Читать книгу Prescription: Makeover - Jessica Andersen - Страница 7

Three months later

“I can’t believe I have to wear a coat in my own office,” William Caine muttered. “It’s spring already. Isn’t it supposed to be warm out?”

He sent a glare toward the thermostat, which was set at a chill fifty degrees, and yanked on his leather bomber jacket before returning to his desk, where a computer competed for space with a multiline phone and a pile of papers. Off to one side, a coffee mug overflowed with the pens that seemed to breed in his pockets.

“You got a better idea for cutting costs?” his partner’s voice asked from the hall.

“Nope.” William looked up and saw Max Vasek, the other half of Vasek & Caine Investigations, standing in the doorway.

Max was as tall and dark and tough-looking as he’d ever been, but these days his craggy features sported new lines, new worries. William had seen the same signs in the mirror just that morning. A recent trim of his short brown hair and a fresh morning shave hadn’t done much to disguise the strain.

Vasek & Caine wasn’t doing well, and the bills on the New York office suite were the least of their concerns.

Four months ago the company had been a growing enterprise, bringing in new medical-type investigations on a weekly basis. Then Max had gotten himself caught up with his ex and her female sex enhancement drug, Thriller. The product tampering case had put Vasek & Caine smack in the crosshairs of The Nine, a group of very powerful scientists rumored to control worldwide scientific progress through a combination of bribery and extortion. In effect, they were the biotech mafia. Unfortunately, almost nobody outside of Max, Raine and William actually believed they existed.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that Vasek & Caine’s clients had started drying up after that, though. The blackballing was a punishment. A warning, backed up by an anonymous note slid under the waiting room door a couple of months earlier.

You stay out of our business and we’ll leave you and yours alone.

Thing was, neither Max nor William took kindly to extortion. Hell, that was why they’d gone into business together in the first place.

They’d met at Boston General Hospital, where ex-FBI agent William had been freelancing for a medical investigations group called Hospitals for Humanity—HFH—and Max worked in a lab. They’d both needed a change of scenery around the same time and they’d both wanted to make a difference. It had seemed natural to combine their specialties into private medical investigations, with a focus on cases like that of drug developer Raine Montgomery, the ex-flame who’d become Max’s wife three months earlier.

At the thought of her, William glanced at his watch. “It’s Friday night. Aren’t you and Raine supposed to be somewhere?” He made the question seem casual, as though he didn’t care when his partner left the office.

“I’m on my way right now.” But Max stayed put. “Listen, I need to ask a favor, and you’re not going to like it.”

“That’s a heck of a sales technique. No wonder we’re down to our last few paying clients.”

Max grimaced. “No, that would be the part where we discovered Raine’s drug was being sabotaged by a scientific cartel that isn’t supposed to exist. Which brings me to the favor.”

“You don’t have to ask me to investigate the bastards,” William said. “I’m already on it.”

“I know. And I also know I haven’t been much help lately,” Max said.

“You’ve had other things to worry about, like making sure Raine’s drug returns to the market without any more glitches.” And making sure she stays safe, William thought but didn’t say.

Though Max and Raine had engineered the arrest of Frederick Forsythe, the man directly responsible for sabotaging Thriller, there were at least eight other members of The Nine to watch out for, along with their underlings. Any one of them might decide to finish the job, which was why William intended to finish them first. His was an ordered world, structured around laws and categories. There were good guys and bad guys, and The Nine were very bad guys.

Problem was, they also apparently had enough power to sway even his old bosses. That was the only logical explanation for why the evidence Max and Raine had amassed months earlier hadn’t been enough to convince the feds to open an investigation. Instead they’d decided Forsythe had acted alone, which was just ridiculous. It didn’t account for the subsequent attack on Ike Rombout, the tech-savvy, terminally annoying woman who’d helped Max track down Forsythe, and it didn’t account for whoever was blackballing Vasek & Caine now.

