Black Brick - Part One Read online

  I was taken out of my trance when we passed the volleyball game and the woman waved, flashing a toothy smile. I nodded and put her from my thoughts. I had Shannon waiting for me.

  Twenty minutes later, when we came around the bend and could make out Cherry and Shannon absorbing the sun, we ran faster. The ground disappeared beneath us and our gait tightened up until we were in sync with each other.

  This lasted for several heartbeats. Tom was the first to fall behind. I noticed that Shannon was looking our way and adrenaline shot through me, bringing out a final reserve of energy. I overtook Martinez and felt a small thrill rush through me.

  It wasn’t long though before my chest burned, my eyes watered, and then Martinez was at my side, keeping pace while I gasped. The sound of Tom calling from behind reached my ears, but I couldn’t make out the words. Then it was over and I could go no further, I slowed to a stop, wheezing for breath as Martinez rushed ahead.

  At first, I thought it was just my imagination that a man was taking pictures of us with his phone. But when I looked at him, he stopped and turned away. He was a hundred feet off and was wearing a wide brimmed hat that did a good job of obscuring the rest of his face.

  “You almost had Bill!” Shannon called out.

  My heart skipped, and I hoped I didn’t show my surprise. I’d been so focused on the man that I hadn’t noticed Shannon approaching. If she realized she’d startled me, I’d never hear the end of it. The breeze twisted her blonde hair around her neck and her smile made me forget the woman at the volleyball game.

  If only I saw Shannon smile more often.

  Tall for a woman, Shannon was still several inches shorter than me. She was wearing sunglasses and had a yellow sundress pulled on over her swimsuit. It was hard not so stare.

  “Did you twist an ankle?” she asked. “I warned you about running on the sand. Just be glad you lost to Bill, Tom wouldn’t ever let you live it down.”

  I looked back at the man in the wide brimmed hat, but he was already walking away. Maybe he had just been taking pictures of the ocean.

  “How’s your future case of melanoma coming?” I was still out of breath and my voice sounded off. I scanned the beach and noticed that Cherry and Martinez were standing a little too close. If they weren’t more careful, Beltran would find out about them.

  “How's your future case of a broken nose coming?”

  “Try it and you’ll pull back a bloody stump.” I took a deep breath. “Did you see him? The man taking pictures.”

  Shannon looked around and focused on the man who was now a good distance away. “Stop being paranoid. Nobody knows we’re here.”

  “You forgetting about Jackson?” I studied her face. She really did think I was worrying over nothing. She grimaced when she heard the name Jackson.

  On a mission a few months back, I'd begun to suspect that a man named Frank Jackson knew we were playing him. I'd expressed my concerns to Shannon but she'd thought I was worried about nothing. I’d allowed her to allay my fears. That had been a mistake. Jackson had ended up leading us into a trap. Even though we had managed to escape, Jackson was still out there and we might have to deal with him again one day.

  “You ever going to let that go?” Shannon asked.

  “Not until you admit you were wrong,” I said, glancing at my watch. We didn’t have long before we needed to get into place around Jason Kurt’s home. He should be waking up soon.

  “Stop being petty. You’re too paranoid, even for a spy.”

  I scowled. “We need to go.”

  Chapter 5

  I was waiting for Jason Kurt’s last computer to power down when there was a sound at the doorway to Kurt’s bedroom. I turned from the bank of computer screens expecting to find Shannon but instead recognized Lisa, Jason Kurt’s younger sister. Somehow we’d missed the fact she was still here when we’d broken into the home.

  “Hey mister,” Lisa said in a small voice. “Whatcha doing?”

  The little girl stood in the doorway, her hair in pigtails and a smudge of something on her cheek. Grape jelly? She wore a shirt that sported cartoon characters I didn’t recognize and clutched an ugly orange stuffed animal that looked like the progeny of a horse and a dolphin.

  I covered up my surprise. Shannon and I had already been in the home for half an hour and had gone through every room. How had we missed her?

