Surveillance (Ghost Targets Book 1)

Prologue

1. Ghosts

2. Ms. Linson

3. Rookie

4. Brooklyn

5. Ghoster

6. Martin Door

7. Police Work

8. In Little Rock

9. FBI Headquarters

10. Ghosting Katie Pratt

11. That Man

12. Buenos Aires

13. Bloodthirsty

14. Goodall

15. Unmasked

16. Goodbye

It was easier than he ever would have imagined, wringing a woman's neck. Cleaner than using a gun or knife, certainly. She struggled, but she was a slip of a thing and he still had the strength of a younger man. With his hand crushing her windpipe she couldn't scream, and he could see in her wide blue eyes that she was too terrified to cry. For that he was grateful. It made everything easier, after all.

He waited in the frantic silence. At last she stopped thrashing, but he waited still for the angry throb of her pulse to die away under his thumb before he let her go. Then he left her body where it fell, on the dense gray pile carpet half-hidden behind a giant fake potted plant, and made his way back through the empty offices to the elevators.

When the doors rumbled open, he paid no mind to the sign hanging at eye level, an ornate curl that declared, "Hathor knows what you've done." He stepped into the car and turned his back on it to push the button for the lobby. When the doors closed, they made another sign in matching font, "...but Helen knows what you need."

He ignored the marketing slogan, as he had on the way up. His hands, so sure a moment ago, were shaking now. He looked down at them in bemused curiosity, but his mind drifted on to other things. All in all, he thought, it had gone fairly well. Not the evening he had been hoping for, but not as bad as it could have been. All things considered. As the numbers ticked down, it did occur to him that he probably hadn't needed to kill her, but she'd surprised him and he'd gone on first instincts.

A loud ding sounded before the doors buzzed open, and he stepped into the foyer. Out of old habit he nodded to the receptionist on his way out. Across the marble floor, he pushed through the big plate glass doors and stepped out into the night, darker already than it ever got back home but not nearly so chill as he would have expected.

His car was still waiting for him by the curb. Another lucky break. He pulled the door open, and as he was climbing in he thought once more about the sign hanging in the elevator. "Hathor knows what you've done." The door fell heavily shut behind him,
clunk-tk
, and the reality of it finally struck him.

He'd killed a girl. He had committed a crime in front of God and everybody. He sank deeper into his seat and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He took a deep breath.

Why did he feel so calm? Was this shock? Or had he simply made the wisest choice in a difficult situation? He shook his head, because it didn't matter. Panic or not, he was in trouble. He knew that much. He took another breath.

"I know you're listening," he said. He was surprised his voice didn't tremble. He took some confidence from that. "And I need your help. I need the record changed. I need that not to have happened. Please." He winced at the word. It always made him feel small. But he caught his breath and pressed on. "Please. Fix this for me."

He waited a moment in silence, head bowed, hoping for some answer. None came. Still, his heart felt a little lighter. There was never any answer, but he was always listening. Everything would be all right.

He let his head fall back, until he was staring up out the rear window at the massive looming edifice of the database service's office building glowing in the night. "Take me to the airport," he said to his driver. "Make it quick." He felt the wash of motion carrying him away from his sin. Overhead, the streetlights became a percussion and then a blur, and the noise of the city outside faded to a hum.

He sighed, and let his mind wander. Nothing to worry about at all.

Katie was a woman in her mid-thirties, dangerously close to her late thirties, with long, straight black hair, and a pixie face with a grin that could still turn heads. She wasn't grinning now, though. Yesterday she had been the top detective in her department. Today she was late, first day on a new job, and there was no excuse for it. She darted into the elevator just before the doors fell closed. An older man built like a linebacker smiled down at her as she straightened her clothes—half sympathetic, half amused—and her heart stopped as a voice whispered in her ear, "Rick Goodall, Department Head, FBI Ghost Targets." Her boss. She blanched, and his smile widened as he extended a hand.

"Good morning, Katie Pratt. I'm glad you could make it."

She fought down a blush and cleared her throat. It was no good making up excuses, so she just said, "Thank you, sir."

He laughed. "Call me Rick. And I mean it, Pratt. I'm glad to have you with us. You have a hell of a record."

She shrugged. It was true, but she knew that wasn't enough. "I've always wanted to work for the Bureau. Since I was a little girl. For me, this opportunity—"

"For all of us, Pratt." He turned to stare at the burnished steel doors, freeing Katie from his laughing gaze. He went on. "It's a fine department. You probably know that already, but we get the real action." He glanced at her, measuring. "We're the only ones left doing real police work. I'm showing my age, saying that, but I think you know what I mean. Your old man—"

"Yeah," she said, then blushed again. "I mean, 'yes, sir.' I know exactly what you mean."

He chuckled. "I told you to call me Rick." The doors whispered open, and he waved her out ahead of him.

