Beneath the Surface

Then he’d slammed her up against the wall and put the gun to her head. If she’d known he was going to do that, she wouldn’t have shown up.

Judging from the low-life clientele the bar catered to and the fact that they were in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood only a few blocks from the Watergate Hotel, Shannon doubted that help would be forthcoming even if she could yell.

“Do you know how much trouble I’m in because of you?” Drago demanded.

“No,” Shannon croaked around the vise grip of the man’s big hand. “How much?” She’d been trained for years to ask open-ended questions. It was only the politicians that had to be restrained from climbing up on their soapboxes.

Vincent Drago wasn’t a politician. He was a private investigator, only he called it “freelance information specialist.”

From what Shannon had found out about the man, he had a shady career. Some of Shannon’s police contacts had claimed the man sometimes worked for the government on hush-hush jobs. Others claimed that he was a semilegal blackmailer.

One of the people Shannon had talked to had told her that Drago had gone after a blackmailer preying on a presidential hopeful. When he’d gotten the evidence of the candidate’s philandering with a young intern, Drago had put himself on the candidate’s payroll.

Shannon knew that because she’d broken the story about the intern when the girl had come to her after the affair ended. The intern had come forward so she could claim her fifteen minutes of fame. Everybody wanted that.

Drago was six feet six inches tall and looked like a human bulldozer. The carroty orange hair offered a warning about the dark temper that he possessed. His goatee was a darker red and kept neatly trimmed. He wore good suits and had expensive tastes. He could afford them because he did business with Fortune 500 companies.

According to the information Shannon had gotten, Drago was one of the best computer hackers working the private investigation scene. The man was supposedly an artist when it came to easing through firewalls and cracking encryptions. He was supposed to be more deadly with a computer than he was with a weapon.

Shannon was pretty sure she wouldn’t have felt as threatened if Drago had been holding a computer keyboard to her head. Of course, he could have bashed her brains out with it.

She held on to Drago’s wrist with both of her hands and tried to reel in her imagination. Thinking about the different ways he could kill her wasn’t going to help.

“Somebody found out about me,” Drago snarled. Angry red spots mottled his pale face.

“You advertise in the Yellow Pages,” Shannon pointed out.

“People are supposed to find out about you.”

“Somebody got into my computer.” Drago looked apoplectic.

“My computer! Nobody gets into my computer.”

“You get into other people’s computers. I’ve heard that’s dangerous. That’s why I came to you.”

“I’m invisible on the Internet,” Drago roared. He stuck his big face within an inch of Shannon’s. “I’m a frigging stealth ninja.”

Shannon couldn’t help thinking that stealth ninja was pretty redundant. When a ninja killed someone, they weren’t supposed to be seen. That was part of what made them a ninja.

“Who are you working for?” Drago slammed her against the wall again.

The back of Shannon’s head struck the wall. Black spots danced in her vision. She tried to remember the last time she’d had her life on the line and thought it was during her coverage of the apartment fires that had broken out downtown. Nine people had died in that blaze. She’d very nearly been one of them.

But it hadn’t seemed as scary then. She’d been with Todd, her cameraman, and he’d been rolling live footage. Every time the camera was on her, she was fearless.

Unfortunately neither Todd nor a camera were currently present.

Shannon held on to Drago’s thick wrist in quiet desperation. Even standing on tiptoes, she could barely draw a breath of air.

“I’m not working for anyone,” Shannon said.

“You work for American Broadcasting Systems.”

“I told you that. I also told you this wasn’t a story I was covering for the news station.” That was true. Oddly enough, throughout her years as a reporter Shannon had discovered people believed lies more than truths. They just seemed to want to.

“Are you working for the government?” Drago asked.

“No.”

“Because the Web sites I tracked the black ICE back to felt like federal government sniffers to me.”

That was surprising. Shannon didn’t know why the federal government would have been feeding her the information she’d been getting lately. Or before, for that matter.

“I don’t work for the government,” Shannon insisted. “I don’t even know what black ICE is.”

“Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics.”

“How much do you think someone like me would know about stuff like that?” Shannon pulled her best frightened blonde look. Considering she was suspended and nearly choking to death, she figured she was inspired.

Her mind raced. She knew a physical confrontation with Drago was going to end badly. She was a foot shorter than he was and weighed about half of what he did. The room contained crates and cases of liquor. The single low-wattage bulb in the ceiling barely chased the night out of the room.

There was no help there, and nothing within reach that she could use as a club.

“I’ve seen you on television,” Drago said. “I’ve seen you lie and wheedle your way into stories that other reporters couldn’t get.”

Despite being strung up against the wall, Shannon took momentary pride in her accomplishments. Getting recognized for something she’d done felt good. It always had.

“I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you,” Drago went on. He smiled, but there was no humor or warmth in the effort. “From the start I figured you were out to cross me up. But I bought into that blond hair and doe-brown eyes.” He leaned down, a long way down, and sniffed her hair.

Shannon cringed and couldn’t help closing her eyes. She hated being manhandled. It had never happened before, but she’d talked to rape and domestic-abuse victims enough to know that she was feeling the same thing they’d gone through. She resisted the urge to scream only because she thought if she did, he might kill her outright to shut her up.

“You sold me, baby,” Drago whispered into her ear. “Hook, line and sinker. You had me with that teary-eyed look—”

Shannon didn’t use that one often anymore, but she knew it almost guaranteed instant game, set and match when she did. She just didn’t like appearing weak.

“And the way you told me you needed help to find a cyber-stalker.”

Well, that was almost true.

“Who did you find?” Shannon had to struggle to keep from hiccupping in fear. The need to know what Drago had discovered almost leeched away the power her fear had over her.

“Have I told you this is a really bad part of the city?” Rafe Santorini lay back in the uncomfortable seat of the Ford Taurus he’d picked up to use for the night’s surveillance. At six feet two inches tall, he couldn’t quite get comfortable in the seat. His bad knee still ached and the gun on his right side kept digging into his hip.

“Yes,” Allison Gracelyn replied. “Several times.”

“Maybe I just haven’t gotten through to you how bad this section is.”

“I’m looking at it now.”