Sometimes Leo forgot he and Neil weren’t exactly on the same team. “We could speed up the search if I plug them into the FBI database.” And stop the shooter from getting another chance at Olivia.
“Olivia’s name is on there. When Pohl died . . . how many Olivias did what she did and disappeared when the man who hired them was dead? The list is irrelevant to Olivia. She knows the name of the shooter . . . What she is looking for is bigger.”
Leo huffed. “Bigger than a list of assassins?” He had a hard time picturing what that could be.
“Secrets. Throughout the years, the board members of the school were responsible for the hiring and firing of the administrative staff. People like Pohl and Lodovica, the headmistress, recruited the board by learning the dirty secrets of parents who placed their children in the school and then blackmailing them.”
“So the board members knew what Pohl was doing?”
“Perhaps . . . some. It’s unlikely they knew the extent, but they would never ask the hard questions or risk their own exposure. AJ, for example, his mother had an affair . . . AJ was the result. Fast-forward several years and her husband is appointed as America’s ambassador to Germany. Things get sticky. Pohl tells the board filled with members like AJ’s mom to keep voting Lodovica in so he can farm in . . . literally . . . young orphans such as Olivia, and prime them to become his henchmen.”
That was some seriously fucked-up shit. “And the board does nothing.”
“Exactly. But for every Olivia there’s a Sasha. Orphans placed at the school to educate and protect them . . . teach them to protect themselves. Sasha’s father murdered her mother, and would have eliminated her, too, had he known where she was. The secret of who Sasha was when she was placed at the school, and who her benefactor was, is interwoven in those files. None of it dirty, unless given to the wrong person. We of course have no way of knowing what information is damaging, so it remains hidden. Only the board members were scrutinized when the entire thing came down seven years ago.”
Leo placed both hands on his knees as if he needed to lean in to digest the information. “And now Olivia is searching for these files.”
Neil nodded. “She knows we have copies, but she went to the source instead of asking us.”
“To not involve you.”
“More proof Olivia has changed from what Pohl had turned her into.”
Leo stood and started to pace. “She has a name and wanted any information she could get on this person to find them.”
“That would be what I’d do.”
“To what . . . kill them?”
Neil shrugged. “Maybe. If the attempt on her was personal.”
Leo closed his eyes, hated the nausea that the thought of her going after this person induced.
“Or maybe she wants to find this person’s Pohl. Who hired them. I’d be more interested in that name if this wasn’t a personal bullet.”
“Do we know if she got to these files?”
“No idea. Doubtful.”
Leo nodded as direction started to form in his head. “How did you know she was at the school?”
Neil leaned over and picked up a remote from the coffee table and pressed it. The back wall of the office started to move until the panels folded onto each other and revealed a series of monitors that ran the length of the room and added another five feet of depth. “Damn, Neil.”
The man actually smiled. “I’m rather fond of that.”
Leo crossed his arms over his chest to see what other James Bond shit Neil had up his sleeve.
Another click of a different remote and it all turned on.
The monitors were a patchwork quilt of camera angles from dozens of homes and businesses. It was a larger-than-life version of what Neil had in his headquarters.
Neil moved to his computer, pressed a few keys, and the majority of the monitors turned off, leaving the center one illuminated. He then expanded the image to fill the surrounding monitors and make the picture close to six feet tall and ten feet wide.
“This is Richter.”
Leo saw three images.
“Satellite, obviously. The front doors and the service entrance.”
“Olivia wouldn’t walk in the front door.”
“No. And she didn’t.” Neil scrolled through several different cameras, giving Leo a snapshot of life at Richter. “She is well aware of where these cameras live and knows how to avoid them. Any kid that grew up there would