by Dale Mayer
She groaned. “You’re accusing a group that I’ve worked with for years and my own assistant who comes into my house and here you know information about my family that I don’t have any access to,” she said. “And yet you want me to help you.”
“I think you’ve been living out in the cold too long,” he said quietly. “Just because I work for the government doesn’t make me a bad guy. Just because you’re an activist doesn’t make you a bitch.”
She gasped at that. “Is that how the rest of the world sees me?”
“Activists have a role to play in this bigger world,” he said. “But you can’t just pigeonhole everybody as black-and-white in this scenario.”
“I know that,” she said. “The trouble is, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now. You’re tearing apart my world, and I don’t like it.”
“Of course you don’t like it,” he said. “Who would? But the bottom line is, somebody kidnapped you. Do you want help sorting this out or not?”
She sat down beside him. “You’re making me crazy,” she said.
As she reached for his coffee cup, he moved it out of her way. “Go lie down again,” he ordered.
She glared at him and looked at his coffee cup, then back up at him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he snapped. “Get up, go over to the couch, and lie down.”
“I’m not a dog,” she said.
He growled, stood, and swept her into his arms, then walked into the living room and gently laid her down. He pulled the blanket back over her and said, “Now sleep.” And he turned and walked away. He knew she wouldn’t likely stay, but it’s what she needed. She was alternating between reasonable and unreasonable, and that went along with exhaustion and all the rest of this adrenaline butt-kicking scenario that she’d been through. They would get along much better after she’d had a nap.
Nico turned around to see if she was up and ready to come after him again, instead he saw her curled up in a fetal position with her eyes closed. He glanced at Keane, who stared at him with an odd look in his eye. Nico sat down and whispered, “What?”
Keane’s lips kicked up at the corner. He didn’t say a word and shook his head, but his grin widened.
Nico glared at his buddy for a moment and then said, “Have you gotten anywhere with those names?”
“Friends, no connection to anything suspicious. No records, not even traffic tickets for most cases.”
“Let’s start on the people in the group.”
“I’ve already taken off one name.”
“Good.” Nico said. “One of the guys quit, Steve Darwin, who was Australian.”
“Good. Contact him.”
Nico went through the Mavericks databases and did a quick search. There didn’t appear to be anything outside of a couple arrests for public conduct at a big rally. Nico did find a phone number. After he dialed it, he stepped outside in the backyard, so he wouldn’t disturb Charlotte. When a voice answered, he questioned if this was the Steve Darwin of the GA group. “Yes. Who’s this?”
He identified himself as a friend of Charlotte’s. “We’re investigating a kidnapping that happened in Australia. It’s brought us into the activist realm,” he said. “And we’re wondering if you have any knowledge of death threats sent or assaults. Maybe even other kidnappings.”
“I don’t have anything to do with that life anymore,” he said. “I was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. That’s been my life since I left. What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Nico gave a brief description on the recent events. “She was not scheduled to go at all, but the actual organizer said that she was put down due to an error between her assistant and the organizers. But then everybody was fairly adamant that she go, even though she hadn’t booked it.”
“That’s because normally I go every year,” he said. “And this year I couldn’t go. So they switched out me for her. I may have mentioned that she could go in my place, and I probably completely forgot to even mention it to her. I’ve been a little overwhelmed with my own world. For that, I owe her an apology.”
“And I’m sure she’d like to get it,” he said. “She’s pretty unnerved after showing up and then never making the keynote speech.”
“I heard about that,” he said. “I don’t have a clue who would be involved in the kidnapping though. We’ve had dissidents at every rally. Sometimes we think it’s private citizens. Sometimes though it makes you wonder if some of these big chemical companies and industrial mills and whatnot aren’t following the rules and instead are putting people in to cause trouble. But to kidnap someone? I don’t know. That seems a bit far-fetched to me.”
“So you’ve never had anything like that happen at one of these rallies before?”
“No, nothing like that at all.”
“Well, if you think of anything, please call me and let me know.” With that, he walked inside and quickly shared the information with Keane.
“That’s a complete change of life direction,” Keane said. “In his case, it’s quite understandable though.”
“Exactly. And it explains why he walked away.”
“And Charlotte wants to go in a different direction, which is also understandable, and somebody else is probably quite eager to step into her place.”
“Would that somebody have her kidnapped, with no intention of killing her, just to take over her spot?”
“Seems far-fetched,” Keane said. “But again I don’t have a clue what these people are like. We would think the violence wasn’t the way that they operated, but …”
“It’s also possible they hired somebody to do the job, and the orders either got confused or somebody got a little too eager.”
“Still seems far-fetched.”
