Running the Risk

by Lea Griffith

  “Nadege brings us to Dr. Gabrielle Moeller. Twenty-eight years old, graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Said to show great promise, she was slated to perform her residency at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, but never followed through. She’s the daughter of Harold and Caroline Moeller, deceased some twelve years ago. Her father was at one time the ambassador to China, and he was a two-time senator from Maryland. Gabrielle Moeller went to an all-girl private Catholic high school, and here’s where things really get interesting—she met Anna Beth Caine at Saint Pius, and they became inseparable until two years ago when they both disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “Lots of people falling off the face of the earth, Vivi,” Rook said, an edge to his voice that displayed his concern.

  “Yeah, Granger. They disappear, but they don’t realize I’m the one looking for them,” Vivi said with a grin.

  Rook grunted.

  Vivi huffed. “I really hate when you do that.”

  Ella just wanted her to hurry the hell up. She needed to get to Jude. It was a driving mantra in her head. Every second her teammates traded loving quips or secret grins was another second she was without him.

  “Okay, what’s the connection between Moeller, Anna Beth Caine, and Dresden?” Allie Redding tossed out.

  “I’m not sure where Moeller falls in other than her connection to Anna Beth. And let’s talk Anna Beth Caine,” Vivi said, taking a deep breath and once again consulting her iPad. “Born twenty-six years ago, second daughter of Noah Caine,” Vivi said, pulling her glasses down as she looked each person in the eye. “Our Piper.”

  Everyone nodded. By the pall in the air, everyone understood the weight of his picture on the board.

  “Anna Beth is Caine’s second daughter. Cameron, married name Markov, was born two years previous. The Piper’s wife died in childbirth with Anna Beth. Caine took the loss hard and moved his daughters to the Maryland countryside, buying a property that butted up against… Anybody?” No one answered, and King made a motion with his hand to hurry Vivi up. She huffed again but continued. “He bought the property beside Harold and Caroline Moeller.”

  “Is there a reason for that information?” Ella asked, a queasy feeling in her gut.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe we can figure that out. But allow me to continue,” Vivi answered. “Caine was just beginning his stint on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Harold Moeller was the ambassador to China. I’m digging, but I’m thinking we’ll find out these two families were close, and no, I don’t know what role that plays in things.

  “Anna Beth and Cameron were schooled at Saint Pius, and there are hints that when the Moellers died in a car crash, Piper took on the raising of Gabrielle Moeller. Gabrielle and Anna Beth both dual-enrolled at Johns Hopkins University their senior year in high school and entered medical school the summer after they graduated from college. Gabrielle’s focus was plastic surgery. Anna Beth’s was psychiatry. But again, though they graduated, they never completed residency. Where was Cameron through all this though? I searched and searched and couldn’t find Cameron, and then I turned to your dad’s files, Allie, the ones you sent me last night?”

  Allie nodded, disquiet marking her features.

  “Dresden wants Gabrielle Moeller because of her specialty,” Ella said aloud, the possibility too great to ignore.

  “He wants to disappear under another face?” Brody asked in horror.

  Ella nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Silence reigned for a few moments as everyone absorbed that tidbit.

  “Big risk to take…letting someone who never even completed their residency carve on your face.” King pondered the thought.

  “Back to the files.” Vivi spoke up again. “Cameron is mentioned once and never again. She entered a CIA training camp at age seventeen at the behest of her father.”

  “My dad took a seventeen-year-old on to train?” Allie asked in surprise.

  “Guess who trained her,” Vivi urged.

  Allie swallowed hard, but it was Ella who answered. “Loretta Bernstein.”

  Vivi slow-clapped. “Bitch shows up everywhere. But I don’t know where Cameron went after training. There’s no mention of her again, and there’s not enough information for me to build a code to search for her aliases or operative code name.”

