The far younger man replacing him at this pinnacle of power would not be nearly as duplicitous. Or stupid enough to think that he could get away with anything. They were all cookie-cutter drones. The only principles they believed in were the ones that benefited them. The question was simple: How much would they cost? They were just another line item in a budget, though that line item would never officially appear in any budget. Yet that made it no less critical.
The calculation was a simple one: Laws equaled money. If you made the laws, you made the money.
And this immoral and corrupt man, whose political decisions had harmed many ordinary citizens in myriad ways, would be buried, and his loved ones would mourn him; but then they would immediately fight over his money, the only thing of value he would leave behind.
Good riddance, thought Spector.
She finished with the body and took her time erasing all traces of her presence there. After that, she made her way out the way she had come, via an impossibly high window and down a wall that seemed to have no visible means of support for such a climb or descent other than a copper gutter. But that was for the average intruder, not Britt Spector. There were no signs of forced entry. And that would make it certain that the police would conclude the man’s death was an unfortunate accident.
She walked down the darkened street and arrived back at her hotel in short order. She took a shower, had a drink, and sent an encrypted message to her employer. Then she waited and checked an electronic bank account to make sure that the remainder of the agreed-upon funds had been deposited. When this was verified, she went to bed. She rose at six the next morning, showered and dressed, packed her bag, checked out, and was on her way to Dulles via an Uber.
She liked working for Peter Buckley. He was a class act who paid extremely well. And he never called her in for something that was not aligned with her elite abilities.
Spector caught the Uber driver checking her out in the mirror. Spector knew she stood out. Five ten, lean and willowy, she had driven herself hard most of her life to achieve her goals. Her features were exotic due to her Filipino father and Scandinavian mother. Her skin was olive and her hair blond. Her father had been an Olympic-caliber judo athlete. Her mother had been a tall, rangy biathlete, and she had taught her daughter how to both ski and shoot at the same time. Her parents’ athleticism had passed to their daughter, though she had not followed their paths in life. She had other goals.
She looked at the man’s hungry gaze in the mirror. Any woman would easily be able to read that look.
“You like what you see?” she said.
He nodded. “Very much.”
“Well, life is full of disappointment,” she replied. She turned away and thought no more of him.
Yes, men were easy. Women, women were hard. And apparently Peter had found a challenge for her to take on.
This was exactly what rocked Britt Spector’s world.
CHAPTER
39
THE WHEELS OF THE BOMBARDIER JET solidly gripped the tarmac and held as it landed at the business aviation park. The aircraft taxied to a stop, the door stairs dropped down, and off stepped the sole passenger. Spector carried her black leather duffel over one shoulder, with a confident swagger in every stride.
Before joining the Bureau, she had completed college and then enlisted in the Army, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes with the 101st Airborne Division. Before every mission they would smear any exposed part of their skin with multicolor camo paint. It was a difficult process, and you had to get it just right or the entire purpose would be defeated. Irregular diagonal lines across the face. Two colors on the lips, nose, chin, etc. Don’t forget the ears, neck, eyelids, hands. Done right, even if the enemy hit you with a light, you would still be invisible. You could kill them before they killed you. Done wrong, you were a sitting duck with a Hollywood premiere-grade spotlight shining on your soon-tobe dead ass.
Yet the Army had never understood or appreciated her. When the promotions didn’t come as fast as she would have liked, and after some of her extracurricular activities had drawn the ire of those in command, she’d gotten her honorable discharge and moved on. She’d then taken her talents to the FBI. She’d stayed there long enough to realize it was also not a good fit for her personal goals. So she had become a freelancer in a field she had very much made her own. In doing so, she was deploying the same skills she had gained and burnished first in the military and then at the Bureau, but making far more money in the process. And, best of all, it was a life of her own making.