His Secret Desire (6 page)

When she returned to the house she stopped
dead. She heard the sound of wheels again on the road in front of
her house. Three times in one day was a record. Three times in a
year would already have been too much. She drew out her pistol and
approached the house with extreme caution. The sound of the wheels
was definitely receding away. Someone had come and gone. She came
around the side of the house holding her pistol at the ready. It
had been a long, long time since she had held a firearm and she
definitely did not like the sensation. She had never shot anyone in
her life and hoped she would never have to.

Rounding the corner she saw a small package
on her doorstep. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead. The
statistics of the US Witness Security Program were excellent. Stay
in the program and you die of natural or accidental causes. Leave
the program and turning the key in your front door was likely to
shoot you twenty feet into the air and leave bits of you spread
over out over a three hundred foot area.

Was this a warning of some kind? Why leave it
there in the open? Why not just find her and kill her?

She approached slowly, the feeling of choking
beginning to take hold of her throat again. Then the package fell
over.

Katy froze.

A set of huge green eyes stared up at her. It
was Brad Pitt, her cat and closest companion of the last three
years. He was pawing relentlessly at the brown packaging.

"Brad! No, stop it, don’t do that."

He paid no attention and quickly tore a huge
hole in the paper letting a small sixteen ounce bag of dark coffee
beans fall out onto the porch.

"What the hell?" It was almost certainly not
an explosive device. She looked around, put the safety back on her
weapon and then picked up the package. Inside was a brand new
coffee pot with two new cups and another sixteen ounce bag of
coffee beans. There was also a note. She looked around again,
scanning the hills and trees and then picked it up. It was
handwritten.

Sorry about the pot and cups. Here's some
Peaberry Jamaica Mountain Blue to make up for it. I watched them
harvested myself on the Langford estate in the Blue Mountains. See
you later,

Clay.

She held the note in her hands and then
looked up into the darkening forest around her house. Tears began
to come to her eyes while Brad Pitt stared up at her.

"What the hell is wrong with me Brad?" The
cat didn't move, he was hungry, but Katy imagined what he would be
thinking if he had a shred of human emotion in his body.

I'm just a cat but as your closest companion
I'm going to suggest that maybe three years of living like the
deceased has left you a little on edge. Maybe three years without
any human interaction other than listening to your clients'
paranoid demands for secrecy has made you an emotional wreck. And
finally, as my final word, maybe, just maybe, three years without
any human contact other than a handshake has fucked you up
girl.

She wiped the tears away as her internal
monologue subsided.

Brad still looked hungry, but somehow
wiser.

"You're right." She said to her living
companion. "I've been alone too long. I'm getting psychological
advice from you, a cat, via
your
voice inside
my
head."

She wiped away the last of her tears and then
gathered up the beans. The coffee pot and cups could stay where
they were. She would have no room for them in her suitcase but the
beans she would enjoy whenever she got to wherever she was going,
and if she never saw Clayton Hargrave again she would at least have
that handwritten note to look at and pretend that…. pretend what?
That she was an ordinary woman with an ordinary life who could have
a relationship and settle down somewhere, be happy, have a normal
life with children, vacations, holiday celebrations?

It all sounded so ridiculous, so
impossible.

The tears began to come again but she forced
them back down.

"Screw it." She threw the beans and the note
away into the darkness and went inside to get her suitcase.

"You’re a big girl Nadia…."

Shit.

She had used her real name out loud. That
hadn’t happened in a long, long time. She clamped her jaw shut and
plunged into the darkness to retrieve her bag and resume getting
the hell out of town.

********************

After he had dispatched his gift to Katy,
Clayton set about preparing dinner. He had not been resident in the
stunning hilltop and waterfront property that long but it had been
so fabulously equipped already at the time of sale that he had
decided to keep most of what was there. He would adapt things to
his taste in good time. Between his work and his leisure time
passions interior design and decoration didn’t feature that highly
on his list of priorities.

He called his personal chef and gave him
basic instructions for an excellent vegetarian meal. Obviously he
had no intention of cooking himself. Time, always time. Instead he
checked in with his private detective, Lacey MacMahon. She had come
to him via an excellent personal recommendation from one of the
Demovic brothers in New York and he had found her to be excellent
in meeting his needs thus far.

"It's Clayton." He said when she answered.
"Do we have anything new?"

"I think you're correct about the Witness
Security Progam Mr. Hargrave. But if you are it means whoever she
was before is, to all intents and purposes, now dead. There's no
way to get information from that program. It is easily the tightest
run department the government has. It'd be easier to get credit
card details for the Area 51 security team."

"In that case, what exactly am I paying you
for?"

"For this. I did a thorough search on cases
that involved protected witnesses from two to four years ago and
narrowed the criteria down to crimes that involved electronic
eavesdropping or the use of military grade technology to hide
criminal activity."

"Spare me the mechanics Lacey, I'm meeting
this person in under an hour. What did you find?"

"There was a case in Washington DC about four
years ago involving the Russian Mafia. It turned out that a
seemingly legitimate business, BoyTech Inc, with connections in the
White House was a front for a big time Vory, a Bratva, a Russian
mobster by the name of Mikhail Boyevik. Government secrets seemed
to be the major currency involved with a major tax evasion and
pyramid scam going on as well. One person had the guts to blow the
whistle on these guys but her name was never released."

"You're sure this person was a she?"

"Absolutely. She paid a heavy price. Family
members were sucked into it but she stuck to her guns. After the
case she disappeared presumably into the WITSEC."

"What's the connection to Katy Maldon?"

