Chapter 2
Sienna woke the next morning tired and achy. Instead of enjoying a peaceful dinner last night, the place had erupted with questions and phone calls. She hadn’t meant to create such a stir, but when she had connected the sequences in her head, she realized she could look at them in a completely different way. And apparently, that made a difference. She still had to study the spreadsheets …
The group had discussed the issue at length even though she’d said, “I could be wrong.”
“But you could also be very right,” Jarrod said, sounding impressed. “I didn’t know that was the kind of work you did.”
“I was doing all kinds.” She smiled at him. “It was fun until it blew up in my face.”
“Time to tell me exactly what went wrong,” Jarrod said in a hard voice.
“It’s over.” She shrugged. “What difference does it make?”
Katina reached across the table and covered her hand. “I’ve been there, and it sucks,” she said. “But it’s much better if these guys know exactly what happened to you in the past.”
Sienna frowned. “It’s just so … embarrassing.” The last thing she wanted was to air her dirty laundry in front of anybody else.
“Give.”
Her brother had always been like that. One to bark out orders and expect her to follow. She glared at him. But his expression never eased. She threw up her hands and said, “Fine, I was part of a criminal investigation into a leg of the Mafia. Hard to believe they’re around, but they are.”
Katina gasped in horror.
“Anyway, while I was looking in the banking transactions to prove they were involved in money laundering, I didn’t realize who and what they were after until finding all the information. And my current boyfriend at that time was actually part of the Mafia family.” She winced. “It all went south. My bosses said I was sleeping with the enemy, that my information was tainted, so the case was thrown out. I lost my job and good name.” She glared at everybody. “Embarrassing enough?”
Jarrod reached over and grabbed her hand, tugging her into his arms for a hug. “You didn’t know who he was. That’s a heavy weight you had on your shoulders.”
When he released her, she said, “Everybody just likes to have a scapegoat. I was it. The stupid thing is, I’m pretty damn sure my boss was part of the same family. I think I was given that job specifically because I was in a position that would compromise the case.”
She fisted both hands and stretched them back out again to make them relax. “But it really makes you reassess who you can trust in this world.”
“And there is not one person at this table who has not already had to reassess that exact same issue,” Jarrod said quietly.
“We were all betrayed by somebody we trusted,” Rhodes said. “Maybe we were foolish to trust in the first place. For some of us, the betrayal was more serious than for others.” Rhodes shook his head. “It’s a hard lesson to learn but better to know.”
“Did you go to the police and report what they did to you?” Katina asked Sienna.
“The police were all over me by that time. I’m lucky I wasn’t charged,” she said in a low voice. “There was talk of it. Only because I gave as much evidence as I could, was I able to walk away. As it is right now, everybody walked, because whatever I found was supposedly tainted.” She lifted her gaze and said, “It was pretty humiliating at the time. I felt so stupid. I had no idea my boyfriend was involved.”
Katina patted her hand. “And it doesn’t matter. That’s all in your past. Time to face forward and forget about him.” She gave a lopsided smile. “These guys are good at helping you do that.” She linked her arm with Merk. “Merk helped me out of my jam.”
“Nobody can help me out of mine,” Sienna said. “It’s done and gone. The aftermath was pretty rough, and the fallout was terrible. I would have kept falling, but Ice found me, and I am very thankful for that,” she admitted. “I couldn’t do anything to undo it, so I just moved forward,” Sienna said. “We’ve all come to crossroads in our lives where what we used to do isn’t what we currently do.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I’m going to enjoy my new life.”
Levi wrapped an arm around Ice’s shoulder, tucking her close.
Sienna could certainly understand why Ice was happy. As much as Sienna hoped for the same, she wasn’t at all sure it would happen.
Abruptly Levi asked, “Did you like that kind of work?”
“Yes,” she said. “I did. It was fun to chase the trails. Sometimes it was also frustrating because it would just end, and I had nowhere to go. I had to wait until something else happened. But often I could keep tracking and find out more.”
“I have to admit, I would’ve enjoyed going farther into that field myself,” Katina said. “The little bit I got involved with was interesting, but also unnerving.”
“If it was directed at you, then it would definitely be. But I was going after criminals—at least I thought I was.” Sienna shook her head. “I’m honestly not sure who I was chasing now. Because if my boss was involved, … who knows.” She turned to gaze at Levi and realized he was studying her thoughtfully. “What are you thinking?”
“Sometimes we get asked to look in to things like that,” he said. “I haven’t had anybody I could put onto cases involving that level of programming before now. Money trails we’ve looked in to tended toward offshore accounts. Certain ones can be very time-consuming. I’m wondering if it’s something you want to get away from completely or would like to get further into.”
