“What kind of incident?”
Another pause. “An incursion.”
“Any casualties?”
“None, sir.”
“Any idea why they were there?”
“Sir, I should really be speaking to—”
“Please answer my question, Ms. Clark.”
“Yes, sir. They came to get the man we were questioning.”
“And did they?”
“Unfortunately.”
Davis said nothing for a moment. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I’ve barely had time to take a breath, let alone go through Boyer’s files.”
“Sir, where is Mr. Boyer? I’m sure he’s expecting me to update—”
“He’s dead.”
She had been walking across the ground-floor room toward the exit, but his words stopped her in her tracks. “Dead? How?”
“He was in his house when it burned down.”
“Jesus. Was it an accident?”
“Unlikely. His security team was found unconscious in the backyard. They’d apparently been drugged.”
Drugged? She’d been unable to revive King while they waited for the response team, which had led her to believe he was drugged.
Quinn, she thought. If he’d played a role in her boss’s death, it would certainly explain how he’d found out where she was.
“Ms. Clark, are you there?”
She blinked. “Uh, sorry, sir. I’m here.”
“I need to know exactly what you’re working on.”
“It’s a KV job, sir.” KV was McCrillis’s highest secrecy designation, meaning phone conversations about it were strongly discouraged.
“Of course it is, goddammit. Fine. Get your ass in here as quickly as you can and give me a full report. I’ll be in my office.”
Gloria stood on the other side of Davis’s desk as she filled him in on her assignment. The offer to sit had not been extended, nor would she have accepted it if it had. Though one of Foster’s men had patched her up before she left Virginia, she’d refused any pain medication, so it felt like she had a hot poker constantly pressed against her side and sitting made it worse.
“So the job is to find out if the girl is alive or not?” Davis interrupted, apparently having a hard time comprehending the mission.
“Part one, yes,” she said, working hard to maintain her patience.
“And what is part two?”
Her training made her not want to answer the question, but with Boyer out of the picture she had no choice. “If she’s still alive, eliminate her.”
“A child.”
“Yes, sir.”
She would have understood if he looked disgusted, but instead he appeared merely annoyed as he said, “And do we know why?”
“That’s not part of the job, sir,” she told him, though she actually did know the answer.
“Unbelievable. Who approved this?”
“The client has worked with McCrillis for many years, sir, and I do believe a premium is being paid for this project.”
“As well it should be.” He reached for his phone. “Please step into my waiting area. I’ll call you back in when I’m ready.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and headed for the exit.
As she entered the waiting area, she heard Davis say, “Don? This is Perry. We have a situation here that I need a little…”
After the door closed behind her, she could hear him no longer, but she had no doubt who he was talking to.
Donald McCrillis. President and CEO of McCrillis International.
The corner of her mouth ticked up.
Exactly seven minutes after she stepped out of Davis’s office, the door opened.
“Please come back in,” Davis said, his tone contrite.
As she entered, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the text on the screen.
Davis. Keep it natural.
There was no sender’s name, only a number she was sure belonged to a burner phone. It didn’t matter. She knew it was from Don McCrillis.
In a few hours, when the sun came up, instead of being down one vice president, McCrillis International would be down two.
“Ms. Clark, please have a seat.”
She smiled and lowered herself into the chair.
CHAPTER 26
Orlando’s alarm went off at 6:30 a.m., barely four hours after she’d fallen asleep.
Forcing herself up, she shuffled into the shower, shocking her body first with cold water and then gradually adding some heat. By the time she was toweling off, she felt like she probably wouldn’t spontaneously fall asleep in the next fifteen minutes. Anything beyond that, all bets were off.
Coffee. She needed coffee. Now.
Forgoing even the small amount of makeup she usually wore, she ran her fingers through her hair, pulled on some clothes, and headed downstairs to the coffee shop in the lobby. She knew there would be a line — there were always lines at hotel coffee shops, no matter the time of day — but what she didn’t expect to see was Abraham sitting at one of the small tables out front, sipping from a cup and eating a muffin.
Orlando purchased her coffee, waited for it to be prepared, and then joined her former mentor.
“You did get some sleep, didn’t you?” she asked.
“More than enough,” he replied. “The older you get, the less you need.”
“Then I need to get older fast.”
A small grin, but no snide comment. That wasn’t like him.
She stirred her coffee and gave it a taste. A little too hot still, but she was willing to risk a scorched mouth for the brew’s revitalizing effects.
“I…I tried again,” he said.
“Tried what?”
He touched the phone sitting next to his half-eaten muffin. “The number. I tried again.”
“And?”
“Same as before,” he said, disappointed.
“Whoever it belonged to probably tossed their phone.”
He nodded in reluctant agreement. “It’s just…whoever Eli called was trying to help him. So that has to mean they know something about Tessa, doesn’t it? I thought…I mean…” He took a breath and picked up his coffee. “I don’t know where we go from here.”
“I might,” she said.
He looked at her, hope creeping into his eyes. “Did you find something?”
She held up a hand. “Can I finish my coffee first?”
Despite Abraham’s persistent questioning, she refused to go into further detail until they were back in her room.
Once she woke up her laptop, she brought up the files Eli put on the memory card for the members of Operation Overtake. “According to Eli, three are dead,” she said. “I double-checked and he was right. These other two, though, were only listed as missing. Akira Hayashi and Desirae Rosette. I checked to see if either of them had taken any jobs after Overtake but found none. Granted, I didn’t have a ton of time so it wasn’t a thorough search, but it was enough of a sample to form my opinion. Before I went to sleep, I set up a few search bots. First, to see if any unidentified bodies had been recovered in the months following the job that matched either of them, and second, to hunt down any personal information such as friends and family who they might get in contact with.”
“What did they find?”
“Have no idea.” She moved the cursor across the screen. “Shall we take a look?”
She accessed the server where the bots had dumped their information into presorted files. She checked Hayashi first. During the time frame she had specified, three male bodies had been recovered in Japan with the correct height and general size. The one discovered nearly three months after the operation was the most intriguing.
It had been found in the wreckage of a building fire. Though the body had been severely burnt, the medical examiner found that the man had been shot in the back of the head and not recently. The doctor was able to extract some cells that hadn’t been wrecked by the fire, and discovered damage usually associated with extreme cold. To Orlando this meant only one possibility — the victim had been killed, put on ice, and, after a desired amount of time had passed, placed in a building that was then set ablaze.