Worth Dying For (27 page)

“No, I’m not. I won fair and square.”

Vincent walked over to where the women were sitting. He looked at Terasa. “Ma’am, if you don’t need anything else, I’m going to turn in now.”

She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “No, Vincent. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll turn in, too.” Joey said, looking at Caroline.

“Good night, Joey,” Caroline said.

They watched the two men turn to go inside the house.

Rheyna smiled when Joey playfully pushed Vincent through the door. “You’re just a poor sport, Vincent.”

“Am not,” he replied and shoved Joey back.

###

Edwards was silent as he watched Laura heave the aluminum case on the table. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary propane tabletop grill. She snapped open the lock and raised the lid. Taking up the entire inside of the case was the ICS RoadMASSter II Portable Forensic Evidence Analysis System. It was the counterpart to the one that Rheyna had programmed earlier, except on a larger scale.

She pressed a switch on the side and waited as the machine went through its power-up cycling modes. The machine beeped and the bright blue screen lit up like a Christmas tree. After a few seconds, the menu for the biometrics security option popped up and asked her for a fingerprint authorization. She pressed her index finger to the screen, just as Rheyna had done.

“How long before we receive the data?” Edwards asked.

“If everything goes as planned, we should see it within a few seconds.” She typed in several more commands. “It also depends on the size of the hard drive,” she added and then turned in her seat to look at him. “Once Rheyna has access, she’ll upload our disk. After that, we’ll be able to watch in real time any transactions he makes without detection.”

Edwards laughed as she took a drink of coffee and then spit the cold liquid back into the cup.

“That’s not funny,” she said, turning back to the machine. “The best part about this little doohickey is that I’ll be able to see everything on his computer, just as if I was sitting there.” She made a few adjustments to the machine and turned her chair around to look at him. She thought that he looked as if he had aged ten years since they began the operation.

“If she gets caught, they’ll kill her,” he said, frowning as the reality of his words sunk in.

Laura had those same thoughts herself more times than she wanted to admit. “She knows the risks, and she will be extra careful.” She said the words as a way to help reassure him, but she said them more to calm her own nerves and the unease that had begun to settle in her stomach.

He walked over to the window. “I know Rheyna will do her job. Castrucci’s unpredictability is what worries me, and if by chance he knows about Rheyna, she could be walking into a trap. If that’s the case, he’ll kill her. I also know that if she can pull this off, we might find enough evidence to bring him down. The way I see it, we have a fifty-fifty shot and I think I increased our odds greatly by limiting those with knowledge of tonight’s operation.”

“Who else knows?” she asked.

“Just you, me and Stevens,” he said, lighting a cigarette.

“So Artie doesn’t know about tonight?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not unless Carl said something to him, and under the circumstances, I don’t see him doing that.”

“Where is he, anyway?”

“He went for coffee,” he said, glancing over toward Pal Joey’s restaurant. “If Rheyna’s cover’s blown tonight, we have a very serious problem,” he said as he walked over and pulled out a chair next to Laura. He sat down, stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, and buried his face in the palms of his hands. When he lifted his head, she could see that he was troubled. She could see it in his eyes. She had known him too long to mistake the look.

He raised his head to look at her. “They knew we were coming today,” he said matter-of-factly.

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankle. “You should have seen him, Laura; he was so smug, so sure that we wouldn’t find anything.” He laced his hands behind his head. “I could tell by the look on their faces. I knew we wouldn’t find anything.”

“Who else knew about the raid?”

“You, me, Stevens, two Sr. field office agents from L.A, and the Deputy Director,” he answered as he chewed on a piece of skin at the edge of his lower lip.

“Did Artie know?”

He shook his head. “And that’s what bothers me.”

She looked over at him. “I’m glad to hear you say that. I have an uneasy feeling that I just can’t seem to shake.”

She had been wracking her brains about the mole for quite awhile and it just didn’t add up. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on what that ‘it’ was. Deep down, she knew that Edwards was also thinking along the same lines. She had tried to talk herself out of it, but the nagging in her gut was persistent, and she was starting to regret their decision to allow Rheyna to continue with her mission.

No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t make herself believe that Artie was the leak. It just didn’t fit his personality, and it was all too clean—the way it had all been tied up in a nice little bundle and talk about timing—how perfect was that? Ron had verified with Cecil about the missing money from the evidence room. Exactly fifteen thousand dollars was missing from an evidence bag that had been recovered in a drug raid six months ago. For the first time in her career, she was unsure of herself, unsure of how to approach the subject with Kyle. She needed to say something.

“When will Ron get the surveillance tapes from the bank?” she asked.

“He’s supposed to get it sometime in the morning and give me a call as soon as he’s had a chance to review it.”

“You do know that Aldrich Ames was a thirty-year man.” She finally said what she had been thinking all along.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She knew that he understood what she was getting at.

