Betrayed

Chapter 11

As Alesandro watched his sister leave the apartment, he felt elation bubble inside his chest. The excitement came with pain, but he ignored that part and focused on his victory.

She was such a goody-goody that he hadn’t been sure she’d do it. But he knew her family ties were strong. He’d convinced her that she was his only salvation, and now she was on her way to get the information Blake had stolen. And he was on his way out of trouble.

“Thank you, Lord,” he said in Spanish, then added, “I know I’ve done bad things. I know I could have been a better man. But now I promise you that I’ll turn myself around. I’ll stop doing shit to earn extra money. And I’ll get a better education, like my sister has.”

He wasn’t sure that he believed in God. But if there was one, it couldn’t hurt to ask for an important favor and to make promises for the future. As for the past, he knew his parents had always favored him. When he was a little boy, that had made him feel good. But since he’d become an adult, he’d come to envy his sister.

He could see she was determined to make something of herself. She’d studied hard, and she’d gotten a good job. Not that their parents even noticed. To them, she would always be second best, while Alesandro knew in his heart that he was the one who truly fulfilled that role.

Was he screwing up her future? He hoped not. But he wasn’t going to call her back. He needed her to get him out of the shit pit.

He moved his shoulders, wincing at the soreness, then felt his nose. It had bled, but he didn’t think it was broken.

The thugs had worked him over, but he knew that they could have done much worse. This beating had been intended to cause him pain. But it had also been for show—to make Elena realize that her brother was going to end up dead if she didn’t do the job. He winced. That was no joke. They really would kill him if she didn’t do it. But she was on her way, and he’d be home free soon. And then he would mend his ways. No more little jobs for the mob that had a way of turning into bigger jobs. He had to get out of that trap because if he went on like he was going, he’d end up in a Dumpster in an alley somewhere.

Elena paused at the entrance to her apartment building and peered into the darkness. Were the men who had beaten up Alesandro out there, watching to make sure she did what she was supposed to?

She shuddered, remembering that she’d thought a car was following her a few days ago. Could it be those same men? Staking her out? Was that what they called it?

She made a sound low in her throat, hating the position she was in. All her life, she’d tried to do everything right. And it had felt like it was working. And now this.

Her hands clenched and unclenched as she walked to her car and got in. She had to do what Alesandro had asked—to keep him from getting killed. Or maybe her brother was wrong, and Arnold Blake’s office had been cleared out, leaving nothing to find. Then what? She’d fail and they’d kill her brother? Or would they realize they’d given her an impossible task?

She answered that question with a hollow laugh. If they thought that, she wouldn’t be driving to S&D right now.

She felt like she was moving through a nightmarish landscape as she pulled up at the S&D building.

The lot was almost empty, and she was able to park close to the entrance.

In the lobby, she was relieved to see that the security desk was empty. She knew there was supposed to be a guard on duty, but apparently he’d stepped away from his station for a few minutes. That was good, because maybe he wouldn’t come rushing upstairs in the next few minutes when the cameras went off in the IT area.

Quickly she crossed to the elevator, keeping her head down but feeling the camera on her. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do anything about that.

On the IT floor, she walked down the hall to her own office and stepped inside, knowing the security cameras were still following her progress. For a long moment, she stood without moving. Then she pulled out the device Alesandro had given her and pressed the buttons he’d indicated. Nothing seemed to happen, but she had to believe that the cameras were temporarily off. If it hadn’t worked, someone would be coming up to ask her some leading questions.

She was about to leave her own work area when she realized she needed to have a reason for coming back to work so late if anybody figured out she was here. She opened her filing cabinet and took out a folder with instructions for using the new version of the word-processing software that she’d been issued. It was something S&D had developed, and it wasn’t on the market yet.

After tucking the folder under her arm, she hurried down the hall to Arnold’s office and stepped inside. With the door shut, she turned on the light and looked toward the desk, zeroing in on the nameplate that she had half expected wouldn’t be there. “Arnold Blake” in gold letters on a polished wooden strip. It looked as though the man had only stepped out for a few minutes and was going to walk back in.

When she moved around to his side of the desk, she saw a picture of his family at one corner. Arnold with his wife and a teenage boy and a girl. They all looked happy, unaware of what was going to happen.

His technical books were on the shelves behind the desk, and the computer was on the el at right angles to the desk. She started to reach toward it, then remembered the rubber gloves and pulled them from her purse. They were a size too big for her, but she pulled them up as far as she could.

