Deadly Little Secrets (2 page)

Obviously Jen was taking personal time off to try out the millionaire dating pool. Pulling out her phone, Ana sent her a text.

It would make Jen laugh, at least. It wouldn't deter her, but nothing did. Within days she'd be after Ana again to try something else in the way of dating or getting out, or taking a class or something. Ana's back still hurt from the yoga experiment.

She slipped the Italian work into her briefcase. She'd look at that tonight.

Her phone rang, and this time, she checked the incoming number. Not Jen. Hmmm.

“Agent Burton,” she answered. “To whom am I speaking?”

“Agent Burton, this is Gates Bromley, special assistant to Mr. Davros Gianikopolis.” The man's rich, luscious voice filled her ear. “You had called regarding a follow-up on an old case.”

She was so mesmerized by the voice, it took Ana a heartbeat to make sense of the words. “Yes. I'd like to make an appointment with Mr. Gianikopolis to discuss his losses in the incident. I'm following up on some new leads.”

“I'll be happy to meet with you, get the information, and assess if there's any new data we can add.” Holy cow, the man's voice was pure, liquid sex.

For a second, all she could think about was the image of liquid sex. Jeeez, she had to get out more. Jen was right, and she hated to admit it. In the next second, she processed what he'd said and bristled at the high-handed phrasing.
Assess the data, my ass.
Fabulous voice or not, this guy needed a set-down.

“Mr. Gianikopolis is the insured.” She kept her voice brisk, impersonal. “I'll need to speak with him. You are welcome to be present, Mr. Bromley.” She put all the
I Am An Agent Of The Law
insistence she could in her voice. “Which day this week is he available?”

There was a momentary pause, and when Gates Bromley replied, he sounded amused. “Mr. Gianikopolis is in town, but unavailable for the next several days.”

“Fine. Tuesday then?” she pushed.

“Ten a.m. at his estate” was the still amused but clipped reply. He rattled off the address.

“I'll be there. Thank you,” she added, remembering her manners. She'd gotten her way—didn't hurt to sugar things up. “I won't take much of his time.”

“I'll see to that, Agent. Good day.”

Ana clicked off. “I'll see to that? I'll see to that? What a snotty thing to say,” she accused the now-humming phone. “You can bite my ass,
Mister
Gates Bromley.”

“Oh, man, and here I was hoping to do that,” a male voice responded over the cubicle walls and Jim Davis leaned on the opening to her cubicle. Ana cursed under her breath. Just what she needed. The only other person in the San Francisco office who would speak to her was Davis, and he was a slimeball.

“Shut up, Jim,” Pearson called. “And get over here. I need that file.” Davis blew Ana a smarmy kiss and obeyed. Pearson, the one other female agent besides Pretzky, had filed a complaint against Davis. Though not particularly friendly, Pearson had warned her about him.

“Thanks, Pearson,” she muttered as Davis disappeared. She noted the appointment with Mr. Gianikopolis on her PDA, on her paper calendar, and in the file. Checking Gianikopolis off the list, she picked up the phone for the next call.

It was all downhill from there, which made for a bitch of a headache and a long afternoon. At least she had a full Thursday to look forward to, and Friday. She hated the weekends now, with nothing to do but think, which was why she'd gone along with some of Jen's crazier schemes.

“No more yoga, though,” she promised herself.

Dragging into her apartment several hours later, she picked up the plaintively meowing cat.

“There now, Lancelot, we'll have a nice dinner and a glass of wine,” she said. “Well, wine for me, some cream for you. We'll read some strange Greek and Italian phrases and pop off to bed, perchance to dream.” She grimaced.
No. No dreams.
“Strike that, Lancie, let's just stick with a good night's sleep.”

The cat wiggled, and she let him jump down. She followed him into the bedroom and changed into sweats. It felt good to get out of the dramatic black pantsuit. She'd stopped wearing the flamboyant Italian silks, the colorful scarves from the Milan markets. Now she stuck to what she thought of as her going-to-court suits for work. Somehow the formality of them helped her feel stable, serious, on the job. It gave her control of
something
in her life, no matter how small.

That was important right about now.

Dinner in hand, Ana dragged her briefcase to the coffee table. “God I'm tired, Lancie. The job used to energize me, you know?” she said, gesturing with her fork. The cat was far more interested in following the path of the tidbit on the fork than listening to her words. “Here,” she slid the bite onto a napkin and put it on the table next to the cat.

