Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Noah
We were almost back at HQ after spending the day at the camp when Jackson’s phone rang.
It had been a good day. One where nothing happened except that we were somewhere together and that was enough.
I’d spent the morning arranging flowers we’d bought at the local garden center in hanging baskets for the porch.
In the afternoon, we’d walked the property trail that ran along the eastern edge of the woods where the creek cut through the low ground.
Jackson glanced at the screen, and his expression shifted.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s Caden.” He picked up. “Yeah.” A pause. “Put her on hold.” Another pause. “We’re just a few minutes out, so don’t lose her.” He hung up and looked at me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Imogen Corvane,” he said. “She called the main line. Caden says she’ll only talk to you.”
“She kept the card,” I said, mostly to myself.
“She kept the card,” he said in agreement.
I looked at the road. “Do you think he knows she’s calling? She could be calling because he told her to,” I said. “To find out what we know.”
“She could be,” Jackson said. “We’ll find out.”
Wolfe was in his office waiting for us when we got there. He was standing at the window with his glasses on and an expression that said something important had happened, and he was trying to decide what it meant.
“She’s on hold,” he said when we came in. “Caden says she sounded scared but controlled.”
“Then Corvane either isn’t there or put her up to calling,” Jackson said.
Wolfe looked at him. “I agree.” He looked at me. “You talked to her at the Gala. What’s your read?”
I thought about the corridor outside the ballroom. The way she’d held her champagne glass in both hands. The smile that didn’t mean anything. “She was afraid of him,” I said. “Like actually afraid. She would call if he told her to.”
Wolfe nodded once. “We take the call on speaker. Noah, you lead. She called for you.” He looked at Jackson. “You and I stay quiet unless there’s a reason not to.”
Jackson nodded.
Wolfe pressed the button on his desk phone. “Caden. Put her through.”
We waited.
The silence in the office while we waited was heavy. Like it knew that the next few minutes could change everything. I stood beside the desk with my hands loose at my sides and breathed slowly in and out the way Dr. Reyes had taught me.
The phone rang once.
I picked up. “This is Noah.”
A pause. Then, quietly, “I know you probably didn’t expect to hear from me.”
Her voice was different from the Gala. It was softer, calmer, resolved like she’d made a decision about something. I recognized what was underneath it. I’d heard it in my own voice in the months after my rescue.
“I wasn’t sure if you would call, but I’m glad you did,” I said. “Are you safe right now?”
“Yes. He’s traveling. He won’t be back for three days.” Another pause. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. On the stage. About the after being long.” Her voice wavered slightly and steadied. “I’m going to have a baby.”
The room went very still.
“I found out two weeks before the Gala,” she said.
“And I sat there that night listening to you talk about what it means to survive something, and I kept thinking I cannot raise this baby in that house. I can’t let my child grow up watching what I watch.
” She stopped. “I’ve been collecting things.
Documents. Financial records. Communications I was never supposed to see.
Things that would be very useful to the people who are looking for reasons to hold him accountable, but I would need assurances that I would be protected. ”
I looked at Wolfe. He was very still, his expression giving nothing away, but his eyes were sharp.
“Imogen,” I said carefully. “The people in this room with me are good people. They’re going to want to help you. But I need to ask, does Anton know you called?”
“No.” No hesitation. “He trusts me completely. That’s his first mistake.”
“And the documents? Are they somewhere safe?”
“They’re with me. I’ve had them for two weeks. I’ve been waiting.” A pause. “Waiting to be sure I was brave enough to do this.” She breathed in and then exhaled slowly. “Then he had to go on this trip, and I thought, Imogen, it’s now or never. Once we have this baby, he’ll never let me leave.”
Wolfe leaned forward and wrote something on the notepad on his desk and turned it toward me. Where is she?
“Imogen, where are you right now? Are you in Houston?”
“Yes. The house.” She gave the address without being asked, which told me something about how thoroughly she’d decided.
Wolfe scribbled something else, and I read it and gave him a nod.
“We can come get you,” I said. “We can have people there tonight if you want.”
“I need to be gone before he gets back,” she said. “He comes back Thursday. I have until then.”