  Cherry and Tom must have assumed Lisa had left with Kurt’s mother. I should have confirmed that they’d seen Lisa leave as well.

  “Oh, I’m just helping your brother out with a few things.” I smiled at the girl, wondering why she wasn’t afraid of me. Lisa twisted around, and disappeared in a room down the hall. I thought about pulling the plug on our mission as I watched her go.

  She didn’t appear bothered by our presence, but I was uncomfortable having her here. Innocents were supposed to be left out of things like this. Shannon would have overheard the exchange through the earpieces that both of us wore. Her silence was telling. That meant she’d found Lisa and hadn’t told me.

  I had already removed several cameras that Kurt had set up in his bedroom and Lisa had seen us. If we didn’t snag the hard drives now, we might not get a second chance. Things would be okay, Lisa was too young to give a reliable description of us and we’d be gone soon.

  I looked back at the computer monitor; I still had a few minutes before it shut down. I shifted, brushing more garbage from the desk onto the floor. How could somebody live like this? Candy wrappers and empty soda cans littered the desk and a nearby bookcase. The floor was barely visible and covered with clothes, books, a half eaten bag of chips, and loose paper. How could Kurt’s parents tolerate an adult child who chose to live in squalor?

  My mother would never have put up with this, I was sure. Unbidden, my focus shattered and the memories came rushing back. I could see every event vividly, as if watching a movie, but more real. The smell of fresh vomit, the feel of my father’s cold stiff body when I tripped and fell on top of him, the shrill screams of my mother, the loud explosion of the revolver and the acrid smell of gun powder. The man’s laugh still echoed in my mind.

  My ear bud cackled. I made myself focus on the present. I was stealing the hard drives of a hacker and needed to complete my mission.

  “What are you doing on Jason’s computer?” Lisa asked, bouncing back into the room. “He never lets anybody touch it.” I looked at the small girl. “Jason doesn’t like it when other people touch his things. I know, because he yells at me when he catches me in here. That doesn’t mean I stop though.” The girl shook her head as she giggled, causing her pigtails to flick into her face. “If he catches you in here when he comes home from school, he’ll be real unhappy.”

  I forced a smile and chuckled. “Well, I’ll just have to see he doesn’t catch me.” I didn’t blame Kurt for not wanting Lisa in his room. It wasn’t a place for an unattended child.

  In addition to the two widescreen computer monitors that sat on Jason’s cluttered desk, two additional monitors were fastened to the wall. A large flat screen television hung off a swivel stand on the other side of the bedroom, muted and tuned to a news network.

  Cords peeked out from underneath the clothes that were strewn across the floor. Posters of women covered the window. I recognized one as an actor, but I didn’t know any of the others. The most recognizable feature of the room was the pungent smell of sweat, rot, and dirty clothes.

  “He’ll know,” Lisa said in a high pitched voice, “he always does!”

  I thought of the cameras we’d removed and grunted. “It’s okay, I won’t let him catch me and I won’t tell on you. We’ll just keep this our little secret.” I patted the girl on the head. I never spent much time around children and it seemed like an appropriate thing to do, I stopped though when Lisa frowned.

  “Okay,” Lisa said running out of the room dragging the stuffed toy behind her. I smiled as I watched her go, hardly a care in the world. Had I ever been like that?


  “I almost shot her,” Shannon said stepping into the room. Her nose scrunched up as the smell hit her. “Thought she was the dog.” I unplugged the computer I’d just powered down, and pulled it out from under the desk. It was the first of four.

  “Yeah, her pink ribbons are really confusing. Thanks for the warning, by the way.”

  “Hey, Tom’s the one that missed her,” Shannon said. “She won’t be left alone for long.”

  I didn’t comment on Shannon’s obvious assessment and opened the computer case, removed the hard drive, wrapped it in plastic, and placed it into my briefcase. The silenced Sig Sauer Mosquito in the breast pocket of my suit coat bumped against my chest when I stood, reminding me why I’d considered pulling the plug. This wasn’t a game, people sometimes got hurt.

