The Widow File (3 page)

Thankfully Ben had headed off to work. They didn’t technically live together but he spent as many days working from home at her place as he did his own Capitol Hill apartment. She peeked into the bedroom. The space didn’t have room for anyone to hide, but Dani wanted to be sure. Ben didn’t really know what she did for a living. He thought she worked
the information desk for the Rasmund Historical Society because that’s what her badge said, that’s what she said whenever anyone asked, and that’s what the Web site linked to her e-mail said. They had been together four months and Dani had never felt the urge to unburden her secret to him.

She moved down the narrow hallway to the utility room. It was really more of a cubby created when the original building had been broken down into smaller units. A compact washer and dryer filled in a corner beside a folding table surrounded by shelves of detergent and paper products. Ben teased her about her need to squirrel away supplies in every available corner. He had no idea what she had hidden. She pulled open the accordion doors across from the washer, revealing an ironing board piled with clothes in a shallow closet.

Ben had left a pile of shirts to be ironed. “You really are a dick,” Dani muttered. She pitched the shirts onto the table and reached under the ironing board for the catch. One press and she unlocked the board from its latch, lifting it and locking it in place against the side wall. A batik sheet of Tibetan prayer symbols covered the back wall of the cabinet and Dani pulled out the little step stool in the lower corner, still having to stretch to her full length to grab the upper corner of the fabric. A quick pull and the sheet separated from the Velcro that held it in place. Dani bumped the sides of her fists against the bare wall and it separated along a barely visible seam.

Dani had built the hidden cubby into the wall not long after taking the apartment. It hadn’t taken much—some light plywood, interior hinges, magnet clasps, all assembled with enough care to be easily hidden behind the wall cloth. She had a similar cubby in the floor of her bedroom beneath the bed, which was where she kept her passport and some extra cash. She didn’t really have anything to hide. None of the materials she kept in the wall cabinet were sensitive. If anything, Ben or anyone else who might have stumbled upon them would probably just question her strange hoarding habits. Besides, Ben didn’t notice much of anything in her apartment, including the fact that she rarely, if ever, ironed. She wondered how long he would leave those shirts piled there before giving up.

She began removing the pushpins from the left side of the cubby and dropping them into the little plastic case that hung on the rear wall.
Marcher’s phone records, credit card bills, photocopies of receipts, and e-mails with personal identifiers blacked out came down first. Nobody could learn from looking at these papers who the target was. Hickman knew the kind of materials she liked to work with, the kinds of patterns she specialized in discovering. For example, it didn’t matter who the phone numbers on the record belonged to. That was Fay’s specialty. What mattered to Dani was how often they were dialed, how long the calls lasted, and what time of day they usually occurred. Regardless of status, pressure, or fear, humans were creatures of habit. Figure out the habit and you could predict the next move.

The right side of the cabinet looked like a modern art take on public trash. Wrinkled brochures, snack wrappers, Metro Passes, valet parking stubs, even a champagne cork—the kind of stuff people dumped out of their pockets at the end of the day. In fact, much of what she’d tacked to the wall had been obtained just that way. Hickman didn’t list pickpocketing as one of his skills but he was known for it. He’d seen Dani pull results, patterns, and secrets out of the debris targets kept at the bottoms of their handbags and in their raincoat pockets. He knew to skim the detritus from desk drawers and office supply trays. If he couldn’t swipe it, he photographed it, blowing the pictures up for Dani to study. To Dani, strangers dragged trails of information behind them like a comet drags a tail. She read them. All she knew for sure about Marcher was that he ate an awful lot of fois gras and had a weakness for Argentinean steakhouses. Nothing earth-shattering on its own and might never have led to anything but it was the kind of detail that Dani noticed. To say the least, the materials were not sensitive.

Dani had no illusions about who had the more dangerous job. She knew what she provided was color and background, the type of information that could make a big difference in an undercover operation. Hickman and Evelyn and the other Faces put themselves into the thick of the job. The Stringers worked in even rougher terrain, skirting the shadier ethical questions for Rasmund and operating under full anonymity. Even Choo-Choo didn’t know their names, only their identification codes. Dani, Fay, and the other Paint crews operated safely in the well-protected bosom of Rasmund and that was just the way she preferred it.

Which is why it pained her to have to disassemble her materials board. Dani didn’t just enjoy her job; she loved it. She loved this point in a job where ideas and patterns lurked just beyond the grasp of her fingertips. She could feel her mind reaching, stretching, and just barely bumping the soft edges of whatever the random bits of information were trying to tell her. She dreamed about her jobs, imagined she could see the swirls of colored papers rising and bending into arrows and shapes that would become worlds to her. These little bits of debris triggered associations that she couldn’t consciously explain but that she and her employers had come to trust. To have to pull the plug at this stage in a job felt like being cheated.

She stuffed all the materials into the blue canvas Rasmund pouch. Like everything else Rasmund, the pouch only looked like a simple book bag. In truth, the bag was waterproof, fireproof, and, unless Choo-Choo was pulling her leg, could stop a small-caliber bullet and a sharp knife. It certainly weighed enough to be lined with Kevlar.

