Law Offices of Bertrand, Owens & Cromwell | San Francisco, California
Symon signed off on Eckhart’s release and accompanied both Eckhart and Bertrand back to the BO&C offices. Bertrand had agreed to let them use the space as their base of operations, though Symon thought it might have been a case of “keep your enemies close.”
Regardless, once they had established themselves in the same vacant conference room that Eckhart had been using alongside Alex Kayne, Symon excused himself to find a private space for a video chat.
Mayher answered, her image at a slight upward angle, the background bouncing by as she held her phone while walking. “I hear Kayne is in the wind again,” she said.
“Is there ever any different news?” Symon replied.
Mayher scowled and shook her head. “Maybe someday.”
“Have you managed to pick up anything new on your end?” Symon asked.
She shook her head again. “No. No one here knows why Eckhart stepped down as CEO. Or they’re not talking, if they do know.”
“Well, I have the man himself here now,” Symon said. “I may be able to get something out of him. For now, I want you to coordinate with the locals and see what you can dig up on Stephen Spencer.”
“The head of security?” Mayher asked.
Symon nodded. “He’s not shooting straight with us, I think. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something doesn’t smell right.”
“Got it,” Mayher said. “I’ll talk to Christian, see if we can use his offices to run a background.”
“Christian?” Symon asked, his eyebrows raised.
“Agent Daniels,” Mayher replied darkly, hinting that she didn’t want any guff from Symon.
He let it pass. “Ok, get me what you can. I’m working a couple of different angles here.” He thought for a moment. “Can you get me contact information for an engineer named Shai Salide? She’s here, in the San Francisco area.”
“Person of interest?” Mayher asked.
“Kayne’s client,” Symon replied. “She had some of her patents stolen by Curie Motors. Eckhart says he didn’t know about it, and that he was helping Kayne figure it out.”
“So he really was aiding and abetting,” Mayher said, sounding mildly disappointed.
“Eckhart’s attorneys are going with coercion,” Symon said. “I don’t buy it, but I’m willing to let it go.”
“Why?” Mayher asked. “If he’s dirty, we should nail him.”
Symon shook his head. “I’m not so sure he is. Call it a hunch. But regardless, he’s assisting me in finding her, so I’m willing to cut him some slack. Kayne is the big fish.”
Mayher nodded. “Ok, makes sense. I’ll keep digging here, see what we find on Stephen Spencer. And I’ll get you something on Shai Salide. Anything else?”
Symon thought for a moment. “Look into Bertrand, Owens & Cromwell.”
“Eckhart’s lawyers? Why? What am I looking for?”
“Not sure yet. Cross them with the research into Shai Salide and her patents. The firm handled all the acquisitions. See if anything flags.”
“Got it,” Mayher said.
They wrapped up the call, and Symon returned to the conference room where Eckhart was already intently scanning a laptop.
Symon’s first impulse was to come at things a little sideways, to see if he could somehow coax the billionaire into revealing the information he needed. But gauging by the conversations he’d had with Eckhart so far, and by what he’d seen of the man in interviews, he thought maybe a different approach would be or effective.
“Why did you step down as CEO of Curie Motors?” Symon asked directly and abruptly.
Eckhart looked up from his work, his expression first mildly startled, then fading into a sort of casual resignation.
“It’s a long story,” Eckhart said. “And sort of a personal one.”
“I’ve got time,” Symon replied.
Eckhart sighed, nodded, and gestured to a chair nearby. Symon took a seat.
“Ok,” Eckhart said. “Here’s the thing.”
Somewhere in San Francisco, California
While it was nowhere near as chilly in San Francisco as it had been in Texas, the wind coming off of the bay still had a bite. Kayne was bundled against it, having picked up a long, hooded coat from a thrift shop. It was the bulkiest item of clothing she was wearing, and she could shed it in an instant if she needed to make a run for it.
Though she appreciated the coat as an extra barrier against the chilled wind, the hood also served to disguise her as she moved through the city streets. Her large sunglasses also helped. And for good measure, QuIEK was actively scanning for any cameras or surveillance, radio and cellular signals, and any other signs of someone tracking her. Using live masking, the AI smoothly erased her from digital sight as she went. And though it couldn’t cloak her from any prying or spying human eyes that might be nearby, it could hide her in other ways.
