Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“How’d Elaina know about Don?” Emily spoke quietly as she sat on a twin bed, the only piece of furniture in the ten-by-ten room. The space may not have had much, but at least it lacked a typical musty basement smell given they were underground.
They’d arrived at the property thirty kilometers east of the last location in West Virginia—a place his company had purchased under a fake name.
The massive estate had been built by a millionaire during the Cold War era, worried the Russians were going to attack someday.
So, the guy had created an extensive underground bunker to withstand a nuke.
It was where they were currently located, a perfect site for the team.
“She’s super smart, that’s all I know,” he said, leaning with crossed arms against the closed bedroom door. “A photographic memory, too. Maybe she also has a sixth sense about people.”
“She did about you.” She clasped her hands, hanging them loose between her knees. “I still can’t believe they got to Don.”
“They moved fast. Since they failed to get you or your boss, they had to go after the weakest link.”
“Don having a wife makes him weak?” Emily sat upright.
“I didn’t mean for it to sound like that, but loving someone can make a person vulnerable.”
“And what would you have done today if you were Don?” Her palm flattened against her breastbone. “What would Luke do? Owen?”
“I wouldn’t exchange one life for another. Neither would the guys,” he answered as honestly as possible, even though he knew it’d be painfully more complicated if the situation were to ever, God forbid, present itself.
“Owen would let Sam die?” Her voice pitched higher in surprise, and she stood.
He shook his head.
“Then what?”
“My team would get her back like we’ll get Don’s wife back.”
“You’re that confident everyone will be okay?”
“I have to be. And if I ever stop believing we can pull off miracles, then I need to switch professions.” And that was the truth.
Her mouth rounded in surprise, but no words came out.
“I, uh, meant to tell you—your bodyguard’s surgery was successful. The bullet should’ve killed him, but somehow, he survived.”
“Thank God.”
He reached for the ball cap he’d put on after they left the last safe house, slid it backward, and crossed the short space to get to her. “You’ve been so brave. You act like one of us and not a lawyer hell-bent on following all of the rules.”
“Well, I’ve had to deal with my fair share of lions in and out of the courtroom, so I gotta adapt or die, right?”
He cupped her chin, but before he could speak, Knox opened the door.
“You guys ready?” Knox asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Liam said, even though he wanted to finish his conversation with Emily.
“Where’s Elaina right now?” she asked once they were in the hall.
“She’s in the room with us, drawing on the whiteboard. Doodling. I don’t know. We didn’t want to let her out of our sight, though.” Knox reached for the door handle to their temporary command center.
“And Don and Jared are on their way to D.C.?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Knox answered. “Hopefully we bought ourselves enough time to get our people in place.” He opened the door and stepped back to let Liam and Emily through.
The place was much larger than the bedroom. Well, it was big enough to accommodate his team so they could work. One long brown table down the center of the room with eight chairs, and a projector screen on one wall, and a whiteboard on the other.
Asher, Jessica, and Harper sat around the table working on their laptops. And Elaina was doing exactly what Knox said, drawing on the whiteboard with headphones covering her ears.
She was too young and innocent to be caught up in the kind of depravity that no one—especially not a child—should ever face.
Liam pulled out a chair for Emily at the table, but she pointed to the whiteboard, letting him know she was going to hang out with Elaina.
Good call. He tipped his head in thanks, then rounded the table to join his team.
“What do we have?” He gripped the back of a rolling chair for support and eyed his teammates.
Wyatt and the rest of Echo were on their way to D.C. so they could be in position to rescue Becky as soon as Jessica and Harper worked their magic and located her.
Harper looked up from the screen. Her faded navy Yankees ball cap was on backward, her long, dark hair in two braids that draped over the words Kiss Me, Buttercup on her red T-shirt. “We’re running the dead guy’s prints, bloodwork, and picture through every database in the world.”
“And I’m doing my best to track down the source of this thirteen-million-dollar bounty.
” Asher used his fingers as combs, pushing them through his short dark hair.
He’d lost a bet in Mexico a few months back, forcing him to chop his long locks.
A few more months and it’d be back to the length he usually kept it.
“I thought you said there wasn’t a digital footprint,” Liam said.
“Yeah,” Asher began, “but the buyer will have to give a drop-off location at some point. If someone were to capture her, they’d need to know where to bring her. It’s not like he’s going to have a carrier pigeon deliver an address.”
“You’re not going to suggest we pretend to have found her to get the money, right?
” When Asher didn’t say anything, Liam knew the answer.
“That’s how you’re going to try and find the location, isn’t it?
” He let go of the seat and crossed his arms. “We’re not using her as bait,” he said in a low voice in case Elaina could hear them over the volume of her headphones.
Liam glimpsed a look at Emily and Elaina from over his shoulder. Emily was drawing funny faces on the dry-erase board, and Elaina was chuckling.
Damn. He didn’t remember ever feeling such an intensity of emotions crammed inside his chest.
