Chapter 30
SHAWN
This argument was pointless. I didn’t need their permission. “I’m not waiting.”
I hated everything about this safe house, from its hideous furniture to the fact I was here now. Jason and Ethan were seated on the ugly couch, both staring at laptops they’d set up on the table in front of it.
Brahm Müller had been deemed the brightest star by Osterh?gen’s CIO, and he located the originating IP address of the computer that had sent the email through a tangled series of fake accounts.
The timestamp was proof that Kara was alive ten minutes before the picture had been emailed, which was a good sign.
Or so the former US Marshal and CIA agent told me.
But the argument ensued when Müller mentioned the IP address could be a slave computer, and Ethan’s people agreed. The point of origin was somewhere in Italy, and probably a setup. “Too easy to trace,” Ethan had said. “He wants us to find this computer. He wants us to go there.”
It was our only fucking lead. Trap or not, it could take us to Kara, and that idea had made the decision to activate my flight crew easy for me.
“You can do your research while we’re in the air,” I said. “Let’s go.”
My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the dialing code, and for a half-second I considered sending it to voicemail. But something deep inside me sensed not to.
“Is this Mr. Dunn?” The man sounded older, his accent from the north.
This person had my number, which few people did. Why did he need to ask? “Yes. What is it?”
“I own a butcher shop outside of Trier. I forgot to charge my phone this morning, so I couldn’t call sooner, but a strange customer came in not long ago. This blonde woman who didn’t speak German.”
I stopped pacing. My heart stopped beating.
“She was wild looking without any shoes on, and muddy. She said she was an Osterh?gen. Do you know who I’m talking about?”
Hope ignited, restarting my heart. “Yes.”
“She gave me your card and insisted I call.” The man paused to take a breath. “I tried to help her, sir, but she refused. She was bleeding at her waist.”
I had to block that out. “When did this happen, and where is your shop located?”
After the man spoke with Jason at length, there were no arguments this time.
“Kara would not knowingly lead you into a trap,” L said. “And if she was forced, she’d do everything she could to warn us.”
She’d escaped. She was still in Germany. Kara could be waiting for me right this second, holed up somewhere safe. I just had to get to her.
I started thinking aloud. “It’s five hours from here.”
“We won’t take the plane. It’s not faster and too visible,” Jason said.
I nodded. I’d drive—faster than I’d ever driven.
“This could be a trap just as easily,” Ethan remarked, hesitant.
My email chimed again. Same fake email address, a different subject this time: For Laurel.
My knees collapsed me into a chair. In this picture, Kara looked unconscious. She was dressed in a pair of muddy pants and a drenched, bloody shirt, her body curled up on a rug covering a white tile floor. If this picture was recent, she’d been recaptured.
The swing from high to low was devastating. Everyone in the room sensed the shift in me, and movement ceased.
“What is it?” L’s fearful whisper broke the quiet.
“Juric,” I said, scanning the rest of the email, trying to stay detached, “has instructions for you.”
“For me?”
“There’s login information for a video conference. He wants to talk to you, and only you, at nine tomorrow morning.” My stomach bottomed out as I read the next part. “He’ll kill her if you’re not alone in the room.”
L’s shoulders drew up sharply, and she blinked a few times. Her gaze went to her husband, her bright blue eyes determined. “You need to prepare me for what he might say. I don’t want to do anything that might set him off.”
She was scared to see Juric again but wasn’t going to let that fear stop her.
He went to her, seizing her face in his hands. He didn’t like this idea any more than she did, but what choice did they have? “We’ll set it up so we’re watching from the other room. I’ll be right next door.”
As I watched this exchange, I was vaguely aware of Ethan tugging the phone from my hand, anxious to read the email and put his people on it.
A quick evaluation said the picture was recent. My heart thudded slower again, the hope dwindling somewhat. But I had a location. She’d been in that shop in Trier this morning, which meant wherever she’d escaped from had been close by. She’d been barefoot, after all.
Ethan was handed the keys to the Range Rover that was kept at the safe house and said he’d follow us.
I drove while L and Jason sat in the back seat of my Audi, her helping her husband search for possible locations Kara could have been hidden. We were eighty kilometers outside Trier when Jason called Ethan and put the phone on speaker.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “This house was rented last week, but the renter only exists on paper.” He rattled off an address. “What can you find out about it?”
“I’ll put in a request for satellite surveillance,” Ethan said. “If I’m granted permission, it should take a few hours to re-purpose.”
Jason’s startled gaze met mine in the rearview mirror. “Christ,” my brother said, “you weren’t kidding about resources.”
The thought gripped me suddenly. Juric was the asset the CIA was interested in, not Kara. “Don’t cut us out, go after Juric, and fuck it all up,” I snarled.
There was a tense pause. “You don’t have to worry about that.
I’m not on a sanctioned op here.” Ethan’s voice was tight and strained.
“Only my director knows what I’m doing, and he’s looking the other way.
I may not have let the dog off the leash, but I’m part of the hand that did, so that’s on me.
I’m going to see this through to the fucking end. ”
He hung up.
Was the end Juric’s death, like I hoped it would be? Which I was sure Jason wanted it to be?
It was night outside, and the pavement was damp from the rain. For a long time, the only sound was the windshield wipers streaking across glass. L had fallen asleep, her forehead against the crook of her husband’s neck.
I didn’t expect Jason to have any answers even though he’d been where I was now, but I asked it anyway, my words low. “How did you do this?”
How had he endured knowing the woman he cared deeply about was in Juric’s hands?
Another stroke of the wiper blades.
“You shut everything out so only the goal matters.” His eyes were dark in the mirror. “Find her. Save her.”