For a start, as she got closer to the BO&C offices, her smart watch occasionally buzzed, alerting her that she should duck into the nearest doorway or otherwise keep a low profile. This was the signal she’d set up for QuIEK to tell her that police or FBI had been detected nearby. It was a sort of Spidey-Sense for law enforcement—the watch was discreet, and the signal was subtle, and it gave her plenty of warning to stay out of sight.
The watch had only vibrated a couple of times during most of her walk, but now that she was within a block of the BO&C offices, she was getting fairly regular pings. Enough so that she was starting to question her plan.
Walking straight back the scene of the crime, as it were, couldn’t really be her best option, could it?
She could have hung back and waited at some locations nearby, maybe a coffee shop, sipping something nice and warm. Or, really, she could have just gone straight to the home address she’d lifted from the BO&C personnel files. But after spending the night in a vermin-infested dump, she was anxious to get out and shake off the heebie-jeebies. She already had half-a-dozen safe houses set up and waiting, a couple of which were nearby.
There truth was, she was feeling guilty.
She wasn’t used to it. The idea of feeling any sort of remorse for leaving someone to be picked up by the Feds wasn’t really something she thought about. For years now, hers had been the only butt she had to worry about keeping out of prison. She didn’t really have “partners.”
But in their brief time together, Eckhart had become that to her, in a way.
She wondered now whether her gut instinct, the drive that had forced her to ditch and make a run for it, had been less about any suspicions she had about Eckhart, and might otherwise have been some instinct that things were about to hit the fan. The fact that the FBI turned up just minutes after she’d hit the ground running lent a lot of credibility to that idea. Maybe she’d picked up on some subtle cue, something that not even QuIEK had detected. The human brain was still way more advanced than even the smartest AI. Maybe her subconscious was looking out for her.
Or maybe she’d just gotten lucky.
All of this was swirling around in her head and her guts, making her feel a bit of shame over cutting and running, and leaving Eckhart to face the glare of the FBI. And the fact that the charges against her were effectively aimed at punishing him for helping her—that just made it cut that much deeper.
But then it seemed like things might have taken a turn.
She knew that Eckhart had been released. She knew the charges had been dropped. She also knew that Agent Symon was sitting with Eckhart, even now, inside the BO&C offices, both of them still working on the exact thing Kayne and Eckhart had been working on. Guilt, guilt, and more guilt. But also hope.
Symon was using all of this as a means of tracking her down, so that he could do his job. But she knew him—now that he was aware of what had happened to Shai Salide, and to others, he would look into that, too. And he would do the right thing.
Effectively, Symon was handling some of Kayne’s workload. Though he’d balk at the very suggestion of that, when she eventually teased him about it later.
That was good. That took some pressure off. If Symon and Eckhart could tackle some of the broader issues, it freed Kayne up to deal with some specifics.
And one of those specifics was Julia Faure.
Kayne’s sweep of Stephen Spencer’s little spy network had revealed that he had an inside man. Or inside woman, rather. And it hadn’t taken long to figure out that it was Adele Bertrand’s executive assistant.
Julia Faure was a dual-citizen, just like Bertrand. She’d come to the US as part of Bertrand’s team, having worked with her for years in the Paris offices. And, Kayne discovered, Bertrand had inherited Julia, more or less, after Bertrand’s husband had passed. Julia had been the personal secretary or Monsieur Bertrand, serving him since she was barely old enough to work legally.
On the surface of it all, Julia appeared to be as loyal to Adele Bertrand as she’d been to her husband. But as Kayne dug into Julia’s digital history, a different tale emerged.
Almost from day one, Julia had been pilfering the firm’s coffers.
At first, under Bertrand’s late husband, Julia had gotten a regular stipend, outside of her salary. Kayne could speculate all day over what Julia did to earn that bit of side income, but her best guess was that Monsieur Bertrand was doing a bit of “outside investing” in the assets of his young and attractive assistant. The money was meant to keep things quiet, given that his wife was a powerful attorney in her own right.
When he died, the money stopped, and Julia found herself answering to his widow.
But slipping back into the role of lowly secretary must not have been part of Julia’s plans. According to her banking records, only a few months after the stipend ended, she gained some sort of side income. And over the years, that income had increased exponentially. Julia Faure might not be as wealthy as her employers, but she wasn’t far off. She certainly lived in such a way that should have been beyond the means of someone making a receptionist’s salary. Either BO&C were incredibly generous, or Julia was skimming.
And she had a partner.
It hadn’t taken much digging to discover that Julia and Stephen Spencer were part of a silent partnership in a shell company that, on the surface, appeared to be a holding of BO&C, managing (among other things) IP acquisitions for various big-name clients. One of whom was Ross Eckhart.
