Luke had a notebook in front of him but didn’t consult it. “I spoke with three doctors. Two men and a woman. Dr Green, Dr Harvey and Dr Lin. Like I said, I told them I was an old friend of yours from college days, had moved to Connecticut, but was briefly in Portland. We had arranged to meet for coffee to catch up but you didn’t show. So I went to the hospital, thinking you’d been caught up in an emergency, and was prepared to wait for you. I spoke with the nurses and all they knew was that you hadn’t been in for the past ten days. They told me to speak to an administrator, an Emily Cotfield, but she’d taken personal time unexpectedly. Her daughter broke her arm at school. I was prepared to come back later or the next day but then I spoke with Dr Lin.”
“Mei.” Honor smiled as she suddenly remembered Mei. One of her few close friends on the job. Green and Harvey were just colleagues, not friends. Mei was a friend, and would have been a close one if they saw each other more. They rarely saw each other outside work. Mei had a husband with multiple sclerosis and rushed home after work as quickly as she could. As far as Honor knew, Mei never allowed herself even a cup of coffee with a colleague after work hours. But she was funny and hardworking and they’d struck up a friendship at work. Mei knew the basics of her life and she knew the basics of Mei’s life.
“I have to say, I wasn’t impressed by your other colleagues. They seemed really annoyed at being asked.”
“Green and Harvey.” Honor clenched her jaw. “Neither of them like me that much. Green is really handsy and I told him the next time he touched me I’d report him to admin.”
Matt made a weird sound. Honor turned her head to look at him. Luke’s eyes widened. “Matt,” he said. “Did you just growl?”
Matt didn’t answer, just glared at Honor. At least it looked like a glare. He sure looked pissed. “That fucker harassed you?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Harass is a big word. He’s a grabber. Touches my arm but manages to miss and touch my boob. When I told him if he touched me again I’d report him, he stopped. But he’s the kind of man who never looks a woman in the eyes, just drops his gaze.” She stopped to think it over. “Hell yeah, he harassed me. And other women too. I’m surprised he’s still there. I never thought about him too much, just that he was annoying. I’m a colleague, though. He wouldn’t overstep the bounds too much with me.”
“If I’d known, I’d have been less polite,” Luke offered.
“When this is over, remind me to punch him,” Matt said.
The slightly sick feeling she had when she thought about Royce Green dissipated when she thought of Matt punching him. She smiled.
She turned to the screen. “Now Sean Harvey is just incompetent. Suzanne Huntington is grateful to me for saving her father’s life but really what I did was save him from Dr. Harvey. I was going off duty when her father came in. He was having a heart attack, but Dr Harvey misdiagnosed it as a stroke and was about to give tissue plasminogen activators, which would have killed Professor Barron right away.” She shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think those colleagues would be worried if I didn’t show up. If anything, they’d be annoyed. But Mei would worry. I’m surprised she didn’t sound the alarm. Or at least contact me at home.”
Luke shook his head. “She said you took personal time off. She said you sent her an email.”
Whoa. “She did?”
“Yeah. Do you remember that?”
“No. I don’t remember anything. What did I say in the email?”
He hesitated. She didn’t know him at all but it seemed like the hesitation was out of character. She looked over at Matt but he was looking odd, too.
“Matt?”
Matt coughed into his fist. He shifted his broad shoulders against the back of the couch as if something were itching. Then he sighed. “No way around it. We hacked your friend’s email. We had to. Either you sent the email or someone else did. Either way, it would contain intel. Luke couldn’t ask to see it because it would have looked weird.”
Honor was quiet for a moment and they let her work her way through it. She tried, but she couldn’t think of a way for them to get the information without hacking. “Okay,” she said finally. “Show it to me. But how did you get her email address anyway? It’s Lotusblossom —”
“Lotusblossom88,” Luke said. “Yeah. It’s actually on her personnel file. I got it, so anyone could get it. And your email was on file, too.” He stared into his camera disapprovingly. It looked exactly like he was staring at her disapprovingly.
Honor sighed. “Okay, okay. I’ll change my email and I won’t post my personal email on the hospital site. We get assigned hospital email addresses, I’ll post that.”
Luke nodded.
“But I asked her. Dr. Mei gave me her email address . I asked for it and she gave it to me. I said that I wanted to send her some photos of you.”
“She believed that?”
Matt gave a little snort. “Luke can be very convincing. He’s spent a lot of time undercover as a cop.”
Luke scowled. “You doctors have the security awareness of an amoeba.”
Honor didn’t roll her eyes. These guys were doing their best to help her. Plus, with her newfound experience, they were absolutely right. Security awareness had played a minor role in her life. It would play a bigger role from here on out. “Okay, show me.”
Luke clicked on something on his end and a page showed up on the screen. A classic gmail page, from her email address — which was boringly [email protected] to Mei at Lotusblossom88. “I didn’t look at any other emails in your friend’s feed. Just the one from you. If it was from you.”
Honor barely heard him. She was reading off the screen.
Hi Mei,
This will be quick. I had a personal emergency so I won’t be at work tomorrow. In fact I don’t know how long I might be away and I’m not sure if I’ll have wifi. I have personal time and will be taking it.
