He let the image fall back to the desktop, reached for the wastebasket, leaned over, and didn’t resist as his lunch came up in heavy, lurching waves.

  Chapter Five

  Ellie poked her head over Mark’s cubicle. “You ready?” she asked.

  “Be right there.”

  Ellie walked into the conference room and shifted into a chair. Mark came in a minute later and sat across from her.

  “Okay,” he began. “I’ve already written up several PR pieces, and we’re working on getting a few news articles backdated online that show your fake doppelgänger donating to a few good causes. There won’t be much, but there will something to represent you online if they go digging for more information about you.”

  “What’s the story?” she asked.

  “You will be, as requested, a Miss Shirley Dunham. Shirley Dunham is a wealthy social recluse from North Georgia who commissioned a diving expedition out near the Keys last year that yielded twenty-one million dollars in jade and Spanish gold.” He grinned. “Before taxes. I’ve got Glitch backfilling stories on the whole thing and building a narrative about your past, your non-profit contributions to local food banks and a nature conservatory. It should be enough for them to give you an audience and feel like they have a model client interested in taking on their services.”

  “Twenty-one million. That’s a lot of money for a treasure find. Enough to make national news, I would think. Shouldn’t we bring it down a little?”

  “We’re publicizing the holding company that found it, with only a footnote toward Miss Dunham in a couple articles. That work for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come on. Give me your best southern accent again.”

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t be from Minnesota?” She took on a new accent when she said the state: Minn-ah-soda. “Yah, hon. I think I could do this one better. Yah know, me bein’ from up north and all.”

  Mark laughed. “Good, but no. And I think you might be stereotyping.”

  “Ohh...kay then,” she said.

  “North Georgia. Come on with it.”

  “Oh, no honey,” she drawled, “you don’t really want me to be from Gaw-jah now, do you?”

  Mark shook his head. “That’s really good. I can’t even get Scarface or Dirty Harry right, and every man I know does those.”

  “Why, of course it’s good, sweetie. There is only one way to talk in this world, and it’s with the dialect of the gods.” Ellie rested her fingertips on her collarbone. “And Shirley Dunham is as godly as they come, honey.”

  “Okay. I think we’ll be all right. Well done, Miss Dunham.”

  Ellie leaned back, tossed her hands out. “I can do this all day. French, Portuguese, Russian if you like. Not just the accent, the language too.”

  “Maybe during happy hour. Or if we’re ever hunting down Putin’s mobsters in the Gulf, which, you know, I’m sure is imminent. For now, let’s get you a wig and the proper attire. I’m thinking shorter brown hair. It’s Monday…” he drummed his fingers on the table. “I’d like to get your request submitted to Hawkwing by Wednesday. If we’re lucky, they’ll have you up there as early as next week.”

  * * *

  Manuel Saucedo walked into his little sister’s room, leaned down, and set his hand on her shoulder. He shook it gently. “Luciana. Luciana. Wake up.” The small girl stretched, yawned large, and rolled her face back into her pillow. Manuel shook her again. “Come on. You’re going to be late for school. Get up. I made you pancakes.”

  Her eyes flicked open. “Pancakes?” Her feet were on the floor before the word was fully off her lips.

  “Get dressed. Do you have all your folders in your backpack?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said through a half-yawn. “I did it last night.”

  “Good. I’ll meet you in the kitchen. We have to leave in twenty minutes.”

  Manuel heard the bathroom door shut, and he walked through the tiny living room and into the even smaller kitchen. “Abuelita, you want more coffee?”

  “No.” Manuel’s grandmother sat in her nightgown in an easy chair, watching the Local NBC News 6 weatherman tell them it would be another hot, sticky day in Miami.

  Manuel slipped the spatula under the last pancake and removed it from the skillet. He tossed it on a plate already piled high with pancakes. He had made too many. Luciana wouldn’t have time to eat but three or four.

