She's an Easy Target, page 6
part #2 of Quinton Target Series
“That’s right. You can lower your gun. I’m not here to kill you. If I wanted you dead, I would’ve taken you down outside, using a sniper’s rifle.”
QT holstered his pistol. “I’d invite you in, but you’ve already made yourself at home.”
“If I waited for you in the hall, your neighbors might’ve called the police.”
“You could’ve waited in the parking lot.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt whatever was going on between you and the lieutenant.”
“Can I get you something to drink? I need a cup of coffee.”
“Coffee sounds good.”
QT started up the Keurig and made them each a cup of coffee. “Black?” he asked as he handed him the cup.
Rasputin nodded his head.
“Me, too,” QT said as he blew on his coffee and took a sip to test the temperature. “I assume this isn’t a social call. What brings you to my home on a Friday night?”
“Are Blaire and you still a couple?”
“Yes, we are. Why? Are you here to ask me whether my intentions with the lieutenant are honorable?”
Rasputin made a sound that could pass for a laugh or a snort. “No, who she sleeps with is her business.”
“Then what’s so important it can’t wait until daylight?”
I witnessed something.”
“Something that involves Blaire?”
“Yes. Do you know where she is?”
“Not exactly. She left for work at nine-thirty this evening and told me she’d be back by midnight. As you can see, she hasn’t returned.”
“Is she usually on time?”
“Not always. Sometimes, things don’t go according to plan in her line of work.”
“Being a spook isn’t a straightforward, nine-to- five job, is it?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Where was she going to work tonight?”
“She didn’t tell me. I assume it was somewhere near Charlottesville, since she only expected to be gone for a couple of hours. Why are you interested in her whereabouts?”
“Was there any reason she’d be near Rugby Road, tonight?”
“Not that I’m aware of. It’s possible her work took her that way ... Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“At around eleven-twenty, I was a couple of streets over from Dr. Bit’s place, which is on Rugby Road. A woman in a hoody and yoga pants walked toward me on the opposite side of the street. I thought it was strange for her to be dressed like that on a warm night like tonight. When she went under a streetlight, I took a closer look at her. I could see blonde hair sticking out from under the hood. I’m not one-hundred percent certain, but it looked like Blaire to me.”
“How would you know what she looks like?”
“We met in Northern Virginia last year, on the night the FBI agent she was with was shot and killed.”
QT was aware that Rasputin had saved Blaire’s life on that night. It made sense that he would have some recollection of what she looked like, but that didn’t mean he’d seen her near Rugby Road.
“Did she recognize you?”
“No, she didn’t look at me.”
“Blaire isn’t the only blonde in Charlottesville,” QT said. “Even if it was her, why did you think it was important to tell me about it?”
“I turned around and followed the woman to her car. I kept my distance. I was about a hundred feet away from her when she opened her trunk and tossed in a backpack she’d been wearing. A man came out of the shadows from a van parked next to her. He put something over her face. She struggled for a few seconds before passing out. Another man got out of the passenger side of the van and helped the other guy put her in the back. Then they drove off.”
“Why didn’t you try to stop them?”
“I was too far away, and I didn’t have a weapon.”
“Did you report it to the police?”
“What do you think the cops would do if a man looking like me came forward with a wild story like that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’d investigate it.”
“They’d investigate me and lock me up. That’s what they’d do.”
“How sure are you it was Blaire?”
Rasputin took out a piece of paper and handed it to QT. “The first one is the woman’s car license plate. Do you recognize it?”
“... It’s Blaire’s.”
“The second is from the van. One of the men drove away in the van with Blaire in the back and the other one drove Blaire’s car.”
“Did the men look like government agents to you or common criminals?”
Rasputin shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. They were efficient.”
“I appreciate you coming to tell me what happened. Is there anything else you can think of that might help me find her?”
“Nope, that’s it.” Rasputin drank the rest of his coffee and put down the cup. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said and stood up to leave.
“Wait,” QT said. “Where are you going after you leave here?”
“Going to talk with Lieutenant Mad.”
“Tell her I’ll contact her as soon as I make a few calls.”
Rasputin nodded and walked out the door.
Chapter 10
It was normally a fifteen to twenty-minute walk from QT’s townhouse to Dr. Bit’s brick, colonial home, but Lieutenant Mad needed time to clear her head, so she weaved around side streets to delay her return to her room over the garage. Eventually, she ended up at McGuffey Park, a little park on a hilltop a short distance from the Jefferson Theatre. Since it officially closes at nine, she had the place all to herself. She sat on a bench and reflected on the evening.
Meeting Chloe had only reinforced her misgivings about her. It wasn’t anything in particular she’d said or done that was out of line. The woman was just too damn perfect to be for real. The last thing the lieutenant wanted to do was alienate Dr. Bit. If he found out she was working with QT to investigate Chloe, he’d be pissed. She’d like to ignore the situation, but her instincts told her something was not right. To her, even the woman’s name sounded phony. The first name, Chloe, in the twenty-first century is as common as the name, Jane, used to be. The lieutenant thought, Chloe Ripen would be more appropriate as an alias for a porn star than a Social Security worker.
