Death Logs Out Read online

  Then, right after the murder, for reasons she never fully understood or believed, her father had her transfer out of Notre Dame University. She wasn’t crazy about being in Indiana anyway, and she loved being at UNC but she was sure there was more behind her father’s concerns than he let on. Here, surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins, even after her Uncle Alex’s murder, she felt secure.

  Her father changed right after the murder. It was, she suspected, much more than grief. He was rarely home; he was more distracted, stressed. Whenever she called, even at night, he wasn’t there; she had to reach him on his cell. Right after her uncle was murdered, someone tried to kill her dad, too. That alone would change someone. So then he hired a head of security; she was more of a bodyguard, except . . . she was beautiful, striking actually, too beautiful. Her name was Sindy Steele—S-I-N-D-Y—who spells their name that way? She’d never met her but she’d seen her picture in the press. And then, all of a sudden, she was gone and no one at home spoke of her again, at least while Sofia was around. It was all too strange and, Sofia was convinced, somehow connected.

  She walked slowly down Franklin Street passing Jeff’s Confectioners, owned by her great-uncle Jimmy and the last place in America where you could still get a Coke with the syrup and seltzer mixed right there at the soda fountain.

  Despite the intense earlier daytime southern heat, a gentle fall breeze cooled the late evening air as Sofia turned away from the Franklin Street sidewalk and into the tree- lined, cloistered red brick path of the campus.

  Sofia felt alone until she heard the sound of footsteps close by behind her. She sped up and was startled, at the same moment, to hear her cell phone ring. She picked up the pace and rummaged through her purse until, finally, she found the phone, just as it stopped ringing. Who would be calling so late? Hoping for a familiar name, she glanced at the screen. “Private.”

  The footsteps behind her closed in. She checked to each side and then focused straight ahead. Why, tonight of all nights, was no one around—except the person behind her.

  She was surprised once more but relieved when her phone rang again.

  “Hello.”

  “Sofia, it’s your Uncle Alex.”

  Sofia began shaking. “No. Who is this?” But she knew the deep, smoky tone and tough Queens accent was indeed her uncle’s.

  The line went dead.

  She pressed the speed-dial function for her father. Michael Nicholas answered on the first ring.

  “Daddy, I’m so scared. I think someone’s following me—and I just got a call on my cell. Oh my God, I know this is crazy—the voice on the other end said he was Uncle Alex. Dad, he sounded just like him—and then I was cut off. I’m afraid. What should I do? Oh my God.”

  “First tell me exactly where you are, then hang up and call 911 and then call me right back.”

  Her fingers fumbled as she punched in 911 while continuing to walk. She could hear the footsteps; whoever it was, they had to be just inches away. She felt a chill go up her back, her legs began to give out. She looked at her cell phone; she’d hit the wrong numbers. She knew she had to turn around.

  Finally, she glanced over her shoulder. It was a woman—tall and athletic with long dark hair, Sofia froze as the woman came up to her, so close she could smell her perfume. Oddly, it was a scent she knew but couldn’t place exactly. But she recognized the face.

  The woman smiled as she spoke; it was a whisper, “Don’t be afraid, Sofia. I know you.”

  Chapter 5

  Westport, Connecticut

  It’s never good news when the phone rings after midnight.

  “How did the world get on so long without duct tape?” The woman’s voice was all too familiar to Michael.

  “I have your daughter.”

  Michael Nicholas knew he would hear from Sindy Steele again. Her voice carried through the telephone receiver and seared into his chest. He didn’t have time to speak before she continued.

  “I told you I’d find you.”

  He hoped it was a cruel joke, but he knew her—and it was no joke. Instead, his daughter was now in the hands of the woman he desired, and feared, the most.

  “What are you doing?” He couldn’t keep the sense of desperation out of his voice.

  “Soon you’ll know what it’s like to love someone with all your heart—and not be able to have them again. You’re going to experience that never-ending emptiness that comes from loss, terrible loss.”

  “Please, don’t touch her. She hasn’t done anything to you. What do you want? What do you want me to do?”

  “There’s nothing you can do. It’s about what you’ve done. What you’ve done to me.”

  “Sindy, where are you?”

  “Where am I? I’m in your head, Michael. Deep inside your head. You know it’s your most vulnerable spot.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “No kidding. But let me tell you, if I see a four-door car or a white panel truck with FedEx or the telephone company on it, or any of the other stupid things cops do to disguise themselves, I’ll put two bullets in her.”

  “Please, just let me speak with Sofia.”

  After a momentary silence that seemed to last forever, she answered, “Sure, I’ll let you speak with her—as soon as I can rip the duct tape off.”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter 6

  Westport, Connecticut

  Since Alex Nicholas’s murder, Michael had spoken to him nearly every day.

  It sounded strange and, Michael knew, it was. Alive, Alex had been a shell of what he had become now as a dead man. Unlike the original Alex, too little sleep and too much Scotch no longer dulled his mind or his memory.

  Alex had wanted to live forever. Not only because he feared death but because he loved life. He loved the Yankees, veal parmigiana, spaghetti, lobster tails, big steaks, a sun tan, Johnny Walker Red, good-looking women and sex. In any order he could get them. He loved it all.

