Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6

by Dianna Love

  “Why is Perdido giving up so much?” Dingo asked. “I get that she wants to cut a deal but she’s running off at the mouth.”

  Nick grinned. “Not all of this information came from the feds and LAPD. No one realized Perdido was guilty of anything at first, so they rushed her into an ambulance and I climbed in as an FBI agent.”

  Sabrina groaned as if she had severe indigestion.

  Nick tended to give that to everyone when ops went FUBAR, but Dingo grinned back at him. “She get some happy drugs?”

  “Oh yes. She babbled about Smith being her contact to someone high up in government. Someone she’d known since she was a kid. A general in the Pentagon.”

  Sabrina and Dingo both sat up and said, “Who?”

  “I pressed her for a name and she mumbled that it wasn’t a real general, just what he liked to be called. Then we reached the hospital and there were FBI agents waiting to intercept her.”

  “Real ones,” Sabrina clarified.

  Nick shrugged. “Their badge looked like mine.”

  “Tell me they didn’t see you flash that?”

  “No one knows. I convinced the EMTs that I was on a high-level clearance case, and that the local feds weren’t privy, so they needed to keep anything they heard to themselves or I’d come visit them.”

  Dingo shook his head. Nick could be a scary mother when he needed to be.

  “Something’s strange here,” Sabrina mused.

  “Just something?” Dingo asked. “Not the whole crazy deal?”

  “Who is Rikker working for?”

  Nick looked at Dingo then at her. “Rikker contracted the hits. Perdido owes someone in the government for the hits. Rikker came out of CIA. He could be working for the same person.”

  Dingo held up a hand. “Valene said Rikker was trying to take her with him because he didn’t want to risk showing up with something less than satisfactory. They were going to China.”

  “China?” Nick and Sabrina said at the same time.

  “Yeah.” Dingo considered everything. “What if he’s a double agent working for two groups?”

  “If he is, he’s not playing for our team.”

  Dingo agreed with Sabrina. “Doesn’t look that way.”

  She said, “Gage would know if Rikker was still with the CIA.”

  Silence struck like a stray lightning bolt and Nick started back stepping. “I’ll go see what else I can find out.”

  Dingo asked, “You really trust Gage?”

  “It’s no longer an issue. I told Gage I had to put a stop to us. It’s too confusing with so much on the line.”

  “I haven’t helped. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, Dingo, and it’s not Josh’s fault. I’ve let Gage ease back into my world and I have to either be all in or not at all.” She shook her head as if brushing away a thought and stood up.

  “Any idea how Rikker got away? I’m sick over that.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “I don’t really care as long as you’re alive. I wanted him so badly, then I saw how close you came to dying again, because we weren’t there to back you up.” She shook her head. “It hit me that I can’t live my life for Rikker and that’s what I’ve been doing. We’ll still hunt him, but we aren’t putting me, you or Josh in the jaws of death to catch him. To answer your question, he’s got nine lives. The best we can tell, he made it down the side of the building with some jury-rigged rope.”

  “Shit. I left that rope there.”

  “We’ll get him, Dingo.” She stood up. “I need to go talk to some more people and make some calls. If they do lock you up, I’ll have to squeeze heavy hitters to get you out.”

  “Just like old times when we were kids.”

  She put a smile on her face, but her eyes were too sad to sell it. “Sure.”

  “Think you can pull a string and get Valene sent over here?”

  “See what I can do.”

  Sabrina went back to the SAC and waited while he went over to where Valene had been left sitting alone. The SAC said something to Valene that must have had a time limit because she jumped up and followed him over to where Dingo waited.

  When she sat down, Dingo wanted to put his arm around her, but that would be tricky while he was wearing cuffs, so he just leaned over and kissed her cheek, whispering, “I’m sorry I had you give him the real scroll.”

  “It’s okay. If I still had the scroll, these agencies would confiscate it from me. I’m just as glad not to have it if I can’t give it back to the pope. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to return the scroll to the Vatican. It might just turn up missing.”

  He let it go. “There’ll be an investigation. I convinced my people that you really thought Smith was a client, but now we have to convince the world.”

  She looked guilty as hell, which was going to make his job of convincing everyone that she was innocent in all this even tougher. Sure, she’d been working with the bad guys, but she hadn’t known it.

  After chewing on her lip for a moment, she started to say something to Dingo when the SAC walked up to her. “Ms. Eklund, I need you to come with me.”

  Valene asked, “Why?”

  “I don’t have to answer that.”

  Dingo asked, “Where are you taking her?”

  The FBI agent said, “I don’t have to answer any of your questions.”

  Valene got up. “No problem. Just point me in the right direction.” She looked at Dingo. “I’m okay.”

  Then she walked across the fifty feet separating him from where the Feds had set up their area. Nick walked up holding her purse. Valene reached for it, but the SAC snagged it, then Nick walked off.

  The SAC said something to one of his men who stepped up with handcuffs.

  Valene stood through all that with an open-mouthed look. Then she held her hands out and they clamped handcuffs on her.

