Free Two Weeks' Notice by Rachel Caine Page B

Like smallpox. Just in case.
    “What do you have so far on tracing the payments?” she asked. Zaragosa pulled out a folder from the stack and thumbed through it, then handed it over to her with one page pulled out to the front. It looked like a flowchart, but it was incredibly complex—the payments went to a shell company, split, flowed a dozen directions, all of which bounced to other accounts all around the world. “You do realize that my skills aren’t exactly accounting-related, don’t you?”
    For answer, he produced another, handwritten sheet of paper. She somehow had no doubt that he’d written it himself. On it was an address in Los Angeles and a short message: CAN’T PUT THIS ON RECORD. WE ARE BEING MONITORED 24/7, EVERYWHERE.
    She glanced up at his face, and saw the intensity there. He wasn’t kidding. He didn’t trust his own people.
    “As you can see,” Zaragosa said, “all I can tell you is that although the payments look legitimate, they are definitely suspicious just from the care that’s been taken to reroute and conceal them. I would start with the apparent front company, if I were you. But please, be careful. I can’t guarantee that this won’t be dangerous.”
    He meant that; she could tell. She nodded, closed the folder, and tucked it under her arm. “I understand,” Bryn said. She stood up and offered her hand. “I’ll call you when I have something.”
    “My card,” Zaragosa said, and reached over to pull one from a stack—except the one he pulled out had writing on the back, she could feel that without even turning it over. She nodded, tapped it once, and slid it into her jacket pocket. “Call anytime.”
    “Am I free to go now?”
    “Of course. Jeremy will walk you out. I’m sorry I can’t go myself, but I’m scheduled for a conference call in just a few moments. My thanks for being so understanding of our dilemma.”
    She nodded and the assistant’s arrival at the door derailed any possible reply she might have come up with. There was a lot going on here, and a lot she couldn’t understand…but she trusted Zaragosa, maybe unreasonably so. If what he had scribbled out was true, there was a grave problem within Pharmadene—a crippling problem for the FBI that they probably didn’t even trust their own technical people to investigate. There were cameras everywhere in this building, and it wasn’t hard, if you were inside the system, to keep track of everyone’s computer activity, read messages, monitor digital phone calls. There was no privacy, especially if they had people bugged at home, too.
    Pharmadene had always had oppressive, intrusivesecurity, but it ought to have been turned off by now, or at least be under the FBI’s control.
    That it wasn’t was a sign that things were still very, very dangerous.
    So of course, they throw me right in the middle of it, Bryn thought. She slipped Zaragosa’s card in her pocket. The temptation to read what he’d put on the back of it was very, very strong, but she didn’t dare. High-definition cameras everywhere. She’d be sharing the contents of the note with anyone who cared to look.
    McCallister wasn’t going to be any happier about all this intrigue than she was. That was somehow a little heartening.
    Jeremy was about as chatty as Ms. Harris had been. He had a nicer suit than his boss, and there was something about his subtle, expensive aftershave that irritated Bryn; he seemed more like Old Guard than New FBI. She wanted out of the elevator, out of the building, out of the clinging slime of Pharmadene, but she had to patiently wait through the long drop to the ground floor, sign out, turn in her badge, fingerprint out, get in her car, fingerprint out again at the gate, before she finally achieved some kind of freedom. Nobody searched the folder during her exit interview, which she found curious until she saw the stamp on the outside. It had Zaragosa’s personal signature on it, and it said EYES ONLY , with her name