As she made a conscious effort to release some of her irritation, she became aware of another sensation: one of being watched.
She swiveled around in her chair to find Gabriel Michaels looming in her doorway. As it had earlier, the sight nearly took her breath away. Beneath the disciplined exterior, there was something innately alpha male about him, something that had awoken her dormant female hormones.
“Commander! How long have you been standing there?”
“Not long. You were busy. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Please, come in.” He stepped into her office, making it suddenly seem smaller. She glanced at the time on her laptop, surprised to see that it was after six. “I didn’t realize you were still here. Did you complete your interviews?”
“Most of them. No one has any recollection of a package from Greece arriving the day of the dinner.”
“It didn’t go through Sander? That’s odd.”
“How did it get into your hands, again?”
She sat back in her chair, thinking back. “It was delivered to my office along with the rest of the morning’s mail, or at least I think it was.”
“You didn’t see who brought it to your office?”
“No. I went to the kitchen to grab some fruit and a bagel and it was here when I returned.”
“About what time was that?”
“About ten-ish, I suppose.”
“Is that a regular thing?”
“Me going to the kitchen? More or less, unless I’m in a meeting or something. As far as the mail delivery, it varies, depending on how busy people are. Mail is collected from the front gate and run through security before it’s brought into the house. After that, one of Gregory’s minions usually sorts and delivers it. It’s almost always before lunch, though.”
Gabe’s brows furrowed as he scribbled in his notebook. Virginia had the strangest desire to rub her thumb over the creases and ease some of the tension she saw there.
“Have you eaten yet, Commander?”
His eyes snapped up, a startling and intense green. Fred woofed and wagged his tail.
“I’ll take that as a no. I’m about done here for the day. Would you like to raid the kitchen with me?”
He stared at her for several long moments before he said, “Thanks, but we’ll just pick something up on the way back.”
“Of course. All right, then.”
Virginia summoned a smile, hiding her disappointment. She wasn’t sure what had come over her. It had been a spur of the moment thing, thinking that sharing a meal with him was preferable to making herself something to eat and taking it back to her room to eat alone as she did every other night.
Gabe continued to stand there, regarding her with an unreadable expression. The silence quickly degraded into awkwardness. What was he thinking? When they’d parted ways earlier, she’d felt as if they’d formed an alliance of sorts, but now that hint of friendliness was noticeably absent.
Was he back to questioning her motives? He had been talking with others all afternoon. Perhaps he’d gotten an earful of how they thought she’d been leeching off of Chris’s beneficence all these years. As tight-lipped as they were, they’d probably been only too glad to share that with him.
Virginia turned off her monitor and pressed the switch on her desk lamp. “Well, if there’s nothing else . . .”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gabriel
She tried to hide it, but he could see he’d disappointed her by refusing her dinner invitation. He was disappointed, too, but he needed to keep a clear head and a sense of objectivity. Virginia Miller was attractive and kind and seemed to be the only one who welcomed his presence, but she was also part of an ongoing investigation. Technically, she was a suspect.
Yet even as he reminded himself of that, it seemed unlikely. Did she have the means and opportunity to have played a part in her boss’s disappearance? Sure, at least as much as anyone else. She was part of Kristikos’s inner circle and had inside access.
The better question was, why would she want him to disappear? By her own account, she was extremely grateful to him and more importantly, she seemed genuinely fond of the guy and worried for him. More so than any of the others, in fact. Oh, they were worried, too, but their concerns might be centered on saving their own asses, not their boss’s.
Virginia had nothing to gain and everything to lose if they didn’t find Christos soon. Her home. Her job. The closest thing to family she had left, and the only one who seemed to actually want her around.
She moved across the space, her shoulders squared, her stride graceful, pausing only to pet Fred. Her light, delicate fragrance tickled his nose. Gabe felt a tug deep in his chest, his innate protective male instincts rising to the surface. A sudden, fierce urge to whisk her away from all this washed over him. Red warning flags went up, full-mast, in his mind.
“Good night, Fred, Commander.”
She waited expectantly at the door. Reluctantly, he turned to go. As soon as he and Fred cleared the threshold, she locked the door behind them.
As the sound of her soft footsteps faded, he considered changing his mind and following her, but decided against it. He needed to keep his distance in order to remain objective, no matter how appealing the thought of spending more time with her was.
~ * ~
Gabe scraped the remains of his frozen dinner into the bowl. Fred looked up with a mournful glare. Apparently, he didn’t find the meal any more appealing than Gabe had.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Gabe told him. The hound had been moping around since he’d refused Virginia’s invitation. “I know you like her, but priorities, Fred.”
The truth was, he’d been second-guessing himself since he’d left her office. He’d even started playing the rationalization game.
Sure, he needed to remain objective, but he could do that and enjoy her company, too, couldn’t he? So what if he’d caught himself sneaking glimpses of her as they’d searched those rooms, or had silently appreciated her soft laugh and sparkling eyes? He was a mature, disciplined man. Keeping this wholly inconvenient personal attraction out of the mix was completely doable.
