Poison Evidence

by Rachel Grant

  “I thought you weren’t going to tell me what it is?”

  He shrugged. “We need to work together if we’re going to find it quickly—before everyone has a chance to regroup.”

  “And you know where it is?”

  “I’ve narrowed down the search to ten islands and their surrounding waters. CAM will do the rest.”

  “You lied when you said we were going to spend a day and a half at sea.”

  “I lie about a lot of things. Say good-bye to Liberty. We’re going camping.”

  Curt glanced at the clock before answering the phone. Ten p.m. Caller ID sent dread up his spine: Rudy Fredrickson, from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

  He didn’t waste a moment with pleasantries. “Dominick, I just got a call from the office. We got a hit on the Veselov name. As soon as my wife gets home to stay with our son, I’m heading into the office for a full debriefing and figured you’d want to be there too.”

  Curt tightened his grip on the phone. Finally, a lead. “Thanks for the tip. You going to catch shit for keeping me in the loop?”

  “No more than the usual.”

  Like Curt, Rudy had been bothered by the way his bosses had set up Ivy. Curt wasn’t surprised he wasn’t toeing the DIA line and locking Curt out as others had been intent on doing.

  “When do you think you’ll get there?”

  “The embassy event Alyssa is coordinating is supposed to end in forty-five minutes. She said she’d try to slip out, but it’s hard to say. They’ll start without me, though, even though in theory I was the lead on this one. I’m thinking my days with DIA are numbered.”

  Curt was tempted to tell the man to submit his résumé to the Justice Department, but in a few short months—long before a transfer would ever come about—he planned to be out of there himself. No point in inviting the man to further screw up relations with his current bosses when Curt couldn’t make promises.

  “Thanks, Rudy. I’ll see you when you get there.”

  Traffic was heavy—as usual—through Georgetown, but it cleared as soon as Curt left the city. He wished he could bring Mara along for this, but if he wasn’t officially invited, sure as hell the DIA didn’t want Ivy’s boss present. Mara had been livid at the way they’d manipulated and used Ivy. She was only marginally less angry at Curt for telling Ivy to cooperate with Veselov.

  But really, what choice did they have at this point? Attempting to flee from the spy would have left her vulnerable to the Syrians. If she hadn’t been with Dimitri, she might have been taken.

  He finally reached the Northern Virginia offices of the Defense Intelligence Agency and was admitted through the layers of security, his ID subjected to thorough scrutiny even though the guards greeted him by name before he even pulled out his government credentials.

  The meeting was well underway by the time Curt entered the room. No one dared question how he’d known about the meeting, considering he should have been the first one notified and everyone from the general at the head of the table to the lowest-ranked officer in the room knew it.

  In a firm voice, Curt asked to be brought up to speed on what he’d missed.

  General Ellis cleared his throat and offered a tight smile. “Of course, Mr. Dominick.” He nodded to the analyst working the digital projector.

  The analyst tapped his keyboard, and the images projected onto the screen at the front of the room changed in rapid procession. Curt recognized Parker Reeves from various points in his Coast Guard career, along with some candid snapshots Curt’s team had gathered when they investigated Reeves last fall. His office had given the DIA all the data they’d gathered.

  Not everybody, it seemed, was in the mood to share.

  “Have you had any luck determining if Veselov is working for the GRU?” Curt asked while the analyst found his starting point.

  “That remains unclear,” General Ellis said. “But then, the man we knew as Parker Reeves was never confirmed to be from GRU.”

  A fact that kept this investigation in intelligence circles and out of the State Department. For now. But the situation grew more volatile each day.

  At last the images stopped on a shot of Liberty, Veselov’s boat. Curt recognized the image from Keaton’s charter tours website. The analyst cleared his throat. “The boat is legally registered to Jack Keaton, with a license filed in December, but tracing the history of the vessel prior to that was a stumbling block. We started by working backward with known vessels that fit the basic description—of which there are hundreds in that part of the world. But we caught a lucky break when we cross-referenced with Russian owners.

