In Too Deep: A Romantic Suspense Novel (18 page)

O
ur first target
was Patricia Lanstridge, who was the person that directly sent Victor Pinzetti after me. She was ruthless. I’d worked with her during my days in intelligence, and knew that she was one of those sorts of people who put every other person she met into one of three groups. I had been in the first group, considered a useful asset, someone who had skills and an outlook that aligned enough with hers that she could use you to further her own ambitions. This person was to be exploited, cajoled and used until they were no longer helpful before being discarded like they were trash.

Another group you could fall into, one that I was probably considered now, was a threat, someone who not only had skills and abilities but who was in her way. This group of people were to be destroyed utterly and without mercy, and if someone else got hurt in doing so, tough shit. That was the way of the world to Lanstridge.

The third group was the vast bulk of humanity, and that was what I guess could best be called 'the groundlings,' to borrow a term from Shakespearian times. They were more or less beneath her consideration, except as something to be exploited. You could have been her housekeeper, the waiter who filled her glasses at a three Michelin star restaurant, or even a member of Congress, it made no difference to her. Except for the moments when you were at least marginally useful to her, she just didn't give a damn about you.

She was fifth generation blue blood from Stamford, Connecticut, and had grown up rubbing elbows with the highest levels of society. She'd never married, wanting to protect the family name, although from what I had learned she’d given birth to three children, all of them from what she termed 'the finest breeding stock.' In public, she was just another old-money woman approaching her sixties, but in private she was one of the ten most powerful people in North America.

I didn't want to just wipe her off the map, that wouldn't have been helpful at all. First of all, her name wasn't the sort that got headlines on a weekly basis, but it did have enough public weight that I couldn't eliminate it. She had friends, or at least social acquaintances that would be able to swing enough weight with the courts or court of public opinion that she couldn't just disappear. Not without a reason.

My first move was to wipe out her bank accounts, but not through normal means. First, I took about a third of her money and had it given to various charities and groups that would garner her public disfavor. Then, using access to the New York Stock Exchange, I had all of the rest of her money put into stocks that I then intentionally false-shorted. Basically, each and every transaction lost her money. It didn't take a huge manipulation, half a cent on each of the stocks, but it was enough to take away almost all of the rest of her money. Within twenty-four hours, there were multi-million dollar liens on her family's estate, her public businesses, even her classic car collection she'd inherited from her father.

The final piece, however, was the releasing of evidence against her. Patricia, as an aristocrat, rarely had gotten her hands personally dirty with her schemes. It was beneath her, at least in her point of view. But there had been one incident, about ten years prior, that she had gotten personally involved. When one of the fathers of her children approached her about the way she was raising them, she killed him. A twenty-five caliber bullet fired in the back of the head, in fact. Somehow, the initial coroner's report listed the man's death as a suicide. Such is the power of dark matter.

A little bit of changes through Albertine however, and evidence that had been suppressed or thought destroyed at first was brought to light. The first group to get it was CNN, but when they didn't act fast enough, I had Albertine blast the same information to the BBC and place a news report on most of the major news websites. Of course, the news report was written by me and attributed to a false name, totally untraceable, but the evidence was solid, and the Internet went wild.

By the time football season was over, Patricia Lanstridge was arraigned for the murder of her second child's father, awaiting trial while in jail, denied bond. Her family's home had been auctioned off to cover her stock debts, while her children were at least left somewhat untouched. She'd seen far enough ahead to give them trust funds at least, and both Melina and I felt it unnecessarily dangerous to back her children into a corner as well. They were true sociopaths, and I didn't want them desperate. Still, they would have to be corralled for the rest of their lives.

The next largest target was Monroe Cavanaugh, who’d, at first, surprised me by his appearance on the network from Pinzetti. He and Patricia Lanstridge had traditionally been at odds, but as Melina had said, politics made strange bedfellows. He was totally unknown to the public, his family having had the unfortunate fate of being African American when they first garnered influence and power back in the eighteen hundreds when Monroe's great grandfather had become the guiding influence with the patriarch of a very powerful Southern agricultural family. A stupid patriarch and a daughter who was easily seduced, the Cavanaughs grabbed the keys to power, and they'd never let go. Still, it was the post-Civil War South, and as such, they learned to pluck the strings of power truly from the shadows, a tradition that Monroe continued regardless of public perception or laws nowadays.