“Even better. That gives us time to make a plan,” I said, looking at the note Wolfe was writing furiously. “What about guards? Are they going to be a problem?”
“Anton took his security with him, but there’s always at least one guard on the property, sometimes two. They patrol the property.”
Wolfe gave me a nod.
“Imogen, we’re going to help you. You made the right call.” I tried to sound reassuring and confident.
A long silence. When she spoke again, her voice was thinner, the control slipping just slightly. “You said on the stage that survivable becomes livable. That’s what I kept thinking about.” She paused again. “I want that. For me. For the baby.”
“You’re going to have it,” I said. “I promise.”
I looked at Jackson. He was watching me with an expression I recognized. It was the same one he’d had in that corridor outside the ballroom when he told me he was proud of me.
Wolfe shoved another note my direction, and I read it real quick.
“We’ll get a plan together,” I said. “I’ll call you back to make arrangements. If for any reason you can’t talk, just pretend it’s someone asking for someone else and say there’s no one there by that name and hang up, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to be okay.”
She said thank you, very quietly, and the line went dead.
I set the phone down.
The three of us were quiet for a moment.
Then Wolfe straightened. “I’ll call Chance.” He looked at Jackson. “Get Hawk and Gator up here.”
“You believe her?” Jackson asked him.
Wolfe looked at the notepad with the address on it. “I believe she’s frightened,” he said. “I believe she’s pregnant. And I believe that a woman with documents she’s been collecting on her husband has made a decision.” He looked at me. “You?”
I thought about the corridor and the card disappearing into the small clutch.
“She’s ready to leave,” I said. “I knew it at the Gala, and I know it now.”
Wolfe held my gaze for a moment. Then he nodded, the single, definitive nod that meant a decision had been made, and picked up his phone.
Jackson came to stand beside me.
“You did that,” he said quietly. “At the Gala. That was you.”
I looked at Wolfe already talking to Chance in the clipped efficient shorthand of two people who’d done this before. I thought about a sad woman in a blue gown who’d finally decided to save herself.
“No, all I did was give her a number. She was the one who had to be brave enough to make the call.”
Crowe
Hawk and Gator were in Wolfe’s office in less than ten minutes, which meant they’d been close.
Kat came in behind them with her laptop already open, so Wolfe had probably texted her before we even got on the phone with Imogen.
Like always, he’d already been thinking several steps ahead while Noah and I were still standing at the desk absorbing the call. That was Wolfe for you.
“Sit,” Wolfe said, so we did. Hawk and Gator on the couch, Noah in the chair closest to the door, me beside him, and Kat pulled up to the side table with her laptop. Wolfe remained standing, which he did when he was running something.
“Kat,” he said, “what do we know about the house?”
She turned the laptop so the room could see it.
“Corvane’s Houston property. The house sits on about an acre, gated entry at the front, secondary service entrance on the east side.
” She clicked to the next image, which was a satellite view.
“Six thousand square feet, two stories, detached garage at the back. Pool.” Another click.
“The security system is commercial grade, installed three years ago. Cameras at the gate, front entry, back entry, and the garage. I can’t confirm interior cameras without getting inside the network, but I don’t think the whole house has cameras.
Or if it does, I don’t think they’re monitored. ”
Wolfe looked over at her thoughtfully. “Why is that?”
“Because Imogen’s been in his office collecting the documents,” she said. “If she was being watched closely inside the house, she couldn’t have been collecting documents for two weeks without him knowing.”
“Guards?” Hawk asked.
“She said there were just a couple,” Wolfe said.
“That I can confirm now.” Kat pulled up another window. “Corvane has a personal security team that’s at the house when he’s there, but when he travels, they go with him. So it makes sense that he only leaves a couple behind.”
“So the guard is likely just covering gate and perimeter. Like Imogen said,” I said.
“That tracks with what I’ve been able to learn,” Kat said.
Wolfe nodded. “So, one, maybe two external guards, likely at the gate. Cameras we aren’t sure about, but I agree with Kat.” He looked at Kat. “Can you get into the security system?”
“Give me two hours.”
He nodded and then looked at Hawk. “Talk to me about approach.”
There was a knock at the door.
