Better Off Dead

CHAPTER THREE

BROCK WALKED INTO HIS OFFICE. He’d spent the morning attending a seminar conducted by the FBI. Combating Computer Assisted Crimes. What a joke! They’d shown him a few new tricks, but most of it he knew.

Booooring.

He shivered as he shrugged into the microfiber jacket in the room, hyper cooled to protect the sensitive equipment. He pulled on tight-fitting microfiber gloves with the fingers cut out.

What Brock wore didn’t matter to him. Most days, no one saw him. He worked alone by choice. The company would fund all the staff he needed. He had fifty-three people working for him, but he kept them in the field. That way no one at Obelisk but him knew how to use the sophisticated equipment.

Some of the arrogant pricks he worked with, like CEO Kilmer Cassidy, thought they did, but should they try to use his equipment, they would destroy everything. Without an authorized laser fingerprint and the top secret password, on the fourth try his computers would assume unauthorized entry mode, self-format, and devour the hard drive.

He had a backup no one knew about—his personal laptop that he kept with him at all times. He’d downloaded all of Obelisk’s top secret data onto it and had several of his own special programs installed, as well. It was against company rules for any of the secured info to be removed from the premises. But who was to know? He was head of security.

Brock smiled and glanced around his office to see what was happening in his domain—the world. He had six state-of-the-art computers with twenty-seven inch flat-screen monitors evenly spaced around the U-shaped room, but he didn’t rely on them the way he did his personal laptop.

Wall mounted televisions—currently on mute—were tuned to CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. A fourth television was on Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel. The other wall was dominated by a map of the world on a liquid-plasma television screen. It was raining in California, he noticed. So who cared? Let the nuts and fruits on the West Coast drown. All the satellites were still orbiting normally, he observed, but one of Russia’s wasn’t functioning.

“Par for the course.”

The end of the Cold War had been the death knell for Russian science. The state no longer funded research the way it once had. The Russian Mafia now ran the country, and they had no use for scientists.

The satellites and news channels helped Brock keep track of Obelisk’s myriad interests overseas. They required intensive monitoring. A conflict—no matter how small—anywhere on earth was a potential for Obelisk to profit.

Normally staff would have been needed, but Brock had shown the higher-ups how security could be mastered by a single—talented—person and modern technology. Naturally they’d gone along. It was in their best interests for as few men as possible to know the truth about Obelisk’s dealings.

He heard line seven ring. It was the number only his operatives in the field used. Attached to all his private lines was a special mechanism that chopped words into minute sound bites, then jumbled them so that even a state-of-the-art computer would have to spend months unscrambling the garbled noise.

He had no reason to think there was a tap on a line no one—not even the telephone company—knew existed. But various incidents at Obelisk had taught him to be extraordinarily careful. That’s why he had insisted his office be in an underground bunker beneath Obelisk—away from prying eyes.

“Numero Uno,” he answered.

“We’re in place. Everything’s set,” said Operative 111.

His agents had numbers, not names. That way only Brock knew who they were. Their names weren’t written down anywhere except in his mind. They were paid in cash, not by the payroll department.

They never knew his name. He was the number one operative. He always answered the special operative line with “Numero Uno.”

He told Number 111, “Call me when you’ve made contact.”

“Roger that.”

Brock glanced at his Brietling. “If it’s after six EST, call me on my cell.”

He recited the number. He didn’t like talking on cell phones. The message went out over the airwaves, and anyone listening could hear every word. But he had a life beyond this underground bunker. Tonight he was showing his ’52 Gull Wing Mercedes in the Bethesda Classic Car show. To stay in contact he had to use a cell phone.

Every third day a con he knew brought him a stolen cell phone. Brock gave the man his phone, and the con resold the phone again. That way none of his cell calls could be traced back to him.

“It looks like a go for tonight,” Operative 111 told him.

They hung up without another word.

“She’s as good as dead,” Brock said out loud.

Of course, before Samantha Robbins died, she would have to deal with him in person.

BY SEVEN-THIRTY DARKNESS had fallen on Santa Fe’s historic district and customers had slowed to a trickle. Since returning from lunch with Derek, Lindsey had sold several more pieces of jewelry—including her most expensive piece.

“Lookin’ good,” she said to Zach before she remembered the retriever had trotted off with Romero when he’d left earlier to make enchiladas.

She knew the tourist season was relatively short. It began in late June and went full throttle through the opera season and Indian Market, but after Labor Day, the buying slowed. She needed to make money in the summer months to tide her over during slower times. Miraculously, the way things were going, she would make a profit her first season.