  Dingo fought his way to his knees and shouted, “What the fuck?”

  Three LAPD officers stepped in front of him.

  “Get out of my fucking way.”

  Valene called out, “I’ll be okay. Don’t leave me.”

  His heart was ripping to shreds. “Where are they taking her?”

  “Dingo, please wait for me.” Then she was gone.

  He’d wait for the rest of his life if she went to prison, but he was not letting anyone lock her away.

  Chapter 47

  Rikker rode in a limo the Orion Hunters had delivered close enough to Navarro’s building for Rikker to reach by limping as fast as he could. Blood ran down both sides of his face. His head felt as if it had been split in half. He had cuts and a cracked rib, even with the Kevlar vest under his clothes.

  Fucking Paddock had popped him with three rounds. It hurt to breathe.

  Damn Sabrina Slye and her bastards had been a nuisance too long.

  He lifted the mangled scroll in his hands. He was not returning to China empty-handed.

  The General had been calling constantly, demanding to know why the assassinations ended up as a clusterfuck and why Perdido and Navarro had been left alive in FBI custody.

  Rikker deleted those messages.

  The General was no longer his problem. He’d have to cover his ass on his own from now on.

  Wayan was another story. Rikker would rather face a cobra, naked and with his hands tied, than go back to Wayan without something.

  Someone had to pay for what Rikker had lost. He needed answers and he needed them soon.

  Sabrina Slye was the best place to get those answers and she wouldn’t be surrounded by her guard dogs forever.

  Chapter 48

  Valene followed the FBI agent leading her through the hall of a plush hotel in downtown LA. Two more agents stood outside the door and gave her agent a nod of acknowledgement.

  They took one look at her handcuffs and ignored her.

  When the door opened, she followed the leader into a spacious suite. She counted six people.

  One was the pope.

&n
bsp; The. Pope.

  It might seem crazy, but the room felt powerful as if the pope just exuded energy that radiated all around him. He gazed at her and with the lift of his hand he waved over a middle-aged man who had neatly trimmed hair and was wearing a suit. Must be his assistant.

  Once the pope finished speaking, the assistant came to Valene’s FBI agent and spoke in low, quick bursts.

  The next thing Valene knew, her handcuffs were gone and she was seated in a comfortable chair next to the pope.

  Pope Lando had the kind of face that made you want to tell him your troubles. He reminded her of her dad in a way. That’s who she’d always poured her heart out to, but she couldn’t now, because her dad was so sick.

  With one word from His Holiness, everyone departed the room, leaving her and the pope alone with tea.

  She was pretty sure the FBI and the pope’s staff were still close by, but he’d shocked her by sending the others away.

  She was having tea with the pope, when Catholics around the world would love that opportunity. Talk about feeling guilty for bailing on her religion.

  He said in perfect English, though with an Italian accent, “I understand that you have something important to tell me about a scroll that should have been in the Vatican.”

  She tried to talk but lost her breath.

  Giving her a gentle smile, he said, “Take your time, child. You have nothing to fear from me.”

  She needed that little encouragement. “I was approached by a man who I thought represented the Vatican.”

  “The FBI offered some background as to what has happened.”

  Breathing was good. She kept drawing it in, hoping one of those deep breaths would settle her down. “I really thought I was retrieving it for you, but to be perfectly honest we had an arrangement that he would pay me really well to locate the scroll and to keep all this confidential. I understood that you wouldn’t want it in the news so if anyone said anything to the press, it wasn’t me.”

  “Why would you think I would fear this being public knowledge?”

  She thought on that. “Everything he said made sense.”

  “Such as?”

  “I know you’re shaking up everyone who has dirty hands in the banking groups, and you’re holding priests and others responsible for their service to the church.”

  “I’m holding all accountable to God and our people, then the church.”

  “Right, that was sort of what I meant.”

  “What was the reason I would keep this secret?”

  “Because it would look bad for you to lose an artifact this rare and important from the Vatican. The media would turn it into you being careless with the Vatican treasures.”

  He tapped his chin. “That would be in conflict with my goal to clean up the secretive dealings within our organization, wouldn’t it?”

  When he put it that way, he had a point. “I suppose so.”

  “Was the money the only reason you agreed to find the scroll?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you. The money was very important at first, but the deeper I got into this, the more I realized that everything I’d ever hunted for had held meaning for me. There was a time when I only searched for something that I felt had to be found.”

  “But you needed the money this time?” the pope said, bringing her back to what got her into this mess.

  “I did and still do, but while trying to get my hands on the scroll, I almost destroyed people who mean more to me than all the artifacts in the world. I’ll figure another way to deal with my problems and still protect the people around me.”

  It was so calm sitting in his presence. He glanced around and asked, “What happened to the scroll?”

  She said, “If you’ll ask the FBI agent who brought me here to return my purse, I’ll answer that. He had it with him in the car.”