  At twenty-three years old Manuel Saucedo had already served two stints in prison for pushing drugs on the street. Most recently, he’d been released over a year ago and went right back to pushing cocaine before getting nabbed again last month. It’s all he knew. No one would hire him for a real job. He had already tried that. When they released him this last time, he swore to himself that he was going to clean up, that he was going to shoot down the straight-and-narrow that his grandmother always spoke to him about. But it wasn’t that easy. Even down here, in Miami, men with his record and his appearance were intimidating to employers, and they assumed he would be to their customers as well. A third of Manuel’s body was painted with tattoos: on his neck, the Blessed Virgin, weeping over the scales of justice; his forearm, a semi-automatic pistol with a naked lady sprawled over the grip; his grandmother’s name, “Maria,” scrolled across his collarbone, surrounded by rose petals; Luciana’s name spread over his shoulder blades, framed by twisted thorns; letters above each center knuckle that spelled “Grace” on his right hand and “Death” on his left.

  He had never finished high school. The money the government gave his grandmother each month was hardly enough to buy a couple weeks’ worth of groceries. Someone had to pay all the bills. He was fifteen when he stepped from the schoolyard for the last time and found a job at a convenience store down the street. He was young, impressionable, and motivated. So when he was approached on the way to work one morning by Carlos Sanchez, promising him he could make twenty times as much in half as many hours, he was in. And not just in with selling drugs - in with the gang. ‘Cripta Santo - the Holy Crypt - a highly territorial gang over a hundred and fifty strong. Over the last seven years, he steadily moved up in the ranks of the Crypt. He’d killed two rival gang members, a fact that no one outside the Crypt knew. He’d moved more product faster than anyone on the streets. He was a good salesman - relational, trustworthy, and could sell the dream of an escapist high better than Timothy Leary or Ozzy Osbourne.

  But he wasn’t immune to the sobering reality of the law.

  Manuel was currently out on bail, and his omnibus hearing was scheduled for early next week. His attorney would seek to negotiate a settlement. He wouldn’t get it, he knew. It was a stall tactic intended to push the trial out a couple more months. Manuel had a lot on the line this time around. This wasn’t the first time he’d been roped. It was his third, and Florida’s three strikes law meant that, if convicted, Manuel would see the other side of a life sentence and get the opportunity to eat prison food for every last one of his remaining days. It also meant Luciana wouldn’t have him to watch over her. Within five years she’d befriend a needle herself or get pregnant or both. She was already struggling with her learning. It was why she was having to attend summer school. Their abuelita wouldn’t be around much longer. She was only sixty-five but had already beaten down the first assault of lung cancer. It would come back. It always did around here.

  He wasn’t a teenager anymore. He was salted, experienced, and he loved his little sister more than anything in this broken world. Manuel had never met his father - the man had left before Manuel was born. His and Luciana’s mother had overdosed on heroin when Luciana was six years old, five years ago now. Life in the neighborhood had finally worn her down too. The gang wars, the poverty, the hate - it had all finally gotten her to snap. Manuel was eighteen when he found her in the bathroom, her head lying between the toilet and the bathtub, choked on her own vomit, a needle leaning out of her arm. The following four years had been Manuel’s most productive with the Crypt, while his bitter anger grew, and he channeled that into selling the white dust that his gang so readily offered. It had only been during this last prison stint that a priest had helped him work through the pain and anger of his life. He had gotten out a new man. A man ready to take responsibility for his own choices and a man who cared less about showing others how tough he could be and more about taking care of the two women in his life.

  Luciana shut the light off as she came out of the bathroom and stopped by the chair to give her grandmother a good morning hug. That got her a long kiss on the top of her head. “Hurry,” her grandmother said. “You were late yesterday. You still need to get dressed.”

  “I know,” she said, and walked into the kitchen. She spied the stack of pancakes sitting on the table, waiting for her. She sat down in a rickety metal chair, poured syrup over them, and started eating. She smiled through a mouthful. “Thank you, Manuel.”

