"You don't trust this lady friend?" Richardson said as he installed a camera in the room, overlooking the forlorn bed with its rumpled sheets.
"Trust has nothing to do with this," I said, irritated that the man would think of questioning my motives. "This is purely for security purposes. And none of your goddamned business."
"Sorry. Just trying to make conversation."
My pulse was raised; my stomach had that butterfly feeling that accompanied arousal. I had Celia's body at my disposal, but I wanted more. I wanted her mind and heart. I sorted through the items on top of her old dresser looking for hints about her as a person. A selection of hand and body lotions, hair clips, a jar filled with pennies and small change. Pictures of an older woman stuck in the frame of the mirror, middle-aged, with dark hair and dark eyes—her mother. A woman I’d barely met because she spent her time in her bedroom, tripped out on pain killers.
Beside the window sat a telescope. Still attached to the case on the table beside it was a gift sticker taped to the black fabric, although the sides of the sticker were curling.
To Celia on Your 8th Birthday
Love, Dad
The year her father had been killed in the accident that would eventually bring Spencer into her life…
A telescope she'd had all her life. It explained her love of astronomy.
I was almost overwhelmed by the scent that seemed to permeate the apartment. It reminded me of the warm spring evenings I’d spent on leave in Virginia when the scent of cherry blossoms drenched the air.
I sat at her desk and checked out her MacBook. It was open and there was no password so I started snooping into her files. Dozens of PDF documents—all of them journal articles on this or that aspect of law or contracts. Papers she'd written in university. Nothing revealing.
I opened a bottom drawer and rustled through files and papers. Beneath it all, several notebooks filled with lecture notes from her classes. Again, nothing revealing.
But then—a goldmine.
The fucking mother lode.
A diary.
I opened it and flipped through the pages. Written in a tiny hand, with tight script, was the outpouring of Celia's mind dating back a few years. She wasn’t a prodigious writer, skipping months at a time, but here, in the two hundred odd pages, were her private thoughts.
I had to take it. I'd read it quickly and return it and she’d be none the wiser.
I wanted to see what she'd written about me, if anything, and about any men she'd been with. I felt almost breathless as I turned the pages, guilt almost overwhelming my curiosity. On page seventy-three, she wrote about Christmas at home with her mother.
Nothing too uncommon—her mother asking her about boyfriends, about any interesting law students or lawyers she might date, and Celia's frustration that her mother thought only of her romantic life and never once complimented her on being in law school.
I wanted to sit down right now and read the rest, but it could wait till later. I slipped the small book into a pocket in my jacket and turned to her computer. I opened Safari, checking out her browsing history only to find that most of the links were to her webmail account, which I couldn't get into, and to her YouTube account and an assortment of funny cat videos and comic ones of fat men dancing in tutus.
I checked out her pictures and saw dozens of various people, girls her own age, her family—her father. Giant redwoods. The coast of California.
I logged off the computer and turned to the rest of the tiny dorm room. The devices Richardson was installing were state of the art. No one would detect them unless they had the right technology, and most likely Celia wouldn't. You'd have to be in the CIA to trace the little beauties Richardson was installing.
"How long are you going to be?" I watched as Richardson used the existing architecture of the closet to hide the tiny recorder/transmitter. It resembled the other tiny black holes in the wood where nails had been hammered. Richardson even had a little mini vacuum to suck up the wood dust and plaster he had carved out for the device. It was undetectable. It would piggyback onto the building's internet and transmit images to the warehouse through a series of satellite hook-ups and remote servers using wireless technology.
"Almost done. Just need to clean up and we're through."
I nodded, glancing around the room. When Celia returned to her apartment for the occasional night off, I'd have access to her 24/7. I could watch her sleep, I could watch her eat, I could watch her working at her desk.
I was a peeping Tom, yes, but one of the highest order. And all of it done for her security.
If I told myself that enough times, I might actually believe it.
It was so damn good to see George again.
I reserved the entire dining room of a local Russian restaurant in Boston's old downtown district for the evening so I didn’t have to worry about other diners. It was one of the few run by a family of Russian immigrants not controlled by Sergi Romanov, so of course, I wanted to use it. I didn't want Sergi's people to get too close a look at George. He was my secret weapon and would help me understand and get revenge against the Russian underworld.
We sat at a round booth in the back so we could see the entrance and enjoyed course after course of Russian food specially prepared for George. While we ate, a waiter hovered in the background, watching as the meal progressed, a white cloth folded over his arm.