And sometimes it was easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar, right? Wasn’t it smart to foster a useful alliance with someone on the inside, someone who knew the players and had been part of the Kristikos game for the last decade?
Despite their rocky beginnings, she had warmed up to him. And it was just friendly stuff, too. It wasn’t as if she’d come on to him, or had tried to pump information from him. She didn’t pander to him, either, which he liked.
And just because he found her attractive didn’t mean she returned the sentiment. Sure, it had felt like there might be some mutual attraction there, a spark of sexual chemistry, but that could just be on him. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman, and even longer since one had appealed to him on so many levels.
After all, when a man didn’t have a good ribeye for a while, it was only natural his mouth would water a little when he walked past a steakhouse, right? But that didn’t mean he should walk in and order dinner—especially not when the restaurant and everyone in it was under investigation.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He was comparing Virginia Miller to a juicy steak. His first wife, a psychologist, would have a field day with that.
Appetite aside, the bottom line was Virginia Miller had so far proven to be the most helpful to the investigation and the most receptive, and he’d be stupid not to use that to his advantage. Finding Christos and averting possible acts of terrorism on home soil was priority one. Taking Darius down was a close second.
His laptop dinged with an incoming message. He tapped the button and Pixie Livingston’s face appeared on his screen. She blinked at him, then pushed the thick black frames farther up her nose.
“Hey, boss. I did a little checking, and according to Fed-Ex, UPS, and the US Postal Service, there were no tracked packages to the Kristikos
estate that day.”
“Have you checked private carriers?”
“Of course,” she scoffed. “Nada.”
“Okay. Thanks. Anything else?”
“Yes. Those signal interceptors Dawson planted are online and working perfectly. I’m sending you a link now. Click on that and you’ll be able to access their surveillance footage twenty-four seven.”
“Excellent. What about past footage?”
“I’m still working on that. Dawson’s helping me. Their system archives stuff after forty-eight hours using some kind of weird encryption, and they’ve got more firewalls up than the Department of Defense. But no worries, it’s only a matter of time.”
“Thanks.”
Gabe disconnected the video chat link, switching over to his email to find something in his inbox from PixieChick404. His lips quirked as he clicked on the link. He tapped through the connections, scanning the live-feed images across the house and grounds. Things were relatively quiet, staff members going about their business.
What was Virginia doing now, he wondered? How did she spend her evenings? Was she the type to watch television, or did she prefer reading?
His question was answered when he spotted her in the gardens. She was walking alone, a light sweater draped over her shoulders. She paused at one of the fountains, taking a moment to dip her hand in the water before continuing on again. She looked . . . lonely.
Annoyed with himself for thinking that, Gabe was about to change the image when Virginia turned swiftly and looked over her shoulder. He followed the direction of her gaze and caught a dark shadow moving along the edge of the frame.
Shit. A bad feeling skittered through his gut.
He clicked through the surveillance cameras again, feeling a sense of relief when one captured Virginia re-entering the French doors of her office, alone and unharmed, then securing the door behind her.
Gabe kept his eyes on those doors after Virginia disappeared from view. Sure enough, within seconds, a dark shadow moved in front of the doors and paused. Gabe took the opportunity to screen-shot the image. On the live feed, the shadow lingered for a moment more, then continued on.
What the hell? Why was someone following Virginia? Was she in danger?
His mind went back to earlier, when he’d asked her if things there were really as bad as she’d made them seem and she’d answered, “No, but if we don’t find Chris soon, they could be.”
The frozen image didn’t reveal much. A dark, man-shaped blur, nothing more. Increasing the resolution didn’t help. Like Christos’s mystery guest, whoever it was knew how to stay just out of sight.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gabriel
“With the exception of the PA, everyone else on Kristikos’s personal staff has ties to Darius,” Dominguez confirmed. “Christos might be signing their checks, but they, or members of their family, have worked in the Kristikos household for years. In some cases, it spans generations. Daskalakis’s grandfather, for example, was the manager of the family’s private island estate for years when Darius’s father was still around. Then Daskalakis’s father took over when Darius took the helm.”
They sat in the secure conference room, going around the table and giving status updates. Gabe listened, hoping for something, anything, that might provide a clue, but nothing had shaken loose so far. They’d explored all the obvious avenues with no success. Their only option was to dig deeper.
After spending the last two days at the estate, Gabe opted to remain at the base and sort through everything they’d compiled so far, resulting in this little get-together with the team. It was as much of an attempt to organize his thoughts and plan the next steps as it was to prove that he could stay away, particularly from one distracting brown-eyed female who splintered his focus. That was proving to be difficult, especially after reviewing the surveillance tape several more times.
To be thorough, he’d checked other camera feeds from the same timeframe as well. They showed one of Argyros’s men performing security checks at various entry points. The dark, shadowy figure he’d seen at her door could have been nothing more than that. He’d probably only imagined that look of apprehension on Virginia’s face, too.
