Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets (16 page)

Chapter
Sixteen

Vlad pulled in near the flower shop. Mina
wasn't sure if they had any kind of good description of her
transportation, but if someone was watching, she wanted to not make
it too obvious that she was riding in Vlad. She also hoped to have
multiple exits, which the large parking lot in front of the
neighboring Mexican restaurant and hardware store had, and Emerald
City Flowers and Design didn't.

The girls got out of the car after parking
between the two buildings—not a legal parking spot, but out of
sight from the street—then scanned the area. Not seeing any signs
of anything out of the ordinary, both went to the shop. Mina let
herself in with her key and the security code, and went straight to
the shop's inventory computer.

“So, I'm dying of curiosity. How are your
inventories and receipts going to help us?” Miko asked.

“They're not,” Mina responded, logging in as
soon as the system finished booting up. “My grandfather was an
Inquisitor. I have all of his passwords. Do you have a spare drive
I can record all of his information onto? I don't want to stay
logged in here any longer than I have to. There shouldn't be
anything incoming or outgoing, but still ... if we can just copy
everything he had, maybe there's something useful there. We can
look at it somewhere else.”

Miko agreed, handed over a drive with some of
her videos on it, and set to keeping watch on the doors. “I have
other copies of those movies,” she assured Mina.

“Of course,” Mina responded, letting Miko
move to take watch while she used the back doors into the hidden
system information her chip fed her to pull up her grandfather's
records. As soon as they opened, after she'd moved through five
different layers of security, she put the chip in and started
recording everything.

As she was finishing up, the system chimed,
indicating that a new order had come in. “Damn it ... who orders
flowers in the middle of the night?” she cursed, finishing the
copying and shutting down quickly, to see an e-mail asking for a
delivery first thing in the morning ... someone had forgotten her
best friend's birthday. Shaking her head at her own curiosity and
hitting the shut down, Mina headed for the door. “We need to
move.”

“You find something?” Miko asked.

“I don't know, but I have the files. Mrs.
Cofra forgetting her friend's birthday might have been a big
problem though ... if anyone was hacked in enough to look for any
activity here.”

“Seriously? She ordered flowers in the middle
of the night?”

“Yeah, but she also gave me an idea,” she
responded, opening the refrigeration unit and taking out one of the
arrangements slated for delivery early the next day. “My parents
will have to figure out something else to take to the Aaronson
kid's Chipping Day celebration”

“Okay, so ... flowers, great. I'll ask
later,” Miko responded.

They got back to the car without any obvious
sign they'd been noticed, but no sooner was Miko about to start
Vlad up than they noticed a car traveling slowly through the
neighborhood, pausing out in front of the shop. A car door opened
and shut.

Without waiting for anything further, Miko
backed out of the alleyway without turning her headlights on.
Typically, when Miko did things like that, Mina wished that Vlad
had some of the standard modern safety features installed, so she
wouldn't have been able to go anywhere with her lights off after a
certain hour. Now, she couldn't be more grateful to be in an
antique death trap. They moved slowly out through the back of the
lot, through the route typically reserved for delivery trucks from
the hardware store, before reaching surface streets. With no sign
they'd been followed, they settled on one of the light rail
stations with plenty of traffic at all hours.

Mina started going through her grandfather's
records, while Miko, in theory, tried to get some sleep. Before
that effort really began, she finally asked, “So, I just have to
know. Who are we taking flowers to?”

“I'm sorry, Robin,” Mina responded. “I need
to do one more stupid thing first thing tomorrow morning.
Then
we can try to find a good hiding spot.”

“Holy totally not surprised at that scenario,
Batman,” Miko responded.

“What?”

Miko sighed.

* * * *

Mina spent a while trying to relax, closing
her eyes and otherwise trying to clear her mind, but even as tired
as she was, sleep simply wouldn’t come. She was tempted a few times
to call her parents, but elected to keep her phone turned off until
the following morning.

She did spend a while checking the
information from her grandfather's files. She learned a good deal
about the history of the AIA through her grandfather's words, such
as confirming that there had been quite a few more agents in those
days. There was a lot she didn't understand, either due to coded
references an agent of the times may have understood, or simply
references to people and events she didn't know. Still, there were
some that were fairly clear.

May 25, 2118

Initial evaluation of A. Park is just as
expected: he's eager. Very, very eager. This has raised
understandable concerns, but I believe them unnecessary. He might
need a short leash for his initial missions to prevent trouble, but
he'll learn. I gave him the 'chips are a tool, not a crutch'
speech, and he seemed to take to it readily. The kid has good
instincts, and he trusts them. I respect that. I suspect he'll make
a good cop, and I'm confident he'll make a fine agent.

Mina felt tears welling up a bit, more so as
her mentor, in note after note, went from the new kid into a
seasoned agent. But amidst skimming these, another set of entries
caught her eye. The name Fiona Richter (switching in some accounts
to Fiona Reisen, then eventually back to Richter, without much
explanation) immediately grabbed her attention. By the notes and
her early assessments, she was apparently a fourth-generation
Inquisitor. Her father had been killed in the line of duty, after
which the AIA had moved her family west from St. Paul. Beyond that,
what Mina found surprised her. While Mina read the accounts, a
story began to unfold of a technically brilliant new agent who took
a case too personally, in her grandfather's written opinion, due to
similarities to the case that killed her own father. That case
would cost her her arm, and get her put on several months' desk
work.

What surprised her the most was one of the
later entries.

