Bagger had never had a serious relationship with any woman; he’d been too busy hustling for his fortune. All the women he’d been involved with had either been paid for or looking to get some action from old Jerry in return for giving in. He knew they didn’t really care for him and so he never cared about them.
That was his life until Annabelle Conroy had come along and turned him upside down. There had been something about her right from the get-go that had hit him in a place he didn’t think he even had anymore. He’d allowed himself to believe that she actually cared for him and not because he could do anything for her.
And then the bottom had dropped out and here he was in the city he hated almost as much as Vegas, looking to kill a woman he could’ve loved forever. The loss of the forty million hadn’t destroyed him. He could always make more money when it came down to it. Yet Annabelle Conroy had stolen the unthinkable from him: his heart.
So enraged was Bagger by this sense of betrayal that if he’d had a gun, he would have shot the couple passing just a few feet away from him. It was all he could do to keep himself from running over and pounding both of them into the dirt.
He turned and walked quickly back to his hotel. When he got there he was in for another surprise. Mike Manson and his sidekick had just returned looking bloody and disheveled.
Before Bagger said anything to them he motioned to one of his other men and mouthed the word, “Clean?”
“We searched ’em,” the man said. “No surveillance devices.”
Bagger looked at Mike. “What the hell happened?”
“We blew it, Mr. Bagger,” Mike admitted. “We had ’em in the van, then the old guy got the gun away from me and tied us up. Took us all this time to get free and back here.”
“We had to walk five miles,” the other man said.
“I don’t give a shit if you had to crawl using your tongues,” Bagger roared. “You let a woman and a damn librarian get the drop on you?”
“It wasn’t the librarian,” Mike said. “He was an older guy, but he was one serious dude. He stuck a finger against my ribs and my whole body went numb.” He pointed to his wounded ear. “Then he took a chunk of my ear off with a round from my gun like it was nothing. He was a pro, Mr. Bagger. We weren’t expecting that kind of trouble.”
“Mike, if I didn’t know you’re not a screw-up, I’d put a round right through your head.”
Mike said nervously, “Yes sir, Mr. Bagger. I know. We crawled behind some trees, and Joe found a chunk of glass we used to cut the ropes off. Right as we were taking off the cops showed up. They must’ve called them. They didn’t see us, though.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes sir.”
“The guy who nicked you was a pro, huh? What’d he look like?”
Mike told him.
“Maybe a fed?”
“He wasn’t dressed like a fed. And he was a little old for that. But the guy was still a pro. And he and Conroy were tight.”
Bagger slowly sat down in a chair. Who the hell was Annabelle hooked up with?
CHAPTER 51
THE SENATOR WAS NOT IN TODAY, having departed on a sudden fact-finding trip, taking many of his staff with him and leaving only a skeleton crew behind. Finn had found this helpful information out on Simpson’s Web site, where the senator touted the trip as one that would benefit all Alabamans and Americans. How a first-class trek to the Grand Cayman Islands was going to accomplish that, Finn didn’t know. What he did think was that Simpson had been warned about the other killings and had decided to get out of town. That was all right, he had to come back to D.C. at some point. After all, he was a U.S. senator. They couldn’t avoid their duties forever, though some had made valiant efforts to do so over the years.
Finn was dressed in government-standard work clothes, his badge dangling from his neck, his case of tools swinging in one hand. His assured demeanor, dead-on photo ID and polished story of work to be done here resulted in his being quickly allowed on his way.
Getting off the elevator, Finn eyed the glass door of Roger Simpson’s office, the Alabama state flag next to it. The banner was a crimson Saint Andrew’s Cross on a white field patterned after the Confederate battle flag. As it had over 150 years ago for the Union Blue, the flag represented a perfect target for Harry Finn. He walked up to the door and through the glass saw the young receptionist sitting at the front desk.
He’d enlarged the photos he’d taken of the office and the woman on his previous visit here. They had clearly shown her nameplate on the desk.
He poked his head in the door and held up his phony work order. “Hey, Cheryl, Bobby from building maintenance. I was called about your front door lock a few days ago. Sorry I’m just getting to it, but we’ve had a backlog. Do you know what’s wrong with the darn thing? We’ve had complaints from other offices about theirs too.”
The harried young woman, who was fielding phone calls in rapid succession, cupped her hand over the phone receiver. “No idea.”
“I’ll just take a quick look at it, then. Just sit tight,” Finn said. The receptionist smiled gratefully before turning back to her work.
Finn knelt down, examined the lock and slid a tiny piece of metal into the keyhole. He spent a couple more minutes pretending to fuss with the door and said, “You’re good to go now, Cheryl.”
She gave him a wave. As Finn packed up his tools he glanced inside the office. He had already learned there was no alarm panel and no motion sensors, but it never hurt to check again.
Out in the hall there was a surveillance camera set up on the ceiling at the juncture of two halls. Finn had already timed it. It changed positions every two minutes so it could sweep both corridors. He walked down the hall and watched the camera while checking his watch. It was still on the two-minute sweeps. That would be all he needed. Guards patrolled the halls at night, but he had learned that they did the even floors on odd hours and the odd floors on even hours. He waited until the hall was clear of people and the camera pointed away from him. Then he quickly jimmied the lock of a room he knew was used to store holiday decorations, and slipped inside. He wedged himself in the back, lay on the floor and went to sleep.
At two minutes after midnight, Finn slipped a video wire under the door of the storage room and did a quick look-see up and down the hall. It was clear. The camera was sweeping the other corridor.
He hustled to Simpson’s office door. The piece of metal he’d inserted in the lock earlier performed only one function, but did it flawlessly. It made the door seem to be locked when it actually wasn’t if you had one special piece of equipment, which Finn did. He inserted the magnetized end of his tool in the lock, pulled out the metal piece and the door clicked open.
Finn immediately went to work. He jogged through the anterooms and into Simpson’s spacious office. He knelt down by the desk’s kneehole and flipped the computer CPU around, revealing the back. He unscrewed the cover, slipped his device inside and connected it to other components inside the computer.
Finn had been able to get his device past security because it didn’t have any explosive materials in it. Instead, the device had been designed to ignite a chemical reaction inside the components in the CPU. It was a reaction that would make the otherwise harmless CPU a bomb, a possibility no one in the computer industry would want you to know. The device had attached to it a wireless receiver with a range of about fifteen hundred yards, more than enough, Finn had calculated. He replaced the CPU’s cover and put the unit back under the desk.
Next, he sat down at the computer and turned it on. The screen powered up but a password was needed. Busy senators didn’t have time to recall elaborate or obscure passwords, so Finn started simply typing in names. The third one did the trick: “Montgomery,” the capital of Alabama.