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Chillwater Cove
By Thomas Lakeman St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2007 Thomas Lakeman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-8316-7
CHAPTER 1
STORYTIME HAS SEEN BETTER days, the woman in the red Lamborghini thought as she pulled up to the old school-house. Once upon a time, sending your toddler to Storytime Children's Academy was something to brag about in Philadelphia. Now the place was a rathole. On that chill April night, the only other vehicles in the lot were a green Eldorado, a van from Propeller Hedz Computer Services, and a blacked-out panel truck with Jersey plates. It was the last one that troubled her: the truck's tag number had checked out fake, and the driver's description wasn't on her prep sheets.
The woman's business cards read Renée McDormand, Importer-Exporter — as did several other pieces of identification, none of them more than a few hours old. Her real name was FBI Special Agent Peggy Weaver. Somewhere in the darkness, men with automatic weapons waited for her command.
Peggy briefly checked herself in the mirror: thirty-seven, auburn hair, hazel eyes, light freckles on a nose that she'd never liked. That night her eyebrows were freshly tweezed and she wore a killer black suit that made the SWAT team boys grin at their final briefing. Peggy wasn't sure if the getup made her look more like an executive or a trophy wife, but that was precisely what the subject's profile demanded. She sure as hell didn't look forward to chasing anyone on those stiletto heels.
"Stop primping. You look fine." A cocksure male voice spoke over her in-ear receiver. "I see you decided to go with the black bra."
"My eyes are up here, Yeager." She raised an eyebrow at the cable van down the road, where her partner Mike Yeager was running tactical. "Yoshi's in place?"
"Roger that. We've got thermal and audio surveillance working. Awaiting visual." He paused. "Sounds like they're still debating whether to trust you. You sure you want to go in alone like this?"
"I'm not crazy about it. But until we confirm the victim's status, this has to be a soft-target entry."
"Yoshi just texted us. The panel truck driver's carrying a semiautomatic, maybe a forty-five. He's brought at least two friends along." Mike's voice lowered; he'd put her on closed comm. "Make an excuse and get out, Peg. This smells bad."
She didn't answer. Someone was watching her through the blinds. Peggy stood from the car, smoothing her jacket to make sure her Glock 22 was still within easy reach. Please God, don't make me use this tonight: the prayer she breathed every time she armed herself. Don't let anyone die because I missed something important.
The door opened before she could knock.
"Hello!" Peggy was all bright smiles and handshakes. "I'm Renée McDormand. Thank you so much for meeting me this late."
"I have to admit, my wife didn't like your people sending a woman." Dr. Barry Cooke, the school's pastry-plump co-director, escorted Peggy through dark and empty playrooms. "She thinks I'm a pushover for pretty girls."
She smiled. "Actually, Dr. Cooke, I own the company — well, I and our mutual friends."
His eyes flickered south of her neckline. "You obviously do well. What is that out front, a Lamborghini Diablo? Magnificent. What did it cost, if you don't mind?"
"Oh — a buck and a half?" She was glad she'd remembered to ask the attorney who lent her the vehicle. "I didn't get overcharged, did I?"
"A hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Please." He chuckled. "You practically stole it. Time was I could have driven a car like that right off the lot. Not today. Not with all the troubles Dr. Barry Cooke is having lately."
Dr. Barry Cooke often referred to himself in the third person — as did his wife, Dr. Clara Cooke. Peggy knew that the degrees were bogus — just as she knew that, in their native Ukraine, their true names were Vasyl and Kalyna Kohut. The Cookes' troubles began when one of their employees was arrested on possession of child pornography. Thanks to a ruinously expensive defense, they beat the rap — barely. The prosecutor told Peggy he'd been barred from presenting evidence that suggested the photographs not only belonged to the Cookes, but had likely been taken by them on school property.
"The scandal destroyed us," Barry told Peggy as he led her into an office decorated with purple dinosaurs. "Our kids were the finest. Three-year-olds speaking French! And now it's all dust and ashes."
"Has my old fart of a husband been flirting with you again?" Clara Cooke looked at Peggy with gimlet eyes. "It's a wonder a pretty girl like you still isn't married."
Barry had been an easy sell. It was his wife who'd insisted on references and background checks. Renée McDormand's marital status had never come up in conversation — but Peggy had carefully planted the information in her bona fides, just in case Clara decided to dig deeper. Evidently she had.
Two men were waiting for them on the sofa. She recognized the fidgety teenager as the Cookes' son, Adam. The middle-aged man, tough and blunt, was the driver of the panel truck. As she glanced beneath his jacket, she realized that Yoshi was wrong about the gun. It wasn't a .45. The shooter carried a .357 Magnum Desert Eagle, a gas-operated semiautomatic. It would tear her in half before she could get anywhere close to her Glock. He stared at her torso, but not with pleasure. He was noticing her lack of body armor.
"How much longer will this computer nonsense take?" Clara asked the technician crouched behind a desktop PC. "We're trying to do a meeting here."
