Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
M arise sat at her kitchen bench, staring at the screen of her laptop.
The message had arrived in her secure inbox ten minutes ago, buried beneath layers of encryption. It looked innocuous enough. A quarterly e-newsletter from a fictitious travel agency. But the phrase "Change of itinerary: effective immediately" triggered the decoding protocol in her custom software.
The real message appeared in pale blue font over a static background: Cease all contact with subject. Do not engage further. Your contract is finished. Funds have been transferred.
She read it twice, then a third time. She felt queasy. They were pulling her off the job and paying her anyhow. Whoever gave her the contract must have very deep pockets. She didn’t come cheap.
The message didn’t say why, but it didn’t matter.
The directive was clear: cut ties. Walk away without looking back.
She closed the laptop and leaned back in the chair.
The night in the lab hadn’t answered her questions, only posed more.
What were those strange glowing plants—alive but rootless, pulsing faint blue in their tanks?
She had no idea what Kathleen had genetically built and now she was being told not to find out.
Marise got up, paced to the window. Outside, the city shimmered under rain-washed light, indifferent as always. She usually welcomed leaving, but not this time. She was too invested in the outcome and in Kathleen.
She glanced at her phone to see if there were any messages from her. There were none, of course. What did she expect? That Kathleen would forget her scruples and forgive her?
Fat chance of that.
She should leave but she couldn’t. If her contract was terminated, it could mean three things. One—they were no longer interested, two—they knew what she had engineered, or three—they decided to force Kathleen to give over her secrets.
She had to assume it was number three, which meant Kathleen was in danger.
She shrugged on a coat and went to see the real estate agency and to hire a car.
A t six the next night, Marise, dressed in her black shirt and jeans and a dark hoodie, drove to her temporary rental on the opposite side of the street from Kathleen’s apartment block.
From there, she had a partial view of her building.
Not close enough to be seen, but enough to watch.
She settled down in a chair with a pair of binoculars to wait.
Kathleen didn’t appear from work, nor was there any light on in her apartment on the fourth floor.
A few minutes after eight, a black SUV nosed past Kathleen’s apartment block and parked a few doors down. Not directly out front, but half hidden beneath a low-hanging tree. Marise trained her binoculars on the windshield and caught a silhouette in the driver’s seat through the tinted glass.
The car didn’t leave until an hour before daybreak.
The next night, she returned at the same time.
Kathleen still didn’t come home. At 8.15 pm.
, the SUV came back and parked in the same spot.
This time, Marise was ready. She jotted down the rego number on the plate, snapped two photos, and noted the make: late-model Land Rover Defender, black trim with out-of-state plates.
The vehicle stayed until nearly 5 a.m., then pulled away without headlights.
This wasn’t a coincidence. It was surveillance.
The watchers were probably waiting for Kathleen to return to make their move.
Marise went back to her apartment in the Alderidge after the car left. Once there, she pulled the curtains and switched on her desk lamp. She opened her laptop and slipped a USB key into the port. The program she’d written for bypassing encrypted login portals still fooled department servers.
She accessed the New York Department of Motor Vehicles under a proxy shell and typed in the license plate.
After thirty seconds, a file blinked open.
Registered Owner: Claude S. Fahey.
Company: Lantrak Holdings LLC.
Address: Manhattan, NY.
Classification: Commercial Vehicle (Private Security).
She sat back to process this news. Lantrak Holdings didn’t exist, at least not in any public corporate registry. Marise scrolled deeper, cross-referencing associated tags—insurance broker, PO box, emergency roadside contact. Then she found it: a flag in an old internal case file.
Lantrak Holdings LLC – Subsidiary of Cerberus Logistics Group.
Cerberus. The name made her mouth go dry.
It was a private "logistics" company in the same way a snake was a pet: coiled, cold, and deadly. They did book work for offshore oil interests—surveillance, extraction, and asset retrieval under the guise of maritime transport, and subcontracted security to low-life criminals of the underworld.
She clicked into a sealed federal report she shouldn’t have had access to.
Cerberus had been investigated five years ago for covert operations involving data theft and coercion of civilian scientists working on renewable energy prototypes in California. The case had gone quiet after two of the scientists dropped out of public life.
Those were their people in that black SUV watching Kathleen. Which meant whoever paid them considered Kathleen’s work detrimental to their business. And they wouldn’t wait for press conferences or patents.
Marise leaned back in her chair, concerned now. Cerberus had been employed to shut down Kathleen’s experiment and they wouldn’t hesitate to use force if necessary.
She had a choice to make. Stay out of it and leave Kathleen at the mercy of these dangerous people, or get involved.
She closed her laptop with a sigh. The choice had already been made when she kissed her.
Marise arrived at five o’clock the third night and waited in her car. An hour later, Kathleen drove into her underground parking and the light came on in her apartment. Marise moved her car closer until she was directly opposite the apartment building.
The black SUV came into the street on eight and parked. Marise focused on it.
At eleven, Kathleen’s light went out.
An hour later, the passenger door of the SUV cracked open with a muffled click.
Two broad-shouldered men climbed out, both in dark clothing, their faced covered by balaclavas.
They moved without urgency and climbed the stairs to the front door.
They turned to scan the street, then one of them pulled out a phone and tapped a code into the building’s side keypad.
The other jiggled something in the lock with practiced ease.
A faint metallic click sounded, then the door swung open.
They slipped inside.
Marise was already moving. She left her car door ajar and crossed the road at an angle, shadowing their steps by ten seconds. When she reached the entrance, the door was sliding shut. She caught it with her palm, eased it open, and inched into the small foyer.
