Hacker For Hire (Ted Higuera Series Book 2) (12 page)

Ted thought about
growing up in East LA. With the macho attitude of most of his friends’ fathers,
the running around, the gangs, women were a commodity. He had seen more than
one mom in the ‘hood picked up by the meat wagon after
su marido
came
home drunk. He couldn’t even count the ones who showed up at work with black
eyes and broken bones from “walking into a door.”

“You’ve already
met one case: Abeba Iskinder, our receptionist. Abeba is Ethiopian. When her
daughter turned thirteen, her mother-in-law insisted that she be circumcised.”

“Circumcised? How
do you circumcise a woman?”

“It’s an African
tradition. They cut out the clitoris with a sharp stick.”

Ted instinctively
pulled his legs together.

“They believe that
it’ll keep the wives faithful to their husbands. If the women don’t have a
clitoris, the reasoning goes, they won’t have any sexual desire. Then they will
only engage in sex with their husbands to fulfill his needs.

“Abeba left her
husband. She came to us to save her daughter from going through the same thing
she did.”

Wow! This woman was
not only Wonder Woman, she was The Shadow, defender of lost souls. As Papa
would say, she was
mucha
mujer,
much woman
.
Ted didn’t
know what to think. He just sat and let his feelings run wild.

“The pay’s lousy.
I can only offer you about half of what you’re making at YTS. The hours are
terrible. We work when we have to. Sometimes we work four or five days
straight. Whatever it takes to keep our clients safe.” Catrina leaned forward
in her chair.

“There are
benefits though. You go to sleep at night knowing you make a difference. That
the world is a better place because you’re in it.

“There’s also
bonuses. Any cases we take that have bonuses, like the MS case, we split with
all the employees who worked the case. It might not amount to much, but it
could be a couple of thousand dollars a year. It just depends on the work we
take in.”

Ted fidgeted in
his chair. He already knew what his answer would be. “I don’t know what to
say.”

“Don’t say
anything.” Catrina got up and extended her hand to Ted. “Go home. Think it
over. Talk to your family about it. I think your mama will approve. When you
make the decision, you noticed I didn’t say if, I think I know you pretty well...When
you make a decision, give me a call. You have my number.”

Ted felt foolish.
She knew him inside and out. How could she amass so much information about him
so fast?

“And, by the way,
I hear you’re a pretty good cook.” Catrina smiled at him. “After you make your
decision, you’re going to have to invite me over for tamales.”

Ted was no sooner
out of her office, than Catrina’s desk phone rang. She recognized the number on
caller ID.

“Tom?” She was
never sure how she felt about Tom. Their relationship, (would she even call it
a relationship?) rode a wild rollercoaster.

They had been
seeing each other for four or five years. She saw Tom when it was convenient to
her, when she was feeling selfish, she shut him out. Tom had to keep it on the QT.
Catrina was a pariah among the Seattle PD. He wanted a more permanent
relationship, but she wasn’t too sure. She liked Tom well enough, she craved
the physical release, but she didn’t trust him. After her abusive marriage and
all the cases she had handled, she couldn’t bring herself to fully trust any
man.

“Hi, Cat. I’ve got
some news for you.” Tom sounded monotone and somber, not at all like his
chipper self.

“What is it?”

“That computer
consultant you’ve been looking for? We found her. Floating in Elliot Bay.”

“Shit.”

“She was naked,
her fingers and teeth had been removed to keep us from identifying her. Whoever
did it really knew their stuff. No physical evidence at all.”

Catrina stared at
the picture of her son on her desk. “How did you identify her?”

“When I first came
on the force, she would have just been a Jane Doe. We got lucky, matched her
DNA to some hairs we got off her comb.”

“Damn.” Catrina
felt ice water running in her veins. “Do you know how long she was in the
water?”

“Coroner thinks a
couple of days. But there’s more, Cat.”

There was a long
pause.

What more could
there be?

Catrina didn’t
answer. Finally Tom continued. “She was tortured.”

“Jesus God.”

“Coroner says that
someone hooked alligator clips up to her nipples and ran an electrical charge
through her. COD was heart failure. Apparently she had fairly advanced heart
disease. The electric shock put her over the edge.”

Catrina took a
deep breath and relaxed her clinched fist. She had been here before. She had to
put her personal feelings aside. She had to be professional. She had to focus.

“Do they know
where she went in?”

“CSI thinks it was
around Harbor Island. With the tides and the amount of time she was in the
water, that’s their best guess.”

“That can be a
pretty isolated part of town. If there are ships to unload, they work
twenty-four hours a day. If there’s nothing in, it’ll be deserted.”

“I gotta go, Cat.”
Tom’s voice became almost a whisper. “Cap’s calling me.”

Catrina knew that
it would be Tom’s hide if the captain knew he was giving her any information.
“I’ll call you later.” She said and hung up.

“Damn!” She
pounded her desk. “Damn, damn, damn.”

