She caught his hand and he jolted, the coldness of her skin at odds with the heat of the connection.
“Not many people thought so.” She squeezed, then let go. Then her face started to crumple—from exhaustion or tears he didn’t know, and he wasn’t about to stick around to find out.
He went out the back door and headed down to his motorboat. The moon hung high above the water of his little bay, constant, and yet never the same. A big old spotlight for trouble.
Well, trouble had come to this cove many times before and he was still standing. But life was a damn sight easier to deal with when you only had yourself to worry about. He looked back at his house, and saw a light go on upstairs as he started the motor on his boat.
Anna Silver.
A complication he didn’t need.
The sooner he got rid of her, the better.
More than twenty-four hours and the woman was still in the wind. Rand had driven to Minneapolis to search her place. Photos showed a dark-haired, pretty little thing. Pity she hadn’t stuck around. She could have entertained him while they waited for the mailman. Now he was back in Chicago with the rest of the team, hunkered down in the boss’s office for a crisis meeting. Rand didn’t remember a time that a crisis hadn’t involved automatic gunfire and fucked-up intel.
“Did you track her phone yet?” Hank Browning was the top guy—on paper at least. The gray-haired, stocky individual was the figurehead of the charity, a former general, ex–Special Forces soldier who’d paid his dues in the jungles of Colombia. His reputation was akin to that of the drug lords he’d targeted and he’d earned every bit of it. Bobby Petrie sat at a desk with four monitors all flashing information at him. Pretty boy Petrie was their IT guy, a whiz at hacking communication systems and moving money, but an irritating little shit when things didn’t go his way. Kudrow managed operations, domestic and international, from home base here in Chicago. Rand was the leader on the ground—Vic and Marco, his foot soldiers.
They were a tight group—considering their occupation, they had to be. And, with the exception of Petrie, they’d worked together for nearly two decades, serving in three wars and countless conflicts in the venerable US Army. These men were as close to family as Rand was ever going to get.
“I’m trying to locate it,” Petrie repeated between gritted teeth. “If these guys gave me some space, I might have more success. You try cracking this shit with some asshole breathing down your neck.”
Kudrow hauled their resident geek to his feet by a fistful of shirt and hoisted him until they were nose-to-nose. “We’re not the ones who lost the money, asshole.” He flung him away like a rag doll.
“And I’m not the one who lost Davis Silver.” From where he was sprawled on the floor, Petrie shot Rand and Marco a sneer.
Kudrow swung his rage in Rand’s direction, but Rand didn’t let his expression change. It was a game of chicken, and if he blinked, he lost. He never lost.
After a long moment, Kudrow pressed his lips together and visibly checked his anger.
“Think Davis planned this?” Rand asked.
Kudrow shook his head. “We had someone go through his personal effects at the morgue. No envelope. Just a photo of his daughter and directions to the nearest FBI field office. We’re fucking lucky he didn’t get there.”
Petrie turned back to his screens. The General pinched the bridge of his nose, then said, “His phone message said he mailed those account details to his daughter.”
The old man was starting to panic. He’d lost his edge, which was a damn shame for someone who’d been such an inspirational soldier. When the General had retired from the army six years ago, he’d been asked to do a little side work by some friends on Capitol Hill and, using the charity as a smoke screen, they’d all done very well for themselves. Or had. Until Davis had ripped them off.
Rand hated anyone getting the better of him.
“We’ll keep checking the mail at her place and his place. As soon as that envelope arrives, we grab it. Done deal.” Kudrow tried to reassure them all.
“I just want to retire with my wife to fucking Florida. Is that too much to ask?” The General paced behind his desk. “If the cops believe this guy’s story and start an investigation, this whole organization falls apart.”
“Not if we don’t report the theft,” Rand spoke up. He widened his stance, folded his arms over his chest. “With no crime to investigate, the cops will lose interest. All the legitimate donations to the charity are intact.” Petrie had covered the trail of the laundered money, which was what he’d been doing when Davis Silver had spotted his access codes being used. They should have made sure he’d gone home like all the other drones. They’d gotten sloppy and now they were paying the price.
