The Informationist: A Thriller (41 page)

“Emily’s footage and a thorough explanation outlining all this are also being sent to media outlets and law enforcement. The charade of your persona may possibly survive the news-shark feeding frenzy, but without the power and money granted by the board of trustees, I doubt you’ll survive a courtroom.

“Motive is a powerful thing,” she continued, “and I do believe yours has now been thoroughly documented. When you’re arrested—and you
will
be arrested—your public defender is going to have his work cut out.

“No, Richard,” she said, shaking her head, “I don’t have to kill you. Death would be so much easier than what you have waiting. This is a revenge I will be able to enjoy every day for years to come.”

She smiled. “Every night I will think of you, a soft white man with gang members, killers, and rapists as bedtime companions. I’ll wake with a smile, knowing it’s another day in the life of Poor Daddy Burbank, the bunkmate’s bitch. Word will leak that you’ve gotten AIDS or hepatitis C, that you’ve grown older than your years, and that you’re wasting away. Every bit of news will make mine a good day. And when you get out,
if
you ever do, I’ll be waiting.”

She paused again and whispered, “So far the fall, so great the degradation.”

Munroe indicated the photo envelope she’d tossed on the desk. “Keep these as a memento, because once the shit hits the fan, memories are all you’ll have.” She stood, slid the silenced pistol into the far corner of the room, said, “Enjoy the rest of your fucking miserable life,” then turned and walked out the door.

M
UNROE GOT AS
far as the kitchen before the stillness of the apartment was split by the unmistakable hiss of the weapon. She returned to
the office and stood in the doorway only long enough to ascertain that Burbank had been successful. She removed the DVD from the computer and then went quickly down the hall, through Burbank’s bedroom to his bathroom. She found a washcloth and soaked it, then repeated the procedure with a second, applying a generous amount of hand soap.

She returned to Burbank. Lifting his right hand with the damp cloth, she wiped it thoroughly, hand to wrist to forearm. She followed with the second washrag and for consistency did the same on the left. The soap and water would wash away enough of the trace powder to conceal the crime scene’s silent truths.

Rags tossed into the attaché case, she moved back through the apartment and took the elevator down. Their encounter had veered far from the initial strategy, but her improvisation would suffice.

Her return to the hotel was on foot, cool air to clear her head, to think things through, to decide what the next step would be, but it wasn’t until she was back inside Breeden’s room staring at the body of the woman who had betrayed half a decade of friendship that she was certain.

Munroe said nothing to Breeden, merely stripped out of the suit and stepped into her own clothes, then released the gag, the bonds, and the choke from Kate’s neck.

“Are you going to kill me now?” Breeden asked.

Munroe slipped the constraints and suit in with her equipment, turned toward the door, and said, “No.”

“Is Richard dead?” Kate called out.

“Yes.” Munroe said, and without looking back she walked into the hall, down the stairs, and into the darkened shadows of the city’s steel-and-glass giants, mentally blinded, emotions coursing along a Geiger counter’s range.

She had no direction, no motive, and no place to go.

F
rom inside the helmet, the world’s sounds took on a muted distance. There was that and the rush of wind and the vibration of power that rumbled through her body as the bike whined across the miles. Munroe was headed north, up from San Antonio and Texas’s hill country, back into the flat of Dallas, where she was scheduled to meet with Miles Bradford later in the day.

She’d left him in Paris with the promise to look him up in a few weeks’ time, and though the few had stretched into several, she knew that he knew by way of Logan that she was all right. She could have made the effort to see him when she’d first returned to Dallas but had needed the distance of time and space to purge the venom from her system and grieve Francisco’s death.

More difficult was coming to terms with the decision to allow Breeden’s treachery to go unpunished. It somehow seemed that in choosing to allow her own soul to go free, Francisco’s memory had been betrayed, and there were still only a handful of days when Munroe hadn’t considered tracking down Breeden and finishing what should—in the laws of the jungle—rightfully have been done that night.

