White Hot
Page 14
“Who is she?” Cornelius asked.
“A socialite,” I said. “She was involved with the people behind Adam Pierce.”
“I put her under surveillance,” Rogan said.
“We bugged her apartment, her phone, her cell, and her car,” Bug said. “We bugged all the shit.”
“A month ago Harper began an affair with Jaroslav Fenley,” Rogan said.
Cornelius leaned forward. Jaroslav had worked with Nari. He was one of the three other lawyers murdered with her.
“Then, last Friday we got this.” Rogan nodded at Bug, who reached over the top of the laptop and pressed a key.
“It’s happening,” Harper’s voice said. “They’re going to hand it over. They don’t want it leading back to them, so they’re looking for security for the meeting now.”
“We need the time and place,” an older female voice said.
A muscle jerked in Rogan’s face.
“I’m tired. Can I just be done? He’s boring and he smells. The BO is through the roof.”
“Do you need me to remind you who’s holding your leash?”
“Fine. I’ll call you when I get it.”
“The other woman on the tape is Kelly Waller,” Rogan said. His blue eyes were glacier-cold. He cared about Kelly Waller’s betrayal. He cared very much. If I were Kelly Waller, I’d make arrangements to run away to another continent.
Bug grimaced. “She used a burner phone. If she wasn’t clutching Sassy at the time, we wouldn’t have caught it.”
“Sassy?” I asked.
“Her foo-foo poodle,” Bug said.
“You bugged her dog?”
Bug drew back, outraged. “I bugged her collar! What, you think I’m a complete fart muffin? She shouldn’t have that dog anyway. She treats her like shit. She doesn’t deserve Sassy.” Bug tapped the keys. “We combed the net and the usual places a dimwit—”
Mad Rogan glanced at him.
“—a man who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing might look for private security. We found Fenley’s job and we took the contract.”
“We?” I asked.
“I own a private security company,” Rogan said.
Of course.
“Fenley indicated that they were meeting with another party to exchange some data,” Rogan said.
“At Hotel Sha Sha,” Cornelius guessed.
Rogan nodded. “The timing and location weren’t ideal, but I took the risk. If my cousin wants this data, I want it more.”
He took the risk and his people had died. He blamed himself. It didn’t reflect in his face, but I saw it in his eyes for a brief moment, before they went back to their icy blue. The last time we talked, I was almost completely convinced that he was a sociopath. He seemed invulnerable, as if nothing could bother him. This did.
Bug pushed a key on the keyboard. I braced myself.
A woman in her mid-thirties wearing grey pants, a black shirt, and an odd-looking bulletproof vest appeared on the large screen. A thin strip of metal and plastic adhered to the left side of her forehead, disappearing under her dark hair, pulled back from her face. She touched it and the view shifted slightly. She was looking into a mirror.
“Stop screwing with it,” Bug’s voice said.
“It’s distracting.” Her voice carried traces of Louisiana. “I don’t like distracting.”
“It the best tech on the market,” Bug said. “And you broke the last two, Luanne.”
“They were also distracting.”
“Do you see the care in my eye?”
Luanne looked athletic and strong, and the way she held herself projected a dispassionate calm. Not serenity, just a quiet, competent alertness devoid of any emotional connection. I’d met her type before. She was a professional private soldier. You would look into her eyes and see nothing, and then she’d shoot you in the face, and as the bullets were flying, you’d still see nothing. It didn’t reach her, maybe because of her experience or perhaps it just never did. In everyday life, she’d look completely normal. You’d see her at the supermarket and never imagine that she could kill people for a living.
Behind her men and women in identical garb were checking their weapons.
“What kind of a vest is that?” I asked. It looked segmented under the grey fabric, as if made of small hexagonal sections. Flexible too. The hexagons shifted slightly as Luanne moved.
“That’s a Scorpion V,” Bug said. “Latest, greatest, classified, and civilians aren’t supposed to have them, so don’t see it or we’ll have to gouge your eyes out.”
“No heroics, Luanne,” Rogan said off camera. “I just want to know what they’re trading. Get in, stay alive, get out.”
“With all due respect, Major, this isn’t my first dance,” Luanne said.
