Watch Over Me

by Lucy Monroe

  Considering his expression, the words were surprisingly diplomatic.

  Lana’s weren’t. “You’re wrong.”

  “Lana—”

  “No. This is too important to let Vega’s actions mess it up. This thing between them is the real deal. Anyone with eyes can see that. Casey needs to see her. He’s going to be worrying about telling her what happened and what her reaction will be. He’s going to be concerned that the fact that he was kidnapped will make him a bad relationship risk. He needs to see that Nisha still wants to go out with him and see where their relationship can go.”

  “You don’t think he’s got other things on his mind right now?”

  “Right. Because you wouldn’t allow emotional considerations to take your mind off target, you assume Casey’s the same way. But the target is his life and a really important part of that is Nisha.”

  “They haven’t even dated yet.”

  “They’ve known each other for two years. They care about each other. You don’t have to have sex to fall in love.” Though it sure could make you see your emotions more clearly when you did.

  She didn’t tell Mykola that. It wasn’t something he’d want to hear.

  “Casey’s going to be worried that what happened to him has messed up what he was hoping to build with Nisha. We can’t let Vega and Musa win that way.”

  Surprising her, Mykola rested his hands on her shoulders, rubbing along her clavicle bones with his thumbs. “Being kidnapped does not mark a person as a relationship leper.”

  Like he would know. “It can.”

  “Did it for you?”

  “I never told anyone exactly what happened to me, but I alluded to it with a couple of the men I tried dating when I started working here. They dropped me fast. One even admitted that dating me wasn’t worth putting his own safety at risk.”

  “That bastard.”

  “But that’s not how I see it,” Nisha passionately interjected. “Casey’s work may be more obviously targetable, but my own knowledge of exotic materials is matched by less than a dozen people in the world. I know that puts me at risk, but I’m not about to live my life letting fear dictate my actions.”

  Lana turned away from Mykola and the false sense of comfort from his touch. “Good for you. Now, we just have to show Casey you feel that way.”

  Myk called Brett while he waited for Lana to pack some things to take to the fortress on the ocean.

  “One of my men could have packed for her,” Brett said.

  “She agreed to stay at the beach house until this situation is contained. She didn’t even argue.” He thought that had more to do with the fact that Casey would more readily cooperate with staying if she did than her own safety, but still it had been a huge concession for her. “Letting her pack her own clothes seemed like a pretty small reward to offer her.”

  Brett grunted an agreement. “Collins is watching your six?”

  “Yes. Although considering his altercation with Nisha, he’s probably due a hazard pay bonus.”

  “All the operatives on this mission are getting hazard pay.”

  “And TGP is covering it?”

  “It’s cheaper for them than keeping a team of their own containment agents for cases like this that require more man power.”

  “I guess you can hide a lot in a budget for an agency no one knows about.”

  “Don’t you believe it. The CIA hides plenty in theirs.”

  “True.”

  “You do realize that once this other scientist comes to the base, she’s going to know where it is.”

  “The TGP background check on her was a hell of a lot more thorough than ETRD’s on their security guards. She’s clean.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  His gut told him he was. Besides, it was important to Lana and, like it or not, that made it important to him. “According to Lana, seeing Nisha is exactly what Casey needs.”

  “She could be right about that. He’s only mentioned the woman’s name a total of thirty times since you all left.”

  Mykola fought a chuckle and lost. “Young love.”

  “Love at any age can turn a man into a blithering idiot.”

  “Speaking from experience, are you?”

  “Claire ran me ragged.”

  A month ago, Myk would have made a sarcastic comment, but he couldn’t make the words pass his lips now. Not when he was allowing Lana to pack her own things. He’d calculated the risk and determined it was minimal, but the longer the time from the aborted kidnapping, the higher the risk of Lana returning to her apartment.

  Anibal Vega wasn’t the type of man to give up. However, he had to make plans since his initial attempt to grab one of the scientists working on the enzymes had failed. That made this little trip low risk.

  The problem was, any other civilian would have gotten a resounding no from him if there was any risk.

  “Her serum should be ready when we get to the house.” No use dwelling on that which remained inexplicable.

  “She’s a woman of hidden depths, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah.” And didn’t that make him feel ridiculously proud?

  “Casey overheard a conversation between Ramirez and a man she called jefe.”

  “Vega.”

  “That’s my guess.”

  “What was it about?”

  “She told him she’d taken the assistant instead of the lead scientist. From her side of the conversation, it didn’t sound like Vega was happy with the substitution. They were speaking in Spanish and she assumed Casey couldn’t understand them, or she didn’t care if he overheard. Regardless, he pretended to be as monolingual as she thought he was. He’s a smart kid.”

  “And then some.”

  “She talked about meeting Vega at the airstrip and going parasailing.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, but Casey’s still pretty shaken up.”

  Something niggled at the back of Myk’s mind. He yelled out, “Hey, doc, you know anything about geography?”