Even though everything was here, she couldn’t believe that nobody had searched for the information she’d been sent to get. Or maybe nobody at S&D knew that Arnold Blake was a thief. Yes, that could be right. They knew he’d been killed, but they had no idea why. Of course, Shane had mentioned him. And she didn’t know why. Did he suspect something?

She sat down in Arnold’s chair, telling herself she’d better hurry and trying to figure out where he could hide something. And all the while she kept her ears tuned for someone coming down the hall to ask what the hell she was doing here.

She pushed that imagined confrontation out of her mind and tried to focus on what she’d come here for. If he’d hidden something, it would have to be in plain sight, because if anything was suspicious, someone would have examined it.

Hesitantly she started opening drawers. She found pencils, pens, paper clips, and an old-style cell phone in the middle drawer. He’d obviously gotten a new smartphone and left the old one here. She felt the underside of the drawer and also the underside of the desk above the drawer but found nothing of interest.

Another drawer had vertical files, and she riffled through them, even though her brother had said she wouldn’t be looking for paper.

On the bottom right was a small bottle of Scotch, which she hadn’t been expecting. She hadn’t known that Arnold drank at work. Under the bottle were some stacks of computer printouts that he’d just shoved in the drawer.

She kept searching, finding other things that made her pause—like a small stuffed bear with the logo of a software company on his chest. She felt over the fur and probed at the stuffing inside the body, but as far as she could tell, it was just a toy. When she found a program from his son’s school graduation, she felt her stomach knot. She remembered Blake talking about his son. The boy was going to Princeton, and his father was so proud of him. Had Blake needed extra money for school tuition? Was that why he’d stolen from the company? She wished she had understood him better.

She kept looking and found nothing that could be a storage place for information Arnold intended to take out of S&D. Getting up, she began pulling books out of the shelves and riffling through them.

But she kept thinking about the phone in the middle drawer, lying there in plain sight. And some of the things Blake had said in his emails kept circling in her head.

“If you have any doubts, phone me.” And what had he called his puzzles, “SIMon Sez”? Simon Says was the name of a game kids played in the States. She’d played it at some birthday parties when she was little. The person running the game would say, “Simon says, ‘Lift your hands.’” And you were supposed to do it. There would be several similar directions. Then the game leader would quickly say, “Lift your hands,” without adding the “Simon says” part first. And if you did it, you were out.

It was a good name for a game. But it didn’t exactly fit what Arnold was doing. Why had he used that name?

She’d thought it was odd—along with his direction to “phone me.”

Her mind made a leap to an idea, and her heart pounded as she opened the drawer again, pulled out the phone and flipped it open, looking at the blank screen.

SIMon Sez.

She pried off the back of the phone, looking inside at the tiny subscriber identity module card. It was an integrated circuit, designed to store information about the phone. Once SIM cards had been as big as credit cards, but now they were much smaller—about the size of a dime. But what if this one only looked like a regular SIM card? What if it didn’t have anything to do with the phone and was being used to store other data?

There was no sign on the phone saying, “This is it.” And on the face of it, the idea might seem unlikely, but the more she thought about it, the more she thought that it made sense. Particularly since Blake had given her two clues. SIMon Sez. Like for SIM card. And then he’d said to use the phone when he had no reason to do it.

But why her? Because he knew he was in danger, and he wanted someone to have the information?

She looked at her watch, seeing that she’d been in the office twenty minutes. She had to get out of here before anyone figured out what she was doing, and the phone seemed the best bet for a clandestine storage device.

She stood up and started to slip the instrument into her purse. No, maybe that wasn’t such a great idea. But where to put it? She finally tucked it into her bra, thinking that would be a dead giveaway that she was doing something shady if anyone found it.

She was about to leave when she remembered to take the folder she brought along. Snatching it up, she exited Blake’s office and headed back toward her own workstation. But as she rounded the corner, she saw the light come on over the elevator. Someone was coming up here, probably to find out what was wrong with the camera.

She looked around quickly, saw that the ladies’ room was only a few steps away, and sprinted inside. Then she crossed to one of the stalls and used the toilet, flushing the rubber gloves and praying they would go down. When they disappeared, she clicked the buttons on the device her brother had given her.

She thought about throwing the phone away. But then she wouldn’t have the information she’d come to get. If it was truly in the phone. But what about the thing that had turned off the camera? She shouldn’t keep that, should she?

Still unsure that she was doing the right thing, she kept the phone in her bra and wiped off the camera remote control before stuffing it in the bottom of the trash can. Then she took a deep breath and let it out before exiting the bathroom. As she stepped into the hall, she almost bumped into one of the security guards who was standing there, staring at the bathroom door. She stopped short, trying to look normal.

