Gwen knocked on the door and stared at the bold printed letters of the name Thomas Goens printed there.

“You can just go in Ms. Pierce, he's expecting you.” The all too young and blond secretary said.

“I know," Gwen said without moving. After a minute she knocked again, louder this time. She continued to wait and the glass darkened as a figure approached and then opened the door. Gwen took a step into the room and looked the man square in the eyes. She’d worn her heels specifically for this meeting. With them on she was the same height as Goens.

“Have a seat Gwen" He said motioning to a chair before closing the door and taking his place behind the desk. “You know why I asked to speak to you?”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“Then we'll get right into it.” He gestured to a stack of folders on his desk. “Twenty Seven cases in the last thirteen months. You've had twenty seven of them. How many arrests?”

Gwen held his gaze but didn't speak.

“Sixteen, how many of these cases have you closed? Four. Four out of twenty seven.”

Gwen exploded. “You know damn well I've been overloaded. That's a huge case volume. I've practically begged you for more manpower and resources.”

“I don't care why. I only brought you on board because I was instructed to by my superiors last year. They, like everyone else, thought you were the best. I knew otherwise. I figured I'd give you enough rope to hang yourself and that's exactly what you did.” he stood and leaned forward with his knuckles on the desk. “Accept that it wasn't only yourself you took down, but one of your agents too. Do you even consider the lives of your agents or their families before running off half cocked?

As much as she despised Goens, his words stunned her.

“And what do I tell Roter’s pregnant widowed wife? We don't have a trial pending, we don't have a suspect in custody for the murder of her husband or the case he died investigating. Damn it Gwen, we don't even have his body. It's been over three months, have you discovered anything more about his disappearance?”

Gwen opened her mouth and was about to respond when Goens continued.

“No. And furthermore, his wife has called this office begging for answers several times a week for over a month so I know you haven’t contacted her with any update.”

Gwen stayed silent

“You, are reckless. You're impulsive and you’re irresponsible. You're the most arrogant woman I've ever seen. You don't respect the chain of command. You don't respect the principles this office was built upon and you don't respect your superiors. And now they've turned their backs on you. You're done. As of the end of the day, you're on administrative leave pending a formal investigation. You're dismissed.” Gwen launched herself to her feet. “YOU'RE DISMISSED.” He said again louder to drown out her objection. “And Gwen, make sure Bobby is aware of everything, he’s going to be taking over until we can get a replacement for you.”

Gwen gave him one last fiery eyed stare before turning and storming out. She blew past the secretary and down the hall. The dark look on her face turning aside anyone she encountered. She entered the women's restroom and bent down to look under the stalls. Seeing no sign she shared the room with anyone else she turned and placed one hand on either side of the nearest sink.

Head bowed, a sob escaped her. All at once the pain and frustration overcame her resolve and she began to cry. She looked up at herself in the mirror and what she saw sparked a fury inside her so ferocious, the heat immediately dried her tears. “No. I will not let him do this.” she said to herself and took a deep breath before letting it out. Gwen turned and pulled her phone out. She leaned against the sink and called Bobby.

“Hey Boss, what's up?”

“Bobby, are you having any luck at all?”

“Actually, yes” he said sounding surprised himself

“Alright, get out of there and meet me on the roof.” Gwen said thoughtfully

“Oh-kay” he said, separating the syllables confusedly.

Gwen hung up the phone and turned back to the mirror where she straightened herself up before leaving the bathroom. A few moments later she was stepping out onto the roof where Bobby waited, a lit cigarette between the fingers of one hand. “So what’d you find?”

“Well, not a lot of hard evidence, but a ton of tiny bits. You were right about the employment record. Every single case we’ve had since I joined your team that we haven’t solved; has James Malaki listed as an employee. In fact, The records go back another two years, but he wasn’t very active until last year. He only hit a total of seven places in the first two years.”

“That was a lot of information to go through; did you guys get through it all already?” Gwen asked

“No, not all of it; but a lot of it. Man, Ronald can read really freakin fast.” Bobby said, sounding impressed.

“Is that all you’ve been able to determine so far then?”

