Terminal Secret Read online

  “I know the arrangement.”

  “The final target will be problematic and will require an expedient exit. I won’t have time to wait around to get paid. There will be additional press coverage and increased interest from law enforcement. A proper exit will be difficult enough without hanging around.”

  “I know our arrangement,” Dinero said again with conviction. “For the last person on the list, you will be paid in advance. I assume you already have a plan for the last one.”

  “I do,” Angel said, nodding.

  “So all we need is one more plan.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I would like it done as soon as possible,” Dinero said.

  “How soon?”

  “Weeks, at the very latest.”

  “Not possible.”

  “You are paid to make it possible,” Dinero retorted.

  Angel responded. “Need I remind you that in addition to planning and training, there is also the unknown variable of our hired help? Our inventory of available killers is currently at zero. And even if we did have someone, training is a mixed bag. As we have learned, you can’t sign someone up for a weekend shooting camp and expect to churn out a military-grade assassin. There is no substitute for ten thousand rounds of ammunition through various weapons in different environments and situations. Not to mention the impact of stress on breathing and focus. It doesn’t take much to induce shaky hands.”

  “Your point is made.”

  “Good. As of now, we have zero assistants available. Our last two declined our offer. I have identified another three from the latest list who may be contenders. But there’s a lot of legwork to be done with those three before any decision can be made. As of today, if we needed to eliminate a target, we have no one who is trained and operational. No one.”

  “We do have two people who have been trained and proven that they are trustworthy.”

  “Reuse the help on a second assignment? That raises our risks considerably. One-and-done is the protocol we agreed upon.”

  “It may be time to deviate from the existing protocol.”

  “Easy for you to suggest. Unlike you, I spent time with the hired help. They could identify me. I don’t want to reengage any of them. It’s a risk I would prefer not to take. Retirement is my goal, not prison. I can get to prison on my own.”

  “If you’re sure about not using old help, then I have another suggestion. Let’s double the offer to others. See if any of those who previously declined our offer will reconsider for two million dollars.”

  Angel considered the option. “That’s a better plan than reusing the help from a previous assignment. But I’m not sure increasing the payout is going to solve our problems. A week or two is not long enough for effective training.”

  “Figure out options that don’t require training.”

  “I’ll consider the alternatives.”

  There was a long silence as the rain started to pound the roof of the cabin.

  “As I said, I’m not concerned with the details. That’s what you were hired for. That is what you are paid for,” Dinero said.

  Angel nodded. “What about this private detective?” he asked. “He could be an issue.”

  “Then you will have to deal with him.”

  “Do as I please?”

  “I’m only concerned about the final two people on the list. How you get it done will not keep me up at night.”

  Chapter 29

  Dan drove through downtown Middleburg, the heart of horse country, forty miles west of DC. The main drag was littered with art dealers, real estate offices, swanky coffee shops, and classy restaurants, most residing in two-hundred-year-old buildings with all the modern upgrades. Two banks, a gas station, and a church filled the remaining gaps on the two-lane main road. The working class side of Middleburg was one block over, on a parallel street, where the locals could still find the plumber, the electrician, and the Irish pub that had survived since the end of the Civil War.

  Three minutes and one stoplight later, Middleburg was in Dan’s rearview mirror. His smartphone rested on the passenger seat and directed him to turn at the second street on the left. Ten minutes farther, with rolling hills and dry stack stonewalls on both sides of the road, Dan turned at a driveway sandwiched between an old oak tree and a large red mailbox.

  The long gravel driveway kicked up dust as he approached the house in the middle of an open pasture. With the average size of the Middleburg home approaching nearly ten thousand square feet, the modest, all stone, metal roofed, one-story home on the hill was underwhelming.

  The large gate near the edge of the circular driveway in front of the house was the second indication the residence was not simply another home among the foxhunting and steeplechasing majority. A large closed-circuit camera loomed over the gate from a brick column. A black metal security fence ran the perimeter of the yard, its substantial size and girth subdued by well-manicured trees and shrubbery. Another set of cameras peered down on the front yard from the corners of the house. Dan looked closer at the yard and noticed ground sensor alarms at regular intervals.

  He rolled down the window of his car and pressed the button on the security panel in the brick column next to the front gate.

  A female’s voice echoed, “Who is it?”

  Before Dan could answer, a familiar male voice interjected, “Drive on up, Dan.”

  *

  Dan climbed the three stairs to the front porch of the house, and the door opened. Tobias, clean-shaven, stepped outside to meet Dan with a handshake. Dan’s eyes widened slightly at the sight of the well-groomed Tobias wearing pants and a shirt that hadn’t been pulled from the laundry pile.

  “Look at you. You clean up well.”

  “Got a girlfriend.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Must be serious. You shaved.”

  Tobias rubbed his chin. “Not that serious. But she doesn’t like stubble. Says it rubs a certain area of her anatomy the wrong way. And she says that if I want a certain area of my anatomy rubbed the right way, then I need to shave.”

  “Blackmailed.”

