Before Nate could even answer, he heard one of the hallway doors behind him open, and the sound of someone moving into a position that cut off any potential retreat.
Without moving his lips, he said as quietly as he could, “Set.” Then he raised his voice. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
Giacona shrugged. “Of course. I’m always happy to answer questions from good customers, but maybe you can come back when it’s a little more convenient.”
“It needs to be now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Giacona said, his smile unwavering, “but now is not good for me. I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“Let me make sure I’m clear. You’re saying you don’t want to help me?”
“When did I say that? I’m saying I cannot help you at this time. Perhaps you can come back in the morning? Say, nine thirty?”
“
Now
would be better.”
At the street end of the hall, the door flew open. Unable to help themselves, both Giacona and the man with him looked past Nate to see who had come through their supposedly locked door. That was all Nate needed. He pulled out his gun and took two steps forward before they refocused on him.
The large man started to raise his pistol, so Nate shot him in the wrist. The Smith & Wesson clattered to the ground. The guy tried to pick it up with his uninjured hand, so Nate sent a second bullet into his foot. The man yelled and staggered back against the wall.
“Daeng?” he called without taking his eyes off Giacona.
“All good here.”
While there had been no shots in the front end of the hallway, there had been plenty of grunts and groans and the sound of flesh hitting flesh.
Giacona stared at Nate for a moment, then took a quick look at the gun on the floor.
“You really going to try for that?” Nate asked. “I
am
pointing my gun right at you. But if you want to give it a go, be my guest.”
Giacona licked his lips as if his whole mouth had suddenly gone dry. “I…I don’t want.” To emphasize the point, he kicked the gun across the floor toward Nate.
“Good.” Nate smiled. “Now why don’t you wrap up your friend’s wounds, then we’ll have our little talk.”
__________
T
HEY ADJOURNED TO
the workshop, Giacona helping his injured bodyguard in, while Daeng encouraged the other one along with his SIG.
“
Dottore
,” the one who’d been shot pleaded as Nate motioned for him to sit against the wall.
“That depends on how helpful your friend is,” Nate said in English. “Now sit.”
The large man seemed to understand that much, and did as he was told.
Nate turned his attention to Giacona. “You got any coffee? Maybe some tea? Anything like that?”
Giacona looked truly scared. He opened his mouth but all that came out were a few stuttering syllables.
“Never mind,” Nate said. “We can make this quick.” He moved to within just a few feet of the small-time arms dealer. “True or false: You talked to someone after my other friend and I were here.”
Giacona shook his head. “I…I…talk to no one.”
“You want to think about that answer? Because I find it hard to believe.”
“Well, no one about you. Understand? Is this not what you mean?”
“It’s exactly what I mean, and thanks for getting straight to the point.” Nate reached out and patted the side of Giacona’s face. “See, that makes things easier, and that’s something I appreciate.”
“Yeah, but then there’s the lying,” Daeng said from where he stood guard over the other two.
Nate nodded. “Very true.” He tried to lock eyes with Giacona, but the man kept looking away. “Who did you talk to about us?”
“I told you,” Giacona whispered.
“You lied.”
“I…I can’t.”
Nate leaned back. “Good. We’re getting somewhere. At least now you admit to talking to someone.”
“But I didn’t ad—” Giacona stopped himself, no doubt realizing he’d gone too far.
Nate let him stew for a moment, then put a hand under Giacona’s chin and lifted his face a couple inches. “Tell me who they were.”
An internal struggle played out on the man’s face. Finally, he said, “Americans.”
“You’re going to have to narrow that down a little bit.”
“Government.”
Nate frowned. “Government? The
US
government?”
Giacona nodded. “The request for the meeting came through a channel they have used in the past.”
“Who did the request come from?”
“I only know a code name.”
Nate remained silent, waiting.
“Clear Fox.”
Clear Fox
. Nate played the name through his memory, but it didn’t match up to anything.
