Assassin (17 page)

Case slowly drew her socks off and then tossed them over to her bags, too. She brought her body up to a standing position and unhooked her bra's front clasp. She left it partially dangling open and turned her body to the side to give Rain a nice profile view. Then she unbuttoned her jeans and slowly peeled them down her thighs until they dropped to the floor.

Case refused to bend over, now that Rain would finally have a clear view of naked skin, and simply kicked the jeans off her feet. Lastly, she finished removing her bra and tossed it over to her bags to join the rest of her clothing. Then she turned to face Rain for a moment. The look of lust in the woman's eyes was practically tangible.

Case walked over to the main light switch and flipped it to the off position and then she made her way back to her bed. She bent over to climb into her bed and made herself comfortable.

"Goodnight," Case said cheerfully, and listened as Rain groaned theatrically.

"Oh, that is so evil," the aroused woman complained.

"Sweet dreams," Case replied innocently.

CHAPTER 16

CASE LISTENED TO Rain as she eased into the slow deep breaths of sleep. After counting off a full twenty minutes, beginning with the first natural sounds she'd heard from Rain, Case slid out of the side of her bed and onto the floor.

She crawled silently across the carpet to her bag and slowly began unzipping it. It took her nearly five minutes to complete the operation, but Case could be very patient when she needed to be. Each click of the zipper was muffled by Case's hand until the opening was finally large enough for her to pull out the laptop.

The next part took just as long, as Case eased her laptop out of the black bag and onto the carpet. Keeping the hard zipper from hitting and scraping along the hard plastic of the computer called for more hands than Case had, but somehow she managed.

She thought about moving to the bathroom, but she didn't want Rain to be out of her sight while she worked. If Rain woke up and caught her in the bathroom with her laptop, there wouldn't be anything Case could say to completely erase the suspicion she knew Rain would feel. There were obvious excuses that came to mind, but even though they were plausible, she knew the image of her huddled over a laptop in a separate room from Rain would forever be imprinted on the woman's mind. Also, hotel bathrooms tended to echo and this one hadn't been any different. She stood a better chance of not waking Rain if she stayed in the room with her. It would give less of a feeling of hiding something, too, if Rain did wake up and saw her on the computer.

Case turned off her speakers to keep the modem signal quiet and then signed online through her sat-phone.

Her first search went through the usual channels. There were the standard files that came up when she ran any background check, but she was looking for something a little more in depth. She used the information gathered through her initial searches and put it to work for her in several national databases that the better private investigators had access to. It took a little work to narrow down her results to something more useful, but she was finally starting to find what she'd been looking for.

The birth record Case had found for Erica Raineri helped her track down the woman's parents and then she was able to pull up their records as well. The death records for her parents matched what little Rain had told Case. Case continued to look for files pertaining to Erica Raineri and she found them. There were school enrollment forms, W-2 forms issued to Rain and her parents, DMV files, and everything else that Case usually looked for to find out whatever Antonio wasn't telling her about certain jobs she'd been sent on.

Everything checked out. Case sat back and looked over at the sleeping woman. Case's forehead scrunched in concentration as she watched Rain's chest rise and fall in the dim orange light coming through the break in the curtains.

Why did she feel like Rain was more than what she appeared to be? Everything checked out, so she should close down the computer and put it away and go to sleep. But there was something off and Case just couldn't let it go.

She looked back at the copies she'd made of all the files. There were dozens and they all seemed to confirm one another. There weren't even any typos on the names or misspelled words within the documents themselves and all the dates matched.

The dates. Case decided to check the dates the files had been uploaded onto their respective servers. Within minutes Case was staring at a list of DNS links that all led to the same TCP/IP address and contained the same upload date. Case realized she'd stopped breathing and tried to start again without gasping.

The woman sleeping in the bed only a couple meters away had been created only three years ago and in such a way that the agencies that supplied the information probably weren't even aware that it was false. Case herself couldn't create that kind of legitimate fake identity and she was a consummate hacker, having studied computers just as intensely as she had martial arts. In fact...

Case pulled up a security hack program she herself had designed and continually updated and began bouncing signals off satellites. It took her over an hour to get the number of hops she wanted and then she went straight for the database she knew would probably have the answers she was looking for.

Only the CIA, NSA, and FBI had the ability to create false identities and input them into so many different governmental databases without being caught. But the CIA worked almost exclusively in international affairs, while the NSA only seemed to work in the encryption field. Though that kind of information had probably been used in cracking the databases that had been altered to create the illusion of a legitimate identity, only the FBI did those kinds of things on a routine basis, like for the Witness Protection Program. So, that's where Case was headed.

It was actually fairly easy to access the area that Case was interested in. She uploaded an image from Rain's records and fed it into the face recognition search, after starting a copy/paste loop that disregarded previous saves and overwrote her presence by copying over every spare bit of the server's latest logs. With her presence being obliterated even as it was logged, Case let the new technology of face-mapping lead her to what she already knew was there. Rain's file flashed up in the window and Case quickly copied all of the information to her hard drive.

Case glanced at the clock and knew that if anyone was tracing her, they were getting close to her actual physical location. She uploaded a tiny file and sent it through the chain she'd created with her hops. It began the process of redirecting all those links to break them and then wrote over its own origination point as she logged out and then cut the connection.

Case looked down at her little computer and began reading. It was nice to know she hadn't underestimated Rain's abilities. But with each new fact she learned about the tall woman, her heart began to sink a fraction of an inch in her chest. The things Rain had told her had been true, except for the slight name alteration, but she'd even gotten around that by keeping the same nickname.

