Surrept

Surrept

A NOVEL

T
AYLOR
A
NDREWS

T
.
M
.
A
NDREWS
P
UBLISHING
LLC

Surrept

Copyright © 2011 by Taylor Andrews. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events are the result of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental. Some of the places are real but used in a fictitious manner.

Published by T.M. Andrews Publishing LLC

ISBN: 978-0-9837656-0-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011911966

Manufactured in the United States of America

Book design by Brion Sausser: www.bookcreatives.com

Editing by Jill Wright of jillwrightwrites.com

Chapter One

In the warm desert night air, a thirteen-year-old girl watches silently as the men quickly carry her father's body in a bag to the helicopter just outside the gates of their house. Her aunt holds her tight while quietly reciting scriptures.

Her younger brother's mother suffered a gunshot wound to the leg. A few of the twenty-plus men who came for her father are still tending to her wound. Many are dead; their bodies lay out next to each other, arranged together. This was for photos taken by the shortest man. Most all of the dead are on the main floor and upstairs, two are still outside on the other side of her family's house. Three of the men guard over the bodies, while the others move over the property like ants methodically searching.

She watches as three of the men prepare explosives for the helicopter that crashed in their yard. Suddenly, two of the men rush them away from that side of the house to another room. They are now with the others. She then hears the voices of the men yelling over the helicopter blades whirling on the other side of the wall.

All of the men rush for the helicopters in teams of two and three. She can hear their radios as they pass her, and they are talking to each other in their ears.

The crashed helicopter explodes. She can feel it in her chest as her aunt jumps and covers her head and face to protect her.

She hears the whirling blades move faster as the helicopters lift off the ground. The teen girl rushes to the window as if to say goodbye. He is famous. He is a leader. He is Osama bin Laden, her father.

Four months later

In University Hills, an FBI team works to remove the private security gate at Richard Underwood's home, a twelve-acre estate.

The area is dark, other than the landscape lighting of three other private residents' private gates. All four residences are located in a cul-de-sac in the affluent neighborhood.

A dark-haired woman, Special Agent Linda Davenport, notices that there are two lights on in the Underwood residence. She watches her team as they work on the security gate.

She wonders if her partner is right about the young woman suspect, for whom they have a warrant for her arrest. Could she be an innocent citizen who has nothing to do with the recent events?

The FBI agent thinks about the profile of the team's target, a Caucasian female, age twenty-seven, five-foot-seven, a hundred twenty pounds, blonde hair, and blue eyes.

Her name is Dana Underwood, a Colorado real estate agent. She has no prior criminal history. She has a strong educational background, with no known history of drug or alcohol abuse. This girl is clean.

Her partner nods as he closes his cell phone and notifies the waiting FBI team that he just received confirmation from the United States Marshall's service that the other suspect was in their custody. In addition, their arrest warrant is a go.

Ten minutes later, Agent Davenport and her team enter the affluent estate home of Richard Underwood. He is not a happy man as they take his daughter into federal custody. The woman agent can hear his protests downstairs as she handcuffs the young real estate agent.

She steps in front of her and asks the young blonde woman, "Dana, where is your handgun? It was not at David's condo."

Dana looks at the FBI agent surprised, and motions with her head as she answers, "It's in my purse in the bathroom. Be careful. It's loaded."

Special Agent Davenport comes out with her purse, removes the handgun and unloads it. She yells out of the bedroom door to her fellow agents.

"Suspect's in custody, her weapon is secure."

Dana looks over her shoulder as the female agent is now looking around her old bedroom in her father's house.

"What did I do? Is this something about my work?"

The woman agent answers, "You will find that all out when we get to our offices, Miss Underwood. You should change into some comfortable street clothes."

Fifteen minutes later, her father is on the porch of his house. Richard Underwood looks concerned and scared for the first time for her. She watches her father from the car as it pulls down the circular driveway. The FBI agents take away his daughter, and he has no idea why.

She tries to think back to when and where this all started, she smiles as she remembers that morning in the shower. God, she wishes that she were back there right now, with David. She remembers how he looked in his shirt and tie as he wrapped her in the towel and kissed her neck. Dana closes her eyes, and she can smell him.

Dana leans her head against the rear window of the FBI agent's car. She wonders what all this is about, and her mind wanders as she tries to wake up. She wonders where David is. Had he landed? Is he on his way back home already?

Dana thinks back to that morning in the shower at his place two weeks ago. She wonders if things will ever be that way again. Dana closes her eyes and recalls that morning.

Two weeks earlier

It is early dawn in downtown Denver, Colorado, and the Rocky Mountains are still showing snow. Steam rises from the street vents as the buses pass each other with their lighted glow, the air is chilled, and the morning wind is brisk, biting the few well wrapped pedestrians braving the predawn cold.

David Bloomfield, the Denver ad-executive, is in his downtown high rise. He pours his morning double espresso. A monitor in the kitchen is airing breaking news on CNN regarding a gunman in Chicago who shot nine co-workers during a meeting the prior evening.

