Almost everything here would have to stay. She selected some basic cosmetics, enough to get her by but not enough that Rafael would ever notice part of her stuff was missing. The rest she left scattered across her vanity, as if she were expecting to return. She rolled up a pair of black cropped pants, and a skimpy black shirt, and added them to the bag. Black was the least noticeable color in New York, because so many people wore it, even during the summer. Another bag, smaller and plainer, also went into the tote.
That was it. She'd buy everything else she needed as she needed it. She was satisfied that no one, looking at this room, would think anything other than that she'd gone shopping and would soon be back. Rafael, knowing how she loved clothes and makeup, would never believe she'd willingly left all this behind, and that would buy her precious time-she hoped. She'd have to make a clean escape; if the babysitter saw her, tried to catch her, then she'd have no grace period at all.
She paced. She watched the clock. After awhile, hunger pains drove her from her room to the kitchen. Rafael didn't have a cook because he didn't trust people outside of his network, and generally thugs didn't develop their culinary skills, but he did have food delivered so there was always something available.
She made herself walk slowly, as if she didn't have a lot of energy. The two men sitting in the living room looked around. To her relief, neither of them was Orlando Dumas. Their names were Amado and Hector, and if she'd ever heard their last names she'd promptly forgotten them. They were okay, sort of middle of the pack: not the smartest, not the dumbest. Cool. She could handle that.
"You feelin' better?" Hector asked.
"Some." She'd forgotten to keep coughing, but her voice was still a little raspy. "I'm going to heat some soup for lunch. Do you want any?" She doubted it, because she could see plates and glasses on the coffee table, indicating they'd already eaten, plus Amado had his hand in a huge bag of Doritos.
"Nah, we've already had lunch. Thanks, though."
Hector had fairly good manners, for a thug.
Drea went into the kitchen and nuked a bowl of soup, ate it standing up at the counter. Her heart was kicking into high gear; she could feel the rhythm of the beats picking up in speed, feel the excitement beginning to race through her veins. She looked at the clock again: two p.m.
Showtime.
Chapter Seven
AFTER LOCKING HER BEDROOM DOOR, DREA GOT HER LAPTOP and logged on. She had carefully researched this, not because she'd been planning all along to wipe out Rafael's bank account and go into hiding, but sort of as a "just in case" type of thing.
If Rafael had played straight with her, she'd have been content to rock along at the status quo for as long as he wanted her, then she'd take her jewelry and leave. That was what she'd expected to happen, and she'd played her part to convince him that she was completely harmless, so he wouldn't worry about something she might have seen or overheard.
Besides all that, what if Rafael had been killed? Things like that happened to people like him. She hadn't seen any point in letting all that money sit in the bank, his accounts frozen, until the feds stepped in and took it all.
So she'd planned for the future-her future.
She truly had no idea where or how Rafael kept his other set of books, for the big money that hadn't been laundered. She hadn't tried to find out, judging that effort way out of her league in terms of the risks she was willing to take. But the bank account that Rafael used for his personal needs, and the one from which he made transfers to the account he'd set up for her, well, that was different.
The penthouse had a hard-wired router for their computer use; Orlando had told Rafael to go that route instead of wireless, as a wireless router made it easier for someone else to capture his information. Drea's laptop's IP number was different from that of Rafael's laptop, but from the router outward only one IP number showed up at the other end, meaning that, if she accessed Rafael's bank account, as far as the bank was concerned, the access came from the correct IP number.
Getting Rafael's password had taken months of watching, catching glimpses whenever she could, watching his hands and working out what keystrokes he was using. If he'd changed his password regularly, she'd never have been able to figure it out, but like most people he didn't bother. Nor was his password particularly imaginative: he used his cell phone number. He had two cells, an encrypted one Orlando had gotten for him, and another one that he used for ordinary stuff. Drea didn't know the number for the encrypted phone, but she'd often called his regular cell. After she'd figured out three of his keystrokes, she'd known what the password was.
She went to the bank's website, then logged on as Rafael, holding her breath until the account information actually flashed onto the screen. First she went into his account preferences and changed the e-mail address so that any notifications would be sent to her e-mail address instead of his. From the research she'd done, she knew that a bank would send an e-mail when any unusually large transfers were made, and she didn't want Rafael getting that e-mail today.
How long it would be before he-or rather, Orlando -thought to check her e-mail account was anyone's guess. At first, when Rafael realized she had disappeared, he'd check her room. He'd never expect her to leave all her clothes behind, so he'd be concerned something had happened to her, and he'd have his men searching for her. Unfortunately, that meant she also had to leave the laptop behind, because he'd notice immediately if it were gone. She didn't care; there were no files she needed to keep, no photos saved on it.
Besides, she wanted Rafael to know what she'd done-after she'd had plenty of time to get away, of course. She wanted him to know that she'd made him pay. He might not find out about his empty bank account until he bounced a check, which could be days. That was the best-case scenario, but sometimes the ball bounced her way. She wasn't counting on it, though; she intended to run far and run fast. She'd have to change her name, spend some money to get a new ID that would hold up under at least a first round of scrutiny, but she knew all about reinventing herself and the prospect didn't bother her.