Damage Control Read online

  Riley tossed his napkin over his plate. “Beckham didn’t accomplish his objective or he wouldn’t have been left for dead.”

  Sebastian cringed, his gut pulling tight. Being left for dead was as hopeless as it got.

  “We can’t ignore this.” Max showed his rare temper. “Our reputation is tied up in it.”

  “I can make a call,” Viva said. “Uncle Vlad was—is Russian mafia. He might not talk to me, but it’s worth a try.”

  When Sebastian nodded, Viva dug in her purse for her cell and left the table. “We can still look for answers,” he said. “Just not for a client.” Dragon One had the latest computer technology and software thanks to Logan, along with satellite capability, GPS, and the net. It wasn’t as fast or as far reaching as what the CIA had but they’d operated just fine for years before being dragged into government work.

  “When I saw the satellite photos of the bombing, I prodded some contacts, but didn’t have any success like I did before,” Safia said. “They’re either being paid well to keep quiet or there’s nothing substantial to get. Though…I can go beat the ugly out of them, maybe learn what else was in that area then?” Viva blinked owlishly, the phone to her ear, and Safia smirked to herself. “I’m not serious about beating them up. Well, half serious.”

  “McGill says stay out of it,” Sam said. “We poke and they’ll do more than tie us up in paperwork.”

  Viva moved away, covering one ear, but Sebastian heard her speaking Russian like a native.

  “I resent the hell out of this,” Max groused. “Not like we haven’t walked into a mess before and bailed them out. They didn’t have to yank our card and put us out of business. We still have bills to pay.” They looked at him. “Okay, without paying that ridiculous insurance premium, we’ll survive. But for how long?”

  “You’ve been whining about diving,” Riley said. “Go get wet. Bridget is back in Okinawa. She’s said you’re welcome to join her.” That brightened Max’s mood.

  Viva returned to the table, frowning softly. “Uncle Vlad hasn’t heard anything about that area, but reminded me that he didn’t know everyone in the eastern bloc. Which is a lie, he’s ex-KGB and ran a tidy weapons market across that military road. He knows I know that, so he’s keeping secrets, too.”

  Safia leaned in. “Vlad…as in Vlad Dovyestoff?” she nearly choked. “He’s your uncle?”

  Viva smiled. “Not blood, my godfather. Palled around with my father when he was exiled till Putin let him back into the country.”

  “I’d like to get him in this one and have a chat,” Safia said, then smiled. “Maybe I shouldn’t have quit and just worked your contacts.” Viva grinned, wiggling the phone and offering Vlad’s number. She and Safia sat close, trading tales from Viva’s colorful past, when Sebastian’s private line rang.

  He urged them to make a dent in all that food, grabbed the mobile, then walked to the living room to answer. He glanced at the caller ID. England. It had to be early there.

  “Fontenòt,” he heard. “Edward Granlen here.”

  An odd chill worked over his skin. “And this is a surprise.” MI-5 never called to chat, and certainly not a former British Royal Marine he wasn’t supposed to acknowledge.

  “I wish it was a pleasant duty, but I have disturbing news.”

  He glanced to the balcony, to his friends he considered family. If he had to get bad news, there was no better place to receive it.

  “This isn’t our case, but last evening Noble Sheppard was taken by force from his hotel in Chertsey, Surrey.”

  Sebastian’s heart slammed to his gut, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Noble was more of a father than a friend. He’d spent half his childhood with the man. “Kidnapped? What would anyone want with a rare bookseller?” That brought the team out of their chairs and closer.

  “I was hoping you could tell us that.”

  “Believe me, Eddie, this man did not have enemies. He’s a bookworm. Last I spoke to him a week ago, he was still translating a manuscript for some museum or college in Ireland.”

  “Maybe that has something to do with this. Less than an hour before his disappearance, he’d won the bidding at the Surrey Auction House for a fifteenth-century Portuguese pilot log, the Aramina. It’s missing as well as his phone.”

  “Noble didn’t talk about the work he was doing. Was it that valuable?”

