The Marked Star

by Vicki Hinze

  “You seem distracted.” Even more so than usual, which meant she might or might not remember Elle even called. She’d have to phone her father herself.

  “I’m in the middle of my massage.”

  She was always in the middle of something. The pit of Elle’s stomach hollowed. She could have been killed and her mother remained totally oblivious. Maybe she didn’t have that mother’s intuition women supposedly had. Or if she did have it, she didn’t recognize it for what it was. That was highly possible. Either way, Elle felt abandoned yet again.

  No one could make her feel like an intrusion just by existing the way her mother could. The worst part was her mother had no idea what she was doing. She never had, which made it impossible to expect more from her or to resent her for what she lacked.

  It is what it is, and she is who she is. Love her anyway. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Elle said. “You’re fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  “All right, dear.” She paused, then added, “Do phone your father. His obsessive calling is driving me crazy—and, Elle, please make a reasonable effort to stick to your phoning schedule so you don’t worry him.”

  Resentment steeped in Elle. It’s a little hard to not inconvenience others when you’re kidnapped off the street, drugged, and you lose days of even knowing what planet you’re on. She wanted to say it all. The words burned her throat and tongue. But she didn’t utter a sound. Since she hadn’t told her mother a thing about the incident, she couldn’t fairly hold her accountable for not expressing any concern. That wasn’t right. “I’ll do my best, Mother.” Elle hung up and glanced at Nick. “She’s busy at the moment. Getting a massage.”

  He nodded, but the look in his eye said he’d picked up more than enough to grasp the strain between her and her mother, and maybe Elle’s resentment, too, though she hoped not. Letting go of all that, she dialed her dad.

  He answered on the first ring. “Elle? Is that you?”

  “It is. Sorry I’m late calling. I got…delayed.”

  “No problem. I wasn’t worried yet. Neil hadn’t called, so I felt sure everything had to be fine. Otherwise, he or Charles would have phoned.”

  Neil hadn’t called because Joe likely had threatened him into not calling. “What are you doing in DC? I thought you weren’t due to go for another month.” Two weeks actually, but something about his reaction, his tone—all of this—didn’t feel right.

  “I decided to come out early and get it off the schedule.”

  It was all she could do to keep her jaw from dropping. Her father never went to DC without dragging his feet until the very last possible second. He detested DC and almost any place else outside his lab and testing facility. Something was definitely wrong. “Is everything going okay?”

  “Absolutely. We exceeded expectations, of course. That always puts them in a good mood.”

  “Well, I hate to wreck your good mood, but I have some bad news.”

  Nick jumped to his feet, motioned for her not to disclose her circumstances or location.

  Elle put up a restraining hand, mouthed, “Don’t.”

  Nick stilled, but clamped his jaw and the look in his eyes chilled to ice.

  “What kind of bad news?” her dad asked.

  “I’m afraid I lost my ring,” she said. “One minute I had it on, and the next it was gone.”

  “Oh, Elle. You had me worried something happened to you.”

  She sought a response that was honest and true. “I’m fine.”

  “That’s all that matters, then.”

  She tensed. Something was definitely wrong. Her father would ordinarily be talking about insurance adjusters and filing claims and police reports. Instead, he doesn’t even ask a single question? Beyond odd and headlong into bizarre. What was going on here? She pushed, digging for information that would make his reaction make sense. “I told you I was concerned about wearing a diamond that big all the time.”

  “It’s jewelry. Isn’t jewelry meant to be worn?”

  He didn’t dispute her. “Yes, but…” He didn’t know. He didn’t know! Her heartbeat jacked up, thundered, pounded in her chest, in her temples. What did this mean?

  “I’m sure you reported it. We’ll deal with the rest when you’re back home.”

  The bottom fell out of her stomach. She swallowed hard, struggled to keep her voice steady. “Of course.” Her throat bone-dry, she worked to steady her tone. “When will you be going home?”

  “In a few days. I’ve got field study results to go over with the people here, and you know how that goes.”

