Fiona Brand - Killer Focus

Rico couldn’t believe it. He usually worked out of L.A., which was why he’d been chosen for this particular job. The client had wanted to make sure the hit was untraceable. In this business, secretive as it was, it was sometimes possible to trace the triggerman by asking around to find out who was available in the area to do the work. He had been the perfect choice for an East Coast job. Until Aldo.

He rounded a corner and stepped directly into the wind. Sleet pounded his face and froze his fingers. Shielding his eyes, he broke into a run, the ice-laden air shoving into his lungs hard enough to hurt. The sirens were closer.

As he dodged around pedestrians, he studied the street to orient himself. This wasn’t his city, but he had done his homework. There was a subway entrance a block away.

Seconds later the subway sign came into view. When he reached the entrance, he slowed to a jog, grabbed the railing and slipped, almost losing his footing and the guitar case.

Breathing hard, he steadied himself and took the stairs as quickly as he could with the awkward weight of the case. A train pulled out, gathering speed, as he reached the platform.

He checked the displayed timetable. He was going to have to wait.

Clenching his jaw, he strode into the men’s washroom, grabbed a wad of paper towels, dried his face and hair and wiped down his suit jacket. With any luck Aldo hadn’t recognized him. If he ever asked him about it, Rico would simply say he had made a mistake; he hadn’t been to D.C. in years.

When Rico exited the men’s room, a familiar figure was staring at the timetable.

His stomach sank. He put on a smile. Finally, his acting classes were good for something. “Hey, Aldo . What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” His attention dropped to the case. “No, don’t tell me. You’re in town for a concert.”

Rico assessed the hard greed in Aldo’s expression. He was a two-bit drug dealer and a fence, small potatoes all around, but he wasn’t stupid. “How much?”

Aldo named a figure. Rico’s stomach bottomed out.

Aldo grinned. “Don’t worry. For that price your secret’s safe with me.”

Five

Steve Fischer stepped into the FBI building. It was just after four-thirty. The office was still open, but a lot of people had left early, eager to avoid the evening rush hour and worried that the escalating blizzard might create further delays.

Dusting sleet from his jacket, he stripped off his gloves, slipped them in his pocket and produced his ID. “Cold night.”

The security guard checked his face against the photograph then waved him through. “Yes, sir.”

He took the elevator, stepped out into the corridor and found the office he wanted. The door opened as he approached, which meant he didn’t have to use his card and PIN number, which would record his presence in the office. He had a working agreement with the FBI, but Marc Bayard wouldn’t tolerate interference in his investigation, old friendship or not. A woman and a man stepped out. Colenso and Burrows.

Colenso held the door. Burrows gave him a speculative look, but it was more female than curious. She had only recently transferred into D.C. and was still working out who was who, while Colenso had briefly met Steve during the hostage situation in Eureka last year.

The door closed behind him. Aside from a light in one of the end booths, the field room was empty. Walking through to an interview room, he took a seat and waited until the occupant of the booth left. Seconds later, the lights went out and the door clicked closed, signaling that he now had the office to himself.

Strolling to Taylor Jones’s workstation, he sat down at her computer. The screen flickered the instant he touched the mouse. The computer hadn’t been switched off, as he had expected. It had been in rest mode, which meant that when Taylor had left the building to get lunch, she had left the computer on, the system open. Frowning at the uncharacteristic sloppiness, Steve withdrew a disk and a flash card from an inside pocket of his jacket and plugged it into the USB port. The flash card was larger than normal, about the size of a pocket calculator.

He inserted the disk and waited for the program to install. Seconds later, he removed the disk, unplugged the flash card and slipped them both back into his jacket pocket. Taylor’s security breach in leaving her computer on and unprotected while she was out of the building had just been solved. There was nothing to copy; her computer was clean. Someone had gotten there before him.

An hour later, he stepped into Taylor’s apartment. Pocketing the duplicate master key he’d had made several weeks previously, he closed the door behind him and thumbed on a penlight. He didn’t want to risk turning on a light in case Taylor’s mother, Dana Jones, had caught an early flight and was already in town, although it was more than likely she would go directly to the hospital.

He moved soundlessly through the rooms in case one of Taylor’s neighbors had caught the evening news and was nosy enough to check out who was in apartment 10A when the tenant was on the critical list.

The master bedroom was empty, the quilt a little wrinkled, as if she’d sat down on it that morning after the bed had been made. The quilt itself was plain, the bedroom furniture elegant but neat. No surprises there.

He moved through a second bedroom. The lack of luggage in the spare room confirmed that Dana Jones hadn’t yet arrived. Given the weather conditions and the fact that even if she got a direct flight from San Francisco, it would take several hours to reach D.C., he didn’t expect her to fly in until the morning.

The bathroom was cramped but spotless and contained the same clean, faintly sweet smell he had noticed in the bedroom and which he now identified as soap, not perfume. One towel was neatly draped over a towel rail.

Checking the luminous dial of his watch, he moved through to the sitting room. Like the rest of the apartment, the room was tidy, except for one corner, which was occupied by bookshelves jammed with reference books and a large computer desk awash with papers, notebooks and a stack of files. If he had needed further confirmation of what Taylor did with her spare time, apart from a rigorous fitness program, this was it. She worked.

And for the past few months, she had been busy. He’d had a tail on her ever since she had been discharged from the hospital after the hostage crisis in Eureka. Taylor’s personal connection to Lopez, and the fact that, since Rina Morell had disappeared into the Witness Security Program, Taylor was Lopez’s only link to his ex-wife, made her an automatic choice for surveillance. The fact that she had obsessively researched Lopez and the cabal, despite being first cautioned then pulled from the case, made her even more interesting. And now she knew about the book.

Locating the Internet files she’d searched had been easy. On a previous visit he had bugged her computer with a highly illegal piece of spyware designed to mimic the security system she used. His electronic friend recorded Taylor’s online research and mailed to him the sites she had accessed and duplicates of any e-mail messages.

The microfiche material was something else entirely. Other than the time periods and the newspapers she had been researching—information that was noted on the register held at the front desk of the library—he had no idea what she was reading unless she created a computer file and e-mailed it to her work address.

Sitting down at the desk, he booted up the computer, inserted the disk and connected the flash card. A small window running percentages at the bottom of the screen indicated his copy program was complete. Removing the disk and flash card, he inserted a second disk into her drive. This one contained a powerful wipe program. Minutes later, her hard drive was clean.