Authors: Dakota Banks
C
amila Reyes lived in a small apartment in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. During the day, there was a doorman, but at night there was controlled access with a video cam to each apartment so the occupant could see who was buzzing them.
A little research was all it took to locate a single man in his thirties living in an efficiency on the eighth floor. At midnight, Maliha went into the lobby and stepped in front of the video cam. She was wearing a blonde wig, heavy makeup, and a top and skirt that barely covered her body’s erogenous zones. A skimpy jacket, not warm enough for the weather, hung around her shoulders. She pressed the buzzer.
A sleepy voice came on. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Hernandez, I’m here for you.”
“Uh . . . what?”
“You will have the best night of your life, Mr. Hernandez. Ring me up.”
“Just a minute.” She pictured him shuffling to the door to get a look at the video screen. She smiled into the camera and waved, making sure that plenty of cleavage showed.
“I . . . I’m not Mr. Hernandez,” he stammered.
“You are not?” She pouted and read him the address from a slip of paper. “Room 821?”
“No, you’re at least ten miles away.”
“I’m new in town. I guess Mr. Hernandez will be disappointed tonight.” Her face brightened. “Who are you?”
“I’m Gil Ceja.”
“Hi Gil, I’m . . . Trixy. I’m here already. Would you like some company, Gil? I’ll give you a special deal. I promise you’ll have fun.”
There was a brief hesitation, and then the iron-barred doorway blocking access to the elevators clicked open.
“Oh, Gil,” she said. “Get naked and wait for me by the door. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Maliha headed for Room 408, where the journalist lived. Using a torque and pick set, she opened the standard lock on the door. Easing into the room, she slipped off her heels and left them by the entrance. After letting her eyes adjust to the dark, she could see that there was a desk with a computer on it in the combination kitchen-living room. Checking it out, she could see that the computer was on, with a bouncing-ball screen saver.
Later.
She moved on to the bedroom, drawing a knife from a sheath that rested on her back, attached to the skirt’s low-rise waistband. Maliha moved like the Black Ghost she once was. Soundless, a shadow, something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, followed by a rush of darkness and death.
She turned the doorknob and cracked open the bedroom door. In this room there was a night-light, a yellow starfish shape with a smile. Camila was asleep, her blanket slipped to one side and one leg exposed from the knee down. Maliha had an urge to cover the woman’s leg. The heat was turned down for the night, and it was cold in the apartment.
She pushed the door open a little wider, revealing a dresser and mirror, a brush, makeup kit, and a tottering stack of books—the ordinary things of this woman’s life that were about to become mute witnesses to her death. Camila was snoring softly. The double bed she slept in was shared with no lover, just a cat. The cat’s eyes opened and looked at Maliha through narrow slits. Satisfied, it adjusted its position and went back to sleep.
Maliha could go in, slash Camila’s throat, and be out in a few seconds without causing any noise.
Then what? Another body part, another target? I’m trapped. Give up on Yanmeng or go against what I believe in and deal with the fallout afterward?
Maliha pushed the door open further and stepped into the room.
She froze.
There was a crib against the wall that had been blocked from her view by the door. Maliha was drawn to it. She walked over, her knife still at the ready. In the crib was a baby boy, about six months old, wearing pajamas with feet. As she watched in the pale yellow light of the starfish, a bubble formed between his lips and gently popped. She put her hand on the baby’s chest, feeling the rise and fall of his small rib cage as he breathed.
M
aliha couldn’t control the urge to push. With her back against the cold stone wall and her legs drawn up, she bore down. Her screams echoed in the room, again and again, as she strained and rested. One last mighty push and the infant slipped out onto the earthen floor.
She lay down next to the small body. In darkness as deep as a cave’s, she could see nothing, but she could feel that her baby was flaccid, unmoving. Hope dying in her heart, she did what a midwife would do for a baby who appeared dead—try to share her own life with it. She placed her mouth over the baby’s mouth and nose and breathed out in small puffs. Each time she lifted her head, she willed the baby to draw breath and begin crying.
After a while she stopped trying. The heat left the small body and the soft, perfect arms and legs locked into the stiffness of death.
M
aliha closed her eyes at the painful memory.
Constanta, my daughter.
She put away her knife.
There has to be another way.
Back at the desk, she copied files from Camila’s computer. She saw that there were physical files, too, folders of research color-coded and neatly stacked. She assumed there were backup files, too.
Destroy all this? Not yet. Too much to think about.
As she left the building, she wondered if Gil was still standing naked at his door waiting for his surprise.
M
aliha had a video conference call from her hotel in D.C. to catch up on her team’s activities.
“What the fuck got into you sneaking out like that?” Hound said. “We’re supposed to be a team. Is Camila dead?”
