I could see where she was going with this. “Security cameras at the Atlanta airport. Since Corey’s house is in Atlanta, it would make sense that they would’ve flown out of there.”
“It’s the world’s busiest airport, has the most extensive security presence of any airport on the planet. If anyone had the cameras to catch the two of them on tape, they would.”
“Right,” I said. “And then we can use facial recognition. Maybe catch the two of them checking in or boarding a flight, figure out what names they’re traveling under.”
“But,” she acknowledged, “even with Lacey working on that, it might take a while.”
“Well”—I was already dialing Angela’s number—“then let’s get things rolling.”
72
Overall, supper was a disaster.
Tessa felt so unnatural and gauche in the new dress, and she didn’t really know what to say during the meal with the two other couples. Melody’s boyfriend kept asking her what she was going to talk about at graduation next month, and she wasn’t about to bring up death and oblivion and meaninglessness, not right before prom. So she did her best to change the subject.
Both of the other couples had been together for a while, and since this was the first time she’d ever gone out with Aiden, that just made things even more uncomfortable.
It wasn’t her crowd either — admittedly, she didn’t really have a crowd, but everyone else at the table wanted to talk about baseball or track and knew all about pop music and the current viral videos on YouTube and what to laugh at and what not to. Tessa appreciated that Melody was trying to reach out to her, trying to include her, but it wasn’t really working.
Not to mention how distracted she was — thinking about her argument with Patrick, and how nervous she was about being here with Aiden.
She kept floundering for what to say, and when she did say anything it just seemed to come out wrong or make her seem like a complete idiot.
But the worst thing of all was the server at a nearby table.
Tymber Dotson.
The girl Aiden had been dating until a month ago.
She wore a perky little skirt and moved in a way that showed she knew what guys like.
So why did Aiden choose to come here if he knew Tymber was waiting tables tonight? He had to have known. It didn’t sit right with Tessa.
Not at all.
Even though Tymber was supposed to be serving this older couple at the other table, she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off Aiden, and although he was still being polite and nice and everything to Tessa, she saw his eyes wander in Tymber’s direction way more often than necessary.
Lacey was able to find Tyree and the unidentified woman on the security footage at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport last Thursday morning boarding a flight to Frankfurt. From there they continued on to Chennai.
By analyzing the names of the other passengers on their flight, we figured out the aliases that our two suspects were flying under: Caleb Hayes and Deborah Moss.
The two names brought up a complete electronic footprint with no hiccups or run-ins with the law.
If they were working with Valkyrie, as it appeared they were, I wasn’t surprised at all that he’d set them up with comprehensive false identities.
But now that we had the names they were using, we could track their movements.
When we ran everything through the system, we found out that the two of them had flown from Chennai to Logan International earlier this week, and then flown down here to DC this morning.
Lien-hua and I had finished our pizza but Ralph had thrown in another one and was working his way through the third pie by himself. “Why Logan?” he asked, wiping pizza sauce from his chin.
“Let’s take a closer look at the timing and location,” I said.
“Timing and location.” Now he had his mouth full. “Imagine Pat suggesting something like that.”
I found a notepad and drew a timeline as I talked things through. “Last week Thursday, Corey Wellington is killed. As far as we can tell, Tyree removes something from his medicine cabinet.”
“Probably Corey’s meds,” Lien-hua inserted.
“Yes. Then he and this woman we know as Deborah Moss fly to Chennai, travel from there to Kadapa, torture these two men, then return promptly to the States.”
“And someone clears out the facility where they were manufacturing the drugs.” Ralph finished off his last piece. Chased it down with a long guzzle of Mountain Dew.
“Right. We don’t know who that might have been, but we do know something else about these drugs.”
“The lot number,” Lien-hua said.
“Right. If we can identify the distribution services that PTPharmaceuticals uses to transport their drugs from India to the States to move them into our supply chain, we should be able to find out if any of their planes—”
“Land in Boston,” she finished my thought.
“Exactly.”
“Or DC,” Ralph added.
It was after business hours and we weren’t able to reach anyone from the pharmaceutical company, so Lien-hua hopped online to see what she could dig up.
“I’ll put an attempt to locate on Caleb Hayes and Deborah Moss,” Ralph announced. “They might still be in the DC area.”
I had an idea. “Try this: They flew into Dulles; they might have rented a car from there. If they did, we can have Metro start looking for their rental car — or, if it has GPS, locate it through the rental company. Also, have some agents find out if the two of them have checked into any hotels in the DC area.”
“I like the way you think,” Ralph replied, quoting the words I’d said to him earlier in the week.
I followed suit: “I’ve been working with you for a decade. ’Bout time you took note of that.”
“Funny how it just occurred to me.”
“Uh-huh.”
We split up the calls between us and got started.
73
Valkyrie stood quietly, hands clasped behind his back, watching Alhazur and his two men board the yacht.
Alhazur’s two hulking freedom fighters were wearing jackets that seemed a little too bulky for the cool spring evening. One man’s face looked like it was molded out of old clay. The other was an enormous, steel-fisted human wrecking ball. Alhazur himself was a broad-shouldered, densely muscled man with a chiseled jaw and hollow eyes.
Once the three men were on board, they gathered in a small semicircle around Valkyrie. He was on good terms with Alhazur, but there was no doubt that encircling him was an intimidation technique.
Valkyrie was not intimidated.
“I would like you to take off your coats,” he instructed the two men who flanked him.
“We’re comfortable as is,” Clay Face said with more antagonism than necessary.
“I’m afraid that to be comfortable, you have to be alive.”
As a flicker of revelation crossed the man’s face, Valkyrie made his move.
He was quick and before either man could respond, he’d grabbed the guy’s head, snapped his neck, and had his own gun drawn and aimed at Alhazur’s forehead before the dead soldier’s body even landed on the deck of the boat.
“Kindly remove your jacket,” Valkyrie said to the other man. “Do it slowly. I wouldn’t want to get anxious with my finger on the trigger here.”
“Take it off,” Alhazur commanded his man. He was trying to sound unaffected, but Valkyrie heard concern beneath his words. Alhazur may have recruited, trained, and coordinated suicide bombers, but he did not want to make the ultimate sacrifice for his cause — at least not needlessly, at least not tonight.