Except, Kayne uncovered, BO&C was really only a minor partner in that company. It shared in the profits, but did not actually manage the patents. And, according to the convoluted trail of records that Kayne had managed to untangle the night before, the shell company itself was merely “loaning” the IPs to the various clients who had shelled out money for them. On paper, those patents were owned by Julia Faure and Stephen Spencer.
It was kind of brilliant. Though it had taken a while to trace.
Julia used her position to inject herself into the acquisition process, on paper at least. As filings went to various courts and federal offices, crucial documents would be replicated, altered, and replaced. Things would appear to go smoothly, all around. But in the end, the corporation owned by Julia and Spencer would become the de facto owners of the patents, “loaning” rights and profits to Eckhart and any other client, and instead of paying whatever percentage had been negotiated to the original IP owner, they would collect it themselves. And BO&C managed all of it as part of the firm’s day-to-day, without even realizing what had happened.
It was fraud on a grand and epic scale. Kayne was actually impressed. The percentages that Julia and Spencer picked up were kind of paltry, in the grand scheme of things. But with thousands of patents folded into the scheme, along with intellectual property across a broad spectrum, the two were actually banking back hundreds of millions, combined. And because they continued to work in their “day jobs,” keeping the money in offshore accounts and keeping their lifestyles below the “extravagant” line, there was nothing to really tip anyone off. Who would suspect the secretary of having a nine-figure bank account, even if she drove a Mercedes and lived in a high-rise apartment?
The people that Julia and Spencer ran with were used to extravagance and wealth. Unless these thefts were impacting the bottom line of the firm, they were invisible. And Eckhart had already told Kayne that he was more or less oblivious to the details of these deals, letting BO&C handle everything. He had no reason to suspect anything, because from his perspective everything was running as it should. It wasn’t much of a leap to think that other BO&C clients might behave in a similar way.
No one bothered looking for something that was right out in the open, unless it was causing an immediate ruckus.
Basically, Julia Faure and Stephen Spencer were using a tactic that Kayne herself used, all the time: They were hiding in plain sight. But Kayne could see them now. And she was here, edging nearer to the BO&C offices, just to get an even closer look.
Her smartwatch buzzed, and Kayne pulled back, ducking into the entryway of a drug store across the street from the high-rise office building. She looked through the filthy glass of the store to see Eric Symon stepping out of the building, standing on the sidewalk as he held his mobile phone to his ear.
A private chat, Kayne decided. He wanted to be outside the building for whatever it was.
She felt her gut twist at the thought of what she was about to do, but at this point it was crucial to know as much as she could, to gauge how close he was to catching her. She needed inside information. She hated doing this to someone she considered a friend. Privacy be damned, she needed to know what he was saying, and who he was talking to.
She popped a set of wireless earbuds in her ears, and had QuIEK scan and crack the signal from Symon’s phone, dropping in mid-sentence.
“—far she’s stayed off the radar. Tracking her digital footprint is pointless. I’ve circulated photos and video clips we do have, to every agent and officer in the area.”
“Think it will be enough?” a male voice asked.
It was familiar, though Kayne had only had a brief interaction with him. She recognized the voice of Agent Roland Denzel, the FBI partner of Dan Kotler. And the current head of a breakout group within Historic Crimes, known by the codename “Outsiders,” a pet project from the division’s Director, Liz Ludlum. Kayne was a part of that group, technically. She had a sneaky suspicion that Ludlum might have designed it with her and Kotler in mind. Outsiders, resources who were useful for taking down bad people and averting bad things in the world, but who were not quite agency material.
“Kayne is the best there is at staying out of handcuffs,” Symon replied. “We’re casting a wide net, hoping someone sees her. And I think we have a rare opportunity here. This feels like a slip, to me.”
“A slip?” Denzel asked. “What do you mean?”
Symon sighed. “Well, usually when we get some lead on her, we show up to find she’s plotted ten different ways out and invents four on the fly.”
“She got past us this time, too,” Denzel replied.
“But it just… feels different,” Symon said. “I’ve talked to Ross Eckhart and his attorney. The way Eckhart describes his interaction with her, it seems like Kayne let her guard down. She got on a private plane with the guy, without knowing exactly where they were going. That doesn’t sound like her.”
There was a pause. “No, I don’t think it does. Not from what I’ve seen in her files. Or from the experience we had with her in New Mexico. She tends to have her exits mapped out.”