  “You find anything else?”

  Shannon shook her head. “Nope. This smelly hole is the only place of interest.”

  “What’s the update on Kurt?” I asked.

  “Just got out of class,” Shannon said. “Bill says Kurt has a thing for his professor and is hanging around bugging her.” Martinez had followed Kurt to class while we’d stayed behind to nab the drives.

  I didn’t bother to put the computer back together because Jason would know we’d been here regardless, and that was kind of the point that Beltran had wanted us to communicate when he sent us to track Kurt down. Beltran had called it an intimidation tactic, but I thought it was more likely to just piss Kurt off.

  I turned to the other computers and removed those hard drives as well. Rummaging around the room, Shannon managed to find an old laptop underneath the bed and a tablet computer that Kurt apparently slept with, both went into her briefcase. Afterward, once Shannon had taken pictures using her cell phone, we placed bugs around the room. One in a vent, another under the bed, we even pulled up part of the carpet in the corner and placed one underneath.

  As I replaced the carpet, I noticed white dust beside a small bookcase that stood against the wall beside the bed.

  “Drugs?” I asked as I examined the white powder wishing there had been time for a full surveillance workup. Beltran had been adamant that our raid take place as soon as possible. I rubbed some of the powder between my finger and thumb and was surprised that it felt familiar.

  “Let’s go,” Shannon said. “Drugs are the least of his issues.” She looked at her watch and muttered something that I didn’t hear.

  It took me a moment to place it. The last time I’d seen this white dust was when I’d helped Sister Bautista hang sheet rock at the Boone Ranch for Boys. It had been an ambitious project for an older woman with a handful of boys under ten.

  I pulled back the bookcase expecting to find a hole, but instead I found the wall undamaged. There was more dust on the floor, so I ran my hand along the wall just above it and felt several ridges.

  Kurt's sloppiness had given him away. He'd done a good job on patching up the wall but he should have cleaned up afterward. Ignoring Shannon’s look of impatience, I pulled a flashlight from my briefcase and became certain that the wall had been disturbed. I could see the variations in the paint. Following along the edges, I cut a square of the wall away using my pocketknife and found a paper bag inside.

  “Let the cops handle this,” Shannon said, “let’s go.”

  “This isn’t drugs.” I opened the bag and pulled out a stack of photos. The picture on top had three people, two women and a man. They were in a conference room. The second and the third were of the same people. I stopped on the fourth. It was the woman from several nights ago. It took me a moment to remember her name. Gina Townsend. She was talking to another man that I recognized but couldn’t put a name too.

  I showed the picture to Shannon. “Know him?”

  She shook her head.

  I wondered if Kurt had left behind the powdered sheet rock, hoping an intruder would find the hidden compartment in his wall and stop there. It was a paranoid thought, but I couldn’t help it. I inspected the other walls by running my hands along them. When Shannon saw what I was doing, she sighed.

  “I think we got everything,” she said. Her phone beeped with a text message. “Kurt’s on his way.”

  Hoping there wasn't something else hidden away, I put the pictures in my briefcase.

  My phone vibrated. It was a news alert—I’d lost count of how many I set up—with an update on the Andrews murder investigation. I was about to put my phone away, thinking it could wait, until I saw the headline. They had a lead on the suspects in the investigation. I clicked on the alert to read the story.

  “Find the remote to that TV,” I said to Shannon. “They found footage of the suspects from the Andrews murder.”

  I paused. “They have us on video.”

  When she wasn’t able to find the remote, I started switching channels on Kurt’s television by hand. Unfortunately, the story wasn’t big enough to interrupt the national news cycle. Andrews was an executive for a large corporation, but he’d been a minor player at the company.

  I growled.

  Shannon had her phone out by then and was searching for additional information.

  “We don’t have to destroy his room as well,” Shannon muttered, glancing up. With a start, I realized I had grabbed onto the television with one hand and was in danger of pulling the swivel stand off the wall. I released my hold.