  “He paid nearly four thousand U.S. for it.” Eddie’s voice lowered. “I’m out of my rank here, friend. We’ve received a fax from your DHS—”

  “Let me guess, no assistance.”

  “I’m afraid so. But I can fax you copies of the preliminary police reports. It’s not our jurisdiction, Chertsey Surrey police found your name in his billfold. When it came over the wire, I remembered you mentioning this bloke. The one with all the stories.”

  Sebastian lips tugged at a smile, and for a instant, the image of him and Eddie outside a rebel camp in Panama blinked to life. Hot, steaming wet, and so tired they were popping NoDoz like candy. “I’m one of Noble’s in-case-of-emergency contacts,” he said as the image vanished. Just as Noble was his. Noble was with Jasmine when she learned he was presumed dead in Singapore.

  He gave his fax number, then crossed to the machine. “Video surveillance? Witnesses?”

  “I’m afraid not. Old hotel and it was late. We’re waiting for the auction house cameras. But after he won the piece, he returned to the hotel on foot, spoke to the concierge, ordered dinner sent to his room, then went to his suite. Room service likely interrupted Sheppard’s kidnapping. The bellman is dead. The room had been ransacked, the lining of his cases cut, but not a single print. Not even Dr. Sheppard’s.” Eddie paused, his voice lowering. “The concierge was the last person to speak with Sheppard directly. We found him beside his car, beaten nearly to death. He’s in a coma. Sheppard’s rental is missing as well.”

  One dead and another critical? “Jesus. Over some antique papers?”

  “Apparently so. Have any idea exactly what he was working on and for whom?”

  “No, sorry. He was pretty mum about it. But I’ll find out.” The first forty-eight hours were critical. He needed to be there.

  “Don’t go nosing in police business, mate. Chertsey police are on it.” His accent was suddenly heavier, but Sebastian got the message. They were being recorded. “Go visit your pal, Riley. You can’t help us here. We have this contained.”

  Sebastian’s gaze swung to Riley standing a few feet away, and he frowned, then felt his features tighten. Eddie was telling him not to go to Surrey, but to Ireland before the police could. “Maybe I will. Keep me posted. Thanks, Ed.”

  Sebastian wanted to push the friendship and ask for photos, but Granlen was already skirting his boundaries. It didn’t matter; he’d be in Ireland as soon as he filed a flight plan. He ended the call after learning that Noble’s daughter Moira had been notified by the embassy. His friends surrounded him as he relayed the news, and imagining Noble in the hands of a killer over some goddamn antique papers enraged him. The choking fax machine startled him, and while Max snatched up the first page, Sebastian moved to the window to call Moira.

  “Sebastian. Thank goodness. Hold a sec.” She spoke to someone nearby. “It’s a close friend. No, it’s private. Don’t you dare record it.” Then into the phone she said, “Sorry. The FBI are staked out here, but they aren’t telling me all of it, I know.”

  “They’re just doing their job, Moira. But as far as we know, he’s alive.” He didn’t tell her about the damage left behind. No sense in giving her nightmares till they knew something, but the bellman’s death magnified the danger to Noble. If they’d kill some kid, they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to his oldest friend.

  “I needed to hear that.” Moira let out a long sigh, then asked, “Who’d want to hurt my dad? He never made anyone mad. Well, ’cept my mother.”

  Sebastian couldn’t help his smile then. Noble and his ex-wife fought over one issue and she was on the other end
of the line. “I don’t know, darlin’, but I’ll find him, I swear it.”

  “I know you will.” She paused, sniffled. “He’s probably counting on it. I am, too.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I want to hire you. ’Sides me, you’re the only person Dad trusts. You still have his power of attorney to act on his behalf?” He did, then she said, “Good, I want to hire you.”

  “Darlin’, we’re sacked by the DOD.”

  She scoffed. “Like that will stop you?”

  He smiled, agreeing, and after he made certain Moira wasn’t alone with a bunch of Feds, he promised to call later. He severed the line, swallowing a few times before he could speak without smashing something. He looked at his friends. “There is no rock on the planet this killer can hide under.”