“Not like you haven't heard this all before, cat,” she sighed, ruffling his ears. “I'm like an effin' broken record.”

They sat in companionable silence as the news rolled by, and a sitcom came on. Somehow, it didn't really seem all that funny but it was better than a crime show or a drama. She avoided them like the plague.

“My own demons are enough, thanks,” she told the TV as she switched channels away from a cop show. Finally, at eleven, when the news came on, she picked up the folder with the e-mails from TJ. Pulling her long dark hair into a tail, she got to work.

She smiled over his note, then read the phrases from both pages and laughed out loud, seeing why TJ had been concerned. Then she translated them and sent them to him with a note:

She hit S
END
, then doubted herself and pulled up the sent e-mail to double-check it. No. It was right. She had to quit checking everything to the point of obsession. She took her dishes to the kitchen and stuffed the files in her briefcase.

As she sat back down, a program started itself on her computer, and a soft tone sounded an alert.

“What? Why would someone be searching me?”

She opened the alert, noting that a superficial search had already shown up and that whoever was looking at her had initiated a deeper, more intensive search, which included databases one had to pay for and register with. She grinned.

“If you had to register…” She hummed the two-tone
Jaws
theme. “I can find you.”

Cracking her knuckles and taking a big swig of wine, she set to work.

“Damn, whoever this is, he's good,” she muttered, yanking her dark hair off her face and tying it into a knot. The tracer had used a series of cross-referencing search engines, with ISPs that bounced back and forth as he searched first one and then the other in an attempt either to move faster or to deflect notice.

The clock on her computer chimed midnight. That was her signal to shut it down and go to bed. She'd gotten pills to help her sleep. Problem was, she absolutely had to go to bed by midnight or they wouldn't wear off before her alarm buzzed, which meant she would be worthless at work. Of course, if she didn't take the pills and she had one of those nights when she couldn't get to sleep or stay asleep, she'd be worthless anyway.

She wanted to keep going. It was killing her. “What is he looking for?” The search was deep and thorough, but it wasn't for financial data or data about the inquests or Rome.

“My college? Why Marshall?” she wondered. The chime sounded again. Twelve-fifteen. Now or never.

“Gah, I hate this. I hate pills,” she complained to the cat as she reluctantly shut down her laptop. Damn. She wanted to know what this guy was up to.

“I can check in the morning. I can check in the morning,” she chanted as she went to her bedside and got the pill bottle. “I have to have sleep.”

 

“I told you, someone's looking at the files, calling people from the list,” the voice whispered on the phone. “It's that new woman, Agent Burton. I haven't been able to get in touch with Agent—”

The man on the other end of the line cut him off before he could name anyone. “Someone? You call me again, without a name of
who
is doing this checking? Shoddy work, Perkins. Very shoddy work.”

“Don't use my name.”

“What, you think the Agency could have possibly made the connection between us?” He laughed when he heard Perkins draw in a frightened breath at his more menacing tone. “You had better hope not, Perkins.” He used the man's name over and over, just to irritate. “Now, don't call me again until you have a name. And not even then until you know there's something about which to be concerned. Calling old contacts on an old list of victims means nothing. You knew the files would eventually come up for review, which is why you set the alert. They had nothing nine years ago. They have nothing now.” He paused for a long, cool moment designed to unnerve his worthless snitch. “And if they begin to have anything, you will see that it's taken care of. I assume that's understood?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Perkins stuttered. “Certainly.”

“Monitor it. Nothing more. Let me know if anything changes.” There was resignation in his voice as if he was sure Perkins would screw it up, which was quite true.

“I think,” Perkins began, then stopped.

“You think?” He began drumming his fingers on the mahogany desk.

Perkins sighed. Most annoying. When Perkins finally spoke, it was with a quaver. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

He clicked off, hanging up on the still-whining Perkins, and sat looking at the disposable cell phone in his hand. How irksome. Perkins had his uses, but he was a nervous little shit and it was risky to continue using him. He was prone to panic, and that panic could easily turn to ass-saving. Perkins, in order to save his own ass, wouldn't think twice about giving anyone up. He'd have to be eliminated. Soon.

