Cold Jade (9 page)

T
he Owner was home
. The luxury condo was on the top floor and had been built to his specifications. He had his own communications center that operated separately from the rest of the building.

It was his lair and his fortress.

Best of all, was the view.

He had built his own living space solely around the view. And he had arranged it so that when he worked, the various computer screens and television monitors failed to block his view.

It was a glorious snapshot of Washington, but best of all, he could clearly see in the distance, one building that he never failed to single out, and relish the image before him.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building.

Headquarters of the FBI.

The monitoring system The Owner had installed was very complex. It was designed to be a cyber watchdog, continuously patrolling his own enterprise, while simultaneously keeping a close eye on anyone and everyone with whom he did business.

While the mechanics were very complex, the basic idea was simple. Every single “partner” in his enterprise was tagged. Their computers, cell phones, home phones, car phones, anything and everything they used to communicate with others was flagged. And the usage of each of those items was also monitored with a flagging system. A master list, comprehensive and thorough, was used to corroborate safe usage of the items by his customers. If one of his clients used their home computer to buy a book on Amazon, the monitoring system noticed, but did not do anything about it. If one of his clients called his distant relative’s home in Flagstaff, the monitoring system noticed, but did not raise any alarms.

However, any calls to 911, or a police station, hospital, attorney’s office, government entity, etc., any of those types of contacts, whether it be via cell phone, home phone, computer, and even a personal visit (the system was linked to an unofficial security camera network), the alarm was raised.

So the minute Charles Starkey, hundreds of miles away, typed the web address of the FBI into his browser window, a shower of warning lights cascaded across The Owner’s main monitor.

He read the report and knew instantly what was transpiring.

The Owner sighed softly and picked up his satellite phone.

T
he two happiest
days of a boat owner’s life are the day he buys the boat, and the day he sells the boat.

But right now, Charles Starkey was happy to have the boat, period.

When he’d seen the mobster’s car parked outside his house, he knew he could never go back. They’d already given him multiple warnings about his lack of payment. Plus, they’d clearly given up trying to reach him via phone.

They were going to hurt him, and hurt him bad. Maybe even kill him. Then try to get the life insurance money from his wife.

Well, that wasn’t going to happen.

Because no one knew about the boat.

Not his wife. Not his insurance agent. Hell, no one at the marina knew it was his because he hardly ever used it. He’d gotten it because at one point in his foolish past he thought it would be a good place to take the underage prostitutes he had developed a taste for. But he’d quickly discovered that wasn’t practical. Most of them wanted to have sex in a hotel room or his car. They didn’t like the idea of being transported to a boat.

So he’d given up on the fantasy, but hadn’t given up the boat.

Now, he had the power on, and was charging his cell phone. He couldn’t hide forever.

He needed to get in touch again with the FBI before his enemies found him.

Starkey checked his phone again and there was barely 5% of battery power. He had to wait until–

The boat shifted.

He looked up from his phone.

Could it have been the water? There was no boat traffic whatsoever in the marina.

It had seemed odd.

He wished he had a gun. There was a flare gun somewhere on board, probably near the emergency first aid kit. But it was stowed in the bench by the captain’s wheel.

He started to get up.

“Sit down,” a voice said from the doorway.

Starkey looked up and found a woman watching him. She had a gun in her hand and a face that was totally devoid of any emotion.

“Who are you?” Starkey asked.

The woman squeezed the trigger and Starkey felt something hit him hard in the chest and he struggled to breathe. He saw the gun spurt flame again but didn’t hear anything.

He wanted to ask the woman if she was from the Mob.

But his last thought was an answer.

She wasn’t.

She was from The Store.

R
ebecca Spencer sat
on the edge of her bed, trying to think. She instinctively knew the cabin, or cell as she thought of it, had been thoroughly stripped so as not to provide any type of weapon.

No phone. No unlocked doors. Just the bed, a toilet, and a sink.

It was not her style to wait.

Although it seemed like they had no intention of harming her, that they were basically storing her until the ransom money came in, she wasn’t about to sit around and wait.

She needed a weapon.

Rebecca considered the bed.

She stepped back, lifted the mattress and looked at the metal frame, thinking maybe there were springs she could bend into some type of shiv, like they do in prison movies.

But beneath the mattress all she saw were two strips of metal welded to the frame.

“Damn it,” she said.