Lindsey tried not to let Derek’s departure bother her. Making friends was probably good advice. She didn’t want to rely too much on Romero.

For a moment, her mind wandered to Houston. Tyler and Skyler. Their names even rhymed. It was probably meant to be, but that didn’t make her feel any better.

“Get over it,” she told herself.

Easier said than done. She’d been in love and during these long, lonely months in isolation, she’d replayed every moment she’d spent with Tyler, becoming more in love with him as each memory replayed in her mind. How could he marry—Skyler of all people—within a year after she’d last seen him?

The thought tore at something raw inside her. She’d been living with a nagging, constant anxiety, wondering if she would be killed. The whole time she’d assumed Tyler was missing her, and in time, they would be together again.

WITSEC had refused to allow her to telephone him. Masterson claimed that since they weren’t officially engaged it was too dangerous. Now, she wondered if her interview with the risk assessment psychologist had somehow indicated she might try to see Tyler again while she was in protection and that was why Masterson insisted on cutting off contact.

“What does it matter?” she muttered under her breath. “It’s over. Forget him.”

She picked up the phone and hit autodial for Ben Tallchief’s number. While it rang, she gazed at one of her cell phones concealed in the letter rack on her desk. She had another, smaller cell phone in the deep pocket of her skirt.

Derek’s flight had already left. She was on her own for the next week. Now was the time to practice everything he’d taught her. Don’t become careless just because nothing has happened for almost a year.

“Ben?” she said when he answered with a grunt that was supposed to pass for hello. “Guess what? I sold the Rising Sun necklace.”

“No way!”

“Yes. Way. I love saying I told you so.”

“I made the right decision,” he said in his deep baritone, and she could almost see him fiddling with the turquoise beaded strip of leather that cinched back his sleek, black hair into a ponytail at his nape. “Your gallery shows my work—”

“Showcases your art.”

He grunted again. “I’ll make more money with you than I did at the other gallery.”

We’ll both make more money, she silently added. “I need two, three—whatever you’ve got—large important pieces.”

“My work takes time…inspiration.”

Lindsey studied the hand-hewn beams, vigas, that supported the ceiling in the historic building. Ben Tallchief received most of his “inspiration” in the horizontal. Not only was he a talented artist known for his inventive work with hand-forged silver, but he was a world class womanizer.

Most nights he could be found at the Pink Adobe’s bar, picking up female tourists who couldn’t resist a “real” Indian who was tall and drop-dead gorgeous. He’d gone to UCLA on a football scholarship and graduated with honors. He’d returned to his hometown to teach art at the Indian School where promising young artists from the pueblos studied.

From his West Coast days, Ben Tallchief had a surfer’s attitude about life. Laid back. She could almost hear him telling her, “Chill, Lindsey. Chill.”

Maybe he was on to something, she decided. She’d spent her life on the fast track. Look where it had gotten her. A cell without walls.

“Get me what you can, Ben, as soon as possible.”

The shop bell tinkled and a couple from the Midwest sauntered in. She smiled at them, but doubted they would buy anything. The man was in his early thirties, but he’d already lost the battle of the bulge. His stomach stretched his Ohio State T-shirt so much that the seam on one side had popped and a patch of skin showed through.

He had the worst comb-over she’d ever seen. Six or seven strands of light brown hair went from ear-to-ear. His expression told her he was “in tow” and his wife was the shopper. The plump blonde was inspecting the earring case more intently than Lindsey had expected when they’d walked through the door. Maybe Lindsey was wrong, and the woman would buy something.

It was a guessing game that Lindsey indulged in each time a customer walked through the door. Were they lookie-lou’s or buyers? Could she predict what they would do? She’d kept a tally on the pad beside her telephone. She’d been right almost ninety percent of the time. Not bad, she decided, knowing probability the way she did. Actually, her predictions were phenomenally correct.

“I’m sorry. What was that?”

Ben had been talking, but something was niggling at the back of her mind and she hadn’t heard him.

“Do you think I should make more sugilite pieces or turquoise?”

“Sugilite,” she replied without hesitation. The stone ranged from pale lavender to deep plum and looked spectacular when set in silver. “It’s unique. Most tourists seem to be drawn to those colors.”

“You got it. I’m just waiting for divine inspiration.”

“Hustle over to the Pink Adobe and pick up some…inspiration.”

“Why don’t you meet me there?”

It wasn’t the first time Ben had come on to her. The last thing she needed was to become involved with one of her artists.

“Sorry. I already have plans.”

“Too bad. We could discuss, you know, my work.”

