he now had a purpose. Five minutes later he rose and faced Megan Emerson.
“Change of plans,” he said, reaching for her hand to help her up.
13
Vasily Chirkhoff arrived just before midnight at the Bakersfield Municipal Airport in a small chartered jet, and Cody Radich met him and escorted him to his rental car. While the Russian had been in transit, Radich, with the help and resources of John Delamater, had made significant progress in picking up Hall’s trail once again.
WeOfficeU had long contracted with the Adams Janitorial Services company to send a two-person crew to their Bakersfield location each night after hours, with responsibility for cleaning the bathrooms and conference rooms, vacuuming out each of the two hundred and ten offices, and emptying the individual trash containers in each.
Only four hours earlier, a woman named Larissa Hochhalter, who was one half of this crew, had been covering the same ground at WeOfficeU she had covered for years. During this period of time she had thought she had seen it all. She had interrupted office residents having sex, had come across managers passed out drunk, and offices that had been literally torn to pieces by irate wives or lovers. But when she had entered Megan Emerson’s office to vacuum, minding her own business, she encountered something that even she couldn’t take in stride.
After she had stopped screaming, she had called 9-1-1 to report two very dead bodies resting comfortably on the floor, with patterns of blood leakage and spatter that were like demented modern art.
Delamater had learned of this only minutes after the Bakersfield police had been notified, and Vasily continued to be impressed with the wide variety of sources he had cultivated. Although, in this case, Delamater had probably recruited a single player with access to the national police computer system, and had set up the system to alert him to anything of possible interest in the vicinity of Bakersfield. In this instance, though, they didn’t need outside intel. Vasily and Delamater already knew their hired guns were dead at this location.
The men had called Vasily from WeOfficeU to give them Megan Emerson’s identity, but had never called back. And repeated attempts to contact them had failed. Vasily tracked their cell phones, and learned the phones hadn’t moved a millimeter in hours. Either they had both left their phones behind in the office, which was so unlikely as to defy imagination, or they were recently deceased.
The fact that Nick Hall had prevailed against two experienced killers this time was becoming alarming. At first Vasily had tried to convince himself the man just had a six-leaf clover in his pocket. But after this, he agreed fully with Delamater that they were missing something big.
They had been caught off guard by this development and didn’t have a crew ready to retrieve the bodies and scrub the premises, which would have been a challenge in a locked office building in any case. And who knew how many bullet holes, and how much blood, would have to be concealed and cleaned.
Had they removed the bodies they might have been able to delay an investigation, but not forestall it entirely. And this move, as well as others they had contemplated, like torching the entire building, added more risk than benefit. No matter. They always retained the capability of remotely frying the phones of anyone in their employ, which they had done to the two phones long before they were discovered. The mercs wouldn’t be carrying any identification, and they couldn’t be traced in any way to Vasily Chirkhoff or John Delamater.
Now they just had to be sure to stay at least one step ahead of whoever would be investigating the murders. Given that they had started many steps ahead, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Radich and Vasily had traced Megan Emerson’s phone to the Kern River Motor Lodge, and from there, with a little investigative work by Radich, they learned of the
“Change of plans,” he said, reaching for her hand to help her up.
13
Vasily Chirkhoff arrived just before midnight at the Bakersfield Municipal Airport in a small chartered jet, and Cody Radich met him and escorted him to his rental car. While the Russian had been in transit, Radich, with the help and resources of John Delamater, had made significant progress in picking up Hall’s trail once again.
WeOfficeU had long contracted with the Adams Janitorial Services company to send a two-person crew to their Bakersfield location each night after hours, with responsibility for cleaning the bathrooms and conference rooms, vacuuming out each of the two hundred and ten offices, and emptying the individual trash containers in each.
Only four hours earlier, a woman named Larissa Hochhalter, who was one half of this crew, had been covering the same ground at WeOfficeU she had covered for years. During this period of time she had thought she had seen it all. She had interrupted office residents having sex, had come across managers passed out drunk, and offices that had been literally torn to pieces by irate wives or lovers. But when she had entered Megan Emerson’s office to vacuum, minding her own business, she encountered something that even she couldn’t take in stride.
After she had stopped screaming, she had called 9-1-1 to report two very dead bodies resting comfortably on the floor, with patterns of blood leakage and spatter that were like demented modern art.
Delamater had learned of this only minutes after the Bakersfield police had been notified, and Vasily continued to be impressed with the wide variety of sources he had cultivated. Although, in this case, Delamater had probably recruited a single player with access to the national police computer system, and had set up the system to alert him to anything of possible interest in the vicinity of Bakersfield. In this instance, though, they didn’t need outside intel. Vasily and Delamater already knew their hired guns were dead at this location.
The men had called Vasily from WeOfficeU to give them Megan Emerson’s identity, but had never called back. And repeated attempts to contact them had failed. Vasily tracked their cell phones, and learned the phones hadn’t moved a millimeter in hours. Either they had both left their phones behind in the office, which was so unlikely as to defy imagination, or they were recently deceased.
The fact that Nick Hall had prevailed against two experienced killers this time was becoming alarming. At first Vasily had tried to convince himself the man just had a six-leaf clover in his pocket. But after this, he agreed fully with Delamater that they were missing something big.
They had been caught off guard by this development and didn’t have a crew ready to retrieve the bodies and scrub the premises, which would have been a challenge in a locked office building in any case. And who knew how many bullet holes, and how much blood, would have to be concealed and cleaned.
Had they removed the bodies they might have been able to delay an investigation, but not forestall it entirely. And this move, as well as others they had contemplated, like torching the entire building, added more risk than benefit. No matter. They always retained the capability of remotely frying the phones of anyone in their employ, which they had done to the two phones long before they were discovered. The mercs wouldn’t be carrying any identification, and they couldn’t be traced in any way to Vasily Chirkhoff or John Delamater.
Now they just had to be sure to stay at least one step ahead of whoever would be investigating the murders. Given that they had started many steps ahead, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Radich and Vasily had traced Megan Emerson’s phone to the Kern River Motor Lodge, and from there, with a little investigative work by Radich, they learned of the
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