Fireflies: A Katie Bell Mystery (book 1) (23 page)

“Good shoot, all of you. Let’s get these bastards masks off,” Arthur said, bending over the middle body and pulling at the mask.

They quickly pulled off all three masks and Freckles muttered under her breath.

It was the crew Agent Pilsner had been tracking. Corey Cox, along with the rest of his crew. They looked just like the mug shots that had been circulating around the office.

Freckles let out a low whistle. “It’s a standard who’s who of scumbags. Except…”

Arthur looked at her. “I know.”

Dimitri Markovic was not among the bodies.

A
gent Tapscott rolled
over and stretched out his arm, expecting to find the back of Lacy’s naked back. Instead his arm simply hit the bed. Blinking in the morning light he saw she was not in his bedroom. He made a mental note to rescue hostages more often, the sex the previous night (and it had really lasted all night) was some of the best he had ever had. The scent of bacon made him blink away the sleep and roll out of bed, yawning.

He found her in the kitchen, the bacon making a pleasant crackling sound on one burner, as she flipped hot cakes on another.

“Morning, lover,” Lacy said smiling at him. She was wearing one of his shirts and apparently nothing else, and it was only buttoned halfway up.

“Is that … do I smell coffee?” Tapscott asked and his eyes darted over to the Clever Coffee Maker.

“I know you like it black, but I hope you don’t mind I added a little cream to mine.”

“Sacrilegious,” Tapscott said bemused as he moved around the kitchen island.

He came up behind her and kissed her on the neck and she moaned a little and arched her back. Tapscott noticed she had scrambled eggs too, and they looked utterly divine.

Lacy kissed him on the cheek and focused on flipping the pancakes.

“What can I say? I like my coffee like I like my men. All American and a bit on the blonde side,” she added with a wink.

Tapscott groaned and poured himself a cup of coffee and took a sip. Perfect.

“Do you have to go into work today?”

“Yeah, but not until noon. I have a debriefing.”

Lacy turned off the burners. “Is it going to be okay?”

“Of course. Standard investigation with any shooting. We’ll probably end up getting some medals after everything is said and done.”

“Any word on the last suspect? That … what was his name? Damond?”

“Dimitri. And you know I can’t talk about ongoing investigations, but considering my phone hasn’t blown up, I think you can guess the answer to that question.”

A
rthur was surprised
to find Fields was already at her desk when he arrived for work.

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to have the morning off.”

“Right. I know it’s just,” Fields spread her arms out at her desk. “What is it?” he asked, taking a seat across from her in Tapscott’s chair.

“Well, I didn’t get a ton of sleep last night.”

“Understandable. It was your first shooting.”

Fields waved that away. “No, not that. Why Dimitri was targeting that bank? Something about it… something about it bugged me. Also, it’s clear that we recovered everything but what? A hundred grand? Except … the safety deposit box. Which Dimitri, who planned this whole thing, cared about more than the millions in cash.”

“Right, but the deposit box belongs to a John Smith correct?”

“Yep. And tech’s been running down everything we have on the John Smith. It’s a ghost. Total and complete bullshit.”

“Well, with a name like John Smith I wouldn’t exactly call that shocking. What does the bank say?”

“The account was opened eight years ago and was paid up for the next twenty. They’re looking through boxes, but who knows if they actually have the file anywhere.”

“That’s not everything though. Something else is bugging you.”

“Yeah. Third Union bank. Something about it. Something’s bugging me about it.”

“How so?”

“I’ve heard that name somewhere else, and it somehow feels … there’s something else, and it wasn’t this case.”

Arthur rubbed his chin. “Well, what was it?”

Fields threw up her hands. “That’s the thing, I don’t have the faintest idea. I tossed and turned all night, but nothing. We have any idea who gave them insider info for the heist?”

“I’ve been around long enough to know that this investigation is going to go on for awhile. Whoever actually gave them information is probably dead or going to keep their mouth shut. You know how these things go. Hell, for all we know the information could have come from a disgruntled ex-employee.”

Fields shrugged and picked up a pencil and began tapping it on the desk. Arthur watched her for a second and then stood up.

He moved past her and stopped, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You did good out there yesterday.”

She didn’t reply and kept tapping her pencil. Arthur moved past her and reached the door to his office when the pencil stopped. “What did you just say?”

“Excuse me?” Arthur looked back at the younger agent.

“Say what you said to me again.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself? It was a good shoot?”

Fields waved at him with the pencil. “No, no, not that. Before that.”

