“Pardon?” Nate said.
“All that sex, money, and fame and you can’t take it with you,” the policeman said.
“Right,” Nate answered.
Nate checked Oren Victor’s laptop. “This been looked at?” he asked.
“Nothing was tampered with. The place is spotless,” the policeman noted.
Nate grabbed the laptop. “May I?” he said.
“Not if nobody sees you,” the cop smiled.
“Thanks Egan, I’ll owe you,” Nate smiled.
“Nah. Get me that Patron I told you about and we’re good,” the cop said.
Nate nodded.
Hours later he had the ISP and protocols sourced. Nate called in the findings and turned them over to the field. He had a murder to place.
***
Mina let her legs stay open. The man in front of her snarled. He was full-pissed and eager to shag. He had Mina pinned against the concrete wall.
“I let you use my phone.” You used my phone to surf the Net,” he said, legs wobbly.
“True,” Mina said.
“You said you were calling a friend,” he burbled.
“No, you opened the browser on your phone for me,” Mina said. “I asked if your phone made a Hot Spot connection… Remember?”
The man wobbled side to side. He hiked his pants up, his breath foul. Then he frowned. “You- you didn’t even tell me your name,” he pouted.
“Leigh ‘Mina’ Marley, but its ‘Wilhemina’ to you,” Mina said.
The man thought about it best he could. “Aww, yeah… That’s right…” he agreed. “Listen. Why don’t you give me a little something-something, and I’ll let you use all the phone you want. What do you say to that,” the inebriated yuppie warbled.
“Or I could just kill you,” Mina said.
The man laughed, then hit the ground.
***
The rain sluiced from trickle to downpour. She had to sidestep more than a wake of puddles or two to find a place to lie. She finally found a coffee house a block away from the park. She ducked her head under the sign advertising Internet service and hurried inside. Cold and uncomfortably sticky, she pried off the overcoat she’d borrowed from somebody who would no longer need it. She hunched in a booth and tried to block the memory of the man’s pallid face, the life drained from him.
She was grateful when the proprietor of the coffee house set a cup and saucer down and topped it with a delicious smelling ground roast. She lifted a hand to stop him but the man poured the rich Brazilian liquid to the brim.
“Sir-, I don’t-“ she started.
The man cut her off. “At this hour of night, we serve our guests free,” the coffee shop owner said. He pointed to a sign over a novelty jukebox stating the same. Wilhemina smiled, weary. The coffee shop owner leaned forward.
“Anything you want, it’s on the house,” he said.
Hair stringy, clothes too big a fit, Wilhemina knew she must look a fright. She ran a hand through her hair and it tangled when it struck her ring.
“Thank you,” Wilhemina said to the man.
“I’ve been there,” he said with a wink.
Wilhemina let the sorrow flood in. It washed over her and sank into an ache in her heart. She had set out to find the woman who had started the morbid chain of death and circumstance. The only way she could do was to hide under the radar and live deep undercover.
The coffee shop owner sat a plate of steaming bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast, topped off with another round of dark brew. Wilhemina looked up at him again, thankful. The man floored her with the sweetest smile.
Like another man she’d met had…
***
He was close. Damn close.
Nate had trailed the data down to Chicago. There was no question the body that struck into the ravine was Leigh Marley. After Wilhemina had confided in him she had a past, he had understood the sadness that sometimes flickered behind her eyes. She always smiled — God, he loved her for that — but her eyes were more cornflower than just blue. A blue he wanted to fall into for the rest of his life.
She had told him she worked as an assistant to an investigator in Philadelphia. Her prowess with paperwork and undeniable athleticism won her assignments no one else could close. Before the two of them met she had helped a girl escape an abusive relationship. The girl matriculated at the prominent university and Wilhemina was sure she had secured the girl’s chance to live her life anew.
Wilhemina didn’t establish a new identity for her. That much was clear. The records from three precincts and stations across three counties pulled up zip with any noticeable changes in Leigh Marley’s routine. His fed contact confirmed the same. Except when she dropped enrollment and about the same frame of time ‘Leigh’ had begun making purchases and renting a small motel room not far from Chicago. Nate realized Wilhemina was Leigh.
Except Leigh Mina Marley was now six feet under, and Nate didn’t give a crap load what the theorists said about Quarks. In his world, no two objects could occupy the same space, and he didn’t give a screw about parallel dimensions. Someone had taken care of Leigh and anyone she was connected to after being helped by Wilhemina.
Nate pulled around to a garage a block from the coffee house. He’d called in his badge at the precinct before leaving for Chicago. If he was right, Wilhemina wasn’t Mina, which meant she was in for the heroic fight of her life.
There was so much he wanted to tell her, share with her. And they had a date to keep he wasn’t about to let her get out from under…
***
“Take it, take it all,” the coffee house owner said.
He stared down the barrel of a gun and glanced at Wilhemina.
“I don’t need your frickin’ money. Don’t look this way. I told you!” the attacker whined.
The man looked down at the gun.
“Much better,” she said. “You,” she nodded to Wilhemina. “Get up.”
Wilhemina looked at the coffee house owner. They would have made great old acquaintances any another time. They shared a glance.
“I said, get up!” the woman screamed.
Wilhemina tried to hit the send button at the PC at the Internet station. The woman spun her around. “Out,” she said.
Wilhemina nodded at the shop owner and blinked two times. The man saw her point two fingers at the computer. The man looked back at Wilhemina and blinked twice. Good, Wilhemina thought. He got the message.
The woman shoved her outside into the pelting rain. It was icy but Wilhemina saw it as a sign, a comfort of a kind that said everything would be all right. She hadn’t eaten for days except for the kindness of the coffee shop proprietor and everything she had done to protect Leigh Marley, Oren Victor and the people in Leigh’s trajectory looked like it had all been done for nothing. She scoffed. Fine P.I. Indeed. She’d never make in the field, she realized.
“What are you snickering at?” the woman said. Her gun was trained on Wilhemina. Funny how everyone she seemed to come into contact with had a troubled past or knew how to wield a firearm, she thought.
The woman pushed Wilhemina taking her to the park. She shoved Wilhemina under the bridge. The rain made seeing anything except what was right in front either of them hopeless. The angry woman aimed at Wilhemina’s throat.
“So what..? No final request?” Wilhemina managed over the clacks of rain.
“Greener pastures,” the female officer from the eatery in Philly sneered.
***
The coffee house owner’s expression drummed fear in Nate’s heart. He tore into the shop asking for information and the man took him to the PC. He gave the description of two women to Nate and tapped the space bar on the computer keyboard. Nate read the sentence on a text file left on the desktop background…
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t me. — W.P.”
The coffee house wrung his hands. “What’s it mean?” he said.
Nate backpedaled to the front door. “Call the police. Give them this,” Nate said tossing his license to him.
The man looked at the swinging door. “But what does it mean?” he yelled out.