Ana and Gates had holed up in the small hotel at the game reserve where they'd secured space. Here in the offseason, the rates were ridiculously low and the proprietors were thrilled to have the team take more than half the available rooms. They were going to fan out from here, having come to the hotel straight from the hangar. Holden and Callahan would process everything, see if they could get a further direction from this point.
“What if we really have an inside breach?” Ana asked her pacing husband. “What do we do?”
“It would explain some things.”
“Things?” she said. “What things?”
“Little things that went wrong last year, things that could have been chance and could have been interference, but I couldn't ever pinpoint the source and I knew they hadn't come from outside or from our known enemies.”
He looked grim and Ana didn't blame him. When and if they could catch their mole, she decided she would leave discipline to Gates. It wouldn't be pretty, and she'd bet there would be both personal retribution as well as lawyers involved in a great deal of it.
That brought her back to thinking about Dav. “It's been nearly five days, Gates. What are the chances?”
“The ransom note was delivered three days in,” he said, instead of answering. “We can't judge by timing on this one.”
“Gates.” All the compassion she had for him and her own fear made the one word come out like a combination plea and question.
“I know, I know,” he said, raking a hand through his dark hair in frustration. His thick hair was darkened to nearly black with perspiration and his fingers left grooves in the heavy layers. The rooms were stuffy and closed in, and yet it wasn't warm enough to want the air-conditioning on. “There are so many factors here. We have kidnappers who are well organized, well supplied and funded. We have the death at Carrie's gallery, which is connected. Presumably the girl thereâ”
“Inez.” Ana supplied the girl's name. “Art student, parttime employee for events, moves up to full-time when Cal leaves.”
“Yes, Inez,” he continued. “Presumably she was their connection to be sure that the date between Carrie and Dav went off as scheduled. She was probably instructed to let someone know when they left, keep the timetable right up to par. She probably wasn't aware that she was doing it, Baxter says she had a new man in her life, according to her friends. One about whom she was secretive. Obviously, it's not good to keep those kind of secrets,” he added grimly. “That said, she wasn't
our
inside leak; she wasn't even there last year.”
“And yet she died because she knew someone's face. Did Bax get anything off the security tapes?”
“Man, wearing a hoodie, enters and sweeps the girl off her feet. This is, we presume, the new mystery boyfriend. They suck face on the way to Carrie's office, making it obvious he knew her and had a relationship with her, probably for some time, since she let him in without hesitation. For five minutes, the camera shows an empty hallway, then goes off.”
“No camera in Carrie's office?”
“No. Then again, I don't want one in mine either,” Gates acknowledged. “Next thing the camera shows is the wall of the corridor, so the guy went and moved the camera so it wouldn't show him leaving. It wasn't off long enough to trigger the backup alarms. He knew what he was doing.”
“No doubt.” She said nothing else, knowing that he had to walk through the crime scene in his mind, feel the pattern if there was one. They hadn't had the luxury of walking through it in person. Now they had to think it through in order to find a next step.
“So,” Gates continued, oblivious to her thoughts. “Then, as the whole restaurant deal goes down, with this guy at the gallery doing the deed with the giâInez.” Gates caught himself and used her name. “Is he a dupe, a cog? Or is he a major player? I have no idea. The restaurant op went essentially without a hitch on their part. Sure,” he said, waving a hand to indicate their opponent's negligent attitude toward life, “they would probably have preferred not to kill anyone, but hey, collateral damage, right?” He ran his hands into his hair again. “So they're not amateur operators. We know that.”
“Professionals all the way. They were in and out of that restaurant with Dav, with decoys flying in all directions, within four minutes. Police response couldn't get past the camera barriers and they were slow anyway because there were legitimate permits for filming and mock gunfire. Cops thought the calls were just neighbors who hadn't known they were filming there. The security guards were real hires as well. They slowed everything down because they thought they were protecting the set.”
“Mass confusion,” Gates snapped, but Ana heard the renewed admiration in his voice. “Brilliant, really. And in the middle of the chaos, our real snatch-and-grab vehicle, full of our real friends, gets away clean. I'd bet they made a transfer within blocks to a van or another SUV that had nothing to do with the set.”
“Another lead for Bax to tug.” Ana made a note to e-mail him that potential directive. Who knew if it was the way it had gone down, but if Gates thought it a reasonable scenario, you could bet it was a good thing to check.
“Exactly. But not anything that helps us now,” Gates growled in frustration.
“Keep playing it out,” she encouraged. “Anything we can figure about the scenario may help. Laying it out this way may give us more keys.”
He nodded, paced some more. “Okay, so we've got a nondescript vehicle heading to general aviation at the airport, maybe even to one of the smaller outlying airports for smaller planes, maybe to a private strip.”
“Plenty of those around San Fran and Oakland, in the outlying areas. Wouldn't have to drive far. Palo Alto, San Jose, San Martin, any of those would do it.”
“Right. No matter what, though, you get them on a plane and head them south. We have the planes here, so we know they left the States pretty soon after they nabbed Dav and Carrie.”
“That evening at the latest,” she added, thinking of the time line he was presenting.
“Which leads me to believe they cut Dav's and Carrie's hair here, in Belize, for proof of life, rather than in the States. The FedEx box came from a drop box in Texas, but according to the lab, the box had traces of an adhesive only used on the boxes in the Central American countries.”