“No. I got into her place and found out she has a baby, something conveniently left out of the dossier.”
“I found that out when I was doing background work,” Amaro said. “Too bad you weren’t here to learn that. Or answering your phone. That’s what these things are for”—he held up a cell phone—“to keep in touch when you’re away.”
“My cell was off. Does Jake have anything to report?”
“Jake? What Jake? We haven’t seen him, either, since you left. We thought maybe the two of you eloped or something,” Amaro said.
“Hey, that’s uncalled for. Maliha would never run out on Yanmeng. You watch your tongue or I’ll hand it to you in a pickle jar,” Hound said.
“Pickle jar?” Amaro said.
“First thing I could think of. Sorry, Boss, you can see things are a bit tense here.”
“Here too,” Maliha said. “I have a copy of Camila’s hard disk. Amaro, you can get it from my computer. I’d like to run an idea past you and see what you think.”
“Downloading now.”
“I’d hate like hell to kill Camila. The purpose of the assignment is to keep her from publishing her exposé about Senator Plait’s philandering and the pay-to-play scheme. We should focus on that goal. My first approach is to offer her money. Lots of it. She’s living small, and she has a son to support and put through college. My second idea is to destroy every bit of her research. The story will evaporate. If she tries to go to her sources again, I’ll scare them off.”
“I like Door Number One,” Amaro said, “with one modification. By taking away this story, we might be derailing her career at an important point. What makes her career less valuable than the senator’s? I say give her another story. A big scandal, even bigger than this one. Make her work for it. Give her some facts and some sources who’ll talk to her and let her do her job.”
“I like it,” Maliha said. “One thing—where does this big scandal come from?”
“I might be helpful in that regard,” Hound said. In his work as a private investigator, Hound worked for both the private sector and the public, including classified government projects.
“Remember we want scandal material, not government secret stuff,” Amaro said.
At that moment, Jake appeared and sat down within camera range. “Am I missing anything?”
There was a brief recap. Jake liked the idea of the scandal approach.
“How fast can you put something together, Hound?” Maliha said.
“Two days?”
“Do it in one. I don’t think Mr. X is very patient. Amaro, I could use your help here getting back into Camila’s building. I’ll send the jet for you.”
“Wait! How do we get this across to Mr. X so he knows you satisfied the assignment?” Hound said.
“I think Mr. X is watching her closely. He’ll know when she drops Senator Plait and begins working on an unrelated story. So we’re going with Door Number One?”
They all nodded.
Maliha had some misgivings, but she kept them to herself. When she was still Ageless, she’d once tried what she was attempting now: satisfying the intent but not the literal order of the assignment, in order to save a man’s life. It worked, but she suffered horribly at Rabishu’s hands afterward for her creative defiance.
“What about looking for doctors who might be vulnerable to being forced to cooperate by working on Yanmeng?” Maliha asked.
“I decided to start close to home,” Amaro said. “A person living in this building would have good access to your entrance door. All that would be needed is a jamming device for the cameras, and I think that’s a given. There are one hundred and fifty-eight doctors living in all three wings of Harbor Point Towers.”
Hound whistled. “I would never have guessed. I guess it’s because these condos are so expensive.”
“That’s why most of them are surgeons or specialists, especially oncologists, cardiologists, and radiologists,” Amaro said.
“Find any compromising situations?” Maliha said.
“Quite a few. This is not a group of people who live ho-hum lives.”
“Pass the names along to Hound to check out,” Maliha said, “but not until he comes up with a good scandal. That’s top priority.”
I
t was two in the morning. Wearing gloves, Amaro pressed the button for Gil Ceja’s apartment, Number 821. There was no answer. Amaro leaned on the button. After several minutes of pressing, a gruff voice came on.
“Yeah, what do you want?”
Amaro held a badge up to the camera. “Detective Jeremy Weeks, Metro PD Homicide. I’d like to talk to you about Ms. Trixy Fox.”
“Don’t know her.”
“Ms. Fox took a cab to this building and her fingerprint was on your call button. Open the door, Mr. Ceja. I need to ask you some questions.”
“Is she . . . missing?”
“She’s dead. Open the damn door.”
“Shit.”
The access door clicked open and Maliha, who’d been keeping out of camera range, walked through. She picked the lock on Room 408. Everything was the same as the last time she’d been there. She went to the bedroom and woke Camila up, first putting a gloved hand over the woman’s mouth.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Maliha said. “Don’t scream. I need to talk to you. Come out into the other room.”
The woman cooperated. It was clear that she was anxious to get the intruder out of the room where her son was sleeping. In the kitchen, they sat opposite each other at a two-person table. With the high chair in the corner, there was barely room to move. Maliha put a gun on the table to impress Camila with the seriousness of her visit, keeping her hand on the pistol’s grip. She wasn’t worried about having the gun taken away from her.