“I’ve gotta go. Customers are here looking at your jewelry.”

She hung up the telephone. For practice, she reached forward and switched on her cell phone concealed in the letter rack. She pressed the autodial button that called the cell phone in her skirt pocket. That telephone was off, but anything said in the gallery would be recorded on her voice mail that was set to run for hours.

“Are you from Ohio?” she asked as she walked up to the couple.

The woman looked up from the earring case. “We live in Indianapolis. Bud went to Ohio State. He never lets you forget it.”

The man smiled, his eyes cold blue marbles in his fleshy face. “What can I say? It’s a great school.”

A sense of unease lurked in the back of her mind. “I went to UCLA—another great school.”

She was surprised at how easily the lie came from her lips. Her undergraduate studies had been at Duke, but when WITSEC created a new ID for her, they had chosen UCLA. It was so big that even if she ran into someone from her class, they wouldn’t necessarily have known each other.

The man smiled again, his soft chin sinking into the fold of flab at his neck. “We just drove in from Albuquerque. Is there a good place to eat around here?”

Something in the reptilian part of her brain clicked, and a chill coursed through her, but she refused to allow her face to reflect her feelings. “You just drove in? Was there a lot of traffic?”

He chuckled. “Not compared to L.A. Right, honey?”

“Right,” she replied without turning around.

A frission of alarm waltzed across the back of Lindsey’s neck as she realized what had been bothering her. Hadn’t she seen this couple walk past the gallery shortly before Derek arrived?

Trust your instincts.

That’s what Derek had taught her. A depth charge of fear exploded in her chest. Move! Get out of here!

“You know, Casa Sena is the best restaurant in the area. I just had lunch there today. You won’t get in without a reservation, but my neighbor next door is the owner’s cousin.” She was making this up as she went and managing to sound convincing. “I’ll get you one of Romero’s cards. Give it to the hostess and you’ll get in without a problem.”

“That would be great. Right, honey?”

“Sure. Whatever.”

Lindsey walked through the connecting door into Romero’s gallery. Inside, she picked up her pace and bolted out the back door. She sprinted down the alley, rounded the corner, and dashed for a dark side street. Only a breath separated her from debilitating panic.

No one was around, and the soft summer night seemed unusually quiet. In the distance, she heard the lonely wail of a coyote, urging his pack to pounce on some small animal—probably a rabbit.

I’m the rabbit, she thought.

She stood, panting, wondering what to do next. Verify. Don’t panic until you know if you’re imagining things or not.

She slithered behind a cluster of lilac bushes and hid in the shadows of a rambling adobe home where no lights were shining from the windows. She jerked her cell phone out of the pocket in her skirt. Maybe she’d imagined all this. She punched autodial for her voice mail.

Lindsay picked up the conversation from the point when she’d asked where the couple in the gallery was from. Their voices had a hollow ring, but just as Derek had shown her, the cell had acted as an open mike. She listened—a full minute behind real time.

“What happened to her?” Lindsey heard the woman ask after a static-filled pause.

“She probably can’t find the card.”

He sounded casual enough. Maybe she’d made a silly mistake. This might not be a pair of operatives—disguised as a couple from the Midwest—sent to carry out a hit. She agonized through another long silence punctuated by a low hum of static.

The woman’s shrill voice came through the small cell phone. “Check on her.”

A few seconds of dead air.

“She’s not in there! The bitch must have gone out the back door.”

“Shit,” screamed the woman. “What tipped her?”

“You, stupid! You were too interested in the jewelry for a broad from Indy.”

“I was just browsing like women do. I don’t think I—”

“Stop sweating it. The bitch can run but where’s she going to hide?”

Lindsey flipped her cell phone shut, sank down to the ground and asked herself the same question. The metallic taste of fear nearly choked her. They were coming to kill her.

CHAPTER FOUR

“EVERY INCH HAS BEEN RESTORED to its original condition,” Brock told the admirers clustered around his Gull Wing in the Bethesda Sports Center where the car rally was being held.

The two doors were open and thrust upward like the majestic wings of a metallic bird, Brock thought. The lipstick-red paint glistened and the chrome was like a mirror. Hell, Brock decided, his car was better than it had been when it rolled off the assembly line in Stuttgart in 1952.

His baby. He had other cars, sure. A George Barris modified all steel ’32 Ford and a rare ’27 T Roadster, but the Gull Wing was his favorite. It was a crowd pleaser. People flipped over the unusual doors.

The show would close for the day in another twenty minutes. There were a few people wandering around looking at the other cars, but he was the only one with a crowd. He grinned, pleased with himself and the Mercedes.