She hesitated a moment. “I’m not sure that’s what I could do. I specialized in banking programs. I’d have to know that it was completely legal before I would venture into it again. I got off lightly, considering. Not sure the law would let me go so easily a second time.”
“And yet you helped out Bullard,” Ice said.
Sienna’s lips twisted. “Yeah, he caught me in a weak moment. He’s very persuasive.”
At that Ice laughed out loud. “Oh, he is indeed. He also has a greater variety of work and would have more exposure to cases like this.”
“I’d be fine as long as it wasn’t something I’d end up in trouble over,” she said finally. “That part wasn’t fun.”
“I so understand.” Katina laughed. “Like you, I don’t want to end up in something that is dangerous. I was already kidnapped and someone tried to kill me over the mess I got involved in.”
Sienna’s gaze widened. “Oh, my situation wasn’t anywhere near that bad. I can’t imagine what you went through.”
“Well,” Merk added, “you may not have known how bad it was because you were the one set up to take the fall. In this case, Katina wanted the others to.” Merk’s explanation brought a laugh from everyone.
“I wish I’d thought of that, but I didn’t even see the danger closing in around me,” Sienna said. “I don’t think like that. I thought I was a happy-go-lucky person, and pretty intuitive. Only I didn’t really know the kind of people I was working with. I’d never come up against individuals like that before.”
“How long were you with your boyfriend before this all came apart?” Katina asked.
Sienna hugged her coffee mug. “Honestly, not long. I can see now he set me up, targeted me. He’d probably researched me beforehand, so he knew what I liked, what buttons to push. It was a pretty fast whirlwind romance. About three months, maybe four, that I’d known him.”
Rhodes nodded. “That sounds like about the right time frame. A con of that magnitude would require at least three months to set up. Obviously, they had enough in place for you to take the fall.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” she said. “My reputation’s in tatters, and I certainly won’t be working in that field anymore.”
“Unless you want to do that kind of work for me,” Levi said. “I already know how the story played out and understand.”
And she had no doubt he meant it. “Why don’t we leave it at that? If you get something across your desk that might involve matters like this, I could look.” But she didn’t really expect anything to come of it.
Until the next morning when Bullard called her again. “I have another bit of code for you to look at.”
She leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temple. “Have you talked to Levi about this?”
He laughed. “Of course I have. Levi and I are working on the case jointly.”
There really was something magnetic about that voice of his. But she was immune to smooth talkers. “Okay, send it over.”
She hung up and returned to the accounts she was setting up for the business. Levi had done a decent job, but some fine-tuning would make it work that much better. She was busy with the forms when an email alert sounded. She checked and saw Bullard had sent four more videos. He really wanted answers.
She downloaded the videos and brought them up on the double monitors. She split the screens so all four played at the same time. All codes were again similar to what she had looked at the day before. She read them over, but at first glance, they didn’t appear to mean much. Same program but with newer updates. She studied the stream for close to half an hour.
Levi walked in. “Are those Bullard’s files?”
Without lifting her head, she said, “Yes.”
“Okay. How about letting Katina help? She has quite a photographic memory. It’s one of the reasons she was so instrumental in putting the company she was working for behind bars. When she found access to information, she memorized the material.”
Sienna looked up at him in surprise. “You know, that could be very helpful.” She motioned at the fourth video and said, “This is different.”
He stepped over to stand behind her. “Different how?”
“The others are all very similar to the first ones he showed me. This set of code is replicating, so everything it does, it does twice. Like a mirror image.”
She minimized the other videos and opened the fourth in full size. “It’s not active. It’s like a copy.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, unless they are making changes, yet wanting to keep a master. They appear to be working on the code, but I can’t see the extent of the tampering.”
He tapped a finger on the far column and said, “Good. Bullard can go back to the bank and tell them that.”
“Good.” She smiled. “If that’s all then …”
“Can you track who is doing this?”
“Maybe. But not from here. And Ghana has their own specialists. Didn’t he say there was a Dallas connection?”
He stepped away from the desk and said, “Looks like it. They’re waiting on results from the bank investigation.”
She nodded, but her gaze was still on the monitors. She heard Levi leave as quietly as he had appeared. She quickly brought up several of the programs she formerly used to hunt through databases. She’d caught glimpses of accounts. Would it help to know what the transactions were? She’d spent a lot of time doing this before. Very quickly she picked out one of the Swiss banks. Of course that made it even more difficult because those were much harder to get information from.
She kept digging and found several were running through France, and others through Hong Kong. She focused on the latter. Of course, a lot of offshore accounts ran through Asia.
