by N. J. Croft
“Do you know anything about the pilot?” she asked.
“His name was on the accident report. I ran a background check on him, but there was nothing unexpected. Likely he was just collateral damage. Poor bastard.”
“I wonder how they did it.”
“The investigation found no evidence of any sort of explosive device. Maybe they sabotaged the engine, but the fire destroyed any chance of confirming that.”
He doubted they would ever know for sure.
Noah walked around the perimeter, his hands trailing along the side of the plane. He came back to stand beside her. “There’s nothing to learn here,” he said, his good mood broken. “Let’s go.”
She looked as though she wanted to say something but then just nodded.
“Why wasn’t the plane taken for investigation?” Noah asked as they headed back, and Stefan translated the question.
Dimitri shrugged then spoke.
“He says only the black box was taken,” Stefan said. “The rest was considered too much effort and expense. Except the bodies, of course. They were airlifted out and taken to the morgue in Irkutsk.”
With nothing left to ask, Noah followed the group back to the vehicle in silence.
He waited until Star seated herself in the back and then got in beside her. “Well, that was a waste of time,” he muttered as the car pulled away.
“What did you expect to find?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just felt I had to at least see the place she died. I thought it might help me…understand.”
What was clear was that Eve’s murder had been meticulously planned. And he still had no idea as to why anyone would want her dead.
“None of this makes any fucking sense,” he said.
Star laid a hand on his thigh and squeezed. “It does. We’re just not seeing it yet. We will.”
He placed his hand over hers; he liked the feel of her touching him but suspected she would withdraw any moment. Then he rested his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept well. He wasn’t used to sharing a bed, not to mention he’d had a raging hard-on all night. He was trying not to think about that.
“Let’s go over what we know again.”
Noah ran through what was in his head. “Eve was working on something related to the search for the Spirit Banner and tomb of Genghis Khan,” he said. “She must have gotten some new information, and it was important enough that she overcame her PTSD to fly out to Mongolia.”
“How bad was the PTSD?” Star asked. “While I never met her in person, she always seemed very…together.”
“She suffered from acute claustrophobia and hydrophobia, and she was pretty bad. She’d gotten good at hiding it, but she had triggers. They had her for three weeks, but at least she survived. Two of the captives died under torture. Eve was tougher than she thought.”
“And she married you.”
“Yeah, everyone makes mistakes. I think she married me because she thought I’d make her feel safe. Then she divorced me because the opposite happened. She couldn’t cope with the pressures of being a soldier’s wife. She told me she had enough fears of her own without adding mine to the mix.”
He’d never regret the marriage. They’d had three beautiful children. He’d never expected to have children, and he couldn’t believe how much he loved them. He just didn’t know how to show it. How to connect with them.
“So she flew out to Mongolia on the twenty-eighth of May and met with her team: a Russian archaeologist who appears to have vanished, a Mongolian scholar who also seems to have dropped off the face of the planet, a translator who apparently is just what he seems but again is nowhere to be found, and a rogue MI6 agent. We don’t know how long she was in Mongolia,” he continued. “And we haven’t yet been able to track her movements after she arrived in the country—”
“I’m pretty sure she was heading to the Khentii Mountains.”
“You are?”
“That was where the spear was located. Or at least where Eve had me looking. But I don’t know whether she found it or even if she got there. When she turned up in Russia, I assumed she was having trouble with the Mongolian government—they’re pretty strict on who they let into the area.”
“Okay. We’ll check that. I have someone searching the hotels—we hadn’t picked anything up, but maybe she wasn’t registered under her own name. One of the others could have checked them all in.” He made a mental note to get Tom to check out the other names on the team. “Fourteen days later, she tries to call me because she was worried about something. The following day, she turns up dead in Russia.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his head. “Any of this making any sense?”
“Nope.”
His brain hurt. “According to her old professor, she’d been working on this Genghis Khan stuff for years and had never been to Mongolia. What changed?” He shifted in the seat so he could look into her face. She was chewing on her lower lip, seemingly thinking hard. “Are you sure she never said anything to you?”
She shrugged. “Not that I remember. We’ve been over this before.”
“Then go over it again. We’re missing something.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, but we didn’t have that sort of relationship. We talked a lot, but about work. She was so passionate about her research. While I knew she didn’t do field work, I always thought it was because of the children. That she didn’t want to leave them. She never mentioned the kidnapping.” She gave him a hopeful look. “You know, maybe she got better. Decided to move on with her life. Twelve years is a long time.”
Yeah, but it didn’t feel right. “Harper told me Eve had been worse in the week or so before she left for Mongolia. That she wasn’t sleeping, and when she did, she usually woke up screaming.”
“So, not better then. Maybe someone made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”
“Who? And why couldn’t she refuse? Money didn’t interest her.”
“Maybe someone threatened her or the children.”
