Free Undercover Genius by Patricia Rice Page A

foreign correspondent.” Who
hadn’t taken her with him anywhere, but impressions were everything. “I have
international contacts, but I was hoping for an assignment in the states for a
while, because this is where the action is.”
    Smedbetter’s phone rang, and he lifted a finger to indicate
that she wait — as if she had any intention of walking out. Patra fiddled
with the V-neck collar barely concealing her best push-up bra and hid her smile
as her interviewer glazed over and began nodding without speaking. No wonder
these toads feared women if they were so easily led by the balls.
    The VP hung up and made a few notes. Patra obligingly put
both feet on the floor and her hands in her lap.
    “Your credentials have already been approved by upper
management, Miss Llewellyn, congratulations. You can start Monday at nine in
the entertainment department, if you’ll check in with Human Resources, they’ll
show you around. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”
    He stood up dismissively. Patra rose and held out her hand
to shake. Had she been interested in a career move, she would have laughed in
his face and told him where to shove his offer. Entertainment, her foot and
eye. They wanted her to hack celebrity phones for gossip for Broderick’s
scandal sheets.
    But they were also putting her in a position to hack their
internal files, and that’s what she wanted. This was Friday. Next week, she’d
have them by the short hairs. She accepted Smedbetter’s finger-smashing
handshake and sashayed back to the corridor.
    Voices from a meeting room down the hall drew her like an
ant to sugar. Pretending to be absently checking over her employment papers,
she leaned against a wall and listened.
    “Look, we’ve got her where we want her. All we have to do is
tap her phone. Leonard is a schmuck. Why haven’t we retired him yet?”
    Patra raised her eyebrows. She was pretty certain that
sounded like Broderick, The Man, himself. Whose phone? She listened harder.
    “Leonard’s got useful connections,” a different voice
replied. “And he knows where too many bodies are buried. Let’s just see if she
knows anything or if that damned twerp sent Smit’s files to anyone else.”
    “Now that he’s had a chance to size her up, I’ll set
Smedbetter to locating Smit’s files. Billy Boy, have we got anything on the
girl’s family? C an we have her discredited if she still has copies?”
    Billy Boy — Broderick’s son and next in line to the
media estate. And if they were talking about her family , they could
find enough to discredit a few presidents, kings, and prime ministers. Might
make for good reading.
    Someone closed the meeting room door. Damn. It sure had
sounded like they were talking about her. That pretty much verified this
interview had been the set-up she’d suspected.
    Who was Smit?
    * * *
    Sitting in my basement office, flipping through the file
folders Sean had lifted from Bloom’s apartment, I decided they were mostly old
client files. I set aside a few on politicians talking to local crime bosses
like Salvador DeLuca. That could make interesting reading. I returned the rest
to their sack.
    The disks Patra had smuggled out in her purse weren’t helpful
since I didn’t know speech analysis. They were all carefully labeled audios of
people I didn’t know. We needed a new analyst, but I was reluctant to add
another corpse to the count if we were the reason Bill had died. Maybe I’d look
for labs in Seattle.
    I was glad we’d made copies of Patra’s recordings because
Bill’s copies weren’t here.
    Which led to the interesting question — if we assumed
Bill’s death was related to Patra, had he been killed to prevent telling Patra
what he’d discovered? So now did the Bad Guys think we’d been rendered harmless?
    Anyone who knew our family knew better than that.
    I checked the time. I had a few more minutes before I needed
to tune in to my on-line English lit class. Now that I had a home and a