CHAPTER 1
It's All Fun and Games
"Mom! Mom, can we ride that one next?" Sally pointed at the tower ride on the other side of the amusement park.
Jessica checked the time on her phone. "Let's ride a couple of other rides on the way there." She was secretly hoping to distract Sally before they got to the tower ride. She was great on the spinning rides and even the rollercoasters but something about the rides the slowly pulled you up higher and higher before letting you free fall… Well, she would be thrilled if she could escape without riding the tower ride.
The day was hot. Jessica's weather app displayed a happy sun face with sunglasses on as it informed her that it was 98°. People seemed to press in on every side adding to the heat of the day. Next time they'd have to go to one of the water parks. They stopped at a food stand and Jessica bought a grape slushy for Sally and a blue raspberry slushy for herself. They sat in the shade of an umbrella covered table and compared their tongues as the slushies turned them blue and purple. Jessica and Sally pressed cheek-to-cheek to take a selfie with their tongues sticking out.
Two roller coasters and a round of bumper cars later and there was no avoiding the Tower Plunge. Jessica stood in line while Sally dance-hopped circles around her out of sheer boredom. They watched as the load of passengers ahead of them were hoisted into the air. About halfway up there was a loud clanking sound and the seats hanging from the ride bounced and swayed. The people shrieked and squealed in joy and terror and then the ride continued to hoist them up. At the sounds Sally grabbed Jessica's hand.
"We don't need to ride this one. We could take FroZone coaster right over there instead." Jessica tilted her chin to indicate the next ride over.
With a gulp Sally looked up just in time to see the Tower Plunge drop the riders on the sound of a buzzer. "No mom I wanna ride this one." She clutched Jessica's hand tightly.
"Are you really sure?" Jessica thought about trying to talk Sally out of this ride but decided against it.
In no time the passengers were brought back to an easy stop, and everyone jostled happily down the exit ramp. The line started to move as teenager overseeing the ride opened the gate to let the next group on. Jessica and Sally had just made it to the gate when the teenager closed it. He walked around the platform making sure that the padded safety bars were latched. He came back to the gate and announced, "I got room for one more, but only one!" He held a finger up to emphasize his point.
"Mom! Can I go? I wanna go!" Sally hopped excitedly next to her.
"I don't know baby. It's a pretty scary ride."
"Please-please-please-pleasepleaseplease!" Sally grasped her hand in front of her face.
"Alright." Jessica looked at the teenager. "Can she have that seat?"
"Sure." The kid opened the gate to let Jessica and Sally through. "You can go through the gate there." He pointed to the exit for Jessica.
"You want me to walk over there with you?" Jessica asked Sally.
"I got this mom. I'm fine!" Sally ran to the empty seat.
Jessica walked down the exit ramp and waved an 'I love you' sign at Sally. Sally rolled her eyes but gave the sign back. The ominous canned music started, and the riders were hoisted up. At about halfway up there was a shriek and a clang and Jessica held her breath waiting for the ride to continue. Suddenly there was another metallic shriek and a groan right before everyone could hear something snap and the frame holding the seats dropped crookedly something tore into the outside of the tower and stopped the frame from dropping all the way to the ground. Jessica's heart was in her throat, but she could still see Sally. With a shriek of metal, the frame dropped a few more feet and jerked to a stop again. The padded safety bar on Sally's seat popped loose. Jessica knew she would never forget the look of terror on Sally's face as she slid from the seat and plunged out of sight.
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Hardison played one of the clearest cell phone videos that he'd been able to find. The video had been shot by someone a few rides away who'd already had their phone recording and pointed in the general direction. In this clip they could see the small form of Sally Jennings as she fell from the ride. The 'Tower Tragedy' as the media had dubbed it had happened two months before. Sally's mother had come to them for help a few days ago.
"Jessica Morabito, our client, took her daughter to the amusement park and then the unthinkable happened." Hardison waved a hand behind him at the screen. "When Sally Jennings fell, she landed on the tin roof of a maintenance shed. The doctors think the tin roof is what saved her. However, she has yet to wake up from the coma and even if she does it's going to be a long road." He scrolled through multiple x-rays, MRIs, and CTs. "Jessica sued the amusement park to pay for Sally's medical bills and you would think that would be fairly straight forward. But the amusement park is claiming that it is not liable because Jessica let Sally ride on her own." Hardison clicked a button and a photo of a small sign attached to the fencing near the ride, appeared on the screen. "The sign says that all minors must be accompanied by an adult." Hardison clicked the button again and several more pictures spread out on the screen. "So, Greg, the kid in charge of the ride that day made no objection and gave no warnings before letting Sally ride. As a matter of fact, he claims that he didn't know about the rule. He also took the time to call his supervisor before he called 911 on the day of the accident." Hardison pointed at another face. "Jessica's ex-husband is now suing Jessica for negligence and reckless endangerment of Sally. And the amusement park is using that suit to help support their case."
