Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(81)

His skin was coffee-brown, his head shaved. His features could have come from any mixture of races, as if he were from everywhere, or nowhere at all. He wore a crisp black synthetic raincoat over a starched white shirt, black jeans, and polished black combat boots.

“I can already tell this is a bad idea,” said Peter. “Don’t talk amongst yourselves, okay?”

June gave her rich, bubbling laugh. “I’m a reporter, Peter. I’m waaaay ahead of you.”

Peter shook his head and got behind the wheel in the minivan. The Escalade eased out of its spot and around the corner, leading the way.

At the vacant lot, Peter opened the windows, poured gas through the interior of the van, tossed in the lit book of matches, and stepped away as quickly as he could with his hurt leg. The fumes caught with an audible foomp.

This was becoming a bad habit. Two cars in two days.

He watched the flames lick through the windows, sorry to see the green Honda go. It was a good ride. Then he stumped over the rough ground to the Cadillac.

“Jarhead.” Lewis handed him a bottle of Anchor Steam, already open. “Your friend June’s working on a plan.”

“Thank God.” Peter drained a third of the bottle. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“I got us a suite at the Four Seasons,” said Lewis. “Plenty of room for everyone.”

“Not for me,” said Peter. “I’ll never fall asleep inside.” June looked at him over the seat back. “Why don’t we camp out somewhere?”

“You still fighting that thing?” said Lewis.

“I’m working on it,” said Peter. “But not tonight.”

“Discovery Park would be fun,” June said, and turned to Lewis. “I’ll give you directions.”

“It’s a suite,” said Lewis. “At the Four fucking Seasons.”

“You use it,” said Peter. “You’re not invited.”





40





CHIP



Chip Dawes’s driver navigated the downtown traffic while Chip sat in the back of his Mercedes G63 and thought about the meeting he’d just had with Nicolet.

Chip had never seen anything affect the tech attorney’s professional cool, so it was fun to see that the girl’s mystery man had managed to put a dent in Nicolet’s Teflon coating. The attorney thought he was tough, and he wasn’t wrong. But he was a civilian. He lived in the world of legal maneuvers, where the worst thing that could happen was a bad court decision.

Chip lived in the real world, where far worse things were possible. Chip was definitely not a civilian.

He’d told the tech shark to tighten up his sphincter, things were under control. The mystery man was being handled. The algorithm would be in hand soon.

Chip didn’t say whose hands, exactly.

Now Chip was headed back to his office to check on the operation’s progress. He was late. He hoped they had something by now.

He stared out the window at the headlights shining through the rain and remembered how he’d gotten started.

Cashing out the Iraqi colonel’s bearer bonds had gone just as Chip had planned. Shepard had stepped back and let Chip take the lead, his natural position. He’d chartered a series of ghost corporations headquartered in Belize, Luxembourg, and the Bahamas, used those corporations to hire his real company, Citadel Security, to do fake work. Then he’d paid himself with his own stolen money, now nice and clean.

He’d even written himself letters of recommendation on his ghost companies’ letterhead. Citadel Security was the best, their discretion unparalleled. You’d be a fool not to hire Chip Dawes.

It was appallingly easy to get his first legitimate contract. He paid a high-end prostitute to seduce a senior-level programmer at a company-sponsored outing. She got the guy home and put a roofie into his drink to knock him out. Chip showed up, copied the guy’s keys and passcard, and fucked the hooker, too, what the hell. He was paying her already, right? The next morning he’d waltzed onto the corporate campus, changed some passwords, and downloaded a bunch of client information and proprietary code. Then made an appointment with the CEO.

The security chief got fired, and Citadel Security got a big fat contract. Nothing to it.

After that, Chip was pulling intrusions up and down the West Coast, signing up clients left and right. He bought the G63, the big house on Lake Washington, and a couple of boats. The actual work of corporate information security turned out to be pretty fucking boring, and not that lucrative once Chip had hired some tech geeks who actually knew what they were doing. No surprise there.

It was the other jobs that really turned Chip’s crank. The creative jobs.

Convince a young developer to sell his very good idea now, not later, for a lowball price. Throw in a Tesla and an oversexed “college girl”? Done.

Blackmail a programmer into leaving a code glitch for an extra week? Chip had access to a substantial pool of call girls who looked stunning in a little black dress and could also suck a golf ball through a garden hose. They made cameras very small these days.

There were so many opportunities.

Bribe a dissatisfied venture cap researcher to vet an outdated set of numbers.

Start an unfortunate and mysterious wildfire to clear the way for a new corporate headquarters.