  “She married Yevgeny Markov, now deceased. And Cameron, known as Svetlana, is dead now. I think Dresden is responsible for the sniper that took her out in Moscow. She took a bullet to the chest and head, but not before she gave up the thumb drive’s location and asked me to tell her dad to protect her sister,” Ella bit out. God, it played out like a bad movie behind her closed lids. Svetlana Markov, a.k.a. Cameron Caine, had married the devil to get further into Dresden’s organization. Had her father groomed her for that duty? And if he had, that meant he’d known Dresden was about to go rogue. How would he have known that ten years ago? And why in the hell would he use his daughter to keep track of the bastard? Maybe Dresden hadn’t been his initial objective.

  Ella’s head hurt trying to figure it all out.

  “Jesus Christ,” Brody muttered. “Who are we working for?”

  King held up his hand. “There’s more, Vivi. I can see it in your face.”

  She nodded. “While Cameron Caine was becoming Svetlana Markov, her sister, Anna Beth, was hitching her flag to our good old buddy, pal Horace Dresden. They became engaged shortly after Dresden graduated from BUD/S training. There are no society pictures, only a small announcement in the Washington Journal, but it’s there.”

  “Something happened though,” Ella began. “Because they most definitely are no longer engaged, and that was six years ago. Move forward two years from their engagement, and Dresden is betraying his teammates in the Hindu Kush and moving on to world domination. Four years later, Anna Beth Caine is a prisoner in Dresden’s cells.”

  Vivi mumbled something around her pen tip before she sighed. “I’m trying to account for their whereabouts the last two years. It makes no sense that they simply disappeared, leaving their lives incomplete and hanging, and now they’re both back on the scene. Moeller in Burundi, right in the heart of Abrafo Nadege’s backyard. And we all know where Anna Beth Caine is.”

  King turned to Ella. “Tell me how you found out about Anna Beth.”

  “After I left you, Rook, and Jude in Russia, I returned to Ukraine. Dresden was going to want answers about what happened in Moscow, how his grand deal had gone to shit. When I arrived, he said he had something to show me. It was Anna Beth Caine—living in the same cell I’d resided in after Beirut.”

  “You okay, Ella?” Brody asked. He’d know what thinking about that time in the cells would do to her.

  She gave him a small smile. “We’ve got to get her out, Brody.” Ella tapped her finger on the table and swallowed hard. “Dresden told me about Svetlana Markov being Cameron Caine and how Anna Beth was his former fiancée and Cameron’s sister. The connection to the Piper was right there, and Dresden taunted me with it.”

  “The link was there the whole time, but we had no idea to look for it. The Piper has a connection with Dresden—and it’s so goddamn personal he created an entire team to take the bastard down?” King asked in exasperation. “It doesn’t play out to me. There’s information we’re missing.”

  Ella both agreed and disagreed. “It’s more than personal, but don’t any of you fool yourself, it’s also very personal. So Rook, you guys want to share what happened in the Hindu Kush?”

  Rook closed his eyes before he drew in a deep breath and opened them again. Ella swore she could see the memories in them, violent and ruthless.

  Vivi covered her man’s hand and looked over at King. “Let me handle this?”

  King and Rook nodded at her.

  “When I first met Rook, he was at Leavenworth Correctional F
acility. Rook had saved my brother long enough for me to say goodbye. That alone merited my help. But when I started looking into the reason behind his incarceration, I discovered he’d been tried and imprisoned on faulty information.” She took a deep breath. “I busted Rook out of prison.” She glanced at her man and smiled. “You were a right ass when I first met you.”

  “But sexy,” he responded with a grin. “Don’t forget sexy.”

  “Too much for my own good,” she answered with a grin of her own. Her expression hardened. “And don’t think for two seconds I’m not pissed as hell about you not letting me have access to that file. I can crack it, Rook. I know I can!”

  Ella cleared her throat. Loudly. “Can we keep it moving?”

  Allie laughed. King grunted. Vivi smiled.

  “During the course of trying to clear Rook, we also found Jonah Knight. He wasn’t dead at all, but that’s a story for a different day.”