“What is it, Mrs.
Flaherty?” Abeba was at the door. “You don’t sound too good.”

****

Hardwick, Burstein
& Johnson was a seat of power with all the trappings. The views from Harry’s
throne in the corner office on the sixty-sixth floor of Mount Rainer, Puget Sound and Vashon Island were stunning. The offices flaunted hardwood furniture, an
espresso bar, tropical plants, CNN playing continuously on wall-mounted
monitors, original art by local artists on the walls and standing in vestibules
and Chihuly glass on well-lit pedestals.

But, back in the
sweat shop, beyond the areas where clients ventured, Chris labored in a common
garden variety gray cubicle. He hadn’t done much to personalize his box yet,
just a copy of Scott Adams’
Cubeville
on the shelf and a
Dilbert
calendar. Any further protests against the establishment would bring swift and
angry conflict with his dad. He had to keep up the “Hardwick Image.”

Chris smelled lilacs
and roses before he heard the voice.

“You Hardwick?”

It was a hard,
demanding female voice. When he looked up from his desk he was surprised to see
one of the tiniest women he had ever met.

She couldn’t be
five feet tall. Chris doubted if she weighed a hundred pounds. But man, what
there was of her was prime. Dark almond eyes, long, lustrous black hair. She
was the perfect image of Asian beauty.

“Ah…hi. I’m…
Chris…”
Damn!
It was happening again.
He couldn’t get out a
coherent sentence.

“You belong to me.”
She spoke without a hint of an accent. “You’re assigned to my case. I’m Kathy
Nguyen. I expect you to be here when I get in and be here after I leave. I only
accept exceptional work. Any questions?”

“Case? What case?”
Jesus that sounded lame.

Her crepe dress covered
a classic Asian body, long waist, short legs, and tiny breasts. Her skin was so
smooth he wanted to reach out and touch it.

“I’ve just been
assigned the Metcalf file.” She flipped her long black hair back out of her
eyes. “There’s tons of paper to go over. This will be your first case, right?”

Mesmerized, Chris
tried to recall what she just said. “Yeah…I just …started this week.”

“Stop by my
office, I’ve got four cartons of files for you to go through.” Kathy threw him
a derisive smile and walked off. She didn’t so much walk as kind of floated over
the carpet.

Damn. She must
think I’m a complete idiot.

Chris paused a
minute, then picked up the phone.
I need to find out about more about her.
He
speed dialed a number.

“Spencer.” Will
Spencer, another paralegal, was the first person Chris felt close to at
HB&J.

“Will, Chris.” Chris’
breathing returned to normal. “I need the 4-1-1 on Kathy Nguyen.” Chris heard a
pause.

“You want to know
about the Dragon Lady?”

“I’ve just been
assigned to one of her cases.” Chris heard his friend chuckle before answering.

“Kiss your social
life good bye, buddy. She’s the number one hard ass. Puts in at least a hundred
hours a week. Never takes a day off. She works her paralegals into the ground.
No one wants to be on her cases.” Will chuckled again. “Good luck, big guy.
Maybe she’ll be a little easier on the boss’s son.”

Chris groaned to
himself. Since he walked in the door, he felt like he had a target on his
forehead. Anything he did right, it was because he was Harry’s son. Anything he
did wrong, everyone said he got away with it because he was the boss’s son.

He spent his
entire life in his father’s shadow. He refused to play football in high school,
despite his obvious talent, because his father had been a Heisman Trophy
candidate. Everyone expected Harry Hardwick’s son to be a star. He resisted law
school because everyone expected Harry Hardwick’s son to follow in his footsteps.
Why couldn’t he just be a veterinarian or pharmacist instead?

“So, what do you
know about her?”

This time, Will
didn’t chuckle, he laughed out loud.

“Don’t let that
China Doll exterior fool you. Messing with her is like playing with fire. She’s
second generation Vietnamese and all she thinks about is work. No one here has
ever heard of her having a date or going out for a drink after work. I don’t
think she has an ‘after work.’ If she’s not working, she’s sleeping, and she
doesn’t do very much of that.”

****

Kathy Nguyen’s small
office, with no exterior windows, was obviously not a place to meet with
clients. Asian hangings, paintings and trinkets lined the walls. Green plants
threatened to take over the small space. On one wall, a shelf with Grow Lights
was filled with orchids.

The banker’s boxes
on the floor filled what little empty space was left. Chris gazed around the
office, mesmerized.

“When you get
through going through those files, I have a drawer full of CD’s with electronic
files that need to be entered into the system.” Kathy wasn’t looking at Chris
as she talked. Her attention was glued to a file folder open on her desk as she
sketched notes on a yellow legal pad.

Chris loaded the
four boxes on his hand truck and turned to head out of the office.

“Scan all of those
documents and enter them into the document management system. Then search them
for anything that has to do with Alison Clarke or a product code named ‘Delphi.’”

“So what are we
looking for anyway?” Chris stopped at the door and turned back to Kathy. “What’s
this case about?”