“Major worries,” a younger man with a freckled face said as he rested a firearm on his lap. Heckler & Koch MP7.
I glanced at Rogan. His face was blank.
“Major always worries,” an older man said.
“It’s our job to prove that he’s worried for nothing, Watkins.” Luanne turned and the view swung to a group of private soldiers. “Time to earn the big money.”
The screen split into four, each feed attached to a different soldier.
“Fast forward,” Rogan said quietly.
The recording sped up. They divided into four huge black Tahoes, picked up the lawyers—putting them only into two Tahoes—and took separate routes to the hotel. The video slowed to normal speed. We watched them get out and escort two men and two women, all in Scorpion bulletproof vests, into the hotel, where another private soldier met them at the door. Rogan’s team must’ve scouted the location beforehand and done a walk-through.
As the lawyers were hustled into the hotel, the recording caught the taller woman’s face.
Cornelius took a sharp breath.
She was about twenty-eight or so, Asian, possibly of Korean descent, with a round face and large smart eyes that looked just like her daughter’s. Worry twisted her face. She seemed so alive there on the recording.
I was watching a dead person walking.
The lawyers and the private security people moved into the building. Four went ahead. The group directly responsible for the lawyers’ lives followed, clearing the hotel’s corridors in the “hallway” formation: one guard in front, the other slightly behind to his left, then the lawyers, then the third guard on the right and the final guard almost exactly behind the first. From above it would look like a rectangle set on a corner. Four remaining guards brought up the rear. They moved fast, took the stairs instead of the elevator, and arrived at a suite on the second floor. Another private solider, a woman this time, stood at the doors of the suite.
“Any security on the outside?” I asked.
“There are two people,” Rogan said. “One on the building northwest, covering the entrance, and one on the museum’s roof to the north, covering the two windows.”
Thorough. He’d covered the exit and the windows, so if anyone or anything that presented a threat tried to enter the hotel, his people would know instantly and neutralize it. I never took any private security jobs, but back when my father was alive, he and my mother had insisted I take a course on it at a training facility in Virginia. From what I could remember, Rogan’s people had crossed every t and dotted every i.
“A socialite,” I said. “She was involved with the people behind Adam Pierce.”
“I put her under surveillance,” Rogan said.
“We bugged her apartment, her phone, her cell, and her car,” Bug said. “We bugged all the shit.”
“A month ago Harper began an affair with Jaroslav Fenley,” Rogan said.
Cornelius leaned forward. Jaroslav had worked with Nari. He was one of the three other lawyers murdered with her.
“Then, last Friday we got this.” Rogan nodded at Bug, who reached over the top of the laptop and pressed a key.
“It’s happening,” Harper’s voice said. “They’re going to hand it over. They don’t want it leading back to them, so they’re looking for security for the meeting now.”
“We need the time and place,” an older female voice said.
A muscle jerked in Rogan’s face.
“I’m tired. Can I just be done? He’s boring and he smells. The BO is through the roof.”
“Do you need me to remind you who’s holding your leash?”
“Fine. I’ll call you when I get it.”
“The other woman on the tape is Kelly Waller,” Rogan said. His blue eyes were glacier-cold. He cared about Kelly Waller’s betrayal. He cared very much. If I were Kelly Waller, I’d make arrangements to run away to another continent.
Bug grimaced. “She used a burner phone. If she wasn’t clutching Sassy at the time, we wouldn’t have caught it.”
“Sassy?” I asked.
“Her foo-foo poodle,” Bug said.
“You bugged her dog?”
Bug drew back, outraged. “I bugged her collar! What, you think I’m a complete fart muffin? She shouldn’t have that dog anyway. She treats her like shit. She doesn’t deserve Sassy.” Bug tapped the keys. “We combed the net and the usual places a dimwit—”
Mad Rogan glanced at him.
“—a man who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing might look for private security. We found Fenley’s job and we took the contract.”
“We?” I asked.
“I own a private security company,” Rogan said.
Of course.
“Fenley indicated that they were meeting with another party to exchange some data,” Rogan said.
“At Hotel Sha Sha,” Cornelius guessed.