  “I’ll finish this, Viv,” Rook said. He glanced at Ella. “Knight and I were on that failed Hindu Kush op. It was a joint team operation. Dresden and another man were the SEALs of the group. Me and Knight were the Rangers. There were two CIA agents with us as well as four Force Recon marines. We were to meet with a tribal chief, Abu Bakr-Kabal, for information on Al-Qaeda and another shadowy group that was making waves on the terrorist map. We couldn’t get a bead on them or the organization, but it smelled bad so we needed the intel. We had about two million on us. Bakr-Kabal wasn’t giving up information for free.

  “Once we arrived at his village, sugar went to shit. We were targeted and viciously attacked. Knight, the other SEAL, and the four Force Recon soldiers didn’t make it out. Dresden disappeared, and for a while we thought he was dead. Only the two CIA agents and I walked out. I headed home and continued with life. I never heard anything else about the failed operation or Dresden until Endgame started being bandied around with Vivi. Endgame was the name on the disk Vivi knew of. It was the name of the Piper’s privatized black ops outfit, but it was also the name of the operation we ran in the Kush.”

  Something Rook had said stuck with Ella. “What were the names of the marines?”

  Vivi shot her a look and put her glasses back on. “Gimme a second,” she said. Two minutes later, she said, “David Small, Warren Gent, Henry Grant, and…oh shit!”

  Vivi’s eyes went round, and she leveled them on Ella.

  “Drake Cain. No e on the end.”

  Ella nodded. It made sense. “In your research of Caine, you never ran into a son?”

  “There’s nothing. He’s buried so deep that not even I turned him up.”

  “Probably the e,” Ella mused.

  “So the Piper, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a son on our op?” Rook asked, his gaze on King.

  King ran a hand over his forehead. “Makes sense why he was buried so deep now, doesn’t it?”

  “Dresden betrayed us, made off with the money, is responsible for the Piper’s son’s death, so he sets up an entire team to take the bastard down? Risked his daughters?” Rook asked in disbelief.

  “I still think the big picture is unfolding. You forget, he’s lost two children to Dresden, and his last one is in Dresden’s hold. There’s something bigger the Piper is after,” Ella warned.

  “Ask him,” Allie said as if it were the most logical thing in the world. “Just ask him. It’s obvious this is much bigger than any of you realize. If people in the White House are doing everything they can to silence and come after you, it’s apparent that Noah Caine is an island under attack. I don’t think the Piper is the enemy.”

  Ella agreed. But… “Doesn’t excuse his methods. He’s playing with our lives.”

  “Agreed,” Allie Redding admitted. “But outing him at this point doesn’t serve any purpose. And we have no way of knowing who’s friend or foe at the moment. My dad was betrayed by his second-in-command. Best course of action is to just pin the Piper down and ask him.”

  “You’ll have to find him,” Brody interjected. “He’s on a tour for the president that’s taking him all over the Middle East and, oh yeah, Russia.”

  “How has he evaded Dresden?” Vivi asked absently.

  Ella knew this one beyond a doubt. “It’s a game to Dresden. He’s keeping Caine on the line to hurt him. It’s deep between those two. Also, Dresden is part of a group that I can’t get a bead on. It sounds mysteriously like the group Rook was just telling us about.”

  “Man, this is a cluster,” King said around a sigh. “I haven’t heard from the Piper in a week. Strange. Worrisome. But we aren’t shut down. We still have access to our accounts. It’s almost as if he’s telling me something without telling me.”

  “Maybe he figured you’d discover the truth. Especially now that I’m back with the team,” Ella added with a shrug. “Vivi, I need Jude.”

  Every gaze slammed into Ella.

  She stood. “If Dresden gets him first, I’ll lose him. And if I lose him, I’ll set the world on fire, team leader.”

  “Vivi, do you know where Keeper is?”

  Vivi glanced uneasily at Rook.

  “I’m right here, Vivi,” King said in a hard voice. “I’m your team leader.”

  “Don’t talk to her that way, King,” Rook warned.

  “This is my team, Granger.” He shot Rook a hard look. “Tell me, Vivi,” King demanded in a softer tone.

  God, these men, Ella thought. Alpha. Badass. But so soft on the inside it defied expectation. She wanted hers back. Now.