"Actually, we're good. Almost." According to his Propeller Hedz jacket, the spiky-haired young man's name was Scotty. That was an in-joke around the Philadelphia field office; a tribute to his favorite TV show, Star Trek. Peggy knew him as Special Agent Yoshi Hiraka, someone who could work miracles with technology — even rig video surveillance under the pretense of upgrading the Cookes' computer network.
"Peg?" Mike's voice on the comm. "There's two other targets guarding the basement. I think that's our play. We're pulling Yoshi back so he can knock out their security system. Maybe you could give him a little nudge out the door."
Yoshi was meanwhile chatting about server protocols and needing to get behind the firewall. Peggy could tell he was trying very hard not to look her way.
She turned instead to Clara. "Should we reschedule for another time? Things seem a little disorganized."
"This was supposed to be done hours ago. I'm not paying for this incompetence." Clara snapped her fingers at Adam. "Go give this boy whatever he needs in the computer room. Shut the door when you leave."
"Why can't I stay?" Adam's eyes darted nervously at Peggy.
"Because, because, because. Out." Clara's features hardened as the door closed. "Enough chitchat, dear. What can you do for us, and for how much?"
"I understand you want something moved out of the country," Peggy answered. "As I'm sure you know by now, my associates and I have secure channels across the Mexican and Canadian borders, as well as through all major U.S. ports. No delays, no inspections. I can make you disappear."
"Dr. Barry Cooke likes to fly first class." Barry tried to laugh, but he was sweating. "As long as he doesn't have to take off his shoes at security."
Peggy threw Clara a sympathetic look: I see what you have to put up with. The woman didn't respond.
"We do have contacts at LaGuardia, LAX, and Atlanta," Peggy replied. "There's additional risk involved. It'll run the costs a bit higher."
"How much higher?" Clara folded her arms.
Peggy tapped out a number on a pocket calculator and showed it to Clara.
"Too pricey." She shook her head. "Sorry you came all this way for nothing, dear. You're looking at people on a fixed income."
Barry cringed. "Maybe she'll take a percentage?"
"A percentage of what?" Peggy noticed that the question made Clara frown. "We generally work on a cash basis."
The shooter laughed and said something to Clara in a foreign tongue: his voice rang like thresher blades, keen and remorseless.
"It's Ukrainian," Mike said. "Hang on, we're getting the translation. He said ...'I told you your husband was thinking with his dick. This bitch is full of shit.'"
Barry started to answer — then Clara cut him off in the same language.
"Clara's telling her husband to make the call," Mike translated. "She says that if he's wrong about you, they're going to be digging some holes in the basement tonight."
Peggy cleared her throat.
"Dr. Cooke." She stared right at Clara. "You and your husband need to understand, I'm not a travel agent. If you want to cheap out, go hire some coyote with a false-bottom eighteen-wheeler. I personally think you'll run straight into ICE. But if you want peace of mind, you're going to have to pay for it."
"And you don't even ask what we're moving." Clara snapped her fingers. "Drugs, bombs — you just want your money."
"Not unless it keeps me from doing my job."
Clara glanced at the shooter. He raised his hands as if to say: It's your mess, you clean it up.
"Let's show the girl how much we trust her," Clara said.
It had been two months since Peggy's desk, the Crimes Against Children Unit, had received an anonymous tip that the Cookes were trying to get something past Immigrations and Customs. She knew it couldn't be money or porn — such matters could be handled electronically. Then she made the connection.
"We want to return home. But the goddamn bureaucrats in Kiev ..." Barry glanced nervously at the two men in leather jackets guarding the basement door. "There's people who will help us — if we give them something they need."
Peggy tried not to seem interested. Just as she feared, her pointed heels kept getting caught in the stairs' metal grating. For a moment she nearly tripped and was obliged to let Barry take her hand. Clara's eyes burned into her from behind.
"It scares me a little that you're a woman." Barry fumbled his keys into the inner door's locks. "I can't know how you'll react to ... what you're about to see."
"Peggy." Mike's voice was broken by static now. "Yoshi's running into trouble. Before you proceed —"
Barry's hand quavered on the doorknob. "I want you to know we've been taking very good care of her."
Mike raised his voice. "Peggy, we have to abort."
Barry opened the door.
Only one of the room's twelve cages was still occupied, by someone whose face had become well known since her disappearance on Christmas morning. The victim's father had personally requested Peggy's unit for the case. All leads had dead-ended until Agent Weaver happened to notice that the child had once briefly attended Storytime Children's Academy.
The girl in the cage was five years old, wearing a ragged yellow diaper and nothing else. Her ribs showed hard against ebony skin, marked by still-darker bruises. The child's hair, raven black in family photos, was dry and frayed like scorched grass. She stared at Peggy with empty brown eyes that had moved past fear and even despair, and were on the verge of indifference.
Peggy listened for Mike's voice, heard nothing.
"So, Miss McDormand," Clara said. "Does this keep you from doing your job?"
