Chase stood up, causing her stomach to flutter.
Their relationship had crossed the big river, and she wanted to spend some time sunning on the grass. She wanted to find out if it felt as good as it had looked from the other side. If it didn’t, she told herself that would be fine. Disappointing but fine. Moving on without taking any time to feel the sand between their toes, however, would be a blow.
She wasn’t ready for another kick right now.
Chase pulled on his boxers and snuggled back in beside her, keeping the glow alive. He put an arm around her shoulders and studied the pin that had popped onto her screen, bringing an abrupt end to their first intimate encounter. “That’s not a good sign. Looks like a default, the equivalent of an error message. Can you zoom in?”
“Maybe Aria’s on a yacht,” Skylar said, enjoying his warmth while working the touchpad.
She moved back and forth between zooming in and re-centering until the scale was city size. “It’s an island.”
One more click revealed the name.
“Seven Star Island,” Chase read aloud. “That makes sense. I should have thought to Google it when we got Aria’s email address.”
Skylar typed in Seven Star and got millions of hits. “It wouldn’t have helped.”
“Try Aria Seven Star.”
Skylar did. They studied the output. “Just garbage. Any more ideas?”
“Tory said he could never find anything on his employers. He explained how he searched and why, and I believed him. But he never had a location, just photos and first names.”
“Right. He said they were clearly meticulous about keeping off the grid, and speculated that they’d invested in a serious internet cleanup operation.”
Chase raised a finger. “There’s one place that cleanup operations can’t reach, and that’s the NSA archives. The National Security Agency keeps records of cached web pages, kind of like computer backups for the internet. Rumor is they’ve subcontracted this to Google, but I don’t know if that’s true. In any case, I can see if Lesley will run an archive search on Aria Seven Star. We might get lucky.”
Chase retrieved his laptop and began typing.
Skylar waited for him to hit SEND before asking, “Does it matter at this point? Now that we know where to find Aria.”
“It might. Although we’re definitely going to Seven Star Island, one way or another, I’d like to know what to expect when we get there. Aria might well be a Latin American drug lord, or an East European human trafficker, or an African arms dealer. The only thing we know about her at this point is that she paid a Finnish assassin a lot of money to make people with specific physical descriptions disappear without a trace. The CIA, with all its tricks and toys, would never initiate an infiltration operation with such a paucity of information.”
Skylar had never really considered the drug-lord or human-trafficking or arms-dealing options. She’d never really considered the demographics of her assailant at all, beyond charming con man. As a professional, Chase had an entirely different perspective. He took the pragmatic block-and-tackle approach of an operative. She needed to start thinking that way too. “How will additional information impact our approach?”
Chase repositioned himself so he was sitting cross-legged on the bed and they could speak face to face. “It’s a question of tactics. Do we make a stealthy assault in the middle of the night, or sail in during the day and knock on the door? Do we take a boat or helicopter—assuming that Tory’s Amex is still working? Do we scuba dive, or saunter off the dock? Do we go in heavy or unarmed?”
Skylar was pleased to see Chase stealing glances at her body. “What do you mean by going in heavy?”
“Assault rifles, night vision, an assortment of grenades.” His intonation altered as he spoke, no doubt in reaction to her facial expression. “Probably not our best option, given the composition of our team. Actually, I feel kind of silly for even considering it. It’s just my default scenario, given my background.”
“I understand. But you need to know that I’ve never fired a pistol, much less an assault rifle. And frankly, I’d be nervous about picking up a grenade. I will do it if that’s what you’re convinced it takes, but I’m hoping we can come up with something more cerebral.”
“Like a frying pan?”
Skylar appreciated the injection of levity, but didn’t allow it to deviate her train of thought. “I also hope we’ll call the police if Aria turns out to be a drug lord or human trafficker or arms dealer.”
“You make some excellent points.”
Her stomach rumbled again, breaking the tension.
“Let’s go out for dinner. Get some air,” he suggested. “With luck, Lesley will have responded by the time we’re back.”
68
Ultimate Relief
DAVID RAISED HIS GLASS as the others took their seats. Given the table’s small size, it was easy for them to clink. “To the future.”
“To the future,” they repeated.
He cracked a claw and forked out the meat, retaining the semicircular shape. One of the things he’d learned as a man of wealth was how to attack shellfish. He dipped the flesh into the warm butter, then popped the whole thing into his mouth, savoring that sumptuous first bite.
Aria went to work with equal aplomb on a slice of honeydew melon. “Before we discuss a reply to Tory’s email, have either of you learned exactly what happened to Lisa?” she asked.
“You were the last to see her, right?” Pierce asked. “She paid you a visit?”
“Yes. She showed up unannounced. It provided a timely test for my security contingent. They detected her approach from half an hour out and tracked her all the way here.”
David set his fork down softly on the white tablecloth and cleared his throat. He’d hoped to finish his lunch before having this conversation, but it seemed silly to trifle now that Aria had teed it up. “Lisa was killed with a neurotoxin. Batrachotoxin to be precise. An injector hidden in her seat was activated by a trip-switch calibrated to her weight, 120 to 130 pounds. It triggered when the attached altimeter indicated that her G650 had crossed into long-range cruising altitude, 45,000 feet. Ironically, it was her attempt to escape that killed her. Hopefully she died in her sleep.”
“You have a contact at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department?” Pierce asked, visibly impressed.
David wetted his throat with a swallow of Champagne. “No. That’s just how I designed it. Her seat, her weight, a long-range flight. Safety measures designed to ensure that there wouldn’t be an innocent victim.”
Pierce’s eyes went wide, then turned toward his steak knife. It was the hefty kind, with a riveted hardwood handle and a sharp serrated edge.
“Same thing with Allison?” Aria asked, her voice strained but steady.
“No. I strapped a canister of anesthetic under her seat and triggered it directly. I was in the car right behind hers. I’d phoned her agent with a fake urgent audition to get her going fast on the right road. She fell asleep and the laws of physics did the rest.”
“She was innocent!” Pierce shouted. “How could you kill that innocent girl?”
David wiped his lips with a linen napkin. “None of us are innocent, Pierce. Twenty years ago, we killed Kirsten to keep our secret. This year we plotted to kill nine more people to maintain it. In another twenty years, we’d have done it again. Ad infinitum. We’re all mass murderers.”
Pierce grabbed the knife.
David looked directly into his bulging eyes. “And what are we giving the world in exchange?”
Pierce gritted his teeth, but stayed silent.