  “He’s in Ukraine. According to my sources, he met up with Georgia Banks, FBI agent on loan to the CIA for covert ops. She’s known Jude for a while,” Vivi said, her eyes on Ella.

  “She’s the one who knocked me out and brought me to Jude the other day.” Ella grimaced. She would not get pissed off that he’d met up with another woman when he’d refused to let Ella go with him. “What’s their location in Ukraine?”

  “Sevastopol in Crimea,” Vivi answered.

  “Vivi,” Rook warned. “No more.”

  “I told him where she was. Right is right.” Viv was emphatic.

  Rook shook his head. King laughed. Allie looked uncomfortable.

  Brody stood up. “We headed out, Ella-Bella? Sounds like we got two folks to corral now.”

  She looked at Brody in shock. “No way, Madoc. You’re here. I’ll not—”

  “What you’ll not do is tell me how to live. I get it, Ella. I do. But I won’t hide from that motherfucker. Now when do we leave? If Keeper is setting up to give that bastard some, I’m going to be in on it,” Brody stated patiently.

  She gave up. She couldn’t protect everyone. She loved Brody like a brother, but she wasn’t his keeper. Keeper… Damn you, Jude, she thought. “Do you still have that contact in Sevastopol?”

  “Yeah,” Brody replied with a grin breaking across his face. “She’s probably missing me.” He rubbed a hand down his stubbled jaw. Brody was a huge dude and attractive. The scruff covered the scars on his lower face. Savidge had ravaged her friend’s face like he’d ravaged Ella’s back.

  “Tap her and set up a puddle jumper. We’ll head out tonight. Adam Babic owes me another favor. I’ll tag him for transpo…get him to set us up on board his next flight to Odessa. From there, we’ll hit the puddle jumper to Sevastopol,” Ella said, giving details as she rose and planned in her mind.

  Brody nodded.

  “There’s one more thing, team,” Vivi called out.

  “There’s more?” Rook asked in disbelief.

  “I got a kickback on one of our burner cards two weeks ago. I had put a trace on it because it wasn’t in Nina’s things when we picked them up from the hospital after she…” Vivi trailed off. There was no reason to say it.

  Ella rubbed her chest. Nina and Micah. She missed them.

  “And?” King prompted when Vi
vi didn’t continue.

  “It was used in Utah to purchase a plane ticket to Anchorage, Alaska.”

  Nothing niggled at Ella about Alaska. “Were you able to get any footage of who purchased it?” she asked Vivi.

  “Yeah.” Vivi turned around and pulled up the email, clicking on a link to the requested footage. “I just got the email response as we talked.”

  As they watched, grainy CCTV footage at the Provo, Utah, airport showed a woman walk up to the Alaskan Airlines desk and purchase a ticket. She turned back toward the camera, and the shock nearly took Ella to her knees.

  “No way,” she said breathlessly.

  “Let’s enhance this,” Vivi mumbled, doing her mojo. In seconds, a clearer picture of the woman’s face showed on the screen.

  “Nina?” Ella whispered.

  “What the hell is this?” King roared. “She’s dead. We buried her outside DC!”

  Vivi took the image down. “The plane landed in Anchorage on time yesterday morning. I’m looking for anything I can find after the plane landed. It may take me awhile with everything else going on. But, yeah, that looks like Nina Lassiter.”

  “I want to know where that woman is when we return, Vivi,” King demanded, pointing at the screen.

  Ella looked at her team leader. “You’re going?”

  “You don’t seriously think I’m going to let my team go without me?” he asked in a hard tone.

  She shrugged. “You left us in Beirut.” It came out before she could stop it.

  “We didn’t know,” King said in her face, his voice tortured. “You are my team. You’re part of me,” he claimed, slamming a fist to his chest.

  Ella felt a single tear trek down her face.

  King grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to him, hugging her tight. “I would never have left you in Beirut if I thought you were alive, Ella. You, Brody, Nina, Micah…you’re as much a part of me as my arms, my lungs. Hell, you’re not just team, you’re family.”

  “I know,” she mumbled against his chest.