Jessica reread the information she had collected for a third time, each successive time slower than the time before, to make sure she had read what she thought she had read.

"Son of a fucking bitch."

She was sitting at the end of the bar, the end closest to the door, the end that gave her laptop the best WiFi connection; and it just so happened that Luke was only a few feet away when she made her discovery.

"What did I do now?"

"Not you, you tripod. Annelie fucking Bodin."

"What did she do?" he asked as he stacked clean glasses behind the bar, the damp bar rag over his left shoulder.

"She fucking lied to us."

It was after Noon for everyone else, but Jess had just gotten out of bed. Her late night, or early morning, depending on your viewpoint, finally wiped away by seven hours sleep. But the nagging idea that had delayed her slumber by fifteen minutes had wasted no time reasserting itself once she had woken up, and she had begun investigating it as soon as she sat down at the bar and ordered breakfast/lunch and coffee.

"Did you just order coffee?" one of Luke's regulars asked, "I don't think I've ever heard you order coffee before."

"Fuck off."

"Okay, then," he replied before moving to the other end of the bar.

"I figured since we went to the trouble to steal Mariner Lab's secret database and client list that I would dig a little deeper into Annelie Bodin."

"Makes sense," Luke said, "look into her past, and see who might want to hurt her. Trish had you looking into anyone who might be sharing her travel plans, might as well see if she was sharing any. So she was telling somebody, and then lied about it?"

"No. She knew who was sending her those fucking letters the whole time, and then lied about it."


"Run it by me one more time," Luke said after lifting his head out of his hands and massaging it's shiny crown.

They had tabled their discussion long enough for them to take Jess's laptop and walk to his office. The WiFi connection was almost non existent, but all of the pertinent info was still on the laptop's display.

"2016, Annelie starts dating Ekaterina Sokolova, owner of SAPESTUFILM, also known as Saint Petersburg Studios Cultural Films. Fast forward to 2018, they have a major break up. Sokolova starts a long chain of classic stalker/abuser emails, texts and DM's to Annelie."

"What, don't leave me, I can't live without you, shit like that?"

"Come live with me in Rublyovka, make films for me, cut everyone else out of your life for me, blah, blah, blah."

"Which, I guess, Annelie didn't do."

"Correct. Instead, she starts dating one of the brightest stars in Swedish Hockey, NHL player of the year for 2008 and 2009, Elliott Fornberg."

"Yeah, I remember him. Broke every scoring record on the planet. But, didn't he..."

"Die mysteriously in a car accident. Ran his 2011 Saab Phoenix X into a tree in the wee hours. No witnesses."

"Not suspicious at all."

"Nope, not at all."

"When was that again?"

Jess scrolled the text from the database down to the section where Ekaterina began contacting Annelie again.

"April 2020. A month after the crash Sokolov is back, My dearest heart, I wanted to offer you, yada, yada, yada. Annelie blows her off. Two weeks later Annelie starts getting letters. A month goes by, and Sokolov tries again."

"Jesus," Luke said as he looked at the words on the screen.

"Yeah. Dearest, blah, blah, blah," Jess read silently before getting to the section she wanted, "she wanted Annelie to play feisty reporter Nastya Fedoro in SAPESTUFILM's new Luka Makarov film Nastya. Annelie refused and the letters get worse. A lot worse.

"Luka Makarov?"

"Former chief investigator for the Soviet Militsiya in Moscow, current chief investigator for the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs of the City of Moscow. Based on the novels by what's his name. He's written something like ten of them so far. Luka gets a new love interest every book, which is pretty impressive considering he has to be two-hundred years old by now."

"Yeah," Luke said, "Viagra has a lot to answer for."

"No fucking lie."

"It's gotta be her," Luke said, "She had Fornberg killed so she could have a clear field. And that fucking guy was a massive star across the known universe, including Russia where they take hockey pretty seriously."

"Annelie must have run to him for protection, and it got him killed," Jessica said after a second of silence.

Luke shook his head. "And killing him didn't do shit for Katerina fucking Sokolova. She still didn't get the girl."