As for Quinton Target, she couldn’t get him out of her mind. She wished she could say she felt bad that things were only fine between Blaire and him, but the truth was she hoped their relationship would fail. She regretted not taking advantage of QT’s offer to walk her home. They both knew what he was really offering. She’d used their semi-intoxicated state as a reason for declining, but it was more than that. She was afraid spending one more night with QT wouldn’t be enough for her. It might rekindle the feelings for him she’d managed to subside over the past year. In her usual fashion, instead of living for the moment, she’d chosen to run away to avoid getting emotionally hurt.
The lieutenant was so busy thinking about Chloe’s relationship with Dr. Bit and sorting out her own feelings about Quinton Target, she’d lost track of time and almost forgotten about Dr. Bit’s request for her to contact L. Ron. She withdrew her phone from her pocket and selected the contact she’d labeled UFOMAN.
L. Ron answered on the first ring. “Hello, Lieutenant. It’s about time you called.”
“What’s so urgent? Is an alien invasion about to begin in Charlottesville or is an asteroid on a collision course with planet earth?”
“This is no joking matter. It’s serious.”
“Sorry. What’s up?”
“Our headquarters has been broken into and our network has been hacked?”
“What? Do you mean somebody physically broke into Dr. Bit’s house?”
“Yes.”
“How’d they get inside?”
“We’re still investigating. Somehow, they bypassed the home security system, went into the basement, and gained access to the servers. I’m at the house right now. Dr. Bit and Rasputin are here, too. They said you left the restaurant an hour ago. Where are you?”
“I’m about twenty minutes away.”
“We probably shouldn’t discuss this on the phone. For all we know, our calls may be monitored.”
“Yes, you’re right. I’ll be there shortly. We’ll decide what to do when I arrive.” She disconnected from the call and began her walk to Rugby Road.
After hanging up, the first thing that came to mind was that the break-in had happened while Dr. Bit and she had been preoccupied with Chloe. It could be a coincidence, but she doubted it.
She touched the screen of her phone and pulled up the group selfies taken at Miller’s. In the first picture, Quinton was in the process of putting his arm around Chloe and she was looking up at him with what the lieutenant interpreted as a come-on look in her eyes. What was that about? It didn’t appear that QT was reciprocating the gesture. The lieutenant wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
Anyone outside their group who saw the photos would view the subjects as friends, having a few drinks and enjoying a Friday evening together. What they wouldn’t see were the undercurrents.
She forwarded the photos to QT along with a text:
Mad: Here are the photos. Let me know what you come up with when you run her face against your databases.
When there wasn’t an immediate response, she sent two more texts:
Mad: Enjoyed spending the evening with you.
Mad: In case I wasn’t clear, the next time you ask me if I want you to walk me home, my answer will be YES.
She felt herself blush after hitting send on the last text. Quickly, she exited the messaging app to delay reading a response when it came, in case it was a rejection of her flirtatious texts.
I’m such a coward, she thought.
***
As the lieutenant approached the Rugby Road home, she looked at the house on the opposite side of the street, where the woman Dr. Bit referred to as Betty Busybody lived. True to her moniker, Betty was inside, peeking through a crack where the curtain was pulled aside next to the front window. The lieutenant stared at the window and the curtain closed. She quickened her pace and bounded up the steps to the porch. After passing the facial recognition and password security checks, she entered the hallway. Dr. Bit, Rasputin, and L. Ron were sitting at the table in the dining room, which was located at the end of the hall.
“Where have you been?” Dr. Bit asked. “You left long before Chloe and I did. You didn’t stop by QT’s for a quickie, did you?”
“I was wandering the streets. I needed to clear my head before coming home. A better question is, why aren’t you at Chloe’s love nest, making sweet memories that you retain long-term this time?”
“She wanted me to spend the night with her, but I told her I’d have to take a raincheck.”
“Playing hard to get?”
“No, I wasn’t feeling up to par.”
Lieutenant Mad sat at the table with them and took a closer look at Dr. Bit. “What happened to your nose and eyes?” she asked, surprised to see his battered face.
“I was in an altercation at the bar. You should see the other guy.”
“What instigated that?”
“A drunk tried to hit on Chloe and I took exception to his advances. You should’ve seen him. He was built like a professional football lineman.”
“And, you got the better of him in a fight?”
“Don’t sound so shocked. Actually, it was a team effort.”
“What team?”
“I distracted him by allowing him to punch me in the face and knock me to the floor a couple of times and while he was off guard, Chloe kicked the living shit out of him. You should have seen her.”
“Chloe did that?”
“Yup. Don’t get all paranoid about her again.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I can read your mind. You’re thinking she must be a spook because she’s had self-defense training.”
