Chapter 22
So why did he feel like his arm was being ripped off?
Mac’s phone pinged. “TacOps sent through a facial recognition hit for Bocharov entering Mexico from Guatemala day before you saw him in Veracruz. Used the name Lars Thorwald. Swedish national.”
Lucy narrowed her eyes. “That name sounds familiar.” She typed it into her laptop. “Oh, no, just a character out of ‘Rear Window.’”
“That makes sense actually. He was a big Hitchcock fan. Any record of him leaving Mexico?” Jordan needed to concentrate on the hunt. That was the only way to truly ensure Daisy’s safety. Eliminate the threat.
He was no good distracted, and Daisy was every type of distraction.
“Not yet. TacOps are working with analysts at SIOC to try to backtrack his movements prior to that.”
“It’s more important to put resources into finding where he is now, not where he was yesterday,” Jordan argued.
“Our systems can do both and hopefully point to any of his contacts which might lead us to alternate forms of transportation.” Mac put his hand on his shoulder, lowered his voice. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine when Bocharov is no longer able to hurt anyone.”
Mac’s lips pinched. “By which I know you mean arrested and put in a SuperMax facility for the rest of his miserable life.”
“Yeah. That’s what I mean.”
Alex Parker came over to speak quietly. “I ran analysis on the people involved in your undercover op back in Chicago. Your FBI handler was a woman called Jenna Stork, correct?”
Jordan felt himself grow still on every level. “Correct.”
“I tracked some payments from some of Bocharov’s accounts to an offshore bank account in the Caymans before he disappeared. I also found records of unreported trips made by Agent Stork to the Caymans around the same time as several large withdrawals.”
Jordan felt a buzz in his blood. A woman he’d trusted. A colleague who should have had his back.
“Turns out she retired early.”
Something rumbled inside him. A vault opening. “Where is she now?”
Alex opened his laptop and showed him a small dot on the map. “Flew into DC this morning from the US Virgin Islands, where she has a nice house with a pool.”
“You’re tracking her cell phone?” Mac hissed.
Alex shrugged. “Want me to wait for a subpoena?”
“Let’s keep this very quiet,” Mac murmured.
“Call me cynical, but she’s either heard about Anton Levi and is worried the Russians will eliminate another loose end, or she has been coerced into the investigation under threat of exposure to find out what we know.”
“Leveraging her old contacts.” Jordan felt hollowed out. “Sonofabitch.” The sense of betrayal was almost overwhelming. Or maybe that feeling was from Daisy leaving him behind without a second glance.
So long and thanks for all the fucks.
His tongue felt like sandpaper.
It was probably for the best. She’d told him no emotional entanglements, but he was dangerously close to falling for her, and neither of them needed that kind of idiocy.
He nodded toward his old friend Granger. “What about him?”
“No money trails that I’ve found yet. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been paid in some other way, or coerced in some other fashion—threats to his wife, his kid—but there’s no proof that he’s anything except a solid cop.”
Shit.
All these years he’d blamed Granger.
Really, he should have let the blame fall squarely where it belonged.
On his own shoulders for being arrogant enough to take on a job that he knew was dangerous to his family’s welfare.
He’d never imagined Bocharov would do what he’d done, that he’d have that capacity for such ruthless violence against the innocent.
But Jordan should have known. It was his fault they’d been murdered.
He took a step toward Granger, but Alex stopped him with a hand on his arm. “As difficult as this must be, I suggest we wait until after we pick up Stork before we say anything to anyone else.”
“We don’t have a warrant,” Mac argued between clenched teeth.
“Don’t need a warrant to have a conversation,” Jordan pointed out.
Mac looked torn. “We could have agents from the Washington Field Office there in twenty minutes.”
“She won’t talk to them. She’ll talk to me,” Jordan insisted.
“Fine. Bump into her. Take her somewhere nice for lunch. Parker has your back. I need to stay here and coordinate all the different threads, including what’s happening at the University of Richmond physics department.
But I want ears on the meet when you get there.
We play this by the book, Jordan, or you won’t get to play at all. ”
Jenna Stork sat at a high table in a diner opposite the Ford Theater when Jordan sank into a seat beside her.
“Agent Stork?”
She startled and blinked rapidly. “Jordan, what a surprise!”
She sounded genuinely happy to see him, but then she’d seemed genuinely upset the night his family burned alive.
He gave her a puzzled smile. “What are you doing in DC? Based at JEH now?”