And they were all FUBAR unless they recovered that money.
“What if he didn’t mail it to her house? Where the hell is she? If she gets the info and takes it to the feds, we’re all screwed.” The General smacked the table.
“Any idea who the guy Davis trusted is?” asked Rand. There was nothing in her house to suggest a name. He’d done a quick search and snagged her hard drive, but needed to go back and dig deeper if they didn’t find her in the next twenty-four hours.
“No idea.” Kudrow shook his head. A tic played with the man’s right eye as he shoved his fingers deep into his receding hair. They’d been friends once, but too much death and disappointment had honed their relationship into something tougher, more durable. “I can’t believe this. Fucking cheese eater.”
Davis should have just kept his mouth shut. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
“What else do we know about Davis Silver? Does he own property anywhere?”
Kudrow snapped open a file. “He spent five years in prison in Canada for stealing a million bucks from the city—swore he didn’t do it. Wife divorced him and remarried before he was even convicted.” Kudrow snorted—he had three ex-wives. “He has one kid—a fucking elementary school teacher—who has so far outwitted a team of former elite soldiers.”
“Maybe she isn’t what she seems,” said Petrie.
“Yeah, maybe she’s a covert Russian agent with government training.” Kudrow’s expression of disgust made Rand’s spine tingle. The guy was close to snapping and he needed to be ready for whatever the hell happened next. “Of course she’s what she seems! She has twenty-seven grade-three pupils starting September fifth. I have a list of their names. She drives a VW Beetle and shops in fucking Ikea. She’s a schoolteacher who’s made us look like a bunch of assholes.”
“We know she flew into Vancouver.” Petrie tried to calm his boss down. “Then she dropped off the radar.”
“Cool it. She’s just a schoolteacher,” Rand reminded them quietly. “We’ll get our money back.” They’d taken out warlords and heavily guarded government ministers, but his colleagues were suddenly pissing their pants like raw recruits over one untrained female? Women were good for one thing and that didn’t include getting in his way. “How’d Davis get this job anyway?” Rand asked.
“I hired him.” The General’s thick eyebrows bunched. “Prison warden heard about the fact we hired ex-cons, Davis Silver had dual nationality, and he wanted to help him out. Gave him a personal recommendation and I thought he might prove useful.” And he had—all the way up to stealing their money and falling under that train.
Kudrow’s brows wedged into a deep furrow. “We need to run deeper background checks on both of them if we’re going to find the girl.”
The General surveyed his troops and Rand automatically stood to attention. He hit each of them in the eye with a bullet-hard gaze. “I know we all have a little cash stashed away, but not enough to disappear from Uncle. There is no backup plan. There is no extraction strategy for this situation. That sixty million is ours and we earned every goddamned penny.” He adjusted his shirt cuffs. The man always looked more comfortable in camo gear than a suit. “And just in case any of you get cold feet, know this…” Rand stilled. “If
you run, if you talk to the feds, or betray this organization, I will hunt you down, I will find you, and I will kill you. Clear?”
Silence bounced around the room.
No one discounted the man just because he was a good twenty-five years older than the rest of them. But it didn’t mean Rand would make it easy for him if it came to that. A small smile curled the edge of his lips as he acknowledged the challenge.
“As a fucking bell, General,” said Rand. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll hunt down the woman.” The thought heated his blood. Not that she had a chance against a man like him, but at least she wasn’t completely dumb. She had a good head start. It always made things interesting.
“Goddamn elementary school teacher.” Kudrow shook his head again. “Take Marco with you.”
“Enjoy Canada.” Petrie smirked.
“Dump your personal phones and vehicles—I don’t want any electronic trace of you anywhere outside this office.” Kudrow’s jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it might crack.