It was dimly lit by a motion sensor bulb that flickered once, then held. They’d taken the stairwell at the right, ignoring the lift.
She climbed behind them, two floors down, her sneakers silent on the floorboards.
The fourth-floor corridor was quiet, lined with grey carpet and lit by a line of dim LED lights.
She peeked around the corner to see what they were doing.
The taller man stood outside Kathleen’s unit while the other crouched, working the lock with an electronic tool.
Finally, there was a small click and he rose and laid the tool on the ground.
He reached under his coat, pulled out a handgun and fitted a silencer onto the end.
With a nod to his colleague, he disappeared into the unit.
Marise sidled closer, silent as breath. She waited until the taller one checked his watch, his body angled toward the lift, and then she struck.
One hand seized the back of his collar while the other slammed the steel edge of her flashlight into the base of his skull.
He grunted once and slumped forward. She caught him before he hit the carpet, then eased him down.
After laying him on his stomach, she dug in her pocket for two zip ties and bound his hands together.
Then did the same to his legs. He wasn’t going anywhere when he woke up.
The second man had reached Kathleen’s bedroom door when Marise barrelled into him. He staggered backward, hitting the wall with a thud, the revolver flying out of his hand.
He recovered quickly. He was bigger than her, maybe mid-thirties, with combat boots and a hard jaw. Ex-military, from the way he pivoted into a low stance and launched at her.
She ducked the first swing—an elbow aimed at her jaw—and drove her shoulder into his midsection, knocking him into the edge of the kitchen area. A sharp grunt sizzled out of his mouth, but he didn’t slow. He came back harder, grappling now, trying to pin her arms.
Marise twisted out of his grip, using his own momentum to pull him off balance. Her foot connected with the side of his knee. A crack echoed. He cursed loudly and swung again, catching her cheek with the back of his fist. Pain bloomed white behind her eye.
She rallied, and ignoring the ringing in her ear, drove her knee into his ribs, once, twice. His grip loosened. She slipped out, grabbed a heavy ceramic bowl from the kitchen counter, and smashed it into the side of his head.
He went down, breath rasping, out cold.
She grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back until he was face-down on the tiles, her knee on his spine. With a zip tie, she bound his wrists securely and tied his ankles as well. Only then did she take a breath.
She wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.
The next moment, she looked up and found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.
The light came on in the hallway and Kathleen stood at the entrance of the kitchen, barefoot in sleep pants and a rumpled shirt, a silver revolver in her two hands.
“Get back,” Kathleen ground out and hit the kitchen light switch. “Step away from him,” she yelled, arms trembling but steady enough to aim.
Marise froze. “Kathleen,” she said, raising her hands. “It’s me.”
For a second, neither of them said a word.
Kathleen’s eyes flicked from the unconscious man on the floor to Marise, then back again.
“What the hell is going on, Veronica?” she snapped.
“I can explain,” Marise said, slowly raising her hands. “But you need to put the gun down.”
“Who is this man?” Her voice cracked. “Who are you?”
“He was here to kill you. I stopped him.”
“You’re supposed to be an escort not …GI Jane,” Kathleen said, her voice thin.
“Listen Kathleen. You have to come to terms with this. These men were sent to eliminate you,” Marise said quietly.
“ Men?” Kathleen said, her voice raised a notch.
“The other one is tied up in the corridor.”
Kathleen looked shocked. “Why do they want me dead?”
“Because it’s a common belief that what you engineered in that lab of yours will replace fossil fuels.”
“No one knows what my experiment entails.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Kathleen. Get your head out of the sand. People have been speculating about it for months. So much so, that all the big oil conglomerates are interested. Some are shit scared that the rumours are true.”
Kathleen narrowed her eyes. “What has that got to do with you? You’re an escort for hire.”
Marise flushed. “That was a front. I was paid to find out what you were doing and if you were nearly finished.”
“You joined so you could get close to me?”.
“I did.”
“And I fell for it, hook line and sinker,” said Kathleen bitterly. “Was everything you did a lie? So you could find out what I did?”
“At first, but not now.” Marise sat wearily down on a kitchen stool. “My contract was terminated. I should be gone.”
Kathleen’s voice began to tremble. “Why did you stay?”
“Because I got to know you,” Marise said. “I didn’t want them to hurt you. That’s why I’m here.”
Kathleen shook her head once, sharply. “No. No, you don’t get to say that.”
“I guess I don’t,” said Marise. “But this isn’t the time for recriminations. We have to plan the next move.”
Kathleen exhaled shakily and lowered the gun the rest of the way. Her arms dropped to her sides. “I should call the police.”
“They won’t help. Whoever sent them has enough muscle to bury the report before morning.”
“So, what now?” she said, looking not angry, but exhausted. “What do we do?”
“We get you out,” Marise said. “Now. Pack light. Only what you need.”
“Shouldn’t we warn Ted? They may go after him.”
“He’s only your assistant. They’ll know that hurting him won’t stop the project since you’re the brains behind it. Now come on. We have to get to somewhere safe.”
Kathleen looked like she might argue, but then something in her gave way. She nodded and turned toward the bedroom.
Marise bent down and checked the pulse of the man. Still alive. She dragged him by the shoulders out into the corridor with the other goon. When she was far enough away, she’d let the cops know they were there.
Whatever came next, Kathleen was her responsibility now. They had to find somewhere to hide. Somewhere safe where no one would ever look.