Undercover Genius (6 page)

I didn’t ask a second time where he’d stolen the video. He
never revealed his sources. I’d learned he was former CIA with presidential
affiliations, so he could have taken it from spy satellites for all I knew.
Although hacking a security company’s cameras was more likely. “I need a copy
of this to show her.”

“Would you return to England after seeing this?” he asked
dryly.

He had a point. It didn’t matter. “Patra deserves the truth.
She needs to know what she’s up against. It took one impressive organization to
pull together an operation like that so swiftly. How could they have known Bill
was on to anything? We need to search his office to find out what he learned.”

He clicked the screen one shot forward. The Good Samaritan
was rifling Bill’s pockets.

“Crap,” I muttered. “They have his evidence, address, and
keys to clear out any backup. I repeat, what kind of organization is this well
prepared? Besides you,” I added snidely.

“Top Hat.”

Had I not known better, I could have taken this as an
enigmatic brush-off and crowned him with his keyboard. But
Top Hat
was burned into my synapses. My grandfather had been
allegedly poisoned by a mysterious cabal of power brokers that called
themselves by the code name Top Hat.
Allegedly
being the key word here. We had nothing but my grandfather’s last message to me
and the admission of a scam artist murderer to base our theories on.

I tried out-waiting him in hopes my silence would force him
to say more. Stupid ploy, but it gave me a chance to process a few facts.

When Graham continued playing his computers as if I weren’t
there, I pushed harder. “Broderick is part of Top Hat, isn’t he? He’s a Brit,
but his media network over here supports Senator Paul Rose.” As did the
senators behind the now-defunct textbook propaganda scheme. Everyone in
politics has an agenda. My agenda was to steer well clear of megalomaniacs who
think they can rule the world. They inevitably cause a lot of grief and come to
a bad end. The world is seldom improved in the process.

If I had believed in the devil, I’d have made him a
politician.

“Send your sister home,” was all Graham said.

“Stay out of my office,” was my retort. “You had no right to
steal her DVD. And if that blamed cat gets near me again, I’ll start ripping
out walls to find your sneaky passage.”

He gave me a middle finger salute, hit his keyboard, and
zoomed in on some Mideast carnage.

Really, if I wasn’t worried that he might actually be a cripple,
I’d turn Graham over in his chair.

If he hadn’t smelled so damned good, I might have lingered
to torment him more. The sad fact was that Graham tortured my hormones as much
as he messed with my mind. I really should have returned the favor. Oh, wait, I
already had. I was just too lazy to dress up to do it often.

I stalked out in no better mood than I had arrived, but with
vital information in exchange for the stolen disk. Graham had weird ideas of
fair trade, but at some base level, we understood each other. A very base
level. You will notice we did not discuss anything normal like the million
dollars and the lawsuit pending to get our house back.

Patra still wasn’t home. I vowed to learn to track GPS chips
in phones.

Patra’s perspective

Patra was standing outside Bill Bloom’s apartment,
watching a thug systematically work the place over. She had a cozy dark corner
of the doorway across the street and one of the best zoom lens cameras on the
market. Every time the thug passed Bill’s curtainless front window, she
snapped. She’d called 911 and reported a burglary in progress. She needed to
make friends with someone on the force. She wanted inside that apartment. Only she
knew what her father’s enemies sounded like or what to look for. The cops sure
as hell wouldn’t.

A long black Escalade limo pulled up to the curb in front of
her. Patra realized the drawback of her hiding place immediately. The door
behind her was locked. She had no escape.

When Patra didn’t return as ordered, I had no choice but
to hack into Graham’s GPS network and track Nick’s phone. The coordinates led
me to the address I’d already ascertained as Bill Bloom’s. Stupid idiot. That
was the first place the bad guys would look. If Patra persisted in this
investigative nonsense — and in our family, it’s really hard to avoid —
she would have to learn a few basics.

I changed into black leggings and knee high boots — better
for kicking than sandals — and grabbed a Metro to the exit nearest Bloom’s
crappy tenement. His neighborhood was quite a few Metro stops from ours, but a
taxi would have made me a rich target.

