Private Beijing

Chapter 6

The sun was shining as brightly as ever but Los Angeles had lost its luster. Justine steered her black Mercedes S65 into the parking garage beneath the Private building on Wilshire Boulevard. She’d taken Jack to the airport the previous evening and had returned to her empty apartment with a feeling of foreboding. As far as the world was concerned, Jack epitomized the action hero. No one else saw him as she did: The moments he drifted back into his memories and the pain of the past was written on his face; the nightmares when he spoke indistinct but fearful words; and the terrors from which he woke screaming, but with no recollection of the horror that had prompted them. Even though they didn’t live together, they were not often apart. She knew him better than anyone else did, but realized she would never fully understand him. He would rush headlong into danger when others would shy away, confront it without hesitation. Three murders and a disappearance in Beijing suggested Jack was going into danger there, and Justine could not help but worry about him.

She pulled into her parking space just as her phone rang and she saw Rafael Lucas’s name flash on-screen in the center of the dashboard.

“Rafael,” she said when she answered his call. “I’m just parking so we might lose signal. Can I call you back?”

“Sure,” he replied. He still had more than a trace of a Spanish accent, a legacy of his upbringing there in the region of Cantabria. “If you’re not with them, you might want to loop in Sci and Mo-bot.”

He was referring to Maureen Roth, Private’s tech guru, and Seymour Kloppenberg, the agency’s forensics expert.

“I’ll see if I can get hold of them,” Justine replied, but the line had already gone dead. She took the elevator up to Private’s offices on the fifth floor, emerging into the lobby where Michelle and Dewayne, the two cheerful receptionists, normally sat, but Justine was early and the pair weren’t in yet.

She found Mo-bot in the computer lab on the fourth floor. Maureen Roth, known to everyone at Private as Mo-bot, was a technology genius. Her tattoos and spiky hair suggested a cool, aloof rebel, but she had the warmest heart, and many at the firm, Justine included, thought of her as their second mom, someone they could go to with any problem. The rest of Mo-bot’s team weren’t in yet, so the lab was otherwise empty.

“Morning, sunshine,” Mo-bot said, turning her attention away from lines of code. “I hear Jack has gone to Beijing. What a tragedy. Those poor people.”

“Yes,” Justine agreed. “It’s awful.” She was silent for a moment out of respect for their fallen colleagues before continuing, “Rafael Lucas wants to talk to us. Says we should loop in Sci.”

“I’ll call him,” Mo replied as she hit the speaker button on the phone on her desk.

“Hey, beautiful,” Sci said after a couple of rings.

Private’s chief criminalist, Seymour Kloppenberg, was nicknamed Dr Science — or Sci for short. He ran a team of twelve forensic scientists who worked out of a lab in the basement of the building. He was an international expert on criminology and consulted for law-enforcement agencies all over the world, ensuring Private stayed current with the very latest scientific thinking. A slight, bookish man, Sci dressed like a Hells Angel biker, which often unsettled the agency’s more conservative clients. He enjoyed restoring and customizing old motorbikes, and Justine thought that right now she could hear a powerful engine idling somewhere in the background.

He and Mo-bot had been among Jack’s first hires and their mutual professional respect had evolved into a deep friendship.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Mo-bot replied. “And we don’t have time for your forked-tongue smooth talk. Rafael wants to speak to us.”

“No problem.” Sci adopted a more serious tone immediately.

The idling engine noise fell silent.

“I’ve got Justine with me. I’ll call Rafael.”

“Hey, Sci,” Justine said as Mo-bot dialed the number. It rang a couple of times before he answered.

“Hello.”

“Rafael, it’s Maureen Roth. I’ve got Justine with me, and Sci is patched in.”

“Thanks for calling,” he replied. “I’ve got bad news, I’m afraid.”

He sounded tired and downbeat. Whatever it was must be serious because he paused for a long while.

“You still there?” Mo-bot asked.

“Yes. I’m sorry,” he replied. “Jessie Fleming and her partner Lewis Williams were shot last night. Lewis died at the scene, but Jessie managed to escape and is under police guard in an induced coma in Mount Sinai Hospital.”

“Jeez,” Sci remarked. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m afraid I’m not,” Rafael responded.

“Oh, God.” Mo-bot sighed sadly.

“That’s unbelievable,” Justine said. “This can’t be a coincidence, can it? Another attack on our staff so soon after what happened in Beijing. What’s Jessie’s condition?”

“Touch-and-go.”

Justine couldn’t be certain, but it sounded as though he was crying.

“Any leads on the shooter?” Sci asked.

“None,” Rafael replied. “That’s why I’m calling. With Jessie in a coma and Lewis dead, the team here needs leadership.”

Justine looked at Mo-bot, who nodded.

“I can move some things around.”

“Same here,” Sci chimed in.

Justine had submitted her profile of the Griffith Park Strangler last night and was between assignments.

“I think we can make something work,” she told Rafael.

“Thank you,” he said, his relief palpable. “Send me your flight details. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

He hung up.

“Beijing and now New York? You’re right to be alarmed, Justine,” Mo-bot observed. “I don’t like this.”

Justine nodded. It could have been a coincidence, but two attacks on Private personnel in the space of twenty-four hours was more than unusual. And what if this was only the beginning?