The other end of the line was muffled as Trevor must’ve said something to Jarrod. After a moment, he returned to the phone. “Done.”
“In the meantime, look into our new friend in the government. I will expect to hear from you soon.”
Trevor grunted in acknowledgment on the other end of the line. When the line went dead, she took out the battery from her phone and snapped the SIM card, then threw them all out the window toward the pasture.
When they were well away from the ranch, she would turn on her other equipment, but not yet, not with possible enemies lurking around every corner.
Eli started the truck, letting it roar to life. He kicked up bits of snow and gravel as he took off.
She wasn’t sure whether she should ask him where they were going or just let him lead the way. There was enough information out there that if someone wanted to find her, it may not have taken too much digging. But no one would guess she would leave her heart and safety in the hands of her ex—only a madwoman would do something so stupid...or someone incredibly desperate.
The midday sun bounced off the front window just as they crossed over the Montana-Idaho line. They were stuck behind a line of truckers ascending the pass. There always had to be that one driver who found fault in the others around them and decided to pass the line of cars, only to find that the left lane was snow packed and icy and far more treacherous than they had anticipated. In a way it acted like a metaphor for her life—just when she thought she was ready to take control of the world around her, her hubris caught up with her.
She should never have gone to Billings. Everyone had warned her to stay home and out of the limelight. She had been an idiot and fallen into the trap of complacency. She should’ve known better.
As they crested the hill and made their way deeper into the panhandle of Idaho, she turned on her phone. Eli gave her a glance, like he wasn’t sure whether or not it was safe for her to be doing so.
“Even if people are tracking phones, if they find the signal they won’t think anything of it. This line is assigned to an alias. Even if they take the time to look it up, the findings won’t go anywhere. We are safe, at least for now.” She didn’t tell him the part about how she didn’t dare to delve too deep into the internet.
She wanted to reach out to her brothers to make sure they were okay, and to see where they were headed, but she didn’t dare just yet.
“I’m coming to learn that safe is relative,” Eli said.
“Why would you say that?” She clicked off the screen after making sure the phone was fully charged.
“I shot that man twice, center mass. Nothing happened. He wasn’t wearing standard body armor, but the bullets didn’t penetrate. It was like he was wearing something similar to your dress at the trade show.” Eli gave her an appraising glance like he was questioning her culpability in the attack.
“If you’re implying that I gave this man bulletproof clothing so he could break in, shoot up my house and try to kill us, then you are crazy.” Something like that wouldn’t even make sense. “I thought by now you would know you can trust me, and I thought I could trust you. Let’s not take two steps back. Not now. The only way we are going to make it out of this, or at least the only way I will make it out of this, is if we stick together. Eli, I can’t do this alone.” She could hear the pleading edge to her voice, but as she spoke she didn’t try to muffle it.
“I know.” He sat in silence for a long moment, staring at the road. “I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t somehow involved in this.”
“I know it’s been a long time since we were together, but I’d like to say that I’ve changed for the better.” She felt exhaustion seep into her core at having to fight to prove who she was. “I’m not entirely evil.”
“Well, now I know you’re telling me the truth—you’re still a little bit evil. If you tried to tell me you were a saint...we’d be having a very different conversation,” he said with a laugh. “In fact, that bit of duality is part of the reason I have always thought of you as someone special—you’re not like everyone else. You say what you mean, even if it’s something you know people aren’t going to want to hear, and you are unapologetically yourself.”
She laughed. He hit the nail on the head with that one. Most people wouldn’t consider those strengths, but rather character defects. More than one of her exes had chewed her out for embarrassing them by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
Luckily, she had never let the criticism of others change her. She was unstoppable. But Eli’s compliments made her uncomfortable, like a jacket that brought her warmth but rested too heavy on her shoulders.
It was easier to shrug off criticism than it was to accept praise.
“You’re only saying that because you saw me in that pink dress,” she teased, hoping to ease some of the pressure. “I saw the way you looked at me up there.”
She could have sworn that she saw a blush rise on his cheeks, but it was something so rare on him that she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t simply a trick of the light.
“Ha! Is that how you respond to a compliment, by searching for another?” he joked. “If that’s what you want, well... I have to admit—”
“Wait,” she said, interrupting him as a thought crossed her mind. “Mindy had her marketing team give samples of our new line to a select group of foreign leaders.”
“Algerian leaders?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea who we ended up sending them to.”
“Looks like we’re going to need to give Mindy a call,” he said as he took the off-ramp at the first exit in Coeur d’Alene.
She moved to make the call, but stopped herself. It was more than likely that there were people out there who were monitoring Mindy’s phone calls. She had to use another number. Using an app, she grabbed a number assigned to a man out of Newark. It would do the trick. If their enemies went digging they would be looking on the other side of the country.
She dialed, hoping Mindy would pick up even though she wouldn’t recognize the man’s name or number.
