, but unconcerned, as he did his business. That reassured me. His senses are a lot better than mine. After Sasha had finally relieved herself, we went back in and I set the house alarm. It’s less complex than setting the one in the office.
A half hour of draw and dry-fire drills later, I could go to bed with a clear conscience. I must have been tired, because I don’t think I was awake more than five minutes after my head hit the pillow. As deeply as I was sleeping, I almost wouldn’t have heard the alarm go off. Either alarm; they were connected. If one was set off, both would sound.
* * * *
TO: D
FROM: HB
Primary target Youngston and secondary target Trevethen met in her residence; separated after meal. Surveillance devices emplaced in
Youngston’s office. It has an impressive security system, but no trace of our efforts remains on it. Will attempt to cover her residence and additional locations as indicated in immediate future as circumstances allow.
TO: HB
FROM: D
You appear to be doing an excellent job. Continue.
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