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Konrad was so deeply focused that he didn’t even hear the security guard drive up. The guard hit the siren for a second, and the brief wailing sound almost sent Konrad jumping out of his skin. He spun around, eyes flashing angrily.

“You can’t hang out here,” the guard said, still sitting in the driver’s seat of his little Suzuki 4x4. “You’re gonna have to leave.”

Konrad reluctantly released the trigger from his grip and pulled his hands out of his pockets. He glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. Stryker was going to appear any second.

“Are you listening? I’m talking to you!” The guard put the Suzuki in park and stepped out. He walked around the front of the vehicle, his right hand nervously resting on the pepper spray canister at his belt.

“I’ll be leaving in a few minutes,” Konrad said calmly.

“No, you’ll be leaving now.” The guard was several inches taller than Konrad and he had the authority complex of a man who wanted to be a cop but couldn’t pass the test. He looked like he was used to intimidating people. The guard made the mistake of aggressively stepping in closer. Konrad moved like lightning.

Konrad was the eye of the storm, the calm at the dead center of a tornado. Thoughts and emotions whirled around him, but they were inconsequential. He struck out with a fierce upper cut meant not to kill but to stun. The guard stumbled a little and predictably went for his pepper spray. It was already
whooshing
out of the nozzle as he raised his arm. Konrad stepped aside and delivered a swift kick to the man’s hand. The pepper spray went tumbling through the air, over the side of the parking garage.

The guard staggered back and brought his hands up defensively but Konrad was way ahead of him. He kicked the guard in the side of his knee, smashing the bone. The guard went down like a sack of bricks. He hit the ground screaming. Konrad bent over, caught hold of the man’s head, and gave it a sharp twist. There was a sickening snap as the security guard’s neck broke. His body shuddered.

Konrad stepped back up to the wall just in time to see the familiar blue convertible that Stryker had rented. The top was up. That was unusual for Stryker. Normally he would have been enjoying the weather. Stryker didn’t mind a little fog or a cool breeze. Like Konrad, he was a man of the elements. At least he had been when he was younger. Stryker was getting old.

Konrad watched the convertible pull up to the stop light. He waited. The trigger in his hand would arm the bomb from as far as a thousand yards. Konrad wanted a good view. He also wanted some civilian collateral damage, if possible. Nothing would distract the press and the feds like a good bombing. By noon, Fortress would be all but forgotten.

Stryker’s convertible pulled through the intersection and got half a block down the street before Konrad hit the switch. Stryker’s car exploded next to a bus stop. Konrad watched the flames billowing into the air and, even from that distance, felt a blast of warm air. The smoke was white at first, like giant pillowy clouds racing up along the buildings. Then as the car burned, the smoke turned acrid. It became black, oily, toxic.

Konrad put on his gloves and gathered up the guard’s body. He shoved it into the back of the idling Suzuki and then moved the vehicle into a parking space and shut it off. Konrad crawled into his Suburban and drove away, ignoring the sense of apprehension growing in the pit of his stomach. He’d done what he had to. There was no karma, not in this business.

Konrad wasn’t thinking about the guard. He was thinking about Stryker. He was thinking about the future. Stryker had gotten what he’d deserved. Konrad told himself that. Stryker had been killing people for two decades. It was bound to come around sooner or later.

At least Paolini would be satisfied for a while. And Konrad was due a promotion. An opening had just come up. Konrad couldn’t help but think of his boat resting on the dock in San Diego. A few more hours, maybe a day, then he’d be out there on the water with Lisa, drinking, sailing, screwing. He’d never been looking forward to a vacation like this.

Then the phone rang. It was Chaz. “What is it?” Konrad said. “I thought Stryker told you to get packed and get out of town.”

“I was working on that,” Chaz said. “I was listening to the scanners while I worked. Sara Murphy is still alive.”

Konrad winced. He knew Sara was alive of course, because he’d seen her handiwork at Jim’s. But he’d been trying to keep that from the others. He wanted to shut down the operation and then find her and finish her, quietly. He took a deep breath. “How much packing is left?”

“It’s almost done. It’s all boxed and ready to go, except the computers.”