“Weak tools,” he muttered, wiping the phone with a cloth. He cleaned it thoroughly, then put it in a plastic bag and used the heavy bronze bust of Shakespeare on his desk to pulverize the pieces. Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he left his office and climbed the stairs to pick a diaper out of the holder on his son's changing table. In the bathroom, he poured water into the diaper so it swelled, as if it were full. Opening the bag, he dropped half the pieces in, then repeated the process with a second diaper.

Sealing them both in a large plastic freezer bag, he carried them to the garage. Popping the trunk, he dropped it in. He'd deposit the diapers in separate trash cans on his route to the office the next day. It was time consuming, but it had saved his ass so many times he never even thought about it anymore. He just did it.

“Honey?” his wife called out, as he closed the garage door. “Are you coming up to bed?”

He smiled. Caroline was a wonderful woman, a great wife for a man in his position. Always eager, always on the ball, and very seldom curious about his work or his travel schedule. “In a moment, dear. I just want to check on Jeremiah.”

He heard the smile in her voice as she told him not to be long. She thought him a doting father, and in that, at least, she was right. Most of what she knew about him, about his business, was a lie. That he loved her and their son, however, was true.

Slipping back into the nursery, he touched his son's damp curls. The boy was a sweaty sleeper, and his curling blond hair looked as honey colored as his mother's in the dim glow from the night-light. He tucked the blanket in and pressed a kiss to his fingers, and then to Jeremiah's cheek.

“Daddy loves you, little man.”

It took most of Thursday morning to wade through the calls and paperwork she'd already generated, before Ana found time to dig into her alert. When she finally managed it, she was thwarted at every turn. It was frustrating as hell. Whoever had done the deep search had bounced the ISP all over God's green creation and back again. She wasted the last two hours of the morning and most of what should have been her lunch hour trying to track it down, to no avail.

“Why would it bounce through the Bay Area Cisco facility?” she grumbled. The Agency contracted with Cisco for equipment, most people did these days, but to have one of the bounces go
through
Cisco? That was just weird.

Another search had turned up, but that she'd been able to track. Bromley had checked her credentials, tried to go a bit deeper, but the Agency had those files blocked. The CIA frowned on people knowing too much about their employees. Frowning, she wondered if he'd done the illegal search as well. She didn't have enough probable cause to dig that out.

“Why?” she wondered, scribbling more notes. Bromley hadn't worked for his boss during the art fraud case. There was a note in the file that he'd asked to review the case when he came to work for Davros Gianikopolis, but nothing else.

She spent the rest of Thursday digging at the search and fielding return calls. Postponing being in her quiet apartment, she got dinner sent in and continued to work. She left late and was back in the office Friday morning before anyone got there.

“A great life if you don't weaken,” she quoted to herself, thinking that in the old days, she'd have had at least a dinner with friends or something besides hearing about Jen's date to look forward to over the weekend. Now, well, too much time to think and brood was her enemy, not her friend.

She started Friday by following up on the Moroni Gallery in New York. It was an exercise in futility and frustration. No one who'd been there for the case was still in the same precinct, or even still on the police force.

“Where the hell is he?” she muttered, opening yet another search on the New York detective listed in the notes. It took her till well after noon to find him. His obituary popped up in one of her searches. The listing was five years old.

Instead of pounding her head on the desk, she went to lunch. She was walking back from the deli when her phone rang. One look at the caller I.D. and she answered it.

“Hey, Jen.”

“Oh, my God, you should have gone with me last night,” Jen gushed. “There were the most gorgeous men, two of them. I'm going on a date with one of them.” Ana could visualize her friend bouncing up and down in her seat.

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I thought you said this was a meet and greet, not a date.” Ana stopped outside her office building, stepping behind a planter so she could continue the conversation.

“It wasn't a date, but one of the millionaires chose me for a date,” Jen hurried on, “and he's really nice. I really like him.”

“What's his name? What does he do?” Ana set her lunch on the planter and fumbled a notepad and pen from her purse.

“You are not going to run him and tell me horrible things about him,” Jen insisted. “You always do that, and I'm not telling you. I don't care if he's an ax murderer at this point. We're going to dinner at Quatra Quilla up in the hills tomorrow night. Just us in the restaurant, no one else. Everyone waiting on us.” Jen sighed. “I'm going to feel like a princess.”

“Oh Jen, don't get your hopes up, honey.”

Jen groaned. “Don't be a buzzkill, Ana. I know he may be a total wipeout, but the experience will be a freakin' Cinderella ride. What the hell, you know? You have to live full out.”

