Chapter 19 #3
“No.” A hard breath later, she looked at everyone. “I’ll be fine. So, uh, did we catch Samir on camera at the hospital with his mom?”
“No. I don’t think he traveled with her. Well, not under his name, anyway,” Liam answered.
“Samir’s been a ghost since his brother died. He didn’t have any ID in Syria. And there are no pictures of him we can run through our facial recognition software to try and get any hits,” Luke explained. “Hell, he’s barely twenty.”
“What about the sketch I gave the Feds in Berlin?” she asked. “My artwork that bad?”
Luke semi-smiled. “Drawing isn’t exactly one of your talents, but that image will help authorities if they ever come face-to-face.”
“I can try again,” she said, and Asher could see a darkness shadow her eyes. The pull of failure attempting to lure her away.
“We’ll run your sketch through the systems again. Maybe we’ll get something.” Luke glanced around the room.
“Samir got to you in Berlin somehow,” Knox interjected. “Must’ve had a fake passport, which means there’s a photo of him out there. We’ll keep checking all the flights around the time you were taken and see if anyone looks similar to the photo you drew.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” Asher’s brows drew together, and she looked over at him and took what appeared to be a calming breath.
She lightly nodded before focusing on the rest of the team at the table. “What about his mom? How’d she get to Paris?”
“She acquired a visa and passport a few months prior to the trip. It was her first time out of Syria,” Liam told her. “When we pulled the flight manifest and checked the cameras at the airport—she appeared to be alone.”
She shook her head. “Someone must’ve been in Paris waiting to see if Ara would show, though. What about the hospital cameras?”
“Aside from Ara visiting—no one else that we noticed,” Liam replied.
“There has to be someone funding Samir.”
“I think I have an idea how to access Samir’s accounts.” Knox rose from the table, and all eyes went to him. He braced his palms against the back of the chair and swallowed. “My pops is going to be in Austria soon. Some political thing, I don’t know. We’d be in Egon’s territory.”
“What are you getting at?” Luke leaned back in his chair.
“Egon usually gets his jobs by way of a message board. The new age we live in . . .” He lifted his shoulders. “Hitman for hire, ya know?”
“You want to lure him out by requesting a hit on your dad?” Asher asked in surprise. He knew Knox and his dad had had a falling out, but still.
“No. No.” He smiled. “I’ll go with him, and we put the hit on me.”
“First of all, we’re still grounded,” Luke began while slowly rising. “And secondly, we don’t know if he’ll be the one to answer the message.”
“How about a third reason,” Jessica chimed in. “You could get killed.”
Knox shook his head. “This might be our only chance to draw him out, and it wouldn’t raise any questioning brows for him if we put a hit out on the son of a politician. That’s a normal gig.”
He had a point, but there were still a lot of roadblocks.
“You don’t even talk to your old man,” Liam said.
“I’ll do what I have to for the team, and you know that.” He swiped a hand down his jaw. “Could you put an encrypted message up? Ask for a public killing since that’s Egon’s specialty?” Knox briefly closed his eyes. “God, I’m sorry, Jessica. I didn’t—”
She held her hand in the air. “It’s okay. I want to find this bastard, but I don’t want you to risk your neck.”
“You guys won’t let anything happen to me.” Knox semi-smiled.
Luke was quiet for a moment, stroking his jaw. “Put the message out there. If he takes the bait, then I’ll find a way for us to get there.”
“If we catch Egon, we can hopefully trace the transaction from Samir to Egon, and then get a handle on Samir’s accounts,” Luke said. “We need to know who is bankrolling him.”
Asher looked over at Jessica. She was already on the laptop. Back to business, so it seemed. Well, she was trying, at least.
“Any word on the girls?” When she looked up from the screen a moment later, he could see fragments of fear and sadness clouding her eyes. A temporary obstruction.
“They’re in a CIA safe house in Oslo,” Luke answered. “Although getting Rutherford to share that news wasn’t easy.”
“That’s good.” She rolled her lips inward briefly. “When this is over I can’t see them again. Being close to me is too dangerous.”
“Jess.” Owen was on his feet and standing behind her now. He placed a hand over her shoulder.
“You don’t need to say anything,” she said without glancing back at him, her eyes committed to the screen again. “I, uh, should work.”
Owen nodded, but his eyes met Asher’s, and he cocked his head toward the door, motioning to meet him outside.
“What’s up?” Asher asked.
“There’s something you should know,” he began. “When I was recovering all of Jessica’s data from the phone she lost in Berlin”—he scratched at the back of his head—“well, Luke was in the room with me, and he saw her texts. He saw the last message she got before Egon took her.”
Asher cursed under his breath. His damn I miss you text had now become public to his team. Just great.
“When did he see it?” Asher lifted his hands from his pockets, not sure what to do with them.
“Last night.”
“The text . . . it isn’t what it looks like.”
Owen raised his brows, and a slight smile tugged at his mouth. “Sure, man.”
Shit.
“Anyway, I thought you should know.” Owen reached for the knob to go back into the office, but then paused and looked at Asher from over his shoulder. “If there’s something going on between you two, he’ll get over it. You’ll just have to give him time.”