“Did she have a good explanation for her fighting skills?”
“Yes, she did. Her father enrolled her in martial arts training when she was a young girl, and she continued it until her early twenties.”
“Point the big man out to me and I’ll make sure he never bothers you or your lady again,” Rasputin said.
“That won’t be necessary. They took him away in an ambulance.”
“Tell me about the break-in,” the lieutenant said. “I didn’t see any damage to the front door or the security equipment on the porch. Did they come in through the backdoor or a window?”
“No, the backdoor is reinforced steel and I keep it locked. All of the windows have sensors, and none were triggered,” Dr. Bit said.
“How do you even know there was a physical break-in? Couldn’t the computers have been hacked remotely?”
“I stopped by around eleven-fifteen to do International Space Station research that required use of Dr. Bit’s network,” L. Ron said.
“You mean you needed to hack into the computers on the space station and you could only do it using Dr. Bit’s network, right?” Lieutenant Mad said.
“That’s another way of putting it,” he said. “Anyway, when I arrived here, displayed on the porch security system monitor was a message that said Dr. Bit had exited at eleven-ten. I knew that you and he were going to Miller’s at ten. It didn’t make any sense that he would leave at eleven-ten. So, I went to the downtown mall to ask Dr. Bit about it.”
“Yes, I saw you there talking to Dr. Bit.”
“He agreed with me that it was suspicious, but he wasn’t ready to leave yet. He told me to come back here and wait until you or he contacted me.”
“Dr. Bit, have you had a chance to check your home surveillance videos and security logs,” Lieutenant Mad said.
“Yes, and there was one anomaly on the video footage. There’s a forty-five second blip at eleven-ten where the video goes out. This implies to me that somebody zapped the cameras as they were leaving in order to hide their exit.”
“To enter in the front, someone would need to simulate your likeness to pass the facial recognition and they’d need your security code for verification, right?”
“That’s right.”
“We both know that it’d be relatively easy to get by the facial recognition. You’ve done it yourself when you’ve hacked other systems.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it could be done by someone with hacking skills as advanced as mine.” Dr. Bit said immodestly.
“Breaking your code for the security system and network would be more difficult. Are you sure you haven’t given those codes to anybody?”
“You think I gave them to Chloe, don’t you? Well, I didn’t.”
“I was just asking.”
“Can you tell what they hacked on your network?
“I’m running a scan. It located a keylogger right away. I’m not sure what else it’ll find.”
“Would you know if they copied any files.”
“No, but if they went through the trouble of breaking in, I’d say there’s a good chance they copied all the files on the local servers and cloud storage.”
“Does that include all the details of our recent investigation into Upshaw?”
“Not everything. I put some of the more sensitive information on USB drives that I keep locked away and hidden.”
“Where?”
“They wouldn’t be hidden if I told you that.”
“Did you check the entire house for monitoring devices?”
“I checked this room, but not the basement or the rest of the house, yet”
“How about my room?”
“I don’t have the access code to your room to gain entrance.”
“That’s what you say, but you have administrative access to the security system and could find it. Perhaps you did that as part of your guided tour of the house for Chloe.”
“There you go blaming Chloe again. You have no proof she’s involved.”
“You’re right, I’m jumping to conclusions like I do sometimes. But even you have to admit it’s suspicious that this break-in occurred while we were preoccupied with her.”
“It isn’t suspicious to me. No matter who’s responsible for the break-in, you better check to make sure they didn’t hack your laptop or install monitoring equipment in your room.”
“I will.”
Rasputin had been relatively quiet throughout the discussion, so when he spoke, the others listened. “I might be able to shed some light on this situation,” he said.
“Please, do,” Lieutenant Mad replied.
“I saw Blaire Saunders nearby at around eleven-twenty.”
“Where?”
“A couple of streets over, on Cottage Lane.”
“QT told me she was working tonight,” the lieutenant said. “Maybe breaking into our home was her job for the evening.”
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“She was kidnapped by two men in a van. I stopped by FBI Agent Target’s place and told him about it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said to tell you he’d contact you as soon as he makes a few calls.”
“Breaking and entering, hacking, kidnapping — I knew I should’ve stayed home tonight,” Lieutenant Mad said.
Chapter 11
The room was dark and the smell of something acrid was in the air. Blaire imagined it was the flesh rotting on her face, turning her into an unspeakably ugly creature. She sobbed again at the thought of her appearance.
When the monster had left, he’d opened what sounded like a garage door. All she remembered seeing after the liquid burned into the corners of her eyes was a blur. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting there, but as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could begin to see cracks of light around the edge of the door. It wasn’t sunlight, it was artificial like a sodium vapor streetlight. The fact that she could perceive light at all gave her encouragement. Apparently, the acid hadn’t caused total blindness. She wasn’t sure whether it would be a blessing or a curse to be able to see her new face in a mirror.