“Ms. Reyes?”

“Yes. Is something wrong?” she managed to say.

“We were having a problem with the security cameras up here.”

“Oh.”

“Did you notice anyone in the building who shouldn’t be here?”

“I’m sorry, no,” she said, managing to keep her voice even.

“Did you sign in when you came in?”

She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I should have done that.”

His walkie-talkie crackled, and he pulled out the device and put it to his ear.

“The cameras are operating properly now,” a voice said.

“Okay, thanks.” He continued to stare at her. “Let’s go through correct procedures. You need to come down and sign in, then sign out.”

“Fine,” she answered. What was she going to do now? The camera in the lobby would have recorded her time of arrival. Which meant that she’d better not lie about that.

“What do you have there?” the guard asked, looking at the folder tucked under her arm.

“It’s instructions for the new word-processing program, and there are things I don’t understand. I mean, the program should do all the same functions, but I can’t get some of them to work,” she said, thinking that she was babbling. She ended with, “I wanted to study them at home.”

“And that was an emergency?”

“No. I just wanted to get ahead of it,” she answered, wondering if that sounded lame.

They walked back to the lobby, and she signed the in-and-out sheet. While she did that, the guard picked up the folder and riffled through it, but he only found the word-processing instructions.

“Don’t these usually come with the program?” he asked.

“Yes, but I printed them out.” Which was the truth. “Sometimes it’s easier for me to deal with stuff on paper than on the computer screen.”

He gave her back the folder.

“Do you mind if I check your purse?”

“Of course not,” she said.

She put the purse on the counter and stood with her heart pounding as she watched him riffle through it, glad that the camera controller wasn’t inside. When he was finished, he handed her back the purse, and she exited the building, thankful to have escaped. But as she stood in the cold night air, she couldn’t stop herself from having second thoughts about what she’d done. She’d always been an open and honest person. Now she was breaking the law. Well, maybe not technically, but morally.

Lincoln Kinkead was watching Notorious, an old movie with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant that he pulled out every few years. They have a spy operation going, only she doesn’t know that the bad guys are on to her and are slowly poisoning her. He loved the story and loved the young Ingrid Bergman. Such a stunning actress. And her scenes with Grant were beyond hot. He had watched the movie so often that he knew every line of dialogue before the actors spoke.

Just as Cary Grant figured out that Ingrid Bergman was in terrible danger, Lincoln’s phone rang, jerking him out of the spy drama. He looked at the clock on the desk in his den. Who was calling at this time of night? When he crossed to the instrument, he saw from the caller ID that it was the security desk at the S&D building.

This better be good, he thought as he snatched up the receiver and demanded, “Is there a problem?”

The man on the other end of the line was apologetic. “I’m not sure, sir, but I wanted to call you.”

“What is it?”

“The cameras on the IT floor went off a while ago, and when they came on, we saw one of the employees coming out of the ladies’ room.”

“Who?”

“Elena Reyes.”

“What was she doing in the building so late?”

“She said she had come to get some information on her current word-processing program. That sounded strange, and she looked nervous, like she was up to something she shouldn’t be. But maybe she just doesn’t like dealing with authority.”

Lincoln thought about the scenario. The camera coming back on just as Elena Reyes walked out of the bathroom on the IT floor. How likely was that? Had she really gone to her office, or had she done something else instead?

“Where did the cameras go off?” he asked.

“Just in the IT area.”

“Would she know how to turn them off?”

The guard answered promptly. “In my judgment, not without help. Unless she’s got a lot more training and special equipment than she needs for her job.”

“Okay,” Lincoln answered. “I’m coming in. I want to look at the security tapes. Have them ready for me.”

“Yes, sir. And should I call Mr. Gallagher?”

Lincoln considered the question and answered, “He should be in on this, but I’ll get in touch with him.”

He hung up, thinking about what Elena Reyes might have been doing in the building after hours, and he came back to something he’d been on edge about.

Falcon’s Flight, the software from Alex Rosenbloom. Although Alex had never understood its true worth, Lincoln had immediately seen it as a gold mine. He’d known it could make him millions—from sales of the product and from the hidden potential he had no intention of sharing with the public.

He’d been worried all along that someone might try to steal it out from under him. And when it looked like Arnold Blake had tried to get his hands on it—and gotten killed in the process—Lincoln had hired Shane Gallagher to make sure that the software stayed where it belonged.

Was this thing with Elena Reyes connected? What if she’d been working with Blake and biding her time until she thought it was safe to—do what? He didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to take a chance.