The man wasn’t famous at all. In fact, while he lived in a Park Avenue high-rise, if you passed him on the street you wouldn't have been able to tell him apart from any other man in New York City. He was as anonymous as anyone else, but controlled a network that could have crushed the entire city if he wanted. Yet outside of the doorman at his high rise, I doubt anyone knew his name.

He was young, only a year older than myself, and didn't have any family, so I was able to totally take him out. First, I deleted him from the world. Every database, every bank account, every trace of him in public or private records was destroyed. By the time that was done, the only thing left to prove he even existed were hard copies of his old prep school yearbook.

Next, I slipped a report into the NYPD's database that a delusional psychopath was holed up in Monroe's apartment. A court order and a raid by the police later, and Monroe Cavanaugh, now John Doe #1578, was locked up in a high-security psych ward in up-state New York for the foreseeable future.

The rest of the takedowns were along similar lines, each target being crushed utterly and completely. It took me most of the time before school re-opened, and by the time Sunday night rolled around, I was exhausted. I'd been sitting in front of Albertine for fourteen hours a day for the past few days, barely taking the time to eat, shower, and sometimes sleep.

It was nine o'clock Sunday night when Melina came up behind me, rubbing my shoulders. "Come on," she said softly in my ear. "You've done enough, and you have to get some rest before school tomorrow."

I nodded, weary. There wasn't a lot left to do, just some of the minor players who were secondary in Pinzetti's action. My eyes were watering uncontrollably, and I reminded myself for the tenth time that day that I was going to get one of those anti-glare screens for myself. "You're right, of course. All right, let me double check this last guy and then I'll shut it down for the night."

"Good," Melina said. "Because I have massage oil and soft music ready for you. No sex tonight, just relaxation."

I smiled, placing my hand over hers and rubbing the back of her hand tenderly. "You know just what to say," I said before kissing her hand. "But my stomach says we need to have some food first. I know it's a little late for just dinner, but what about coming with me to the store for some ice cream? Or maybe the fixings for a small sundae?"

"I can do that," Melina replied. "But only if I get to drive. Your eyes are shot right now."

I nodded, holding hands with her as we walked out of the house and got into her car. It felt strange, riding in the lower slung car as opposed to my truck, but Melina was more confident in it. As she drove, I did everything I could to think of something other than the work I'd been doing for the past few days. "So what are you going to tell Jay tomorrow?"

Melina bit her lower lip, an expression I'd seen whenever she was conflicted about something. "I still don't know," she finally admitted. "What if all this doesn’t work out as planned?”
It was a concept that she and I had discussed multiple times over the past few days, during the short periods I'd taken to rest. Melina had a point, concerned about being tied down when our lives consisted of potentially being constantly mobile. It was a concern I'd shared. After all, being a teacher and coach meant that I had commitments greater than just Albertine. "I understand," I finally said. We pulled into the parking lot, and I forced a smile on my face. "So what flavor ice cream do you want for your sundae?"

I
was getting
out of the shower the next morning, Melina snoring softly in bed still, looking adorable in the morning light. She could still sleep for another few hours, but I’d gotten up before five in the morning in order to be at school earlier than usual. I just felt the need to be there before anyone else, in order to be prepared for what would undoubtedly be an emotional day.

I was slightly startled when my phone rang, and I hit the button quickly before it could wake Melina up. "Hello?"

"Hello, Cam. It's been a long time since we talked face to face."

It was true. It had been a long time, over three years since I'd heard the voice, but it wasn't one that I'd forgotten. "Senpai. You know it's five thirty in the morning here.”

"That's what you get for living in the Mountain Time Zone," Senpai chuckled in my ear. "It's seven thirty by my body's clock."

"What do you want?" I asked. I noted that he said his body's clock, not his own clock. He may not have been on the East Coast. "Working for your masters to deliver another message for me? Or are you trying to distract me while the people you work with send another gunman to try and kill me?"

"Pinzetti was a rabid dog, and you've sent quite a message in attacking his handlers," Senpai said. "You've sent quite a few people into a panic too. By the way, my higher ups had a laugh at some of the ways you did it."

"I wanted to make sure that the message was received properly by all involved. But you didn't call me just to make small talk. What do you want?" I asked, keeping my voice low. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to keep my phone pressed against my ear, which made getting dressed difficult. Instead of the pullover shirt that I'd laid out the night before, I grabbed a button up shirt from the closet, working one arm at a time into the sleeves before grabbing my pants.

"Cam, a lot of the remaining players in the game are scared, and your message, your actions have put them on guard. They didn't really believe what all you can do until the past few days."

"I warned them, didn't I?" I replied. "But you're still not answering my question.”

