Fatal Transaction (Thriller & Suspense, Cyber Crime) (2 page)

Chapter 2

R
ubbing oil into the six-panel wood doors of his 1920s home, Derry found the work to be mindless. Images of Tami kept popping up. Or were they images of the woman he had run into after work today?

Did it matter?

Finishing the last door, he threw the rag aside. Grabbing a clean cloth, Derry wiped his hands and moved to the window for some fresh air. He should have done the work outside, but the threat of rain forced him indoors. Rotating around, he scanned the dining area and kitchen, noting the number of half-done projects. Too many. He’d hoped to have the house restored within a year of buying it, but that date had come and gone several months ago.

Tonight, he worked not to finish the house, but to remove the thoughts of Tami from his mind. It wasn’t helping. He reached for his phone. Scrolling through his list of contacts, he selected FBI and waited for the call to go through. He needed to talk to his close friend, Special Agent Lamar Stover, one of the few people who knew his past and had been there that vile night.

“Hey there, what’s up?” Lamar’s deep rich voice always had a positive effect on Derry.

“Hi. You busy tomorrow night?”

A short pause. “Nope. It’s open. Why?”

“Want to grab a bite? I’ll buy.”

“Sounds good. Just tell me where and when.”

“How about Tony’s? It’s a good halfway point. Around six-ish?”

“That’ll work. Is anything up?”

Derry couldn’t bring it up over the phone.

“No, not really. Just tired of eating alone.” Which was true.

“I know how that is. See you tomorrow around six.” Lamar’s warm chuckle brought his image to mind. At six foot four and just over two hundred sixty pounds of mostly muscle, Lamar was an intimidating figure, and it wasn’t all show.

The strong scent of oil permeated the house. Sliding his phone into his pocket, Derry examined the five doors lying across the sawhorses. They appeared wet. Much of the oil was still sitting on the surface. He’d wait until tomorrow to move them.

Instead, he grabbed his laptop. Finding a clear place on the couch, he sat down to check his email. It was mostly spam, but there was a new message from Mary, a woman closer to him than his own mother.

She needed help with her books. Again. Mary’s heart was pure gold, but when it came to bookkeeping, well, let’s just say it was a good thing she had a heart of gold. Since the time he lived in her youth home, as regular as the seasons, every three months he had to fix her accounts. He’d tried to show her how to do the bookkeeping, but she just couldn’t get it.

He liked helping Mary. She was a good woman, and she had saved him from living on the streets after his stepfather kicked him out. His stepfather blamed him for Tami’s death. Maybe he was right.

Forcing his mind out of the past and back into the present, Derry went back to the email. He fired off a reply and moved the laptop aside.

The hot August night was stifling in this poorly-insulated, non-air conditioned home. He headed out the back door in search of cooler, fresher air. Stepping onto the back deck, his gaze wandered to the double-car garage that faced the alley. It was newer than the house, but had not been maintained. The woman who owned the house before him planned to turn it into a guesthouse and rent it out. She’d hired some men to work on it, but when she became ill, the work stopped.

From the outside, it appeared to be a forty-year-old garage. However, much of the inside work was done. Water, gas, electricity and insulation had all been installed, but there was much remaining to do.

Another project. Oh joy. Why did I think this would be so much fun?

***

“Where have you been?”

Sara’s heart rate spiked. She gripped her apartment key to use as a weapon.

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

It was Jarred, one of Levy’s dogs.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

Sara wanted to ignore him and unlock the door, but she didn’t want him following her into the apartment. Lowering her hand, she faced him. “Get lost.”

“I asked you where you’ve been.”

“And I heard you. So what?”

Sara scooted back as Jarred moved toward her.

“Get away from me.” She raised her empty hand to push him back.

Jarred grabbed her upper arm and thrust her into the brick wall, pinning her there. “You left work early. You were gone most of the day. That’s against Mr. Levy’s rules. So, I will ask you again. Where did you go?”

He reeked of foul cigarettes and sweat. Controlling her desire to gag, she fought back the fear. Fear would only heighten his suspicion that she was up to something.

“It’s none of your business—or Levy’s.”

“He doesn’t like you running off.” He squeezed her arm a little tighter with each word.

“Yeah, well, he’ll just have to get over it.” She tried to yank her arm free, but his hand was too strong.

Jarred tightened even more as he shoved her harder into the rough bricks, rubbing her arms raw.

“Watch your mouth.”

“Or what? You going to hit me? Knock me around? Yeah, I bet you’d like that. You’d better call Levy and find out if it’s okay first.” Sara battled to keep her voice steady, strong.

“You think you’re pretty smart.”

“A whole lot smarter than you and your buddy Ryan.”

Sara anticipated another push, which never came.

Releasing her arm, he lowered his hand. “Don’t run off again.”