“It’s not really a
case yet. Mr. Metcalf has retained HB&J as counsel because he expects
Alison Clarke, the CEO of Millennium Systems to file suit against him. We’re
doing a little pro-active investigation. Maybe we’ll do a pre-emptive strike.”

“Why would Clarke
file suit. What does she think Metcalf has done?”

“Ms. Clarke took
over control of MS from Mr. Metcalf about five years ago. Mr. Metcalf alleges
she used illegal tactics to gain control of his father’s company. Now, the
board is making a big fuss about her inability to control their R&D budget.
She’s looking for a scapegoat for a failing research project into which she has
poured nearly a billion dollars. Mr. Metcalf expects her to try to blame him.”

****

A twenty-knot
breeze howled down the Straits of Juan de Fuca. The
Millennium Falcon
, a
high-tech two-hundred and fifty-seven-foot fully-rigged sailing ship sliced
through the swells.

In the raked-back
pilot house, on the third deck, a silver-haired man sat at what looked like the
control panel on the starship
Enterprise
. He leaned forward in the
padded leather chair and held his hands over a color monitor built flush into
the dashboard. The graphical representation of the ship’s rigging gave him
unprecedented control over his vessel. He touched a sail icon with his finger
tip and it lit up. Then he touched a button labeled “Trim” on the screen. A
window popped up on the monitor with a series of options. He selected “To
Windward.” He felt a slight vibration in the deck as the entire carbon-fiber
mast rotated to meet his command. Any kid who was good at video games could
sail this ship.

Jack Metcalf
smiled. Everything was working exactly as planned. Of course, it had to. He
spent endless hours doing computer simulations. The sea trails of his new mega-yacht,
the only one of its kind, were merely a validation of five years of designing,
planning and executing.

Jack tackled the
problem of designing and building the world’s most sophisticated sailing vessel
like he would have tackled a software development project. He started by
defining requirements: The largest sailing vessel in the world. Accommodations
for twenty-five passengers in outrageous luxury. Room for a crew of twenty-four
to serve his guests, but no need for seamen to sail the ship, it runs itself.
The fastest mono-hull sailing vessel ever built. The list went on and on.

Then he engaged
the best designers in the world to work under his close supervision. There
wasn’t a part on the ship that he hadn’t personally approved. When he set the
world on its ear with his new yacht, it would be just another manifestation of
his genius.

On his boat, Jack
could control every sail, every line, every crew member, down to the finest
detail. It had once been that way in his business, before his yellow-bellied
board of directors brought that bitch in to take over. He wanted his company
back.

He didn’t need the
money. There was no way he could ever spend all the money he had accumulated in
his lifetime. He continued to act as a venture capitalist. Some of the most
successful new companies in America, Google, AOL, Amazon and Netscape among them,
had Jack Metcalf to thank for their initial funding.

Then there was the
bio-tech boom. He had brought a slew of bio-tech companies to Seattle. He was
practically single handedly responsible for the thriving bio-tech corridor in
South Lake Union. Without his seed money, the neighborhood would still be a
squalid group of low industrial buildings.

“She handles well,
Scott.” Jack turned to look at his skipper.

The hard-bodied
young man in khaki slacks and a blue golf shirt with a silhouette of the
Millennium
Falcon
embroidered on the left breast smiled.

“I was a little
nervous about doing sea-trials in November, Mr. Metcalf, but she seems to be
handling the weather well.”

Now Jack smiled.
He had never doubted that she would be a good sea boat. Part of his design
criteria was to shatter the existing records for the trip from New York to San Francisco. That meant rounding Cape Horn, the most fearsome patch of
water in the world. She would have to withstand anything the sea could toss at
her to make that passage.

“We’re going to
push her for a few more hours, then I have to fly back to Seattle.” Jack
motioned aft, where a Robinson R22 helicopter sat tied down on the helipad.
“I’ll let you bring her home. I’ve got to get back for a MS board meeting.”

Millennium
Systems
. He still rankled at the name. He liked it, it lent a Twenty First
Century kind of panache to his father’s company, but it was
her
idea, so
it couldn’t be all good. Every day he regretted the loss of the “Metcalf” in
the company name. Every day he regretted his loss of control of the company.
Soon he would have it back.

****

Somewhere, way off
in the distance, Ted heard a buzzing sound.
Damn
. He wasn’t sure which
hurt more, his head or his shoulder. He opened his eyes. The light hurt, too. It
took a moment for things to come into focus. His mouth felt like it had been
stuffed with cotton balls and dog turds.

He slowly rotated
his head to the left.
Jesu Cristo!
Just moving his head hurt.
Whoa!
What was this, or rather
who
was this? A dark brown head snuggled into
his aching shoulder.

He looked down the
olive-skinned body. She had a great set of hooters. Well, at least the left
hooter, he couldn’t see the other one, but he was pretty sure they were a
matched set. She was short and round, what he would call voluptuous. What was
her name? He tried hard to think back to last night.