The guard took another step forward and Deuce’s heart stopped.
The SIG and holster he’d lost lay in the dirt only three yards away, a foot or so from the guard’s boot. Another step and the guy would trip over them.
Finding that gun would prove that what the gray-haired man had seen was a real concern, not just a trick of light. That someone might still be hiding nearby. And if the guard came to that conclusion and kept looking, Deuce would have no choice but to deal with him.
Preparing himself for the worst, he watched as the guard continued to inch forward, looking as if he were about to take that fateful step. The gun was right in front of the guy, partially covered by leaves, but plainly visible in the sunlight.
Then a voice blared out of the radio, telling everyone to report in.
The guard stopped, and took another quick look around before pulling the radio from his belt and thumbing the call button.
“All clear,” he said as he turned and walked back toward the road.
Seconds later, several more all clears were transmitted, then a voice said, “All right, false alarm. Return to your positions.”
Deuce quietly exhaled as the guard joined his partner and two others who were now waiting on the road. They had a brief conversation, and one of them laughed, then they headed as a group toward the house.
Deuce waited a full ten minutes before he climbed out of the bushes, grabbed his gun and holster, and hightailed it back to his car.
CHAPTER 15
Alex had all but given up on trying to remember Uncle Eric’s last name when something Warlock said triggered it.
They had returned from the rock star’s suite, a frustrated Warlock blathering on about how he didn’t appreciate being left hanging in that bathroom, and how he wished he could’ve gotten a better video feed into Favreau’s suite. “The luck we’re having, Freddy boy’s bound to get skittish and play rabbit before we find out how he plans to deliver those codes.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Alex had said. “One way or another.”
But the word “rabbit” remained in her mind, niggling at her for several seconds. And then, without warning, the name she had been seeking surfaced in a flash—
Rabbit. Hop. Hopcroft.
Eric Hopcroft.
She wasn’t sure what else she may have said to Warlock, because the moment she remembered that name, she snatched her backpack off a chair and carried it into the nearest bedroom.
Behind her, Warlock said, “Why are you going into my—” but his voice disappeared as she closed the door.
As she sat on the edge of the bed, she pulled her computer tablet from the backpack and brought the device to life, tapping the icon that gave her immediate, encrypted access to Stonewell’s databases.
Stonewell International had been collecting information in the field for over thirty years, enough to fill a warehouse full of databanks, and unfettered access to this resource was the main reason Alex was willing to put up with McElroy and participate in ops like this one.
After she logged in with the proper decryption key, she called up the search menu and typed in the name HOPCROFT, ERIC.
The search engine took only milliseconds to deliver a profile photo of the man from her mother’s wedding video, accompanied by identifying text:
NAME: Eric Arthur Hopcroft
DOB: 3/18/56, San Gabriel, Calif.
DOD: 8/17/01, Republic of Yemen
Date of death?
That would explain why she hadn’t heard anything about him after all these years. The odd thing was, he had died only a week before her mother was killed.
A coincidence?
Alex searched for the cause of death and saw two words that momentarily froze her.
Gunshot wounds.
She called up the summary and read a brief report claiming Eric Arthur Hopcroft had been on a field assignment for the CIA when he was gunned down by two unknown assassins in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. The nature of his assignment was currently classified.
So Uncle Eric was CIA.
Okay.
But why had he been at her mother’s wedding?
Was he on assignment then as well?
And what was his relationship to her father? Her dad had always treated Hopcroft as his best friend.
Alex thought of the many times the man had come to their house. Holidays. Dinner parties. Weekend barbecues. He’d even shown up at one of Alex’s piano recitals, back when her parents shared the delusion that she had some musical talent.
But why?
Had he come because of Dad, as she had always believed, or because of Mom?
It was possible Uncle Eric had been a friend to both her mother and father, and might well have been the reason they met, but something about this situation didn’t feel right. Especially when she factored in Hopcroft’s profession.
So, why had he attended her mother’s wedding?
Was it an official visit? A clandestine one? Personal?
And why had he been killed only days before the bombing of the cafe in Lebanon?
What, if anything, was the connection?
Contrary to what Alex had hoped, there were even more questions flooding her brain now, and as she tapped through the pages of Hopcroft’s file, she saw nothing that helped her. He was long dead, and any answers he might provide had been buried with him.
Feeling depressed, she sighed, closed the file, and logged off the database.
It was times like this that she wished she was still in Baltimore running skip traces and bagging local fugitives, back when she had adjusted to the idea that she would never again see her father, and the memories of her mother were simply reminders that she and Danny had once been loved.
Now she felt as if she didn’t know her parents at all, that they had been strangers who had merely pretended to be part of their happy family.
How had it all gotten so complicated?
By the time she returned to the living room, Cooper was back, and Deuce was just coming in, looking disheveled and dirty. His expression was as serious as Alex had ever seen it, no trace of his usual, easygoing grin.
“What the hell happened to you?” Cooper said.
“You don’t want to know. But it looks like Valac’s a guest of Pappy Leo and has an army protecting him.”
“Pappy Leo?” Alex said.
“Leonard Latham. King of St. Cajetan. That’s what the locals call him.”
“He’s staying at Latham’s place?”
“I couldn’t get a face shot to confirm, but my gut tells me it’s our man.”
As Deuce set his camera on the end table, Alex noticed several cracks in the lens.
She grabbed it and tilted it up. “What did you do? Fall on it?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said, taking control of the camera again. He flicked open a compartment on the body, ejected an SD card, and handed it to Warlock. “I’d lay odds that if you do a facial scan and ID the gray-haired guy outside the strip club, you’ll find Reinhard Beck on his list of known associates.”
“I’ll get it started,” Warlock said, moving to his laptop. “But this isn’t like what they show us on the telly. It could take some time.”
“That’s fine,” Cooper told him. “In the meantime we’ll operate on the assumption that Deuce is right.”
Alex frowned. “From what I read about Latham, he’s a bit eccentric, but I don’t see him as the type to be hanging out with a known terrorist.”
Cooper shrugged. “Maybe he’s getting a thrill out of it. Or maybe Valac is using an alias and Latham has no idea who his guest really is.”
“A guy who just happened to show up with an army?”