  He clicked a button, and the image changed to a blurred photo of an older man with a hard look about him.

  “This man was the head of a Bratva group. What’s known as the Pakhan. Word has it he was getting too powerful and not paying the kickbacks that usually flowed up government channels. Last September, he disappeared. Not long after he went missing, Russia made it known to the new Pakhan—and the other Bratva groups—that the problem had been taken care of by the Hammer, a known Russian enforcer.”

  “An assassin,” Curt said as his belly rolled. He did not like where this was heading. This could explain why they’d been unable to confirm Reeves was GRU.

  “Yes, a government assassin. The Hammer has at least a dozen suspected kills, all Bratva who wouldn’t play nice with official channels and were seen as getting too big or greedy to contain.”

  “Is there meaning behind the Hammer name, besides the obvious, I mean?” another man asked.

  “At first we thought it was because he was old-school—from the hammer-and-sickle days of the Soviet Union—but another story has come our way. It seems that the Hammer’s first kill didn’t go smoothly. He and his target fought. The victim was finally taken out by several blows from a ball-peen hammer to the skull. Word is the crime scene was…brutal.”

  Curt winced.

  “The hit took place in Japan, and it’s the only incident in which investigators believe DNA from the killer was collected,” the analyst continued. “We’ve requested they provide the data for comparison to blood on the clothing of the men who attacked the president of Palau in the ballroom, in case some of the blood belongs to Keaton.”

  “How long until we’ll have the results?” Curt asked.

  “Unknown. The request was submitted less than two hours ago.” The man hit the button, and more faces appeared. “These are other kills attributed to the Hammer. We’re cross-checking with dates for when Parker Reeves was on leave from the Coast Guard, although it’s difficult, because like the first victim I showed, most simply disappeared. No precise date, just a range in which they went missing.

  “Liberty—as she is now called—was in the Philippines at the time of the Pakan’s disappearance. The boat disappeared in December, which, as you all know, was after Parker Reeves also disappeared. We believe he had it repainted, numbered, and named. He then sailed for Palau and set himself up as charter captain Jack Keaton. His paperwork for entering the country was pitch-perfect. The guy knows boats and port protocol, and acquired every special permit he could get his hands on for his charter business—which gave him the perfect cover to search Palauan waters and islands for the missing Russian AUUV.”

  It went without saying that having served with the US Coast Guard for five years, Parker Reeves likely knew boats better than he knew cars.

  “There are various descriptions of the Hammer that have surfaced.” Next came the series of slides of Parker through the years. “But there was never anything specific—at least, outside Bratva circles—we believe a handful of Bratva know what the Hammer looks like, but they aren’t sharing that information. Our search on the name Veselov, however, produced one interesting result. The name was associated with a hit in Moscow. But the first name wasn’t Dimitri, it was Sophia.”

  “Sorry I’m late, what did I miss?”

  Curt turned to the door to see Rudy Fredrickson looking anxious and irrita
ted. The man must’ve broken speed records to get here so soon. Curt didn’t meet his gaze, not wanting to offer a hint of who had informed him of the meeting.

  “Nice of you to join us, Fredrickson,” someone snickered.

  “Fuck you, Pfeiffer, I have a four-year-old at home who I couldn’t leave alone.” He took a seat at the table. “Some of us give a crap about our kids.”

  As much as Curt had thrived on his job, he looked forward to leaving the late-night emergency meetings behind as he and Mara started their family. Rudy’s situation was a prime example. This life was hard on families, hard on relationships.

  The analyst continued as if there’d been no interruption, making it clear Fredrickson didn’t rank high enough to warrant starting over. “Our source believes Sophia Veselov is Dimitri Veselov’s sister.”

  “Sophia Veselov is an assassin too?” Curt asked.

  “No. Sophia Veselov had accused the victim of raping her. A few weeks later, the guy was found in a river, bullet through the brain.” The man cleared his throat. “But this time, there were other wounds. Notably, a hockey puck in the man’s mouth, held in place with duct tape. The victim’s teeth were cracked from biting down. But most notably, a ball peen hammer was lodged in the victim’s anus.”