“Of course, we won’t.” Jessica caught his eyes when he veered his focus back to the team. “But Asher’s working on locating a hitman we can use as a cover.”
“What do you mean?” Emily must’ve been listening in because she left the board and joined Liam at his side.
Jessica leaned back in her chair and studied Emily. “We don’t want our buyer to sniff out a fake. It takes time to build up an assassin profile. We need confirmed kills and abductions that can be verified—”
“The buyer might do a hitman background check?” Emily’s brows darted together in surprise. “Is that a thing?”
The team glanced at each other, and then lifted their shoulders to say yes.
“Okay, let me get this straight.” Her hands went to her hips. “You’re going to abduct a hitman.” She paused as if letting her words sink in. “Then pretend to be him and put the word out you have Elaina.”
“It’s one possibility,” Asher was quick to respond. “But we’d never actually put Elaina in the line of fire, we just need a drop location to make some headway.”
“I know where those men were taking me.” Elaina’s little voice had everyone swiveling in their chairs to face her. “The bad men wrote it on a board before they erased it.”
Liam slowly looked at the girl who was somehow stealing his heart. She lowered her headphones and pointed to the whiteboard. He’d recognize those kinds of numbers anywhere—longitude and latitude coordinates.
Jessica was on her feet, crossing the room in a matter of seconds.
How could Elaina possibly know what the numbers meant?
“I thought you were just doodling.” Jessica wedged her thumb between her teeth and studied the whiteboard.
“Are you inputting the numbers into the system?” Jessica faced Harper, her cheeks flushed.
“Yeah, give me a minute.” Harper squirmed in her chair a bit as if excited about the new information.
Jessica motioned for Liam to meet her in the hall. “Did you know she’s a genius?” she asked once they were alone.
“She told me back at the last safe house she takes pictures with her mind. Her mom was a genius, so I guess it makes sense her daughter’s smart, too.”
Jessica pointed to the room. “That’s more than smart. You don’t think her mom was experimenting on her or something, do you? Her mom was studying memory loss at Universidad de Chile. What if—”
“She discovered a cure within her own daughter, a kid with an off-the-charts memory?” He highly doubted it.
“If it’s true, or if someone thinks it’s true and believes she holds the answers to a cure . . . wouldn’t she be worth a lot of money?”
“Like to a big pharma company or something?” He gripped the back of his neck, the tension spiking. “That’s a stretch, but I guess we can’t rule anything out.”
“I think it’s time we talk to Maria, the woman who was taking care of Elaina.” Jessica reached for the door handle. “She might know something. Plus, maybe Maria can tell us more about Elaina’s mom since she worked with her at the university.”
“I’ll head there tomorrow. If too many of us go it could tip someone off.” He lowered his hand to his side. “Let me do it.”
“You sure you want to leave Elaina and Emily?” She let go of the handle. “They’ll be safe with us. Although, Maria might be more apt to talk with a woman present, and I need Harper working here with me.”
“I don’t want to put Emily in danger,” he snapped, knowing what she was thinking.
She waved her hand in the air. “Of course.” She went back into the room and over to where Harper sat.
Elaina and Emily were now playing Hangman on the other half of the whiteboard.
Both of them were so damn strong. And both were somehow penetrating his walls, which scared the hell out of him.
“Thank you,” he mouthed to Emily when she caught his eyes.
She tucked a strand of loose hair from her ponytail behind her ear and gave a quick nod before laughing at something Elaina had said.
“The Port of San Lorenzo.” Harper looked up from her screen. “They must’ve planned on putting Elaina on a ship out of Argentina.”
“You get the final destination?” Jessica braced the back of Harper’s chair and eyed her screen.
“Port of Adra. Spain,” she answered. “Arrives late Tuesday night.”
“Whoever made the deal with Carballo won’t show now,” Knox pointed out. “Surely they’ve heard he lost Elaina.”
“But maybe the government can use this information about the ports for a lead on Carballo,” Asher noted. “Carballo might have weapons or other cargo on that ship. We can at least use this information to stop some guns from going to terrorists. I’ll take any wins we can get.”
“Get the information to the president,” Jessica instructed Harper. “Send everything we have.” She walked over to Elaina and knelt before her. “Thank you.”
“I hope you can stop them.” Elaina smiled at Jessica then focused back on the game they were playing. “Are there any P’s?” She tipped her chin, a knowing smile on her face.
“Two.” Emily playfully rolled her eyes and filled in the letters.
“Who do you think chose the port, Carballo or the buyer?” Knox asked.
“My guess is Carballo,” Liam said. “Do we have any contacts over there who’d have picked up on chatter about this?”
“I know a guy.” Harper found his eyes. “I’ll reach out to him.”
“The first priority is saving Becky, but yeah, see if he can get us eyes on the port when the ship arrives.” His gut churned. “What can I do to help?” He sat at the table across from Knox.
Asher glanced his way. “Find out who the hell on the FBI and CIA joint task force needs the money bad enough to throw away their career for it.”