They got up several times and refilled their coffee cups until the pot was gone and worked their way through every name on the list. Finally Nico shut the lid on his laptop and said, “I’ve got nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“I know,” Keane said. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment. Just then came a rap on the front door. They looked at each other and immediately bolted. With Keane on the opposite side of the door and Nico standing near the doorknob, he pulled open the door to see a man standing there and frowning at him.
“Nico?”
“Yes, who’s calling? Who are you?” Nico asked. But then he knew. He recognized the facial features. “I presume you can come in.”
“Well, it doesn’t make much difference now if I’m in or out,” he said. “But, yes, inside would probably be better.”
He let in the man. Introduced him to Keane. “And your name?”
He took a slow, deep breath, and said, “My name is Joshua, a name I haven’t used in many years.” He looked around. “Is Charlotte here?”
“She’s on the couch, sleeping,” Nico said. “Come on through this way.” He led the way to find Charlotte sitting up, slowly rubbing the sleep from her eyes. When she saw the stranger, she bolted to her feet, coming awake almost instantly. She walked over, then frowned at him, and asked, “Who are you, and why are you here?”
A slow grin came across the stranger’s face. “Well,” he said, “I heard that maybe somebody was interested in meeting me.” The two men waited to see if she finally understood. But, when she didn’t, Joshua said, “My name—I haven’t used it in a long time though—that you would know me by is Joshua.”
She stared at him in shock. “Joshua?” Her gaze was searching as she studied the man in front of her.
He nodded slowly. “Remember me?”
Chapter 10
Charlotte stared at the man in front of her, but her brain didn’t want to compute. “Seriously, my brother Joshua?”
He gave her that smile that she remembered, only it was so much older looking now. “Yeah,” he said. “Hi, sis.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and he opened his arms. She raced into them, and the two just held each other close. When she finally could s
niffle back the joy that threatened to bubble over, she said, “Seriously, if you knew I was here all this time, why didn’t you contact me?” she cried out. He looked at the two men as if for their help. “You did this, didn’t you?”
Nico stared at her steadily. “Are you now unhappy that you know that he’s alive?”
She was stunned. “But we just had that conversation about an hour and a half ago,” she said.
“But it has been several hours since we had the original one,” he said. “And the bottom line is, it was time to bring him in anyway.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. She couldn’t stop staring at Joshua. She had one photo of her parents, and he looked so much like their father. Her gaze kept going from one man to the others. “Why?”
Joshua answered, “Because I’ve been undercover, working for the government,” he said. “And some threats were raised, and some alarms were set off that maybe I was compromised. And that your kidnapping might be connected.”
“But that would mean that somebody would know that I existed, as your sister, that is,” she said. “For all I knew, you were dead, running away from foster care and hitting the streets at sixteen and dying of an overdose.”
He laughed at that. “You always did have a great imagination.”
She gave him a pained look. “I imagined a million scenarios,” she whispered. “But I can’t say that you knowing that I was living here while you were alive and well, yet not contacting me, was one of them.” Instantly she could see the sorrow on his face.
“It was for your own safety,” he said. “And I know that sounds very hollow and empty, but, considering that you were kidnapped and two of the kidnappers and a lone gunman have since died, obviously there was a reason for it.”
“Maybe,” she whispered. “But what about before you went into the Secret Service?”
“My work was overseas mostly for another department,” Joshua corrected her.
Charlotte waved her hand. “What about before you became an undercover whatever it is that you do? Couldn’t you have contacted me then?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I went through a really rough childhood after they separated us. I became very suicidal, and I figured that you were much better off without me. We’d spent enough years apart at that point in time, and I didn’t even know how to find you back then. I never did finish school, but I finally entered the military and found that I was on a fast track somehow, moving on up into the work I currently do. And I’m good at it. Finally being good at something was great, but it also meant that, when I went into it, I had to get rid of my true identity. It was perfect in a way because I didn’t have any family. They knew that I had a sister lost in the system, but I hadn’t had any contact with you for so many years that it became just one of those little footnotes at the bottom of the page.”
“And you think that one of those little footnotes was read by the wrong person?”
“It’s possible,” he admitted. “It’s really hard to have any answers. I hope not, as in I really hope not, but I can’t be sure.”
“And what would the bad guys getting a hold of me mean in terms of your work?”
“Blackmail’s the biggest threat. I can’t give you many details of the work that I do or possibly was doing,” he said. “But the minute you become compromised, and you can be blackmailed, then …” He just opened his hands. “Basically that means my job’s over.”
She sagged down again on the kitchen chair, finding that her world had suddenly just shifted in a huge way. “I can’t believe that you were so close by.”
“Not really. But, once my cover seemingly was blown, the government removed me from my undercover assignment and, after being debriefed in DC, I got the message about you being here. So I came to Coronado,” he said. “I landed about thirty minutes ago and came straight here.”
“Then you made good on the traffic.”
He laughed. “I did, indeed.”