He shook his head vehemently. “No way, I don’t believe that for a moment.”

Even if he didn’t like her implication, she was glad that she had spoken her mind. It needed to be said, if for nothing else than to lay everything out on the table.

“I don’t like the idea, either, but a good agent once told me to always expect the unexpected, even if it leads you down a road you’d rather not take. That same agent also taught me that instead of looking at the big picture, as most suggest, that I should try concentrating on what’s going on inside the frame, because nine times out of ten, the real answer can be found in the details. He also said that those small, little, minute facts tend to be the ones dismissed first, because they seem to go nowhere, but in the grand scheme of things, can be tied together relatively easily.”

His features softened as he looked at her. “Let me guess, I’m the guy who said those things.”

“You got it. You told me that not long after I became an agent.” She smiled at him and focused her attention back on the IMS.

###

The guesthouse was as nice as Rheyna thought it would be. It was roughly the size and layout of her beach house. The only difference was the amount of bedrooms. Hers had three and this had two. She sat on the couch, staring at the white snow on the TV screen. A glance at her watch told her that Caroline had been asleep for about an hour. She moved Annie’s front paw off of the overnight bag lying at her feet, took a deep breath, reached in, and rifled through the clothes for the IMS device.

She took the CD out and tucked it in the front pocket of her sweat jacket. She walked over to the bedroom where Caroline was sleeping. She put her finger to her mouth to tell Annie to be quiet. She could hear Caroline snoring softly and quietly pulled the bedroom door closed.

She quietly made her way over to the front window and peered out from behind the curtain. Everything looked quiet. She waited for the last light to go out in the main house. She was breathing heavy, a roaring sensation echoing in her ears as adrenaline rushed through her veins.

She watched the crisscrossing pattern of a flashlight scoot back and forth across the pavement. The guard was near the kitchen and slowly making his way toward the front of the house. As soon as he disappeared from sight, she slid the patio door open and stepped outside.

She ducked behind a large hedge bush near the edge of the sidewalk that led directly to the back of the house. Her senses were reeling with nervous energy. Every nerve ending in her body felt as if it were standing on end. She inhaled deeply through her nose and exhaled slowly through her mouth. She had to try to get her heart rate down. She was a little too pumped up and felt lightheaded. It never changed. It was always the same. She often wondered if it was anything like how a junkie felt when the rush of drugs hit their system.

A low growling sound from somewhere over her shoulder caused her to jerk her head. She felt the muscles constrict in her neck and felt a rush of heat. A very large Doberman was standing behind the fence. He snarled and bared his teeth at her. Damn—she hadn’t counted on the neighbor’s dog being out. What if he woke up Caroline? What if she got up and found that Rheyna wasn’t there, or what if the guard heard the dog? There was no doubt that he would.

In a matter of seconds, a million what if’s raced through her mind. She had to make a decision and make one fast. She knew she only had a few seconds before the guard returned to see what was upsetting the dog.

She looked out across the yard. It was now or never. She took off like a banshee and quickly made her way across the grass toward the house, while mentally reciting the alarm code she saw Caroline enter three days earlier. She flipped up the security box, quickly punched in the code to turn off the alarm, and waited for the lock on the door to slide. When it clicked, she slid open the door and entered the kitchen.

Leaning against the wall, she took a few minutes to catch her breath. Her heart was throbbing painfully in her chest. She rubbed her hand against it while she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. She replayed the house layout in her head. She knew exactly how many steps it would take for her to get to Castrucci’s office.

As she made her way over to the doorway, she counted each step in her head. When she reached the doorway that led out into the hallway, she stopped to listen for any sounds that might indicate someone was still up. She continued to count steps—twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight—she was almost there. Twenty-nine, thirty, she was just a couple steps from the dining room, and then she hit it. She had forgotten about the little table. In an instant, she saw her life flash before her eyes as the angelic figurine toppled from the table.

Fueled by adrenaline and pure instinct, she dove downward and stretched her hands out, catching the figurine just before it shattered across the floor into a thousand pieces. Her hand trembled as she set the little statue back on the table.

She crouched down in a sitting position and leaned back against the wall. Slowly, she began to regain the feeling in her legs. Her nerves were already frayed to the point that she was not sure she could stand upright.

After a few seconds, she stood and quickly made her way toward the target room. She counted the steps in her head again, until her hand was firmly on the doorknob. She said a silent prayer as she turned the knob, hoping that the door hinges wouldn’t squeak.

Total relief was what she felt as closed the door behind her. She didn’t waste any time, going straight for the desk, being extra careful not to knock into anything. She ran her hand along the edge of the desk until she found the computer and then felt for the ON button.

While the computer powered up, she knelt down beside the desk and fished the penlight out of her jacket pocket. She held the end firmly in place by clenching it between her teeth. She pulled out the IMS unit and turned it on. It made a loud ‘beep’ as the screen popped up.