Parker stared at all the faces for a moment. "So, we need to prove that the amusement park is at fault?"
"Jessica claims that a man talked to her right after Sally was brought to the hospital. This man said that he was a safety inspector and that Dan Clarich, the owner of the park, had been notified about several safety and maintenance issues concerning that ride. Unfortunately, no one, including me, can find a safety inspector named Charley." Hardison shrugged.
"If he was notified about anything to do with the safety of the ride there would have been a paper trail." Eliot frowned.
"It looks like he's been paying off anyone that might have had anything to do with said paper trail." Hardison swung side to side in his chair. It wasn't often anymore that they held 'official briefings' but with Eliot working in the Pub's kitchen today this was closer than the living room upstairs.
"Alright. So do you guys have a plan?" Eliot checked his watch. "I got ten more minutes before I gotta get back."
Parker's eyes glittered. "Hardison found a safe!" She smiled and steepled her fingers. "If he's got anything we can use, it'll be in the safe."
"Where's the safe?" Eliot leaned forward against one of the tall chairs.
"In his office. So, we need to clear him out to give Parker time to empty the safe." Hardison put up schematics of the safe in question.
"Why not just wait until after hours and clear it out then?" Eliot looked back and forth between his teammates.
"Because he has security that you wouldn't believe at night. We have a much better chance of getting in during business hours." Hardison flashed through several images of various security measures.
"During the day he'll have turned off over half the security measures and there won't be active security guards just the two at the desk." Parker pointed at a spot on the building's blueprints.
"You two come up with a plan and we'll discuss it after closing tonight." Eliot checked his watch one more time as he headed back to the kitchen.
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Hardison remembered the first time he'd snuck into a place like this. The smell of deep-fried food, sun block, and sweaty people brought it all back. Never once, when he was a kid, did he think that anything truly bad could happen in a place like this. He checked his watch. "Five minutes late."
Eliot's voice was quiet over the earbuds. "No sign of him here."
One slow tap/dash, three quick taps/dots, very short pause, one slow tap/dash, one quick tap/dot, one slow tap/dash. BK the morse code abbreviation for 'Break/Break in' meant to signal a break in the code. Parker however used it to signal that she was breaking into someplace and couldn't talk.
"I see him." Hardison breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his mark. As long as Clarich was here it meant he was at least four minutes from Parker. Hardison put on his salesman smile and gave a little tug to his suit jacket to straighten it. "Mr. Clarich, so nice to meet you." Hardison had given his original pitch for the project over the phone and had been unavailable for any in-office meetings.
"I don't see why we couldn't have done this in my office." Clarich sounded annoyed.
"Mr. Clarich, I could have presented a sales pitch in your office, and it probably would have sounded like a dozen others that you'd heard before. But my company, Ipsum Dolum Creations, wanted you to really experience what we are selling. The smell of the food vendors, the sound of the crowd, the warm sun on your face, all of that contributes to your customers experience when they're here." Hardison pulled three sets of goggles out of his bag and hand one to Clarich, and one each to the two henchmen that had accompanied him. A few taps to his phone and images started displaying in the goggles. The goggles displayed virtual reality style display of a ride that Hardison had 'borrowed' the plans for. The goggles allowed Clarich to walk around to see different angles as the display moved imaginary passengers through the ride.
While Hardison was entertaining and distracting Clarich, and his personal henchmen, Eliot snuck Parker into Clarich's office building on the opposite side of the park and another block away. Eliot had gotten hired onto the building's maintenance crew a week before and he used his access to smuggle Parker into the building inside a large rubber trashcan. Eliot had the trashcan, a stepladder, and a toolbox on a platform dolly. Eliot wheeled the dolly into the elevator and punched the button for the floor to Clarich's office. Hardison had already looped the security camera in the elevator so no one would see anything in the elevator. Parker climbed out of the trashcan and Eliot lifted her through the trapdoor in the ceiling. From inside the elevator shaft Parker was able to access a utility entrance for the ventilation system. When the doors opened Eliot used his key to lock them open 'for maintenance', preventing anyone else from using that elevator. If everything went right Parker would get the files they needed and sneak back to the top of the elevator and Eliot would smuggle her back out the same way that they came in, with no one the wiser.
Eliot set up the ladder so that it mostly blocked the entrance to the elevator and climbing up a few steps he pushed a few of the ceiling tiles askew to make it look like he was working on something. There was a stairwell next to the bank of elevators that was rarely used. Eliot propped the door open with the trashcan and fished out the end of Parker's rappelling line. He tied the line securely so that all Parker would need to do was clip onto it in case of an emergency. The building was only ten floors, but it was enough that the rope would make a significant difference in the time it took to escape.