*
Rhodes and Merk looked up when Levi walked into the kitchen. “What’s up?”
“Bullard sent Sienna several videos tracing code from a different bank. She thinks the code has been tampered with.”
“Is this Bullard’s case or ours?” Rhodes asked.
“Both. There is a Dallas connection here.”
“Wow, a shared job. That’ll be a first.”
“True, but it’s good for both of us. Bullard has a lot of work over there, and we have a lot of over here, but obviously, if we can pull our resources on some jobs, it’s major. He’s also asking how the new security systems he installed are working. Anybody have any criticism or questions on them?”
Rhodes watched as Merk shook his head. “It’s fine at the moment,” he said. “Until it’s put to the test, we can’t know how the complete system works.”
“I was kind of hoping not to have to stress it that bad.” Levi sat down at the table and said, “Logan and Flynn are taking on a West Coast job. We have a couple special people to be escort back to Texas, with any luck we’ll be out and back faster than expected.”
Rhodes nodded. “Anything from here I can help with?”
Levi glanced at the two of them. “Bored?”
Merk nodded.
“Bored,” Rhodes confirmed. He wasn’t so much bored as preferring a way to get out of the house while Sienna was here. Since Jarrod left, Rhodes saw himself in the brother role. And that wasn’t the relationship he wanted. A break would be good.
“Bullard has located five addresses,” Levi said. “One in New Mexico, four in Texas, the farthest up in Dallas.”
“Addresses regarding what?” Rhodes asked.
“Connected to the banking fraud case Sienna is looking at right now,” Levi said. “Several Texas addresses were on a sheet found on a bank employee’s desk. Check out each one very carefully. Approach with caution, but we must confirm if these are safe houses, terrorists’ hideouts, or just holding properties.”
“Exactly what kind of a case has Bullard got going on?” Merk asked.
Levi looked up and said, “Arms dealing and money laundering. Plus, it looks like a bank employee might have been pilfering a bit off the top. At least if Sienna is correct. Who knows what else.”
Rhodes’s face went on lockdown. “Like hell. Sienna shouldn’t be working on anything to do with that.” Then he stopped himself. In the office, work was a hell of a lot less dangerous than being out in the field. She’d be safe here. He stood up. “I’m in.”
Merk said, “Me too.”
Rhodes asked Levi, “Driving or flying?”
“Driving.” Levi stood up and walked out the kitchen. “Be ready to leave in an hour.”
Merk and Rhodes looked at each other and smiled. “I guess he knew our answers already,” Merk said.
“It’s sure better than doing security detail,” Rhodes said, heartfelt. “He’s been getting a lot of requests by these West Coast entertainers.”
“Hell, I’ve had enough of that. He needs to hire guys just for that babysitting stuff if that’s what he’s doing now. It’s probably very lucrative and could keep the company in ready cash while we do the other jobs.” Merk rapped his knuckles against the kitchen table and said, “Meet you back here in forty-five.”
Rhodes headed up to his suite, happy to leave again. He’d just worry about Sienna if he stayed here. Packing for him was a five-minute job. Too many years being ready to leave at the drop of a hat for him to live any other way. He was back down in thirty, walking into the kitchen to see Alfred had a picnic basket half-full already. “Alfred, you are a godsend.”
“Yep, don’t you forget it.” Alfred quickly added homemade cookies and banana bread in clear plastic containers and then tucked in several large thermoses. “I suspect you both won’t be more than two nights, and you’ll be stopping at hotels anyway, so this should do you for the bulk of the trip.”
Rhodes picked it up, grabbed his own bag and headed out to the truck. Considering the mileage they had to cover, he figured the smallest of the trucks would be easier on gas.
Merk already had the same idea as he had it warming up. He nodded at Rhodes. “Throw your bags in the back. Ice is bringing us the paperwork, and then we’re gone.”
Rhodes loaded the basket into the small back storage compartment of the extra cab and tossed his own bag in the back of the bed. It was a nice sunny day. No reason not to haul the luggage outside. Within minutes they were off. He checked the GPS. “It looks like we’re three hours to the first address.”
“Did you hear any whispers as to what might be there?” Merk asked.
Rhodes brought up his cell and punched in the address. He also checked the notes Levi had sent. Each location was registered to a different name. But as they had checked farther back, each had been under one company.
*
When they pulled onto the street of the first house, they drove past it slowly. It was a rundown large brick two-story house, comparable to the rest of the block. Nothing untoward, nor odd looking. An abandoned-looking vehicle was parked in the driveway. An alleyway was down the back.