  Several men at the table shifted uncomfortably, and the man Rudy had called Pfeiffer cursed.

  “Sophia Veselov had an airtight alibi for the time of death. Our source said rumor had it ballistics on the bullet matched a hit made by the Hammer. Worth noting, the government didn’t put forth a statement that the Hammer did it. But then, this guy wasn’t Bratva, like the others. He worked for the government—and some suspect he was affiliated with GRU.”

  At last, there was that GRU connection. But not in the way they’d expected.

  “So either it was a copycat, or it wasn’t a sanctioned hit,” Rudy said.

  “Exactly.”

  “If it was, indeed, the Hammer,” General Ellis said, “we can conclude Veselov cares about his sister.”

  “Agreed,” the analyst said.

  “How long ago was this?” Curt asked.

  “About five years.”

  “So where is the sister now?” Pfeiffer asked.

  The analyst shrugged. “We’re looking into it.”

  With each fact that had been laid out, Curt swallowed bile. It appeared he’d told Ivy to cooperate with a Russian assassin.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Water splashed over the bow of the inflatable boat, soaking Ivy and her backpack of clothes. The cases that housed CAM and RON were airtight and waterproof, a necessity for this type of job, or she’d be thoroughly freaked out as they navigated between islands.

  At last they reached Dimitri’s destination, an S-shaped island, steep on the opposite curves with a saddle in the middle connecting the bowed rises.

  They unloaded the boat, then Dimitri pulled it up onto the beach and into the woods, while Ivy hauled the cases two at a time up the narrow, steep path. By the time she had all six cases, her wet backpack, and another backpack full of assorted guns, Dimitri had the boat well hidden in the vegetation.

  He donned the gun-filled backpack, picked up four of the cases—two in each of his large hands—and nodded toward the steep, vine-covered slope. “Follow me.”

  She settled the wet pack on her back and grabbed the two remaining cases and followed. He had no trouble navigating the thick foliage and steep slope of the mushroom-shaped mound. Ivy wasn’t quite so agile and cursed as vines caught on her ankles and branches whipped her cheeks.

  It was humid, and her shirt, already damp from the boat ride, quickly soaked through with sweat. She didn’t pause to complain. She found she was strangely grateful to be off the water and enclosed in the canopy. No longer exposed. She’d feared coming across a yacht full of terrorists intent on taking her and CAM while they were on the inflatable.

  They’d crossed paths with scant few other boats in the two hours they navigated the narrow waterways between islands, and those were either dive boats or kayakers enjoying an afternoon in paradise. It was hard to believe there were people living normal lives, on vacation, enjoying the beauty of the Rock Islands, when her life was in utter disarray.

  She’d seen happy couples kayaking, and she’d envied that they didn’t know about terrorists and spies and missing AUUVs and how long it took for grey reef sharks to smell blood in the water.

  Sweat dripped into her eyes, and she brushed it away. Focus on something more pleasant. Like Dimitri’s ass, which she was dutifully following up the steep slope.

  His army-green, quick-dry hiking pants hugged his butt, reminding her how his glutes had felt under her fingers. She was about to spend an unspecified amount of time on a deserted tropical island with a man who had awoken her libido and more than delivered on the sexy promise of his body and words.

  But he also was a spy and had abducted her.

  Since then, he’d saved her a second time, and she was starting to believe she would be sympathetic toward his reason for abducting her.

  Jesus. She was mentally making excuses for him. Was that libido or honest assessment?

  Dimitri came to a halt in front of her. She was so preoccupied with her thoughts, she bumped into him. This caused her to stumble on the slope, and, quick as a flash, he dropped the cases and slipped his arm around her waist, preventing her from pitching backward.

  A smile played about his lips as he continued to hold her close. “You don’t have to play games, Ivy. You want me to hold you, just say so.”

  She rolled her eyes and pushed on his chest. He released her, and she couldn’t help but regret not taking another moment to savor being pressed against him first. “Why did you stop?”