Ana rolled her eyes. Herein lay the difference in their dating philosophies. Jen believed that you dated anyone who asked and enjoyed The Experience, no matter if it was a bust or if the guy was an ass, or ax murderer. She believed you learned something or got something even if there was absolutely nothing to it beyond one date. Ana, on the other hand, believed there should be at least one damn good reason to go, and preferably seven damn good reasons, including a background check that turned up single status.

Not that she didn't like men; she did. She just didn't trust them after her run-in with a married man in Italy. Getting your heart broken by someone eligible was one thing. Being lied to and led on, when you were a data geek who should know better, was another.

Resigned, Ana moved to a bench at the side of the building. “Sounds fun. So, tell me about him.”

“Seriously?” Jen sounded suspicious.

“You don't want me to run him, I won't. Seriously.” It was a little lie, and unless he
was
an ax murderer, Jen wouldn't have to know what Ana had done.

“Okay,” Jen said and plunged into a description of the guy and what he was like and how well they'd gotten along. Peppered throughout her monologue were the guy's name—Jack D'Onofrio—and his business—magazine distribution—so Ana would easily be able to do a quick background check on the guy.

“So, what was the dating service like? Tell me about it.”

Jen skated over the question, continuing to detail Jack D'Onofrio's sterling qualities.

That bore checking out. Avoidance was Jen's modus operandi of choice when something bothered her, and she had yet to learn that it would put Ana's radar up quicker than anything.

“So, if you enjoy your date with this Millionaire Jack, what happens then?”

“No telling,” Jen said cheerfully. “Like any guy, if we hit it off, we hit it off. This service, they've got a lot of rules and stuff. They want to set me up with someone else too, so that the guys kinda compete, you know?”

Ah, there's the rub,
Ana decided. Jen didn't like to do more than one at a time.

“Anyway,” Jen rattled on, “the other guy wasn't my thing so I'm not keen.” Jen said it offhandedly, as if it were as simple as saying “no thanks,” but again Ana sensed there had been a whole lot more to it. “But Jack—” Jen was quickly back on track with tales of her new beau.

Knowing it might take a while for the litany to run down, Ana headed into the building and back to her desk. “And then Jack said…”

Ana finally got off the phone by agreeing to meet for lunch on Saturday to hear all about the dinner. She swiveled to her personal laptop, booting it up and setting a series of searches to run on Mr. D'Onofrio. The primary search didn't take long. Nothing but his magazine businesses popped, which surprised her, but she decided that maybe, for once, Jen might have pulled a decent card from the deck.

“And now for my own aces and kings,” she muttered, beginning background checks on the two men she would be meeting on Monday. Nothing like a little legwork to pass the afternoon.

“Well, well, well,” she muttered several hours later as she began the run on Gates Bromley. The initial run on Davros Gianikopolis had been extensive. The man had holdings all over the world, from Singapore to Bangalore to a plant in Bisonsville, Kansas. Wading through the listing of the business holdings bought and sold in the last year alone had taken an hour and a half. She'd saved and logged the rest of the search for reading later.

As the pings and bings notified her that her first search was done, she opened files and began to read. “Look what we have here, a rap sheet. Hmmm,” she mused, vaguely disappointed that it was short. She really wanted a reason to dislike Mr. Velvet Voice.

The sheet was fairly mild for someone in security work. Bromley's title might be special assistant, but she'd read between the lines when she got to the real data. He'd been rapped on the knuckles for assault, a frequent charge when keeping the hoi polloi from a public figure like “Mr. G,” as the media had dubbed Bromley's boss. Bromley had beat all the charges or had them dismissed, but there were quite a few. A second search finished with a beep, and she opened that file on top of the other.

“Yeah, yeah, where's the good stuff?” she groused, scanning the pages rapidly onscreen. There were several notations in the CIA files. Not surprising given the international nature of his boss's business. Again, though, it was really mild stuff, nothing that she could pull out and wave in his face as leverage for cooperation. “Damn. Nuthin' here. Can't anyone dig anymore?”

She opened another new window, more searches.

“Iraqi veteran,” she read, and frowned. The picture of him in the files, both the publicity shots for Gianikopolis's businesses and some candids at various functions, didn't say military to her. “Really? Didn't see that one coming.”

She made some notes and scanned the recent stuff, then switched to the military database. Bromley's file had a classified tag, which she didn't tamper with. She didn't want to explain her need to check it, so she stuck to the accessible, surface stuff.