“There are a few more minor things. Every site he hit; number one, was hit under the utmost stealth, most of those sites can’t even place a time for when the equipment went missing. Nothing caught on camera, no witnesses and no fingerprints left behind or other identifiers. Number two, there were no major injuries from any of his thefts. Guards and potential witnesses were all tranquilized or locked in their offices and such without catching sight or hearing anything out of the ordinary. And, number three, what he stole from all these sites is forming a pattern.”

“A pattern, really?” Gwen said expectantly

“Well, kind of. What he stole tells us more about what he’s not doing rather than what he is doing. He’s definitely trying to do something with all the tech, and he’s definitely not trying to sell it.” Bobby finished before fishing a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and handing it to her.

Taking it, Gwen opened the paper and began to read the list on the page. Matter/anti-matter experimental tech, gene splicing research, nano-machine research, aerospace atmospheric entry research, the list went on with about forty more items and Gwen began to see what Bobby had meant. Few, if any, of the item’s could be directly associated with any other; but the vein of dealing with the very small and the very advanced were strikingly common. Additionally, only a few of the items on the list would have been profitable to sell on the black market or even to a competing company. “There is definitely a pattern here. You guys did good.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“One more thing. After seeing his name as a common thread, Pops did a search. You're not going to believe this. He is listed as a base level employee at three hundred and twenty four companies.” Bobby smiled when her eyes grew wide. “Pete pulled him up on the system and immediately said it was fake.”

“It's a fake name?”

“Not the name, the profile in the system. He says it's too perfect and nobody is that clean. You'll have to talk to him about it, I don't remember the details.”

“This is exactly what I needed.” she said, holding up the piece of paper. “Now I need you to pack up the shop. We’re going to be relocating to DC.”

“Relocating?”

“Goens is trying to fire me and I’ll be damned if I'm going to just sit around and let him. I’m taking this to Doug Carter.”

Bobby nodded thoughtfully and opened his mouth to ask a question when a bright flash off to the side caused both to turn.

*********

Six blocks away Detective Tyrell Williams sipped at a slushy while sitting at a stop light, waiting for it to change. It was a pretty busy intersection and there was a lot of traffic. As he looked around bored, a bright flash caught his eye. As he turned his head to find the source he felt a rumble that shook the car. Car alarms in several nearby parked cars started going off. To his left, about two blocks away there was a building with thick dark clouds of smoke streaming through a hole in the side of the building twenty or so stories up. Looking up at the stop light he noticed it was out. Craning his head he could see that up and down the street in both directions that the power was out to most of the buildings. Turning on his police lights and siren he made his way through the now dead light and toward where the blast had come from. Pulling over to the side less than a block away, he parked so his car was diverting traffic down another street and keeping it from moving in front of the building before he turned off his siren and reached for his radio.

“Dispatch this is 1220. There has been some type of explosion in the Queens City Tower Center.”

“1220 this is dispatch. Be advised fire and rescue are already on their way, no officers are on the scene yet. Please advise if you feel the bomb squad will be needed.”

“I hear ya, I’m going to go check it out. Also it seems power is down between 12th and 36th street, it could be a larger area though, I’d recommend getting some uniforms out here to direct traffic.”

“Ten-four"

The detective made his way cautiously to the front door. The door was locked but the window on it had blown outwards and he squeezed his slender form through it. Once inside the building the security immediately tried to stop him holding weapons on him and telling him to freeze. After showing them his badge he demanded to know what was going on.

“We're not quite sure what’s going on sir. There was an explosion from upstairs and power is down, radios are out too. The building should be mostly empty today but nobody has come down the stairs yet.” A security guard told him.

“Funny, you‘d think with that kind of boom the sprinklers would be going off. I wanna get up stairs and see how bad it is, there might be people hurt.” He followed the latino security guard named Antonio up stairs lit by emergency lighting. Upon reaching the nineteenth floor they found the door had been blown into the stairwell and thick dark smoke was pouring out of the hallway. He was winded after climbing all that way up and stopped to take what he saw. A deep scorch darkened the door frame that was no longer occupied. Beside the stairwell was a pair of elevators, and on the floor next to them were two unconscious security guards. Checking the bodies Williams found a pulse and sent Antonio down to get others to help. Proceeding down the hallway alone Williams came to a door that had also seemed to have been blasted outwards off its hinges, except it was nearly three times thicker.