I’ve already contacted admin.
Don’t worry about me, it’s just something I have to take care of. I’ll get in touch soon.
Best, Honor
It read perfectly normal but it wasn’t. “I didn’t write that,” she said.
Matt simply looked at her. Luke’s gaze into the camera was unwavering.
“I won’t insult your intelligence by asking — are you sure.” His voice was flat.
“Thanks. And I’m sure. In emails to friends I never use a comma after the greeting, just put a dash. In emails to friends I take a less formal tone. And with Mei I sign myself ‘Red’. It’s an inside joke.”
Matt looked at her hair. She shook her head. “It has nothing to do with my hair color. I told her once I couldn’t stand to be in debt. All my life my father alternated being rich with drowning in debt. I have an allergy to personal debt. When I said I never wanted to be in the red, she laughed and said she’d call me Red. And that’s how I sign myself with her. Whoever sent that email isn’t me. I’m surprised she didn’t notice it was odd.”
“But it did the trick,” Matt growled. “The hospital administration might be pissed that you disappeared but they’re not worried, because they received an email, too. No one would have contacted the police.”
Honor couldn’t answer that. Her throat just seized up. “God.” She shivered, suddenly chilled.
With each word, she had a clearer understanding of what she was up against. Not just a group of men who’d abducted her and kept her prisoner. But some kind of conspiracy. Something planned and carried out. Some kind of organization with weight and heft.
“But … but why?” she whispered. “Why me? Why any of this?”
Matt’s heavy arm tightened around her shoulders. “That’s what we’ll find out. Right?” His eyes lifted to the screen.
It was exactly as if Luke Reynolds were in the room with them. His tired green eyes narrowed. “Better believe it,” he said and the screen winked off.
Laurel Canyon
Los Angeles
There was a cha
nge in the atmosphere of the room, like a current of cold air, though the outside temperature was mild and no outside door had been opened.
Chamness knew what it was. That icy Russian had come in. Chamness had worked for the CIA for 20 years and he’d met his share of tough guys. Hard men who had aggression profiles that were off the charts.
Matt Walker had been one of those, that fucker who’d almost derailed the present operation that was going to see him set for life. Walker had unexpectedly trashed his career for a bunch of Afghan boys.
Ivan Antonov was not that kind of man. He was tough, yes, but he was also cold. Nothing moved him, unless it was some preternatural allegiance to a distant concept he called Mother Russia. Some kind of construct some of the Russians in his orbit held of a resurgent Russia, born from the ashes of the Soviet Union to rule over the world.
But even here, Antonov didn’t show passion. To him, the rule of Russia over the world was a done deal, he was just putting the pieces into place.
Personally, Chamness didn’t give a fuck.
He intended to be far away when the shit hit the fan and to live out his life in ease and luxury. With the kind of money he’d have and with the kind of medicine available in the Far East, he’d live forever, too. Just buy himself replacement organs from the poor until his entire system failed, far far into the future.
“Chamness.” Antonov’s voice, a deep bass without inflection, startled him a little. Antonov was right behind him. The man moved soundlessly and Chamness found that creepy. “Thomas’s daughter escaped. She escaped four days ago. She died escaping.”
Chamness turned in alarm. He was the one responsible for keeping Thomas in line and functional. It was his one duty and it was an important one.
“What?”
Antonov didn’t repeat himself, just nodded.
Chamness damped down the squirt of adrenaline and bile. He wasn’t responsible for the fact that Thomas’s daughter had escaped but somehow it made him look bad. The men controlling her were Antonov’s men but the control itself, the fact that Thomas’s daughter controlled Thomas himself, was on him.
It was a complex plan that required Simon Thomas’s acquiescence, something he would never give without the strongest weapon they could wield — his daughter’s life.
Sweat broke out over Chamness’s back, but he would rather burn himself alive than let Antonov know how stressed he was.
He took a moment, sipped his whiskey. “How did she escape? I thought you were keeping her drugged and shackled.”
Antonov’s jaw muscles worked as if he were chewing on something unpleasant.
Well. Yeah. They were in the endgame now and they still needed Thomas. Afterward, Thomas would have to remain alive to absorb a goodly portion of the guilt. A wealthy shipowner who was drowning in debt who used his shipping company to poison Los Angeles for money. Exactly the kind of story that made sense to a lot of people. But Thomas’s daughter would be food for the fishes, as an old mafioso once said to him.
Who would believe the old man’s story when he was such a convenient scapegoat? Rich men would do anything for more. Everyone knew that.
“My men there think she managed to pull the IV from her arm for the night, and was weak but awake the next morning.”
“What was the drug?”
“A mixture of ketamine and diazepam.”
“She should still have been disoriented, even after a twelve hour washout.”
“Well, she might have been disoriented, but she managed to stick the needle in her guard’s eye, grab the keys and unshackle herself and escape. She would have been weak but she managed. She stole a vehicle from the garage but crashed and burned.”
Chamness was frightened of Antonov, but he schooled his face. “Why wasn’t I told? I thought she was being filmed. And that the film was livestreamed to Thomas.”