The landing served only one office, sealed off wall-to-wall with floor-to-ceiling glass doors that had the words "Ghost Targets" frosted into them at eye level. The receptionist by the door looked like an old intercom panel—ancient technology. The courthouse back in Brooklyn was using tiny, almost invisible microphones and just relaying video feedback directly to people's handhelds. She'd gotten used to that. Most places these days had sleek pedestal monitors that fed directly off the ambient local audio (for a small fee to Hathor). This one looked like it was just a panel mic, probably connected to a local computer running voice recognition code in some back corner of the office. With all the other fanciness of the building, it surprised her.

The department head paid no mind. He stepped up to the sealed doors and said, "It's me, and Katie Pratt with me."

Katie called out a tentative "Hi!" just in case, because she'd worked with old equipment before. Still, she felt a little silly, especially when Rick turned that laughing gaze back to her as the doors slid open.

"Come on, Pratt."

The office beyond felt so much like the one she'd left behind that a sudden homesickness stabbed at her. She'd only been away a day, it was silly, but her stomach knotted and for a moment she couldn't move. The office was mostly given over to an open floor plan with desks back-to-back along the walls and a handful in a cluster in the center of the floor. They'd always referred to that as the "bullpen." Just like home, there was too much clutter for a modern office, but she knew how that happened. There were also the busy, serious faces at the desks, and laughing conversations at the water cooler and in the break room there to her left.

She spotted three conference rooms that could work as interrogation rooms (or maybe the other way around, up here), and the lights were on in one of them as a handful of agents discussed something on the full-table display—and Katie suspected it was even odds whether they were looking over a new break in an important case, or the latest fantasy football numbers. This time of day, on a Monday, she'd put her money on football.

This place still looked just like home. But none of the faces were familiar, and the ones that turned to her as she followed Rick to his office were the serious desk faces, not the friendly water cooler ones. She hated that. She hated being new. She hated being alone.

Rick didn't notice. He never slowed his step, and she had to hurry to catch up with him as he pulled open his office door and held it for her. She took one of the plush chairs, her back to the window on the familiar office all full of strangers. His desk was neat, bare except for three matching framed photos, all turned away from her, a notepad, a black pen, and a coffee mug. About half of the pages had been torn from the notepad, leaving only a clean, unmarred page staring up at the ceiling. She'd never seen a notepad like that on a person's desk. Certainly not on a cop's. There were always half a dozen pages folded over the top, and scribbles on the exposed page from passing thoughts and phone messages as often as meeting minutes and memoranda. This page was pristine, its spent, soiled brethren nowhere in sight. It fascinated her.

Then a moment later something else struck her. The desktop wasn't a monitor. Just stained mahogany, with a real grain finer than anything a screensaver could fake. That surprised her enough that her eyes jerked to his, just as he sank into his plush leather office chair. He smiled at the questions plain on her face.

"I have a handheld in a desk drawer somewhere. I work mostly with voice notes, though, and just keep track of it all in my head. After all, the work we're doing...the computers don't do us much good anyway."

She sighed and shook her head. "You know," she said, "it really irritates me when anyone can read me like that."

"It should," he said. "Bad news for a cop. But go easy on yourself, it's your first day. And you are
not
 the first new recruit to sit in that chair."

She shrugged and put on a rueful grin, but in her head she was cursing her foolishness. There was no reason for any of this to take her by surprise. She'd known for weeks what she was getting into. Mr. Goodall sat on his throne, safe behind the expanse of his bare mahogany desk, and waited for her to take control of herself. She
knew
 that was what he was doing, and it only irked her the more.

"Fine," she said. She sat up straight and muted her headset with a deft flick of her wrist, just as she would have done taking the witness stand. She knew how a cop behaved, and it wasn't like a scared little girl. She met her boss's eyes levelly. "In the elevator, you said you do real police work here. Did you mean that?" He chuckled and spread his hands, but she pushed on. "My dad was a cop, and that was all I ever wanted to be. But by the time I got into the Academy, it was already more about search engines than search and seizure. You know what I mean?"

This time he nodded, and he was paying attention. For the first time since she'd met him, he wasn't laughing at her. He was weighing her, and that was perfectly fine by Katie. She had nothing to hide. "I've always tried to do my best, but this right here—
this
 is what I want to do. Maybe there's not a lot of police work left to do, but I know for a fact there are still perps slipping through the cracks, and I'd rather be out there on the streets, chasing them down, than sitting behind a computer screen connecting the dots."

He waited a moment in silence, then rocked back in his chair, considering her. "You could have said that on your application, Katie."

"Frankly, Rick, I wasn't auditioning for the job. It was the right place for my career, and I was the right candidate. I've been connecting the dots for twelve years now, and that was an easy one. What I want to know from you...." She realized her tone was challenging, demanding, and she almost blushed and dropped it. But he had invited her to be blunt, and she needed this answer. Without it, she might as well go home. "Mr. Goodall. Rick. I need you to tell me the truth. Were
you
 auditioning for me? Or were you telling it straight? What should I really expect out of this job?"