The commentator cites staff cuts and downsizing as the man's motive for the assault in downtown Chicago.

David sits down watching the monitor and opens his laptop as he looks out of the fifth floor window over Denver. He sips at his cup. He hears the shower down the hall and smiles as he pictures his fiancé stepping into the steam.

His girl Dana slides into the steamy shower closing the glass door. She allows the hot water to immerse over her hair and back. She reaches for the sponge and pumps soap onto it. Dana begins at her shoulders, and works the soap down across her abdomen. She smiles as she reaches her tan line and is proud of her maintenance.

Dana opens the door as steam escapes, she calls to David, "Baby, please put the coffee on, I have to be in early to prepare for my closing today."

David is well dressed in his shirt and tie and glances over to the espresso machine, which is already draining into the stainless pot as he sips at his.

He rises from the table, adjusts his tie, and heads down the hall. David pushes the door open and sees her blonde hair through the foggy glass. The water darkens it. He feels that temptation as he opens the shower door quietly speaking over the shower, "It's already waiting for you to pollute it with honey."

Dana smiles, she rinses her hair, eyes closed listening as she drags the sponge teasingly over her neck and breasts as soap falls from the sponge.

David admires her while avoiding the water.

Dana leans into the water, "Thanks, baby. I love you."

She opens her eyes. "Hey, no way, dude." She pushes him back playfully as she turns off the shower. "I have to get in early today and prepare documents for the closing. Now be a good boy, and hand your girl a towel."

Dana gets out of the shower, and David wraps her with a towel, his lips fall immediately to her wet neck as the towel warms her with his big hug, her head sways back to accept his affection.

She winces with delight but reluctantly pushes him back, "No fair and no weak spots."

***

Across town, on the outside of an Islamic market deli on Colfax Avenue near downtown Denver, the traffic is stacking up as commuters make their way. The windows are dark, and the street people move quickly in the morning cold as they pass the store. Inside the market, the sound of Islamic morning prayers breaks the quiet of the store. The air in the market deli is filled with the aroma of herbs and exotic scents.

Down the basement stairs, Muslim prayers echo, as if coming from the top of a mosque over Islamabad. A young Middle Eastern man bows on his prayer rug in the makeshift apartment conversion. The radio blasts the imam as morning prayers fill the air. The sleepy-faced yet diligent young man continues his ritual; he is obviously dedicated to his fervent prayers.

A few miles south of Denver in the tech center, Matthew Cohen, an up-and-coming Colorado defense attorney, exits the southbound I-25 freeway at Orchard in his Porsche. He navigates the off ramp with reckless abandon. His radio is blasting the Eagles as he heads west one light to Greenwood Village. He makes the yellow light, whipping the car to the left and then a rapid tight right onto Syracuse Way.

He punches the accelerator, barely getting into second as he whips the car into his office building driveway at Fiddlers Green, an upscale commercial suburb of Denver.

He traverses the parking lot as if he is in a rally race, drives to the rear of the building slated for tenant parking, and pulls into his reserved space for the law firm. He checks his hair in the rearview mirror and reaches for his leather bag on the seat next to him.

He smiles as he notices the unusual bulge in the bag. He shuts off the car and exits, hitting the alarm on his key chain with his bag in tow. He enters the glass doors, heads for the elevator, and pushes the button as the doors open. He smiles at its emptiness and steps in.

The door closes, he checks the mirrored wall of the elevator; he looks sharp, his dark hair is perfect, he wishes he were taller. Matthew Cohen opens his bag, pulling out his weapons with one in each hand and shoulders the bag. Matt holds the weapons to his side as he enters the glass doors of the firm.

The receptionist greets him as usual. She thinks to herself that he looks just like Andy Garcia, the actor, as she reaches for his messages. "Good morning, Mr. Cohen, you have three."

Before she can finish her sentence, Matt opens fire on her with an air horn blast and a giant can of silly string. The girl jumps back in horror, her mouth open and her eyes wide with disbelief as to what just happened.

"Good morning, Linda." Matt continues.

A legal secretary rushes into the hall to see what the noise was, and he blasts her the same way—only he covers her large cleavage with the string. She tries to duck and screams as if she were being murdered.

"Look live, and feel alive, Nancy."

Nancy, wiping the string from her dress, is pissed off. "Matt, you are an asshole."

Matt, walking away, raises his weapons and exclaims, "This is true, and you, my dear, just got whacked."

Matt enters the break room where two others are engaged in coffee talk, leaning close to each other. One is a lawyer the other a legal research assistant. They turn and look, feeling his presence as he stares at them with a look of impending doom. He then raises his hands and blasts them in simulcast, holding the air horn open for extra effect as he covers them in red string. Coffee spills, a chair is projected backward, as the man falls to the floor. Matt slowly exclaims as if a Baptist preacher: "Give praise to the Lord almighty that I was not your wife with a real gun, Bill."