Arthur frowned. “Oh, that the bank information could have come from a disgruntled ex-employee.”

Fields slammed the pencil down on her desk. “Yeah that was the one. Somebody from … the past,” she wasn’t really talking to Arthur but rather herself at that point.

She turned back to her keyboard and started to tap the keys. Arthur moved back to her and watched over her shoulder.

“Who?”

“Seaborn’s case. It was…” Fields’s fingers stopped typing and a file popped up. “Lacy Persons. She worked at Third Union for two years.”

“That was also over a year ago…”

“Boss, we thought it didn’t fit with Seaborn.”

Arthur looked at Fields for a long moment. He wasn’t convinced, but he was starting to see her side. Something else was bugging him too. “Can you do a search on her?”

“On Persons?”

“Yeah.”

Fields punched in the search and started to scroll down. Arthur pointed suddenly on the fifth link down. “That one.”

“Her mention in the college paper?”

Arthur nodded. Fields opened the article and scrolled down again. She stopped on a grainy photo of Persons. She was a few years younger and her hair was short and blonde. Arthur stared at the picture for a long moment and shook his head. “It can’t be. Not unless…”

Recognition filled his eyes. “Oh no. Pull up our internal database. We’ll need to order the files again, but we should have some stuff on Laura Booth.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Because she and her sister Sarah Booth were some of Martin Snow’s first victims, and also his youngest.”

Fields typed in the name and hit enter. The screen flickered for a second, like the computer was being cranky and wasn’t sure it wanted to do as she had asked of it. Then the whole screen went black. Except it wasn’t just Fields’s computer screen, suddenly every computer screen at every desk in the office went black, and then a skull appeared, and began laughing at them, in a high pitched chipmunk voice.

“What the fuck just happened?” Arthur snapped.

“I don’t … I just hit enter and…” she looked up at Arthur, a look of horror spread across her face. “Oh God, there was a virus somehow installed. Waiting for that and … Oh God, Tapscott.”

“What about him?”

“He’s been seeing Lacy. Or rather hooking up with her. I know after we had drinks last night she was going to come over and…”

“Call him. Call him right fucking now.”

T
apscott took
another bite of bacon and moaned. “This is so good.”

Lacy squeezed his hand and smiled. “Good. I’m glad you like it.”

Her phone chirped and Lacy sighed and picked it up, glancing at the screen. She seemed distant for a moment, and it was like the room had suddenly gotten several degrees colder.

“Everything okay?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, just a work thing … I thought I had the night off, but apparently things got moved up. Unfortunate really. I was looking forward to spending the time with you.”

“It’s okay,” he said between shoveling a bite of pancake into his mouth. “We’ll always have last night.”

Lacy smiled and stood up. She went around the kitchen island and refilled her coffee mug. “Kenneth, that was some really amazing stuff last night. It was … stupendous. Just thought you should know.”

Tapscott snickered. “Stupendous?”

Lacy giggled. “What can I say? You fucked my brains out last night, I can’t think of a better word at the moment.”

He smiled. “Thanks, babe. You were really something else.”

“Aw, I tried.”

Tapscott took another bite of bacon and moaned again. “Seriously, this is so good. I swear, I just love bacon. I want it to be my last meal on earth,” he said, and took another sip of his coffee and sighed, content.

Lacy came around the kitchen island and started humming something softly as she moved to his side, and set her coffee cup down. It sounded familiar to Tapscott, but he couldn’t quite place it, and at the moment he didn’t care. With one hand she started to rub his shoulder, and Tapscott reached up and squeezed her hand.

“You know, honey, that was a very poor choice of words.”

Tapscott looked up into her eyes and smiled. “How so, babe?”

“Easier just to show you, lover,” Lacy said, and raised his chef’s knife to his throat and dragged it across the skin with a single clean flick of her wrist.

Tapscott gasped, his eyes filled with dull shock as Lacy slit his throat. He laughed, and as blood spurted out he reached up and tried to close the wound, but Lacy coldly brought the knife down again, jamming it into his chest.

Tapscott struggled, falling out of the chair and hitting the kitchen floor hard. He started to crawl away from Lacy, even as she just stood there, watching him.

Dully, Tapscott realized what the humming was, and where he had last heard it.

In Martin Snow’s cell.

Snow had been humming the same tune, and only now did he actually place it.
She’ll be coming around the mountain.

“Can I tell you a secret, honey? It’s something I’ve only told a few people,” Lacy said, moving past him.

On the kitchen table, Tapscott’s phone started to rattle. Lacy picked it up and looked at the display, before setting the phone back down.