  Once the purse had been delivered and they were alone again, Valene tugged on the false bottom, revealing the extra space. She pulled out a silver cylinder that she handed to the Pope. “I truly thought I was returning it to you, but when I realized the man I’d been dealing with was a liar, I didn’t know who to trust. So I had a duplicate made to use as bait to catch the man paying me, but that one burned up in the helicopter fire. I hid this one until I was positive it would end up in your hands, and this is the best chance I’ll ever have for that.”

  A man named Nick had convinced her that he and Dingo were teammates and that he was the one in the hospital in LA when she’d helped Dingo’s team find the doctor in Chinatown. Once he’d convinced her that he was a friend of Dingo’s and wanted to know if she had any information that would help Dingo, like finding the scroll, she told him what she was going to do.

  She thought he’d call her out, but he’d grinned and managed to not only find the scroll where she’d hidden it, and sneak it into her purse, he also got word to the pope that she’d requested a meeting with him.

  The pope held the tube gently, staring at it with sad eyes, then he opened it and carefully reviewed the first part of the scroll before putting the parchment back in the cylinder. “You took a great risk in telling the FBI agent that I was expecting you and if he did not allow you to talk to me that he would regret it.”

  More of Nick’s machinations, no doubt, but Valene just smiled rather than admit or deny anything of the sort. Then she said, “Didn’t seem like much of a gamble at the time, until he cuffed me.”

  “The FBI had received a bomb scare from someone who said if they didn’t get to speak to me personally they were going to blow up this building.”

  Chill bumps lifted on her arms. The FBI could have locked her away forever until they decided she was not a part of that.

  “However, my assistant keeps his ear to the ground in all situations and brought your request to my attention. We have a mutual friend who spoke to my assistant.”

  Did that mean Nick knew the pope?

  She didn’t care, because both Nick and Pope Lando had saved her bacon. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for returning this scroll.”

  “It belongs to you ... or that would be the Vatican and the Catholic people,” she quickly amended, taking his sense of duty to God and the church into account. “Will you allow anyone to study it?”

  “Eventually, once the danger has passed.”

  “The scroll is bad news?” she said, her insatiable curiosity racing to the forefront.

  “The scroll is tangible evidence of Galileo’s writings while he was unfortunately under house arrest. He claimed these were visions, and I am not in a position to dispute that, but the people searching for this are not interested in Galileo’s musings. They want to alter the course of our future by manipulating one man’s writings. I have always heard that this script would dictate a horrible war between major powers in our world.”

  “That’s what I heard, too, but you don’t believe that this scroll can really predict that?”

  When he just stared at her as one would a slow child, she nodded. “Right. Lots of prophesies in the scriptures. What exactly is the meaning of this scroll?”

  “I believe the writings are a warning more than a prophecy.”

  “Have you read the scroll?”

  “I have not.”

  “Do you intend to allow anyone to read it?” Yes, that sounded eager, but she’d like to read it.

  “Yes, once the danger trying to rise up has passed.” He sat quietly for a moment, pondering something, and it was so peaceful in his presence.

  When he spoke, his voice was strong. “Thank you for returning something you could have claimed was lost or stolen, then sold. It shows how strong your heart is.”

  “I appreciate your wonderful words, but I don’t deserve praise. I’m failing everyone who depends on me.”

  “Everyone is a large number, my child.”

  Valene sighed. “I’m failing my father, who needs to get into an experimental treatment program for a rare lung cancer, which was why I took this co
ntract for the scroll. I’m failing my friend Henri who needed the money from this contract to move to a new location and save his relationship. And ... I let down the man I’m in love with, but that relationship was lost before I had a chance to have it. And ... ” She’d been trying to come to terms with this and now seemed as good a time as any to admit something she’d been in denial about for too long. Her voice was raspy with unshed tears. “As long as I’m confessing, I’m fighting to keep my father here with me and he might be ready to go...” She swallowed. “But I won’t let him. I’m a bad person.”

  His Holiness put his hand on hers where it rested on the chair arm, and the tears she’d held back came rushing out. He let her cry, patting her hand and offering her tissues.

  When she finally quieted, he started to speak and his assistant stepped into view. “I’m sorry to interrupt your Holiness, but you have a meeting with the Vice President in forty minutes. He arrived an hour ago.”

  The pope said, “I have something more important to do at the moment. Call and make my apologies for the delay and reschedule for this evening.”

  “Yes, your Holiness.” The man left as silently as he’d entered.

  Valene said, “I’m sorry to impose on your time. You’re clearly busy and I should go.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I thought you had something to do.” And it had to be major to include the Vice President of the US.

  “I do. I must pray for a soul.” Then he proceeded to tell her to bow her head, which she did, and he prayed for her father, that God might see fit to watch over him. He prayed for her friend that Henri would realize material goods would not save a relationship, and he prayed for Valene that she would follow her heart and allow it to lead her to love.”

  It might have been her crying, but she felt a huge burden lift just by being with the pope.

  When she stood, she took his hand. “Thank you for being who you are.”

  “Just remember you have an angel watching over you. We all do.”