Not unless Camila is Ageless—in which case I would already be on my ass with a knife at my neck, or in my neck.
“It’s about the story on Senator Plait.”
“Did Plait send you here? That son-of-a-bitch? You can tell him to go screw himself. Nothing’s gonna stop this story from coming out and it’ll be my byline he can ride to hell.” Her voice was low and even, remarkable given the situation, except that she practically spit out the senator’s name.
This may be a tougher sell than I thought.
“Everything you have on Plait is true?”
“Yeah. It’s one-hundred-percent legit. I busted my butt for a year checking out all the shit.”
“So you feel confident that the public has a need to know this, given that it’s going to derail his career?”
“Don’t kid yourself. He goes to some country-club jail for a while and when he gets out, he squirms his way back into politics like a worm. The public’s got a short attention span. This is just a bump in the road for him.”
“Even if that’s possible, it could take years to get back on track.”
Camila shrugged. “That’s my concern because?”
“Are you doing this to make a name for yourself?”
“I wouldn’t mind the extra money. Get a two-bedroom place, start saving a bit. But that’s not the main reason. He killed my sister four years ago. I thought about hiring somebody to take him out, but it’s too risky. My baby isn’t going to Family Services. I’m getting some justice for Angelita the only way I can.”
Maliha viewed Camila’s aura. She detected some darkness there, which she guessed was due to her childhood experiences. She’d seen it before in the auras of abused children. There was no deception.
“What happened to Angelita?”
“I don’t have to tell you my life story. I’ve told you too much already. Now it’s time for you to answer some questions. Who the hell are you, and what gives you the right to come into my home with a gun? You’re threatening my son and me. I want you out of my apartment.”
“Calm down. I’m here to offer you a different story to investigate, a national scandal. And I can do something about your money anxieties. Give you and your son a secure life.”
“What are you talking about? Haven’t you been listening? I don’t want
another
story. This is personal, with Carlton Plait. You’re gonna bribe me out of getting justice?
No way
.” She pulled a string hanging around her neck and brought out an emergency call pendant that was hidden under her pajamas. “I pressed this when you put that gun on the table. How long has that been? Three minutes? The police will be here any second!” Camila stood up. “You are so out of your league, sister. You think I haven’t been expecting something like this?” She upended the table, knocking the gun onto the floor. Grabbing a knife from a wooden block on the counter, she lunged at Maliha.
Maliha blocked the thrust easily and grabbed Camila’s wrist. She twisted Camila’s arm behind her back, hyper-flexing the wrist and plucking the knife from her fingers. She kicked the back of Camila’s knee and brought the woman down hard on both knees.
Maliha felt a rush of air. Viewing auras in the room, she saw the black streak left by an Ageless running at speed. When a person moved, his aura lagged a fraction of a second behind, a kind of inertia of the energy field. For a normal person, that slight delay wasn’t enough to matter—his aura would appear to stay with him as he moved. At Ageless speed, it did matter, and was visible to Maliha as a black blur crossing her field of aura vision.
Puzzled, she said, “Jake?” Then she noticed that the gun on the floor was gone. “No, Jake, don’t!”
She heard gunshots and Camila slumped in her grip. The woman had taken a bullet in the head and another in her chest. Maliha turned to leave and saw that the computer had been pulverized and flames were already leaping from the stacks of research folders to the nearby curtains. In a minute, the apartment would be engulfed.
The front door crashed in and a S.W.A.T. team rushed into the room. They stopped a few feet beyond the threshold. The carpet was on fire.
Maliha was already in motion. With the flames around her, she locked her fear of burning alive away and sped toward the bedroom, drawing on her Ageless speed. She pulled the baby from the crib and ran out the door, knocking into an officer holding a shield, who couldn’t even see what had brushed him aside.
She spotted blood on the baby. Horrified, she checked him over and found no wound.
It’s his mother’s blood from my hands. I’m glad he’ll never know it.
In the hallway she placed the baby on the floor and ran for the stairwell. She delayed long enough to make sure that someone noticed him, and then she bolted down the stairs.
She was running down the street, trying to distance herself physically and mentally from the horror of her plan gone wrong, when Anu’s judgment hit her so sharply she stumbled and rolled. She grimaced in pain as a figure crawled from the lives saved side of her scale and made its way across her stomach in the wrong direction, burning its tiny footprints into her skin. Then the scale swung into motion as the pans readjusted their positions. The pull through time, since she aged every time the scale moved, was not great. The damage was already done to Maliha’s heart.
The boy will die because I didn’t save his mother. What on Earth went wrong in there?