Of course, he’d felt compelled to call her anyway, making up some bullshit excuse about needing confirmation on one of the names on the list she’d given him. That, more than anything, convinced him he was getting too involved personally and needed to take a step back.
Besides, there was no good reason to head out that way, not until he had a better idea of what he was looking for. He’d completed his interviews for the time being, planted his bugs around the mansion, and had a look around, and still had nothing.
It was frustrating as fuck, especially since his gut told him the clock was ticking. The window of opportunity was closing fast, and he didn’t feel any closer to finding Christos.
He was missing something; he was sure of it.
To complicate things, Mancini had planted a ghostly seed in his head. In the absence of solid evidence and the lack of actual answers, the unlikely what if scenario had stubbornly taken root.
There was no proof that Tenebris existed, but there wasn’t any proof that he didn’t. Any one of those close to Christos, even Christos himself, could be Tenebris. They all had ties to Darius and, as such, could harbor a secret hatred. As Mancini had accurately pointed out, Darius had been ruining lives and making enemies for a long, long time.
Gabe hadn’t been able to eliminate any of the staff as possible suspects. They all had means, motive, and opportunity. Argyros had recently edged ahead of Daskalakis in Gabe’s mind as the most likely possibility, mainly because of the strong family ties Daskalakis had. Unless, of course, Gregory hated his father, too.
“About the PA,” Mancini said, interrupting Gabe’s train of thought. “Does anyone else think that whole situation is strange?”
“She’s pretty hot,” Dawson quipped, “for an older woman. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a boss and his assistant hooked up.”
Gabe tensed. He didn’t like hearing Dawson say that, even though he’d had a similar misconception originally.
“Misogynistic, much?” Dominguez scoffed.
Dawson winked at her. “Didn’t seem to bother you last night.”
Dominguez rolled her eyes. Were those two hooking up? Oh, yeah, they were. Gabe recognized that smug I-hit-that-and-I’m-gonna-do-it-again grin on Dawson’s face. Frankly, he didn’t give a shit as long as it didn’t affect the mission.
“I don’t think so,” Mancini said, ignoring them. “Miller is attractive, but a little too apple pie for Kristikos’s sexual appetites. Besides, if the home videos we hacked off his personal account are any indication, he’s getting plenty of on-site action.”
“Nothing wrong with a little variety, though, right?” Dawson contributed. “And you know what they say about older women, especially widows—”
Having had enough, Gabe interrupted their commentary, his tone brisk and, he hoped, appropriately objective. “Ms. Miller is Christos Kristikos’s sister-in-law.”
That got their attention.
“Come again?” Dawson asked.
Gabe looked across the table to Pixie Livingston, who nodded so emphatically her glasses slipped down her nose. “It’s true. I was able to hack into the records of two independent labs and confirm the results of the DNA analysis.”
Gabe gave them a brief overview of what Virginia had shared with him.
“Well, that’s a plot twist I didn’t see coming,” Dawson commented, “but I guess it does make more sense than my theory.”
Dominguez’s phone chimed. She looked down at the screen and frowned. Dawson used the opportunity to lean in close. “What is it?”
“A text alert Pixie hooked up for me. It appears that two of the higher-ups in Darius Kristikos’s organization flew into Dulles last night.”
“Last night? Why am I just hearing about this now?”
“An o
versight,” Dominguez said, scanning as she swiped the screen. “Apparently, there was a lot of movement on our international watchlist yesterday, and these two slipped through the cracks.”
Gabe growled. “Where the fuck are they now?”
“Three guesses, and the first two don’t count,” quipped Dawson.
Dominguez met his eyes. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“Well, find out,” Gabe barked.
“I can run a check on the private limo services and hotels in the area,” Pixie offered.
“You can, but you won’t find anything,” Mancini said, echoing Gabe’s thoughts. “If Daddy’s sending the big guns, they’d warrant more personalized attention.”
“What time did they arrive?”
“Seven-thirty p.m.”
Gabe mentally calculated the amount of time it would take to drive from Dulles to the Kristikos estate. “Check the surveillance camera footage from last night, see who’s come and gone over the last twenty-four hours.”
It didn’t take long to confirm that a black town car had arrived at the front gates shortly after midnight. What was odd, however, was that none of the other cameras between the gates and the main entrance picked up the car or its occupants. Even odder, none of the bugs Gabe had planted inside had picked up any indication of their arrival, either.
“Well, I think it’s safe to say that our theory of a hidden entry/exit point has been confirmed,” said Mancini.
“Either that or they looped the footage,” commented Dawson. “It’s easy enough to do.”
“But why loop some and not all?” Mancini shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s sloppy and these guys are anything but that. I’d like to head back out and have another look. Maybe I can pick up some tire tracks or something before the rain comes and washes them away.”
Gabe nodded his acknowledgement.
“What we really need is someone on the inside.”
Once again, Mancini had read his mind.
SEAL Out of Water (Silver SEALs, #7) Page 10