68.
Nadine
Nadine had done a lot to make sure she wasn’t being followed after she left her office. She’d gotten out of an Uber on Fifth Avenue, gone through a department store in one entrance, came out from another entirely after wandering through the sparsely populated aisles for a while. She took a cab next, to Central Park, where she meandered a while and then changed in a restroom, putting a shawl over her head to hide her hair, and big sunglasses over her face. She dumped her leather handbag, putting the contents she needed into a plastic shopping bag and packing her clothing away in it.
She wandered out of Central Park and flagged down another cab, and this one she rode to six blocks from her destination, a building in midtown. She navigated her way down streets and avenues, taking a circuitous route until she found the building and buzzed the front door. When she said, “Henry sent me to pick up the donations,” she was buzzed up instantly. She looked at the street around her through the dark glasses, checking once to more to be certain she hadn’t been followed.
Nadine walked up to the third floor and found the door already open. She slipped inside, checking the hall quickly. There was no one there, and so she came inside and shut the door, locking it with her gloved fingers.
“Taking a mighty big risk meeting in person, dove,” said Abner in the darkness. The room they were in was an office of some sort, but with blackout curtains in front of the windows. He clicked a desk lamp on, and it revealed his fat face by yellowed light. He smiled. In the lamplight, his teeth appeared yellow, as though he was a copious smoker even though she knew he wasn’t.
Nadine made her way over to the desk, staring across at Abner then smiling in calm relief. “You have no idea how many twists and turns it took me to make sure I got here alone.”
“A great many, I hope,” Abner said, opening his desk and pulling out a bottle of something that looked expensive. He could afford it, doing what he did. He pulled the stopper and gave a generous amount to his coffee, then offered her the bottle. She shook her head with a smile. “The question is … why did you risk it?”
“I’m growing sick of calling naked from my safe room,” she said, figuring that this revelation would put him off balance. It did; he had his coffee cup up to his lips and he almost choked on it, putting the cup down in a ring of wetness, hacking like he’d taken a gulp into a lung. “Nothing personal,” she said sweetly, “I don’t mind being naked talking to you, but … the lack of a face to talk to is … lonely.” She said the last word wistfully, as Abner got his cough under control. “I’m a little bit of a social outcast, you see.”
“So I’ve heard,” he said, sounding quite choked. “Well … I was going to give you an update next time you called, but I think you know what I’m going to say.”
She was fairly certain she knew as well, and that was why she’d come. “I want to hear you say it anyway,” she said, wandering over to a bookshelf at the side of the room and looking at a snow globe with some European village nestled within under a layer of white. She kept her hands fastened behind her back, though.
“Well, you know the big job’s done,” he said, still a little choked but back to business. “All the loose ends are taken care of and everyone who could identify me are good and dead. A few little strays managed to get caught in the net cast by those heroes, but they’re of little concern since they were hired by the ops chief of the mission, and he’s dead.” Abner cleared his throat again. “So that’s done. Evidence rendered to ash, glass, and deleted disk space all around, from the SEC to the FBI to the US Attorneys.”
“Good,” she said, turning her head to give him the hint of a smile. Her hair bristled against the restraint of the net beneath her shawl, but she ignored it. It was necessary. “And the other thing?”
“Jamie Barton, you mean?” Abner smiled. It was an ugly expression, even absent the yellow tinge the lamp gave his teeth. “I’ve set up quite the gauntlet for her to go through. ArcheGrey did us a solid and wrecked her finances in the collateral of the cyber-attack. Our lady’s already experiencing the joys of poverty—not a dime in the bank, lost a loan her business needed to survive, and she’s had all her accounts closed. She’s even lost her phone and car to sudden, surprising nonpayment. Foreclosure to follow.” He showed a trace of regret here. “Wish I could have had ArcheGrey speed that one up, but it would have been a bit obvious if he leapt right to it. But don’t worry, the other things coming are going to be plenty enough to make this lass miserable.”
“Oh?” Nadine asked, fishing.
“Something’s about to happen that’s going to turn her life upside down, make what we’ve done so far look like, uhh … a day in the park.” Abner leaned back, chair squeaking under his girth. “Then once that’s done, I’ve arranged one last kick to make the lady take a deep dive into despair before her end comes, one way or another.” He took a long pull of his coffee, droplets still running down the sides from his mess earlier. “You said to ruin her life … well, I’ve done it. When this is over, I promise you she’ll be the saddest soul in cell block D, if by some miracle she lives.” He grinned.
“And it’s all done?” she asked. “Set in motion? Because I want this bitch to suffer, no ifs, ands or—”
“It is,” he said, reassuring. “I’ve made all the arrangements.” He lifted his watch up and looked at it. “One of the little bombshells is about to go off right now, in fact, if you’d like to stay and watch.” He picked up a TV remote and gestured to one on the wall.
“No, I’ve been out of sight for too long already,” she said, infusing her words with regret. “I need to get back. I just wanted to … hear what you had to say, make sure the arrangements are on track.” She sighed. “You’ve been a real pro, Abner. I couldn’t have gotten out of this without you.”
He nodded, smiling faintly. “Just take heed, Nadine, and remember … I can’t do this again, okay? We’ve buried everything they had, and there’s no connection back to you. So stay out of trouble if you want to keep free.”
“I will,” she said with a smile. “It’s a shame you couldn’t help me again.” She let her smile turn nasty. “But it does mean I don’t have any more reasons to keep you around.”
She raised the pistol she’d been hiding in her pocket and shot him in the face, three times. It had a suppressor on it, which made it sound like a crack, like she’d dropped something, instead of a full-blown gunshot. She stared into his face as each shot hit, watched him die, his gurgling coming to a stop relatively quickly.
When she was sure he was dead, she walked around the desk and pulled the whiskey bottle out of the desk. She spilled it all over his paperwork and his computer, which frizzed quietly as it shorted out. She left the pistol in the middle of the spill; it was untraceable, without a serial number or her fingerprints anywhere on it. Then she took the desk lamp and broke the bulb with one good whack against the corner of the desk.
She carefully set the broken lamp in the puddle of booze, and watched the electric current light the alcohol with a Whoosh! Nadine stepped back from the desk, watching the flames spread for only a moment before she headed for the door. She didn’t even look back, because why would she? He may have been the first person she’d actually physically killed, but who cared? This was done.
On to the next thing.