Dirty Deals: Olesia Anderson Thriller #1 Free Epub Edition

Copyright © D. D. Marks 2011 All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or copied without written consent from the author.

The Olesia Anderson series:

#1: Dirty Deals

#2: Black Market

#3: Muzzle Flash

#4.1: Double Down, Part 1

#4.2: Double Down, Part 2

#5: Burning Bridges

Olesia Anderson woke to the beeping of her phone. The hotel room was dark - she guessed four am, an hour reserved for cats, prostitutes and assassins. The boy snored beside her, naked in the light of the bedside lamp, sandy hair falling across his eyes. He didn't seem half so cute now that she'd finished grinding out her frustrations. She watched his chest rise and fall and thought about the politest way to get him out of her hotel room. A poke in the shoulder? Glass of water in the face?

The phone was still beeping, and Olesia scrambled to dig it out from the tangle of clothes at the foot of the bed. It was the low tone that meant a call from headquarters, and she scurried into the ensuite bathroom before tapping ACCEPT.

On the other end of the line was a low hiss, followed by a man's voice: "Alleycats and private eyes."

"Waking wires," she replied.

"Agent Eight-Oh-Six?"

"Speaking."

"You have a job in Maryland. Sensitive data loss from a rather large client. A taxi will arrive in ten minutes to take you to the airport."

"You couldn't give me half an hour to wash up?" She dared a look in the bathroom mirror; her wheat-blonde hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, and she stank of sex from head to toe. "I'm in the middle of a situation-"

"Mess around on your own time, Eight-Oh-Six. Sparks will be your tech handler, and agent Two-Thirteen will supply any necessary equipment. More details on the way."

The call clicked off. Olesia dropped the phone with a sigh. Typical of Blackrock - curt, to the point, and they always knew to phone right in the middle of afterglow.

Out in the bedroom, the boy was still snoring. He'd pulled the sheets across his shoulders, but not high enough to hide the deep scratches she'd left down his back. He'd be smarting come dawn, much more so than she would. Typical, how they never put any muscle into it. God, what she'd give for a quick screw who wasn't afraid to bite back...

"Hey." The boy didn't stir. What was his name? Tommy, Timmy? No matter. "Hey!" she said again, and planted a foot in his back.

The boy grunted as he rolled off the bed, but it wasn't until he hit the carpet that he squawked and jumped to his feet. He rubbed the back of his head, scowling. "What'd you do that for?"

Skinny little thing, she thought, aside from what he was carrying in his pants. She'd noticed the bulge from halfway across the hotel casino, and it was hard keeping her eyes off it now, but the call had been made. She was on Blackrock time. "I'm going, which means you're going. Get out."

The boy grinned. "Baby, hey, we only just met. I don't start the morning shift for an hour, we could still fool around-"

It was the way he stared at her breasts that annoyed her the most. She stalked across the room and the boy skittered backwards, eyes wide. She raised one fist and he cowered, saying, "Hey, hey, don't hit me, don't-"

Olesia yanked the door open and kicked the boy through in one swift motion, and he fell ass-first into the corridor. He looked around, frantic, covering himself with his hands. "What the fuck? At least give me my pants!"

She slammed the door and pushed the lock. On the other side, Timmy - yes, she was sure it was Timmy - howled and banged on the wood. After a while, he quieted, and she listened to his furtive footsteps as he scampered down the hall in search of a towel.

Finally, she was alone. She checked her watch - seven minutes until the taxi arrived. She could stretch that to fifteen. Time enough for a shower and a protein bar, but first...

She pulled an aluminium suitcase from under the bed and clicked the locks. Inside, nestled in foam, was her SP-01 tactical - a 9mm pistol, rubber-gripped, heavy and smooth in her hands. Beside it were three empty magazines and two boxes of .40 Smith&Wesson cartridges. She loaded the first two magazines with practised, automatic movements, twelve cartridges per mag. The first magazine slid into place with a solid click that made her shiver. Blackrock policy - never begin a job without one in the chamber.

Only when she was done did she turn the shower to full blast and wash the sweet smell of Timmy off her skin. A radioactive Seattle sunrise lit up the glass.

So long as nobody got killed, it was going to be a beautiful day.

* * *

The taxi driver was a tall, pale man with thin lips and dark glasses. He nodded to Olesia as she climbed in, and while he made no mention of how she was not fifteen but twenty minutes behind schedule, she could sense his disapproval. Screw it, she thought. They could always make it up in airtime.

A call came through as they approached the terminal. "Alleycats and private eyes."

She recognised the voice on the other end. "It's me, Sparks. What's the job?"

Sparks spluttered. "You have to say... goddamnit, it's protocol."

"I had to kick a great lay out of my room to take this job, so protocol can shove itself. Where, when, what?"

Sparks was her handler and tech go-to guy, a software engineer and mechatronics genius plucked from some obscure Australian university. She'd never met him in person, but she'd seen a photo; a skinny kid in a shirt two sizes too big. He always called at the worst possible times, but he knew his gear and he was always prompt, and that counted for a lot.

"The job, it-"

The driver cut left across three lanes of traffic, pressing Olesia up against the window. "Pertinent details only, Sparks. We're almost inside."

Sparks swallowed and began again. "The client is Lockheed. They noticed someone probing their network, downloading some pretty hefty information. Schematics and source code. Their security traced it back to one of their own aerospace engineers."

"And they want me to get it back?"

"Yeah, but nicely, if you can. Also, squeeze the engineer to find out who he's selling to. If it's a rival US aerospace company, that makes for great litigation. If it's some overseas entity, North Korea, Iran, Russia-"

She winced a little at that. "It's always the Russians, isn't it?"