After a couple of rounds of ring backs of “Woman Up” by Meghan Trainor, Mindy picked up the phone. “Hello, this is Mindy. How can I help you?” she asked, like she was a well-seasoned receptionist instead of the owner of a multimillion-dollar company.
“It’s me,” Zoey said, hoping she would recognize her voice. “Are you holed up?”
She could almost hear the relief in Mindy’s sigh. “Yes, we’re in—”
“Don’t tell me. But you are safe?”
“Yes, I’m with Sabrina. Everything is fine. Are Trevor and Jarrod okay?”
“They’re good,” Zoey said, hoping that she was right. “I’m calling about the samples we sent out for the new Monster Wear. Do you have a list of people we shipped samples to?”
Mindy paused. “I think so.”
“Perfect.” Zoey gave Eli a thumbs-up. For once, the stars were almost aligning.
There was a moment of quiet as Mindy must have been scrolling through her phone. “Okay, it looks like we sent out samples to about thirty heads of state.”
“Did you send any to Algeria?”
Mindy made a noise as though she were sucking on her teeth as she read over her list. “Yeah, looks like we sent three white T-shirts and two pairs of Monster Wear jeans to the prime minister.”
There was no way that the man in the living room was the prime minister of Algeria, that much she knew for sure. “Did you send the white T-shirts to anyone else?”
“Looks like members of the Swedish parliament, but no one else. Why?”
Was someone in the Swedish government coming after them and trying to make it look like it was an Algerian hit? Zoey’s thoughts moved to a few months ago and the nerve agent attack on Jarrod and Mindy.
“Do you still have enemies in Sweden?” Zoey asked.
> “No, I don’t think so. We’ve been well received after...well, everything. In fact, most have been apologetic about the whole incident.”
That didn’t mean they were in the clear when it came to Swedish ties, but she had to hope that this case was going to be more cut and dry than the last. “Good, but let me know if you think of anyone or anything that strikes you as odd,” Zoey said, trying to make sense of all the thoughts that were flooding her mind.
“Actually, did you make a wire transfer out of our corporate expense account?” Mindy asked.
“No, why?”
“It looks as though someone transferred $500,226.23 from our account. Do I need to flag it at our bank?” Mindy sounded a bit breathless. “Do you think someone stole it?”
That was a lot of money. And an odd amount. Who transferred twenty-three cents in change? “Have you looked into it at all?”
“Looks like it was transferred to a bank just outside of Barcelona. A town called Sitges. It was processed to be taken out in cash.”
“Do you know who picked it up? Their name?”
“John Smith.” Mindy huffed. “I was hoping you had something to do with it.”
“I’ll take a look at it. For now, have the bank put a hold on all accounts not vital for handling the daily expenses. Only give access to our VP of finance and you and me. We need to stop any leaks before we lose everything.”
Chapter Ten
Five hundred thousand. That was more than the average American’s initial mortgage loan. For some, it would be enough to live off for the rest of their lives. And yet, H&K had enough liquid resources to transfer that kind of money without anyone panicking. Eli shook his head.
Now the five-million-dollar bounty on Chad’s head made sense. Everyone around him was rolling in money.
He would never know what a life like that was like. Sure, he had enough to pay his bills and never have to worry about where his next meal would come from, but he couldn’t imagine not being overly concerned about a missing five hundred grand from his bank account.
“What do you think is going on?” Eli asked.
Zoey was staring down at her phone. Maybe she wasn’t taking the loss of that kind of money as flippantly as he thought she had been.
“Are you okay?” he asked, when she refused to answer.
She pointed in the direction of a Starbucks. “I’m going to need a coffee.”
Yep, she wasn’t taking this well. His body relaxed a little bit as she returned to the land of normal Americans who lived on a budget. He loved the idea of her being successful and doing well with her family and their businesses, but he wasn’t sure that he could be with a woman who was a magnate—he would always feel completely out of her league. He wanted to be an equal partner in any relationship, and that wasn’t limited to fiscal matters.
He pulled into the Starbucks and parked. “Want a caramel macchiato, two pumps of hazelnut?”
She smiled. “We can go in together. You still like your coffee so dark and bold that it can hold the spoon up, right?”
He laughed. “A lot can change, but as far as I’m concerned there is only one way to take coffee and that’s it.”
She rolled her eyes in feigned exasperation. Before getting out, she turned around and grabbed a tablet from out of her bag. She turned it on and connected into the Wi-Fi.
“Seriously, open Wi-Fi? You’re good with that?” Eli was surprised.
“Often, it’s best if we just hide in plain sight.” She gave him a sly grin as she took a beanie-style hat out of her bag and slipped it over her pink hair. She handed him a baseball cap. “But I would hate to be too obvious.”
He slipped on the hat, aware that it would keep him anonymous in the coffee shop’s cameras.
Inside, the place smelled like pumpkin spice lattes, hopeful writers and daring entrepreneurs. He loved it.
After ordering the coffees and making their way to a private table, Zoey turned her tablet back on and set to work. He watched her as she frowned and nibbled on her lip. She had always made the same face when she was concentrating and working hard. He had nearly forgotten how beautiful it looked.