After leaving the hotel, she’d wandered aimlessly, long past the rising of the sun and the chaos of the lunch crowd and far into the afternoon rush
hour before finally making her way to the Greyhound station and catching the next bus to the Mexican border. She’d left the United States on foot and returned to Paris out of Monterrey, Mexico, the next evening.

In what was perhaps one of her life’s only truly altruistic gestures, she’d taken Alain out of Paris to where the hustlers wouldn’t find him and committed him to a lockdown rehab facility, with the promise of an apartment and job if he remained clean for six months. She held no illusions about recidivism rates and the odds of the boy’s making it for the long term, but she’d given him a shot at a clean break. What he did with it was his own.

Munroe exited the freeway, turned off the access road, and rolled the bike into a parking lot adjacent to a twelve-story building. Capstone Consulting was located on the fifth floor, just one of the many midsize companies filling space in the North Dallas tower. But for the pair of muscle-bound bodies that exited the plate-glass doors of the office as she entered, Munroe would have seen no indication that the business was the mercenary outfit she knew it to be.

Bradford looked good, and his smile brought on a pang of guilt for having waited as long as she had to see him. Necessary business aside, this was closure, a proper way to conclude the strange bond forged between them, and so much better than the abrupt good-bye at Charles de Gaulle. After a few moments of small talk, he handed her a slip of paper and said, “Transferred to the accounts you specified, the full five million as per the contract.”

She took the document and glanced over it.

“I assume you heard that Burbank’s dead,” Bradford said.

Munroe nodded and while skimming the page said, “Logan told me.”

“Have you heard about Kate Breeden?”

She stopped and looked up. “No,” she said. “I’ve been out of touch for a few weeks. What about her?”

“Let’s sit,” he said.

Munroe paused and after a brief hesitation took the chair that was to her right. Bradford sat opposite and swiveled so that he faced her directly. He was quiet for a moment and then leaned forward, elbows to knees. “Kate’s been implicated in Richard’s death.”

The news came unexpectedly, and Munroe took a deep breath. She’d walked out of the Alden that night, turning her back on whatever revenge was to be had, not considering that in failing to carry out the original plan, that by allowing Kate to live, she’d left behind the details of a crime scene that still set Kate up for murder. Munroe imagined for a moment how easy it would have been to have gotten away with it all.

“It’s still not certain that the DA is going to prosecute,” Bradford said. “But she has been charged. According to my sources, they’ve got video surveillance of her entering and exiting Richard’s building around his estimated time of death, her using her key card for the elevator, and her fingerprints and DNA are all over his place. The evidence is compelling.

“She denies killing him, of course, swears that she was set up, and she’s pointed the finger in your direction. It’s possible there will be a few people interested in talking to you.” He paused for a moment. “There’s a weapon involved that does raise questions, and I figured you’d want the heads-up.”

“As far as I know,” Munroe said, “Burbank died when I was in Paris. Wasn’t it right after the board met?”

“Before.”

She shrugged. “Either way. I shouldn’t have any problem proving I was out of the country.”

Miles nodded. He opened his mouth to say something and then stopped. He turned toward the window. “Look,” he finally said, “I know it’s not my place, but I think you deserve to know. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Kate intended to betray you. I’ve seen the photos, and the prosecution has seen the photos. To you and me, it looks like she was sleeping with the enemy. To them it looks like she came after him out of jealousy. But it goes deeper.

“Burbank was blackmailing her, and she was playing the lover’s angle to try to mitigate the damage. I suspect even she didn’t realize how deadly the information she gave him was.”

Munroe stared at him for a moment and finally, unable to hide the waver in her voice, said, “Burbank was blackmailing Kate?”

Bradford nodded again, lips pressed together.

Another pause and she said, “How do you know this?”

“It hasn’t been easy to piece together,” he said. “I had a man on the inside when the call on Burbank’s death came in, and for the sake of deniability let’s just say I’ve had my ears open and leave it at that.