"Sorry, Eight-Oh-Six. Anyway, that's your job, in summary. Meet him, get close, get the info and the schematics, and take a holiday." Sparks' voice dropped. "Well, you get a holiday. Some of us just get a good dental plan."

"I'll take you out on the town, Sparks. My treat." It was a lie and they both knew it, but Sparks laughed, and that was enough. "Got a name for this guy?"

"Nothing yet. You have to meet with the head of Lockheed internal security, David Orion. He'll give you all the details."

"Sparks... are you sure they needed me for this job? I mean, I'm not going to turn down easy work, but I'm used to more..."

"Explosions?"

"A challenge, at least." The taxi bumped over the steel-teeth barricades at the mouth of the airport and descended into the darkness of private parking. Her ticket said she was travelling economy on a public 737 - Blackrock's budget didn't extend as far as private jets for mid-level operators, it seemed. "There's gotta be something more for an AA-rated agent."

"AA? You dreaming?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know." She grimaced as she recalled the debacle with the Ardentech data heist. She'd been the thief that night, lifting several petabytes of classified code from a locked server room in the basement of a heritage-listed Washington office block. Whether it was her or the Blackrock quartermaster who miscalculated the weight of the thermite used to blow the door, nobody would ever know. Nothing was left of that office block now but ash and sticks of concrete smoking in the wind. "You'd think Blackrock could forgive and forget."

"Well, you're G-rated now, and you're getting a G-rated job. God forbid you screw this one too - they'll put you out on the street before you can blink. Agent Two-Thirteen will have your kit ready and will deliver you to your hotel, and-"

"Two-Thirteen? I don't know that number."

A pause. "Jean Bonsour." She must have made some sort of surprised noise because Sparks laughed. "You know him?"

"Yeah, we worked together back when he still did fieldwork. I didn't know he was in Maryland now."

"Time enough to catch up when you arrive." For a moment he sounded almost despondent. "Relevant data has been mailed to you. Get it done, Eight-Oh-Six."

She watched the phone for another minute, waiting for a callback, but none came. The taxi came to a stop outside Gate 3 and the driver tapped the meter. "Fifty even."

Olesia stared. "What, me?"

The driver nodded. "Fifty two, if you don't hurry it up."

She grumbled as she dug her purse - a slim, black, kevlar reinforced lozenge - out of her overnight bag. "Fucking Blackrock," she said, as the taxi peeled away, her wallet suddenly fifty two dollars lighter. "Can't even get a proper cabcharge-" She stalked through the corridors, passing through the executive scanners, where a man in dark glasses opened her case and inspected the pistol. He grunted when she flashed her ID. "You can't carry this on board, Miss. Doesn't matter what paper you wave at me."

She didn't have the strength to argue. Shame burned her cheeks as she passed through the full-body scanners. "Useless fucking bunch of wannabe-spy incompetents-"

Blackrock. The only real job she'd held down since graduation and the only job she knew how to do. A network of corporate spies for hire who alternated between ripping off data and protecting it. Escorting executives to clandestine meetings on foreign soil, or blowing rival executive's helicopters out of the sky. Prototype theft, money laundering, and the identification of corporate moles were standard jobs. Shoot-outs with private security and desert warlords were less common, but still, she erred on the side of caution and kept her pistol loaded.

She'd sometimes wondered what sort of jingle Blackrock would use, if they ever ran TV ads.
IRS comes knocking, and there's things that you can't show... call Blackrock! If your Directors gone missing, and your shareholders can't know-ow-ow... Blackrock! Competitor threatening your life? Got a leak in accounting and you think that it's your wife? Call... Blackrock!

After two months without work she could have done with a shoot-out, or even a midnight rooftop infiltration, but the job was the job. At least shaking a rogue engineer for information would be simple. She made her way to the lounge, found a seat overlooking the runways, and watched the departures board tick down the minutes until take off.

It was then that Olesia noticed the kid in the white jumper slouched by the coffee stand. His hood was pulled up to hide his face, and while she couldn't see his eyes she knew from the tilt of his neck that he was staring at her.

She stared back, guessing at where his eyes were beneath the hood. The kid looked away. Olesia's fingers were suddenly itchy, and she wished she'd argued harder with the man on security. The heavy steel of a pistol would be perfect in her hands. She reached into her pocket and drew out her phone, thumbed it to camera and prepared to take a picture.

A speaker sounded overhead, and Olesia spun. "The eight-fifteen to Washington-Dulles is now boarding-"

She turned back, raising the phone up to centre the kid in the frame, but he was already gone.

The suitcase with the pistol was, as usual, the last to come off the carousel at Washington Dulles International. Olesia grunted as she hauled it off the conveyor, turned to the exit, and found Jean looming before her. He was a great monolith of a man, blocking the afternoon light almost entirely with his wide shoulders and the broad bald sweep of his skull. When he smiled his teeth shone, and he picked Olesia up, suitcase and all, and squeezed her against his chest. "My Olly!"

Olesia could only splutter and gasp until he set her down. He smelled of dust and smoke and something like roast beef, as if he'd been tending a barbecue only moments before, and she had to crane her neck back to look him in the eyes. "Well, hello to you too."

The last time she'd seen Jean Bonsour was two years ago, in DC. They'd spent a weekend in an apartment overlooking the park. There was champagne, most of it poured across her skin, tingling and fizzing. Jean was old CIA, but he'd put in the hours for Blackrock when it counted. Last Olesia had heard, he'd been shipped out to train first-encounter teams in Sao Paulo.

"So, you finally decide to visit." The brusque growl of Jean's voice made her tremble down to her toes. "They said you needed a gofer."

"A guide, more like. They fill you in?"