“What? Oh no.” She shook her head, and her long dark hair fluttered over her grass-green sweater that she’d paired with a dark gray, tweed skirt and black leather boots. She had that prim and proper middle-school-teacher vibe going on. “I retired a couple of years ago.”
“Retired? How come? Or is that a personal question?”
She took a sip of coffee while the server came over and he ordered pancakes. He hadn’t eaten yet today. Too torn up with remorse and guilt over making love to Daisy, and then the goddamned anger over her ditching him without a backward glance.
Apparently, when she’d said no strings and no emotional entanglement, she’d meant it.
Finally, Jenna Stork spoke. “It’s a little personal, but I think we went through enough together that I can share.”
Drawing him into her confidence with their shared experience, building that connection. It took everything in him not to wrap his hands around her throat and squeeze.
“After you moved on to HRT, I met someone. A really sweet and interesting someone.” She smiled and wiped at her lips with a napkin.
It came back stained red with lipstick. “As much as I loved the job, and I did love it.” She swallowed and stared at the thin gold band on her ring finger.
“I realized I loved Charlie more, and when Charlie was forced to move to the US Virgin Islands by his firm…I knew I had to go with him.”
“That’s great.”
She looked at him with sad eyes. “It was until Charlie died, two years ago. Massive heart attack, and he was just gone.” Emotion shook her voice. “Between losing him and working the Bocharov case, it brought home that we don’t live forever and shouldn’t take happiness for granted.”
He rubbed his thumb down his coffee mug. “I’m sorry about your husband. That has to be tough.”
Sadness settled over her features. “Thank you. I guess we’ve both experienced tragedy in our time.”
“Steady.” The voice in his ear was Parker’s.
Jordan felt as if his jaws were wired shut but somehow forced a smile. “Oddly enough, I met a spook recently who told me I’m a ‘cautionary tale’ at Langley.”
“Ouch. Why were you talking to a spook?”
“I can’t say, sorry.”
“Classified.” She nodded sagely. “Of course. Sometimes I forget I’m no longer part of the Bureau.”
His pancakes arrived, and he drowned them in maple syrup and dug in. “So what drags you from paradise?”
She sighed dramatically. “A friend of mine called in crisis.”
I bet they did.
The salt of the bacon, combined with the sweetness of the syrup and pancakes, made him want to groan with pleasure. He had to stop himself taking a photo and sending it to Daisy because he knew she appreciated her food.
You and Daisy are done, motherfucker.
“Your friend lives in DC?”
“Maryland. I figured I’d visit a couple of my favorite DC hangouts”—the Russian Embassy perhaps?—“and maybe find a decent shopping mall before heading that way. As much as I love USVI, the shopping sucks.”
“Then you must have saved a fortune living there.”
“Ha. Funny. I wish.” She took a big gulp of coffee. “Charlie left me financially secure which isn’t the same as having him around, but at least I don’t have to go back to the grindstone.”
“I always thought you were a good agent.”
She shot him a nervous look. “Thanks. I tried, but sometimes it was a little too dangerous for my liking. Why are you in DC? I thought you were still in Quantico with HRT?”
Her brown eyes were completely guileless. Maybe they were wrong about her. Maybe she’d been set up to take the fall?
“Chasing a lead. You’d be interested actually, kind of serendipitous to run into you, but I can’t really talk about it.”
“Classified.” She blinked rapidly and nodded. “I didn’t think HRT did that. I thought it was all macho chest-thumping and fast-roping out of helicopters. I was sorry about the operator who died on New Year’s Day. Was he a friend of yours?”
The woman poked the raw wound.
“Yeah,” he cleared his throat. “One of the best men I ever knew.”
“Sorry to hear that.” She placed her hand over his and he froze.
Then she let go and ate a little more of her sausage.
“That must have been difficult, but it’s kind of why the decision to leave wasn’t that difficult for me in the end.
The idea of bullets flying or hunting down evil monsters seemed a lot more exciting when you weren’t the one doing the chasing. ”
Being in the middle of it, stopping the bad guys, that was the whole point.
“I was lucky. I had Charlie for a few years. Did you ever meet anyone special?”
Was she hitting on him?
Or trawling for information?
Or both?
He cut more pancake and stuffed it in his mouth. Then spoke around his food because he was sophisticated that way. “I thought I had, but it turns out she was just after my body.” And damn if that didn’t sting a little.
She leaned back and laughed. “Well, I’m not surprised.”
“She dumped me this morning.”
“I’m sorry about that. She’s a fool.”
He let his gaze warm up as if he wasn’t full of revulsion. “You think so?”