Deadly Past. Kris Rafferty

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СКАЧАТЬ as morning sunlight irritated her eyes, and felt relieved to recognize the view.

      Chinatown, Boston. She was at a federal safe house she’d used three weeks prior for a case now closed. Why was she here? Injured, with gun drawn, red flags flapping in the breeze. From her vantage point, she could see her black Lexus parked at the curb across the street, indicating she’d driven here. A quick press of her palm to her pants pocket and she found her car keys, which eased her mind enough to holster her gun. There was no sign of her iPhone, or wallet, suggesting she’d been robbed. But then what?

      She couldn’t remember.

      Whatever had happened had prompted her to seek shelter at the safe house. Not the worst decision she’d ever made. An active safe house had on-site personnel who could help her, and fill in some blanks. Hope spiked as she hurried out of the room, and it grew as she continued to recognize familiar wall-to-wall rugs, worn to the backing in places, dingy beige drywall, the dark hallway, the smell of cigarettes and air freshener. She might have lost time, but she remembered these details.

      The safe house had a hollow feel, and it surrounded her in silence. Calling out, searching every room, she continued to hope someone was there, until the last room was searched. Nothing and nobody. Not unusual, just damned inconvenient. When not staffed, the safe house was locked up tighter than a tick, heavily alarmed to protect its expensive surveillance tech. So how’d she get in?

      The security cameras would have the video. Cynthia hurried back to the surveillance room on the first floor, in the back near the kitchen. It was hard to focus past the stabbing pain in her head and the accompanying nausea, but she did, punching in the door’s code with trembling fingers. Afraid the code might have been changed since she’d last been here, she waited nervously, and then enjoyed a wave of relief when the door clicked open. She stepped inside to view a wall-to-wall display of monitors, each screen dedicated to a different live security camera: the building’s two entrances, all abutting streets, and the roof. A long desk in the middle of the room was covered with electronics, hard drives, and keyboards.

      Cynthia sat at the desk, logged in using her FBI security clearance, and pulled up archived digital video, searching for last night’s time stamp.

      The desk’s phone caught her eye as she scrolled through the video, keeping her finger on the keyboard’s down arrow button. It nudged her conscience. Her team leader, FBI Special Agent Jack Benton, would be wondering why she hadn’t arrived at work yet. Eight AM. He’d want her absence explained. He’d have questions, deserved answers, and she’d have none.

      She’d look like a fool.

      Cynthia’s heart sank as she thought of the many ways her team would spank her over this bizarre turn of events, but when she factored in the safe house’s phone protocols—three levels of security on all incoming and outgoing calls—it had her hesitating to broaden the scope of who knew of her troubles. Staff, rightly, would require explanations regarding a federal agent’s unauthorized use of a secret safe house, and her blackout would produce incomplete answers, suspicion, and be noted in her personnel file—a high cost for a potentially benign reason for waking, injured, in a Chinatown safe house.

      “Ugh.” A lifetime of following rules could not be ignored. She grabbed the phone, and then her image appeared on the monitor’s screen, distracting her enough to place the receiver back on its cradle. Digital time stamp: 10:30 PM. Cynthia’s image staggered down the center of the street, just outside of the safe house, gun drawn and hanging at her side. Drunk? Cynthia refused to believe her eyes. Then her image moved and a streetlight illuminated her face. She froze the image, zoomed in, and recognized pain—not inebriation—contorting her face.

      She’d arrived at the safe house injured. Good to know.

      Rummaging in a desk drawer, she found a flash drive, inserted it into the computer’s port, and watched as her image progressed past her parked Lexus to the safe house’s stairs, and then its stoop. Whatever her level of impaired cognition last night, she’d been clear-headed enough to punch in the door’s security code, but not clear-headed enough to drive. Cynthia paused the video, clicking appropriate pulldown menus, and copied, then downloaded, the time-stamped video footage.

      Benton would have questions, and this video was all Cynthia had to offer.

      She clicked “copy,” and flinched as pain flared behind her eyes. It blinded her for a moment, forcing her to breathe through the nausea. Her stomach lurched without warning, forcing Cynthia to lean over a waste bin as she emptied her stomach. Shaken, blinking past watering eyes, she struggled to read the screen, clicking a message panel she assumed said “download complete.” Tucking the flash drive into her pocket, she managed to breathe past the worst of her stomach’s spasms, and finally her vision cleared.

      The screen’s pop-up message box stated, “File deleted.”

      “No!” Cynthia hit the computer’s power button, hoping to hard boot the system, maybe activate an auto-recovery program. The computer didn’t respond. The screens remained unchanged as the words “File deleted” stared back at her. She hit the power button again. Still nothing. In full panic mode, Cynthia yanked the wires from the hard drive’s ports, front and back. All monitors went dark, and the hard drive’s motor fell silent. Heart racing, her breathing labored, Cynthia stared in horror at the wall of now blank monitors. What had she done?

      She’d fucked up.

      This computer system didn’t respond like her personal laptop. Where were the fail-safes? High tech federal security hardware should have fail-safes, but tech hated her, so maybe she’d found a way to make them fail. Cynthia couldn’t keep a watch more than six months before it died, and had long since given up wearing them. Even her iPhone hated her, always freezing, never working correctly. Why had she assumed she could finesse these computers? Cynthia groaned, realizing there was nothing she could do now but cut her losses. Tech support would clean up this mess as they’d cleaned up her other messes in the past.

      She pushed away from the desk, spared a glance for the soiled waste bin, and then remembered the sheets and comforter that she’d bloodied upstairs. Ten minutes later, she tossed them in the dumpster out back and headed across the street toward her car. Clicking her Lexus’s key fob, she opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel, instantly relieved to see her pink Kate Spade pocketbook in the backseat. Her gym bag was open on the passenger seat. Resting her hand on the clothes, she realized they were still slightly damp, and it triggered a memory. The gym last night. A couple blocks down. It might have security cameras, too, so maybe video there could fill in her memory gaps. Her iPhone lay on top of the soiled gym clothes—battery dead, big surprise—next to a small container of peppermint gum, which she fell on like a starving child. Her wallet was in her Kate Spade bag.

      “Hm.” Cynthia’s anxiety had her chewing the gum frenetically. “Curiouser and curiouser.” Finding her phone and wallet ruled out robbery, so what was left? Abduction by aliens?

      Fifteen minutes later, she parked at the curb of her Back Bay Gloucester Street apartment, impatient to call Benton from her landline phone. The peppermint gum had settled her stomach and her headache was under control, but she was panicking. Memories were flooding back…of men on their knees, bags over their heads, hands tied behind their backs. A brick wall. Blood. Lots and lots of blood. So…definitely not aliens.

      Cynthia dropped her keys twice as she worked the front lock to her apartment. Once inside, she hurried down the hall to her landline phone in the living room. In her rush, she dropped her pocketbook, and didn’t see him until she flipped on the overhead light. Cynthia lashed out with a punch, shrieking as fear suffused her. He twisted his upper body upon impact, stripping her blow of power, but by then her fright had СКАЧАТЬ