Flashing cop strobes caught me as I rounded the corner to
Bloom’s front door. I picked up my pace. I didn’t want to find any more
abandoned phones in the gutter, especially not my sister’s. I was counting on
this being a different precinct and a different set of cops, but if anyone
started putting together the hit-and-run with this address, we’d have
officialdom breathing down our necks.

At this point, I was more concerned about Patra.

I breathed easier when I saw her leaning against the
building, chatting with a familiar figure. Damn O’Herlihy. He either had a Sir
Galahad complex when it came to our family, or he thought he would learn more
about Graham by spying on us.

“Graham is still off topic,” I told Sean before he could
speak. I turned to Patra, biting back my big-sisterly fear, and sticking to
business. “Unless you have a way into that apartment, you should not be here.”

“I could have got in, but someone beat me here,” Patra
protested.

“And then she had a run-in with a limo until the cops ran
them off. Are you going to introduce us?” Sean asked with interest.

My eyebrows reached my hairline as I swung on Patra and
ignored the nosy reporter. “What kind of limo and what did they do?”

“Black Escalade, tinted windows, very men-in-black. They
blocked me from taking photos, grabbed my camera, and then the cops showed up,
and they moved on. I have a partial license plate number. The street light
isn’t working so I couldn’t get more. The guy who took my camera looked more like
a hired thug than government, though — bald, massive, over forty, wearing
a shiny suit. If I see him again, I’m picking his pocket. That camera costs.”

“You really need to keep a better eye on your siblings,”
Sean interrupted, wearing an impressive frown. “She’s too young to be running
around DC alone. I assume from her accent that she’s not local.”

I swung back to the critic. Behind me, Patra choked on a
laugh. I’m just too predictable, but nobody criticizes my family except me.
“Patra has robbed thieves in Singapore and driven elephants in India. DC is not
the problem. Patra’s imitation of her damnable father is the problem. Are you
covering burglary reports these days? Bit of a come down from political reporting,
isn’t it?”

“I got hired at the BBC because I don’t have an accent,”
Patra protested, interrupting my rhetorical and irrelevant question. “All those
years of traveling wiped it out. Anyway, nosy here followed me from Dupont. I
figured he was a cop, he was so bad at it.”

Sean shrugged, leaned back against the brick wall, and
followed the activities across the street. “I had no reason to hide.”

Single-minded Patra ignored this. “Do either of you know
anyone on the force? I really need to see inside Bill’s apartment. He might
have left notes about my father’s recording. I need to know what he was so
excited about.”

Moral judgments did not happen in my world. I let the
slippery slope of breaking and entering slide by and returned to the practical.
“Catch anything with the camera phone?” I didn’t think Patra would miss any
opportunity, and Nick’s phone was a dandy.

“Probably not much,” she said, confirming my suspicion.
“Look, I really need to get inside. Any suggestions?”

With a sigh of exasperation, I answered her plea by morphing
from Basement Mouse into Kickass Ana.

Keeping an eye out for familiar faces I needed to dodge, I crossed
the street and took the stairs up to where all the activity was. I didn’t like
it. If the beat cops had learned the apartment owner had just been killed, I
was opening a can of worms.

Conversely, if dangerous thugs were on Patra’s heels, I
needed to know everything.

Four apartments to a floor, I noted as I emerged on the
third where two men in blue were scribbling notes. “Hello, officers,” I said,
swinging my legging-clad hips as I noted door numbers and located Bill’s. Patra
and Sean were right on my boot heels. “Neighbors been beating up on each other
again?” I reached for Bill’s doorknob as if I belonged there. We were in luck,
the door hadn’t been shut.

“Wait a minute,” one of the officers looked up from his
note-taking, “That your place?”

“Of course not. Have you seen inside that dump? We’re just
here to help Sean shovel out his stuff. Why?” I donned my best puzzled innocent
expression as I pushed open the door and scoped a glance. The apartment had
been trashed, as feared.

“We had a burglary report, found the place unlocked.” The
note taker held up his pad while the other cop tried to block our access. “You
got any ID?”