  Tobias turned his neck slightly to show Dan he still had long locks of dark hair pulled into a ponytail. “Now, if she asks me to cut my hair, we are done.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “I moved out here. She owns the place next door. Was married to a real estate developer. Poor guy died in a steeplechase accident.”

  “Really?”

  “Indeed.”

  “How does that fit into your death count total? Or have you stopped counting the number of people you know who have died?”

  Tobias stared into the distance from the front porch, and then answered. “My employer has me on Clomipramine. They thought it would be better for everyone if I gave it a try.”

  “So you aren’t counting the dead anymore?”

  Tobias leaned in towards Dan and whispered, “I’m still counting. I just count to myself.”

  “How many are we up to?”

  “Two hundred twenty-one.”

  “Does that include the girlfriend’s ex-husband?”

  “No, he died before I moved to the neighborhood.”

  Tobias took several deep breathes of the crisp morning air.

  “Nice place you have here. Beautiful view. Good location for security. Nice clean sightlines. A gravel driveway that kicks up dust. Ground sensors. Closed-circuit TV.”

  “My employers like security. I like seclusion. This is the compromise.”

  “So you ditched retirement in Belize?”

  “Not at all. I’m putting the finishing touches on a nice place in the former British Honduras, as we speak. I have a quarter-acre of waterfront land on the sunset side of the Ambergris Caye. I’m going down there next month for a visit. Going to spend the winter down there.”

  “A snowbird?”

  “I like to think I merely broadened my retirement horizon.
Funny how things work out. Who knew organized crime would make me legitimate? I figure with the deal I have with the casinos as an ongoing data consultant, I should be able to launder most of my dirty savings over the next five years or so. Little by little, I should be able to clean years of illegally acquired money. By the end of the decade, I should be entirely legit.”

  “I’m not sure if I like the sound of you being legit.”

  “Me either.”

  There was a long pause and then Tobias cut to the chase. “So, you said you need help looking for something?”

  “I do.”

  “You want to come in and see the new setup?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Dan followed Tobias through the living room, past the large stone fireplace and the matching leather sofas. Near the rear of the house, Dan could see the view from the back was no less spectacular than the view he had just enjoyed from the front. Without warning, Tobias turned left and disappeared down a flight of stairs at the edge of the kitchen. As Dan turned to follow his host, he heard dishes gently clinking together and smelled the faint scent of perfume in the air. It took all the restraint he had not to pass the entrance to the basement and wander into the kitchen just to see what kind of woman would put up with Tobias.

  Dan came down the stairs and stood in the middle of a large room filled with computers. Monitors, keyboards, servers, and enough wire to restring the Brooklyn Bridge ran from component to component. Expensive hardware to expensive hardware.

  “I have about the same bandwidth here that I did at the other place, but the equipment has been updated,” Tobias said.

  “All paid for by your employer?”

  “Considered as my signing bonus. You want a top-quality product, you have to have top-quality equipment.”

  “Or know how to hijack top-quality equipment.”

  “That works too. Hopefully, those days are behind me.”

  Tobias sat down in a well-worn office chair with wheels and pushed himself in front of a monitor and keyboard. “What are we looking for?”

  “I need you to find a connection between three people. And before you ask, one of them is a congressman’s wife.”

  “Which one?”

  “John Wellington.”

  “What is his wife’s name?”

  “Sherry Wellington.”

  “Who are the others?”

  “The father of Sherry Wellington’s son, Marcus Losh. Army vet. Disabled and deceased.”

  “Which one? He can’t be both.”

  “Deceased. Sorry.”

  “Who’s next?”

  “Carla Jackson.”

  “What’s her relationship?”

  “She worked with Sherry Wellington at a bar in Georgetown called J. Paul’s.”

  “The place with oysters in the window.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Snot on a shell.”

  “I don’t think that’s the restaurant’s official slogan.”

  “So where do you want me to look?”

  “Everywhere. I tried the usual places. I know Carla the waitress and Sherry Wellington worked at the same restaurant. And I know that Marcus Losh and Sherry Wellington had a relationship, lived together, and had a child together. I’m looking for something else.”

  “And you don’t know what it is.”

  “I don’t, but my guess is there’s something. The Army vet is dead. The waitress is also dead. Sherry knows both of them. She says she’s scared she may be next. She hired me to find her baby daddy’s killer.”

  “But she isn’t telling you the truth.”

  “She has a problem with the honesty.”

  “Okay. I can bang this thing off most law enforcement and government databases in just a couple of minutes.”

  Dan watched as Tobias’s fingers danced across the keyboard, interrupted by the intermittent reach for the computer mouse to the right. As Tobias worked his magic, Dan noticed the small basket of prescription medicine bottles sitting just under the main computer monitor.

  “You working on anything else you can talk about?” Dan asked.

  “Almost finished with the code for picking winners for professional baseball games.”

  “How accurate is it?”

  “It’s good. But it’s been a lot of work. Baseball has more variables and stats than football. It got a little weedy there for a while.”

  “Weedy?”