“Fine. Go back to the hotel, pack your gear, and get on the plane. I want you in DC tonight. Tell Lisa the same. Tell her to stick with the plan.”

“Are you sure? Stryker wouldn’t want us to leave. I tried to call him but his phone was dead.”

Dead
. Konrad smiled.
You have no idea.
“I’m only going to tell you this once, Chaz, so you’d better be listening. There is no Stryker. There never was a Stryker. You’ve never heard of him because he doesn’t exist. Understand?”

Chaz was silent for a moment before he answered. “I understand,” he said softly.

“Good. Now do what I told you.”

Konrad hung up the phone and contemplated his situation. The chess pieces were spinning, but the board wasn’t so crowded now. He was starting to feel a little in control. He dialed Paolini’s cell.

“Hello?” she said.

“It’s me. The old man’s dead. Went to bed, bumped his head, didn’t get up in the morning.”

“What did you do?” Paolini’s voice was terse. She didn’t share his morbid sense of humor.

“You really want me to describe it over the phone?”

“No. Meet me at my office in Sacramento.”

“I can’t,” Konrad said. “We still have to close up Mourningbird.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve had all night to do that.”

“She’s alive,” Konrad said. He grimaced as he said it. He hadn’t wanted Paolini to know that yet.

“What?” she sounded furious. “Stryker called yesterday. He said the project was finished!”

“He was wrong,” Konrad said. “Calm down, I’m taking care of everything.”

“You damned well better,” Paolini said.

“Have I let you down yet?” Konrad said. He tried to keep his voice pleasant, but he wanted to reach through the phone and throttle her.

“Call me when it’s done,” Paolini snapped. She hung up.

Konrad heard the click and he put his phone down. “Bitch,” he muttered. He wanted to kill her so bad he could taste it. He wished Lisa was there to calm him down. He tried to think of her, to think of the boat, but it wouldn’t come now. His mind was too full of things he had to do.

Chapter 34

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Brian said as he parallel parked on the street in front of the Law Offices of
Pritchard & Stark
.

“You’ve been saying that for half an hour,” Sara said. “Look, you don’t have to come with me. I could use your help, but if you’re not comfortable with this I won’t hold it against you.”

“No, I’ll come,” Brian said. “But I still don’t think it’s a good idea. How do you know he’ll even be here? It’s Saturday. I thought all you rich lawyer-types spent your weekends up north in wine country.”

“Not Steve. He works on Saturdays. His wife is a mean old hag. He works every chance he can get.” Brian laughed.

Sara peered up and down the street for a few moments and then cautiously got out of the car. Brian joined her and they went up to the door. It was locked, but Sara had her ID card in her wallet. She swiped it across the scanner. The door clicked open.

“RFID,” Brian murmured. “You know that’s one of the worst security technologies out there?”

“They gave us these cards a few years ago,” Sara said. “They overhauled our whole security system.”

“Yeah, that’s because of Sarbanes-Oxley. It’s a set of laws that congress passed to improve security and reduce corporate fraud. The whole thing’s a joke.”

They stepped inside. The lobby was dark and quiet. Sara led the way to the elevators, where she had to swipe her card again. “Seems to work okay,” she said.

“Sure it does. That’s because you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Sara gave him a look. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the matter with ID cards?”

“They’re a joke. Give me a thousand bucks and twenty-four hours, and I’ll clone every card in this building. At least in the old days you had to pick the lock. Now you can do it in seconds with a laptop computer and free software from the internet.”

“Really?” said Sara.

“Really. They put that crap in driver’s licenses and passports and credit cards… it’s all over. Basically, they’re just handing out the keys to anybody who feels like taking them. With a decent scanner you could sit on the sidewalk out front and steal twenty or thirty identities per hour. Most of those RFID tags hold personal information, sometimes even your social security number.”

Sara grimaced. “How did you learn all this stuff?”

“I used to be in the security business,” Brian said. He smiled deviously.

“What kind of security?”

“Don’t ask.”

Sara gave him a sideways look as the elevator opened. The second floor was dark, except for the light streaming out of Steve’s office down the hall. Sara strode purposefully forward, and Brian fell in behind her. They got halfway down the hall before the motion detectors turned on the lights. They paused as light flood the hallway.