  She knew too well how those briefings went. She’d handled a lot of them while working with her father. “Good luck with it,” she said. “I’ve got to go now but I’ll call again in two days.”

  “All right, dear. Be careful over there.”

  “You be careful, too.” She hung up the phone, rattled to the core.

  “Is everything all right?” Nick asked.

  She refused to lie to him but did she dare to tell him the truth? Unsure, she shrugged and passed him his phone. “Thanks.” Glancing at the brown sofa, she spotted Lizzie. Droopy-eyed and snuggled down. “Lizzie’s fading fast. If you want us to look at photos tonight, I’d say now’s the time.”

  Lizzie sighed for the tenth time in as many minutes. “How much longer do we have to sit here, Elle?”

  Elle glanced over to the child seated beside her before a computer screen the size of a TV. “Until we find her.”

  “Why? She didn’t hurt us. She just asked if we were okay. Why do we need to find her?”

  “Because she damaged Nick’s car.” And fled the scene of an accident with an unconscious, injured driver in her car, and she’d warned Elle to beware. “When she came to your car window, what exactly did she say?”

  “I told you.” Lizzie tapped the cursor to advance to the next line of photos. “She asked if we were okay.”

  “That’s it?” Elle took over on the cursor.

  Lizzie twirled her hair with her fingertip, stopped suddenly and squealed. “Stop, Elle. Stop.”

  Elle stopped advancing the photos. “That’s her—the lady who gave me the begonia.”

  Tim sputtered a swallow of iced-tea. “That’s impossible.”

  “It’s her.” Elle looked back at him, then to the others, settling her gaze on Nick.

  “It’s not her,” Lizzie said. “She’s not the lady from the wreck, either.”

  Elle reacted to the certainty in Lizzie’s voice. Doubt took hold. “Seriously?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lizzie nodded to add weight to her claim. “She looks like her, but she’s not.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Nick said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

  “Why?” Elle turned in her seat to look back at him.

  “Because that’s Mandy. Tim’s wife.”

  Lizzie frowned at Tim. “Then you have to know the lady.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because she looks just like her.”

  “She does,” Elle agreed. “The lighting was dim, but she did look like Mandy, Tim.”

  “Well, not just like her,” Lizzie said. “The lady was older. I saw her in the light when she opened the door to outside.”

  “You saw her leave?” Elle asked.

  Lizzie nodded.

  “And she looked like Mandy only older?”

  A flash of the woman walking out into the sun filled Elle’s mind and came into sharp focus. “You’re right, Lizzie.” Elle recalled the woman clearly now. “She’s about twenty or twenty-five years older than Mandy. But age this photo, and you’ve got her.”

  Tim looked thunderstruck. So did Nick. “What’s wrong?” Elle asked. Had she said something goofy? Missed the obvious?

  Nick let his gaze drift to the other guys. All of them looked intense, worried, and a little confused. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  Elle stood up and called Nick outside onto the porch. Near a rocker, she leaned a shoulder against a col
umn. “You know more than you’re saying on this.”

  “I do,” he admitted. “But, at the moment, there’s nothing I can share.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I’m not sure—and that’s as honest as I can be. If she’s who I think she is, then we’re okay.”

  “And if she isn’t?”

  “Then we’re clearly not.” He leaned against the rounded column, facing her. “I don’t have the answers you’re asking for, Elle. When I do and I can, I’ll tell you what I know.”

  “Well, don’t mess around.” Her nerves jangled.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  There it was. The moment of truth. She had to trust him, or not. All in, or all out.

  Innately, she did trust him, and equally important, whatever was going on with her kidnapping and being shipped back to the States and this strange woman with the begonia and then the intentional ramming of the car was bigger than she could handle alone. That decided it. “Because I don’t know the identity of the man in DC I talked to on the phone.” She lifted her gaze to meet his. “But he was not my father.”

  “What do you mean, he wasn’t your father?”