  “Some,” Lana called back from her bedroom.

  “Aren’t there some islands off the coast of Vietnam called Parasail?”

  “Paracel,” Nisha said from her place on the sofa. “They’re a pretty much unpopulated group of islands that both Taiwan and Vietnam lay claim to. Some think they’ve got untapped oil and gas reserves around them.”

  “I think we’ve got our storage spot for the scrap metal,” Brett said after Myk repeated what Nisha had said to him.

  “We’ve got to get that information to Whitmore. If any of the barge crew are still alive, they are probably on those islands somewhere.”

  “Right.”

  “If I tell Whitmore, I’m going to have to tell him how I got the information.”

  “You don’t have to tell him how we got Casey back or that we have a Vega henchman in custody to tell him Casey overheard something Vega wishes he hadn’t.”

  “True.”

  “We should confirm our guess during interrogation of Vega’s man before we tell anyone what we suspect.”

  “Even more reason to interrogate the little bastard as soon as possible,” Myk muttered.

  “You got that right.”

  Myk walked into the dining room, away from Nisha and the door to Lana’s bedroom. “I’m going to have to resign after this case.”

  “You want a job, we’ve got one for you.”

  “And work for my little sister?”

  “There is that.” Brett, the bastard, was laughing.

  Mykola said, “We’ll be there in thirty-five minutes,” and clicked the phone shut.

  He was not going to work for Elle, but he wasn’t going to be able to keep working for the feds any longer, either. There was a reason for protocol, even if he couldn’t make himself stick to it.

  One dose of Lana’s truth serum and ten minutes later Vega’s henchman became loquacious as all hell. He also got teary eyed. Although he couldn’t seem to help answer
ing their questions, he was aware enough to realize that if Vega ever got hold of him after this, death would be the easiest outcome he faced.

  It was good thing Mykola spoke Spanish, though, because the man slipped into it pretty much immediately.

  His name was Jorge and he was merely a hired henchman, not family to Vega like Ramirez. He knew more than he realized, and not all of it useful for this particular investigation, but Mykola took note of everything Jorge said.

  He would compile it, and later, he would share it with the other federal agencies who might find the information of interest.

  According to Jorge, Ramirez had planned to take Casey directly to the airstrip near their office in Mexico. From there, they would go to the Paracel Islands, just as they’d surmised from Casey’s garbled memory.

  But what Casey hadn’t known from the little he overheard was which of the islands they would be headed for, the coordinates of the airstrip in Mexico, the exact location of the office within the Vega compound that the man himself used. or Anibal Vega’s personal e-mail address.

  Jorge hadn’t realized he knew that one, but it had been in the header of an e-mail Ramirez had sent to him with instructions for the abduction.

  It took several hours, but finally, Myk was satisfied with the information he had obtained.

  Myk found Lana in the bedroom Brett had assigned to them. He didn’t know if Lana realized yet that they were sharing, but she didn’t seem surprised to see him.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “That serum is scary stuff, doc.”

  She nodded. “I decided not to use it with my parents. Truth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “They do love you, sweetheart, even if they don’t understand you.” The cards he’d found on her dresser had all been personalized and quoted sentiments that indicated a depth of feeling he’d be willing to bet her family had been incapable of expressing in person.

  “That’s the conclusion I came to. They let me turn their attic into a fortress and never once said a thing about it. Ultimately, both my brother and my parents encouraged me to go with Mr. Smith when he came recruiting.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Yes?”

  “I wouldn’t have met you if you hadn’t started working for ETRD.”

  “You’re glad you did, even knowing Vega tried to kill your sister because of me?”

  “He tried to kill her because he’s a megalomaniac without a conscience. That’s not your fault.”

  “That’s not what you said the first time you came into my lab.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “I bet you don’t admit that often.”

  “As often as I need to. Which happens rarely.”

  She rolled her eyes, but smiled. “Like I’ve said before, arrogant.”

  “Confident.”

  “Whatever.”

  He leaned down and kissed her. Couldn’t help himself. “I’m meeting with Brett and Claire to discuss the best course of action from here on out. I wondered if you wanted to sit in.”

  “Are you in the habit of inviting civilians into your planning meetings?”

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  “Then why me?”

  “You are smart, sweetheart. Maybe the smartest person I’ve ever met. I think you could add to the discussion.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Baby, your family may not have seen the benefit of your incredible brain, but I’m not them.”

  “Wow.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It might get sticky, with the whole mostly pacifist thing.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “I believe that.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Wait. What about Casey? He’s very good at scenario building.”

  “He’s got good instincts, too. He figured out that something was up with Ramirez even though you hadn’t yet told him she’d been fired. He lied and told the kidnappers that you were out of the lab before they revealed their intentions.”

  “He was protecting me,” Lana said, awestruck.

  “Yes. He’s your friend.”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  Myk pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay, doc.”

