Page 3 of Girl, Empty
CHAPTER ONE
Michael Rankin's shoes squelched on the lobby's marble.Soaked through.Some asshole in a Porsche had taken the corner at Broad and Fifth like he owned the intersection, and sent a tsunami of gutter water straight through Michael's two-thousand-dollar Oxfords.
It was probably a sign he should go home.The world had ways of telling you to just give it up, but Michael had work to do, and bank fraud didn’t care how wet your shoes were.
It was somewhere between midnight and 4 AM; the hours that bled together before sunlight broke the city’s fever.Michael had made the five-minute trip from his office to his car, now had to make the return journey to the 40thfloor.Morrison & Associates were the biggest forensic accounting firm in Indiana, and a few late nights here could set you up for life.
‘Forget something, Mr.Rankin?’Terrence, the security guard, didn’t look up from his crossword.
‘Pills.’Michael patted his jacket pocket.‘Blood pressure.’
‘Very well.Eight letters.Unlawful entrant.Any ideas?’
‘Intruder.’
Terrence tapped his pen on the desk.‘Bingo.You stay safe up there, Mr.Rankin.’
Michael nodded his goodbye and left Terrence to his crossword.Twenty years behind that desk and the man had never finished one, but Michael admired his tenacity.Either that or he didn’t have much else to do down here, because Michael & Associates had the best security tech in the business, apparently.
The elevator required a keycard just to call it after hours.Michael fished the plastic from his wallet, held it against the reader until it beeped green.The doors slid open to reveal mirrors on three sides.He pushed the button for the 40thfloor.
At floor 20, the elevator stopped.This was security checkpoint one.Michael stepped into a glass mantrap that looked like it belonged in a supermax prison.The door sealed behind him before the one ahead would even consider opening.Weight sensors in the floor.If you weighed twenty pounds more than your employee file said, the system flagged it.Too many late-night pizza runs and you'd have some explaining to do.
He pressed his palm against the scanner.The machine mapped every ridge and valley, compared it to the Michael Rankin it knew.Green light.The exit door clicked.
Back in the elevator, it rose past dark floors.Twenty-second floor: patent law.Twenty-eighth floor: corporate restructuring.Each one a different circle of hell, but at least they went home at reasonable hours.Michael’s department – fraud investigation – could spend their lives here, because working with criminals meant operating on criminal hours.
At the 40th floor, Michael exited the elevator and arrived at the next blockade.This time it was a door with a retinal scan.The worst one.Michael hated things near his eyes, always had.Even eye drops made him flinch.But he leaned forward and tried not to blink as the laser painted his retina.
Access granted.
The panel flashed green and Michael pushed through to the corridor that led to his office.He found his door at the end of the row, then placed his finger on the biometric scanner.A blue light swept across his hand while a computer somewhere in the building's guts confirmed that his palm print matched the one in their database.The scanner beeped its approval, then a pneumatic lock disengaged with a thunk and allowed Michael into the office he’d worked in for nine years.
Michael dropped into his leather chair and let it swallow him whole.The office sprawled around like the kingdom he'd always dreamed of having.It had forty feet of windows overlooking downtown Indianapolis, as well as enough square footage to park a small plane.Michael had measured it once, out of curiosity.He could fit his first apartment in here three times over.
Morrison & Associates hadn’t always been Fort Knox.When Michael had started nine years ago, you could get past Terrence with a smile.But then a new director took over and turned this place into the Pentagon.
Not without reason.Four years back, the building already had what most considered tight security, but someone had waltzed in during a holiday party and made off with two servers full of client data.The thieves had splashed the data across the internet like a digital oil spill, and the financial fraud and offshore hobbies of thousands of clients had been the world’s entertainment for a few weeks.Careers and marriages ended, lawsuits rained down and old man Morrison even ended up splattered on the pavement after a fall from his penthouse in Zionsville.His family went with the angle that he’d been drunk and fallen off the balcony, but Michael Rankin knew a suicide when he saw one.
The irony wasn’t lost on Michael.Even Houdini couldn’t get in here now, yet here he sat, alone at midnight in a fortress nobody could penetrate.The most secure office in Indiana, and the loneliest.
Michael jabbed his keyboard and three monitors surged to life.The Henderson data lived on the middle screen, encrypted six ways to Sunday.Michael entered his password – another randomly generated string that changed every two weeks.The files bloomed open.
Richard Henderson had been bleeding his own company dry for eighteen months before he painted a Miami hotel room with his brains.Shell companies nested inside shell companies, like a Russian doll of financial fuckery that had even flagged up to the feds.The money trail led through Panama and Switzerland, but luckily, such routes were amateur hour for anyone who spent their life unraveling professional fraud, as Michael did.
Before he could lose himself in the numbers, his cell rang.Sarah’s name flashed up.
‘Sarah,’ he answered.‘It’s late.’
‘You're still at the office.’Not a question.Sarah had always been able to read him through the phone.
‘Yes I am.Why are you up?’
‘Emma has an infection.I told you this.She’s only just gone to bed.When are you coming home?’
‘Umm….’
‘Actually, don’t worry about it.I’m just checking if you’re coming tomorrow.’
