“Which is why you told me to take the battery out of Mallory’s phone.”
“Exactly. Everyone in the business uses cell spyware now.”
“And what business is that?”
“You must have some inkling,” she said.
There was a semblance of a smile on her face, a gentle understanding in her voice. But it was my most disquieting moment with Ivy so far-the sense that she knew what I knew, that she knew what I didn’t know, and that I had no idea how she knew any of it.
“Tell me about Vanessa Hernandez,” I said.
She didn’t hesitate in the least, didn’t even try feigning ignorance.
“Vanessa Hernandez had no problems with her nose,” she said, showing me her profile. “It was Ivy Layton who insisted on getting the work done.”
“I’m serious,” I said.
Her smile faded. “I was born in Miami. My parents were undercover agents for the DEA. My mom was born in Colombia, so she played the go-between for wealthy American dealers trying to hook up with Colombian suppliers.”
“Not exactly the Chilean schoolteacher and ex-pat engineer you told me about.”
“It was the same cover story they told our neighbors in Miami. They were always headed off to another copper-mining project in Chile, when in reality they were infiltrating the cocaine cartel in Colombia. Anyway, when I was five years old, a job went bad in Bogotá. Their target figured out that my father was DEA. My mother watched them drag him out of the car, shoot him in the back of the head, and dump his body on the side of the road.”
“I’m sorry. Your mother obviously escaped?”
“Somehow she was able to convince them that she had no idea he was an undercover agent. They let her go.”
“Did she stay with the DEA?”
“For a while. But she hasn’t worked with them for years. She got into corporate security as a consultant.”
“So…which way did Vanessa go?”
“No interest in law enforcement. But when I grew up and went to business school, the world of corporate espionage intrigued me. I joined a huge corporate security firm and when I was twenty-nine years old, my mother got a call from an old friend on Wall Street. He needed a brainy young woman with guts to infiltrate a billion-dollar hedge fund. That fund was Ploutus Investments. The friend on Wall Street was Eric Volke. Vanessa got the assignment, and that’s when I became Ivy Layton.”
I drew a deep breath, trying to get my arms around the whole thing. “Your mother knows Eric?”
“Yes. She’s in a taxi right now, on her way to meet up with him. Eric promised me that he would keep the two of you safe while this plays out between me and McVee.”
I paused again, still overwhelmed. “So when you and I met, you were doing corporate espionage for Saxton Silvers?”
“No. Eric hired me for WhiteSands.”
I knew WhiteSands. Sometimes its services complemented those of Saxton Silvers, and sometimes Eric was criticized for holding such a large ownership stake in a publicly traded company that, at least on the investment-management level, competed with Saxton Silvers for business.
“But you were spying,” I said.
‘“Spying’ has such a negative connotation. Eric knew that someone was manipulating the stock of WhiteSands, and he was convinced that the man behind it was Kyle McVee at Ploutus. The basic MO was similar to what just happened to Saxton Silvers. McVee used FNN reporters to spread rumors about WhiteSands, and McVee’s hedge fund bought low on the negative rumors and sold high on the favorable ones. Eric suspected that McVee was behind it, but he couldn’t prove anything. My job was to expose his plot by going to work for Ploutus and reporting my findings back to Eric.”
“Is that why McVee wanted you dead?”
“That was only the beginning,” said Ivy.
She suddenly stopped, and the expression on her face alarmed me.
“Ivy?”
“Holy shit,” she said.
“What?”
She was staring out the window into the parking lot. “Your driver.”
“Nick?” I said as I turned and looked. His Chevy was about a hundred feet away, parked beneath a tree. The sun was setting and the streetlights had just flicked on; their glare at dusk made the weblike crack in the windshield all the more evident. Nick’s head was facedown on the steering wheel.
“They got him,” said Ivy.
56
IAN BURN ENTERED THE EMERGENCY ROOM THROUGH THE AMBULANCE entrance. No one stopped him. He figured Cantella and Ivy were keeping an eye on the main entrance to the ER. By entering from the other side, where access was restricted, he would catch them off guard. He started down a maze of sterile corridors, guided by the signs marked WAITING ROOM. Ironic.
He couldn’t wait to get there.
Cantella’s limo driver had been a good source of information over the past few weeks. The tip about Cantella’s true destination had been Nick’s best yet. And his last. In an operation this big, Burn never kept people around after they were no longer needed. That held true even for the little guys-especially the little guys. It was always the housekeeper, the limo driver, or the bartender who ratted you out and sent you to prison. Nick had served his purpose and needed to go-though the cracked windshield and brain splatter were regrettable. His 9 mm Glock pistol had been too much firepower for such a close-range shot.
“Excuse me, sir. Can I help you?”
It was an elderly hospital volunteer. Nobody policed the halls of the “authorized personnel only” area like a seventy-year-old woman from Jersey who worked for free.
Burn ignored her, picking up his pace. He had no time for delays. Six months of tracking Ivy Layton had taught him plenty about the way her mind worked. She felt safe in public places, and probably the last thing she expected was for Ian Burn to walk into a crowded waiting room and start shooting. It was a risky maneuver, even for Burn, but acting contrary to a target’s expectations was the key to success in his business. Reporting back to Kyle McVee that Ivy Layton had slipped away again was not an option.
The gray-haired hospital volunteer came after him.
“Sir, this area is restricted.”
He knocked her to the floor and pushed through the double doors that led to the ER waiting room. The old woman’s scream turned heads and robbed Burn of the element of surprise, sending Ivy and Cantella running across the waiting room at full speed. The automatic glass exit doors parted, and Ivy was flying through the opening with Cantella on her heels when Burn spotted them. He raised his semi-automatic pistol and took aim. The sick, the injured, and the healthy alike scattered in every direction, screaming and diving for cover beneath the chairs and behind gurneys as Burn squeezed off six quick rounds. The echo off the tile floor and walls of painted cinder block sounded like cannon fire, and the shots shattered the glass doors as they closed. There was hysteria all around, but Burn’s focus was unshaken.
In the shower of shiny glass pellets just beyond the exit, Ivy Layton-Vanessa-fell to the sidewalk.
57
THE SIGHT OF IVY GOING DOWN HIT ME LIKE HOT SHRAPNEL.
One moment we were running at full speed, and the next it was a war zone. The noise was like firecrackers in a campfire. We were beyond the glass doors, but the exploding pellets of shattered glass caught up with us. The rest happened in a split second, but the image and sounds unfolded like slow motion. Several bullets slammed into Ivy’s back. Her body jerked forward, as if someone were knocking her to the ground with a hammer. I could actually hear the bullets pelting her-which struck me as odd. The jerking body was odd, too. Papa had told me that when people got shot, they dropped. Period. He’d seen it happen in World War II. Bodies weren’t knocked back, held up, or slammed against the wall like in the movies.