Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Carter Dominick?” Harper blinked, a look of disbelief on her face. “CIA Carter Dominick? The one who left the Agency about two and a half years ago and went rogue? That Carter?”
“I was wondering if you’d know of him.” Rory sat in front of the fire using her folded-up rain jacket for a cushion on the rocky ground. Her skin was pink and glowing from sitting so close to the flames.
Chris peered at Roman, trying to get a read on him. What’d he know about Carter? Anything?
Who the hell was their adversary?
Andrew Cutter? The Italian? Or this Carter guy?
Fuck, he hoped “all of the above” wasn’t the answer to this multiple-choice question.
“We worked an op together maybe seven years ago in Costa Rica.” Harper squeezed her eyes closed as though mentally doing the math. She’d most likely worked a ridiculous number of ops between then and now. “Took down a smuggling ring together, actually.”
Smuggling? That can’t be coincidental. “We were worried the ambush of Santiago’s transport might have been an inside job because the officers escorting him were left unharmed.
But after hearing this, do you think Carter could be our guy?
” Chris was familiar with the name, but not because Carter was CIA.
He tried to catch hold of a memory that wasn’t quite forming clearly.
“Maybe Carter had a CIA contact who gave him the transport information.”
“I don’t know what kind of criminal activity Carter has been involved with since he left the Agency,” Harper responded, “but I can’t imagine why he’d be interested in a smuggler like Santiago.”
“Personal tragedy often changes people. Maybe losing his wife turned him into someone else.” Chris’s tone grew dark at the idea of what Carter had gone through.
“Carter was Delta Force before joining the Agency,” Harper said.
Delta Force. Now Chris remembered the particulars about Carter.
It wasn’t every day a former Delta guy turned CIA, disappeared, and was then pegged as having gone rogue.
“After his wife was murdered,” Harper continued, “he went off-the-grid. Rumors are he became a criminal himself, but I can’t be certain.
Carter’s wife’s family was wealthy, though.
Picture the Kennedys but with more money,” she added.
“I think Carter’s wife hoped her husband would be POTUS someday. ”
“Thinking that ship has sailed,” Chris said and kept his eyes on Rory. “How’d his wife die?”
“Home invasion. She was savagely murdered.” Harper paused for a moment as if paying her respects. “Police and Feds brushed it off as a burglary. There’d been a string of similar break-ins around D.C. in the previous months, but Carter refused to believe it.”
A multitude of emotions flooded Chris when he thought back to waking up on the yacht yesterday with no idea if Rory was still alive. If he’d been Carter, what would he have done if he’d come home to find his wife brutally murdered?
He suddenly had a sour taste in his mouth and felt like he was about to lose the fish he’d eaten.
“And why would Carter think you could help him find her killer?” Harper asked. “You’re clearly a kick-ass tracker, but . . .?”
“He showed me a photo of someone he believed I could identify, and the reason he thought I’d know him is that Carter had another photo, one of the same man with me near the Washington Monument.”
And now, maybe Chris needed to sit. But instead, he set his palm to a nearby tree and braced himself for whatever else Rory was about to lay on them.
“I assume the timeframe was around his wife’s murder,” Harper commented.
“Carter was light on details about the photos, but the picture with me in it had to have been from when I was in D.C. having lunch with my friend about two and a half years ago.”
“Maybe Carter pulled CCTV footage outside his house and found your friend, and then he canvassed all the surveillance cameras in the area looking for more sightings of the guy,” Harper suggested. “I assume he checked immediately after her death because I doubt those tapes would still exist now.”
“But it took him two and a half years to approach Rory?” Chris asked. “That doesn’t add up.”
Rory nodded. “I asked him why he waited so long after her death to reach out if he’d had the images so long, but he didn’t answer. I was just glad he wasn’t going to kill me.”
Chris winced at her words. Thank God Carter hadn’t . . . He couldn’t allow that thought to marinate, or he’d blow a fuse. “So, uh, this guy was a friend? How do you know him?” And why would Carter think a friend of yours killed his wife?
“Well, we worked together. He was part of Andrew’s crew. And when I left Andrew’s team to chase down antiquities buyers, Danny decided to join me.”