“What I do is—”

“You work for Mr. Levy. You’ll do as he says. Is that clear?” His voice was softer than a minute ago.

“Maybe you better call in and get directions on what to do next.”

“Maybe you’d better do as you’re told before you end up like—”

“Like Steve? But I suppose you think you’re safe. None of us are safe.” Sara edged away from the wall.

Four months ago, Levy had forced Sara to watch as he had Steve executed. He said it was a lesson she needed to understand. That’s when she realized her days were numbered. That’s when she started making plans to run and make Levy pay with the only thing that mattered to him—money.

Jarred shouldered past her, knocking her against the wall one more time.

The rough bricks tore at her shoulder as a hundred insults flooded her mind.

Sara rubbed her arm, and watched Jarred walk away.

She delayed entering her apartment. Once he’d disappeared down the stairs, she turned toward the door. Her hand shook as she struggled to insert the key into the lock. Finding the hole, she quickly unlocked the door and stepped inside.

She leaned against the inside of the closed door, holding her bag tight against her side.

What am I doing? This is crazy. How did I get into this mess?

Regaining control, she switched on the lights in the living room and closed the shades. She retrieved her new birth certificate and read the name for the seventh time that night.

Sara Chelsea Ramos

It appeared real enough. She rubbed the certificate between her index finger and thumb. It felt real. Was it enough to give her a new identity, a new life?

She plopped down into a chair. Her gaze flitted toward the door.

Levy sent Jarred to check on me. How much does Levy know?

Questioning her plans, Sara contemplated running tonight.

No, if she ran without everything in place, she wouldn’t make it out of the state before one of Levy’s men found her and brought her back. She didn’t want to end up like Steve. She had to stick to her plan. It was her only hope to escape Levy’s hooks.

Chapter 3

Standing in the dark alley, looking down at the gun pointed at his heart, he reached out and grabbed the barrel. As his hand twisted it, the other boy’s finger pulled back on the trigger. A loud boom echoed in his ears. The blinding flash lit up the boy’s face.

D
erry jerked to a sitting position, body covered in sweat. Eyes wide open, he surveyed his surrounding, confused. Where was he? The gunshot echoed in his ears.

He rubbed his eyes and face, forcing his mind back to reality. Opening his eyes again, he peered into the darkness. After a few intense seconds, the placement of the window across the room made sense. He was in his bedroom. The shot was just a nightmare.

It was a moonless night, and the room was too dark to convince him that this world was real. He swung his feet to the floor and stood, then groped his way out of the bedroom, the floor squeaking under his feet. Derry headed to the living room. A narrow shaft of light from the nearby streetlight filtered in through the front window. Parting the curtains, he gazed out onto the quiet road. The fragrance of the oily doors permeated his senses.

What time is it?

He swiveled toward the kitchen and peered at the clock on his microwave.

4:17.

The sun wouldn’t be up for at least two hours, but he wasn’t sure if he could get back to sleep, or if he even wanted to try. Back in his bedroom, he put on a pair of shorts, a tee shirt, and tennis shoes. Maybe a walk in the cool night air would clear his head. He charged out the door.

Why were the nightmares back? It had been a couple of years since he’d had one so intense.

As he walked, his speed increased. Before long, he was running, hard. If only it were that easy to run from the bad dreams, from his past.

As he ran, he thought again about his chances of seeing the woman he had run into after work.

Maybe she worked in his building.

His head told him to stop thinking about her.

If only he could.

Chapter 4

“Y
ou going to make the deadline?”

The demanding voice startled Sara, causing her to mistype a command. Hitting the escape key rapidly several times, she barely prevented her computer from removing the wrong files. She frowned in frustration.

“I asked you a question.”

Looking over her shoulder, Sara saw Levy hovering in the doorway. His colorless expression matched the drab windowless office she shared with Kai. Behind Levy was an even uglier sight, Mike, his top tag-along bodyguard.

Sara disliked all of Levy’s lackeys—they gave her the creeps—but Levy was the epitome of evil. He terrified her.

The public adored him. He was charismatic, with a winning smile that complemented his expensive suits. To the people of Denver, he was a great benefactor, helping poor homeless youth. Yeah, he helped them all right. He paid kids to do his dirty work. To the public, he was the man who was always willing to give someone a second chance. The second chance he gave them, however, was to commit crimes and not get caught. Those who did get caught disappeared before they had a chance to talk. Levy had connections in high places.

Levy reminded Sara of the man who played Batman. He resembled Bruce Wayne and, just like Batman, he led two lives. The big difference was that Levy’s secret life was more like the Joker’s: cold, heartless, and demented.

Swiveling around in her squeaky chair, Sara faced the door. “The routing code’s been downloaded and tested for the credit card banks. It should all be in place this week. And I’ve run tests on the different decryption algorithms. They all work.”

