“Right.”
Honor knew what he was doing. She did a version of this all the time with concussed or drugged-out patients. Do a question and answer, make the patient repeat or confirm what was said, to imprint it in the memory. It worked. She was getting a clearer picture of what had happened with every passing moment.
“And once in the compound, you went up to his office.” He made it a statement.
“Correct. I didn’t think he’d be there but I knew his computer would be and maybe there’d be some sign of what was going on. In his constant campaign to get me to take over management of the company, my father often briefed me on what was going on with the company. And I have total access to everything.”
“You thought there would be some kind of clue there.”
“I did. And I was hoping with all my heart to find out that he was in the middle of some important business negotiation and not that he was in the cardiology department of a hospital, or dead in the morgue.”
Honor wanted that last bit to be said with exasperation but her voice wobbled and she couldn’t control the tears that sprang in her eyes. She turned her face away.
When she was composed, she steadied her voice. “I have very vague memories of going to the Portland office of Quest Line Shipping but right now I’m not pulling up anything else, and don’t remember actually going up.”
Matt glanced toward the screen where Luke was watching them, a sober expression on his face.
“You went up.” Luke switched screens. On the screen was a fairly grainy black and white image of her walking into the side entrance of the building. It then switched to a view of her in the elevator.
Honor watched herself. She had absolutely no memory of this. She was dressed in the clothes she’d had on when Matt fished her out of the river. The time stamp on the video said June 6, 4.17 pm, so she’d been in those clothes for six days. Clothes that had been cut off her and presumably thrown away. She’d been fond of that sweater. And those were her favorite pants.
Stalling in her head. It still made her sick to think of being abducted by unknown men.
She was standing straight and still, holding her briefcase with both hands. The briefcase.
She leaned forward. “Wait. What happened to my briefcase?”
“We found it under the desk in your father’s office. Whoever took you didn’t find it. They were probably intent on getting you out of there as fast as possible.”
That sick feeling again, that unremembered yet potent image of unknown men, drugging her, taking her. Wiping days of her life from her memory. The sense of violation went deep.
“We’ll get them.” This from Matt. That deep voice sounded so sure. As if not getting them were unthinkable.
“Shit, yeah,” Luke chimed from the screen. “They are going down.”
“But who are they?” Honor’s voice wobbled again, the fear she thought she’d beaten down rising sharply again. She hated that. In emergencies she always made sure her voice was strong and decisive. She was responsible for saving lives and tone of voice and body language were almost as important as actual medical knowledge in reassuring the broken and wounded men, women and children on gurneys who came into the emergency ward close to death.
Her voice never wobbled. Until now.
“Here’s who they are.” Luke switched screens again. Two men, in a grainy black and white photograph. “They wiped the tapes where they appeared but they missed a couple of seconds.” He gave a wintry smile. “Felicity caught it, this fragment.”
Matt’s smile was wolfish. “Never mess with Felicity.”
“Nossir,” Luke said. He leaned forward, clicking again on an unseen keyboard.
“The images aren’t sharp but Felicity done good.”
The two men, tall, broad-shouldered, wearing track suits, had faint boxes around their faces. The faces were out of focus, features barely visible. How could anyone recognize anything from those photos? But then another keystroke and two clearer faces showed up, magnified. Followed by two mug shots. Data scrolled underneath them.
“Bless you, Felicity. You saved our bacon,” Matt said. He glanced at her. “Felicity does what you do. Saves lives.”
She did indeed.
Honor frowned as she read the data under the photos. She reared back in shock.
“They’re — they’re Russian!”
“Mm.” Matt said. His eyes tracked the data.
Honor was almost incapable of reading and taking in the data. Her mind snagged on that one fact. The men who’d taken her were Russian. Why on earth had Russians abducted her, drugged her, kept her prisoner? Her head swam. Nothing made any sense.
Matt and Luke looked unfazed. They were used to this kind of thing. Maybe if the men had turned out to be three-headed Martians they’d have been surprised, but not this.
“So what’s the Russian connection?” Luke asked, voice hard. As if she’d been keeping something back.
Matt made a low sound in his throat. Honor put a hand on his forearm. It felt like warm steel.
She turned back to the huge screen. “I don’t know, Luke. As far as I know I don’t have a Russian connection. I know I don’t have any Russian blood. We’re Scotch Irish all the way, both sides of the family. I’ve never been to Russia. My father’s been twice, for business, but briefly. I don’t have any Russian friends and there isn’t a big Russian community in Portland. I know two words in Russian. Da and dasvidanya.” She lifted her shoulders helplessly. “I just — it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Look at the faces,” Matt urged. “Do either of them look familiar?”
Obediently, Honor turned back to the screen and scrutinized the brutish faces up there.
Igor Bugayev and Yuri Gribkov. The names meant nothing to her. The faces meant nothing to her.
She was so out of her depth in this world. Like stumbling on ice covering dark depths. This was not her world, this world where things unraveled.
Honor was specialized in putting things back together, putting them right. Her thing was using all her skills and hundreds of years of medical research to make things right again, make people whole and healthy again.
