Life of Secrets

PROLOGUE

A beautiful woman hung by her fingertips 100 feet above the ground. Far below her was a dark alley, but she did not look down. At four in the morning, when the night is blackest and human reflexes are slowest, she gripped the side of the building, muscles on fire from continuous strain.

She wasn’t falling off but climbing up. And she was nearly at the top of the building. One last reach would get her to the roof, but it was a long reach. She stretched for the edge of the roof but couldn’t quite make it. Wedging her toe into a chipped-out hollow in the brick, she used that leverage to raise herself an inch or two farther.

The fingers of her left hand wrapped over the parapet. Her right hand soon followed. That done, it became a simple matter of muscle strength. She pulled herself up far enough to lean over the edge onto the roof and dropped forward onto it. Success!

Alyssa Chambers rose lightly to her feet on top of the building. Silently, she padded across the empty roof toward a maintenance door in the center. The moonless night wrapped around her like a cloak as she walked. Anyone watching would have seen little more than a shadow that may have moved. Clad in black fatigues, Chambers blended into the dark like a whisper in a crowded room.

Her raven-black hair was darker than the sky itself. She moved with a lithe grace of a dancer, and her head scanned from side to side constantly, alert for danger. She wore a bulky set of night vision goggles on her face, and a pistol—its long, fat, sound-suppressed barrel almost like a sword—strapped to her back.

She slid a card into the electronic reader on the door. Alyssa’s card was special, however. Two wires ran from the card to a black box the size of a pack of cigarettes, which she held in her hand. A small digital display on the box scrolled through numbers before locking in on a set of six. Calmly, she opened the door.

Her radio earpiece came alive. I see you're in. You have 30 seconds.

Two blocks away and ten stories down, her co-conspirator Gunter Hauptmann reclined in a white Ford Econoline van, idly watching displays. His relaxed posture was deceiving; Gunter was fully alert. His role in the operation was to monitor the target's defenses.

Gunter and Alyssa worked together from time to time on jobs like this. Both were freelancers, and their paths crossed only when there was money to be made. They weren't exactly friends, and they weren't exactly coworkers, but they had done jobs like this together before. When Chambers needed an electronics expert, she called Gunter.

She had never revealed her name and was a bit surprised when he disclosed his. However, she checked him out and, indeed, Hauptmann was his real name. His past was even more checkered than hers—an ex-con who hadn't learned his lesson.

He adjusted his long legs, resting the heels of his combat boots on the edge of the console in front of him. His gaunt frame hung totally slack, as if he were at home watching television. Not a single blond hair on his head was out of place. The only sign of tension he showed was to rub a hand over the two-day growth of stubble on his chin.

Three hours ago Gunter had run a wiretap into the phone line used by the target's alarm system. Now, he sat and watched the readout, waiting for the alarm to summon the police. It never did.

The first keycard opened the door’s lock. Now it was time to turn off the alarm. Barely inside the door, Chambers wired another small electronic box into the alarm's keypad and calmly let it do its work. In moments it beeped, and she knew the alarm would not be summoning anyone any time soon.

She headed down the stairs, never for a moment relaxing her guard. The alarm was disabled, true, but someone could still show up by chance. Alyssa’s particular skill set had made her a wealthy woman; she had no desire to part with any of her riches by becoming careless at this point.

Suddenly, she heard muffled voices. It was impossible to make out any words, but the implication was clear enough. The floor below her was not empty.

Her briefing had indicated it would be.

That meant one thing had already gone wrong. What else might follow?

She walked quickly but never made a sound as she made her way through the darkened maintenance space on the top floor. One floor down—on the ninth story—were the executive offices of the building. Her target was there.

Her feet padded noiselessly over the dusty floor. Apparently, no one came to the tenth floor very often; it was really more like a maintenance attic. Its purpose mattered little to Chambers—people could come here as often as they wanted, so long as they didn't do so in the next ten minutes. She descended to the ninth floor.

At the landing, she waited behind the door. She stood completely still, frozen, listening. And on the other side of the door, she heard the gentle slap of footsteps.

They were coming nearer.

Nearer. Nearer. She had three choices. Keep standing still. Head back up the stairs. Reach for the pistol strapped to her back.