“Is somebody there?” Steve said. Sara took a deep breath and stepped into his office. Steve’s jaw dropped. “Sara? What are you doing here?”

“I just need to ask you a few questions,” Sara said.

Steve leaned back in his plush leather chair. His eyes bounced back and forth between the two of them. “The cops are looking for you.”

“Yeah, I know.” She settled into the chair across from him. Steve’s eyes nervously danced around the room, pausing on the phone for a moment too long. “Don’t even think about it. I have a gun.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. “You really did it, didn’t you?”

“No. Not if you’re talking about Fortress, anyway. I did shoot Jim but that wasn’t my fault.”

Steve’s eyes grew wide. “You shot Jim?”

“I had to. Believe me, I didn’t want to. He attacked me with a knife. Who was he working for, Steve? Are you working for them too?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Sara watched Steve carefully, looking for telltale body language. He seemed genuinely perplexed. “Jim set me up,” she said. “And then he tried to kill me.” Sara rose from the chair and pulled the gun out from under her jacket.

“Jim didn’t know I had a gun, otherwise I’d be dead.” She looked at it for a moment. Then she leveled it at Steve. “I don’t want to make that mistake twice. Tell me what you know. Who was Jim working for?”

Steve’s face turned bright red and he started to sweat. “You’re crazy, Murphy. Out of your friggin’ mind. Jim worked for
me
. I hired him five years ago. If he was moonlighting, I never heard anything about it. Would you please put the gun down? I won’t call the cops, I promise. Just leave. I won’t call the cops.”

“In a minute,” Sara said. She felt sick. She didn’t like what she was doing. It made her want to vomit. She couldn’t stand seeing the terror in Steve’s eyes. It made Sara want to put the gun to her temple and blow her own brains out. But she was doing what she had to.

She had trusted Jim too much. She’d put herself in danger by doing that, and Jim had ended up with a bullet in his gut. Sara could see things more clearly now. She knew what she had to do in order to protect her family and clear her name. She had to be ruthless.

“Tell me about Scott,” she said in a grim tone.

“Scott? Okay… Scott’s your husband. You’ve been married for years. I don’t know how long, it was before you came to work here. You have a kid together, a little girl. Her name’s Bree, if memory serves.”

“What happened three months ago?” Sara said.

Guilt washed over Steve’s face. “That wasn’t my idea,” he said. “Jim thought you needed to have a good time.”

“So you knew?” Sara said. “You knew he was trying to get me into bed, and you still put us right into that situation?”

Steve looked like he wanted to crawl out the window. “Look, it’s none of my business…”

“What happened to me that night, Steve?”

“I don’t know. You left with Jim. You were really out of it. He practically had to carry you out.”

“That’s because he drugged me you dumb son of a bitch.” She spared Brian a glance and he shook his head slowly. He looked as disgusted as Sara felt. “What happened after that?” she said.

“Well, as I understand it, Scott moved out. You moped around for a couple days but then you cheered right up. We all thought you must have decided you were happier without him.”

Sara felt her resolve weakening. She tightened her grip on the gun because it felt like it was slipping from her hand. “Scott didn’t leave me,” she said firmly. “He didn’t!”

Steve gave Brian a look, and Sara saw it. Steve thought she was crazy. Brian probably did too. Steve was telling the truth. As hard as it was to believe, Scott really had left her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You were right, Brian, we shouldn’t have come here.”

“What now?” Brian said.

Sara looked at Steve and realized the conundrum she was in. She couldn’t just leave now. Steve would be on the phone with 911 before they even got out of the building. “I’m sorry about this, Steve. I’m going to have to lock you in the filing room.”

Steve looked almost relieved. They led him down the hall. “Empty your pockets,” Sara commanded. “Keys, cell phone, wallet, everything. Brian, pat him down and then make sure there’s nothing he can use to pick the lock.”

Brian nodded and did as she instructed. Steve handed over everything he had, and Sara set it on the edge of a copy machine. Brian came out with a few boxes of paper clips and some files. “I think this is it,” he said.