  “We’re here.” He brushed aside a curtain of vegetation, revealing a low opening in rock.

  She took a step back. “No way. I’m not going in a small, dark cave.”

  “It’s just small at the opening. It widens out.”

  “It’s not small spaces I don’t like, it’s the lack of windows. No light. No way to see out. Nothing to triangulate from.” It was hard to articulate this concern, not without sounding crazy. But then, maybe she was crazy.

  Dimitri just smiled and took a step closer to her. He cupped her cheek with one broad palm, then leaned down and brushed his lips across hers. The kiss was sweet, yet savory.

  Like a fool, she opened her lips and deepened it, sliding her tongue over his.

  This was forbidden, this kiss, which she allowed for no reason other than she wanted it. Which was probably why it felt so damn good.

  His hand moved from her cheek to the back of her head, and he groaned against her lips as he pressed his erection against her belly. She let out her own groan. She wanted him. In spite of everything, she wanted him inside her body. Her memory of the other night was so crisp, it was almost eidetic, and she wanted every hard inch of him again.

  He ended the kiss, his breathing uneven. “Damn. You’re going to be the death of me, Poison.”

  If only they could return to that surreal night when he’d been a stranger she’d dubbed Death Valley and they’d shared the empowerment of recreational, healing sex.

  His hand returned to her cheek again, where the kiss had started. “Do you trust me, Ivy?”

  “No.”

  His eyes lit. “Not even a little bit?”

  She frowned and considered his question. “Okay, maybe a little.”

  He brushed his lips over hers, soft and light, one more time before releasing her. “This cave has windows. If you can squeeze through the opening, you’ll be fine.”

  She wanted to argue, but in the end, she agreed to follow him in, and if she didn’t like it, she could leave.

  He slid the cases inside in front of him, a train of them, each one nudging the one before it forward. She’d freak at the potential for them to be lost in an unknown abyss, but at this point, it was clear CAM was as important to him as it was to her, and he knew this pl
ace.

  At last, she’d crawled through the two-foot-high hole, through a slightly larger tunnel until the opening expanded into a chamber. She gasped at the light shining through two openings in the cave ceiling.

  “Skylights?” she asked in awe.

  “Four of them. Two here, two over the lower chamber. Carved though the limestone by Japanese soldiers during the war.”

  He handed her a flashlight, which she cast on the walls and ceiling. “The cave looks natural.”

  “It is, but the entrance we came through was cut, as were the skylights. And the stairs.”

  She frowned, then her light landed on what appeared to be steps cut into the natural downward slope of the limestone floor that extended into darkness. “What’s down there?” The ceiling also sloped downward, mirroring the floor.

  “A chamber with a pool that leads to the sea.”

  She ran the light over the walls. “This is amazing. I knew caves like this existed in the Rock Islands, but this is more extensive…” Her words trailed off as the light landed on writing on the wall. Japanese and Palauan writing.

  She studied the characters, which were kanji. Her ability to read Japanese was limited, and she couldn’t read Palauan at all—but the symbols were familiar. “Names, maybe,” she murmured. “I wonder if this was created by the Palauans who were pressed into duty by the Japanese during the war? There are stories that eighty young men were trained to participate in suicide guerrilla raids against American forces. The Kirikomi-tai. Some said they set up outposts on other islands, refuge from the Americans.”

  “I believe that’s exactly what this was. Ulai said there are rumors of a handful of caves like this one in the Rock Islands. I found this one thanks to the tunnel through the pool. The tunnel we crawled through was filled with dirt and well hidden.”

  She shuddered. “You swam through an underwater tunnel to find this?”

  “With scuba,” he said. “It’s a hard without scuba, but possible.”

  She didn’t want to know how he knew that. The idea of swimming through a tunnel of rock gave her shivers. She was a decent swimmer and had learned scuba due to the need to ground-truth CAM’s results, but she was far from experienced enough to try underwater caving. That would be every nightmare come true.