Shadowlight

Page 2

“We’re going to be rich, baby,” the man panted as he grabbed her bouncing breast through her damp silk blouse and dug his fingers into the mound. “So fucking rich. We’ll never have to work another day of our lives.”
Max Grodan was already rich, Jessa knew. Beyond rich. He could leave Ellen and never have to work another day for ten lifetimes—and he had worked very hard to keep Ellen from discovering that.
Ellen groaned. “What if I get caught? This time they’ll know it was me. I’ll go to prison, Max.”
“Ellen Farley will go to prison, if they bother to dig her up out of the ground.” Max nuzzled her neck. “Judy Tulliver is going to Rio with me and five-point-nine million bucks.”
The image in Max’s mind was of a shallow grave, but it was empty. At least until he shoved Ellen’s limp body over the edge.
Sunlight.
Jessa released the other woman’s hand, smiled, and watched her leave the office. As soon as the door closed, she dropped down into her chair and buried her face in her hands. She sat like that until the worst of the shakes from her vision stopped and she could think of something other than running after Ellen and pleading with her not to go anywhere near Max.
She couldn’t do this. Not here, not now.
With a trembling hand she picked up her phone and dialed a two-digit extension. “Angela, check the U.S. interment database and see if you can find a listing for an Ellen Ann Farley, date of birth February nineteenth.”
“What year, Ms. Bellamy?”
She flipped open the file and gazed at Ellen’s date of birth. To use identity records belonging to another person, Ellen would have had to choose someone born prior to 1936—the year the United States began issuing Social Security numbers—with digits that could be easily doctored. The digit I could be easily changed to a 4—or a 7. “Try 1914.”
“Searching.” After a few moments, Angela took in a quick breath. “One hit. Holy Moses. Ellen Ann Farley, born 1914, died 1916. Interred in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Albany County, New York.”
“Good.” Jessa put the phone on speaker so she could walk around the office and work out the last of the trembling weakness from being in the shadowlight. “Call the Office of Vital Statistics in New York, and have them fax a copy of Ellen Ann Farley’s actual birth certificate to us. If the certificate numbers match, we’ll move on to Social Security.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Angela hesitated before adding, “See what I mean? You’re never wrong about people, Ms. Bellamy.”
“No.” Jessa looked down at the vase of white roses on the coffee table, and touched one of them. “This time I wasn’t.”
“Adele, standing there and breathing on it ain’t gonna get that window clean,” Maribeth Boden said as she finished rubbing the last streak from the glass in front of her.
Adele Watkins didn’t reply, but swatted the air with her hand.
“Come on now.” Maribeth walked over to help her friend, and studied the dusty inside of the pane. “We got three more offices to do before … we—” She stopped and gulped. “Sweet baby Jesus.”
“Uh-huh,” Adele murmured.
The man on the other side of the window stood in the shade the recessed arch over it provided. While Maribeth saw a lot of men during her rounds of the office buildings she cleaned every day, she couldn’t recall ever noticing one put together like this one.
He was too dark to be white, and too light to be black. She would have pegged him as Hispanic or Indian, if not for his dark blond hair and light eyes, but that wasn’t right either. If someone had asked her, she would have said his skin reminded her of her mama’s homemade pralines, all hot and smooth as they cooled on waxed paper in the kitchen.
His pretty skin covered broad, heavy muscles, the kind she’d never seen on a white man, not even the ones at the gym around the corner. When he shifted position, they didn’t ripple; they flowed.
“You think he’s gonna put that jacket back on?” Adele murmured.
The white sleeveless shirt he wore clung to his chest and torso like body paint, and made it clear to Maribeth that everything it covered was just as fine as what it exposed. “God wouldn’t be that hateful to me.”
Adele sucked in a sharp breath as the man turned his head to look at the window. “He knows we’re watching him.”
“No, he don’t,” Maribeth chided. “It’s privacy glass; the outside’s like a mirror, ’member? He’s just looking at himself.” But he didn’t do much of that before he went back to watching the street. “You think he works here?”
“If he does, we’re blind.” Adele pressed her dark hand to the dirty window. “Damn, Mari, but if he ain’t the finest man I’ve seen in my whole life, I’ll eat my mop.”