“Exactly,” Symon said. “And here, she left the building through a door that triggered a fire alarm. She didn’t even disable it. She could have.”
“So you think she was in a hurry,” Denzel replied.
“Yeah,” Symon said. “I think she was off her game. Which could be good news. Getting Alex Kayne off her game is the only way we’ll ever get our hands on her.”
There was another brief pause from Denzel, and then, “Agent Symon… Eric… I know we’ve talked about this before, briefly. And I know you’ve had conversations with Director Ludlum about it. But I have to ask—are you certain you are the one who should be pursuing Alex Kayne?”
Kayne quickly glanced out of the drug store window, and saw Symon standing stiffly, his back to the street, his head tilted up to the roofline of the high-rise.
It was a good question, she knew. Because despite Symon’s dedication to hunting her over the past few years, the two of them had formed a sort of bond. He’d gotten her involved with Historic Crimes as his CI, which was helping to repair her reputation and maybe give her a way to come in out of the cold. He’d asked for her help with some of the big and crucial cases being managed by the division. They’d taken down bad guys together. They had a rapport. So even Kayne sometimes wondered if he’d really do it—if he’d take her down, as he was sworn to do.
“I’m getting a little tired of answering this question, Agent Denzel. All I can say is, if you or Director Ludlum doubt me on this, then it makes no sense to keep me on.”
“And if we reassigned Kayne to a different agent—what would that mean for you?”
Symon laughed. “It would mean I’d leave Historic Crimes and go back to working full time for the Bureau. And if that’s out, I’ll just leave and find some other line of work. Because either you trust me to stick to the oath I took, or I’m as good as discharged anyway. I spent years fighting to prove I wasn’t collaborating with a traitor, and this just feels like more of the same fight.”
She heard Denzel sigh from his side of the line. “I see,” he said. “Eric, I know you and I have… static. So I feel like I should make something clear. I was the one who requested that you be brought into Historic Crimes. I requested you for the Outsiders, too.”
From her vantage point she saw Symon turn, slowly, his gaze dropping back to street level. “You… did?”
“I… thought it might be a way to make up for what happened to you,” Denzel said. “In part, anyway. But when Liz… Director Ludlum… came to me to ask for recommendations, you were one of the first people on my list. You’re a brilliant profiler. And your ethics are unquestionable, regardless of what all those idiots claimed at the time. I knew you’d suffered a hit, because of Director Crispen. But you’re a valuable asset to the Bureau. And to Historic Crimes Division. I wanted you on my team, as soon as I had a team.”
Kayne could see Symon taking this in.
“I… didn’t know that.”
“I asked Ludlum not to say anything,” Denzel replied. “I didn’t want you to assume this was some kind of charity. Because it isn’t. I plan to hold you to some pretty high standards. But you tend to prove me right about you, over and over. So if you say you’re clear, that your judgment is good on Alex Kayne, then I believe you.”
Another pause, and Kayne thought she heard a catch of breath. “Th-thank you.” A brief pause. “Sir.”
“Listen,” Denzel replied, moving brusquely on. “I have some things to deal with on this Derek Conners case. I’m still in Oklahoma at the moment. But I’m signing off on anything you need. I agree with you. This feels like Kayne has made a slip, and I want to push that if we can.”
“So do I,” Symon replied. “I…”
Kayne had turned away, hiding behind a pillar in the drug store as she listened to the conversation, but she heard the sound of the gunshot in digital echo as it came from outside the store and from her phone a heartbeat later.
She turned, panicked, and saw a black SUV speeding away from the front of the BO&C offices. And when it had cleared away, she spotted a dark shape on the ground.
Her heart pounded.
She rushed through the glass doors of the drug store, dodging through honking traffic and screeching tires. There were curses from drivers who had no idea of what had just happened. Screams from bystanders who had seen the thing happen, or were witnessing the aftermath.
Kayne immediately dropped to the ground when she got to him and found herself kneeling in a spreading puddle of blood.
“Eric!” she shouted, turning him, pressing her hands to the wound. “Eric, stay with me!”
“Agent Symon?” Denzel’s voice came in her ear. “What’s happening? Was that a gunshot?”
She spotted Eric’s phone on the ground, a few inches from his hand. She tapped her earbud, signaling QuIEK to allow her to speak over the line.
“Agent Denzel, this is Alex Kayne,” she said, holding back a sob. “Eric was just shot. You have an agent down.”