When you were known as Red Robin Hood. Chris arched a brow, waiting. Nervous anticipation coiled inside of him.
“We worked together on and off for two years before I chose my new mission. Danny went back to solely focusing on treasure hunting with Andrew.” She let go of a deep breath.
“Danny was in D.C., and he learned I was also in town, so we had lunch to catch up. As to how or why Carter believed Danny killed his wife, I have no idea.”
“Did Danny know you were giving up antiquities to chase wildlife smugglers?” Chris asked, but he assumed the answer would be no.
“Andrew and Danny were the only two people outside my small group I worked with who knew I was going after antiquities buyers. But when I changed missions and started hunting down wildlife traffickers, I kept my work a secret, even from them, for their own protection,” Rory explained.
“Andrew was okay with you leaving him to hunt criminals? Or for Danny to help you do it?” Harper probed.
“Andrew was worried about me,” Rory quickly replied, “but he knew once I made up my mind, there was no stopping me. I have a feeling he pushed Danny into helping to keep an eye on me.”
“And when you gave up antiquities—what’d Andrew say?” Harper asked next, and thank God for her, Chris was still rolling around in a sea of shock.
“I didn’t give him a reason to argue. I said I planned to travel the world. Take a break from everything. And then I avoided his calls and emails, worried he’d catch me in a lie. Andrew never stopped reaching out, though.”
“Hmm.” Harper frowned, and Chris could practically see the wheels turning in her head. She was suspicious of something or someone, and he assumed it was Andrew “The Asshole” Cutter.
“But um, back to Carter,” Rory continued. “He tracked me down when he couldn’t find Danny. And the reason he couldn’t find him is that Danny died on a dive in the Caribbean a few months after we had lunch in D.C.”
What? That was yet another unexpected twist, among many. “Yeah, that sounds . . . suspect.”
“Given everything that has gone down this weekend, yeah, I can see that now,” Rory admitted.
“So how did Carter find you?” Harper peered at Rory. “Facial recognition software, maybe? Probably still had contacts at the CIA.”
Rory smoothed her hands up and down the sides of her arms. “I guess so, and that’s how Carter stumbled upon who I really was and what I was doing. His men tracked me to El Salvador in August. They watched me break into Santiago’s compound.”
And his mind was blown. He’d known that fact already, but just, wow.
“Then why not grab you there?” Harper asked what Chris was thinking, but he hadn’t been able to get his voice to work.
“Once Carter put two and two together, that I was the person taking down smugglers, he decided instead of kidnapping me, he’d draw me straight to him,” she explained.
“Since it was clear The Italian was my target, about two weeks after I was at Santiago’s compound, Carter lured me to his home in France by acting as though he was smuggling pangolins on one of The Italian’s trade networks. ”
“How’d he do all of this?” Chris asked now that he was able to speak. Rory was far too smart to fall into an easy trap, so now he was curious to what lengths Carter had gone.
“When it comes to wildlife trafficking, a lot of the transactions are done online. Supply chain messages go through different social media outlets that are hard to track. The illicit shipments are then sent through cargo ships or on private cargo planes, along specific trade routes to the buyers in a particular area.” Rory was in full genius mode right now.
“Think about a toll road. You have to pay to drive on that road. Same concept in international smuggling. You pay a fee of sorts to move illegal goods or people on trade routes governed by different transnational criminal groups, or in the case of The Italian, one person.”
“So, Carter made you believe he was going to traffic pangolins on one of the commonly known routes The Italian ran?” Roman asked, quickly interpreting Rory’s words.
“Exactly.” Rory nodded. “Carter set up the sale of pangolins on the black market online. Pangolins are one of the world’s most trafficked mammals right now.
A multimillion-dollar supply chain runs across Africa and Asia, and these criminals are destroying the species, so I’ve been monitoring the situation. ”
“Unfortunately, Interpol is having a hell of a time stopping them,” Roman noted. “Only a tenth or so of pangolins trafficked are intercepted.”
“Pangolins, brother? You know about those, too?” Chris would have laughed if the subject wasn’t so heart-shatteringly horrible.