“What about the people you met. Who were they?”
“Four men came, but only one talked. He…he asked if I deal with anyone in the last few days. He was specifically looking for a woman, I think.”
“But you told them about us.”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly, then in a rush, “but I had to tell them about everyone I’d worked with recently. And…and I didn’t tell them your name. I didn’t. I don’t do that.”
“You’re going to tell me theirs, so you could be lying.”
“They didn’t put a gun to my head.”
“Fair point,” Nate said. “So why did you even tell them about us?”
“They are with the US. I have to answer. Maybe no gun to my head, but I didn’t want to wake up the next day in prison in Cuba.”
“What did you tell them about us?”
While Giacona was describing
why
he talked, some of his confidence had come back, but as soon as Nate asked for details on
what
, his nervousness returned in force. “I had to tell, understand?”
“Yeah, we’ve gone over that. I want to know
what
.”
“I tell them…I tell them what you buy from me. I tell them about…about…”
“About what?”
Again, Giacona’s tongue moved across his lips. “The tracking chip.”
“The tracking chips we bought?”
Giacona looked at the ground and shook his head.
Nate froze, staring at the Italian. “What tracking chip, then?”
“I, um, put them in the equipment bags. Small, hidden in the lining. Sometimes if I hear a job has gone bad, I can have someone collect the bag before the police can find it.” Looking almost guilty, he added, “No sense letting good hardware go to waste.”
“So you could
track
us the entire time.”
“I could, but I don’t. Why would I? I don’t need to.”
Nate didn’t believe a word of it, but that wasn’t the important thing at the moment. “You gave them the frequency.”
Giacona answered by saying nothing.
For a panicked moment, Nate wondered where the bag was now. Had they left it in the car? At the
hospital
? Then he remembered. In Julien’s apartment.
They had led the men right to Julien’s place, and then when they saw Mila arrive?
Bam
.
Instead of saving her from whatever trouble she was in, they had brought the trouble directly to her.
Nate
had brought the trouble to her since he was the one who’d set up the meeting with Giacona.
Tracking chip in the bag?
They could have checked for that, but why would they?
Because for us,
distrust is a way of life
, Nate told himself. He’d fallen into the trap of believing in someone he’d worked with only once before. Giacona hadn’t earned that trust yet, but Nate had given it to him, and now had paid the price. It was a lesson, he knew, he should never have had to learn.
“The people you met with. I want names and I want to know how to find them.”
“I don’t know where they are,” Giacona said.
Unfortunately for him, the look in his eyes told a different story.
__________
“J
UST THE THREE
outside,” Daeng
said.
Nate’s gaze stayed on the front door of the farmhouse just down the hill from where they were hiding. “And the two we saw go in the main building makes five. At least. A place this size, I think we should assume there could be up to ten.”
Daeng nodded in agreement.
Giacona had not known exactly where the others were. What he
had
known was the name of the contact he had given the leader of the group that had shown up at Julien’s. The contact belonged to a private organization that might have been able to arrange suitable, secluded accommodations. With only minor additional prodding, the Italian had placed a call to the contact, saying he had some equipment he was supposed to deliver to the team leader, but couldn’t find the address he’d been given. Since Giacona was the one who’d put everyone in communication in the first place, the contact didn’t even bat an eye when he relayed the information.
After that, it took tremendous will on Nate’s part not to shoot the arms dealer in the back of the head. He settled for clubbing him in the temple with his gun, then tying him up and stuffing him in a closet with the other two. The one who’d been shot was no longer bleeding as much as before. Still, he was in serious need of a doctor, but that was not Nate’s concern. In his mind, Giacona and, by extension, his men had committed an unforgiveable crime. When this was all over, Nate would make sure the rest of the freelance intelligence world knew the truth about the tracking devices and the unauthorized disclosure of information to a third party. That would terminate Giacona’s career, if not his life.