He’d already considered that, but he just couldn’t get the facts to click into any sort of pattern that made sense. “So you sent the image to a PO box in Irkutsk. It has to be tied in somehow. So we assume they killed her for the image. Did she not tell you what you were looking for?”
“Not the details, just that it would help her get a step closer.”
“But you don’t know what it was?”
“No.”
“Eve’s old professor told me there was a legend about a talisman that Genghis Khan carried into battle. Maybe that’s what she was looking for.”
Her eyes narrowed as she considered his question. “Perhaps.” She tugged on the earring. “They came for me after Eve’s death, so presumably they didn’t get what they wanted from Eve—the image I sent her. They took my stuff to see if they could recover it.”
“And I’m guessing they couldn’t.”
“No. I deleted everything after I sent the image to Eve.”
“Was that normal?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes. It depends on where and how I get the information.”
Probably illegally.
So maybe Eve had hidden her copy. Maybe she’d sensed something, someone following her, gotten nervous, and hidden the image in the safe deposit box at the Marriott. If that was the case, and if he was able to retrieve it, then he needed to use it. Get the word out that he’d found it and set himself up as bait. Draw whoever had killed Eve out into the open.
At that moment, they pulled up outside the police station in Irkutsk.
They climbed out of the vehicle and followed Stefan up the stone steps and through the double doors into a reception area. A uniformed officer sat behind a glass panel, and Stefan approached and spoke in rapid Russian. He listened to the reply then turned to Noah. “We ha
ve an appointment with the lead investigator, Rurik Pozniak. He will see you in his office. We just need to wait for someone to escort us.”
He’d had to arrange the meeting under his own name. It was a calculated risk. Hopefully, it wouldn’t blow his cover and alert anyone to his whereabouts.
Maybe he should have left the pistol in the car. Would they be searched? It burned into the small of his back. But in the end, a second uniformed officer led them through the station, paused in front of a wooden door, knocked, and nodded for them to enter.
Investigator Pozniak sat in a chair, his feet resting on the wooden desk in front of him. He wore a shiny blue suit and had black hair, a mustache, and shrewd—and not very friendly—gray eyes. They narrowed on Noah as he watched them approach, lines forming between his brows.
He didn’t rise as they halted in front of the desk, but he slowly lowered his feet and sat up straighter. Stefan spoke in rapid Russian, but the man looked beyond him.
“I speak English, Major Blakeley.”
“Good. Then can you tell me what happened to my wife?”
He shrugged. “Not more than you already know. It was all in the report. Your wife’s death was an accident. The pilot called in with engine trouble shortly after takeoff. He was supposed to turn around and head back to the airport but crashed before he had the chance. Both the pilot and your wife were killed outright. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t sound particularly sorry. “And the bodies were brought back to the morgue here. Is that normal?”
“Of course.” He frowned. “I’m not sure what you are looking for, Major, but I assure you, everything was done by the proper procedures.” He stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Just go home.”
Noah had a feeling he wasn’t going to get anything else from the investigator. He just didn’t know why. Maybe the man didn’t like foreigners. Could he be hiding something? If Eve had been murdered, then it had been covered up extremely well. Maybe Investigator Pozniak had been bribed to write the report he had written. Noah had an idea that he might find himself thrown in a cell if he suggested such a thing. All the same, he couldn’t help the assessing stare he gave the other man, and he allowed some of his thoughts to show. They stared at each other for a minute, and a small smile curled the other man’s lips.
“Is there something you would like to share with us, Major Blakeley? Some reason why you consider there might be more to this case? If so, I can arrange for your stay here while we…talk.”
“That won’t be necessary. Thank you for your time.”
He turned and walked away, feeling a prickle down his spine, expecting to be stopped at any moment.
“That went well,” Star muttered as the door closed behind them and they stood on the steps outside the police station. “I thought he was going to throw our asses into jail.”
“I believe he was considering it.”
“You think he knows more?”
“There’s a good chance. But he won’t talk.”
Another dead end.
Chapter Seventeen
They dropped Stefan at the train station since they were heading to the Marriott and wouldn’t need a translator. They’d already spoken to the manager; he was waiting for them and would open the safety deposit box as soon as they handed over the relevant paperwork.
It was late afternoon by the time they parked the car and entered the hotel. He rubbed at his shoulder. The bullet wound ached. The climbing hadn’t helped.
“Are you okay?” Star asked.
“I think I might have opened up the wound again.”
“I’ll take a look when we get back to the hotel. You want to leave this until later?”
“Hell, no. Maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll find a diary with exactly what happened.”
“Did she keep a diary?”
“One of her therapists had her do it for a while. I don’t think she kept it up for long.”
The manager came out of the back office as they approached the reception desk. He shook hands with Noah and then with Star. “Come through, please.”