“Filmed, yes. But not livestreamed any more, though that’s what we told him.”
“What is he watching, then?”
“We have a lot of hours of his daughter, sleeping, drugged. We are looping it. He won’t be able to tell anything from the short videos we are showing him.”
“And nobody was manning the video cameras there? How many men are there anyway?”
“Two. And they were asleep. They were the ones to loop the recording. They were too frightened to tell us. But I found out. I’d sent one of my personal team up there and he didn’t tell me, either. He’s very sorry for that.”
Chamness put the glass down, hand steady. Well, none of this was his fault or even in any way controlled by him. These were men Antonov had recruited. “I trust the men have been punished. That is really sloppy work.”
“They are dead,” Antonov said, his voice flat. “All three of them. It took them a while to die.”
Chamness’ heart gave a huge thump in his chest, though nothing showed on his face. “Do we know what she did?”
“She took one of the vehicles. It had a transponder. Once they figured that out, that one of our vehicles was gone, one of the men followed the transponder.”
“That’s not good.” Chamness allowed himself a frown. Just enough of one to show worry about the plan, given the incompetence of Antonov’s men. He had nothing to do with this. “Where did she go?”
“Oddly enough, nowhere. She headed for the foothills of Mount Hood. She was driving fast. My man clocked the vehicle at 120 km an hour on bad country roads. She would have still been under the effects of the drug. She ran off the road and rolled down a steep cliff. My man got there in time to see the vehicle explode.”
“So she’s dead. What are you going to do now?” Chamness took another sip of his whiskey. Careful not to say ‘we’.
Antonov’s expression grew even icier. He understood well enough that Chamness was distancing himself from the fiasco. Good. Suddenly, Chamness was tired of all this alpha male bullshit. He’d had more than enough of that in his years at the CIA. Posturing, constantly calculating words and actions.
So tedious.
Well, in three days, when it was over and he was flying to his island near Bali via Mexico, he’d congratulate himself on keeping his cool and keeping his eye on the big prize.
Antonov stood rigidly, gazing out the big picture windows at the mansions below. Mansions that would soon be abandoned. He looked pissed, but in control. There were, however, micromuscles around his eyes and mouth that twitched.
Chamnes understood body language. At the Farm, Chamness had attended lessons by professors who had made it their life’s task to study the body language of humans. He knew how to interpret Antonov’s body language.
Antonov was pissed and he was tense.
He was pulling off something huge, something world-changing, so … as the youngsters would say, props for that. A lot could still go wrong, though.
Chamness, all in all, didn’t really care. He had his money in the bank. In three days, whether the plan was successful or not, the bank had orders to transfer the second half of the money that would change him from a rich man to a tycoon. He had his alternative persona ready, his bug-out plan was airtight. His ass was covered. So the daughter had been sacrificed. Too bad.
“So …” He glanced at Antonov out of the corner of his eyes. “What’s the plan?”
“We proceed as planned. We don’t really need her any more, as long as those images control the father, we’re fine.”
“Good,” Chamness said, and finished his whiskey.
The Grunge
“Another bite.” Matt held a fork of apple-cinnamon muffin in front of her mouth. They’d been having breakfast and somehow she ended up on his lap, being fed. She didn’t even remember exactly how she ended up here, on his hard thighs, back supported by his strong arm. It felt delicious but it also felt like a very un-Honor thing to do.
She couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d sat on a man’s lap. Maybe never. Maybe the last time had been when she sat on her Daddy’s lap when she was a little girl.
Why, oh why had she not tried snuggling before? It was so amazingly delicious, being held. Feeling Matt’s warm skin and hard muscles, under her, around her. She placed her palm over his chest and felt his strong, slow heartbeat.
When had she last felt a heartbeat in a non-medical setting? Not frantically looking for a beat in an accident victim who was bleeding out, but feeling the strong beat of someone she cared about, simply because she could.
“Another bite,” Matt urged. “I worked really hard on these muffins.”
Honor rolled her eyes but obediently opened up. Man, those muffins were good.
“You did not bake these muffins,” she said.
“I nuked them.” That dent appeared in his cheek. “That counts for something.”
“Not much.”
“I chose them. Out of a menu of ten types of muffins. Surely that counts?” His voice sounded aggrieved.
“Yeah, choosing these gives you points, though I suspect the others are just as delicious.”
“Tomorrow is cranberry. My favorite.”
Honor opened her mouth to reply and Matt’s phone pinged.
Video conference now.
Honor leaned back, looking at his screen. “Who’s that?”
He kissed her, eased her off his lap. “Luke. I think he has news.”
And just like that, the mood shifted, the world crashed back like an anvil bearing down on them. For a moment, Honor had felt almost light-hearted. For a moment she’d forgotten that she was fighting for her life. Because as long as her abduction was shrouded in mystery, they could come for her again as soon as she showed her face.
Appear out of nowhere and take her away, with no guarantee that she’d live through it.
She had Matt, now, true. And his team. And they were formidable. But she was an emergency ward physician. No one knew better than she did that a hair separated life from death. If her shadowy enemies wanted to get her, they would, eventually. If they waited long enough, she’d make a mistake and in one second they could kill her.
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 15