Heavy shots rang from above: the Desert Eagle. Feet on the floor, then down the stairs. Peggy started to reach for the holster behind her back. Then the door swung open, and Adam Cooke entered breathlessly.
"He found it," the boy gasped. "That computer guy found the file. Mama, we have to get out of here. Now."
"Don't be stupid." Clara pressed a red button beside the light switch. "It's too late."
"It's not too late!" Adam looked at Peggy. "You shouldn't have come. Don't you know what they're pulling you into?"
"Adam, please — !" Fire exploded through Barry's chest as a loud report boomed in the stairwell. The shooter calmly descended, holding the smoking semiautomatic before him.
"Omigod," Adam said. "Papa."
"She's FBI. Your husband fucked us all." The gunman spat on Barry's prone body. "Bitch is carrying a piece under her jacket. Get it."
Clara was oddly calm as she took the Glock from Peggy. "Are there more of them?"
He nodded and put the muzzle to Peggy's head. "You die — the girl dies — your Jappo upstairs dies. Unless you call the man in charge. Tell him to surrender. Now."
"I can't get a signal down here." Peggy held her breath, forcing her voice to tremble.
"Upstairs, then."
Peggy stopped in front of the stairs. She could hear the girl whimpering behind her.
"I'm not walking back up in these goddamn heels." Without waiting for a response, she bent down and slipped one shoe off.
"Stop that! You stop or —!" The guard took a stiletto in the eye. As he fell, Peggy grabbed the semiautomatic. She wheeled around to see Clara aiming the Glock between her eyes.
"Mama, don't," Adam said.
Clara squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
"There isn't a round in the chamber," Peggy said. "Put it down, Dr. Cooke."
Clara calmly flicked the slide lock and aimed again.
God help me. The Desert Eagle kicked hard. Clara Cooke fell back in a spray of blood.
The boy turned to the door, breathing hard.
Peggy carefully retrieved the Glock. "Adam, step away from the door. I don't want to hurt you."
"You killed my mother." He looked at her, eyes wide. "He told me you would and I didn't believe him."
"Who did, Adam?"
"I should have seen it," he said. "You deserve everything that's coming to you, Agent Weaver." Adam ran up the stairs. Peggy was about to follow when she heard more shots from above: AK-47s against FBI submachine guns. Then another sound behind her: the child's soft breathing.
"Don't worry, honey. I'm not leaving you." As Peggy backed against the cage, the girl's fingers twined into her own.
Moments later the firing stopped, and Peggy looked up into the dark stairwell. "Mike, do you copy? What's happening?"
Agonizing seconds later, she heard her partner's voice:
"Clear up," Mike said. "We have secured the area, Peggy. What's your situation?"
She looked back. The child surveyed the dead with something like quiet satisfaction.
"Clear down," she replied. "We have the senator's daughter."
Peggy held the girl in her arms until the EMTs arrived. As she entered the computer room, Yoshi was waiting for her. His head was freshly bandaged.
"Did you get anything?" she asked.
"A concussion, maybe." He touched his temple. "I was scanning for dead spots when I noticed a hidden partition — that big lunk must have seen me trying to decrypt the data. Put a round right through the screen I was working on."
She squeezed his shoulder. "It's okay, Yoshi. What did you find?"
"You're not gonna believe this." He looked at her. "A folder with your name on it."
"What?"
"Take a look." He punched through a sequence of keys. "There's twelve photos here. I got a feeling Adam was waiting for me to find them, too. Kid was reeeall nervous."
A series of color images appeared on the computer screen. Peggy scrolled through them in silence.
"Pretty foul, aren't they?" Yoshi pointed. "Same kid in every picture — little blond girl. Even for the Storytime classic kiddie porn collection, this is some sadistic shit."
"Yoshi, that's enough."
"Sorry." He blushed. "Looks like somebody scanned them from matte prints — they're at least twenty years old."
"Twenty-five." She reached over him and shut the program down. "Has anybody else seen these?"
"Just Mike. I figured since he's our photo analyst ... are you okay? You look kinda pale."
"I'm fine," she said. "I'll deal with Mike. Right now I need you to password-protect the files and seal the hard disk. No access without my authorization."
"You want me to restrict the files?"
"And no backups," she said. "That's an order."
He hesitated a moment. "Got it, chief."
She went outside, where a forensics team was loading Clara Cooke's remains into a meat wagon. The lot was already crowded with Philly PD and other emergency vehicles. Small knots of reporters were starting to form around the barricades.
"Holy shit," Peggy whispered as camera lights played over the open rear door of the ambulance. Who the hell tipped the media off?
"That was some quick work in there." Mike stood beside her, wearing an FBI flak jacket. His dark hair was damp with sweat. "How'd you get the drop on that shooter?"
"He didn't know it was my operation. He thought I was just the decoy." She looked at him. "Did you find Adam Cooke?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Chillwater Cove by Thomas Lakeman. Copyright © 2007 Thomas Lakeman. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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