She chose the first one, keeping so still she barely even breathed.

Step, step, step.

And then the footsteps began to recede.

She took her first breath in what felt like an hour and listened. When she could no longer hear the footsteps, Chambers cracked the door open the barest bit and peeked out.

At the far end of the hall, she saw a man turn a corner. Once he was out of sight, she opened the door and moved quickly down the hall.

Not only was there more activity on the ninth floor, there was more light also. Apparently, a few of the office workers had left their lights on. Alyssa slipped off her low-light goggles.

From one of those lighted offices, Chambers heard the sound of typing.

She paused for a long time just outside that door, wondering how to proceed. The building was supposed to be empty. It was four in the morning. No one was supposed to be here!

She could leave, of course. She could turn around, go back to the roof, climb back down …

No. The thought barely even passed through on its way to being rejected out of hand.

Her ears told her the sound of typing was little more than two feet from the door. Her experience told her that a person using a computer was likely to be looking at the screen, not at the floor. So she lowered herself to the floor and poked her head around the door just far enough to peek into the room

From this position she could barely see black hair above the laptop screen. Surely the man could not see her. She drew back, stood up, and ducked into the office next door to think. The only solution that presented itself was to wait. Which she did, and did some more, and kept doing, checking her watch obsessively every 20 seconds.

Finally, the typist got up and walked out of his office. Alyssa had no idea where he was going, nor did she care. This was her chance to reach her goal.

Just as she was about to sprint for it, she heard footsteps toward the far end of the hall.

Whoever had walked around the corner earlier was coming back. The hallway wasn’t likely to remain safe for long. But if she kept waiting all night, eventually the staffers and consultants would be back in the office…

Taking a desperate chance, she raced past the typist’s office and popped through the next doorway. She waited behind the wall, listening as the walker went by. She couldn’t see him, but she could see his shadow on the ground as he peeked into the typist’s office.

She waited for the walker to finish his route. She heard him open and close the stairwell door through which she'd entered. Next, she heard the typist return to his office. Once the typing resumed, Alyssa padded silently on to her destination.

Her eyes swept the hall. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. Chambers followed the hallway carefully. She knew exactly where she was going. Reaching a corner, she found the penthouse office and delicately turned the doorknob. It was unlocked, meaning she didn't need her key-card spoofer again. The smallest of sighs escaped her lips, and she whispered a complaint she'd spent her life trying to avoid: Too easy.

Entering the office, she scanned her surroundings to look for potential threats. Having gotten this far, she didn't expect any, but she looked anyway. The shocking thing was that the rich, royal blue carpeting showed fresh footprints. Perhaps the walker had been in here. If so, his potential return would pose a threat.

The walls were lined with contemporary paintings—originals, not prints. Each corner of the room held a bronze bust, but she didn't take the time to examine them. The room's most prominent feature was the exorbitant teak desk in the center. Chambers went to it immediately.

She moved around behind the computer and deftly unscrewed the gray metal case. Opening the machine up, she made a few very quick changes inside and then screwed the case back together.

Chambers looked at her watch again as the machine beeped and whirred. She’d been in here far too long already. While the operation didn't require a firm time limit, every added minute only increased her risk.

With a few key presses she went to work on the computer, bypassing security systems and tweaking the way it ran. Once she'd done that to her own satisfaction, any of the owner's passwords or security programs wouldn't matter anymore. She could copy files from the hard drive to her own flash drive with impunity. This she did with a practiced eye. Years of work in this business had given her excellent judgment about the kinds of computer files likely to be interesting to the people who hired her.

She made one last modification, putting in a little program of her own. It wasn’t part of what she’d been hired to do, but it was standard operating procedure, something she did on every job. She left a key logger, a spy program that could tell her everything the user typed. It was insurance. Alyssa Chambers worked in a dangerous business. If she ever got caught, prison loomed large on her horizon. For that reason, she always looked for leverage over her employers, just as her father had taught her. Tracking every keystroke provided awesome leverage.

Once finished, she took her drive out of the computer. The next morning, the computer's owner would have no idea what had transpired. The computer would boot up the same as always, with no indication that it had been modified in any way.