"Nothing. Not on the surface at least, except
that this WITSEC girl was a technology expert with the same kind of
expertise you say this Maldon has. One part of the Mafia front
operation, the part that was legit, had a contract with Uncle Sam
to provide military grade security devices for electronic silence.
She was pretty damn good by all accounts. Maybe the best in the
business. Sound like your girl?"

A video call from the surveillance team he
had left with Katy was coming through.

"Good work Lacey. I have to go. Keep
digging." He took the video call and Angel Montoya, his head of
security came through. He was good looking man of Colombian and
Hawaiian origin. He had gone to college with Clayton and worked for
him ever since Hargrave Robotics had hit the big time two years
ago.

"What's up Angel?" Clayton said with perfect
Spanish pronunciation of his friend's name.

"She's on the move Clay. Something's up. A
cop car was up there earlier."

"Did they see you?"

"Not a chance. They didn’t stay long. Seems
funny though. Out here in the middle of nowhere."

"Did she get my gift?"

"Sure she did. She came at it with a
handgun."

Clayton's mouth fell open.

"A handgun? Are you crazy?"

"No, but it sure looks like she is. Looked
like a Sig Sauer, compact model."

"Hm, nice choice."

"No kidding. I'm telling you, be careful with
this one Clay. Her cat opened the box and your girl picked up a bag
of coffee with your note. She read it, started to cry and then
began talking to her cat before throwing your coffee beans away
into the bushes."

"That was Peaberry from the Langford
plantation." He said with some irritation.

"I know." Angel lamented. "I'm going back
later on and get it from the bushes."

"Don't go anywhere near the house Angel. I
don't want you spooking her. You're there to take care of her,
remember?"

"Sure. That's why I took this job; to take
care of your girlfriends. But look, I'm nowhere near the house
anymore. She left in a big hurry and I'm tailing her now, but this
area is pretty deserted so I can't get too close to her."

"Where the hell are you Angel? Why didn't you
tell me she'd left the house?" Clayton was surprised and not happy
with the omission.

"I'm telling you now Clay, besides, she went
back to that coffee place first. The place you saw her today."

"What did she go there for?"

"She brought her cat there. Gave it to an old
lady."

Clayton was baffled.

"She gave her cat away?"

"That's right. Looks like she's getting out
of town. That's why I'm calling. She put one small suitcase in the
back of her car then dropped the cat off. I thought she might head
back home but instead she headed out onto the coast road. I'll be
honest with you, if she ain't seen me following her yet then she's
got vision problems. This ain't a secret operation no more."

"God damn it. Keep on her. Don’t let anything
happen to her. I'm on my way."

He ended the call and grabbed his customized
Hargrave secure phone with the tracking device software to follow
the card he had given to Katy. Sure enough it was showing her as
being in town at the coffee place. She must have brought it with
her and left it there to throw him off the scent. He swiped the
screen and went to the second tracking device he had left with her.
A smaller one than a business card this time and fixed to the
inside of her car's body work. He believed in protecting his
assets, even when they were still just remote prospects. She might
be good in her field, maybe the best, but she wasn't better at this
game than him, not by a mile.

He jumped into his Bugatti and sped off down
the drive way.

********************

Paranoia couldn't describe what Katy was
feeling. She had picked up on the Latino looking guy following her
in the midrange conspicuously inconspicuous sedan as soon as she
had headed out onto the small back road that led from her remote
neighborhood into the town.

Every time she looked at Brad Pitt she had to
choke back tears.

"I'm so sorry baby." She kept saying to the
completely impassive animal. "I can’t take any chances. Those cops
might ask questions, they might start digging. And they weren't
there by accident. Someone wants to screw with me and I think I
know exactly who it is."

When she arrived in town she sat in her car
outside the café for a full ten minutes, waiting for Angel to do
something. Finally she decided to risk it and she stepped out of
the car carrying Brad Pitt with her. Angel never moved so she
figured she was allowed to go inside. Angel was tracking her as
well via the business card so he was comfortable enough to allow
her go into the café alone.

When he heard the car pull off he was taken
by surprise.

"Hijo puta." He said as he realized she had
shed one of her tracking devices and snuck back into her car while
he watched his phone.

It was shortly after that he called Clayton
and now he was half way out in the middle of nowhere again, feeling
like an idiot for following this poor woman just so his crazy but
incredibly successful friend could bone her. It wasn't the first
time he had been put on 'pussy duty' as he and his team called it.
It didn’t happen often but by God when Clayton got a woman into his
head he was very, very serious about it. He didn't dare screw up or
he was sure their college friendship wouldn't be enough to save him
his very comfortable and extremely lucrative job, even if he did
have other plans in mind for his future.

Katy meanwhile, heard her phone buzz and
snatched up the Blackphone from the seat. It was Suzy.

"Information." She said as soon as she heard
her friend's voice.

"Not good."

"Shit. I knew it."

"I'm not sure you did. First off, who the
hell is Jack Patterson?"

"Jack Patterson? How did you hear about
him?"

"He's all over the news talking about you and
his hotel room crack cocaine and prostitution bust. You're in the
news Ms. Maldon."

"Don't say my God damn name. You know the
rules."

"The rules are out the window. This guy is
making you famous. You better hope he has no pictures of you
anywhere."

"What has that loser been saying?"

"He says he's been setup and he blames you,
his privacy consultant, for the whole thing. He says he's been
working with you for about six months, that he's paid you hundreds
of thousands of dollars in cash and that your shit, excuse the
language, doesn't work. He thinks you might have set him up."

Katy put the phone to her chest, hissed out a
long sigh of frustration and then put the phone back to her
ear.

"He's an asshole. A moron football player. I
told him I was only able to cover him electronically. How the hell
was I to know he'd party with hookers and land himself in a sting
operation?"