That left it up to Vasek & Caine—or rather left it up to William—to identify the other eight members of the supposedly nonexistent group and bring them to justice. He’d be ensuring the company’s safety and future. He’d be saving the scientific community from their very own version of organized crime. And as an added bonus, he’d be showing up his former boss, FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Grosskill.

The thought had William checking his watch again. “You’re going to be late if you don’t get going, and we both know Raine doesn’t do late.”

William liked Max’s wife a great deal, but she fell square into the high-maintenance category in his brain. Not because she liked expensive clothes and makeup—hell, he liked his women to look like women, and that required some mirror time. But Raine also ran a company of her own, and since the wedding, Max had been putting as much effort into Rainey Days as he was into Vasek & Caine.

William understood that a man had to protect what was his, but he had a strong feeling he wasn’t going to like Max’s solution. Mentally bracing himself, he said, “Come on, give with the favor. It can’t be that bad.”

“I want to take on someone to help you. Someone who can do the data crunching while you pound the pavement.”

William shrugged. “Tempting, but we can’t afford a receptionist, never mind a—” He broke off as he made the connection. His mind clicked on the image of a tall, lean woman with a killer body, three earrings in one ear, a mean-ass attitude and a fondness for tight black leather. His blood flared hot, then cold, and he said, “Oh, no, you don’t. Hell no. You’re not saddling me with that know-it-all Matrix wannabe.”

“Ike is hell on wheels with computers,” Max argued. “She knows way more than either of us about data mining and she’s got sources we can’t even dream of. She could help you find the names. Maybe even identify the next target.”

I already have a name, William thought. I’ve even got a meeting set up. But he kept that to himself, instead saying, “The Nine already went after Ike once. What’s to stop them from trying again if she gets involved?” He might find her annoying, but a woman’s skin was a woman’s skin, and it was no place for a bullet wound. Worse, a man had died when The Nine had attacked Ike earlier in the year. The Vermont cops had ruled the ski slope shooting a random homicide, and Grosskill and the rest of the FBI had agreed, but Max, William and Ike knew better. They knew it had been a warning from The Nine. Stay out of our business or else.

Max grimaced. “Trust me, I don’t want her involved. But she’s got another opinion.”

“Now there’s a surprise,” William muttered, leaning back in his chair. As far as he could tell, Ike Rombout was all about opinions. “And in case you missed it the first time, no. I don’t care how good she is with the tech stuff, I don’t want her anywhere near The Nine.” And I don’t want her anywhere near me.

He wasn’t sure where the thought came from, but it struck a chord. Ike wasn’t his type of woman—she was too brash and in-your-face. And she wasn’t his idea of a coworker for a potentially dangerous op—she had breasts.

He wasn’t proud of the chauvinism, but he figured he had a damn good reason for it.

“She’ll stay in Boston, I promise,” Max persisted. “Give her some data to crunch, some leads to dead end, I don’t care. Just let her feel involved. She needs this, William. They killed someone she cared about.”

That resonated, but William was no fool. “If all you wanted was some long-distance data crunching, you would’ve just turned her loose. Hell, that was how she found Forsythe for you. So give. What do you want from me?”

Max grimaced. “I need you to keep her busy and I need you to make sure she stays in Boston.”

A chill skittered through William. “You don’t think she’d actually go looking for—” He broke off and muttered a curse. “Of course she would. Hell. I don’t have time for this.” He glanced at Max. “And neither do you. But you’re still trying to save her from herself, aren’t you?”

Max shrugged, rueful amusement tugging at his lips. “Ike calls it my DIDS. Damsel in Distress Syndrome. I can’t stop myself from trying to save them.”

William could relate to that, but where Max saved people one at a time, William focused on the big picture, which sometimes demanded individual sacrifices in the name of the greater good.

Like Sharilee? a small thought prompted from within, bringing the smell of blood and gunfire and the sound of a soft body hitting the floor.

“Fine,” he said before the memory could form. “You owe me big-time, but I’ll keep an eye on Ike for you, starting tomorrow.”