“I don’t know what good it will do you.” I rummaged in my
bag. “I don’t live here. Hey, sis, what did you do with my wallet?” I called as
Patra sauntered past the cops.

“In the car,” she replied blithely, pushing the door open
wider and grimacing at the contents. “I borrowed your Amex. Where are the
garbage bags?”

“Shoot.” I handed the policeman a business card with my
mailbox drop address and my fake schoolteacher ID. “Will this do? You think
Bill’s place was burgled? How could anyone tell? These guys live like bums.”

“Does he always leave the place unlocked?” The cop noted my
fake name and address. I might have to think about changing them.

“We only have the one key. Sean, didn’t you lock up after
that last load?” I obligingly lingered in the hall entertaining the officers
while Sean and Patra did a quick reconnoiter inside.

“I thought I did,” Sean called back, emerging from the
kitchen area with a box of trash bags.

That was good — loading up the burglary bags while the
cops watched. Sean’s father had been friends with my father — both good
Irish IRA lads. Family experience made him about as trustworthy as I was, which
wasn’t much.

“I don’t see anything missing,” he continued. “TV is still
there.”

“You didn’t see anyone in the apartment?” I asked the
policemen with mild alarm. “Not that there’s anything worth taking except the
computer, but we’d hate for Bill to blame us.”

“No one here when we arrived.” The note taker put away his
book. “Show me a key and we’ll be on our way. Next time, make sure you lock up.”

“Sean, where’s your key?” I peered around the door to see
Patra sweep a stack of disks into her purse. I could see a couple of computer
monitors, but not the hard drives.

“Right here.” Absent-mindedly patting his jeans pocket, Sean
emerged from the bedroom with a stack of file folders under his arm. “I can’t
find my good shirt. I know I left it here. If that butthead took it with him…”
He dumped the folders in a garbage bag, then dug a ring of keys out of his
pocket.

“Then he’s wearing a shirt two sizes too small,” I said,
playing along and taking the keys from him.

One of the officers was already taking another call while
the note taker waited impatiently for me to sort through keys. “All these
things look alike. Which one is it?” I shouted back at Sean as he meandered
off.

“Domestic dispute around the corner,” the officer taking the
call reported. “Anyone here filing a complaint?”

The note taker looked impatient. “Look, all of you, get out,
take your keys, and I’ll close this place up. If you don’t see anything taken
and don’t want to file a report, we’ll be moving on.”

“Anything missing?” I yelled at my looters. “If not, get
thyselves out here and find the damned key.”

Patra and Sean ambled back to the hall, arguing over the key
ring as the cops turned the flimsy inside lock, shut the door, and hurried off
on their next call.

“You’re good,” I commended them with reluctance. I’d never
had partners in crime before, unless Nick counted, and he tended to do his own
thing. “Did you find what you needed or do we have to get back in there?”

Sean handed his garbage bag of files to Patra. “Computers
are gone. These are the only recent files I found. What are we looking for?”

“Skullduggery,” Patra blithely answered. “You’re a good
person to know.” She pressed a kiss on Sean’s cheek and swung off down the hall
toward the stairs.

Sean raised questioning eyebrows at me.

“Patrick Llewellyn’s daughter, and that’s all I’m telling
you.” I hurried after her.

Behind us, Sean whistled. As a journalist, he knew precisely
what I’d just told him, and could infer the rest. I expected he’d spend the
rest of the evening learning who owned this apartment and would be three steps
ahead of the overworked cops before dawn.

* * *

“Do you have dibs on him?” Patra asked as we emerged from
the Metro down the block from our grandfather’s home.

“Who, Sean? He’s occasionally helpful, but I don’t trust
him. He’s spying on Graham. I’m not risking irritating the beast in our attic for
a nosy reporter.” Carrying the trash bag of paper files, I unlocked the now spider-web-free
front door and made a mental note to have a key made for Patra.

“You’re awfully protective of that beast in the attic,” she
observed with interest.

“I have issues, okay? I protect what’s mine and so does he.
Move on.” I gestured for her to go in.

“Sean’s cute,” she said, changing back to her real interest,
“and he might be able to help me find my way around the local talent. You don’t
mind if I use him, do you?”