  “Buddy, I’m with you. But this wasn’t just a robbery and a kidnapping.” Max handed over the police report. “The bellman, his throat was cut.”

  Sebastian scowled, took the report he knew Granlen would catch hell for sending, and read. “That’s not all. His kidneys were punctured first.”

  He didn’t have to explain. They knew.

  A Black Ops kill. Like a target.

  25,000 feet

  Somewhere over Italy

  Olivia crinkled the police reports as she dug in her tote bag for a tissue. Cruz handed her one. “Thanks.”

  “Ross can be a jerk sometimes,” Cruz said.

  “He’s more than that. How insensitive do you have to be to notify us that Noble’s been kidnapped, and possibly dead, through a damn fax?” It didn’t get any more sterile than that and she wanted Agent Ross to feel some of this pain. Probably good that he was a few thousand miles away, the weasel.

  “Everything just changed, didn’t it?” Cruz didn’t look up from his copy of the reports till he neatly laid the last page aside.

  “People are dead, Cruz, what do you think?” She met his gaze, wiping her nose. “Sorry.”

  “It doesn’t look good,” he said, nodding to the summaries. “You believe he’s still alive?”

  “Yes.” She scowled at him. “We can’t even think otherwise.”

  She glanced down at the preliminary police reports and didn’t wonder how Agent Ross got them so quickly. When he wanted something, he had a golden touch. He’d already put it to good use. Noble’s cell was missing, and it had their numbers. Ross had already disabled their cell phones, and all calls were rerouted to the new phones left in storage on the jet. Ross was covering his bases effectively, but until they’d found Noble, alive and unharmed, his butt was in a deep sling. Hers. This should never have happened.

  She’d barely pulled it together when heard the tone she’d been waiting for, and switched seats in front of a flat screen. An incoming call message trotted across the LCD, then blinked, connecting. Ross’s face appeared so close all she could see was his nose. Adjusting his chair, he sat back. On his end, he could see a head shot of her through the webcam in the top of the screen.

  “Doctor Corrigan. You got my fax.”

  She nodded.

  “We need to move very cautiously now.”

  Wrong answer. “It would be so very wise for you to just listen right now.”

  He eyed her, taking the high road, and simply nodded.

  “Leads to the people who have Noble?”

  “Surrey Police are on it. I imagine the Yard is sticking their nose in as well. It’s not a high-crime area. Auction surveillance shows a lot of people. It will take time to interview them. But with the bellman’s death and the concierge, we have a definite time line of his capture.”

  “Ransom demands?”

  “None yet. It hasn’t been twelve hours. There’s a BOLO for Noble, and police are following all possible leads, but nothing concrete beyond the fax information so far.”

  A Be On The Lookout. That wasn’t enough, and she’d bet the FBI didn’t know everything. “There weren’t any prints left, were there?”

  He looked startled for a second.

  “You’d have one or two suspects by now, the cleaning staff at least.” She gave him credit for looking directly into the webcam. When she was pissed, even her brothers got scared.

  “You’re right, not even Noble’s prints.”

  “So we have professionals. Did you know someone else wanted the ship’s log?”

  “Not with any certainty. The day before the auction, we had a flag on a call Noble received from a number another section was monitoring. The caller wanted to deal. If he won the bidding, the caller would pay him twice the price for the artifact. Noble said no, but they called again the day of the auction, repeating the offer. Obviously this was just for a chance to get close enough to take it.”

  Son of a bitch. He knew. Yet she kept her features schooled, letting that roll around in her mind. It didn’t make her feel any less guilty. She’d sent Noble to Surrey for the Portuguese log. They were supposed to meet in Surrey for dinner tonight before heading back to the site.

  “If that caller number was monitored beforehand, then you know who it is, right?” They could back-trace the call.

  “It was one of several numbers monitored from a classified source.”

  “Don’t stop now, Agent Ross.” You’re digging your own grave.

  “I can’t break protocol and even I don’t know that intelligence.”

  She didn’t believe that, but after a year of working with him, she was accustomed to his need-to-know mantra. “Then find out.”