The farm was south of the city, sandwiched between tree-covered hills on one side and a vineyard with row after row of maturing vines on the other. There were two buildings: a two-story, traditional-looking main house, and a taller, rectangular-shaped outbuilding that had a single door on one side, but no other visible doorways or windows.
Nate and Daeng had already done a complete circle around the property, using the vines as cover along the back, and going farther out on either side to remain unseen in the brush.
Nate nodded at the outbuilding, and said, “That’s got to be where they’re holding her.”
If Mila was in the house, the others wouldn’t have wasted manpower putting a guard near the entrance to the outbuilding. Given that a man
was
posted there, it was logical that she was inside.
“One way in, one way out,” Daeng said. “If you’re right, she’s going to be hard to get to.”
“But not impossible,” Nate said.
“No. Few things are impossible.”
Despite his earlier doubts, Nate was warming up to Daeng. In truth, his concerns had stemmed from the fact he hadn’t known the guy, and, if he was completely honest, a tinge of unexpected jealousy that Daeng had replaced him as Quinn’s go-to guy. Idiotic, he knew, but there it was. Now, that was starting to fade.
“So how do we know for sure she
is
there?” Daeng asked.
“Excellent question.” Nate scanned the grounds. “If we can get close enough, we might be able to find out.”
“If we both go, that’ll double the risk we’ll be noticed.”
“True.”
“So just one of us, then. Unless you’re not worried about that.” Daeng paused, then said, “We
could
just go in and take everyone out.”
Nate had been thinking the same thing, but knew it was not the right call. As confident as he was that these were the people who had Mila, they still couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. While Daeng had seen the faces of the men who’d gone into Julien’s building, he had yet to see any of the same ones here so far. Perhaps Giacona and his contact had given Nate a false lead, in which case Mila wouldn’t be here at all. They had to be sure before they tried anything aggressive.
“We’ll save that option for later,” Nate said. “For now, I’ll go.”
“I can do it.”
“I’m sure you can, but I need to do this.”
Daeng dipped his head in acceptance.
“Comm gear,” Nate said, reaching into his pocket.
As he pulled out his mic and earpiece, he felt something crinkle in the inside pocket of his jacket. He reached in and pulled out Mila’s envelope. In the rush to get Quinn medical attention, then to find Mila before it was too late, he’d forgotten all about it.
Whatever it contained had been important to Mila. He patted the outside of the envelope. Bunched together at the bottom were two square shapes, each a little less than half the size of a credit card. The flap was taped in place, not sealed, so he undid the top corner and peeked inside. The squares were flash drives, the bigger kind some cameras used a few years earlier. It was too dark to see how much data they held, but based on their apparent age, he doubted either was larger than a few hundred megabytes. They could have held almost anything, but ultimately it wasn’t his business.
He folded the envelope and handed it to Daeng. “Hold on to this. I think it might be what Mila took from Julien’s place. She’ll want it back.”
Daeng put it in his pocket.
“I’ll check the house first. Come at it from the rear,” Nate said. “You be my eyes and ears, so try not to get me killed.”
The corner of Daeng’s mouth rose. “No promises.”
__________
F
ROM HIS HIDDEN
position on the hill, Daeng was able to steer Nate clear of the guards, and get him to the farmhouse. From that point it was up to Nate. All Daeng could do was watch his back.
The house was well built—perhaps
too
well. Not just any old farmhouse, Nate decided. He was sure it had been built specifically for one purpose—to be used as a safe house.
There were windows along the back, but no doors, so no easy way in. He peeked around the side, hoping for something a bit more helpful. But it was just as devoid of potential access points as the back.
“Down, down, down!” Daeng said in his ear.
Nate dropped to the ground.
“Guard coming around, walking close to the building.”
Nate hugged the dirt.
A moment later, he could hear the crunch of footsteps. As the man neared the corner Nate had just peeked around, he paused.
Without moving a muscle, Nate mentally worked out the most efficient way to retrieve his gun in time to do any good.