The World Beneath

Chapter 3

Vivian Torres drew in a deep breath. Sure, it smelled like smog, but it was still good. The cold winter sun shone on her long-sleeved running suit as she tightened her shoelaces. She stood at the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge, watching random tourists amble across its iconic span. They were bundled up in jackets and scarves, breath frosting out in front of them.

She gathered her black hair into a ponytail. She’d just gotten it cut, and it was barely long enough. When she did a few quick stretches, she drew admiring glances from a couple of passing guys. At six feet tall and Army strong, she was used to the attention and ignored them.

“Just a short run, right? Nothing competitive,” asked Dirk. He’d come to run with her. They’d served together in the Army before her discharge, and he knew she was competitive.

“More like a stroll than a run.” She stood and stretched first one leg and then the other.

“Sure,” he said sarcastically. Dirk, with his honorable discharge and family connections, had gone straight from the Army to the police. Vivian, with her dishonorable one, had been stuck working private security.

“Ready?” He ran a hand through his short blond hair and bounced from foot to foot. He was an inch shorter than Vivian but a faster runner.

She counted down from three, and they took off. She took an early lead and lengthened it. In a straight line, she was slower than he was, but she was better at dodging obstacles, which is how she thought of the tourists. His well-muscled physique, kept in top form through daily weight lifting, looked good, but it meant that he couldn’t get around people as quickly as she could.

She poured on more speed when she hit an open stretch, knowing he’d make up time on her when he got clear of people. Crisp air cooled her sweaty cheeks.

The Brooklyn end of the bridge beckoned, but she slowed to let Dirk catch up. They both knew she would have won, and that was all that mattered.

They reached the end and stopped, both breathing hard. She stared up at the Watchtower, the Jehovah’s Witnesses building in Brooklyn. As usual, she felt as if someone in the tower was spying on her, and a shiver ran down her back.

“How the hell did you pass the lady with the double stroller?” Dirk sounded winded.

“Matrix-style,” she told him. “Same as always.”

They headed back across the bridge, walking without talking, catching their breath. She’d missed this — the easy camaraderie of soldiers. She was close to her family, but it wasn’t the same as the bond she shared with Dirk.

“So, what’s bothering you?” Dirk asked. His sea-blue eyes met hers, and he waited.

He’d see right through a denial. “About six months ago, I lost a guy I was supposed to be following.”

“Happens to everyone sometimes. Even you.”

While they walked, she told him how she’d been assigned to babysit a Silicon Valley software executive. He wasn’t supposed to know she was there. It had started out easy, but then he’d left his hotel and disappeared in the column in Grand Central Terminal — the one inside the famous clock. She could still see it in her mind — she’d been across the concourse, checking out the time on its four opal faces, when he’d stepped into the information booth and then actually gone inside the pillar.

“I never knew the pillar had a door,” Dirk said. “Don’t see how that’s your fault.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. When you were tailing people, sometimes they got lost. But it usually happened to other people, not her. “Anyway, he came out a couple of hours later, totally trashed.”

“Drunk?”

“Something like that,” she said. “I dragged him back to his hotel, had an altercation with another guy along the way, and tucked the executive into his own little bed.”

“Altercation?” Dirk grinned. “Did the other guy walk away?”

She paused to stretch her hamstrings, muscles gone stiff from the air outside. “Actually, the jerk was kind of curled up in a fetal position when I left him. But he had it coming.”

“What did he do?” Dirk put on his jacket.

“He jumped me by the shoe-shine benches in front of Grand Central. You know the spot?”

“I do.”

“I was coming out practically carrying my guy, and this teenager comes up and asks for our money. Nicely, he said he was collecting for charity and needed a donation.”

“And so late at night, too. That shows dedication.” Dirk moved aside to let a teenage couple pass, their hands in each other’s back pockets.

“He flashed a knife to make sure I contributed the right amount.”

Dirk winced. “Poor kid.”

“I disarmed him,” she said. “Without doing any permanent damage. I couldn’t turn my back on him, so I made him aware that it takes one hundred ten pounds of pressure per square inch to rupture a testicle.”

“Does it?” Dirk moved a step back.

“So I’ve read,” she said. “Sadly, I was forced to apply about eighty pounds of pressure to the aforementioned area.”

“I bet that subdued him.”

“He gave me no further trouble while I took my client back to his hotel.”

Dirk laughed. “Sounds like you did a hell of a job protecting your client, even from himself.”

“That’s what worries me.” Vivian pulled the most recent issue of Forbes magazine out of her backpack and handed it to Dirk. “It’s the cover article.”

Tesla’s face smiled from the front cover. He was pale, like software engineers were supposed to be, with high cheekbones and well-formed lips, the top one dipped in the center like a bow, almost feminine. Curly black hair was cut to his jawline. He wore a light blue suit that matched his eyes. And he grinned like he’d played the greatest trick ever on the world.

Dirk read aloud as he skimmed it. “Joe Tesla, software millionaire… set to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange on the day his facial-recognition software company, Pellucid, went public… software uses a revolutionary algorithm… CTO never showed up… has disappeared from sight… rumors are that he has developed agoraphobia and not left the Grand Central Hyatt for six months.”

Vivian sighed.

“This was your guy?”

She stared down at the green water flowing far beneath the bridge. “Something happened to him down there.”

Dirk stood close to her, his warm form sheltering her from the wind. “How do you know?”

“He had no trouble going outside when I was following him. He trotted right over to the terminal and stumbled back. He didn’t have agoraphobia then, but he does now.”

“Weird, but not your problem.”

“What if it is?” She shifted from one foot to the other in the cold. “What if something happened to him down there, something that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there, and that’s what changed him?”

“Even if,” he said. “He’s a big boy. Not your job keeping him out of trouble all the time.”

“That night, it was.” She clenched her jaw. “And I blew it.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Dirk asked. She liked it that he didn’t try to talk her out of anything, just asked questions.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “But something.”

“You’d be better off letting it go.”

“Sure,” she said. “You’re right.”

They both knew she wouldn’t listen to his advice.