“Oh dear, it looks like we don’t have much time to play. I believe that would be your colleagues, calling you to warn you about me. Oops,” Lacy said, rolling him over so he was on his back.

Tapscott was shaking, his whole body twitching as he tried to hold his throat with one hand and his side with the other.

“Man, you really aren’t looking so good are you? So like I was saying, I have a secret to tell you, lover,” Lacy said.

She dropped onto his waist, straddling him. “The sight of fresh blood, especially somebody I’ve just cut,” Lacy shivered. “Nothing gets me wetter. It’s a shame we don’t have time to play one more time. Because right now, I could go for a nice, hard fuck,” she said.

Tapscott reached out, grabbed Lacy’s neck. He tried to squeeze as hard as he could, but if anything it just seemed to amuse her and she pushed his hand away. He coughed again, and blood came out of his mouth. “I always liked the fact that you were a fighter. Oh well,” she said, and brought his chef’s knife down, jamming it right into his left eye and twisting the blade hard.

Agent Tapscott’s body shivered and jerked, and then his body went still. Lacy stared at him for a long moment before getting off of him.

“Can’t be lazy. Lots to do, lots to do,” she said, and went back to humming as she began to work.

T
he Gibson Institute
sat in the middle of the uninspired plain, it’s tall chain link fence surrounding it like a moat around a gothic castle.

A grey Dodge repair van rolled up along the dusty road leading to it with the words DEWY’S ELECTRICAL REPAIR written on the side in bright blue letters. The security guard at the main gate looked at the driver of the vehicle suspiciously. The driver was unusually skinny and had thick circler glasses on.

The security guard stared at the driver’s credentials for a moment. “What’s this about?”

“Apparently there have been some problems with the central air unit in the upper floors?”

Stan, the guardsmen had heard about that. He worked for a private security company that contracted out specifically for ground security, and nothing in house. It wouldn’t surprise him there had been a problem. All winter long they had been beefing up the security system, and repairmen had been coming and going.

“Okay, park around the side,” Stan said, and buzzed them in.

Stan barely took notice of the man-sitting shotgun to the driver, an older gentleman with dark eyes and a scar running from his ear down to the base of his neck.

“
T
ell me we have something
,” Ruben said, walking with Arthur and Fields as she talked.

They were back in the office after visiting Tapscott’s apartment. The computer screens were still flashing the laughing skulls, though somebody had been smart enough to at least mute the volume.

“We have an APB out for Lacy Persons, and we’ve already hit her work, known associates and her apartment. We’ve also got the airport on lock down,” Fields said.

“Laura Booth,” Arthur corrected.

“Boss, there’s no way of knowing for sure…”

Arthur cut off Fields with a look.

“Are you sure, Arthur?” Ruben asked him, looking at her old partner in the eye.

He looked right back. “She was right under our noses the whole time. Plus…”

“It fits,” Ruben finished for him.

“I’m sorry, but she was dead.”

“No body was ever found, just enough of her blood that we assumed he had killed her someplace else. Of course if he had been draining her blood slowly…”

“But why? He kidnapped both of them, and killed her sister.”

“Stockholm syndrome is a real thing, Agent Fields,” Ruben said.

Arthur looked at the junior agent. Ruben’s phone rang, and she turned away from the two of them to answer it.

“Look, if anyone could twist a young impressionable girl into a killer, it’s Martin Snow.”

Ruben finished her call and turned back to them. “That was IT. The virus your search triggered went directly for our database servers. They’ve been able to contain it, but we won’t know the full damage of what it’s been doing for forty-eight hours. They do say thanks though. Apparently they’ve seen enough of the virus to know it’s something they have been hearing rumors about on the dark net, some new super virus named Firefly.”

“We still don’t know how it got in the system?” Arthur asked.

“Some idiot had to plug something in. My understanding the only way it works is if it was previously planted in the system, secretly growing and replicating before the trigger code wakes it up.”

Fields let out a hiss. “Shit.”

Both the senior agents looked at her at once and said at the same time, “what?”

“About a month ago I saw him open an email she sent him, it was a sexy pic of her in lingerie.”

“Christ, that would do it.”

“That’s what the money she stole from Seaborn was for. Paying for the virus,” Arthur said.

“Why pay fifty grand for a computer virus? You can get nasty stuff for much cheaper.” Fields said.

“My understanding is that Firefly isn’t just a virus, it’s a universal key. Or rather, bolt cutters that can cut your way through any lock, digitally. That’s why our firewalls alone aren’t taking it out. It’s causing digital chaos.”

