Life of Secrets
Authors: Bowen Greenwood
LIFE OF SECRETS
A Novel
By Bowen Greenwood
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidences either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living
or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © May 2014 by Bowen
Greenwood
.
All Rights Reserved
worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form, by any means,
including photocopying,
recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright
law.
Table of Contents
A beautiful
woman hung by her fingertips 100 feet above the ground. Far below her was a
dark alley, but she did not look down. At three in the morning, when the night
is blackest and human reflexes are slowest, she gripped the side of the
building, muscles on fire from continuous strain.
She wasn’t
falling off but climbing up. And she was nearly at the top of the building. One
last reach would get her to the roof, but it was a long reach. She stretched
for the edge of the roof but couldn’t quite make it. Wedging her toe into a
chipped-out hollow in the brick, she used that leverage to raise herself an
inch or two farther.
The fingers of
her left hand wrapped over the parapet. Her right hand soon followed. That
done, it became a simple matter of muscle strength. She pulled herself up far
enough to lean over the edge onto the roof and dropped forward onto it.
Success!
Alyssa Chambers
rose
lightly
to her feet on top of the building.
Silently, she padded across the empty roof toward a maintenance door in the
center. The moonless night wrapped around her like a cloak as she walked.
Anyone watching would have seen little more than a shadow that may have moved.
Clad in black fatigues, Chambers blended into the dark like a whisper in a
crowded room.
Her raven-black
hair was darker than the sky itself. She moved with a lithe grace of a dancer,
and her head scanned from side to side constantly, alert for danger. She wore a
bulky set of night vision goggles on her face, and a pistol – its long, fat,
sound-suppressed barrel almost like a sword – strapped to her back.
She slid a card
into the electronic reader on the door. Alyssa’s card was special, however. Two
wires ran from the card to a black box the size of a pack of cigarettes, which
she held in her hand. A small digital display on the box scrolled through
numbers before locking in on a set of six. Calmly, she opened the door.
Her radio
earpiece came alive. "I see you're in. You have 30 seconds."
Two blocks away
and ten stories down, her co-conspirator Gunter Hauptmann reclined in a white
Ford
Econoline
van, idly watching displays. His
relaxed posture was deceiving; Gunter was fully alert. His role in the
operation was to monitor the target's defenses.
Gunter and
Alyssa worked together from time to time on jobs like this. Both were freelancers,
and their paths crossed only when there was money to be made. They weren't
exactly friends, and they weren't exactly coworkers, but they had done jobs
like this together before. When Chambers needed an electronics expert, she
called Gunter.
She had never
revealed her name and was a bit surprised when he disclosed his. However, she
checked him out and, indeed, Hauptmann was his real name. His past was even
more checkered than hers – an ex-con who hadn't learned his lesson.
He adjusted his
long legs, resting the heels of his combat boots on the edge of the console in
front of him. His gaunt frame hung totally slack, as if he were at home
watching television. Not a single blond hair on his head was out of place. The
only sign of tension he showed was to rub a hand over the two-day growth of
stubble on his chin.
Three hours ago
Gunter had run a wiretap into the phone line used by the target's alarm system.
Now, he sat and watched the readout, waiting for the alarm to summon the
police. It never did.
The first
keycard opened the door’s lock. Now it was time to turn off the alarm. Barely
inside the door, Chambers wired another small electronic box into the alarm's
keypad and calmly let it do its work. In moments it beeped, and she knew the
alarm would not be summoning anyone any time soon.
She headed down
the stairs, never for a moment relaxing her guard. The alarm was disabled,
true, but someone could still show up by chance. Alyssa’s particular skill set
had made her a wealthy woman; she had no desire to part with any of her riches
by becoming careless at this point.
Suddenly, she
heard muffled voices. It was impossible to make out any words, but the
implication was clear enough. The floor below her was not empty.
Her briefing
had indicated it would be.
That meant one
thing had already gone wrong. What else might follow?
She walked
quickly but never made a sound as she made her way through the darkened
maintenance space on the top floor. One floor down – on the ninth story – were
the executive offices of the building. Her target was there.
Her feet padded
noiselessly over the dusty floor. Apparently, no one came to the tenth floor
very often; it was really more like a maintenance attic. Its purpose mattered
little to Chambers – people could come here as often as they wanted, so long as
they didn't do so in the next ten minutes. She descended to the ninth floor.
At the landing,
she waited behind the door. She stood completely still, frozen, listening. And
on the other side of the door, she heard the gentle slap of footsteps.
They were
coming nearer.
Nearer. Nearer.
She had three choices. Keep standing still. Head back up the stairs. Reach for
the pistol strapped to her back.
She chose the
first one, keeping so still she barely even breathed.
Step, step,
step.
And then the
footsteps began to recede.