He already had plans for tonight.

HOPING NOBODY HAD seen her sneak across the dark, deserted seventeenth green, Ike shimmied up the side of the brick building, her breath adding white puffs to the clinging fog.

She couldn’t believe she was actually doing this on her own, but what other choice did she have? Educated guesswork and an intercepted e-mail ghost had convinced her that several members of The Nine were meeting here at the Coach House, a posh country club restaurant outside Greenwich, Connecticut. She’d thought about asking Max to meet her, but given the way he’d been behaving lately, all Neanderthal and pat-the-little-woman on-the-head, she’d nixed that idea and driven down from Boston alone.

It was just recon, after all.

But as she hauled herself up to a narrow ledge of stone trim that ran most of the way around the second story of the brick building, her doubts crowded closer. She was a computer geek; she wasn’t trained for this sort of thing. Sure, she’d done surveillance before, both for freelance gigs and for HFH. And, yeah, she’d been on the edge of the action once or twice, even before Max had stumbled over evidence indicating that The Nine really existed.

This time, though, she was on her own. There was no employer backing her, nobody waiting for her to check in.

You’ve got your gun, she told herself. You can handle this. More importantly, she had to handle it. Zed deserved more than he’d gotten in the way of justice. She owed him.

Taking a breath of damp air that threatened rain, she edged across the brick wall. A series of lights set high on the building were tilted to illuminate the golf course beyond, their beams furred with mist. That same mist slicked her hand- and footholds as she pressed herself against the flat surface and began to move, using her black-gloved fingers to grip a thin pipe overhead while she clung to the narrow stone ledge by the toes of her black rubber-soled running shoes.

Her destination was a half-open window about fifty feet away. Based on her assessment of downloaded blueprints, the window should open into the meeting space. Even better, the rear wing angled off the main building near the window, forming a corner where she could fade into the shadows.

Score one for all black, Ike thought, comfortable in her trademark tight dark clothes, one of the few constants she allowed herself.

“Over here,” a male voice said unexpectedly from below.

Ike froze. Too late she heard the sound of footsteps on wet pavement.

Pressing herself against the building, heart hammering, she held her breath and tried to become one with the rough bricks.

Don’t look up, she thought. Please don’t look up.

“You got the stuff?” a second male voice asked, higher and a little nasal.

“You got the cash?”

She relaxed slightly at the sound of crinkling paper and plastic. It was just a drug buy, she thought, then quirked her lips at the just. Under other circumstances, she might’ve waded in and tried to scare some sense into the idiots. As it was, she’d wait them out.

She was after a bigger score.

Once their business was concluded, the men moved off. One headed out across the golf course on foot, past the pro shop where Ike had hidden her Jeep. The other disappeared around the corner. Moments later, a car door slammed and an engine started, revved and then faded with distance.

After a minute, Ike started breathing again, though her pulse stayed high at the near miss. She resumed her careful journey, crabbing sideways on the narrow ledge until she reached the shadows near the half-open window. Then she paused and listened.

In the room beyond, low-voiced conversation was punctuated by the clink of glasses. The quiet, civilized sounds suggested the meeting hadn’t started yet. Perfect.

Unperturbed by the height, Ike leaned back in the vee formed by the connecting stone walls and braced her feet on the molding. Once she was relatively stable, she spun her black leather fanny pack around to her front and dug out the palm-size telescoping mirror she used at work to look at hard-to-reach computer connections.

Praying she wasn’t about to bounce a reflected beam of light into the room, she edged the mirror past the frosted glass windowpane, to the open spot where heated indoor air hit the damp, cool outdoors and created a faint mist.

The mirror fogged momentarily, then cleared, showing her an expensively furnished room, all wood paneling, burgundy leather and a huge Oriental carpet she thought might be Heriz, based on a childhood spent haunting the antique shops of Vermont with her mother and father, before—

She cut off the memory before it could form and focused on the job at hand, angling the mirror and fighting to keep her hand steady as she located three gray-haired men seated at a large table set for six more.