"I need to speak to you, face to face," He said. "I understand you've got work, but what about this weekend? Saturday night?"

I thought about it for a second. "We can do that."

He noted my use of
we
. "She's that deeply involved with you? That's a dangerous tactic, Cam."

"I thought about the pros and cons of it before I even made my decision. But yes, she’s involved. She deserves to know everything.”

"All right. Saturday night. I'll message you the details."

He hung up his end of the call without even a goodbye, and I set it down on my dresser. I looked at myself in the mirror, then glanced at the alarm clock. I had a few minutes and had enough time to change my shirt back to what I had originally planned. I went over to the still sleeping form of Melina in bed and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Then I went out to the kitchen, where I wrote out a quick note to her on a little whiteboard that we used mostly for grocery lists, and finished getting ready for work.

Today was an important day.

Y
ou'd think
that with it still being early fall or late summer, depending on how you wanted to look at the calendar, that it would be warm at night. The truth was about as far from that as you could think. The night wind had an edge to it coming off the mountains only a few miles away, and I shivered in my light sweatshirt.

"You're sure everything will go okay?" I asked for what had to be the fifth or sixth time. We were out in the country, a little east of the airport in the area that was in between Truth or Consequences and Elephant Butte Reservoir. It wasn't even a road in my opinion, but more of a dirt track that wound its way through the desert. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere.

"We have a good plan," Cam reassured me. "I'm encouraged by the fact that he didn't try and cut the timeline, catch us by surprise."

"Would you have really been caught off guard by that?" I asked, thinking of how the week had been. While there hadn't been any overt change in the way Cam and I did things, there was a sense of underlying tension as we prepared for this meeting. Cam had spent time each evening going over little things with me, trying to help me learn what I needed to know. "I have the feeling you rarely, if ever, get caught off guard."

"Oh, I don't know. You catch me off guard all the time," Cam said with a laugh. "But it's always in a good way."

I blushed, turning away. Unfortunately, that made me look at the items sitting on the tailgate of Cam's truck, and my good feelings evaporated in the chilly wind. It's kind of hard to have good feelings when you see a shotgun, an M-16, and a laptop computer sitting out. We were purposely a few minutes early for our midnight meeting. "What time is it?"

"Eleven fifty-seven," Cam said, glancing at his watch, one of the military type models that has a glow in the dark analog face. I'd never seen him wear it before that night, and I understood why. Even with the nearly full moon overhead in a clear sky, it is
dark
out in the country at night. You don't realize what darkness means until the closest artificial light you can see is a mile away.

I saw another set of lights approaching and knew it was who we'd been waiting for. Cam picked up the M-16 while I picked up the shotgun. I was inexperienced with both, but I had a better chance with the shotgun. I picked it up and double checked that the safety was off. There was already a shell in the chamber, and I was in point-and-shoot mode now. I made sure to remember the safety rules Cam had drilled into me, with the most important being never pointing the barrel in any direction except one that I wanted to shoot.

The man Cam called Senpai was driving an SUV, but I couldn't really tell much about it in the darkness. As the lights swept over us, Cam waved curtly, staying behind the bed of the truck. I was on the other side of the truck, where the angle of our parking job gave me a little bit more cover and protection. Neither of us were pointing our weapons at the vehicle, but we kept them visible. We didn't really have a reason to trust this man.

"Cam," the man said, getting out of the SUV. "This is a little cloak-and-dagger even for you, isn't it?"

"You know where I live, you have my phone number, but that doesn't mean I'm going to invite you into my house," Cam said. "Cut the lights, I can't see shit. Leave the running lights on, though."

Senpai did as asked, and the area between our vehicles as cast into a ghastly mix of red from our tail lights. He left the dome light on in his SUV so we could see that the vehicle was empty. Of course, someone could have been coming cross country after us as well, but paranoia only takes you so far before it becomes paralyzing. That was another one of Cam's lessons.

"Is that what I think it is?" Senpai asked, pointing at the silvery lid of the laptop. "I've never seen it up close."

"It is," Cam said. "You want to take a look?"

The man did, and as he approached I saw that he was a bit older, maybe in his late forties or early fifties, with a nondescript look that meant he could blend in just about anywhere. Still, he had a certain hardness to his body language that said that he wasn't a man to be trifled with. "How can I know this is the real thing?"

"I brought along my satellite network hookup," Cam said. "If you want, you can get on the system and check out some information."

"You know this could just be a very elaborate fake," the man said after some investigation. "How can I trust that this is the real thing?"