Back in the hallway, Alyssa walked briskly toward the same stairwell through which she'd entered. On the ground floor of the building was a service door leading to an alley. That was her egress.

She strode briskly out of the alley and onto the street, ignoring passersby. In her baggy black clothes, she simply looked trendy, rather than suspicious. The two blocks to Gunter Hauptmann's van were covered in moments and less than fifteen minutes after her climb to the roof Alyssa Chambers was on her way home, two million bucks richer. Although Gunter owned the van, she drove. Her route took her right by the front door of the building she'd just broken into. Etched on the glass door was a slick, agency-designed logo of the kind so common among political campaigns.

It read, Rich West for President.

CHAPTER 1

FLASHBACK

Two teenagers walked across the grass at an expensive east coast prep school, both wearing tan slacks and blue shirts. It was their last day of class before spring break, and a touch football game had broken out in the quad among the other students. The ball got knocked out of bounds. It bounced and tumbled off the grass until it wobbled to rest at the feet of the boy and girl walking past.

The girl reached down, picked up the ball, and shot a perfect spiral right back at the quarterback, who caught it and grinned. He called, You wanna play, Alyssa? We’re losing; we could use you!

She shook her head, waved, smiled, and went back to her conversation.

Obviously the gossip hasn’t gotten to them yet, or they wouldn’t be inviting me to play, she said.

She was short, black-haired, and beautiful; she pouted as she talked. With her was a slender boy, with wavy brown hair and an angular face. His hands were stuffed in his pockets as he walked. His blue shirt was like hers—nice fabric with the school crest on the pocket. But his tan slacks fit poorly and the frayed cuffs dragged on the ground. His name was Matt Barr, and he said, You shouldn’t have done it, Alyssa.

Of course I shouldn’t have done it, but it’s like I was seeing red. I got so mad I just didn’t think. Don’t tell me I shouldn’t have done it; that’s obvious.

Is your father going to kill you?

"My father is a minor consideration at best. He barely knows he has a daughter, let alone when she gets into trouble. My sensei, on the other hand, is going to mess up my whole life when he hears. You don’t use martial arts training to beat the daylights out of someone just because they got your goat."

You shouldn’t have… the boy cut off in mid-sentence when the girl gave him a look that suggested she might not be finished beating the daylights out of people.

He should never have said I was your girlfriend, she muttered.

Matt said nothing, which was wise. It made him feel good when people thought he and Alyssa were together. She knew that about him. If he tried to agree with her that the boy shouldn’t have said that, she would know he was lying to patronize her. But if he said what he really felt, it would just make her angry.

They were picking on you, and I didn’t like it. I don’t like to see bullies pick on people.

Matt shrugged. Being defended by a girl wasn’t exactly going to do him any good with the boys.

And then he had to go and say, ‘Oh look, is your girlfriend going to protect you?’ It was like my head exploded. I wasn’t thinking.

It’s funny how often you and I have this conversation, Alyssa. You’ve got to do something about your temper.

I’ll tell you what makes my temper better is touching someone’s nose with my fist if they’re being a jerk.

Indulging your temper isn’t the same thing as learning to get it under control.

The teen girl rolled her eyes at her friend.

My mother wanted me to be strong. That was her dying wish for me. Her very last words.

The boy touched her shoulder lightly.

I remember her.

She continued, Strong is standing up for yourself. Strong is standing up for your friends. Strong isn’t wimping out when a bully is picking on your friend.

Matt said, Well, if my father hears about it, he’ll chew me up one side and down the other. You know how Reverend Barr is about living by the rules. Don’t be violent, don’t be a trouble maker, and don’t waste your time with that rebellious Chambers girl.

She shrugged. Your father thinks the same thing about you and me that those boys thought.

It’s all he thinks about. Wanting to make sure I don’t ‘get into trouble’ with a girl. Any girl, it’s not just you.

Alyssa snorted. You won’t be getting into trouble with me.

Matt sighed. Thanks. My dad will be glad to hear it.

She said, At least your father knows you exist. Mine barely knows he has a daughter.

♦

Later that night, home for break, Alyssa moped in her spacious bedroom, barely even seeing the canopied four-poster bed or the original artwork that hung on her walls.