She put the mattress back down, sat on it, and studied the floor.

It was wood. She believed it was called tongue and groove – solid.

The walls were wood planks as well. And there was nothing in the bathroom. She’d already looked at that.

No windows.

Rebecca looked at the headboard. It really wasn’t a headboard – just a metal bar that connected the sides of the frame.

She was turning her head away when she caught a glimpse of something dark on the wall.

Rebecca pulled the bed away and looked at it.

It was a knot in the wood of one of the planks that made the wall. And at the top of the knot was a small hole.

But the knot was at the bottom of the plank.

It reminded Rebecca of something.

When she was in grade school, a boy named Pat Bobryk had a crush on her. One day after school, they were sitting with some friends on the outfield grass of the baseball field. The fence that marked the outfield was made of wire and wood. The wire ran horizontally, and thick planks of wood made vertical slats in the fence. At the top, the wood slats stuck about six inches above the highest part of the wire.

So Pat decided to hurdle the fence as a way of showing off in front of Rebecca. He ran, jumped, and his front foot hit one of the slats dead on, and it broke in half vertically, leaving a jagged point that proceeded to scrape along Pat’s hamstring and open up a gash at least a foot long.

The boy needed 42 stitches to close it back up.

Now, Rebecca looked at the knot at the base of that plank behind the bed.

She wondered.
If I kicked it just right, and hard enough, would it split? And if so, where?

Rebecca pulled the bed farther out, and pushed it to the side, then sat on the floor and shimmied up to the wall so that her feet were pressed against the wall.

She leaned to the side and looked again at the knot and the small hole at its top.

Rebecca rested her heel just above the knot and traced a line of grain in the wood that ran up and to the left with its origin in the hole.

It was a guess, but if she kicked it just right, and hard enough, the plank might split along the line of grain. And if it broke loose, the result would be a long sharp piece of wood.

A weapon.

Rebecca brought her knee back, tilted the top of her foot toward her so that her heel was leading, exhaled, then drove her heel straight backward.

The sound was insanely loud in the empty, quiet space, and she felt a stab of pain in her foot.

She looked at the wall.

The wood had cracked, but it was still in place.

Rebecca gritted her teeth and kicked again.

This time, the plank cracked inwardly, in two uneven shapes that reminded her of Vermont and New Hampshire.

She got on her knees and went to the wall.

There was enough room for her to put a finger into the hole above the knot. She slid it in, then hooked the wood and pulled it toward her. It was dry, but still strong.

It wouldn’t move.

She studied the plank again. The crack was as she hoped – ending in a jagged point, but she had to break it loose without breaking the plank horizontally.

Rebecca leaned back, brought her foot forward and kicked one more time.

The plank popped and the two pieces were fully apart.

She reached in, and carefully broke the piece free.

It was wide at the base, and ended in a narrow, jagged point.

She touched the tip with her finger.

It was sharp enough to break skin.

She thought of the back of Pat Bobryk’s thigh, the way it had been sliced clean open.

Oh yeah, she thought.

Bring it on, bitches.

M
ack left
Denver by the direct order of Hopestil Fletcher and landed in D.C. after an uneventful flight. He powered on his cell phone and checked for messages. There was one from Adelia letting him know everything was going fine at home without him. She had said it and then chuckled.

He smiled, put the phone away, collected his bag and slid into the backseat of a Bureau car.

A half hour later they pulled up in front of the Hoover Building.

Inside, he went directly to the Computer Crimes section where a young assistant with the odd name of Merlin showed him to a war room.

Inside, there were half a dozen computers linked by various cables.

A woman stood before a large screen. A keyboard sat on a raised pedestal and the woman was furiously typing away. Mack noted that she wore black, polished cowboy boots, blue jeans, an Oakland Raiders T-shirt underneath a black sportcoat.

She glanced at him.

“Who are you?”

“Wallace Mack.”

The woman nodded, then looked at the two other people in the room. “Give us a minute, would you?” she said to them.

They snatched up their coffee cups and left the room quickly, shutting the door behind them.

Mack sat down at the table, caught a whiff of vanilla flavored coffee from whoever had been sitting there.

“Who are you?” Mack asked her.

“I’m Moody,” she said. “Don’t bother with a joke, I’ve heard them all.”

Mack smiled at her.