Rogan nodded. “The timing and location weren’t ideal, but I took the risk. If my cousin wants this data, I want it more.”
He took the risk and his people had died. He blamed himself. It didn’t reflect in his face, but I saw it in his eyes for a brief moment, before they went back to their icy blue. The last time we talked, I was almost completely convinced that he was a sociopath. He seemed invulnerable, as if nothing could bother him. This did.
Bug pushed a key on the keyboard. I braced myself.
A woman in her mid-thirties wearing grey pants, a black shirt, and an odd-looking bulletproof vest appeared on the large screen. A thin strip of metal and plastic adhered to the left side of her forehead, disappearing under her dark hair, pulled back from her face. She touched it and the view shifted slightly. She was looking into a mirror.
“Stop screwing with it,” Bug’s voice said.
“It’s distracting.” Her voice carried traces of Louisiana. “I don’t like distracting.”
“It the best tech on the market,” Bug said. “And you broke the last two, Luanne.”
“They were also distracting.”
“Do you see the care in my eye?”
Luanne looked athletic and strong, and the way she held herself projected a dispassionate calm. Not serenity, just a quiet, competent alertness devoid of any emotional connection. I’d met her type before. She was a professional private soldier. You would look into her eyes and see nothing, and then she’d shoot you in the face, and as the bullets were flying, you’d still see nothing. It didn’t reach her, maybe because of her experience or perhaps it just never did. In everyday life, she’d look completely normal. You’d see her at the supermarket and never imagine that she could kill people for a living.
Behind her men and women in identical garb were checking their weapons.
“What kind of a vest is that?” I asked. It looked segmented under the grey fabric, as if made of small hexagonal sections. Flexible too. The hexagons shifted slightly as Luanne moved.
“That’s a Scorpion V,” Bug said. “Latest, greatest, classified, and civilians aren’t supposed to have them, so don’t see it or we’ll have to gouge your eyes out.”
“No heroics, Luanne,” Rogan said off camera. “I just want to know what they’re trading. Get in, stay alive, get out.”
“With all due respect, Major, this isn’t my first dance,” Luanne said.
“Major worries,” a younger man with a freckled face said as he rested a firearm on his lap. Heckler & Koch MP7.
I glanced at Rogan. His face was blank.
“Major always worries,” an older man said.
“It’s our job to prove that he’s worried for nothing, Watkins.” Luanne turned and the view swung to a group of private soldiers. “Time to earn the big money.”
The screen split into four, each feed attached to a different soldier.
“Fast forward,” Rogan said quietly.
The recording sped up. They divided into four huge black Tahoes, picked up the lawyers—putting them only into two Tahoes—and took separate routes to the hotel. The video slowed to normal speed. We watched them get out and escort two men and two women, all in Scorpion bulletproof vests, into the hotel, where another private soldier met them at the door. Rogan’s team must’ve scouted the location beforehand and done a walk-through.
As the lawyers were hustled into the hotel, the recording caught the taller woman’s face.
Cornelius took a sharp breath.
She was about twenty-eight or so, Asian, possibly of Korean descent, with a round face and large smart eyes that looked just like her daughter’s. Worry twisted her face. She seemed so alive there on the recording.
I was watching a dead person walking.
The lawyers and the private security people moved into the building. Four went ahead. The group directly responsible for the lawyers’ lives followed, clearing the hotel’s corridors in the “hallway” formation: one guard in front, the other slightly behind to his left, then the lawyers, then the third guard on the right and the final guard almost exactly behind the first. From above it would look like a rectangle set on a corner. Four remaining guards brought up the rear. They moved fast, took the stairs instead of the elevator, and arrived at a suite on the second floor. Another private solider, a woman this time, stood at the doors of the suite.
“Any security on the outside?” I asked.
“There are two people,” Rogan said. “One on the building northwest, covering the entrance, and one on the museum’s roof to the north, covering the two windows.”
Thorough. He’d covered the exit and the windows, so if anyone or anything that presented a threat tried to enter the hotel, his people would know instantly and neutralize it. I never took any private security jobs, but back when my father was alive, he and my mother had insisted I take a course on it at a training facility in Virginia. From what I could remember, Rogan’s people had crossed every t and dotted every i.