“That would explain some of the time lag,” Ana mused, counting the hours. “And can I say that it's a strange day when adhesives take us in the right direction.”
“Tell me about it.”
She managed a grin at his appreciative tone. Criminalistics rocked. “So, we're postulating that either someone brought it back to the States to send it to us, or they sent it from here, but through an American account so there was no question that the return addy and account number was San Fran.”
“Exactly. And the sender's address has no connection to anything or anyone in Texas, Central America, South America or the like. They make custom doll clothes. I'm sure it was sent back to the States before it was shipped to us,” Gates said with conviction. “No question that FedEx gave us real tracking numbers and listings from their origin point in Texas. That means we can be ninety percent sure it was shipped from where the label indicated it shipped from.”
“And we won't discuss or mention the hacking you did to confirm that,” Ana said without a blink. “Okay, so they get them here to Belize, tag 'em for the hair and the ring. Do they then kill them?” She hated to ask it, hated to think it, hated to think that this was a wild-goose chase or a fruitless search to recover only bodies.
“No, not yet. If they only wanted Dav dead, they could have killed him at that restaurant. He wasn't under cover, didn't have on a vest, and his detail wasn't close enough to stop a bullet. If they knew that, they knew they could take him out right then.”
Ana frowned, thinking it through. Her heart clenched. “He wanted private time with Carrie,” she said, knowing that had to be why the normally cautious Dav had ditched his detail, kept them contained inside while he and Carrie went outside.
“Yeah,” Gates agreed. “He was nervous about the date. He wanted to really talk to her, get to know her on more than a social level.”
“He's in love with her, isn't he?” Ana asked, and her husband looked surprised.
“In love? Dav?” He looked shocked, as if that hadn't ever occurred to him.
“Duh, of course,” Ana said, rolling her eyes. Men just didn't get that sort of thing the way women did. For the first time in days both she and Gates laughed. “Why else would he want to have lunch out? Why else was he so nervous? Why else would he ditch his detail and walk to the restaurant, make them stay inside? It's not Dav's usual style. You taught him to be übercautious, and last year only reinforced the lesson.”
She added up the pieces in her head and came out with a new theory. “That's got to be it. She's the bait because someone saw that it was more than just interest. Someone who knows him really well saw something between them that Dav hasn't admitted to himself, or to you or anyone. All they had to do was wait for him to make his move, let himself be vulnerable to her.”
Now it was her turn to pace, to think it out. “He's always with women. He's dated beautiful women, smart women, businesswomen. He works with women. Hell,” she exclaimed, “half his business divisions are run by women. Who would have seen that Carrie was different? Who on our team knows him that well?”
“I would have said me,” Gates admitted ruefully, “and I knew he was interested in her, but I didn't catch on that it was love.”
“Maybe Dav didn't either.” Ana narrowed her eyes, thinking hard. “Another woman might recognize it, or a family member.”
“It isn't Sophia, or the other side of the family either, the ones with the artist son. They're not sly enough, connected enough.”
“I wasn't thinking about them,” Ana said. “I'm thinking about the dead brother. You said we couldn't be sure he was dead, right?”
“We're as sure as we can be,” Gates said, looking frustrated again. “Without seeing his body.”
Ana shook her head. “I'm thinking we need to go in that direction. Let's get the Agency to find out what the scuttlebutt is here in Belize about Niko. And in Somalia for that matter.”
Ana began making notes from Gates's comments about Niko's death and their investigation into it. If Niko was alive, who better to be working this deal?
She had a gut sense that she was on the right track. This smacked of something personal, really, really personal. Family-hate personal. There wasn't anyone other than Niko, that they knew of, who would have such a deep and ugly grudge against Dav.
Scribbling notes, she added scorned lovers from youth and his mother's people to the list. She was about to go back a generation and ask Gates about Dav's unlamented father, uncles, and so on, when there was a knock on the door. Hand on his weapon, Gates stepped to the side of the door.
“Gates? It's Franklin.”
Ana nodded, recognizing the voice. Gates opened the door. Franklin stood there with one of his dogs on a lead.
“Yeah?”
“Manager asked me to tell you there's a fax for you at the desk. The new guy, Geddey, also called Callahan, looking for you. Wants you to call in.”
“Thanks,” Gates said, then motioned Ana ahead of him as they left together to get the fax.
Franklin walked around the compound with another of the dogs heeling off-lead as he kept the younger one on the lead. He watched them as they went into the office and Ana wondered if he was their leak.
She wondered if the mole was with them. Who could it be?
The fax was simple. It was a number. The only other information on the sheet was one word, and a time:
Info. 10:00 am EST.
They got back to the room and Gates fired up his computer to run the number, to reverse-directory list it and check it with the phone company. Meanwhile, Ana called Geddey.
“Mrs. Bromley,” Geddey answered on the first ring. “Glad you got the message.”
“You didn't call direct,” she stated. “Why?”
“I wanted your team to know you needed to call me. You said there was a mole, and I thought it might help us flush him or her out if I was known to be calling you. I have some new info on the extra prints.”
Ana's pen was poised to take the information down when Gates grunted a curse.
“Hang on, Geddey.” She turned to Gates. “What?”
“Number's a cell. A throwaway,” he growled, tension radiating from every muscle. “It's on, but it's bouncing even as I tune into it. San Fran. Oakland. LA. Seattle. All West Coast, but bouncing like a rubber ball.”
“Watcha got?” Geddey demanded in her ear.