Private Eyes – Chapter 1
"One… two… three."
BANG!
The door flew off the hinges as men clad in black body armor and SWAT gear, guns held at the ready, stormed into the dark room. Rays of light from the mounted flashlights scanned across the room as the team fanned out. The only other light penetrating the darkness came from the banks of computer terminals spread out across the room. Other than the low hum of electricity, the room was silent. File cabinets had been tossed, hundreds of paper documents scattered the floor, and were littered across the tops of the computer stations, making it appear as if the room had been thoroughly ransacked.
When the "all clear" was called, two young men in ubiquitous dark suits entered. One stood in the middle of the room, surveying the damage and talking with the TAC team leader, while the other went straight for one of the computer terminals, snapping on a pair of latex gloves as he went. He hunched down to type a series of commands on the keyboard. A new window popped up on the monitor and several coded numerical sequences scrolled past. He narrowed his eyes, quickly translating the code in his head, as two senior agents, Turner and Danberg, entered the room.
"Report."
"It's just as you suspected, ma'am," the tech specialist asserted. "The files have been copied."
"The security logs?"
"Erased," the other specialist turned away from his conversation with the TAC team leader. "The external backup drives pulled and missing."
Agent Turner glowered. "So there's nothing?"
"Well, he is thorough," Danberg said. "You really didn't expect him to be that sloppy, did you?"
"No," sighed Turner, carding her fingers through her hair, frustrated yet still capable of admiration and respect for the expert skills on display. "He's the best."
"Which makes this breach all the more serious," Danberg asserted with a grim expression. He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone. "I'm going to report this."
Turner nodded absently as Danberg pressed his phone to his ear and strolled out of the room. She stepped over to the computer terminals, and picked up one of the discarded printouts littering the desktop, turning it over in her hands to see a mass of numerical lines covering the page in crisp black ink. It was unintelligible data to her, but she knew that to others it made perfect sense. One of the younger agents gave her a strange look when he noticed her lack of gloved hands, but she ignored him. Despite the effort to make the room look ransacked, she knew they wouldn't find any fingerprints except for those they were supposed to find.
And besides, they already knew who the traitor was.
Her lips quirked up for a split second at the thought, before she dropped the printout and spun around on her heels. Whipping her cell phone out from the side pocket of her blazer, she scrolled through her contacts as she confidently walked towards the door. Finding the one she wanted, she pressed the call button.
"You were right, Spyglass has been compromised."
XXX
Today had been the worst… the absolute worst. It couldn't get any worse, even if it tried.
But, on the bright side, she was back. Finally.
After a long and boring Law Enforcement Officers seminar in D.C., Kate Beckett was back in the Big Apple. She almost thought she'd never get back. There had been some issues at the security checkpoint at Reagan National… something about a threat to national security. TSA had increased screening. Even her NYPD badge wasn't enough to get her past the Homeland Security agents and National Guard troops that seemed to materialize out of nowhere in the blink of an eye. Every person going through the queue was thoroughly patted down and checked. The delay had cost her precious time, and she'd missed her original scheduled flight.
The clerk at the gate had helped to set her up on the standby list for a later flight, and Kate then wandered around the terminal, killing time. She had browsed through the mystery paperbacks at a little book kiosk, searching for a quick read. Nothing had really leapt out at her, so she ended up just grabbing a random thriller off the shelves and thumbed through it while she waited in the seating area. Eventually, she got a flight back to New York, which had ended up being the last flight of the night.
She wished she could have said that the return flight from D.C. had been uneventful, but that just wasn't her day. Kate was beginning to wonder if she was cursed. Nothing in her life seemed to be going right. She'd just wasted a year of her life treading water in a nowhere relationship, and to top it all off, her friend and mentor had been killed, and she'd then been shot while giving the eulogy at his funeral. Her road to recovery had been long and hard, but Kate believed she was doing better now, even if she occasionally had bouts of agoraphobia. She was seeing a therapist, working through her PTSD, along with her obsession over her mother's murder.
So, with all that hanging over her, Kate wasn't all too surprised when the universe decided to jerk her around by delaying the damn red-eye. After she finally boarded the plane and squeezed into her seat, Homeland Security held them at the gate. She watched from her seat as the agents stormed up and down the aisle, scrutinizing everyone. They'd even questioned her briefly, asking what the purpose of her trip to D.C. was, where'd she stayed, and who'd she'd been in contact with while there. After she'd showed them her badge and credentials, they'd moved on. From her seat, she could see a man and woman standing by the cockpit door, supervising. If Kate had a mind for conspiracies, she'd think they were CIA.
It was damn peculiar. Even though she was exhausted and beyond ready to just take a power nap, Kate had been intrigued. Something major was going down, and her natural instincts were piqued. She had eased up and scanned the cabin, looking around at all the other passengers. No one seemed suspicious. But then again, they never did until it was too late.