With escape plans A and B in place Eliot took a knee in front of the elevator and made a show of looking for something in the toolbox. He would be able to keep an eye on the hallway and Clarich's office door ensuring a safe exit for Parker if she couldn't sneak back through the vents. Keeping his head down and looking busy was the best way to remain unnoticed and he settled into that role.
Parker slid through the vents until they narrowed to a point that even her slim frame could no longer fit. The vent covers above the ceiling snapped on and weren't attached with anything more solid, like bolts or latches. Pushing just firmly enough to loosen the vent cover without sending it flying to crash noisily against something else had taken a lot of practice over the years and was a skill that had paid off tenfold. Sliding the vent cover to the side Parker peered out into the dark space sandwiched above the ceiling tiles of Clarich's office. For a moment she wished that she had Eliot's or even Hardison's werewolf eyesight.
It was dark and hot in the ceiling. She knew from the blueprints that it was seven more feet from the ceiling vent to the wall where the safe was at. Reaching blindly to her left she found the cable ladder that supported the massive amount of wiring needed to run a modern office building. Cable ladders looked very much like normal ladders but were designed to hold the hundreds of cables that traversed the ceiling before being fed one at a time to their final destinations. There was a narrow space left between the cables and the infrastructure above, but Parker was able to squeeze her way in.
Creeping along on her belly with the bolts above snagging at her clothes she made her way to the ceiling tile closest to where she thought the safe was. She slipped a small flashlight out of a pocket on her shoulder and clicked it on. The lens had been covered in red electrical tape so that it allowed enough light for her to see things nearby without destroying her night vision and without attracting attention. The light revealed that she needed to move forward at least one ceiling tile. She clicked the light off and slipped it back into her shoulder pocket. Tracking progress with her fingertips she scooched forward.
When she knew that she was above the correct tile she slipped one of her hook shaped lockpicks out of her other shoulder pocket and used it to dig into the soft material that the tile was made of. She lifted up on the edge of the tile until she could get a fingertip under the edge of it. The difference between the well-lit office and the dark space above the ceiling was momentarily blinding. After a second or two her eyes had adjusted enough to see into the office below. No one was in the room and the safe was not in sight of the door, so Parker lifted the ceiling tile out of the way. In a move that would have made a circus contortionist proud she twisted and turned until she was dangling from the cable ladder by her fingertips. After a couple of seconds to orient herself, she dropped silently to the floor.
The safe had a standard dial to unlock it and looked deceptively simple. However, Hardison had found schematics and work orders that showed other security measures in place. Hardison had already circumvented most of the external security and all that was left was the radio frequency from Clarich's company ID card and the combination itself. Parker had noticed a sensor listed in the work orders for the safe and she was fairly certain it was attached to the lock's mechanism. Hardison hadn't been able to disprove her theory so she was working under the assumption that if she got the combination wrong at any point it could set off an alarm. Parker held her phone up to the safe to be sure that the safe received the RF signal that her phone was relaying from Hardison's phone. Hardison was using his phone to capture the RF signal from Clarich's ID and send the signal on to Parker's phone.
Trusting that her phone was broadcasting the RF signal Parker pressed her ear to the safe and started working her way through the combination. When she found the correct number, she heard a very subtle click in the mechanism.
"Parker, is everything okay? I heard a beep." Eliot had heard the same click that Parker had because it was picked up on her earbud, a split second after the click he also heard a beep. Hardison had vastly improved the sound quality of the earbuds after realizing how much Eliot was already picking up with the old ones and how much more could be possible with slightly better tech.
"I didn't hear a beep." Parker's voice was quiet, almost sleepy, as she started working her way to the second number.
"Hardison?" Eliot whispered.
"You can see how good everything is running here and I can't imagine you'll have any trouble later." Hardison worked his answer into his sales pitch. They had all gotten good at crafting and interpreting such answers over the years.
Parker found the second number with the same nearly silent click as before. "Did you hear a beep this time?" Parker asked very quietly.
"Yes." Eliot answered.
"No. That's not a problem." Hardison answered the mark and Parker at the same time.
Since Hardison hadn't alerted them to any danger Parker continued on to the third number. The numbers slowly ticked around the dial until Parker heard and felt the click that told her the last number was in place and the lock was disengaged. She slowly pulled the safe door open and got a look at what was inside. A short stack of file folders full of papers, a couple of thumb drives, two stacks of cash rubber-banded together, and a small black velvet bag.
Hardison's voice on the earbuds broke Parker's reverie. "Of course we can finish this back at your office. Gotta make things official right?"