She worked as a freelance programmer for the credit card industry, but Levy was blackmailing her into using her connections to develop a program that would allow him to steal thousands of credit card numbers randomly from around the city and then place fake charges with them. For the past six months, she had been slipping small pieces of code past the rigorous tests of the credit card industry. This code would allow fraudulent charges to slip past the banks’ safeguards and route the money to one of Levy’s accounts. From there, the money would be transferred through several other banks, finally ending up in a secure location.

Sara had also developed the program that would be used to steal the credit card numbers from businesses by using special cards that read information from credit card machines and transferred it to Levy’s system.

“So it will be ready as planned?”

Good news first. Now to give him the bad news. “I’m close. I found a bug, but I came up with a workaround. Once I run a few more tests, I’ll be ready to load new code on the cards.”

Levy moved in, crowding her chair, intimidating her. “A bug?”

The temperature in the room spiked, as most of the air was sucked out. Tipping her head back, Sara stared up at Levy’s towering frame.

“It’s a small bug. I modified the code to make the cards enter a command into the card reader to switch on the reader’s output. All the newer readers have the ability to send data to the cards, but in our first set of tests, I found most of them have it turned off.”

Searching for a less vulnerable position, Sara pushed the chair back and stood. It didn’t help. At six foot two and two hundred pounds, Levy’s frame dominated her view.

“That’s sloppy work.” His gaze shifted away from her for a fraction of a second, then back. “What new problems will this workaround of yours cause?” His cold blue eyes sent a chill down her back.

Resolving not to show her intimidation, Sara kept her feelings in check. “The change will require the cards to make two passes through each reader.”

His eyes bore into her. “Why two?”

“The first pass will determine the type of reader used and send the correct set of commands to turn on the output of the reader. I’m in the process of compiling a list at this time for the different p—”

Cutting Sara off, Levy raised his voice a little. “I’m not interested in your details. I’m only interested in the delays that your lack of foresight is costing me.”

“I told you this could be a problem when I started. I asked for more time to research it.” It was becoming more difficult to keep her voice steady, but she continued. “In the second pass, the card reader will download the data to our card.”

“Why can’t it be done in one pass?” Levy backed off enough for Sara to take a breath of air.

“Neither the cards nor the readers are fast enough. It takes several milliseconds for the reader to process the command, and even more time to switch on the outputs. The cards themselves aren’t fast enough to change from input to output and back to input mode, plus read the data. It takes time, making it impossible to do it all in one swipe.”

“What will the clerk see on the first pass?”

“An error. At that point, they will just swipe the card again. Errors occur all the time. No one will think anything about it.”

Levy’s voice registered irritation. “How much delay has this problem caused in my schedule?”

The true answer was about three days, but Sara needed more time than that for her escape plan. She stared down at the floor as if calculating the time needed. Fixing her gaze back on his, she sounded as matter of fact as she could. “Two weeks tops. We should have everything fully up and running by end of next month.”

“Each day you delay this project costs me more money.” Levy leaned forward. “This had better be the last problem.”

Unable to maintain eye contact, Sara looked toward the door. Seeing Mike wearing his lopsided grin, she turned back. She wanted to inform Levy it was impossible to know if there were other problems until the testing was complete. She wanted to tell him that was why people ran tests, but she knew better. “It should be. Final testing will start in two weeks.” She moved back toward her chair.

Levy glared down at her. “Final testing? I want the whole project completed in two weeks.”

Rejecting her natural reaction to back away from danger, Sara forced her fake confidence to the surface. “Can’t be done, not if you want it untraceable. It’s a complicated program. Every part of it, everything we do, has to be fully tested, including the commands the cards send out. It all takes time. If it’s not—”

Levy raised his hand. “Enough.” Turning to Kai, he addressed her. “I want you off your other projects as of now. Give Sara whatever help she needs.”

Glancing back at Sara, Levy added, “With two of you working on this, it will go faster. Two weeks.”

“That’ll help, but much of the testing can’t start until—”

The blow knocked her up against the wall. Her head bounced off the cinderblocks.

“Two weeks.” His voice boomed.

Sara rubbed her mouth with one hand, and used her other arm to push herself upright.

Levy glanced over at Kai. “How much do you know about this?”

Wide-eyed, Kai rose to her feet. “Only my part.”

“What do you know about hers?”

Kai shifted her gaze between Sara and Levy. “Nothing really. It’s different than what—”

Levy twisted back to Sara. “Three weeks, and that’s it. I don’t care if that means you’re here twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week. I want every part of this project fully tested and running in three weeks. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Three weeks would give her the time she needed. She kept her focus on Levy.

“You have something more?”