She had to hurry. She still had to get across the bridge and out to the estate, log the materials back in, and slip out of sight before the client’s liaison came for the package. Maybe Hickman would treat them all to lunch the way he usually did after a job. He wasn’t all oozy charm like many of the Faces. When he was off-job, Hickman’s easy laugh and adolescent humor could occasionally eclipse even Fay’s resentment. As a matter of fact, the thought occurred to Dani more than once that her two teammates might have more going on than just a professional relationship. It wasn’t the kind of thing her friend would talk about. Fay joked about Dani’s sex life but her own private life she kept pointedly private. Still, Dani knew she wasn’t the only one who got a touch of a thrill peering behind the curtains of strangers’ lives. Some might even call it a kink.

Speaking of kinks, she realized she was standing there holding Ben’s shirts up to her face hoping to get a whiff of his scent. All she got was laundry detergent and she threw the shirts onto the ironing board, now back in place in front of the hidden cabinet. She threw them with enough force to lock the board in place. She threw them like it was their fault. Closing the
accordion doors and hauling the Rasmund pouch up onto her shoulder, she promised herself not to dwell on just how weird she probably was.

She made better time on the way back but she was still cutting it close. Her phone beeped as she pulled off the interstate but she ignored it, concentrating on not getting smashed between two semis as she merged onto the two-lane highway. It seemed she had timed her arrival perfectly with a convoy of enormous trucks that stretched for miles in either direction. At least the turnoff for the back road to the estate came several miles before the turnoff for the client entrance. Maybe the liaison would be sandwiched in the same convoy, giving her an advantage.

She turned left onto an unmarked county road then took the right fork onto another unmarked road, this one narrow enough to barely be considered two-way. The trees hung low over it, pin oaks and poplars already dropping enough of their leaves to obscure the little bit of shoulder the road provided. Blackberry bushes and brambles crowded along the sides, sometimes scraping the edges of her side mirrors. This service road was for Rasmund employees only. Dani could just imagine what the reaction would be from the company’s elite clientele if they had to drive their Beemers and Jags over this rough stretch of road. Well, they could keep their overpriced ego-rides. Dani whistled to herself as the little car hugged the curve. With its front-wheel drive and heavy body, she knew the car could drive up the side of a tree if necessary.

“What the hell?” Dani slammed the brakes unnecessarily hard, since she wasn’t even going ten miles per hour. She slammed her fists on the steering wheel. “What is this?”

An unmarked black panel truck was parked facing her, blocking the opening of the rear Rasmund security gate. Dani stared at it for several seconds, her mouth open. This could not be happening. Was someone trying to get her fired? She climbed out of the car, stomping up to the cab of the truck, but it was empty. The engine was warm. Whoever left it here hadn’t left it long. Pounding her fists on the hood of the truck, she swore her way through her frustration.

“That’s it. I’m fired. I’m fired. Life hates me and I’m fired.” She marched back to her car, noting without surprise that there was no way to squeeze it past the truck. Backing up on the narrow road required an optimism she didn’t feel and besides which, she was out of time. She grabbed the heavy pouch from the car along with her purse and keys. She could imagine the sight she would make, standing muddy on Mrs. O’Donnell’s carpet. “See, there was this truck and Ben’s shirts were on the ironing board and there’s never anyplace to park on my street and there was this convoy on Route Seven and…” She double-timed it up the road.

“Oh and the gate’s open,” she said out loud to nobody. “That’s safe. Not like we have security measures in places, stupid trucker-fucker.” She knew the security cameras were filming her and could just imagine Choo-Choo watching her running and talking to herself. She held the pouch up to a camera she knew hung hidden along the fencing, mouthing “Please!” to the lens. Hopefully they hadn’t sealed the box yet. Hopefully the client’s liaison was having the same trouble she was having getting into Rasmund.

She punched in her code at the garden door, barely waiting for the soft snick of the latch before barreling through. She took the steps to the main floor two at a time, no easy task with her short legs, and tried not to pant as she ran down the hall. The carpet muffled her footsteps and she strained to hear the sounds of Mrs. O’Donnell through any of the oaken doors leading to the front of the house. Materials would be signed off on in the library, and if she could just make it to the rear door she could signal to whoever would be sealing the box. She hoped it was Hickman. He’d be watching for her, stalling for her.

She didn’t hear anyone talking. That could be a good sign, a sign that the liaison hadn’t made it yet or was still being greeted in the foyer. It could also mean she had missed the drop altogether.

Slowing down, pulling the pouch to her chest, and quieting her breathing, Dani peeked around the rear doorway of the spacious library. At first glance it looked empty and she didn’t know whether to swear or sigh. She tiptoed through the door, trying to spy any sign of the plain white materials boxes that would be stacked under the front windows. Instead she saw a patch of blue sticking out over the arm of one of the high leather wingback chairs.

“Hickman,” she whispered, knowing that cashmere elbow anywhere. She could see his expensive wingtip-clad feet casually kicked out in front of him. “Todd!”

She crept up behind the chair, hoping she could just pass the pouch off to him and sneak out before Mrs. O’Donnell’s inevitable entrance with the liaison in tow. If Hickman felt relaxed enough to sprawl in the chair rather than grooming himself for the meeting, she figured she couldn’t be as late as she feared. She let out the breath she’d been holding.

“I thought I’d missed this.” She kept her eye on the door to the foyer as she stepped around, slinging the pouch off her shoulder. “Some asshole parked his truck right at the—”

The words died in Dani’s throat when she came around to face Hickman. Her first thought was that he had ruined his beautiful sweater. Two black-and-red holes marred the soft cashmere just under his collarbone. They matched the small black-and-red hole in the center of his forehead.