  Now, two long years after his murder, while everyone believed that what was left of Alex lay buried in a Queens cemetery, Michael knew better.

  He double-clicked on the gold Eastern Orthodox cross icon on his computer, typed in the password, and waited.

  The screen came to life as Alex appeared. It was as though he were on Skype or FaceTime. Michael wasted no time.

  “Sofia’s been kidnapped.”

  Alex’s reaction was exactly the same one he would have given had he been standing there, alive.

  “Shit. I knew something was wrong. I just haven’t been able to put things together, to, you know, connect the dots yet. There’s so many of them right now, I’ve been confused. I needed to contact you but, I’ve been overwhelmed with . . . data, I guess.”

  “I need your help. We need to find out exactly where she’s being held. Sindy Steele’s gone crazy, she’s got her. She just called me from Chapel Hill.”

  Alex looked pained. His right eyebrow rose slightly. It was his look of knowing suspicion, also known as, I told you so. “Sindy Steele has her? That woman is psycho . . . and I mean in a medical sense. I’m still trying to figure out how a guy like you, a fucking boy scout for God’s sakes, gets involved with her.”

  Michael knew. Besides her stunningly good looks, she was everything that he’d felt was missing from his life, at least at the time. She exuded power, and, more than that, danger. It was only later that he discovered how much danger. She had become his Fatal Attraction. But it still wasn’t that simple: she was complicated, capable of turning on a dime and it was that . . . unpredictability . . . her ability to change—seemingly, who she was, that didn’t allow Michael to ever completely shut her out of his mind.

  “She was the mistake of my life. But I need to locate her. More importantly—I need to find Sofia. I need your help.”

  There was silence, Alex appeared frozen, as though he had to process a command.

  “It looks like all this fancy software is paying off—I’ve got her.” Alex appeared
to be looking down at something out of the view of the monitor.

  Without looking up, he spoke. “Sofia’s at the Holiday Inn Express on Carrboro Road, just outside Chapel Hill.” And then, in his best sarcastic tone, he added, “Do you need me to Google Map it for you?”

  “How the hell did you do that? How is this possible?”

  “It was hard in the beginning but now it’s almost automatic. I think the computer people call it . . . intuitive.”

  “Intuitive?” Michael was sure that, in the forty or so years that he’d known his brother, he’d never used that word. Something was happening; Alex was changing.

  “There’s something else, too. Something no one could even think about when I hired those kids to do this.”

  “What’s that?” Michael said.

  “I’m connected to the Cloud now.”

  “So, what does that mean . . . for you?”

  “It means, I’ll just keep getting smarter, more memory, more information, more everything. I’ll be able to . . . process it better. It gives me access to . . . everything.”

  It was more than Michael could absorb at the moment.

  “Just before Sofia hung up she told me she’d had a call . . . from you.”

  No reaction from Alex; he stared straight ahead.

  “Did you call her?” Michael said.

  “Yeah. I spoke to her, briefly, and then I lost the connection. She’s a good kid. Maybe I just needed to hear another familiar voice again, I don’t know. I’m still feeling my way through all this new technology.”

  Michael stopped to process all this himself. “Wait a minute, you actually called Sofia while Sindy Steele was following her?”

  “Yeah, I guess I did. But I didn’t know exactly what was happening, just that the two of them had converged.”

  “So you’ve been following or tracking both of them?”

  “Yeah—separately. I knew Steele was trouble from the time you met her. I track Sofia because she’s my niece. So when the two of them converged, it triggered something but, to be honest, I couldn’t follow through or put it together.”

  “She said she lost the connection,” Michael said. “You scared the crap out of her.”

  “Yeah, I hung up. I knew it wasn’t right. Not yet. But, anyway, it sounds like my calling her is the least of your problems.”

  “Who else are you tracking?”

  “Everyone I can think of.”

  Chapter 7

  Westport, Connecticut

  There was only one other living person Michael could trust with this: his good friend, former NYPD street cop and now Westport’s chief of police, Fletcher Fanelli. He picked up the phone and dialed his mobile number.

  “Fletcher, I need your help. Where are you?”

  “At Mario’s.”

  “Get us a table in the back room. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Entering Mario’s on a cold, dark fall evening made Michael think of a safe, comfortable America, a time he’d only seen on vintage Saturday Evening Post covers. But he did remember what it felt like to feel secure and he knew the exact moment it ended: it was the day Alex was murdered.

  Even though it was well after midnight, and the commuter crowd had long since gone home, Mario’s was filled with mostly old townies locals looking for one last drink, or finishing dinner. Tiger, Mario’s quirky but lovable owner, never closed the doors until the last Martini had been poured, usually around 2:30 in the morning.

  Michael immediately spotted Chief Fanelli at a quiet corner by the back door, nursing an amber Manhattan.

  “This can’t be good. You’re usually in bed by nine,” Fletcher said with a smirk.

  “Sindy’s kidnapped Sofia,” Michael said, keeping his voice low. “We need to get someone to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, fast. Someone good.”

  “Jesus, how the hell did it happen?”