Caden came in carrying a tray holding a pot, cups, and what appeared to be a plate of shortbread that was becoming a fixture at these meetings. He set it on the side table without ceremony and began pouring.
We all waited.
Hawk picked up a cup, looked at it, looked at Wolfe, and said nothing. Gator reached for the shortbread. Kat kept her eyes on her screen.
Caden finished pouring, set the tray down, and left with the quiet satisfaction of a man who’d decided this was what happened at our meetings now, and everyone had accepted it.
Wolfe drank his tea.
“Approach,” he said again, looking at Hawk.
Hawk set his cup down. “Two vehicles. Armored. We go in through the service entrance. That’s less visible from the street, easier to control the gate camera if Kat can get into the system. Small team. Me, Gator, and Crowe.” He glanced at me.
“I want to go,” Noah said.
The room went quiet. The way it does when someone says something everyone knows is a bad idea, but no one wants to be the one to say so. Well, if no one else would say it, I would because nothing mattered to me as much as Noah’s safety.
“No.”
He looked at me. “She doesn’t know any of you. She called me because she trusts me. If I’m not there—”
“You’d be a liability in a live extraction,” Hawk said. Not unkindly, just true.
“I’m not saying I go in with you,” Noah said. “I’m saying I need to be there. If something goes wrong, if she panics, if she won’t come, I’m the one she’s going to listen to.”
“He’s not wrong,” Gator said quietly.
I glared at him.
He shrugged like a man who wasn’t going to apologize for being right.
I looked at Noah. He had the same expression he’d had in the corridor at The Hargrove before he slipped away from me to follow Imogen Corvane into the hallway. The one that said I’ve thought this through and I’m certain of my conclusion.
I’d been furious about that. I’d also understood it completely.
“You stay in the vehicle,” I said. “The armored SUV. You don’t get out until Hawk tells me it’s clear, and I mean fully clear, and then if you go in, you go in because I walk you in myself.”
He held my gaze for a moment. “Okay.”
“I mean it, Noah.”
“I know you do.”
Wolfe looked between us, but he didn’t argue. “Crowe and Noah in the second vehicle,” he said. “Crowe, you’re primary on extraction with Gator. Hawk runs the gate and the guards.” He looked at Hawk. “How do you want to handle them?”
“Depends on what Kat gives us,” Hawk said. “If she can kill the cameras on approach, we go in quiet. If there’s one guard at the gate, I can manage one man quietly. If it’s more, things could get messy.”
“I’d rather not leave anyone injured on Corvane’s property if we can avoid it,” Wolfe said. “It gives him something to point at.”
“Then we need Kat to kill the cameras, and we walk up like we belong there,” Gator said.
“If a guard sees a couple of people in appropriate clothing coming through the service entrance, he’s going to ask questions before he escalates.
Then it at least starts out as a conversation, not a confrontation. ”
“I can make that work,” Hawk said.
“What about the target?” Gator asked. “She needs to be ready when we get there.”
“She’ll be ready,” Wolfe said. “Noah’s going to call her back with the details before we move.”
Noah nodded, thinking it through. “She’ll want to bring the documents herself. She won’t hand them over.”
“She doesn’t have to,” Wolfe said. “The documents come with her. Chance gets them when she’s somewhere safe.” He looked at the room. “We move tomorrow night. Kat, I need that security system access, the camera feeds, and the guard rotation confirmed. By tonight.”
“Done,” Kat said, already typing.
“Chance needs to know we’re moving,” Hawk said.
“I’m calling him when you leave this room. He may insist on coming with us or be here in the office at the very least,” Wolfe said. He looked at Noah. “When we get her out, she comes here first. Not a hotel, not a safe house we don’t control. Here.”
Noah looked at him. “Thank you,” he said.
Wolfe gave the small nod that meant you’re welcome without requiring him to say it.
“She’s going to need the same things you needed when you got here,” he said.
“We don’t know what she has or hasn’t been through, but from what we’ve learned about Corvane, it couldn’t be good.
” He held Noah’s gaze. “You’re going to be important to her. ”
The room held that for a moment.
Noah looked at his hands. At the watch on his wrist, he hadn’t taken it off since the day I gave it to him. Then he looked up.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go get her.”