All three were white guys in their late fifties, maybe early sixties, well-groomed and wearing expensive suits in shades of blue or gray. They exuded a homogeneity, a sameness she would have found vaguely creepy under other circumstances. As it was, all Ike felt was a burn of hatred. An ache for revenge. For justice.

The bastards had killed Zed with a bullet meant for her, and she planned to make them pay.

WILLIAM REACHED THE Coach House a few minutes late for the meeting, thanks to Max and his “favor,” along with the Friday night traffic between NYC and western Connecticut.

He parked his ride—an ice-blue BMW convertible he’d borrowed from a friend of a friend and disguised with fake tags that matched equally fake DMV records in the name of Emmett Grant. The cover was solid. It’d better be, William thought with a grimace. I paid enough for it.

The free cover stories were one of the few things he missed about working for the feds, but the money had been well spent. All but the most in depth background check would show that Emmett Grant was a slightly shady entrepreneur who’d cashed out just before the Internet bubble burst and was now looking to reinvest in the pharmaceutical market. William had the car and ID to match the image and he was dressed for the part in a custom suit—also borrowed—and the good watch his father had given him when he’d left for the Marines. High-quality fake facial hair and a touch of silver at his temples completed the disguise.

He figured he looked like new money and he’d done plenty of research to back up the cover story. He didn’t need to have any medical or scientific expertise, he just had to know the money talk, and that was second nature after his years undercover inside the Trehern organization.

When memories of that other assignment threatened to surface, he shoved them down deep and climbed out of the sports car, slamming the door harder than necessary. Then he took a breath and looked up at the Coach House, which was carved stone across the front, ivy-draped brick on the sides.

Unlike his cover story, the building reeked of old money.

William straightened his tie, a splash of lemon yellow against the suit. Then he said, “I am Emmett Grant.”

The identity settled over him like a cloak, an invisible weight that would remain until he consciously dropped the persona. He became Emmett Grant, a sharp-minded hustler who’d come from humble roots and didn’t mind sidestepping a few laws to get himself the best of everything.

As he walked across the parking area, past four other high-dollar rides, he mentally reviewed his e-mail exchange with his contact, Dr. Paul Berryville.

After Frederick Forsythe’s arrest, William had put out feelers through a carefully cloaked e-mail address, pretending to be a businessman who’d heard rumors that The Nine were for real. Over time, he’d filtered out the respondents until he was left with Berryville, who’d led him in a careful dance of innuendo and double meaning that had finally culminated in an invitation. Meet me at the Coach House at 8:00 p.m. sharp Friday. Some people want to meet you.

Berryville was waiting for him at the door. The silver-haired scientist’s career had been on the brink of complete collapse a few years earlier, when new evidence had conveniently surfaced clearing him of major ethics charges. Now he was the head of a major R & D group, thanks to the power of The Nine.

Berryville frowned, the expression stretching his face-lift-tight skin. “You’re late.”

“Sorry,” William said. “Traffic was a bitch.”

“They’re waiting for us.” Berryville hurried ahead, nerves evident in his quick strides and his silence as he led William through the front rooms of the wood-paneled Coach House, where tables and cocktail rounds sat empty.

“Did you guys buy out the whole restaurant just for this meeting?” William asked, pausing at the base of a flight of carpeted stairs and peering up at the equally deserted-feeling second floor.

“We value our privacy,” Berryville replied. Then he stopped and turned to look down at William from six steps up. “When we get in there, don’t say anything. Speak when spoken to and think before you answer a question. You’ll only get one chance to make a good impression.”

William’s scalp tingled with sudden foreboding as he realized he’d miscalculated. Berryville had hinted that he carried weight within the group, and William had taken that information at face value. But a powerful man wouldn’t have a faint sheen of sweat on his brow or a nervous tremor in his hands right now, would he?

Berryville was terrified, which could only mean that he was one of the smaller cogs in the organization, bringing the big boys a present and hoping they’d like it.