Arthur’s face fell. “We have to call the institute right now.”

Ruben looked at him sharply. “Why?”

“Because I know what they stole from the bank, and I know what this is all about. Laura Booth isn’t trying to just be his disciple, she’s trying to break Martin Snow out.”

T
he security van
had been parked at the side parking lot of the institute for maybe fifteen minutes when the alarms started to go off. Two minutes later, out the same door they had come in, the three people that had entered all wearing matching grey repair outfits walked out, followed by a fourth individual in an all white institute uniform.

Martin Snow turned his head up towards the sky and inhaled deeply, taking in the fresh air.

It was overcast, but the chances of rain looked unlikely. “We gotta get going,” Lacy Persons said, smiling at Snow warmly.

“Thank you, Laura,” Martin said, jumping into the back of the truck.

Stan tried to stop them at the gate, but as he approached the van with his Smith and Wesson out and shaking in his hands, Dimitri quickly drew and fired his silenced HK USP. He fired four rounds, and all four caught Stan squarely in the chest, killing him before he could even properly rest his finger on the trigger.

T
hat evening
it made national news, and Martin Snow watched some of the coverage from the comfort of his Holiday Inn suite.

They had ditched the van a mile down the road and had fire bombed it, getting into a dark green Chevy Malibu they had previously stashed.

Forty minutes later they switched again, this time splitting up. The man with glasses who Martin gathered was named Ed, left them at that point, ditching his glasses and getting into an old Chevy pickup truck that was parked outside of a dive bar off the interstate. Dimitri got in a silver VW Golf, and Laura and Martin got in a black Nissan Altima. They drove a hundred miles at which point they stopped for the evening. Laura Booth had put on a wig and padded bra that matched her fake ID and drivers license she had gotten from one of Dimitri’s contacts, and the woman at the reception desk had barely looked at her as she handed the serial killer the two keycards.

Once in the room, Martin dyed his hair blond in the bathroom.

A
n hour later
, Dimitri knocked on the door to the room. Laura answered it, and he entered the room.

Martin was sitting on the king sized bed, drinking two fingers full of Oban 14 out of one of the Holiday Inn’s complimentary glasses. He took it with a single ice cube, no water. He wore one of the Inn’s bathrobes and nothing else.

Dimitri had changed into a pair of jeans with a white T-shirt and a jean jacket. He had a backpack slung over his left shoulder and set it down on the bed.

Laura, who was wearing a pair of black yoga pants and a matching tank top moved past him and took a seat at the desk in the corner of the room.

Dimitri opened the backpack and set the safety deposit box on the bed, still unopened.

“Crazy over there told me the case was booby trapped so I didn’t bother to try and open it. You got a key?”

“I do. The question is, what’s in it for you? Half the diamonds?”

Dimitri started to laugh. “Half? Hell no. Crazy agreed to all the diamonds, you just get everything else inside.”

Martin shrugged. “Well, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers, and you did break me out after all. Laura, the key please.”

Out of seemingly thin air Laura tossed Martin the safety deposit key. Dimitri pulled out his silenced HK from underneath his jacket and leveled it at Martin’s chest. “Easy now.”

Martin smiled and slid the key into the lock. “Of course.”

He opened the box and looked down. “There it all is.”

Dimitri hesitated for a second and then his eyes flickered down. Martin moved in a blur, smashing the glass of scotch into Dimitri’s head with one hand as he shoved the barrel of the gun out of the way with the other. Dimitri grunted and squeezed the trigger of the pistol, but the round harmless slashed into the bed. Martin leapt onto the Russian gangster and his hands moved like a striking viper. He yanked the gun free from Dimitri’s grip and began hitting him over-and-over with his fists. In short order his knuckles were bloody and Dimitri was unconscious.

Martin stood up and examined the contents of the safety deposit box, which had spilled onto the bed. There were two syringes with a green liquid inside of them, two Spyderco pocket knives, three passports and ID combinations with matching credit cards all wrapped in a piece of plastic and bound with a rubber band, twenty thousand dollars cash, and a black velvet pouch.

Martin selected one of the syringes and undoing the cap end he injected it into Dimitri’s neck.

“How long should that keep him out for?”

“Twelve hours or so.”

“You know that was pretty hot,” Laura said getting up from the desk and moving over to Martin.

He smiled and touched her hair. “You know it really is something special that you freed me.”

“It’s been so boring without you,” she said and leaned in, her lips finding his.