Rhodes carefully drove to the rear and parked just behind the house. Merke and Rhodes got out and walked the alleyway carefully. Merk took several pictures of the area and this part of the house.
As he took the second one, Rhodes saw a curtain pull back and then quickly fall away again. “Somebody’s in the top second room,” he said to Merk.
Merk nodded. “I’ll go around front and see if our presence here has pushed anybody out the door.”
Rhodes nodded as he headed in the opposite direction to the neighboring house. From his view, the derelict-looking house appeared empty. He quickly hopped the fence and ran up to the back so he could peer at the house from the relative safety of this one. But with nothing showing as out-of-place or unusual, he continued around to the front.
He took several photos from this viewpoint. No windows were on this side. He quickly slipped through the hedge and crept up to peer around the front. Just as he caught sight of the car in the driveway, the engine turned over, and it immediately backed down to the street and took off away from Rhodes.
He caught sight of Merk at the far end of the driveway. As the car drove past, Merk turned and quickly snapped a photo. With any luck he got the license plate. They should have grabbed it as they drove past the first time. He’d taken pictures but hadn’t zeroed in on that. He packed his camera in its case for the time being and slung it crosswise on his chest.
Rhodes slipped around the house and went to the back door. He knocked, but there was no answer. He pushed open the door and called out, “Hello, anyone here?”
Again, no answer. But he had seen somebody upstairs. Was that the person who had left? A few minutes later Merk joined him at the doorstep. “Any reason to go inside and check?”
The two looked at each other. They had no legal right to enter. But this was looking more than slightly suspicious. Deciding to take a chance, they went in, weapons in hand. The downstairs looked completely uninhabited. No furniture was in the living room, outside of a single chair and a footstool beside the fireplace. The kitchen cupboards were bare, and the fridge was empty. Obviously, nobody was living here.
Merk and Rhodes swept upstairs and found one room with a single bed, the other two were empty. The hall bathroom was as well. The en suite bath had a toothbrush and toothpaste, but that was it. The sinks were dry; the bathtub was too and looked as if it hadn’t been used in a while.
They had no idea who was here earlier, but as he hadn’t hung around, they were short of getting answers. They ran lightly down the stairs and stopped at the door to the garage. At the count of three, they opened it and swept inside. They found no guns or other weapons.
But there were explosives—dynamite.
“Shit.” Merk quickly phoned Levi while Rhodes retrieved his camera from its case. By the time they had it all catalogued, they’d been here way too long.
Levi would call to the police and somehow let them know what was inside the garage.
*
Buoyed by that success, they hopped into their vehicle and headed to the second house. This time they knew better and quickly approached to take images of the entire place, including any nearby vehicles, no matter how inoperable they looked. None were found under the carport or in the attached garage. They entered through the backyard once again and did a full sweep of the house. Nothing. Back in the truck, Rhodes called Levi. “Levi, the second house is completely empty, no sign of anyone or anything. No one has lived here for a while.”
“Good to know. Head off to the third location. You’re making great time. See if you can get this next one done before nightfall.”
*
By the time they hit the third house, darkness had settled in. That was both good and bad. They needed light to search the place, and if no lights were on, it would be obvious when somebody turned them on. This house was a flat two-story ranch surrounded by trees on a large lot. The house was on the small rise of a hill and appeared to have a walkout-style downstairs. Neighbors were all around, but again it was a heavily treed area, so nobody could really see anyone or anything.
Merk and Rhodes parked on the shadowed shoulder of the road farther up and walked back. No vehicle was parked in the long sweeping driveway. Nobody answered their knock at the door either. The garage was unlocked, so they slipped inside and found an old car.
Frowning—because this looked much more like a broken-down antique than somebody’s driving vehicle—they went out the side door and around the back. There, with the sun setting, they were running out of natural light, and none were on inside to see. If they could get in and out now, they could look around without having to turn any on. Just as they approached from the back, they heard a door bang. They froze. With a glance to each other, they carefully slipped around to the side of the house and waited. A lone man walked onto the porch and lit a cigarette.
Rhodes studied him. He was dressed all in black and wore combat boots. From the buzzed head and tattoos, he could be anything from ex-military to a white supremacist. Rhodes dismissed the military angle as the man was unshaven and looking more ragged and violent than Rhodes would have expected.
When the man finished his cigarette, he tossed the butt onto the wooden deck and walked back inside.
Another point against him. Lit cigarettes and wood were not a good combination, and he hadn’t stomped on the butt and ground it out. Neither did he separate the filter from the end. Sloppy. He was leaving DNA for the police to collect.