Hell, William thought as he followed Berryville up the stairs to the second floor, wishing he’d let Max in on the meeting. He could be in some serious trouble here, without a stitch of backup.

IKE PRESSED HER CHEEK against mist-slicked bricks and lifted the mirror higher, trying to figure out who was speaking as words carried to her.

“What do you know about this guy?”

“Not much,” a second voice answered, deeper than the first. “Berryville’s bringing him in. Says he’s a perfect fit.”

It took a moment for the words to connect. Then excitement zinged through her when she realized they must be interviewing Forsythe’s replacement. More importantly, there were nine chairs, which meant the whole group was going to be there, including their leader, who was called Odin after the ruler of the nine worlds in Norse mythology.

Fingers shaking slightly, she fumbled in the fanny pack for her camera.

If she could get some faces, her computers should be able to match names. Maybe that’d be enough to pull the data threads together, enough to convince the feds that Zed’s death hadn’t been random, that The Nine were more than just an urban legend in the scientific community.

She eased the digital camera up and over the edge, zoomed in on the men and clicked off half a dozen shots. Then she lowered the camera and used the miniscule toggle buttons to flip through the images on-screen, cursing inwardly when she saw that the tiny, blurred photos weren’t going to do her any good. Not even her sophisticated cleanup programs could help these shots, and too much digital enhancement would skew the results so they’d never stand up to FBI-level scrutiny.

She needed to get closer.

Bad idea, her inner voice hissed, but she silenced it with three whispered words. “I owe Zed.”

He’d still be alive if she’d been more careful. Instead he’d been buried while his parents and sisters had wept. She couldn’t bring him back. But moments before they’d closed his casket for the last time, as she’d pulled the black diamond stud from her ear and placed it in his cool palm, she’d vowed to make sure his killers didn’t get away with their crime.

Now, thinking fast, she withdrew a small hand-held computer from her pack and pulled up the Coach House blueprints on the tiny screen. She could swear she’d seen—ah, there it was, a small alcove near the meeting room. If she could get into the sheltered nook safely, she should have a better angle for photos. If being the operative word.

Breathing lightly through her mouth, she looked down to make sure the coast was clear. Nerves hummed beneath her skin, reminding her that although some of her freelancing had skirted over the edge of legal, most of her work was done via the keyboards and high-speed connections of her three trusty computers, Tom, Dick and Harry.

Until now, that is. But there was a first time for everything, and Ike was all about trying new things.

Seeing nothing below but Dumpster shadows and wet pavement, she worked her way over to where a ladder of sorts was formed by the regularly spaced braces that attached a wide gutter pipe to the building.

She was halfway down the pipe when something metal snagged her fanny pack, then pulled free, snapping back against the pipe with a loud clang.

Damn! If anyone were keeping an eye on things from the outside, they were guaranteed to have heard the noise. Heart drumming in her ears, she scrambled down the makeshift ladder and dropped to the cracked tarmac. Then she froze and listened for the sounds of an alarm.

Nothing.

Relaxing slightly, she shifted her fanny pack, more for reassurance than anything, and headed toward the nearer corner of the building, hoping there was a ground-level door she could slip through. She was halfway there when a heavy blow hit her from behind, driving her forward.

Ike bit off a scream as her attacker slammed her face-first into the building.

“What have we got here?” His voice was rough and a little mocking. “Looks like a spy. Kind of cute, too.”

She fought the instinctive fear, telling herself she could handle this, she could. But panic spiked when he pressed closer, his body crowding her, trapping her so she couldn’t move, couldn’t escape. Fear exploded, making her whimper a protest.

Her captor chuckled and swiped his tongue along her ear, getting off on her terror. He shifted again, pressing into her.

“Knock it off,” a second man’s voice ordered, sounding older, more cultured, and annoyed. Ike turned her head and saw a trim gray-haired man wearing a dark charcoal suit. He gestured to the building and said, “Bring her along. She may prove useful.”