Though that wasn’t quite true. Even in her world, things were unraveling way beyond her ability to heal. Two school shootings in one week had shattered her faith in the world being essentially whole and she and her colleagues were on the front lines, making sure everything held.
Sometimes things didn’t hold …
“Honor?”
She shook herself. No point in dwelling on past hells when there was a current hell to deal with. “Sorry.”
Matt squeezed her hand gently. “Nothing to be sorry about. How many times do I have to say it? So Luke and I want you to look at those faces, see if there’s anything familiar about them.”
She did her best. Matt and Luke gave her time, not pushing her.
Showing no impatience at all, though it must be frustrating waiting for the fog in a person’s head to lift.
It didn’t lift. She stared and stared until her eyes burned. A sigh of frustration. It was hard to disappoint these two men who were working so hard to help her. “I’m afraid —”
Honor stopped. Cocked her head to the right, to the left. She didn’t speak while she chased an elusive thought.
“I —” she stopped again.
Matt was watching her carefully, not saying a word. Not pushing her in any way.
Honor stared some more at the images. “Show me the original images of them. The full body ones.”
Luke didn’t answer but the screen immediately showed the men. They were similarly built, she could see that now. Tall, broad-shouldered. They were maybe six feet tall.
Their faces weren’t in any way familiar, but there was something about them …
Honor held up a hand, held her breath. Matt and Luke were completely still, waiting.
She knew something, she knew she knew something, but it was almost impossible to put her finger on
it. Staring at the photo so hard the figures seemed to shimmer, there was something …
One of the men kept his elbows out as he walked. The other had a swagger, chest out, shoulders back. Honor suddenly knew this. But how could she know it if their faces meant nothing to her?
And yet it was as if she could see the two of them walking down that corridor, elbows akimbo, chest puffed out. How could she …
“They wore masks,” she said. Almost surprised at the words coming out of her mouth. “But I remember how they moved.”
Matt nodded. “Makes sense. They thought they eliminated the video footage. They put on masks later, when they abducted you. They didn’t want you seeing their faces. I don’t think they expected you to recognize how they walked.”
“Gait.” Honor switched her gaze between Matt and Luke. “I’ve attended several medical conferences on gait. It’s as important a diagnostic tool as blood pressure. You can tell a lot about a person by their gait.”
Matt nodded. “Anything else? Do you have even the slightest memory of the abduction itself?”
Honor wanted to say no, but she hesitated. The fog in her head was so frustrating. It ebbed and billowed, parting at the oddest moments.
“Let’s run through it as if you could remember,” Luke suggested. “I mean we know the basics. You were in your father’s office. Presumably you were sending him a message on the office computer, right?”
Honor nodded. That sounded right. She didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to hear her own voice in her head because it disturbed the vague images, mere wisps, that were forming.
Sitting down at her father’s desk. He had a super expensive office chair that practically held you up on air and all but made you coffee. She lusted after a chair like that and always refrained from telling her father because he’d have bought her ten of them.
Sitting down, firing up the computer. Logging in …
“They — they came in to the outer office as I was logging on to my father’s computer. The outside of the building is sound-proofed but you can hear what’s happening in the outer office. My dad didn’t use that office much, as I said, so sound proofing wasn’t an issue. I could hear —”
She tilted her head, trying to jump start her memory, as if it were a tape she could replay.
“I could hear them in the outside room. I —” she pushed her thumbs against her forehead. If she could, she would have pushed through the bone of the cranium and grabbed her own brain and shaken it. “I switched on the video cameras and looked at what was in the outer room. I saw —” she squeezed her eyes shut and all of a sudden the clouds parted and she could see it, feel it, as if it were happening all over again. A flood of memories that was both welcome and terrifying. “I saw two men, but couldn’t see their faces because they already had masks on. If they’d managed to break into the outer room they wouldn’t have any difficulties in breaking into the office. There was a note on the screen from my father. He said he was having problems with his new sleeping partner, Lee Chamness —”
Matt sat up as if poked by a cattle prod. Luke, too, suddenly looked like he’d been given an electric shock.
“What?” Matt said.
“Lee Chamness.” Honor frowned. “That name is familiar. You talked about him, right? That horrible story of the CIA officer and the young boys.”
“That was him all right.” Matt’s face was cold, grim, dark eyes icy. It would have been scary if that expression were aimed at her but it wasn’t. “Nastiest fuck on earth. What does he have to do with your father?”
“Like I said, he’d been having some financial difficulties. Two ships caught fire. Nobody knew how. But in the meantime, Dad lost two ships and two shipments and he had huge insurance problems. This guy came to him, wanted to be an investor but would leave everything in Dad’s hands. My dad had him researched and he seemed solid. High-up government bureaucrat who’d inherited some money.”
“High up CIA fuckhead,” Matt said grimly. “And that money no doubt came from drug trafficking.”
A huge painful jolt of anxiety shot through her. Honor’s voice was sharp. “My Dad wouldn’t have known about any of that. Nothing at all. He’s a totally honorable man and would never ever do anything criminal. Ever.” She gripped Matt’s arm tightly. “You must believe me.”