He caught his distorted reflection on the chrome fender. His brown eyes were grotesquely wide as if someone were pulling taffy. His sandy hair didn’t show, but he knew women found him handsome.

Brock admitted he was a tad short. Before Obelisk had lured him away from the Defense Department, a general had accused Brock of having a Napoleonic complex. The prick had a tragic fatal car accident the following week.

The cell phone clipped to his belt vibrated. He yanked it off and glanced at the screen. It was his operatives in Santa Fe, Number 111, a man, and 32, a woman.

They had the bitch!

Brock punched “talk” and walked away from the car to avoid anyone overhearing him. “Yeah?”

“I—I d-don’t know what happened,” the woman stammered. “She slipped out the back door.”

“Unfuckingbelievable!”

“She’s only been gone a minute. Well, maybe two minutes.”

“The bitch can’t be far. Get her!”

Brock hit the end button. Hearing how his operatives had bungled it could wait. At least they hadn’t started searching before they notified him. Samantha Robbins—now Lindsey Wallace—was a black-bagger, a high risk WITSEC witness. The Federal Marshals knew she was very likely to be killed. She would have been given an emergency 800 number at the U.S. Marshal’s D.C. office.

Her cover blown, the bitch would call the number. It took Brock a few seconds to get on the Internet. He always insisted the con bring him a cell phone with Internet access for emergencies like this. Trouble was no two phones worked the same.

It felt like hours, but it was less than a minute before he was online and had contacted his computer at Obelisk. He gave it instructions to dial his anonymizer. This remailer was based in Switzerland and used a super-powerful software program that buried your real e-mail address.

Within seconds—thanks to technology—the remailer had contacted the phone company in D.C. When Lindsey Wallace tried to alert WITSEC that she’d been compromised, all she would get was a busy signal.

PANTING, A STABBING ACHE in her side from running, Lindsey slumped against an adobe wall blocks from where she’d listened to the hit team over the cell phone she’d left behind in her gallery. She punched the autodial for the emergency number she’d been given.

Still busy.

How could that be? Perhaps there was a storm back East or another widespread power outage. What else could explain a constant busy signal on an emergency line?

Frozen by fear, she could hardly think. Derek had drilled her relentlessly on what to do if worse came to worst. What would he say to do now?

There was an FBI field office here somewhere. Contact them. Her fingers were trembling so much she could hardly dial, but finally she managed to call information and obtain the number.

A busy signal.

Panic curdled her blood. What was going on? She was an expert on statistics and knew the odds of the emergency line and the local FBI office both being busy were astronomical.

Someone knew what she would do and had deliberately blocked her access to those numbers. She couldn’t imagine how, but she had to get away. Without her purse, she had no money, no ATM card, no credit cards. No gun.

Nothing.

She didn’t dare go to her condo where she kept an emergency stash. If they were clever enough to block the phone lines, they would know where she lived.

She could phone the police, but it would take a lot of explaining and calls to the U.S. Marshal’s office before her story could be verified. The hit team would expect her to do this. They might even be waiting near the station. One sniper shot and she would be in a black bag.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a beam of light swinging back and forth. The flashlight was far down the type of narrow unpaved street that made Santa Fe so quaint. She saw the hulking shape of the man in the shop, methodically searching the bushes. If she ran, he would see her.

Her only choice was to climb the adobe wall as quietly as possible and drop down the other side onto the adjacent street. Like most adobe walls in the historic area, this one had been crudely made by the Native Americans who had been used as slave labor by the Conquistadors. Over time it had weathered and had several holes where the adobe had deteriorated.

She jammed the toe of her sandal in an indentation part-way up the wall. Bracing on that leg, she boosted herself upward. She managed to grasp the top of the wall with the tips of her nails. Heaving one leg skyward, her foot caught the top of the wall.

The broomstick skirt made it nearly impossible to scramble to the top. After two tries, she was lying flat on top of the ancient adobe wall. The light was so close now that the man holding it would hear her if she dropped down the other side.

A pickup with a bad muffler and a radio blaring music from a station in Juarez rumbled up the street. Pachucos—bad boys—out looking for trouble. She waited until they were closer, almost upon the man with the flashlight, then she plunged off the wall.

Thump! She landed on her side and rolled. Starting at her shoulder, a sharp, punishing jolt of pain seared through her body. Shuddering in agony, she pulled her feet under her and lurched upright. The pachucos’ music was still blaring, and she forced herself to run, knowing the noise she made couldn’t be heard.