He stepped over the door as he approached the room. The smoke was thick and made the room dark but he could make out the form of a person trying to drag something heavy across the ground towards him. The figure hadn’t seemed to notice him so he watched a little longer. As he looked on, he could make out that it was another person the man was dragging.

Pulling his gun the detective made himself known, “hold it right there.” The figure, startled, let slip his hold on the hand he was dragging and fell over backwards. He looked at Williams wildly, still clutching a piece of cloth to his nose and mouth. “Do you work here?”

The figure nodded. “There is another one back in there.” the man said pointing into the smoke filled interior of the room, his voice muffled by the cloth.

Sensing the man's urgency Williams put the gun away and helped drag the man’s burden into the hallway next to the elevators with the two unconscious security guards. The man collapsed on the floor and was coughing into the cloth and looked exhausted so Williams told him to wait by the elevators and that he’d run in and grab the last man. “It’s toxic, use a cloth of some type and be fast or it’ll burn your lungs and eyes.” The man muffled into the cloth between wracking coughs. Williams could see several blood spots on the cloth.

Holding the collar of his blazer across his nose Williams ran in. Crouching low and keeping his eyes squinted he looked around the room a few moments before finding the last man. As he reached for the technician in a long white lab coat he heard Antonio’s voice from the door.

“Detective, are you in here?”

It didn’t take long for Williams to reach the door and Antonio helped him pull the body to the others. His mind was wondering where the man with the cloth over his mouth was when he saw that the elevator doors were now sitting open about three feet exposing the dark shaft within.

Two hours later Detective Williams was sitting on a bench in the lobby trying to figure everything out. The medics finally finished poking and prodding him, and he now had to wait. Supposedly there was some FBI hotshot that had to debrief him. Who was the guy, a thief? He knew the smoke was toxic but risked not only imprisonment but his own health and life to pull those security guards out of there. Why didn’t he just run and leave them? A thief who was also a humanist? He chuckled to himself at the dichotomy. Antonio didn’t even know what they did on that floor.

“Detective Williams?” Looking up he saw a tall woman with short wavy blond hair and dressed in a business skirt, blouse and jacket standing in front of him. “Special agent Gwen Pierce, FBI.”

“So you’re the one I’ve been waiting for.” he said as he stood to shake her hand.

“Yes I made a request to your captain to have you stay here so I could speak with you myself. Now that I’m here I find myself a bit hungry, there is a diner a couple blocks over would you rather talk there?” She said looking out the front window.

“As good a place as any I suppose, I’m hungry too.” Together they made their way to the diner. It was a quiet walk and he found that though this was a friendly way to question him, she was all business. After ordering drinks and food she started right in on him.

“I’ve already heard your report, your captain gave it to me.” She pulled a photo out of her bag, and passed it to him. “Is this the man you saw?”

The man in the photo was white, in his mid to late twenties with styled hair. He looked familiar but he couldn’t compare his memory of the man to the picture. “I’m not sure, he had a cloth covering most of his face the whole time, the eyes look the same color though.

“The man in that picture there, his name is James Malaki. We think he is a multibillionaire industrialist.” She said, her eyes fixated on his.

“I’ve never heard of him” Williams said

“I’d have been surprised if you had. On paper he inherited all his money, but he is listed as an employee at nearly four hundred major corporations and businesses just like the one we just left. I believe he secretly owns them all through layers of parent companies and aliases. Over the past few years there have been thefts like the one today, all on companies he owns, and on every one of them he went out of his way to make sure nobody was seriously hurt.”

“And you think he is behind them all?” he asked, sipping at a cup of hot coffee.

“In a word, yes. His name is the only thing we have that links him to everything. And that is nowhere near substantial enough. You’re the first one to lay eyes on him in the act and you can’t be sure of what you saw, his involvement with the situation or if it was even really him. You looked into his eyes though, if you could again, do you think you could be sure if it was him?” She asked before scooping part of her salad into her mouth.

“I think I could if I got close to him. Why, you’re not planning to bring me in on this are you?”

“Exactly. Since you’ve managed to get a look at his face, I need you to confirm its him.”

“Listen, I don’t want to seem rude, but my wife and I just had our first baby boy last week, I can’t leave my son and go hunting for some thief who only steals from himself.”

“I’m sorry detective, you don’t have a choice in the matter. Help us place him and you're out, I‘ll promise you that. You've got some time before we'll need you though, just be ready when we call.”