Rand caught an untraceable burner phone Petrie tossed him. Kudrow handed them ready-made false identities they used on jobs, a wad of cash, and a credit card associated with—he looked at the papers—Benny Tacon. Shit. Who the hell thought up that alias?
Rand headed out the door with Marco on his heels. Hunting was what he did best, not sitting around watching Petrie type and moan like a girl. He didn’t like people fucking with him, and he was in the mood for a little fun, a little payback. Anna Silver was just the girl to provide it.
“So the dead guy called nine-one-one before he fell under a train?” Jack Panetti asked his contact at the Chicago PD on the phone. And you guys didn’t think this might indicate foul play? Jack had been a detective before he’d become a PI and sometimes wished he was back on the force. That was always before he climbed into his Mercedes convertible or took off on a week’s vacation just for the hell of it. He had offices in Los Angeles, New York City, and Denver—where he was based because he liked the mountains—eight assistants, and a country full of people doing stupid-ass things.
Life was good.
“Security chased him because the guy was caught with his hand in the till. He called nine-one-one and made out like he was some sort of whistle-blower,” the sergeant out of the 1st District told him. “But he was just an ex-con who couldn’t do an honest day’s work. They grabbed him, but the asswipe ran right into the path of that train. It’s all on video.”
Jack had seen the video. No doubt Davis Silver had been terrified of the people chasing him. The question was why. And why had those so-called “security guards” disappeared?
“I bet whoever gave him a job is going to regret it,” Jack said as he sat in a supermarket parking lot across from Davis Silver’s apartment, watching puffy white clouds float across a blue sky. He’d gotten a phone call in the middle of the night and headed out straightaway. Some clients demanded personal attention. Brent Carver was one of them. Usually Jack steered clear of ex-cons, but for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, he didn’t mind dealing with Carver. Maybe it was just his money? Jack grimaced and hoped he hadn’t sold out to the dark side.
“Giving an accounting job to a guy who’d already swiped a million? Yeah. But no one got fired this time, because the bright spark who hired him just happened to be the boss of the whole deal, claiming they specialized in giving ex-cons a second chance.” The cop laughed. “If it had been some dumb-ass in HR, they’d be out on their ear.”
Jack heard the derision in the guy’s voice. “Did they say how much he took?”
“Nah. Said it was negligible and they wouldn’t report it, given the guy ended up as a smear on the metro.”
“Did they find anything unusual on the body?”
There was a weighty silence. “Who’d you say your client was, Panetti?”
“You know I don’t reveal names.” Jack prided himself on never giving up a source and always giving clients their money’s worth. “I do, however, happen to have tickets to the Bears season opener. And, if you get me names and addresses for those security people, I’ll see what I can do about Super Bowl tickets.” Carver could afford it.
There was a grunt, but Jack knew he had the guy. “I’ll see what I can do. But you didn’t hear it from me.” The cop hung up and Jack leaned back in the seat of his rented Buick. He looked up at the building where Davis Silver had lived. An unremarkable, squat, square redbrick apartment complex. Jack had grown up in something similar.
He was about to get out of the car when he noticed another car parked on a side street with someone inside watching the building. Not wanting to raise any flags, he headed into the store and bought himself something for lunch. He went back to the car with his plastic bag in hand and pulled the tab on a can of soda, getting the license plate as he chugged the cola. He climbed in his car, and paused for a moment after starting the engine. The other guy got out of the car and walked swiftly to the front entrance of Davis’s building. He held keys, but caught the door just as the mailman left the building.
Jack surreptitiously took a picture, then reversed out of his spot and drove around and past the entrance as the guy came out again, heading back to his car. Jack went around the block again, but when he glanced at where the other car had been it was gone.
He parked and went and looked at the buzzer buttons. V. BERNSTEIN. He leaned on it.
“Who is this?”
“Mrs. Bernstein? I was a friend of Davis’s and I’m hoping to talk to you for a moment?” Hopefully this was Viola, the name he’d gotten from Brent of the woman who had collected Davis’s mail whenever he was away.