November 5, 2132

Dear Sirs,

I understand that Agent F. Richter has been
offered a promotion, moving her to a supervisory position within
the FBI. I was officially asked to submit my opinions on the
matter, as her trainer and supervising officer. While she had some
rough spots in her early career, particularly the Everett incident,
she has been nothing but committed to the Agency. She has so far
sacrificed an arm, a kidney, a marriage, and a chance at any kind
of normal home life to the AIA. I cannot question her commitment to
our goals and ideals.

Additionally, while she has a stated
preference for field work, I think her greatest gifts would be
realized in a supervisory role. While she has few true friends
among the agents, especially those junior to her, she has earned
universal respect. Additionally, while her methods may occasionally
be graded as unusually harsh, I have no doubt that this is because
she genuinely cares for her fellows, and hopes to pass on the
lessons she has learned without new agents having to learn them the
hard way, as she herself did.

I highly endorse the move, and urge that you
do not put too much stock in some other reports, which would cause
us to lose a valuable opportunity. We have sufficient agents in the
field. An agent managing an agent's responsibilities, while also
moving up to a supervisory position with the FBI should be lauded
for that accomplishment, and she could do more good for us
there.

Sincerely,

T. Escalante

Mina read the note through a couple more
times, then went back through a few more accounts. Some of the
Director's behavior and attitudes began to make a degree of sense,
and as her grandfather had noted, while there was no question that
Mina still didn't like Director Richter, she could respect what
she'd put into the job. The fact that the Director didn't want to
know where she was and had urged her to simply avoid notice
helped.

Granted, she was pretty sure that her
upcoming plans were anything but careful, but there was something
she had to do anyway. She spent a little while writing on the card
attached to the flowers, then did her best to cat nap a bit until
first light.

* * * *

Because someone involved with the killings of
Agents Park and Hall had clearly gotten information on the cops'
routes and methods, Mina had Miko keep some distance when she went
to the police station where the agents had worked first thing in
the morning. She took the flowers with her, delivering them to the
station under the guise of bringing flowers to pay respects to the
pair of officers who'd been killed. She hoped that even if she was
recognized, no one was going to try anything in the actual police
station.

She did her best to not tear up or otherwise
look like anything but a delivery girl, moving to a cubicle which
still bore Agent Park's name. Taking a deep breath, she ducked into
it to add her bouquet of flowers to the numerous others decorating
the station. No one was looking, and soon Mina was at the keyboard,
bypassing the police department's security system like she was,
well, perhaps a 'Szach-level' hacker, the taste of aluminum on her
tongue.

Rather than looking anything up, however, she
entered the license plate from the sandwich shop, and put out a
public APB on that plate and vehicles matching the description. She
didn't recognize the name of the registered owner when she pulled
it up, but was able to enter a falsified report suggesting that it
was picked up by a traffic camera leaving the area where the two
cops were killed, and the driver was wanted for questioning. She
was pretty sure that few things were going to motivate the police
like the thought of possible suspects in a cop killing. If nothing
else, she was pretty sure that even if that specific car hadn't
been there, there was indeed a tie between them, which may lead to
other information coming up.

She was tempted to do more than that, but the
sound of approaching footsteps drew her attention away. Making sure
the report was filed, she turned the computer off, and by the time
a policewoman rounded the cubicle doorway, she was back on her feet
and rearranging some of the flowers.

“Can I help you, Miss?” the woman asked.

Mina gave her her best smile and shake of her
head. “No. Just dropping these off. I'll be on my way. Thank
you.”

She left the woman behind, but as she neared
the door, she picked up the scent of a familiarly cheap cologne. A
man was talking into his wrist-comm, though she couldn't pick up
what he was saying, but figured that he was either one of the
people she'd briefly encountered at the sandwich shop, or shopped
at the same place. It was enough to put her on edge. While she was
tempted at first to cause a scene to draw attention to him, she
knew that would have gotten her kept around for questioning, and
she wasn't sure, even here, whom she could trust and whom she
couldn't. Instead, she just nodded to him politely as she exited
the building. She was still fairly confident, immediately out front
of the station, that no one was going to try anything stupid, but
she didn't want to lead anyone right back to Miko, either.

Instead, she headed down the block, staying
in plain view of people on the sidewalks, moving away from where
Miko was parked. She was sure she was being watched, and probably
followed, but if so, people were not giving off any of the cues her
chip would typically pick up on to suggest where the problems might
lie. As such, she continued at a casual pace, as if she hadn't
noticed a thing. After crossing one street, she moved with the same
casual air to the edge of a building, then quickly darted down the
first alley that went through to the next block that she came
across.

Somewhere outside the alley, she heard a car
suddenly accelerate and turn the corner. It could be coincidence,
but she suspected someone was moving to cut off the other end of
the alley. She had to either double back or make a run for the next
block. Her speed and reflexes would keep her ahead. She knew this
... and she knew it as every breath tasted like chewing on foil.
Those aluminum-flavored thoughts hadn't served her well against
these particular threats. Mina fought off the instinctive reactions
to simply follow the suggestions the chip put in her head and
pursued a different plan.

All scents of the city were drowned out by a
burning sensation in her sinuses. Nonetheless, she headed for a
dumpster at a full run, pulled herself up onto it, sprinted across
it, and used the extra height from the dumpster to snag the bottom
edge of a fire escape. Pulling herself up, she started scaling the
side of the building with the escapes, heading for higher ground.
She saw a car pull around to the other end of the alleyway, as
she'd expected, while hearing two sets of footsteps entering it
from the end she'd come through. She didn't spare much time to
glance down, climbing as quickly as she could without making too
much noise. After a few moments, she could hear voices below as
people shouted to one another from either end of the alleyway. A
bit of scuffling as they searched, before a shout told her that
someone had seen her.