Carrie Vaughn - After the Golden Age

“Hi, Mom, it’s me. This is going to sound weird, but I think I know what the Strad Brothers’ next target is. There’s a special philately exhibit at the history museum opening Saturday. Rare stamps—it fits their target profile. I suppose we have to assume they’ll attempt a kidnapping to go along with any robbery. Anyway, call me so we can talk about it.”

Mark and Analise weren’t answering their phones, either. With them, however, Celia’s paranoia kicked in. Either they were busy, or they saw her name on the caller ID and decided to ignore her. She left messages.

Somebody had to call her back.

She had to make one more call. She looked up the number to police headquarters. “Yes, I’d like to speak to Chief Appleton,” she told the receptionist, who asked who was calling.

Celia took a deep breath. “Celia West. And yes, it’s important.”

She spent time on hold. They didn’t even bother putting on bad music for her. Eventually, her name got her through to the chief.

Appleton didn’t bother with a greeting. “If you’re calling to yell at me about making your record public, I had nothing to do with it. I haven’t shown it to anyone. That information got out all on its own, just like I always said it would.”

“Hello to you, too,” she said. “That’s not what I’m calling about.”

“I only sealed the record in the first place as a favor to your parents.”

“That’s not what I’m calling about.”

“People deserve to know about you, you know.” It was as if he’d been keeping this secret for eight years, and he was damned well going to take advantage of the fact that he could now rant about her as much as he wanted.

“Chief, I think I know what the Strad Brothers’ next target is.”

The following pause was nerve-shattering. Finally, he said, “And how, may I ask, do you know this?”

“I don’t know it. It’s a guess. They’ve gone after unique cultural objects, right? The history museum is hosting an exhibit of rare stamps. It seems like this would be just the kind of target they’d go for.”

“You don’t know this because you’re still in the Destructor’s pocket?”

God damn him, Celia thought. “Sir, I don’t think Sito has anything to do with the Strad Brothers. The MOs are completely different, Sito can’t organize anything from the asylum—”

“If anyone could organize anything from the asylum, it would be Sito.”

Calling him had been a mistake. “I’m sorry to bother you, Chief. But I have this hunch, and in good conscience I had to tell someone about it. I thought you might listen to me.”

She hung up on him, because she wasn’t brave enough to hear what kind of response he’d give to that.

Suzanne listened to her. The Olympiad had always had the attitude that vigilance never hurt. It wouldn’t cost them anything to be on alert. It wasn’t too far from their usual routine, after all. Spark did insist that Celia spend the weekend at the West Plaza penthouse, to secure her against another kidnapping attempt.

Celia couldn’t argue. It was only a matter of time before one of these debacles got her hurt. But she could bargain. “I’ll stay there if Dad lets me into the West Corp archives.”

Her mother hissed out a breath that clearly said, Now isn’t the time for this argument. All the more reason to have it.

“Celia, this is too serious for you to be playing games like this.”

“I’ve never played games.”

“Then here, ask him yourself.” The phone rustled as Suzanne handed it over.

Warren’s gruff voice came on. “What’s going on?”

Suzanne hadn’t had a chance to tell him anything, so Celia had to explain it all.

“I’ve got a guess at the Strad Brothers’ next target. Since they’ll probably try a kidnapping along with it, Mom wants me to stay at the penthouse. I said I would if you let me into the West Corp archives. So how about it?”

“I don’t make deals, Celia—”

“Well, it was worth a try. I’ll see you later—”

“Don’t hang up!”

She didn’t.

He said, tiredly, “Can you just tell me why you want to see those files? Please?”

Enough of a pause preceded the please that Celia wondered if Suzanne had prompted him.

It didn’t matter. The please was enough. “I found evidence that suggests Simon Sito worked for West Corp about fifty years ago. I need to confirm that.”

“Simon Sito worked for my father?”

“It was a long time ago. He wasn’t crazy then. He wasn’t the Destructor.”

“If it’s true … what does it mean?”

She shrugged. “I hope I’ll find out when I see those records.”

He didn’t answer right away. She could hear him breathing, not talking. She could picture him and her mother looking at each other, having one of those silent conversations that longtime couples shared. She probably wouldn’t have been able to interpret their looks even if she’d been there, watching them.

Finally, Warren said, “I’ll make sure there’s a key card for you in the lobby.”

That was easier than she thought it would be. She hadn’t wanted to bring up Sito. She hadn’t known how her father would react. She hadn’t expected him to hold his temper. “Thank you.”

AS she entered the lobby of West Plaza, she called up to the penthouse. No one answered. The Olympiad was already gone.

Damon Parks smiled a greeting and held up a plastic card to her. “Your father left this for you.”

Damn. She’d half-expected him to back out of his part of the agreement.

“You coming to work for him now?” he said.

“Who knows? He might be the only person in town who’ll hire me.”

“I doubt that. This mess of a trial will blow over soon enough. Especially if this sort of thing keeps up.” He held up the front page of the Eye , the issue that screamed that the Destructor was controlling the crime spree from prison. Parks clicked his tongue. “Good old Destructor, at it again.”

She frowned. “I don’t think it’s the Destructor. He’s in prison, out of commission. Someone else is behind this.”

“If the Destructor isn’t the mastermind, who is?” He watched her closely, like he was asking a test question and not making small talk.

“If I knew, I’d call the cops.” Anonymously, this time. “There’s got to be some connection between all these guys—the Baxter Gang, the Strad Brothers, the guys from the pool. Someone just has to figure out what the link is.”

“And that link’ll be the mastermind?”

“Or it’ll lead us to the mastermind. I don’t know, maybe it’s just wishful thinking, that the Destructor really is finished.”

Parks folded the paper away and smiled. Celia moved on to the elevators.

The records department—a climate-controlled, brightly lit cavern of a room with row after row of steel shelves, located in the skyscraper’s basement—was in the process of scanning all the records into digital format. The job was set to take years, because as Warren had said, the company never threw anything away. Only a dozen or so sets of shelves were empty. At a computer workstation, banker’s boxes sat on open tables near scanners and high-powered shredders. All was quiet now, but the equipment probably made a hell of a racket during the workweek.

They hadn’t yet gotten to the year she was looking for. She wouldn’t be able to use a nifty computerized search engine to help her find the file on the Leyden building. The old-fashioned way it was, then. Even with the high-tech air filtration system in a modern facility, the place still smelled like archival storage: old paper, stale manila folders, cardboard, and dust. Libraries and accountants’ basements all over the world smelled like this. It was the scent of information waiting to be discovered.