Maribeth thought of her man, Darnell, who was still home in bed after a long night on the road. “Think I’m gonna go home for lunch today.”
Adele sputtered a laugh. “I was thinking I’d take my coffee break in the back of my husband’s cab.”
“Morning, ladies.” Carter Burleigh, one of the young attorneys who worked on the floor, walked up behind them. “Have either of you … found—” He stopped speaking, but his jaw remained in its dropped position.
Adele glanced back at him. “That your boyfriend, Mr. Burleigh?”
“God wouldn’t be that kind to me, Adele.” Carter wedged himself between the two women to have a better look. “Damn.”
“Amen,” Maribeth said on her own sigh.
On the other side of the window, the man who had taken the name Gaven Matthias decided he’d concealed himself long enough to dispel casual suspicion, and moved out of the shade to cross the street. As he did, he heard the groans of the two women and the one man who had been watching him, and smiled a little as he kept his jacket slung over his arm.
On the other side of the street, he walked down the block, went to a meter, took out a handful of coins, and counted them. Everyone who walked past him paid little attention to what he did; he was simply a man avoiding a parking ticket.
They were not aware that he’d claimed the spot many hours before dawn, or that he had spent the time either watching the phone booth next to the parking space or feeding coins to it so he might eavesdrop on every woman who came to use the booth. Fortunately in this era of mobile phones few seemed to have need of it, and there had been only two since dawn.
The third came as he selected a quarter to add to the meter. He heard the click of her heels on the concrete sidewalk and smelled her scent as she passed. He didn’t look directly at her, but from the corner of his eye he saw the gleaming twist of black hair at the back of her head and the smooth fit of her gray jacket over slim black trousers.
She dressed like a man but smelled like good clear water, crisp and cool. He closed his eyes briefly, taking her scent deep into his chest and letting it warm him. Few of his boyhood beliefs had withstood the passage of time and life, but he still kept faith in his senses. They whispered that she had come to him at last, the one he was meant to find. She smelled of tears and melting snow.
She smelled of rain.
Coins chimed as she fed them into the phone, and then her voice brushed against his ears, low and sweet, a taste of dark honey. She asked for an agent by name, waited, and said, “I have important information for you. Please listen carefully.”
Matthias pressed a button on his watch to switch it to its timing function before he fed another quarter into the meter and listened. The woman spoke rapidly, offering names, dates, monetary amounts, and the electronic method used to commit the crime. She gave the address of a hotel and the room number where the criminals responsible could be found. She finished the call with a polite refusal—probably for a sizable reward—and hung up the receiver.
She walked away without looking back once.
He checked his watch. She had related everything in one minute and thirty-eight seconds. As he watched her turn the corner, he saw her remove first one black leather glove and then the other.
He took out his own phone and pressed the number two before bringing it to his ear. “Whom did she call?”
“FBI headquarters in New York City,” Drew told him. “Did you get a clear shot?”
“There was no opportunity.” Matthias went around and climbed into his rental car. As he pulled out and drove around the block, he repeated everything he had heard the woman say. “You can check what she reported to see if it is true?”
“Already on it.” The sound of tapping keys came over the line. “Got a hit. The details she gave the FBI match an unsolved case that happened two years ago. Electronic embezzlement. The company lost close to a million dollars. No suspects.”
“Soon there will be.”
“No doubt,” Drew agreed. “Why doesn’t she report them to the local office? They’re there in Atlanta.”
He considered that. “Too close to where she lives.”
“Then you were right. She lives in the city.”
“Lives, or perhaps works.” Matthias searched the faces of the pedestrians walking on either side of the street before he spotted the woman standing at a corner and holding her hand in the air. “She came by taxi.”
“Smart lady. No car, no license plate we can use to trace her identity. Do you think she suspects that someone is looking for her?”
“She would not stay here if she did.” Matthias kept one hand on the wheel and used the other to lift his camera to his face. He was able to snap three profile shots as the woman entered the taxi that had stopped for her. “Find out what you can. I will call you later.”
“Good hunting, boss.”
Matthias noted the number and license plate of the cab before he pressed the number one on his phone.
“Hit me,” Rowan’s cool young voice said.
He gave her the numbers along with the company name stenciled on the side of the taxi. “The driver took her from the street at one thirty-three.”