“Oh, I do.” Matt covered her hand with his. Warm strength seemed to flow from him to her. “I’m sure your father is innocent in all this. But I also think he’s somehow involved. So we have what? Lee Chamness investing in your father’s company. Am I correct?”
Honor scrunched up her nose. It was all so nebulous. “I — I think. Dad was very expansive when things were going well but he closed up when things weren’t. Which was why we were fighting because he took even worse care of himself than usual. I was worried about his health, really worried. The business was secondary. I didn’t pay that much attention to what was going on with the company, I was paying attention to the effect it had on my father’s health.”
Matt repeated what he’d said. “So Chamness was part owner of your father’s business.” He made it a statement.
“I’m not sure.” Honor shook her head when Matt opened his mouth to speak. “No, really. I’m not certain he became an actual owner. I think there was a complicated private contract between the two whereby he gave my father an infusion of capital and was guaranteed a big cut of the profits for a specified period of time. My father explained it to me but I was more interested in the fact that he started sleeping again after this arrangement was agreed to. I think he was just relieved that the ownership of Quest Line Shipping remained his.” Matt and Luke somehow exchanged glances though they were thirty miles apart. “What?”
“Nothing, honey.” Matt shrugged. “Just a theory. Let’s get back to when you were in his office and you saw two masked men outside in the outer office. What were you doing when you noticed them?”
What difference does it make? Honor wanted to say, but bit the words back. Matt was trying to piece together an overall picture on the basis of her scanty information. She couldn’t find any kind of rational link because what she was remembering was so episodic. And there was still a lot buried inside her head.
“I was —” she closed her eyes, dived into herself. She couldn’t afford distraction, certainly couldn’t afford to look at Matt, who seemed to be a black hole soaking up all her attention. “I was reading something.”
Something her father had left her. Yes!
“Dad had left me a message on our secret message board. I’d forgotten all about it until now. I logged on out of exasperation and worry, thinking I was chasing clouds but then there was a message from him.” Her eyes opened. She met Matt’s gaze, held it. “He said Lee Chamness was dangerous. He said to find you, Matt Walker. And he gave me coordinates. His desk was empty, there was nothing to write on, the men were opening up the office door.”
Matt nodded once. “So you wrote my name and the coordinates of the Grange on your arm in ink.”
“Yes. I just had the time to pull the sleeve down over it and they walked in.” She breathed heavily, as if suddenly all the oxygen in the world had disappeared. Her heart started beating a frantic tattoo. “They were so big and they had masks on. They were terrifying. One had a piece of cloth in his hand. By the time I thought to try to fight back, the other man had grabbed me and they put the cloth over my face. I recognized the smell of chloroform. And that was it. I blacked out.”
Matt’s face was even grimmer than when he’d found her, half dead and terrified.
There was utter silence. Matt picked her hand up and brought it to his mouth. Her hand was chilled. She was chilled, remembering how terrified she’d been. How she’d understood that she was no match at all for two strong men. They’d been masked and she knew they meant to harm her. In those few seconds of terror as the chloroform-soaked cloth was rising to her mouth, she thought she was living the last moments of her life. The horror and despair had risen in her like a b
lack cloud and she shivered at the memory, though the room was warm.
As was Matt’s hand and his mouth. Again, it was as if he were giving her an infusion of heat and strength. Of life.
She looked at his hand. So strong. Raised veins on the back, the sinews clearly visible. Strong like that other hand, only —
“He had a tattoo,” she said suddenly. Matt’s eyes narrowed, as did Luke’s.
“What kind?” Luke asked and she looked at him gratefully. Neither of them asked what? Or are you sure?
She was sure. Now that the image was back in her memory, she’d never forget that hand. The image was burned into her mind forever.
“Yes. On his fingers. On the proximal interphalangeal joint.”
Silence.
She pointed to her own fingers. “Four letters. Or at least they looked like letters. Symbols, maybe. Right here between the knuckles and the first finger joint. On the —” She closed her eyes. “On the right hand.”
“Can you draw the letters or symbols?” Matt asked.
“Nope. Sorry. It was a fleeting glimpse.”
Luke had vanished from the screen but she could hear his deep voice murmuring in the darkness. He reappeared.
“Got it,” he said. “Matt, you’re not going to like this.”
“I already don’t like this,” Matt growled. “Anything about it.”
“I contacted Felicity and had her focus on the guys’ hands. She just magnified the faces before. This is what she got.”
Luke disappeared and an image showed on the huge screen. A blow up of a hand.
Four letters on the index, middle, ring and little fingers.
круг
“Fuck,” Matt breathed.
“Yeah,” Luke answered.
They both had tight faces.
“What?” she said. “What’s that?”
Matt turned to her. “That’s a symbol of the Bratski Krug. Circle of Brothers.”
“Never heard of it before. What is it?”
“Russian mafia,” Matt said. “An international mob based in Russia. Specialized in drug trafficking.”
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 17