There was a strand of pink hair poking out from under her gray hat and it sat at the center of her forehead. Each time she huffed, the little hair would flutter up and down like a frustrated mother’s arms.
Finally, she smiled and looked up at him with a vindicated look in her eyes. “I think I got it.”
“What?”
She moved so he could see her screen. “It looks as though the money was transferred to the BBVA bank in Sitges. About six hours ago, a man came in and picked it up, one John Smith.” She clicked on a few buttons and pulled up the bank’s security camera feed.
“Did you seriously hack into a bank’s mainframe on public Wi-Fi in a matter of minutes?” he asked, both impressed and uncomfortable. Out of some intrinsic fear, he looked over his shoulder, as if one of the other people in the shop could see what they were up to.
She put her finger to her mouth, motioning for him to be quiet. “This is the best place to do it. Now watch,” she said, pointing to the screen.
The video was of the entire bank’s lobby, and though the area wasn’t large, the size of the room made it seem as though they were zoomed out quite a bit. A man walked in from the street wearing a dark tan jacket and a wide-brimmed hat. He made his way up to the teller. A few moments later, a woman walked into the bank and stood behind him.
Though she was never closer than five feet from him, the way she moved made Eli wonder if they were together. The teller disappeared from the screen for a moment, then returned and started talking to the man.
Though they could not hear what the people were saying, they watched as the man produced an ID. The teller nodded, seeming appeased. The teller walked out of the frame and quickly returned carrying a small stack of wrapped euros.
Perhaps there was an odd number in the transfer because of the exchange rate. And there might have been some sort of fee for sending the money, but he wasn’t sure.
The manager turned toward the cash drawer and pulled out a random selection of coins. Eli shook his head. Maybe his theory was wrong. Maybe this had nothing to do with exchange rates and fees. Rather, there was something more to the odd number of transferred monies. But what?
The man in the video turned, and looked straight up at the cameras. As he moved, the woman behind him jabbed him in the ribs, forcing him to look down. They took the money and quickly left.
Zoey turned off the video. “Did you see that?”
Of course he had seen it, it was a video. But it didn’t seem like the time to be a smart-ass. “Which part?”
“That.” Zoey turned to her tablet and skipped back to the moment the man looked up at the camera. “There... That’s Chad. He’s alive.” There was palpable relief in her tone.
“Good.” Hopefully Chad would stay that way. Eli squinted in an attempt to make out the man’s face just a little bit better. “Who’s the woman?”
“I have no idea,” she said, moving closer to the screen like she was trying to see some tiny detail that could possibly give away the woman’s identity.
“Has Chad been dating anyone?”
“No. At least not that I know of. But who knows what he’s up to these days. When it comes to that kind of thing, he normally keeps to himself.”
He and Chad had never been super close. They had never worked a job together, but it wasn’t because they had a difference of opinion or didn’t like one another. It was just that Chad was normally the man they sent to be a bull in a china shop and Eli was the man they sent in to make a death look natural. Needless to say, they had different methods when it came to doing their jobs.
After finishing their coffees, they made their way back out to the truck. With the door closed, he turned to her. “Let’s have Mindy
and Sabrina look into the Swedish and Algerian ties—maybe they can get info about the officials there and find out if anyone has a grudge or reason to want to align themselves with the Gray Wolves.”
She let out a long exhale. “Do you think we should go to Spain?”
“It’s as good a place as anywhere. As far as we know, no one else has spotted Chad. If we get there before anyone else does, we have a chance of getting him to safety.”
“Where would safety be, exactly?” she asked, sounding tired.
He couldn’t answer her with any level of honesty. Right now, her family’s world was upside down, and tangentially his was as well since he had allied himself with them. “The Gray Wolves can’t hunt you forever.” Even as he spoke, he heard the lie in his words.
“I’d like to think that, but so far that has yet to be true,” she said with a haggard look.
He should have stayed quiet.
Calling Mindy, Zoey told her the plan. It took only a few minutes, and though Zoey hadn’t heard from Trevor and Jarrod yet, it would be only a matter of time until she did—as long as they were safe. He had to assume they were all right. At the thought, he could feel his blood pressure rise, putting pressure on his eyes. The last thing they needed was for all of the brothers to be one step away from being murdered, but it seemed like that was exactly where they were.
He had to stop playing out the worst-case scenarios in his head. This wasn’t getting them anywhere.
“You have your passport?” he asked.
“Which one?” she said, motioning toward the back.
This was going to be one hell of an adventure—hopefully, they would both make it out alive.
Chapter Eleven
There was a private jet waiting for them on the tarmac in Spokane. They drove out to the plane and made their way in with a simple nod to the pilot and the staff.
Thankfully, there had been no snow on this side of the continental divide and it appeared they would have an easy flight to Spain.
Her Assassin For Hire (Stealth Series Book 3) Page 8