CHAPTER ELEVEN
The bright afternoon sun poured into Angela’s office. She stared at the notebook on her desk. She hadn’t known that haiku and iambic pentameter would have been part of her job description. Yet here she was, trying to forget the last few days and write snarky poetry for Boss Man.
She was creative to a point, and she had passed that point many, many moons ago. If she hadn’t been waiting for Jared to discuss her request with federal investigators, Angela would have been in her suite, staring out the window she and Sawyer had half hugged in front of, where he dropped a perfectly benign kiss atop her head, wondering if she just experienced her very first spark at more than thirty years old.
Her cheeks flushed hot. Distractions were tantamount right now because there was no way in hell she would let herself think of Sawyer Cabot as anything other than her very good, very platonic friend. Angela refocused on her semi-teasing literary riddle and made absolutely no progress.
Jared knocked on her half-open door and walked inside. His expression was unreadable, and he did not say what his final decision would be.
The best situation might be if he said no. Her safety would be ensured; she’d continue with her everyday job. She might even pull another wordplay message out of nowhere.
But if Jared said yes, her world would turn upside down. That would be hell for a control freak like her. However, she’d asked for the upheaval. She needed to help find Tran Pham’s last victim.
Angela tried for an uninterested look and asked, “What rhymes with bazooka?”
“Crapula.”
“That’s so helpful. Thanks, Boss Man.”
“Literary elements are not my forte.” He sat opposite her and propped his feet on the other chair. “I didn’t expect to come in here and interrupt a psy-ops session.”
She closed the notebook. “The way I figured, if you came in and said we’re a go, I’d need to get ahead on work I won’t have time to do.” She shrugged. “And, if you say we’re a no-go, I’ll bury my disappointment in bad poetry.”
Jared ran a hand through his short-cropped dark hair. “You know what your mother said was bullshit, right?”
She groaned. “Which part?”
“When she insinuated you weren’t part of Titan.”
Angela shrugged. She was more than aware of the circumstances behind her hiring.
“You are Titan.” Jared’s jaw flexed. “In every sense of the word.”
She wasn’t sure if that was true. “Thanks.”
He did not attempt to hide his study of her face but moved on when Angela remained quiet. “I’m worried that Pham is playing a game of mindfucks like a 3-D chess grandmaster.”
She snorted. “He probably is. That’s a good description of his style.”
“And,” Jared continued, “I’m concerned that we don’t know anywhere near enough to make this an effective assignment.”
Her heart sank.
“Parker’s working on more intel, but we’re fishing in a black hole. Lots of nothing is weighing us down.” Jared shook his head. “I don’t want to disappoint you, Angela.” He gauged her reaction. “I think you might need this.”
“I do,” she confirmed, barely trusting her voice.
He grumbled. “I can’t send you somewhere when I don’t have a clue what direction to start.”
She refused to lower her head, but disappointment crept into every inch of her body. She wanted to cry but didn’t dare sniffle around Boss Man. Besides, she’d wept more than enough tears yesterday.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t give up yet. Okay? Let Parker dig. Once that guy finds the smallest hint of intel, he’s like a cat pulling the string on a sweater. The whole thing will be a ball of yarn when he’s done.”
Parker as a cat? The corners of her mouth rose. “A ball of yarn, huh?”
“Yeah, a big pile of possibilities. Okay?”
Parker wasn’t a cute kitty. He was more of a stealth hacker cat. That might be the inspiration she needed for one of the little notes that she wrote for Jared, which he occasionally left for the ACES team to find. He said the notes were psychological training to help a new team build camaraderie. Honestly, Angela was ninety-nine percent sure that Boss Man enjoyed theatrical moments. He’d never claimed to love drama, but he was in the thick of it sometimes.
“You can’t think of anything that might help Parker?” Jared asked. “Anything from years ago, from conversations with investigators or the prosecutor’s office? Anything.”
An old idea came to mind. She chewed the inside of her cheek.
Jared scrutinized her as buried thoughts tried to surface. “What is it, Angela?”
“Nothing, really.”
His face pinched. “That look on your face doesn’t look like nothing.”
Angela shaded the corner of a Post-It note, weighing whether she could handle a second day in a row of judgment. “I’ve been told it’s nothing.”
Jared took her pencil and tossed it down. “Why don’t we let Parker be the judge of that?”
“I’ve been told it is a big ole nothingburger.”
Jared cocked his eyebrow. “Like what?”
“I brought this up years ago. The investigators treated me like a moron—and they might have had good reason.”
“Angela, you have to trust us. We’re here for you. You know that.” He waited until she left the Post-It note alone and raised her eyes to him. “I wasn’t blowing smoke up your ass. You’re Titan. You know what that means?”
“That I’m good at my job.”
“It means that I believe in you. Parker. All the guys.” His pointed look tightened. “Sawyer. Trust in us like we trust in you. If what you say is a nothingburger, we’ll let you know. If not, we work on it. But we’re not going to treat you like crap because you gave Parker a lead to smoke out.”
Trust in Titan. That was always the mantra, and she did. She believed in the team and their work. Angela took a deep breath. “After you guys came in and saved the day, investigators grilled me for weeks. They wanted to know everything they could about Pham.”
Boss Man nodded. “I hired you as soon as they let you out of their claws.”
“There were parts of my story that they ignored. It was as if they were only listening for certain details, and the ones I found noteworthy were…” She made a face. “Not of interest to them.”
“What kind of things?”
“Mostly about how the abduction happened. Faces I saw more than once. Sometimes again later…” She shook her head. “They were very certain that my recollections were off.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why were they so certain?”