  “There’s no sense in screaming at me, Nick. I meant just what I said.” Elle glared back at him. “His reaction to me on everything was off. So I said something about the ring being a diamond. He didn’t dispute me.”

  Nick stilled. “You said it was an amethyst.”

  “It was.” She nodded. “And since he gave it to me, he’d know that.” She worried her lip with her teeth. “He should have picked up on the discrepancy and asked me for our code word, but he didn’t. Whether that was because he couldn’t or he didn’t know to do it, I’m not sure, but my instincts are telling me he wasn’t my father.” A rush of worry had her eyes stinging. “Nick, do you think something’s happened to my dad?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But we’ll find out.”

  “I should have told you right away,” she admitted.

  “Yes, you should have. I trust you won’t hold out again.”

  “I won’t.” She hugged him and held on. He didn’t hug her back, but he didn’t let go, either. And he smelled good. Like fresh air and pineapple. “Thank you.” She’d needed that hug. Elle had learned early to hold herself together and roll with the punches, but she’d never learned to do so without it taking an internal toll. Nick didn’t say anything but she innately knew he sensed that about her—and her end of the conversation with her mother likely affirmed it to him.

  “You go on inside now. Let me brief the guys and make a call. See what I can find out.”

  “Do I want to know to whom?” Curious, she’d asked, but she held no hope for an answer. Nick had secrets. And he kept them to himself. He had four years ago, and he still did.

  “No.” He nodded toward the door. “You really don’t. It wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway.”

  Elle paused, her hand on the knob. “Please don’t make me sorry I trusted you.”

  “That, you never have to worry about, Elle.” The shield in his eyes slipped for a second. “I promise.”

  Praying he was right, she went back into the Lodge.

  Elle challenged Lizzie to a game in the basement arcade.

  “You’re on.” Lizzie scooted off the sofa and, when they cleared the steps, Nick nodded to Sam, who went to the computer, depressed the keys, and the guys waited for the screen to appear in what had looked like a window. Twelve frames appeared on it. Various shots of the property and lodge, four of which were on the inside, including one in the basement, where Elle and Lizzie sat side-by-side playing Sam’s favorite, NASCAR Racing.

  “Lizzie drives like a maniac.” Sam said, a twinkle in his eye. “She’s spunky, that kid.”

  “Just don’t cut her loose on the street in anything motorized.” Nick frowned.

  “Well, what’s up?” Tim said, clearly expecting a briefing.

  “The woman they identified is easy enough,” Sam said. “She had to have been Mandy’s mom.”

  Nick stood behind Sam. Olivia Dixon—Liv—and Mandy did look a lot alike. The resemblance was strong. In the dim light at the reception, Nick could see anyone confusing them. Olivia was CIA and had infiltrated NINA years ago. She’d been walking the line between the two for decades. “But why was Olivia there? She had told Mandy she wouldn’t be seeing her again. NINA didn’t like close association between Shadow Watchers and their operatives.”

  “We’re not Shadow Watchers anymore.” Sam said.

  “Technically, no, we’re not,” Joe said. “But we’ll always be Shadow Watchers to NINA.” He sat down in the recliner. “We cost them a lot of money, disrupting their revenue streams. They’re not going to just let that go, bro. It’s bad for business.”

  “Joe’s right.” Tim rubbed at the back of his neck. “NINA is one of the worst terrorist groups in the world. Add their funding of political objectives to their activities and they can’t afford to just forget anything—ever. They let anything slide and people stop fearing them. Their organization can’t function without fear.”

  “Elle called her parents,” Nick told them. “Heavy tension between her and her mom.”

  Tim tensed, hand in his slacks’ pocket. “Did she tell her mother what happened in London?”

  “Not a word. I asked her not to, but I also asked her not to call and she insisted on doing that anyway.” Nick wasn’t sure what to make of it. “Her mom said her dad was in DC. She called him,” Nick told the others, then quickly briefed them on the conversation. “She told me she didn’t know who the man she spoke with was, but he was an imposter.”