Eventually, they'd been given the all clear, and the plane pushed off from the gate and taxied to the runaway. Kate had glanced around at her fellow passengers one last time, before giving into her need for a catnap.
Now she was paying the cabbie his fee, plus a little extra for the speed with which he got her back from LaGuardia. The man grunted out an acknowledgement of the generous gratuity before speeding off in search of his next fare. Kate shook her head, covering her mouth as she tried to stifle a yawn. Gripping the handle of her roller, she trudged up the front steps of her apartment building and pushed the door open, shuffling tiredly into the small lobby.
It was a little past 3 AM, and Kate was looking forward to just crashing for a good couple hours before heading to the precinct and briefing Captain Gates on the seminar. She was almost hoping that the boys had caught a case while she was gone. She just wanted to get back to work. As she walked slowly towards the elevator, the building super's door opened and Mr. Hostetler stepped out holding his rusty old toolbox in his hand. He quietly closed the door behind him, and she couldn't help but notice his stock of peppery gray hair sticking up in amusing patterns, making it obvious he'd just gotten out of bed.
"Kate!" he beamed when he saw her. "Back from your vacation?"
She threw him a look and smiled politely. "It wasn't really a vacation, Ernie."
"Still, you got out of the city for a time," the older man said with a shrug. "A change of scenery should have been nice."
Kate gave him a wan smile. "I really didn't have time to take in the sights," she replied conversationally. "The conference ate up most of my time."
"Ah, that's too bad," Ernie said, taking his thick black-rimmed glasses off and rubbing them with a cloth from his breast pocket.
"What you doing up so early?" she asked as the elevator doors opened and they both stepped inside the lift. She reached over and punched in the button for her floor.
Ernie leaned over and pressed the button for the top floor. "Mrs. O'Reilly's kitchen faucet is leaking again," he said, putting his glasses back on, and pushing them back up his nose with his pointer finger. "I swear… the number of times she's called me up there you'd think she'd been unscrewing the damn thing on purpose."
"Oh… that again," Kate pursed her lips and looked away for a moment, smirking. "I think she's just sweet on you."
Ernie laughed, and shook his head. "Perhaps," he replied with a little grin. "Just like that doctor fellow of yours… what's his name? Josh?"
Kate's smile dropped, and she swallowed past the lump in her throat. "No. Um… we broke up," she said, voice thick with tension. "During the summer." Being shot in the heart was a real wake up call for her. She'd been treading water with Josh. She had liked him, really liked him, but it hadn't been enough. And after such a traumatic near death experience, Kate had decided she was done with hollow relationships. She would never find that elusive happiness if she squandered the time she did have with a man she didn't love.
"Oh," he raised his bushy eyebrows in surprise. He glanced away and Kate narrowed her eyes, knowing he was leaving something out.
"Ernie?" she warned, gracing him with one of her patent glares that she usually reserved for suspects.
Mr. Hostetler folded easily under her stare. He sighed and slumped his shoulders in defeat.
"He showed up just before dinnertime," he told her. "Got complaints about him pounding on your door from the other tenants. So I went up to check. He said something about you two planning to have a late dinner when you got back, and that he'd forgotten his keys, asked if I could let him in." He paused, and looked up at her with apologetic eyes. "Kate, if I'd known you'd broken up with him, I would never have unlocked the door."
Kate clenched her jaw, a scowl growing across her face. Great. There went her hopes of being able to just collapse in bed and crash. She was not looking forward to the confrontation that was awaiting her. Glancing back over at Mr. Hostetler, her gaze softened. "Don't worry about it, Ernie," she told him after an uncomfortable silence. "It's not your fault. You had no way of knowing." And he didn't. She'd been subdued for the last couple of months, and had barely spoken with anyone in her building. It had been unusual for her, but most of them had been aware of the shooting at her former captain's funeral, and were just respecting her privacy by letting her be.
He inclined his head, and smiled weakly. "Just the same, I feel bad."
Kate placed a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to reassure him. "Ernie, don't worry about it, I'll take care of it," she said, turning as the elevator doors rattled opened on her floor. "You just be careful of Mrs. O'Reilly's wandering hands."
She smiled, pleased when his face lit up with mirth and he laughed, shaking his head and proclaiming he'd try his best.
Chuckling, Kate tugged her roller along behind her as she marched down the hallway. Though once the elevator doors rattled closed, all the amusement and laughter fell from her face as her eyes glared down the hallway, fixating on the door to her apartment. She stopped dead in her tracks, scowling.
Today just wasn't her day, was it?
She gritted her teeth, a low frustrated growl rumbled up from deep down in her throat. Kate thought she'd been very clear before summer, but apparently he just couldn't take a hint. She stifled down her irritation and walked the rest of the way down the hall, resolutely determined to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.
