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She rubbed her fingers across the lettersBandD. He had been one of them. They had taken an oath, like the Mafia. You never turned on one of your own. Obviously, the years had dulled that solemn promise for some of them.
She looked at her Gibson burner phone. What was the woman doing right now? Tracking Julia Frazier’s rental from Dulles to The Plains and back? Had Barbara Cole been able to give enough of a description of Frazier? She wasn’t really worried about that. Clarisse knew exactly the outfit and wig and makeup she had worn at The Plains. She would never look anything like that again, having already excised the items from her inventory. And Gibson couldn’t know that Frazier and she were the same person.
The name, driver’s license, and credit card she had used at the rental car company were first-rate, with several walls of defense separating her and her alter ego. The problem was that Gibson was a trained investigator with ProEye-level resources.
And going forward those same resources might be used against me.
She went online and performed an extreme electronic scrub down to obliterate any pathway for Gibson to connect the dots on Julia Frazier.
Finished with that, she left her place and drove nearly three hours to an apartment she had been renting for several months. Inside the apartment she put on another wig, teased it into a dull, lifeless bowl shape, and wiped all the makeup off her face. She then put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and flat canvas shoes. She grabbed a small duffel bag and headed out. She drove the rental car to her destination and parked in the back lot of a building after swiping her ID, which hung on a lanyard, against the reader port at the gate. She got into the rear door of the building using the same ID card with the name April Nettles on it.
She had her bag opened and examined.
“You over COVID, Nettles?” said the uniformed guard at the security checkpoint. She was in her forties, and did not look happy to be where she was.
“Yeah, it was a bitch the third time around.”
“You’re lucky they kept your slot open.”
“You want me to come here and infect everybody? And who else would want to do this crap? You guys outsourced all this. No benefits, shitty hours, lousy soul-sucking work, and crummy pay. I wonder how long the line is to sign up? Ha!”
“Hey, it’s the American way. Screw the little people, and I include myself in that group.”
Clarisse crossed the hall to a locker room, where there was a fresh set of work scrubs that she put on. She joined a team of nine young women as they pushed their cleaning trolleys down a hall and onto a large freight elevator.
They rode it up to the next floor, where the doors opened. One woman, holding a clipboard, stood there and said, “Bowers and Nettles, this floor. Start right, go left.” She handed each of them a sheet with instructions and office layouts. “Just in case you forgot, which you probably have, Nettles.”
Clarisse hadn’t forgotten, and the forewoman knew it. Clarisse had paid her five hundred bucks to let her work this floor tonight. And because they didn’t pay the supervisors any better than they did the underlings, the woman had not hesitated to take the bribe.
The forewoman got on the elevator and rode it up with the other cleaning crews, while Clarisse joined with Bowers in pushing her trolley down the hall.
Clarisse said, “You’re new, right?”
“Second night,” said Bowers, a petite woman with short dark hair.
“Okay, I’ll go right, you go left. No reason to double up no matter what they say. We get done faster, maybe we can sneak a smoke break,” she added, seeing a pack of Marlboros sticking out of Bowers’s pocket.
“Sounds good to me.”
Bowers went on her way and Clarisse did the same.
She had a system in place and fast-cleaned her section in half the time allotted. She actually liked to clean. It was a process with an intended result. That was pretty much her life. Clarisse left her trolley in an office and slipped down the hall.
She knew where every surveillance camera was located and carefully threaded that needle.
Clarisse took the second key card from its hiding place behind her first one in the lanyard pocket. This was why she had come back tonight. After doing this crummy job she finally had the key to where she needed to go. Her time off had been necessary, though, since she had had other things to take care of. But one of them had been getting a clone of this key, and it was not an easy one to duplicate.
She darted into the office and went directly over to the desk. She had already secured the password for this computer. She sat down, entered the system, and began her search. She continually shot glances at the door as she worked away.
She accessed the files she wanted, inserted a thumb drive, which had been hidden in her Zippo lighter, and copied what she needed.
She put the thumb drive back into her lighter and secured the lid.
She left the office and met up with Bowers. They took their smoke break outside, propping open a door that was supposed to remain locked. Everyone took their smoke break here, and the ground was littered with butts. The powers that be, not wanting to scare off the few people willing to do this job, had turned the alarm off on this door for that very reason.
While Bowers wasn’t looking, Clarisse dropped her Zippo on the ground behind a bush. After her shift was done, she went through the security process, which, on the exit, included X-rays and rigorous searches of both persons and bags. She had not wanted to chance that they would find the thumb drive.
Clarisse left the building, circled back around to where they had taken their smoke break, and plucked her Zippo from behind the bush. She got into her rental car and drove back to her apartment.