  “He could have been hurt because of me.”

  “Nah, he’s probably alive because his instinct was to protect you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If they had known you were in the lab and that they could take you instead of him, do you think they would have left him alive and capable of telling us what had transpired?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh.”

  “I want to kick Vega, and not in the shin.”

  “Hell, sweetheart, I’d let you use your stun gun there. The man deserves it.”

  He was rewarded with a laugh.

  Chapter 19

  Lana would have asked Casey how he was doing, but there was no need. Sitting across from her at the large glass dining table, he was positively glowing with happiness. Nisha sat beside him and looked equally enamored with life.

  “You look awfully pleased with life for a man who survived a kidnapping attempt,” she teased him.

  “How’s the headache?” Mykola asked Casey as he took his own seat at one end of the table, to Lana’s left.

  “What headache?” Casey asked with a grin.

  Nisha shook her head, but she was smiling, too. “He has taken a pain reliever and the medic confirmed he has no signs of concussion. Nevertheless, after this discussion, I will be making certain he rests.”

  “I guess scientists are harder headed than I thought,” Brett drawled from the other end of the table. “Here I thought that was just computer experts.” He gave a sidelong teasing glance to his wife on the right.

  “Maybe almost as thick-skulled as former mercenaries?” Claire mused.

  “I’ll show you thickheaded.” Brett turned his bright blue gaze full on his wife and winked. “Later.”

  Lana could feel the heat of that look from where she sat farther down the table. The intensity of the two security experts’ relationship was as obvious as the reaction in a vinegar-baking soda chemistry experiment.

  “I said thick-skulled.” But Claire was smiling like a woman does when she’s contemplating something very pleasant.

  Brett shrugged and winked again. “Whatever.”

  “You can save show-and-tell for another time,” Mykola said. “Let’s focus on the plan for right now.”

  “Did you get enough from that guy to make a plan?” Casey asked.

  Mykola and Brett had interrogated the man together and they took turns telling the rest of them what they’d discovered.

  “You got Vega’s e-mail address?” Claire asked, practically salivating.

  Brett smiled at his carrot-topped wife. “I thought that would make you happy.”

  “It will make it a whole lot easier to locate his ISP and the computer he’s currently using to retrieve his e-mail.”

  “And if it’s a laptop?” Nisha asked.

  “Vega still has to sign on to a server to send and retrieve e-mail. Servers are location static.”

  Mykola looked up from his notes. “We’re pretty sure that right now, he’s working from his Mexican office.”

  “Right. That will make it easier to locate the system, won’t it, sugar?” Brett asked.

  Claire nodded, looking keen to get started on her computer hacking. “Definitely.”

  “But he could keep his plans to fly to the Paracel Islands. He’s got the enzymes and he’s unaware they don’t work on metal. It would make sense for him to want to try them out,” Casey said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. What about informing the Taiwanese government that the islands are being used for criminal activity?” Brett asked.

  “I’ve already briefed Whitmore to that effect without revealing the source of my intel. I may have overstated what you heard in the
course of your aborted kidnapping,” Mykola said to Casey.

  Casey shrugged. “Why not tell him about Jorge?”

  “Because we would have to release him to the FBI and we weren’t ready to do that before interrogating him.”

  “Are you going to now that you have?”

  Brett and Mykola gave each other significant looks, like they were trying to decide how to answer that question.

  “The only two significant side effects of the truth serum I created are the need to sleep once it wears off and memory loss. Jorge won’t remember being interrogated, or anything else that happened one to three hours prior and post to taking the drug.” Lana didn’t want to be responsible for Mykola stepping so far outside the box of his job as an agent that he couldn’t get back in.

  “So, we could turn him over to the FBI and he wouldn’t remember being here?” Brett asked skeptically.

  Lana wished she could give a definitive yes, but she couldn’t. “That’s a strong possibility if you move him while he is still sleeping off the effects of the drug.”

  “We can’t risk him knowing the location of this house,” Mykola said.

  “We blindfolded him on the way,” Brett replied. “Even if he does have memories of the house itself, all he would remember was that it was by the ocean. There’s a hell of a lot of ocean in California.”

  Casey looked thoughtful. “He could be a bargaining chip.”

  “True,” Mykola said with an approving look at Casey.

  “You don’t sound like a man who is following procedure,” Lana said to Mykola with concern.

  “I’m not. I’m doing my job.”

  “They’re not the same thing?”

  “Not in this instance.”

  “But I think what Lana is saying is that they can be, at least to an extent,” Claire remarked.

  “Exactly. If you did a thorough job interrogating him, there’s little if anything you and Brett will be able to get from him in a subsequent session. As bargaining chips go, he’s not great. He’s not related by family to the Vega Cartel and he’s not high on their organizational pyramid.” Lana had to get Mykola to see reason. “There’s no compelling reason to wait to turn him over to the FBI.”