“A tip came in that eventually found its way to me,” she said. “I understand you’re here to help connect the dots.”

“That’s right, hopefully,” Mack said.

“The tip was initially dismissed,” Moody continued. “It was somewhat mysterious and unbelievable, until we traced it via the IP address to a certain individual with a proclivity for sexual escapades with minors.”

“And who would that be?” Mack asked.

“His name is Charles Starkey and he’s a real prize,” she said. “Rich from his father’s plumbing business, he had a host of charges for assault, improper contact and various degrees of sexual assault with children.”

“Why is he still running around?”

“Because he has good lawyers, and apparently has kept his nose clean for a few years now.”

“So who did the tip come from?”

“This is where it gets interesting. Charles Starkey provided the information.”

Mack frowned. “Why?”

“Well, we dug into his financial records and what we found was complete chaos,” Moody said. She tapped on the keyboard and a screen came to life behind her. Mack could see various financial statements that meant nothing to him.

“Funds being moved around with dizzying speed but eventually we were able to tease out that he’s blown through all of his money and is deep in debt. To the wrong people.”

“Loan sharks? The Mob?”

Moody nodded.

“So he said he wanted to make a deal,” she said. “He supposedly knows about an Internet ring that sells kids online. And that he’ll tell us everything he knows in exchange for going into the Witness Protection Program.”

“Is this Internet ring connected to the Mob?”

“We don’t know. Yet.”

“This is all great and everything,” Mack said. “But how does this apply to me?”

“Well, in his message, he says that he recognized one of the girls on sale in The Store.”

“The Store?”

“That’s what they call it, I guess.”

Mack suddenly knew.

“Rebecca Spencer.”

Moody pointed at him and said, “That’s correct. Starkey claims she was listed on The Store and that he figures a lot of people are looking for her. He’s hoping that his information will help us find her and we’ll reward him with immunity.”

“Let’s give it to him.”

“We plan to. If we can find him.”

“What?”

“He’s missing.”

“Great.”

“And that’s not all.”

Mack waited.

“He said that the Spencer girl wasn’t on the site long. Someone bought her right away.”

B
utterfly landed in Cheyenne
, Wyoming, after a flight from New York to Chicago that included new tickets in different names.

The Owner had arranged it all.

Now, she left the Wyoming airport in a rental car, also rented under an alias, and headed toward Colorado.

The kill cabin was actually closer to Denver than Cheyenne, but she didn’t like to fly into the same airport too many times. Besides, the drive from Cheyenne wasn’t bad at all.

The business in New Jersey had gone well, and she’d ditched the gun in the ocean, about a mile up from where she’d killed Starkey and blown up his boat.

Butterfly recognized the man as a recent visitor to the compound. He must have crossed the Owner.

It took her a little under five hours to get to the enclosure, having passed miles upon miles of vast stretches of prairie punctuated by rolling hills and bluffs, and enormous herds of cattle warming up in the sun.

Now, she turned into the paved driveway of the executive cabin. It was where she had stashed Bernard Evans, while she dashed off to Jersey. It wasn’t an anomaly. Sometimes the customers liked to stay a day or two in the executive cabin while their “purchase” was carefully prepared.

Evans had been pretty drunk when she dropped him there.

There was a small staff at the executive cabin, who were given strict orders not to access the other sections of the compound. The employees included a cook and a cleaning woman.

Butterfly provided security.

Like the staff, guests were not permitted to leave the grounds of the executive cabin.

Now, Butterfly parked the rental car, retrieved her small travel bag and went inside.

She used her key card to open a door that led to her area. The only place she really called home.

She stashed her travel bag, splashed some water on her face and went to her gun safe.

Butterfly entered the combination, the door opened, and she stepped inside. Her eyes caressed the selection of weapons. There were handguns, rifles, revolvers, hideout guns, even a whole wall of “throwaway” guns – with their serial numbers removed so she could dump them without fear of a trace.

She put on a shoulder holster with a S&W .40 automatic, then left her section of the lodge and headed for the bar. Sure enough, she found Bernard Evans there with a glass of amber liquid in front of him.

Butterfly took the seat next to him.

The bartender, who also doubled as part of the kitchen staff, nodded at her and placed a glass of sparkling water in front of her.

“When will I get to see her?” Evans asked.

Butterfly looked into the bottom of her glass.

“How about now?” she said.