She'd just neglected to mention the fact that she was a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation on an undercover mission to gather enough info to take down the Carlotti organization.

Case shook her head in amusement. Rain had definitely gotten more than she'd bargained for. Even Case knew Federal Agents weren't supposed to get involved with their suspects. Unless that was actually part of the operation, such as when one posed as a prostitute or had to participate in drug usage and ended up going over the line while intoxicated.

Case thought about it. Rain was good, but she wasn't that good. Sleeping with Case was not part of the job and if she hadn't truly been attracted to Case, she wouldn't have given in to Case's advances, nor reciprocated them. It only made the job more difficult because that closeness led to natural slips that even Case would be hard put to avoid and she had detachment down to a science.

No, she fucked up and now she's probably shitting bricks trying to figure out how to fix it, Case thought to herself. Then Case had another thought. How in the hell is she going to be able to pull off a cold-blooded hit?

In the blink of an eye, Case realized that everything had changed. She wasn't training a street-savvy woman, who'd gotten involved with the mob, to kill a little differently than she had before. She was trying to get an FBI Agent to disregard all of her previous training and sworn oaths and murder someone in cold blood, something that was definitely against her code of honor, not to mention the law.

Case went back to reading and clicked on the family history link. It wasn't long before Case had her answer as to why Rain had been given this particular assignment. She'd requested it for a reason. Her older brother had been killed during a raid on one of Carlotti's father's warehouses.

Case did a double take. The man who had been in charge of that particular operation had been Danny Cutillo, "Cutie" to all his friends because he'd been a handsome kid and hadn't lost his boyish good looks even into his mid-thirties, and that was how old Danny had been when the sting had gone down and he'd personally shot Rain's brother.

Case remembered when she'd mentioned that one of the other hit men had been bragging about one of his recent jobs. Doc had warned Case never to do that because Antonio wouldn't like it. He'd then gone on to tell her the story of Cutillo and how he had gloated about shooting one of the cops that had attacked his warehouse during an important drug deal.

Danny had apparently gotten a hold of photos of the crime scene and then managed to match up who he'd shot with the officer's identity. It had been months before he'd stopped announcing himself as "the killer of Officer Timothy Raines."

Antonio had only been out of his teens for a short while when the story had hit the papers and he'd tried to convince his father to have Danny taken out for his blunder, which had brought so much light onto their dark activities. But the elder Carlotti had simply brushed his son off and given Cutillo a new route to run.

After Salvatore had died and Antonio had taken over, he'd decided to abide by his father's wishes, but he'd never forgotten Cutillo's bungling of a million-dollar drug deal and the loss of a lucrative trade route.

Case pulled up the Target's file and looked at his picture. Sixteen years later, "Cutie" was still a young looking man with only a few gray hairs to show for his fifty-odd years of life. Apparently, Antonio had decided he'd honored his father's wishes for long enough and it was time for Danny to go.

Case closed down the files and set a new password for her desktop. The numbers were completely random, but with a photographic memory, she knew she wouldn't forget them.

She shut closed down the laptop and put it back in its bag, along with the satellite phone. She went just as slowly as she had before and wasn't back in bed until ten minutes later.

Case closed her eyes, but she could still see her computer monitor clearly in her mind's eye. She'd told Rain that knowing who the Target was usually didn't help with getting the job done. This time, though, Case was pretty sure she'd found the exception to the rule. Maybe if she could let Rain know who she was going to be killing, it would make the job easier.

Case tried not to think about all the other things that had flashed through her mind when she'd first seen Rain's FBI file come up on her screen. Like how they could possibly be together or what Rain would do when it finally came time for her to move in on Antonio.

Case drifted off to sleep, as one thought rose above all the others in her mind.

I have to find a way out. For both of us.

CHAPTER 17

RAIN QUICKLY RELEASED the ropes that held her wrists tied behind her back. Luckily, the ropes had been bound over the puffy cuffs of her dirty white poet shirt and her maneuvering of the sleeves out from under the ropes had given her the slack she'd needed.

The ropes dropped from her hands and she stood up from the grimy floor of the basement she'd been locked in. It only took a moment for her to force the lock on the door and she ran into the main part of the house. She looked above the stone fireplace and saw the crossed swords.

"Perfect," she said, as she took one down and hefted its weight.

It felt good in her hand and she turned to dash out the front door. She ran over green grass made dull by the misting fog that had settled over the land. She looked down and saw that her feet were bare, but she didn't feel the chill of the morning dew. A flash of lovemaking and then being marched into the basement by her duplicitous lover explained the lack of footwear.

She saw the castle through the haze and ran faster. There, just coming through the gates and readying their horses, were the ruffians she sought. She slowed her pace as she came upon them and called the leader out.

"Don't do this," Rain told her now ex-lover.

"I didn't think you were this stupid. Get out of our way," she replied.

"No. I challenge you," Rain said.

The men and women all looked at their leader. She couldn't refuse or she'd lose face.

"Fine, I accept."

Rain backed away to let the woman get down from her horse and readied herself for the coming battle. They'd sparred before, but Rain knew they'd both been holding back.

"You don't have to do this. You could come with me," the short blond-haired woman offered.

"And you could come with me," Rain replied.

"You know that's impossible."

"Just as it's impossible for me to go with you," Rain sadly responded.

The woman nodded and then took a ready stance.

"On Guard!" she yelled, and they joined the fight.

Their metal blades clashed as the woman's band of thieves and cutthroats looked on. They were both impressive in their manipulation of their swords, but Rain was the first to find an opening and she plunged the blade home. She withdrew it just as quickly and the woman looked down at her shirt where red was beginning to appear in the middle of it.