  “Whoa.” Sam sat down on the sofa, braced his arms on his knees. “Why is she so sure he wasn’t her dad?”

  “He gave her the ring.”

  “We know that, Nick,” Tim said.

  “She had a funny feeling, so she tested him. Said the stone was a diamond. He didn’t correct her or ask for her code word.”

  Joe frowned. “They have a code word?”

  “Apparently.” Nick nodded. “She said he should have asked her for it, and he didn’t.”

  “Why do they have a code word?” Sam looked back at Nick.

  “I don’t know. But she was really upset that he hadn’t asked her for it. She’s worried about where her dad really is and what’s happening to him.”

  “To me, that seems more odd than them having a code word,” Tim said, dropping onto a stool at the bar. “Lots of parents have a code word with their kids. They might have started that when she first started school or something.”

  Nick sat down beside him. “Her dad’s whereabouts and what’s happening to him, and her worrying about him, is not as odd as you might think.”

  That got their attention. “I’ll fill you in on why as soon as I talk with Omega One,” Nick added. “Someone’s got that ring—the CIA or NINA—and I think we need to find out who.”

  “You think the ring is the reason NINA grabbed her,” Sam said. “Well, tried to grab her.”

  “Would have grabbed her if the CIA hadn’t gotten to her first,” Nick amended. “And we need to find out about her father.”

  “That, too.” Joe nodded. “I agree. The two might be connected.”

  Nick would bet on it. His instincts were humming it. “Let’s get to it. You know what to do.” Nick pulled out his cell and stepped outside onto the porch, leaving the guys to run some intense background work.

  Omega One answered, sounding half-asleep. “Yeah.”

  “I got your package.”

  “Good. Everything okay?”

  “Okay is a relative term. The package is intact, though an item was removed and is now missing,” Nick said, staring out at the trees. He waited for Omega One to say something.

  “We’re aware of that.”

  “So we have it?” The CIA must have taken possession of the ring in the van. What was special about it?

  “Not exactly.”

  Ba
d news. “Our adversary has it?” NINA. Oh, yeah. Something special, all right. Knots formed in Nick’s stomach and his muscles clenched.

  “Unfortunately.”

  “When did that happen?” Elle specifically said the ring was taken from her when she was in the van.

  “During interdiction. Apparently, we had it and…the chain of custody was broken.”

  “Is there reason to believe it is in the custody of our adversary?” If NINA had the ring, then why were they still after Elle? That made no sense.

  “It’s possible.” One paused, then added. “We’re not sure yet.”

  Someone was looking into it. Olivia? A gentle breeze rustled the leaves, carried the scent of mowed grass and pine. Crickets chirped and frogs croaked in the near wood. Normal nighttime sounds he’d come to enjoy at the Lodge. “We might have encountered that person.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Leaving the delivery location, we had an intentional traffic accident. I didn’t see the individuals, but two witnesses have identified one of them—more or less.”

  “Anyone injured?”

  “No. Everyone’s fine.” So One hadn’t refuted that Olivia was involved. “Clear to disclose?”

  “Just a second.” A couple seconds passed, then a couple more. “Okay, go ahead.”

  Scrambling the signal. “Olivia Dixon. They identified Mandy, only the woman, they said, was older. At the reception, the same older woman issued a warning to the Marked Star and gave her a begonia.”

  “Beware,” One said, repeating the meaning of the flower. “Sounds like her.”

  “So is this a good or a bad thing?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  That was the answer Nick expected, but one he still hated to hear. Even One wasn’t sure what Olivia was doing. “What do we do about the father who is or isn’t the father?”

  “If he isn’t her father, it raises the question of where her father is and why someone is doubling as him.”

  “If he is her father, not sharing the code word is apt to be a signal he’s in trouble.”

  “Either way, we have enough to warrant checking it out, especially considering his…interests.” One said. “I’ll work that angle from this end. I don’t have to tell you that the dad being in question is a really bad sign.”