Merk motioned from the far side of the house. Rhodes waited, watching as Merk snuck up to the deck, came around the side and reached for something, then disappeared back the way he came.
Rhodes quickly assessed the rear of the house. Good. They could gain interior access via the windows, but still there was no sign where the smoker had gone.
They returned to their vehicle and called Levi.
“Don’t go into the house,” Levi warned. “We’ll put a tag on that address. But given what you said, chances are he’s guarding something.”
Rhodes happened to agree, but that didn’t mean the guy was a criminal.
He and Merk grabbed two hotel rooms for the night. Their motto when traveling was easy. Get in, get out, get home. With any luck they’d drive into the compound tomorrow night and not too late at that.
At the hotel, they quickly downloaded and sent off to Levi all the images they had collected, including the ones Rhodes had taken of the militant-looking man smoking on the back deck. Maybe with the new facial-recognition programs they might identify him. Rhodes wasn’t sure if a terrorist bombing was something Levi was looking for, or Bullard for that matter, but the fact that he and Merk had found a house with a cache of explosives was bad news no matter what country they were in.
*
Rhodes and Merk were up and on the road well before dawn to make the trek to the final location on their list. They stopped at the fourth house early enough that the neighbors weren’t up and around yet. This time they parked around the corner and entered through the back alleyway. The rear of the house had a large porch that hid them from view—of the neighbors at least. As Rhodes went to open the door, they realized it had already been broken into. Taking a picture of the busted lock and doorframe, they pushed it open and called out, “Anybody home?”
“Hello, is anyone here?”
With a glance to each other, they both pulled their weapons and moved in, one high, the other low. They swept the first floor, moving in tandem. They knew the drill. No one was prepared to take a bullet at this point in his life. The downstairs was completely empty. But somebody had broken into the house for a reason. Unless they’d come in to clean it out.
They moved upstairs and found it completely empty as well. The staircase to the attic wasn’t latched. They looked at each other, and Rhodes lowered the access. Merk went up first. They stopped in the empty attic and looked around, puzzled. Something had been here. The place was spotless, no sign of dust collecting, like the cleaning service had come through, or this had all been emptied recently. At the far side of the attic were bags of some sort. The two studied them carefully before going closer.
The odor hit them first as they approached.
They found two dead men. Both wrapped in clear plastic and tied up with ropes. From the decomposition already working and the fluids filling the corners of the plastic, the dead men had been here for at least a few days if not a few weeks. Careful not to disturb them, Merk and Rhodes combed the rest of the small room. Nothing else had been left behind.
It would be damn hard identifying their faces through the plastic. Rhodes took pictures anyway and sent the images to Levi. Rhodes didn’t know what the hell was going on, but it was a damn good thing somebody was checking out these houses. Back outside again, they took several deep breaths of fresh air and waited for Levi to get back to them.
“Levi?” Rhodes asked as he answered his phone. “Not exactly what we expected to find.”
“Definitely not. I called the cops there. Stay at the scene. Explain that you’re working for us, and you were looking to speak with the inhabitants of the house. Don’t give them any details, just direct them to me. Say that you found the door ajar, broken into, and went in to investigate.”
“What about the house with dynamite?”
“The police raided that house. You can watch it on the news,” Levi answered in a laconic tone. “Some good media won’t hurt the local police.”
Rhodes laughed, but he wasn’t at all impressed with having to wait for the cops or the upcoming explanations. He and Merk sat down on the back porch and did as instructed. They’d been in this situation before.
When the cops arrived, he and Merk answered what few questions there were and quickly showed the men the bodies. After that, they were escorted off the property and asked to wait for investigators to question them.
The wait was just long enough that by the time they hit the road again, it would be lucky—if not near impossible—to make it home tonight. If not actually impossible. They still had one more address to check out.
“Damn,” Merk said. “I told Katina I’d be home tonight for sure.”
“There is no for sure in this business. Particularly with Levi.”
“Dynamite and dead bodies? Who would have thought?”
“And what’s the connection?”
*
They were still several hours away from the fifth house. Of course, this was the furthest away.
It was late afternoon when they pulled up in front of it. After what they’d found at the first and fourth houses, they had no idea what to expect here. When a family with small kids came out the door, playing in the front yard, they wondered if they had the wrong house. They double-checked the address with Levi, but sure enough a family lived here.
The three little kids all appeared to be under six years old. Mom and Dad were here, as was a puppy. It was the epitome of the happy American family.
Merk and Rhodes drove around the neighborhood, took a few pictures and headed along the back alley. This wasn’t what they were expecting.
On Levi’s instructions they were given the okay to head home. Damn good thing. They were more than ready to return.