Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

out of the bank. She turned and walked down the same side street Jeff had. Rukshana shook her head and whispered, “Bastards.” Then she stood up, adjusted her hair again, and walked across the road. There were hundreds and hundreds of employees in this building, so she was sure she would get away with it. On the steps of the bank, she took a deep breath and said to herself, “This is it,” before walking into the lobby.
    In front of her was a security gate that you needed a swipe card to pass through. To the left of it sat Mark, a security guard, a big barrel of a man in a peaked cap. She fished around in her shoulder bag and took out her now-invalidated employee swipe card along with another one that she used for her local library. She wriggled her shoulders like her sister and giggled at Mark; he smiled back. When she got to the gate, she used her library card to try to get through. A red light flashed and the machine honked at her. She tried again. Another red light and another honk. She looked at Mark helplessly and waved her swipe card at him. Like a middle-aged knight, he got out of his chair and came over to help.
    The bank had strict procedures about access. Mark’s role was to examine her card and see whether there was a problem and, if necessary, refer her to the security office. But Rukshana knew Mark well. His view was that strict procedures didn’t apply to ditzy, sexy women with long legs. And today, Rukshana was a very ditzy, very sexy woman with very long legs. Mark towered over her.
    “Is there a problem, miss?”
    “Oh, yes, Mark,” she breathed. “My card is always letting me down.”
    Mark slipped his own security card into the machine, and there was a green light, a ping, and the gate swung open. She squeezed his arm.
    “Oh, Mark, you’re such a sweetie . . .”
    Mark saluted and Rukshana walked through with the almost physical sensation of his eyes drilling into her backside. She walked to the elevator and went up to the fifth floor, taking out her sister’s blue leather gloves and putting them on. When the doors slid open, she was face-to-face with Renata, a colleague who knew Rukshana as well as Rukshana knew her. Rukshana stiffened; everyone who might have recognized her, with or without her headscarf, should have been out at lunch. Renata smiled at her.
    “Do you really need those sunglasses in here, dear?” For a few seconds Rukshana thought it was all over. Renata held the elevator door open for her and said, “If you don’t get out, you’re going back down.” Rukshana got out, fingered the sunglasses, and stammered, “G-got to look cool . . .”
    Renata got in the elevator, smiled, and said, “You look very cool, darling. You’d better watch out or you’ll have that sleazy lecher Jeff after you.”
    The elevator doors closed. Rukshana hurried down the corridor to Jeff’s office and peered in the window. It was empty. With her gloved hands she pulled the handle and went inside. She sat at his computer. On the screen was a website featuring romantic breaks for two in Paris:
The city of love . . . a weekend of amour . . . for that special person in your life . . .
    Rukshana had the feeling it wasn’t Jeff’s wife who would be going. She took a list out of her handbag and began typing in the web addresses of radical Islamic websites, one after another, so that a casual observer of Jeff’s computer history might think Jeff spent all his time looking up death-to-the-infidel!, death-to-the-great-Satan!, death-to — well, death-to-pretty-much-everyone-really! websites. Then she changed his screen saver from a sugary snapshot of Jeff’s wife and kids to a photo of a radical Islamic cleric.
    She decided to skip the elevator and took the stairs down to the lobby. Mark didn’t wait for her to try her card this time; he jumped up smartly and opened the gate for her, assuming her card still wasn’t working. She gave him a long, sultry look with the promise of the East in it — a look her sister had perfected — and with that she was back out on the street.
    She walked the two blocks to her bike and changed into her burka and ballet shoes. She checked her watch. It was 12:40 p.m. She had to move. She pedaled furiously away from the glass and glitz of London’s financial district to a poorer quarter of town and parked her bike in the yard of a disused workshop. Over her loomed a minaret. She walked a couple of streets until she was standing in the shadow of the