“It seemed wrong, you know, for a woman like Kate to betray you over a love affair, so I started digging.” Bradford handed Munroe a slim folder. “I’m still calling in favors, but I believe that this is what Burbank had on her.”

Munroe studied the pages, impressed by Bradford’s ability to see through the redundant to what was key, following the threads that he’d taken—a trail through an evil so dark that Richard Burbank was clean by comparison. “These were Kate’s clients?” she asked.

Bradford nodded. “She set up their corporate structures and kept them legal.”

“You’d make a good analyst.”

Bradford smiled a half smile. “Call it personal curiosity. And it does help to have worked so closely with Richard. I knew where a lot of his skeletons were buried, and I knew how to locate what he wanted to hide. I admit it’s still a little sketchy, but it does tie together.”

Munroe glanced at the folder in her hands. “You don’t think she knew she was involved in this?”

Bradford shrugged. “She had to know something—how much is anyone’s guess. You know better than I do that Kate is and has always been ruthless.
That
ruthless? Who’s to say? Maybe one day you can ask her.”

Munroe sighed. “In another lifetime.”

Bradford said, “With Kate pointing the finger in your direction,
I
made it a point to pay her a visit. I gave her a copy of what you have there in your hands and told her she was an idiot for choosing clients who would rather chop her up in little pieces than have word of their activity spread. I may have also mentioned that I didn’t want to hear her talking about you anymore.”

Munroe gave a half grin of acknowledgment.

“That said,” he continued, “if I’m right, based on Richard’s notes, he’d already started tracking dirt on Kate before you took the assignment. I think she knew he had something but didn’t know what until you arrived in Africa, because that’s when he began holding her feet to the fire.”

Munroe looked up at Bradford. “You know, it doesn’t change the fact that she sold me out, but if he had this on her …” Munroe’s voice trailed off. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do it.”

Bradford simply nodded in reply. The silence settled, and he said, “I’ve heard from Emily.”

“How is she?”

“Alive—obviously—and doing surprisingly well. A complete turnaround in her situation.” Bradford handed Munroe a DVD. “This was in among the stuff Burbank had on Kate.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “You found his blackmail stash, and that’s what he was using on Nchama?”

Bradford chuckled. “Yeah. And it gives events context in a weird sort of way. Watching the footage, you’d think Nchama was being paid to finance an overthrow of the EG government.”

Munroe shook her head, stared out the window, and whispered, “A man risks his life to save it from the greater fear.”

Bradford nodded, said, “I’m returning to Equatorial Guinea at the end of the week in order to accompany Emily and the children home.” He paused. “I wondered if you’d be interested in coming along. I could use the help.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I think you can handle that one on your own.”

“Well, from what I’ve heard, the country can be somewhat difficult to maneuver and the government difficult to deal with.” He winked that irresistible wink of his. “Truthfully, I’d love to have you there.”

“You’ll do fine,” she said. And what was left unspoken hung in the air.

When the silence grew awkward and stretched into minutes, Munroe stood and said, “I guess I’d better get going.” Bradford stood and reached to shake her outstretched hand. She drew him close and hugged him tight. “It’s hard to let you go,” she whispered, then pulled back and turned to walk away.

“What about you?” he said. “What’s next?”

She paused and looked over her shoulder. “Germany to tie up loose ends, then Morocco.” And for the first time in a long time, she smiled. “There’s someone I need to find.”

I
t would not have been possible to find the time, means, or motivation to write without the love and support of family, friends, and loved ones. Whether they were in my life permanently, sporadically, or for but a season, they touched me and now live on in the work that they helped to nurture.

There have also been many whose insights and direct contributions have improved the original into what it is now. To all of you, I say thank you, and specifically to Nico Hald for her attention to detail, and to my agent, Anne Hawkins, and editor, Sarah Knight, for their love of words and belief in my work.

H
aving spent a considerable part of her life journeying the globe, Taylor Stevens has finally settled in Dallas, Texas, which she, her two daughters, and their Maltese puppy now call home.