  Her older brother scrubbed a soapy cloth over the mixing bowl and turned on the water to rinse. “Of course. How are they?”

  “So good!” she beamed. “Why do you make me breakfast? You’ve never done anything like this.”

  He smiled at her. Because my plan may not work out the way that I hope. That’s what he wanted to say. But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Because I love you. You’re a good girl.”

  Five minutes later he had finished cleaning the dishes and was sitting on the couch next to his grandmother. He reached over and set his hand on top of hers. “How are you?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She turned and looked him in the eye. “What’s wrong? Something is wrong. You need to tell me.”

  She possessed an intuition that Manuel never could slip past. She was old, but her emotional intelligence was higher than an eagle’s flight.

  “Everything is fine.”

  She turned her head away, back to the television. “I don’t like it when you lie to me.”

  “I haven’t said ‘thank you’ in a long time,” he said.

  She huffed. “For what?”

  “For everything. You raised us. Took care of us. You did good.”

  “You’re scaring me. Boy, I don’t like it when you scare me. My heart is too weak for that nonsense.”

  Manuel laughed and stood up. He didn’t want to worry her. Everything would turn out fine in the end. He leaned down and kissed the top of her gray head. “I am thankful, that’s all. We are lucky to have you.”

  Manuel looked over at his sister who was chasing her breakfast down with a glass of milk. “Come on, little one. Go get dressed. We need to leave.”

  The walk to school took ten minutes. As usual, Luciana had talked the whole walk to school - she never stopped talking - and her brother didn’t mind. She had a spirit about her that was rare in these parts. The worn streets hadn’t been touched by the city budget in over forty years, and the homeless had moved in before Manuel was born. Every morning they passed half a dozen vagrants on the way to school. This morning had been no different. Dead palms, empty liquor bottles, and used condoms were the emblems of the neighborhood.

  Manuel was done with it all.

  They stopped in front of the white stucco building, and Manuel squatted down. He put a protective hand on her shoulder. “You pay attention in school today, all right little one? Be a good girl.”

  “I will,” she smiled. “I always am.”

  “Yes. I know.” He pulled her in for a hug and held her longer than usual.

  She feigned an imminent death. “You’re...squeezing my breath...out.” They laughed together, and Manuel released her and gently pushed her away. “Go on. Have a good day.” Her Moana backpack swayed along her back with every step. She was at the doors before he called after her. “Hey!” She stopped and turned around. His breath caught. The tough gangster. The tough gangster who’d hooked kids barely older than Luciana on the Big Rush. The tough gangster who had been to prison and who’d killed two men who’d stolen his stash. His breath caught as he looked after his sister, a dimple in her cheek, her shiny black hair pulled away into a ponytail. His sister who had such a great love for life and, who he knew, would one day be a force for change. “I love you,” he called. She giggled and waved, then pulled the glass door open and disappeared inside.

  Manuel clenched his jaw. That little girl was his life. He wasn’t going to let her turn out the way their mother had. He had to get her out of here. The inner city gripped you and squeezed you until your guts squished out and you were nothing of the person you once were; no longer capable of being the person you could have been; the person you hoped you would be.

  He put his back to the school and stepped into the street.

  Today was the day.

  Chapter Six

  Ellie loved heights. Looking at the world from high above somehow made it easier to comprehend, more simple. The particulars drifted away into a perception of an organized unity, the illusion that all was well with the quiet world below. She stood on the forty-first floor of the Bank of America Plaza in downtown Tampa, the toes of her black pumps six inches from the glass, her posture perfect, her confident chin held slightly above level while she looked out over Davis Island and Hillsborough Bay. She knew why big-time executives preferred the higher floors. It wasn’t simply because they could afford it: looking down on the world from such heights made one feel powerful. God-like even.