The door buzzer rang and he figured he’d give her a lecture on building security that she could pass on to the super—just as soon as he was done. No point in shooting himself in the foot.
CHAPTER 3
Anna slitted open one eyelid and saw a lethal-looking handgun on her nightstand. How on earth had her life come to this? Sunlight poured through the windows, burning red when she closed her eyes. Her mouth was parched, and she forced herself to sit up, to look around.
The room was Spartan but elegant. Solid, hand-carved wooden furniture, eggplant-colored bedcovers, and a lone picture of the ocean on the wall.
The sound of that same ocean drew her to the window and she looked out on a sea that glittered with blue fire all the way to the horizon. Tall snowcapped peaks dominated the hinterland to the north, with rocky outcrops covered in straggly trees surrounding this secluded little cove. She pulled on some clothes, shoved the empty dresser out of the way, and made her way down to the beach.
No sign of Brent Carver anywhere. Thank goodness.
He was a lot bigger, brasher, and younger than she’d expected. Her father certainly hadn’t mentioned washboard abs or that intense probing gaze, but then again he wasn’t likely to, was he? For just a moment last night, there had been a dark, hungry look in his eyes that had damn near scared her to death. That’s why she’d panicked and almost run. But he’d been right, she’d needed rest, and he hadn’t hurt her.
Yet.
She shouldn’t have come. Grief and uncertainty had driven her onward, without any real plan and with nowhere else to turn. But with the clarity of a good night’s sleep, she realized she should have gone straight to the cops even though they’d never believed a word she’d said in the past.
Instead she’d run.
Now she stood at the end of the world—a place so isolated and remote, it had taken a full day to get here. There were more accessible desert islands. She was exhausted after her trip. Mentally wiped. And grief welled up like fresh blood in a deep cut. She needed to figure out what was going on so she could take back control of her life. She breathed in the scent of the ocean and tried to find her equilibrium, but it just brought back even more memories that she’d rather forget. At least she had time to regroup while she figured out if her father had been paranoid, delusional, or just plain crooked.
The fai
nt tinge of iodine mixed with salt on the breeze. After a moment she slipped out of her sandals and hiked her skirt up to her knees, wading into the water. It kissed her skin with a bright, cold lash, jump-starting all the nerves that had still been asleep.
She hadn’t been back in the water since the day she’d almost drowned. She’d been a good swimmer once, but that whole time in her life—the rape, the impulsive suicide attempt—had stripped her emotionally to the bone, and she’d avoided all reminders. Today, for the first time in years, she wanted to dive into these cold waters and wash away her worries. Unfortunately, she knew from bitter experience it didn’t work.
She waded back out of the surf and turned to look at the log cabin. It was more of a mansion than a cabin, gleaming like burnt honey, situated high enough to avoid the worst storm surges—maybe even a tsunami. Brent Carver had obviously done very well for himself with his paintings. She’d known he was private, almost reclusive, and hid his identity from the world. Her father had talked about him often—full of glowing admiration, but with no real details about his appearance, she realized. Her imagination had conjured a man she was comfortable with, an older gent, someone who was almost frail. This guy was nothing like she’d imagined. He wasn’t kind or old or frail. He wasn’t safe.
A bald eagle swooped through the air and landed in a tree high above her head. He stared at her with a beady eye that suggested she didn’t belong here.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Talking to yourself?”
She jumped. Brent Carver moved as swift and silent as a cougar out of the shadow of the trees. She stared into his bright blue eyes, more than a little disconcerted to realize just how handsome he was in daylight. Tall and rangy, he had rugged features and a bold straight nose. Lines of experience etched his face, but a dimple cut in and out of his cheek and, combined with the vivid sparkle in those eyes, it was hard not to stare. Plus, he was shirtless and the torso she’d worked so hard not to ogle in the moonlight was once again on full display with wide hard pecs and those smooth blocks of muscle pulling taut across his abdomen. She hadn’t known that sort of muscle tone existed outside men’s underwear commercials.
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