  I felt numb. It was the first one of our missions that had been brought back to our doorstep. I’d killed a man and the man Shannon shot had died as well.

  If the video led to us, Beltran might have no other choice but to cut his losses and let us take the fall. That was the risk we took in this line of work.

  My phone vibrated again. I pulled it out, expecting another update to the story, this time one that included our pictures.

  It was a text from Cherry asking why we hadn’t left yet. I remembered what Shannon had said, just before the alert had come in. Kurt was on his way back.

  I took Shannon by the arm and pulled her out of Kurt’s bedroom. That earned me a glare, but she came along, phone clutched in hand.

  When we got to the car, I took the driver seat while Shannon called into Black Brick.

  Chapter 6

  I remained in my seat on the airplane when the seat belt sign turned off and the pilot announced we could get up.

  Those around us stood and began to remove luggage from overhead bins. Beside me, Shannon was flipping through emails. She hadn’t waited for the plane to stop moving before she had turned on her phone.

  I checked my watch, it was almost seven in the evening, it had been an eventful day and we'd still need to brief Beltran once we returned to Black Brick.

  We’d waited for clearance from Black Brick before heading to the airport. It turned out that the video that we’d been panicking about had been too grainy to give the cops anything useful. I hadn’t seen it yet, but it showed us approaching the alley, taking out our weapons, and then heading in.

  Despite the assurances from Black Brick that we were safe to return, I was a little nervous that we’d find police waiting for us at the airport.

  “I’m starved,” Shannon said. “Think we have time to grab a bite before heading back to Black Brick?” As she spoke, her phone rang. She listened for a moment and answered affirmatively before hanging up. “Beltran wants us back immediately. He just learned that we took a later flight. Apparently we’re late for a meeting.” Shannon stood and pushed past me, almost running over an elderly man in the process.

  I apologized to the man before following Shannon off the plane and into the airport. When Shannon decided on a course of action, heaven help anybody who stood in her way, even an old man with a cane.

  At the end of the exit ramp, I looked around, in what I hoped was a casual manner, and didn’t see any police. Even though it was a clear spring evening, I expected that it would be cold outside, in contrast to the pleasant warm weather of southern California. I was glad for the suit and wondered if I might want my overcoat tha
t was packed away in my luggage.

  I examined the crowd waiting at the baggage claim, looking to see if anybody was paying too much attention to us. I half expected to see the man that had been taking pictures of us at the beach, but I didn’t. A family of four waited nearby. The mother was trying to calm her crying baby without success, while the father was looking for their baggage, eager to be on his way. He was gripping a toddler by the arm that was doing her best to escape. I took out my phone, pretending to check email while I continued to scan. I didn’t expect to find anything, but looked anyway.

  Even though it had been a short trip, we’d still taken a full complement of luggage according to standard operating procedure. We never knew when an overnight mission could turn into several weeks.

  “It’s kind of sweet that you were so worried about Kurt’s sister,” Shannon said. After we’d left I’d listened in on the bugs to make sure that Kurt hadn’t gone into a rage and done anything to his sister because of what we’d taken.

  I couldn’t tell if she was mocking me. Her arms were folded and she was looking away while she spoke. She’d put on sunglasses shortly after getting off the plane. Combined with her dark suit, she was looking too official.

  “You never know what a man is capable of.” I spotted our luggage and began pulling it off.

  Shannon gave an exaggerated sigh. “Beware the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. Women never cause so much trouble.”

  I grunted. “Yeah, they never cause problems.”

  Shannon’s glare was playful, mostly. “Think things will be less hectic once Beltran gives us our final test and our status changes to active?” Shannon asked as we left the airport. The temperature was indeed brisk, but I was comfortable with just the suit coat. The musky stink of the Philly air was almost a welcoming smell. It always felt good to come home.

  “I doubt we’ll remember what sleep was like,” I said.

  We passed Kingstone campus half an hour later. The tall clock tower overshadowed the rest of the buildings. I could barely hear it ringing in the hour. If today had been a normal day, I would have attended class.