  Michael filled Fletcher in with all the details on the call from Sindy Steele.

  “Okay, first, we’ve got to find out where she’s hiding. It won’t be easy. Steele’s clever.” Fletcher said. “We’ve got to find her and surprise her.”

  “I know where Sindy’s hiding out.”

  “You know?” Fletcher’s head jerked back slightly as he placed his glass back on the white table-clothed table. “Did she tell you?”

  “Let’s just say it’s the beauty of the Internet, GPS and Google Maps—along with some divine intervention,” Michael replied.

  Fletcher looked puzzled, “I’m afraid to ask but I won’t worry about that now. I have someone. He’s good; I used to work with him although it’s been quite a while. I’ll call him right now.”

  “You know, there’s no margin for error here.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I knew all along Sindy was lethal—and there’s no way she was going to stay away from you. She’s a sociopath.”

  He was right; Michael flashed back to the countless conversations they’d had about her.

  Through his law enforcement network, Fletcher had uncovered a sealed report buried in the archives of the Palo Alto police department. Fifteen years earlier, Sindy Steele was a brilliant medical student at Stanford. Nearly a month after her live-in boyfriend and fellow med student had suddenly moved out on her, he was found dead.

  The medical examiner believed—but could not prove—that he’d ingested a rare and hard to detect poison. Charges were never brought against her but Steele was forced to leave Stanford. Her medical concentration had been pharmacology and medicinal chemistry.

  But by the time Fletcher had uncovered this, it was too late. Michael had made a mistake. It was his first and only transgression in his marriage.

  Then, they discovered more. He thought back, to the beginning. It had been three years ago now.

  Michael had noticed her months before he’d met her. He remembered seeing her leaving the bar inside the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills just as he was entering the lobby. He’d barely seen her face but he remembered her long, bare white legs and the black stilettos as she turned away from him, heading for another part of the hotel. It was the same night his boss—the man Michael would be named to replace—was murdered.

  The next morning when Chairman Richard “Dick” Applegarden didn’t show up for a series of meetings, hotel security entered his room and discovered his body. A bottle of Ambien and a near empty glass of Bushmills single malt whisky were found on his bedside table. His death was attributed to natural causes, a result, the police report stated, of sleep apnea and the consumption of a large quantity of alcohol. They apparently missed the needle mark in his groin.

  As their relationship deepened, Sindy Steele admitted to Michael that she’d done it, a paid hit. She’d entered Applegarden’s room and murdered him. Since leaving Stanford, Sindy had taken her pharmacology expertise—and whatever personality disorder she had—and put it to the lucrative career of a professional assassin. The night before that, when she caught Michael’s eye in the Peninsula lobby, she was performing her final reconnaissance of the hotel. He didn’t realize it then, but she had noticed him, too. It was then that Sindy Steele became obsessed with him.

  He always knew Fletcher was correct: Steele was dangerous and a sociopath. And worse. But he was in too deep by then. She was capable of murdering him, too. He could feel it right under the surface of their relationship, and so could the shadowy Vatican figures who had already murdered Alex and were out to kill Michael. They hired Steele to kill him but they, too, didn’t see her pathological side. They did get her to do one hit—Joseph Sharkey, the man who started it all and who the Vatican was anxious to get rid of.

  Despite it all, Michael never anticipated that Sindy Steele would involve—let alone kidnap—Sofia.

  “Where’s Samantha?” Fletcher said, bringing Michael back from his thoughts.

  “She just got on a plane in Paris. She lands in eight hours—I don’t want to have to tell her Sofia’s been kidnapped. I can’t even imagine putting her through this
—not to mention Sofia. We have to find her now, before Steele has too much time to think—and before Samantha lands.”

  “Maybe we should get the police involved,” Fletcher said.

  Although at first Michael didn’t notice it, Tiger had discreetly placed a Blue Sapphire Gin Martini, his favorite, on the table. He took his first sip and knew immediately that it was the last thing he needed.

  “You know Sindy—what do you think? She’s already warned me. She’s too smart and too unpredictable. And the local cops in these small towns are no match for her.”

  “I know.” Fletcher took out his cell phone and appeared to be scrolling through something on it. “Okay, I’ve got his number.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  Fletcher broke into a worried smile, “His name is Rick Martin. He’s a displaced Northerner; more comfortable now as a good old boy, you know. Southern by way of Italian parents. I think his real last name is Martini or something. Like what you’re drinking, and just as ice cold.”

  “How’d you find him?” Michael asked.

  “When I was with the NYPD, we’d brought him into the precinct one night. I had to try and get information out of him about some missing gun trafficker from down South. Rick was visiting in New York. We knew that he’d done some deals with this guy. Interrogating him was like entering a dark swamp. You had this feeling he was going to reach over and pull you under. He’s smart, he’s calculating, former Special Forces. And he’s not afraid of anything. He’s since done some unofficial special assignments.”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t ask, you don’t want to know. I can tell you, though, he’s the go-to guy for some pretty powerful organizations—including a few foreign governments—that need contract work done, quietly. If you know what I mean.”

  “Call him. I’ve got a private jet waiting to take me down there.”