“Went in as a lieutenant, came out as a captain, three-year tour. Saw some action despite that geek rating, didn't you, Mr. Bromley?” she muttered as she read about his technology ratings, and the fact that his unit had been ambushed at least twice. She made more notes. He'd gotten some of the highest marksmanship scores in his class year at the academy and had at least three Military Police markers in his file. There may have been more; from the data she could access, there seemed to be hints of it. “Came out combat-seasoned with those commendations.” She whistled at the listing. “And decorated, too. Wonder what made a,” she checked his education, “Harvard MBA take to soldiering?”

Digging deeper, she found some old hits for drunk and disorderly in police files. “Hmmm, tied a few on, did you, young master Gates? That probably explains the MPs. Didn't do any of that once you went to work for the man, I see,” she said, tapping the pen on the desk as she double-checked his matriculation dates. There was a five-year gap between college and the military. Mr. Velvet Voice sure had been busy.

“So, where were you? Hmmmm?” she asked the screen as her fingers flew over the keys. In two separate windows, she opened search engines and entered relevant terms. She hit E
NTER
and caught her paper notes up to date while the computer processed.

It was the LexisNexis search that turned up the obituary. It also unearthed the heartbreaking story of Gates losing nearly his entire family to a killer, the bodies burned in an attempt to cover the murders with fire.

“Oh, crap,” Ana managed, her voice choking with emotion as she read about the arsonist's fire that had consumed the family's warehousing business. Rifle shots had killed both Gates Bromley's parents and his brother, all because of a woman scorned. The notes section of the report said Gates and his sister were only alive because they'd been away at a trade show, marketing the family's business services.

Two arrests after the fire, one a woman, the other the arsonist she'd hired. Reading between the lines, Ana figured out that the woman had had a romantic interest in Gates's father. When he turned her down and fired her from her job as his secretary, she hired someone to kill the family and burn down the warehouse.

“And for what?” Ana asked the photo of the killer. “He didn't want to be with you. Big deal. Other fish in the sea.” She'd never understand why people killed for the illusion of love. Had she been hurt by lovers? Of course, but once they'd betrayed her, she didn't want them back. It baffled her why anyone would pursue someone who didn't want them.

Extreme cases like the Bromleys creeped her out. It wasn't as if Bromley's dad had dated the woman, then shoved her off. She'd never had him, but killed him for not wanting her.

Losing family was never easy, nor did the hurt of it ever fade. If anyone knew that, Ana did. She didn't want to feel any sympathy for Bromley, but she did. She'd lost her own parents to a terrorist's bomb. “Damn it. I need to keep that filed away, not let it affect me.”

“Something new, Burton?” Pretzky had crept up behind her as she worked, and Ana shrieked as she spun in her chair.

“Jesus, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” she said, without thinking about whom she was speaking to.

To her surprise, Pretzky grinned, though it was more akin to a malicious smirk. “You were talking to yourself.”

“Bad habit.”

“It is,” Pretzky snapped, the smirk still in place. “Break it. It'll get you killed.” Letting that unpleasant thought dangle for a moment, she added, “What's up?”

“Nothing substantial,” Ana managed, still trying to slow her heart rate.

“LexisNexis?” Pretzky crossed her arms, her expression dubious as she scanned the open windows on Ana's monitor and on her laptop. “
Entertainment Weekly
?”

Ana sighed when she felt her eyelid begin to twitch. She'd never had tics or twitches before Rome. Since then…

She hated having to explain her somewhat unorthodox research methods. Of course, she'd hate it even more if Pretzky figured out she was doing a run on Jen's new guy, so she went with the bullshit.

“The high-net-worth individuals noted in the files on this case are all either business moguls or celebrities. In order to cross-reference the vectors…” she said, deliberately making her voice more monotonous as she rattled off technical search terms. “Anyway, these vectors, when managed properly with a broad spectrum matching logarithm can frequently yield a substantial data mine for cross-referencing active searches.”

She could actually see Pretzky trying to follow her methodology, and was relieved to note her temporary boss getting lost on the way. Pretzky liked to believe she understood every facet of the Agency's work, especially computer crimes. In reality, she didn't understand what Ana did at all. Then again, most people didn't, which was why Ana got superior results and, until Rome, plum assignments and grade and pay increases.