She took her
first breath in what felt like an hour and listened. When she could no longer
hear the footsteps, Chambers cracked the door open the barest bit and peeked
out.
At the far end
of the hall, she saw a man turn a corner. Once he was out of sight, she opened
the door and moved quickly down the hall.
Not only was
there more activity on the ninth floor, there was more light also. Apparently,
a few of the office workers had left their lights on. Alyssa slipped off her
low-light goggles.
From one of
those lighted offices, Chambers heard the sound of typing.
She paused for
a long time just outside that door, wondering how to proceed. The building was
supposed to be empty. It was three in the morning.
No one was supposed to be
here!
She could
leave, of course. She could turn around, go back to the roof, climb back down…
No. The thought
barely even passed through on its way to being rejected out of hand.
Her ears told
her the sound of typing was little more than two feet from the door. Her
experience told her that a person using a computer was likely to be looking at
the screen, not at the floor. So she lowered herself to the floor and poked her
head around the door just far enough to peek into the room
From this position
she could barely see black hair above the laptop screen. Surely the man could
not see her. She drew back, stood up, and ducked into the office next door to
think. The only solution that presented itself was to wait. Which she did, and
did some more, and kept doing, checking her watch obsessively every 20 seconds.
Finally, the
typist got up and walked out of his office. Alyssa had no idea where he was
going, nor did she care. This was her chance to reach her goal.
Just as she was
about to sprint for it, she heard footsteps toward the far end of the hall.
Whoever had
walked around the corner earlier was coming back. The hallway wasn’t likely to
remain safe for long. But if she kept waiting all night, eventually the
staffers and consultants would be back in the office…
Taking a
desperate chance, she raced past the typist’s office and popped through the
next doorway. She waited behind the wall, listening as the walker went by. She
couldn’t see him, but she could see his shadow on the ground as he peeked into the
typist’s office.
She waited for
the walker to finish his route. She heard him open and close the stairwell door
through which she'd entered. Next, she heard the typist return to his office.
Once the typing resumed, Alyssa padded silently on to her destination.
Her eyes swept
the hall. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. Chambers followed the hallway
carefully. She knew exactly where she was going. Reaching a corner, she found
the penthouse office and delicately turned the doorknob. It was unlocked, meaning
she didn't need her key-card
spoofer
again. The
smallest of sighs escaped her lips, and she whispered a complaint she'd spent
her life trying to avoid: "Too easy."
Entering the
office, she scanned her surroundings to look for potential threats. Having
gotten this far, she didn't expect any, but she looked anyway. The shocking
thing was that the rich, royal blue carpeting showed fresh footprints.
Perhaps the walker had been in here. If
so, his potential return would pose a threat.
The walls were
lined with contemporary paintings – originals, not prints. Each corner of the
room held a bronze bust, but she didn't take the time to examine them. The
room's most prominent feature was the exorbitant teak desk in the center.
Chambers went to it immediately.
She moved
around behind the computer and deftly unscrewed the gray metal case. Opening
the machine up, she made a few very quick changes inside and then screwed the
case back together.
Chambers looked
at her watch again as the machine beeped and whirred. She’d been in here far
too long already. While the operation didn't require a firm time limit, every
added minute only increased her risk.
With a few key
presses she went to work on the computer, bypassing security systems and
tweaking the way it ran. Once she'd done that to her own satisfaction, any of
the owner's passwords or security programs wouldn't matter anymore. She could
copy files from the hard drive to her own flash drive with impunity. This she
did with a practiced eye. Years of work in this business had given her
excellent judgment about the kinds of computer files likely to be interesting
to the people who hired her.
She made one
last modification, putting in a little program of her own. It wasn’t part of
what she’d been hired to do, but it was standard operating procedure, something
she did on every job. She left a key logger, a spy program that could tell her
everything the user typed. It was insurance. Alyssa Chambers worked in a
dangerous business. If she ever got caught, prison loomed large on her horizon.
For that reason, she always looked for leverage over her employers, just as her
father had taught her. Tracking every keystroke provided awesome leverage.
Once finished,
she took her drive out of the computer. The next morning, the computer's owner
would have no idea what had transpired. The computer would boot up the same as
always, with no indication that it had been modified in any way.
Back in the
hallway, Alyssa walked briskly toward the same stairwell through which she'd
entered. On the ground floor of the building was a service door leading to an
alley. That was her egress.
She strode
briskly out of the alley and onto the street, ignoring passersby. In her baggy
black clothes, she simply looked trendy, rather than suspicious. The two blocks
to Gunter Hauptmann's van were covered in moments and less than fifteen minutes
after her climb to the roof Alyssa Chambers was on her way home, two million
bucks richer. Although Gunter owned the van, she drove. Her route took her
right by the front door of the building she'd just broken into. Etched on the
glass door was a slick, agency-designed logo of the kind so common among
political campaigns.
It read,
"Rich West for President."