"The same way I can trust that you don't have a squad of Delta Force coming through the desert to try and shoot me," Cam said. “I can’t, not completely.”

Senpai nodded and stepped back while Cam shut down the computer. "Cam, you having that thing . . . it scares a lot of people, as I’m sure you know."

"You've been telling me that for years now," Cam replied. "But I still have it. What's changed that brings you out here to the middle of New Mexico? Last I had checked up on you, you were enjoying life in the Virginia hills."

"You tore a swath through the community that seems to be growing every day," he replied. "Three of the biggest players in the game are ruined, you know."

"And an innocent teacher is dead, you arrogant asshole," I spat at him. “Was her life somehow worth less?"

Senpai looked at me as if he was aware for the first time of my presence. "Well, I can at least see how you two get along so well," he finally said, then turned his attention back to Cam, dismissing me completely. My fingers tightened on the grip of my shotgun, but Cam shook his head subtly, and I fought back my frustration. It’s not like I’d have shot him, but I sure would’ve loved to bop him upside the head.

“Cam, you know what the others are thinking. They've given you a lot of slack, but it seems like you're ready to hang yourself and a lot of them with it. That's not going to fly any longer."

"I see," Cam nodded. He shrugged, then picked up the laptop. "All right then, but I'm not going to let any of them get their hands on this."

"They’re not going to let you keep it any longer," Senpai said. "I came out here as a final warning, and to deliver an ultimatum. We’ll take that off your hands and assume the responsibility for it. We know the risks, we can keep the system safe."

Cam shook his head and tossed the laptop onto the dirt, leveling his M-16 at it. "No, you won't," he said. "You and the people you work with won't be able to resist the temptation. You'll bankrupt corporations that piss you off, and make those who support you rich and powerful."

"We do that already," Senpai replied. "What does Albertine change in that regard? Now give me the laptop so that I can get the fucking thing fixed. My God Cam, you know what breaking that laptop does to the world!"

Cam shrugged, and flicked off the safety on his rifle, the two metallic clicks somehow impossibly loud in the night. Senpai reached for his waistband, and I brought my shotgun up. "Don't."

The man looked over at me, blanching. Sure, I may be a total amateur holding a gun far too big for my body and leaning against the frame of a Dodge pickup truck. I probably couldn't hit anything more than ten yards away without an act of God. That being said, I was ten feet away with a shotgun. It'd be very hard to miss. "You wouldn't have the guts."

"You’re threatening to shoot the man I want to spend the rest of my life with," I said evenly. “Are you willing to bet on that?”

He looked me in the eyes, and for the first time, I think he really saw me as a person rather than just some sort of set decoration in this whole little charade. He nodded once and let his hand fall from his waist. "You know at that range, you'd probably hit him too.”

“Maybe,” I conceded, "but one thing’s for sure, you’d be blown away.”

Senpai turned his attention back to Cam. "Cam, come on. You took Albertine because you're idealistic. I knew that from the moment I first met you. It's your greatest weakness. Are you really going to throw it all away, and let the whole damn world come crashing down around us because of it?”

“The world will survive," Cam said simply. Before Senpai could say anything else, Cam pulled the trigger on his rifle, and three bullets shattered through the laptop and buried themselves in the desert sand below. "Now go. Our business is done."

"You just took away your only protection. You do realize that, right?”

"I think everyone should be more concerned with trying to save their asses before the six-month deadline comes," Cam said softly. "Think your friends can get enough programmers on the system to find out how to stop Albertine in that amount of time? Minutes count in this game, so tick tock, tick tock."

The man looked like he was going to say something, then shook his head to himself and walked backward to his SUV. Starting it up, he reversed to a point in the desert where he could turn around, then took off down the road. We waited until his tail lights were barely blips in the distance before Cam picked up the ruined remains of the laptop and tossed it carelessly into the back of the truck. "Come on, let's go home."

I made sure to put the shotgun on safety and then unloaded all the shells from it before getting in the truck. I waited for Cam to start up the engine and drive off before speaking again. "You think he bought it?"

"No chance in hell, but he can't be sure one way or another," Cam said with a laugh. "Thank you again for your idea. Using the backup to clone Albertine and then shoot it? Genius."

It was the root of our plan and one that I'd come up with just two days before. The real Albertine and its backup systems were still at our house. It would keep the data systems of the world safe, and as long as we were left alone, we wouldn't have to worry about using the power of Albertine for anything again.

"Thank you. I do have my moments."