"And now she's seriously pissed," Jess replied, "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

"An ultra rich woman scorned, living in a country where the ultra rich can do whatever they want so long as they don't threaten the powers-that-be."

"A country where the definition of threaten gets broader every fucking day and can include, for some people, continuing to draw breath. She thinks she's untouchable, and apparently she is."

"Assuming her friends in the Kremlin, if she has any, don't know what she's been up to."

"Or that they would give a shit if they did know."

Both of them were quiet for a moment as they read.

"That was the last thing that Annelie got from her. Ekaterina went silent after that," Luke said.

"Not totally silent. She just started talking to other people," Jess said as she changed screens, "and she went online and went shopping."

"SAPESTUFILM bought that fucking database from Mariner Labs," Luke said as Jessica used her mouse to point to the line dated 02-03-2021.

"Is that February 3rd or March 2nd?"

"Who the fuck cares. It's her, we got her. She had Elliott Fornberg killed. She had that flight crew killed. She's trying to reclaim what she thinks is rightfully hers, and she's not taking no for an answer. Fucking bitch."

"So what do you want to do? HALO into...where was it?"

"Rublyovka. It's a suburb of Moscow. Think Beverly Hills but with a shitload of snow in the winter."

"So you HALO into Beverly Hills with a shitload of snow and drag her out by her hair?"

"It's July. There's no snow there now. And I was just going to pull her arms and legs off, but your thing works too."

"They'll never hand her over, not in a million years."

"No. If we want her, we're going to have to go get her."

"There's no we in this. It's not our job, not yours, not mine. Not Trish's either, but she needs to hear this, doesn't she?"

"Yeah, she needs to hear that the woman she's fucking is a liar."


"Hey, I need to send you some intel; but first can you hook me up with one of your dad's old friends from work?"

Jess waited about three seconds before hearing Dakota North's reply.

"Why do you want to have sex with one of my dad's old friends from work?"

"Not that kind of hook up, shit-for-brains, I need a contact in the Agency that has a contact in a country that is not currently on our Christmas Card list."

"Ah, well. Still a weird request, just not as weird as I thought."

"Just a question out of the blue...when was the last time you checked the carbon monoxide detector in your house?"

"Yeah, yeah, very funny. What is it you need that you can't find in the good old U.S. of A?"

"That'll be pretty fucking obvious after you read the intel I'm gonna send you."

"Find. Zip it, compress it, encrypt the living shit out of it, and send it over the same link I gave you before. Send the key separately in an email."

"Will do. Can you do me another favor?"

"Jesus. What?"

"Give a hard copy to Trish. On the down low. Again."

Jess could tell that the silence she was hearing did not precede another joke.

"Yup. I can do that."


"Sorry, this other thing blew up in my face and I've been chasing it all day. How did your thing go?"

Jess could hear the sound of people, but couldn't identify it specifically.

"We had to bug out," Alice replied, "The NYPD got wind that something was up, and Kyle told us to split."

"So your running for it?"

"More or less. We're ordering coffee. We're heading back into the city in a while. What blew up in your face?"

How much fucking time do you have?

"I'll fill you in later. How about dinner tonight? My boyfriend owns a bar, we can meet there. You guys up for it? The three of you?"

"Jules might be getting laid tonight, but I'll check."

Jess was by herself in Luke's office. He had left her alone right before she had called Dakota North. But the memory of him slowly entering her before carrying her, still impaled on his girthy member, to his bed and gently laying her down, was still fresh in her mind, and in her body, even though it was two days in the past.

"Are either of you two getting laid tonight?" she asked as the space between her legs became moist at the memory she was replaying in her mind, and at the touch of her left hand under her tank top on her breasts.

"Nope. So at least two of us will be there."

Jessica spun the office chair around until she was facing the desk and placed her feet on the edge.

"Great. I'll text you the address and time. You can meet Luke."

"Sounds good," Alice said, "See you tonight."

"See you tonight," Jessica said before ending the call, throwing her on the desk, unzipping her pants, pulling them down to her knees, and slowly inserting her right middle finger between her legs.