  He scowled. “Don’t think that you can dictate—”

  She leaned in. “Lives are on the line, Ross. We are now on high alert. I need to know who’s got their fingers in this pie enough to kill innocent people.” He said nothing. “Fine. But I’ve warned you before, keep me in the dark about anything and you risk me leaving this project permanently.” She reached to cut the line.

  “No.” He straightened a bit. “You wouldn’t. This means everything to you.”

  “Not when people are dying! Jeez, Ross. Where the hell was his protection?” She hated that her voice fractured.

  “Right behind him. He was protected from the moment he landed in Doneborg. He didn’t want it, if you’ll recall. He identified his detail after the auction, but the next pickup was taken out, we assume, by his kidnapper.”

  Taken out. Killed. How kind of them to whitewash the murder of their own agent.

  Olivia sat back. Two dead, one critical, and one missing. For a ship’s log? It didn’t make any sense unless the log wasn’t the true target. The project was deeply masked and she knew Noble didn’t give anything up. She’d swear to it. Yet she’d spoken to him hours before he disappeared and he didn’t mention anything suspicious. Nor the calls. The auction house and hotel were within walking distance of each other, so whoever killed his protection detail had spotted the agents. That took skill. Her gaze jumped back to Ross. “Did your people recover the translation?”

  His features tightened. “I was hoping you had it.”

  That’s what they wanted. “He sent me the most recent portion before he left Ireland, but not all of it.” Not the final pieces of this puzzle.

  “Can you work with that while I find someone else to finish it?”

  “No, you can find Noble!” She couldn’t even think of this project without him. “Why are you giving me grief here? It’s Noble, for God’s sake.”

  “We have agents searching, Doctor Corrigan. I’m in contact with garda and the FBI is in the loop.”

  She shook her head. “Use your resources, all of them. Noble Sheppard is an innocent victim of misinformation. Yours. We should have been warned about those traces.” That a division was tracking a cell number more than once said this was much larger than a kidnapping or the translation. The NSA didn’t pay attention to just anyone.

  “Yes, I agree, if it were in my power. It’s not. Now we have to move on with the project.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, again, and she could almost feel her expression darken. “Don’t you dare dismiss
his life so easily.” His unemotional response was dancing on her last nerve. “If you’d studied the time line, you’ll realize that the killer would have no reason to pulverize Mr. Matterson into a coma if they had the translation.”

  Ross’s features scrunched and he finally nodded agreement. “They’d have just taken it and left.”

  Finally, some logic. “It’s not the original and as far as I know, no one else has any idea of its true value. The only reason to need the translation and the log is for the project.”

  “Not possible,” he said. “This has been under wraps since the ice core.”

  The ice core sample had found an air pocket, which wasn’t unusual. Just not one so big or with anything in it. “Keep believing that. And if you’re going to assume anything, then it’s that this killer is well informed and he knows what the translation means. We must find it. What about Noble’s place in Ireland?”

  “We’ve sent people to sanitize the house.” God, she hated that word. “But our concern is his work, not his toothbrush.”

  He’d look really good with a broken nose right now. “Are you trying to infuriate me?”

  He rubbed his mouth, then pulled his jacket tighter around his throat. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want and I’ll see what I can do?”

  Oh, he really didn’t mean that, but she wasn’t in the mood to hold back. “We need security where we didn’t, and that means on anything that connects to the project. Supply lines, systems. Anything. No one gets near the complex that isn’t cleared by our people.” She folded her arms and wished she could pace and work off this angry energy. “And with a high enough clearance, too, because they’ll have to know everything to protect it.”

  He frowned. “That’s how you get leaks.”

  “Wake up! You already have one or Noble would be here right now.” She waited for that to sink in.

  “You’re upset, I understand that, but we—”

  She delivered her best “don’t you dare patronize me” look. “I read the ME’s report. I’m not dense about the methods of close-combat kills.” She leaned in, thinking of those innocent men taking a knife in the kidneys and never knowing why. “Monitoring those calls says you knew there was a threat and did nothing to keep Noble safer. You failed. Protection is your job. He should have had an armed bodyguard with him twenty-four seven!”