“Because the faces—actually, it was only one face. A woman who I swore I would randomly see throughout the years, she was…” Angela shrugged. “Just a face. They told me she was a vision, like an imaginary friend, that I conjured up as a rescue daydream.”
She could tell that her vague explanation failed to make sense to Jared. “I told you. It’s a nothingburger.”
After a beat, he shook his head and asked, “Can I get Parker in on this conversation?”
“We shouldn’t waste his time.” Her cheeks warmed. “I was told more than once that I didn’t see what I thought I saw.”
His lips pursed, and then Jared smiled as though he detected a challenge. “You’ve known me long enough to know that I like to double-check the bureaucratic types.”
“I know, but—”
“Angela, I’ve known you long enough to believe in your gut instincts.”
Uncertainty crawled down her neck. If he only understood how awful her instincts were. “Honestly, if I tell you the details, you’ll think it’s ridiculous.”
“Life’s ridiculous.”
Wasn’t that the truth? She couldn’t help but laugh. Still, if Jared thought she was a moron also, that would significantly decrease her chance of helping investigate and find Tran Pham’s remaining hostage. “All the investigators thought I was a moron when I brought her up. They thought I had…” She twirled her finger by her head and whispered, “...a few loose screws.”
“If you close your eyes, can you envision what they said you made up?”
Without a doubt. Angela could still see the woman’s face in her mind as clearly as if she had seen her in person that morning.
Jared leaned in to Angela. “I have trusted you with my teams. They have trusted you with their lives. My life. It might not be the same way they rely on one another to stay alive, but it’s just as important.”
“Jared—”
He held up his hand. “Like I said, the past few years have taught me that you have a hell of a good instinct.” Jared settled back into the chair. “If you want to wait to rope in Parker, just tell me what you told them. No matter how ridiculous and wrong they said you were. And if what you said is some crackpot bullshit, I’ll tell you.”
She could agree with that. “And we won’t waste Parker’s time?”
“And we won’t waste Parker’s time,” he confirmed, “but I’m willing to bet Parker will be very interested in what you say.”
Angela trusted Boss Man’s instinct and ability to cut through the bullshit. She trusted him enough to risk another day’s embarrassment. “I saw a woman before I was taken,” Angela admitted. “I saw her often.”
Jared’s expression remained scarily focused.
She continued, “Federal agents said they’d checked surveillance footage from when and where I reported seeing her. They’d worked the streets, asked questions, and even brought in people for interrogations. But for all their work, they’d turned up absolutely nothing.” She bit her bottom lip. “They think she didn’t exist.”
He kept quiet.
“Pham didn’t always keep me in the type of place you found me. He would bring me on these family vacations.” Her voice had lowered. “He’d pretend I was his daughter, though he never called me her name. But it was like… like he wanted to spoil me—her, the daughter—but I was the stand-in. We’d go scuba diving and stay at these opulent resorts, relaxing at isolated beachside cabanas where no one else was on the island except for his entourage and resort staff. Mostly butlers.” No one could understand the two sides of Tran Pham. “It’s strange to explain how I could have been both a captive and a sunbather at a high-roller resort. The kind of place where billionaires vacationed and no one ever asked questions—where no one would ever talk to a federal agent about who or what they saw.” Again, she bit her bottom lip, uncertain that Jared’s lack of reaction weighed in her favor. “This is when you start asking why I didn’t ask for help or run away.”
He barely shook his head.
“Or maybe tell me that my years with Pham weren’t so bad.”
Once more, his expression tightened. “You know better than that, Angela. No one in Titan would do that.”
“Sometimes I don’t hate Pham.” Her gaze dropped. “Even when he kept me at the warehouse like a pet in a cage, he ensured I was provided for.” Then her chin jerked up. “But just because that’s true doesn’t mean I don’t want him to stay in prison.”
“I know.” Jared’s jaw worked while the wheels in his head turned. “Bring me back to the woman. Give me more.”
Angela took a deep breath. “The same woman was always in the background, almost as if forced to watch us. I saw her on vacation, set to the side, positioned toward us. She wasn’t security. She wasn’t acknowledged. I don’t know how she arrived or when she left. But she was there.” Angela searched his eyes for a reaction and, finding none, continued, “I can’t tell you why. We didn’t interact with her, and I never saw her at home—I mean, where he kept me,” she amended. “She wasn’t one of the employees who delivered food or magazines. She didn’t wait on Pham like his other employees had. She was simply, sometimes, just there . Watching.”
“Did Pham ever interact with her?”
Angela shook her head. “Never.”
“Never,” he muttered under his breath. “Like I said, that bastard plays some serious 3-D mind-fuck chess.” After a moment, Jared rubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah, this is the kind of yarn ball Parker can dig into.”
She slumped in her chair, relieved to have been believed and unsettled at the thought of going through the search for her again. “Nothing will come out of it.”
“So you’ve been told.”
“So I’ve been told,” she agreed.
“Do you believe there’s nothing to her?” he asked.
“Boss Man, I don’t know—”
“That’s first-rate bullshit, Angela. What do you believe?”
She leveled with Jared. “I am one hundred percent certain that woman is out there.” Angela closed her eyes and remembered the woman’s haunted eyes and listless body. “Do you think she’s the person over whom Pham wants to negotiate?”
“I don’t want theories yet. I want intel.” Jared reached over and lifted the handset from her office phone. He punched a few numbers and waited for an answer. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said into the phone. “We’re about to unload one hell of a puzzle for your genius brain to tear apart.”