“Is it safe for you to be here?” She looked at him anxiously because the last thing she wanted to do was lose him now that he was here.
“As safe as I can be,” he said.
She groaned. “This is all that super-secret spy stuff. It’s not a world I know.”
“No, you wouldn’t. When I did see your name for the first time in the papers, your maiden name, I was shocked. I enjoyed following you in the news, but I couldn’t dare reach out to contact you at that point in my career. Here you were making headlines all around the world,” he said with a grin. “While you lived out in public, I lived in the shadows.”
“And I get that you say you were good at it,” she said, “but did you like being in the shadows?”
“It was good for a while,” he said. “I’m two years younger than you, so you can imagine how many years I’ve been doing this.”
“Time for a change maybe?”
“Maybe. I may not have a choice at this point.”
“Right,” she said. “I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble.”
He smiled. “And I’m sorry if I caused you to get kidnapped. That can’t have been very much fun.”
“For me, not so much,” she whispered. “But two of the four original kidnappers involved had it much worse.”
“Not to mention the gunman who died,” Keane added.
“And that is a concern,” Joshua said. “Because, if the mastermind is killing people, they’re cleaning up their tracks.”
“Who would do this?” she asked.
“I was working in Russia,” Joshua said. “Very close to a businessman running a lot of drugs and women through Eastern Europe. I was feeding information back to the European countries in order to track him down and to get all his various little stations, so we could take them all out at the same time. Your kidnapping event basically moved up that time frame.”
“So does your government boss know you’re here?”
“He knows that I’m coming to check on a couple supply houses, yes. As does my Russian boss.”
“Supplies here?” she asked, her face paling. “That’s pretty ugly to think about.”
“It’s all ugly to think about,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s any less real in this world right now.”
“So, if that was the case, and you were undercover with that big businessman, would somebody go to that effort to kidnap me?”
“Some files were stolen from one of the government offices, and it revealed some names. Mine was one of them.”
“Ouch.”
He nodded. “We were thinking that we were safe because nothing happened for the first couple weeks. Your kidnapping was the first indication that maybe I’ve been compromised. The decision was then made to pull me and the other four people whose names were leaked.”
“So now you’ve left your undercover position, your government boss is busy hiring somebody to replace you, or are you still working with the government?”
“All the undercover take-down plans are happening right now,” he said. “There will be sweeps on more than forty different locations over the next three days. It’s best if I’m not even over there right now, and, as for my immediate future, I have no idea what I’ll do next.”
“Does it line up that maybe I was kidnapped at the same time?”
“It is possible,” he said. “Because, just before you were kidnapped—maybe four days before—we found a connection to this trafficking scheme that led to an Australian group. And maybe they were a little more adamant about finding a way to get back at us. Maybe they had access and found my name and realized that they were in trouble and decided to preempt any raid on their place.”
“So kidnapping me would stop you from raiding this Australian location or would stop you from turning over any of the information on them?”
He nodded. “And honestly, they aren’t part of the raids that we’ve got planned so far.”
“Why not them?”
“We didn’t have a chance to even organize that,”
he said. “It was new information that just came in, but they had enough time to react. If they were told about me, then they could have gone on the offense, but it’s hard to say. We’re still waiting for answers.”
“Can you take out the Australian group at the same time?”
He shook his head. “No, not at all. It takes a lot of time to set this up.”
“So will you let them think they got away with it?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten they’re there. Or how they’re operating. Wouldn’t hurt in the least to spend some time studying them to make sure that we pick up all their supply lines of their network. It’ll spread all across New Zealand and through Southeast Asia.”
She shook her head. “That’s pretty big stuff,” she admitted.
“We’re hoping to save several-hundred-plus women,” he said, “and that’s without counting children.”
“Oh, my God,” she cried out. “That’s terrible.”
“Unfortunately it’s also life,” he said. “As soon as we cut and destroy this network, a competing one will rise to the surface.”
She rubbed a hand to her temple. “In theory, if that’s what this is all about, then I should be safe in my own home, right?”
Joshua shook his head. “No, because, if anybody found out about you, then you’re not safe at all.”
“So what’ll happen?”
“The interesting part of the plan is already in progress,” he said.
“What plan is that?”
He laughed. “I have to die.”
Nico understood. He also heartedly approved. “Is it time to come in from the cold?”
Joshua looked at him and slowly nodded. “Never really thought about it before,” he said. “When you’re busy doing this kind of work, living a fake life, you don’t think about the other side of it. But, with everything blowing up, as it has this past week, I think it’s definitely time for a change of career.” His grin turned lopsided. “Still be in the government though.”
“Understood,” Nico said. “It would be nice to confirm that the kidnapping had something to do with it though. Because otherwise we’re tearing apart her life here as well as yours.”