She didn’t want to get hit again. “No. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to start field tests.”

Just when she thought she was off the hook, Levy reached up behind her. Grabbing her hair and pulling down hard, he forced her into her chair. Leaning over her, he kept her head pinned back and glowered at her. “You do whatever you need to do. Get this done in time. If I learn this is all some trick of yours” —Levy leaned in and whispered in her ear, and she could smell his foul breath— “you’ll wish for the quick death I gave Steve.”

***

“What are you looking at?” Sara’s head ached, and Kai staring at her was annoying.

Kai glanced toward the door and back before responding. “You okay?”

Sara could see from her seat that Levy and Mike had descended the stairs. Her lip stung when she touched it. “Yeah, I’ll live.”

Kai rolled her chair over next to Sara’s.

Other than having dark brown hair, the two women had little else in common. Kai was four years Sara’s senior. Her family was Hawaiian. She was tall, large-boned, with coffee brown skin. She presented a stark contrast to Sara’s small pale figure.

Where Sara’s computer skills were mostly self-taught, Kai had over three years of college for computer security. The story around the office was that Kai’s father was some type of computer spy before he was murdered during Kai’s last year of college. Kai would never say how or who murdered him or even confirm that the story was true.

The second floor of the building was split. One half contained Levy’s plush office with its own stairwell. The other half had several offices. Sara’s and Kai’s was ten by twelve, and sat at the end of the short, wide hall. The structure was one of many that Levy owned or leased around Denver. This one under Mike’s name.

Both women had identical top-of-the-line, custom-built computers with two twenty-seven-inch monitors each, allowing them to run and monitor several programs at once. Levy supplied the computers, high-speed Internet and any software they needed to do his work.

Kai lived on the ground floor below, and was happy to be there. Levy supplied her with a five hundred square foot apartment in the back of the building, rent-free.

Leaning in, Kai whispered, “What was all that about?”

Sara wished she could confide in Kai and tell her what she was planning, but the risk was too high. She had to watch out for herself first. “What do you mean?” Sara touched her lip again, finding it sticky.

“The other day you said something about being close to finishing this project. Now you’re saying three more weeks?”

“I found a problem. Why?”

Kai cast a glance out the door then back. “It’s just—you need to be careful, that’s all.”

“Look, I found a bug. It needs to be fixed. You think you could do better? Go ahead and take over, and I’ll go lie on the beach somewhere.”

Kai placed a hand on Sara’s shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze. “It’s not that. It’s—” Kai stole another peek out the door. “Did you hear about Ryan?”

“You mean the one who doesn’t have the brains to wipe tables at McDonald’s?”

Kai’s face registered fear. “I heard Levy got mad at him and”—another quick glance out the door before twisting back—“killed him. Shot him in his office.”

Sara was only a little surprised. “Who’d you hear that from?”

“Mi— I just heard it. Last night.”

“Mike told you?”

No response, just a blank stare.

“Well, for now, I’m still needed. Levy can’t afford to get rid of me.”

“I hope so.” Kai lowered her hand, and moved her chair back toward her desk.

“So, why are you still seeing Mike? You know he’s bad news.” Sara didn’t want to talk or think about Ryan.

“He’s nice to me.”

Was it a statement or a question?

“You could do so much better.”

“He’s safe.” Kai’s voice was soft.

Did she really believe what she just said? “Safe? He works for Levy. He’ll do whatever Levy tells him to do.”

“Look, I know you have trouble understanding this, but Mike’s a nice man. He’d never hurt me.”

Sara wasn’t sure whether Kai was trying to convince herself or Sara.

Raising her gaze to meet Sara’s, Kai added, “At least I’m not trying to pick a fight with the man who would kill me for getting out of line.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to do my work. It’s not like I’m here by choice.”

Before Levy had learned about Sara’s past, she had worked out of her apartment as an expert in encryption-decryption, a skill for which credit card companies were willing to pay good money.

“And you think I am?”

“I’m only here because I was forced into this job.” Was it the ache in Sara’s head that made her want to argue? It didn’t matter.

“It’s better than being on the streets.” Kai shoved her chair against her desk and leaned back. She insisted she liked working for Levy. After living on the streets, Kai swore she’d never go back. Her eyes narrowed, “So what does he have on you?”

“None of your business.” Levy’s knowledge gave him power over Sara. No one else needed that power.

“What’d you do? Steal? Murder? What?”

“I did what I had to do.”

Kai’s voice became cold. “Yeah, well, so did I. Working for Levy is better than lying on my back.”

Sara shot a hard look at Kai, “I never—”

Kai’s face softened, “I didn’t mean you. I’m sorry. It’s just that so many of the other girls on the street made their money that way. I almost ended up that way. I’ll do whatever is necessary not to go back to the streets.”