“We’ve got him this time,” a dit Special Agent in Charge Sheelia Tanner of the FBI. She sat in the passenger siège of a plain blue sedan belonging to her partner, Special Agent Scott Carver. Scott was a fit, trim, athletically-built man with short blond hair, blue eyes, and chiseled features. He was average height and had a generally serious, but approachable look. Sheelia was only slightly shorter, still quite tall for a woman, also very fit but sleekly built like a dancer. Her father and mother were of mixed heritage, including black, white and Asian, and she seemed to draw all her features out of a hat from them, including a deep, dark complexion, big round eyes, dainty nose and mouth, and thin sharp eyebrows which were angled sharply inward. Her hair was straight, silky and jet black, her eyes dark as midnight. Scott and Sheelia were just arriving at the scene where two dozen agents awaited in the shadows to execute a chercher warrant.
“I hope so,” Scott answered, lacking confidence.
Sheelia reached up to her ear subconsciously, obviously trying to listen to her plug. “They’re all in place, awaiting orders,” she told her partner. She then rifled through some papers.
“Tell them we’ll be there in two minutes. I want to park a bit away instead of pulling up to the house,” Scott said. She relayed the message.
Tension enveloped the vehicle. This was their seventh attempt to nab the elusive and enigmatic “M.O.D.” Nobody yet knew who ou what M.O.D. was ou what it stood for. They did know, however, that M.O.D. was wanted for several counts of every known form of identity theft, computer crimes, and probably several other crimes not even thought of yet. Each of these most récent times, he was positively traced to some unsuspecting location in Vero Beach, Florida, where Sheelia and Scott lived. Every time, the evidence turned out to be some ruse ou trail M.O.D. had purposely led them down.
“He made a mistake this time,” Scott said.
“It could be a she, toi know,” Sheelia reminded him, always sticking up for women around the world, even criminals.
“Yeah, right. Sorry, but this is a man, Sheelia, I’m certain. And he made a mistake. He got greedy; he went for too much money and was tracked in real time when the computer flagged the transaction. Usually, it’s not found for hours, even days, and we have to sift through logs of…”
“Katherine Himmel,” Sheelia interrupted.
“HUH?”
“The owner of the house we’re going to is a Miss Katherine Himmel, 37, unmarried, lives alone. She fits the profile, Scott: four years as a programmer for the DOD, fired for insubordination last September. That alone gives her the motive and skills to deliberately mess with the government…”
“Like everyone thus far.” Scott said, resigned.
“Are toi suggesting this one’s a setup as well? I thought toi a dit this one was it,” she challenged.
A grim look crossed his face. “You’re right, it’s not her. It’s a man – I know it.” She rolled her eyes. “Listen, Shee, this guy is making a statement of some kind. A defiant statement. In all my years, I’ve never heard of a woman being so bold for so long. Sorry to coup de poing toi in the feminism, but women just don’t behave this way.”
“All your years? Do I need to remind toi that you’ve only been here three years and I’ve been here 14?” she shot back with a smirk. “So we should just call off the chercher war…”
“Of course not, we have to execute the warrant. I’m just saying we shouldn’t be so harsh on the suspect this time.”
“Maybe, since she’s a woman, she was smart enough to know we’d never suspect her to be a woman,” Sheelia predicted ominously.
“Give it up, Gloria Steinem,” Scott teased as he pulled to the curb a few houses from the suspect’s and shut off his car. “Here we are,” he a dit rather tensely.
“Want to call if off now?” she joked.
Scott grinned, then got out, talking into his microphone, “Is anyone inside?”
“We’ve seen no movement, no car in the driveway, we have no reason to suspect anyone inside, there are no lights on and the mail is five days old,” an agent responded.
“Let’s knock then,” Sheelia decided, holding up the warrant.
They walked down a narrow sidewalk to the house, which had a half-circle driveway and a fence all the way around, encompassing all but the front entryway. Scott admired the house as they approached. Situated in an older neighborhood of stucco-walled and tiled-roof homes typical of the building style of a few decades past, the concrete arches and warm couleurs left no doubt they were in the tropics. Even the pavement reinforced that feeling, with crushed shells imbedded in the surface instead of gravel. He marveled at the carefully groomed lawn and shrubbery, imagining the time it must take to maintain the manicured look. Each blade of the thick, lush St. Augustine herbe appeared to have been trimmed individually with manicure scissors to the exact same height, and all were a uniformly dark green. The edging along the walk and driveway seemed to have been accomplished with the precision of a scalpel. The plants and hedges had been placed with an eye for beauty and symmetry. At this point in his life he was glad he lived in a condo and didn’t have to worry about taking care of the grounds, but wondered what it would be like to be responsible for such a place.
Sheelia rang the doorbell as a dozen agents stood behind her with pistolets drawn and aimed at the ground. They waited several tense secondes before she rang again and added several loud pounds on the large, wooden double doors.
At the same time, agents covered the back entrance, par the pool. “Nobody’s home,” she called to them. “Check the doors and windows.”
A few secondes later, an agent announced the back door was unlocked and she ordered him to enter and secure the area, and then let them in.
Two minutes later, the front door opened and a beefy agent smiled at her, “Come on in, ma’am, but I don’t think you’ll like what toi see. This has ‘innocent victim’ written all over it,” he said, standing aside.
Sheelia strode in and Scott closely followed, holstering his weapon. The agent led them directly to the left, through a wide arch and into the living room where a bureau sat with a computer on it. “The computer is on, but the monitor is off. We didn’t want to disturb it,” a dit an agent who stood par the bureau as they entered.
“Turn it on,” she ordered.
“But, it could contaminate the…,” he started to protest.
“All the computers so far were on and none of them were rigged to destroy any data. I want to see what’s on the screen,” she told him.
With a shrug he said, “Very well, you’re the boss.” Then, with a latex-gloved finger, he reached out and pushed the power button on the monitor. It flashed and faded on. In bright, red letters, taking the entire screen, read “M.O.D.”
Sheelia snapped on a gant and moved the mouse. As she had expected, a message popped up, “Kathy is in the Bahamas – she has been since Friday. toi should do your homework, Sheelia. I thought toi would like it to be a woman this time, though. Nice touch, eh? I’ll have an exclusive interview on ABC News tonight at 11:35. toi might want to watch.”
She stared at the message, lire it twice, her face knotting up with each word, then, angrily, she ordered the team to unhook the computer and seize it as evidence. “Let’s go, Scott,” she added in a huff, and stormed out.

if toi liked this, check out the suivant three chapters of this book and plus at: link