  Ellie’s appointment with Hawkwing’s Regional Vice President was set for ten minutes after four. Ellie had arrived fifteen minutes early, and the receptionist had escorted her to a small, private waiting room. She and Mark had submitted Hawkwing’s required Intent For Services, and Paul Greenberg’s office had quickly responded with a time to meet this week. Ellie had come perfectly dressed for her role. Her long blonde hair was hidden beneath a wig that endowed her with dark brown hair which flared at the tips and came to rest just below her shoulders. She wore a cream-colored cashmere pencil skirt that stopped just above the knee and a green mock-neck blouse made of silk and set in a three-quarter sleeve. Her right hand held a Louis Vuitton clutch. Shirley Dunham’s style was far different than her own, but it wasn’t so foreign to her tastes that she felt uncomfortable in a single outfit that, all told, cost over a thousand dollars. She had taken on alternate personas like this many times before during her tenure with the CIA, with TEAM 99.

  Ellie’s thoughts moved five years into the past as she recalled the three-month span in which she had become Malvina Popov, the wealthy daughter of a Russian venture capitalist. Her mission at the time had been to get close to Sergei Kuznetsov - a Russian telecom magnate twenty years her senior - close enough to gather damning evidence on him. Kuznetsov had gotten in bed with Al-Qaeda, having contracted with them to supply encrypted and untraceable cell phones. As if that weren’t enough, Kuznetsov was also funding hackers who were throwing everything they had at the United States’ defense infrastructure. Ellie had been sent in to gain his trust and his confidences. To seduce him. She played her part flawlessly, and Kuznetsov fell for her. He quickly asked her to move into his lakeside dacha. Ellie patiently waited for the right moment to place surveillance around the home and on his laptop and phone. Malvina had been introduced to Kuznetsov’s inner circle, drinking champagne with them at his fancy parties, laying by the lake with them; laughing with the women, flirting with the men.

  The Kuznetsov mission had been successful. The CIA had turned what they had on him over to his government. No one had thought that the Russian government was unaware of Kuznetsov’s shady dealings. In fact, they had probably supported him in the endeavor, possibly even originating the idea. But once the CIA provided Moscow with their damning evidence, Kuznetsov had fallen quickly from grace. Moscow had let Kuznetsov take the fall on his own. His holdings and companies were nationalized, and, in a showing of national pride, he was put on trial and executed for treason for his dealings with Al-Qaeda.

  The entire three months Ellie had stayed in character, not once thinking like or allowing herself to be Ellie O’Conner. In the same way that a Hollywood actor might choose to stay in the role of their character, Ellie did the same, but with much higher stakes. Any hint that there was someone else underneath the persona and she would have been apprehended, interrogated, and murdered. Over the course of her career with TEAM 99, incarnating a fictional person had become almost second nature. It was one of the reasons she wanted to keep her quiet life when she exited the CIA and came back home to Pine Island. Parts of Ellie O’Conner had gotten lost in the rearview mirror. Becoming someone else for long periods of time has a way of permanently fusing the fiction into your DNA. Even now, she could remember everything about the lovely Malvina, and, if she were honest, there were parts of the young lady that she missed.

  Ellie brought her thoughts back to the present and gazed out over Tampa Bay. Posing as Shirley Dunham for a half hour would present no problem at all. She checked the time.

  Five more minutes.

  * * *

  Manuel quickened his pace down the cracked sidewalks. He got to Enrique Avenue and turned left. He was unusually anxious.

  He had spent the day getting everything ready. Over the last year he had stashed away all his money. Now, he had just over one hundred thousand in cash. No bank accounts. The cash was hidden in a safe place, and only he knew where it was.

  He didn’t know how today would go down. He didn’t know if they would arrest him after he told them and, if they did, what the bail would be. If they arrested him then he would tell his abuelita where the cash was and give her instructions.

  Manuel turned and checked behind him, making sure he wasn’t being followed. There was no reason he should be. No one suspected his intentions. Yet, he was nervous. It was all on the line. He had told no one. If anyone were to find out, then the Crypt would kill him; no questions asked. Manuel’s decision to do this was unprecedented.