They followed him into the office then through another door into a room behind with a bank of safe deposit boxes along the wall opposite. Noah pulled the paperwork out of his pocket and handed it to the manager. After a quick glance, he opened a box in the middle row and took out an envelope. “That’s all there is. I hope it’s what you’re looking for.”
“Thank you.” Part of him wanted to open it now and find out if it contained any answers. Another part wanted to put it off. The envelope was A4 size, padded, and had clearly already been opened. Noah shoved it in his pocket and glanced at Star. “Let’s get out of here.”
They were silent on the way back. Star drove, no doubt to give his shoulder a rest, but she kept casting him sideway glances. When they got back to their hotel, they still didn’t speak until the door closed behind them.
He leaned back against it, hands in his pockets. Now he was here, he was reluctant to look. If the envelope contained nothing of use, then he had to decide where to go next.
“Come on, Noah.”
He blew out his breath then pulled the envelope out of his pocket, stared at it for a moment, then reached inside.
It contained a single sheet of paper.
On the back was scribbled: Is this what you’re looking for? Star xoxo. He turned it over. It showed a black and white image, not a photo exactly, more a contrast of light and dark. It just seemed like a blurred mess to him. He handed it to Star.
“Your image?” he asked.
She nodded. “I used an ultra-high definition satellite imaging technique that allows us to see beneath the ground. The images are taken from satellites, and then the computer gathers all the information and makes this.”
“But what does it show?”
She laid the image on the bed and sat down. Noah came to stand over her shoulder as she studied it, tracing her finger over the patterns. “There it is,” she murmured, and he could hear the wonder in her voice, which struck him as odd since this wasn’t the first time she had seen it. Her finger traced a white outline just off center, small maybe a centimeter across. “See, it’s hexagonal. At this scale, it looks like it’s maybe two feet across. And some sort of dense material. Stone or rock, maybe just really hard wood. The Talisman.”
As he concentrated on the image, he could sort of make out what she was referring to, though it took a hell of a lot of imagination.
Then again, what had he expected? A picture of a grave with an angel over it and a big fucking sign saying, “Genghis Khan lies here”?
“You have to know what you’re looking for,” she continued, “and what you’re looking at, but believe me, this is what Eve was after.”
“Where is it?”
She pointed to a set of numbers in the corner. “Those are the GPS coordinates. They give the exact location.” She slipped the image back in the envelope.
“So we can go there?”
“If that’s what you think we should do.”
She didn’t sound so sure. Hell, neither was he. The more he found out, the less he understood what was going on.
He stood, staring at the envelope, then he turned to look at her and caught an expression on her face. She was playing it cool, but underneath there was a gleam of excitement that she clearly didn’t want to share.
She stood up and stretched. “It’s been a long day. Why don’t you go shower? I’ll order some room service, and then I’ll take a look at your shoulder. We’ll sleep on it, and in the morning, we’ll decide what to do next.”
He looked at her, considered pushing the matter—finding out exactly what she was thinking. Instead, he shrugged out of his jacket and examined his shoulder. There was no sign of blood, so hopefully, he’d just pulled it during the climb. He unbuckled the holster and dropped the gun
on the bed then ran a hand through his hair, over his scalp, around the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension. He waved a hand at the envelope where it lay on the table between them. “Is it what you expected to find?”
“Well, yeah. I sent it. But I thought maybe it had gone up in flames in the plane crash and the information had died with Eve. That we would never be able to reconstruct the coordinates and it was lost forever.”
Her words sounded reasonable, but he sensed that she was hiding something from him. Maybe she’d open up to him later. “That’s good, then. I’ll go shower.”
In the bathroom, he stepped under the warm water and closed his eyes. What was his next move?
He didn’t have a lot of choices. The only strategy they had was to put the word out that he had the image and see who followed the bait. He’d start making calls and sending emails in the morning. He was guessing somewhere, someone had a flag on his name and would pick up the chatter.
He also needed to decide whether to get some back up. Right now, his gut was telling him to stay out of the loop, do things alone, but that had always been his natural inclination.
He switched off the water, dried himself, and pulled on his jeans. As he came out of the bathroom, she scrambled to her feet, her gaze running over him with more than medical interest. Or was that wishful thinking? He had an overwhelming urge to lose himself in her, just for tonight, to forget…
“Sit down,” she said, nodding to the edge of the bed.
He sat on the dark red coverlet, and she stepped up close to him, so he could breathe in the warm scent of her. She unwound the damp bandage, dropped it in the trash.
“Okay?” he asked, twisting his head to take a look. While one of the stitches had broken, the wound was still closed, and he didn’t think it would need another.
“You’ll live.”
“Yeah, but for how long?”
“Hopefully long enough,” she said, wrapping a clean bandage around the wound.
He rolled his shoulders when she was done, aware of her gaze on him. He could see the rise and fall of her breasts under her T-shirt, her breathing fast. Reaching out, she trailed a finger across his chest, and a shudder ran through him.