  Tobias answered without turning around. “You know, lost in the weeds. Data all over the place. You can’t think. Paralysis sets in because you have data and ideas growing up your legs like weeds. Mental overload. You start dreaming about data sets, which is an interruption to your waking hours when you’re thinking about data sets. You start talking to yourself. And then you start answering yourself. When it gets really bad, you can forget to go to the bathroom. It can get a little messy at times.”

  He may be on meds but he’s still flirting with instability, Dan thought. “Weedy. I’ll remember the term.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Tobias went over the results of the query. “We do have matches for employment for Sherry and Carla at J. Paul’s. Carla worked there first. Sherry worked there for a shorter period of time and joined after Carla. There is no cross-match with Marcus Losh and the restaurant, although he did have a few credit card charges for J. Paul’s.”

  “You can legally get credit card information?”

  “Not for all companies,” Tobias said. “Not yet, anyway,” he added, staring at the screen.

  “So there’s nothing tying Marcus Losh to Carla the waitress?”

  “Nothing.”

  “And Sherry Wellington and Marcus Losh?”

  “Obviously, there are quite a few commonalities. They lived together. They are both on their son’s birth records. They had a joint bank account for a brief period of time. They had renter insurance policies on their apartment.” Tobias paused. “Are you aware that Sherry Wellington had a restraining order and there was a domestic abuse charge filed against Marcus Losh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. If you hadn’t found that, I’d be concerned you were slipping.”

  “Thanks for your concern. Any other ideas?”

  “I’m not the idea man. I’m the data man. And the data tells me there is no triangular association.”

  “How confident are you?”

  Tobias spun in his chair and faced Dan. “If it’s there, I’ll find it. Give me another data point to work with and I’ll run it again.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  Tobias nodded. “Give me a call when you do.”

  Chapter 30

  Dan watched as the light in Sherry Wellington’s bedroom went dark at ten. As it had been for three consecutive nights, Sherry was heading to bed without her congressman husband. According to the files Dan was keeping in his head, the Senate hopeful usually arrived home between ten and eleven. But he showed signs of being a husband who tried. Two days prior he had returned home early, with flowers in hand. For his reward, the beautiful Sherry Wellington had pulled the bedroom curtains before nine.

  Dan checked his watch and remained on the park bench. In the blocks around Volta Park, the flower of life bloomed early and remained open late into the evening. A week into his assignment, Dan’s intelligence of the neighborhood rivaled that of the silver fox gossip who lived a block from the park and who spent her days bending the ear of any warm body she could corner on the sidewalk. Dan had learned to cross the street at the first echo of her cane hitting the sidewalk.

  But in many ways, Dan was becoming an equally nosey neighborhood fixture. He knew the man in the expensive suit who walked his poodle, replete with a diamond-studded necklace. He had a detailed mental picture of the young couple in expensive matching running shoes and headbands who generated lethargic, fifteen-minute-miles. He knew the schedule of the thirty-year-old woman next door who arrived home in the wee hours via taxi and wearing sweatpants. Dan was certain he’d seen her swinging o
n a pole at one of the District’s gentlemen’s clubs.

  Georgetown had it all. The eclectic crowd was as varied as the history, bars, and restaurant options. Dan understood why ten-foot-wide townhouses cost a million dollars and why dive apartments in century-old buildings with dripping faucets cost more than a mortgage on the other side of the river. It was all in the neighborhood.

  At ten thirty, Dan checked his watch before he began his goodnight patrol of the Wellington’s immediate block. In fifteen minutes Emily was scheduled to meet him at his apartment. Just a late evening drink somewhere in Georgetown. A little chitchat about the possibility of a serial killer in town. Dan exited the alley and turned to the right. He had enough time for one final around-the-block surveillance loop.

  Fifty yards from the park, Dan passed three students in various athletic gear with Georgetown Bulldog insignias. Given their location and direction, Dan surmised their most likely destination was the Tombs, a Georgetown student mainstay three blocks down but off the beaten track from the watering holes on M Street.

  As the three young men passed, Dan noticed a strong scent of patchouli oil wafting over him. Minutes later, heading in the opposite direction, Dan saw the same three men coming down the sidewalk again, this time walking away from the direction of the Tombs. Dan thought he heard Spanish being spoken and then noticed the three men fell silent as they neared.

  Dan’s radar emitted a weak warning signal.

  Dan and the three men approached each other from opposite directions of the cobblestone sidewalk. The tallest of the three men pressed a phone to his ear. Dan could see a collage of tattoos covering the hand and fingers holding the phone. The pace of the group slowed slightly as the distance between the Dan and the trio closed to ten feet. Dan mentally set his reaction for a hair-trigger response.

  The taller man with the tattooed hand removed the phone from his ear and slipped it into his pocket. A dangling earring swung from the earlobe of the man nearest Dan. The shortest member of the trio took up the rear of the triangle. Dan tried to make eye contact as they passed, but all three stared stoically straight ahead. Another blast of patchouli oil filled the air. Dan took several steps, waited for a few seconds, and then turned around, holding his position. He watched as the three men disappeared around the corner, walking back in the direction of Georgetown University’s main campus.