Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
C on drove as fast as he dared. The police vehicles they’d seen so far were all running code and heading toward the opulent compound where the gala was being held. As far as he could tell, other security at the gala was nonexistent—not that it mattered.
He glanced at the woman sitting next to him. Of all the gin joints in all the towns … He’d been searching for her for almost a year. There was nothing on her. He’d used backdoors that should have revealed something about her, but there was nothing. The more roadblocks he hit, the more determined he was to find her. “Is that earpiece muted?”
She reached up and tapped her comm unit. “It is now.”
“I looked for you.” Con wanted her to know and understand the kiss they shared wasn’t a fluke. He felt the chemistry, and by the way her pupils had blown, she knew it, too.
“We know. Thankfully, you didn’t do anything illegal … well, anything too illegal; otherwise, you would have been slapped. Hard.” She turned in the seat to look at him. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you look for me?”
“You’re asking that after the kiss we shared tonight?” Con shook his head. “I think the why is evident. It was evident on the island.”
“So, sex is your reason.” She stared at him.
“Absolutely and no way in hell,” Con said. “Absolutely, the attraction started my interest, but no way in hell is that all I want from you.”
She cocked her head. “What else is there?”
Con snapped his eyes in her direction for a second. “Dating. Getting to know you. Having fun. You know, the same things everyone does when they find someone they’re attracted to.”
She turned, facing forward. “I don’t really date.”
“Why not?”
She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “The list is way too long.”
“We have the time. Are you married? Engaged? With someone?” Actually, they didn’t have the time, but he would take a trip around the block if he needed to. The hotel was about two minutes away, but he wanted to know.
She snorted, “No, no, and no.”
He blinked, then … “Are you gay?”
“Nope.”
“Then go out on a date with me.” He flipped on his turn sign indicator.
“Look. Let’s get through what the hell happened tonight first. Then we can talk about other things.”
“Like that kiss?” Conner asked as he slowed the car to turn into valet parking. “That was one hell of a kiss.”
She didn’t respond, but the rise of color in her cheeks told him she agreed. He stopped the car, got out of it, and trotted around to the passenger side to open the door for her. She took his hand and stepped out of the car. Every last person turned to look at the beautiful woman with him. Her long black hair was fashioned in some type of Grecian updo, and that dress would make Aphrodite jealous. She had a banging figure, but he knew from when they were on the island, she didn’t wear makeup and didn’t need it. Tonight, though, with the makeup and jewelry, she was an otherworldly type of beautiful.
Con tossed the keys to the valet and extended his elbow to her. She wrapped her hand around his arm, and they entered the hotel together. He went to the elevator and pressed his room key in front of the reader. The elevator went directly to the penthouse without stopping. Ronnie stepped off the elevator before him. He watched her closely. There was no surprise at the magnificent view, no awe of the grandeur of the room. Nothing but casual acceptance. She’d been around money, the kind of money his family had.
He went into the bedroom and tugged the battered case holding his computer out from under the bed. Returning to the living room, he opened the case and pulled out his most prized possession. He powered it up and started typing as soon as her screen activated. He knew Ronnie walked behind him, but he was too damn busy. Con stopped long enough to grab his comm piece from the side pouch of his bag. “Jewell, I’m ready.”
“Okay.” The woman sounded like death warmed over. “Give me a second.”
Con’s eyes narrowed as he waited. Whatever was wrong with Jewell, it was affecting her. She was never that slow. “Okay.” The word was said before she started heaving again. Con grimaced at the sound of his friend being ill. “I’m in. Jewell, get some medical attention. Archangel and the Rose are online with Con and Centurion.” Con worked the mission as if it had just started and took a moment to scan the connections. “All connections are secure. I’m calling up the video and running facial recognition.” Con continued to work. “I have the street cameras. That would be our bad guys.” He froze the frame. Two darkened limos pulled out of the main entrance to the compound. He captured the license plates.
“I need someone to run this information as I pull it.”
Ethan’s node lit up on his computer, and Con allowed him access. “Sending you license plates. Monaco registration. Dig down to the Ministry of Public Works. There should be a database there.”
“Got it.” Con could hear Ethan working.
“Facial rec has matches coming in.” Con put up the faces on the screen along with the computer’s delegation of names and percentages of matches. He didn’t read the information. He just threw it up on the screen.
“Pulling all camera data on the server for the compound. Do we delete after we secure it?”
“Yes.” That came from Archangel’s node.
“Done.” Con continued to work, singularly focused on the tasks at hand.
“Rentals from Regal Transportation,” Ethan replied. “Working traffic cameras to try to track where they’re going.”
“Check local airports, but somewhere big enough a private jet can take off. Check the privately owned strips, and don’t sift any out because they aren’t registered with the government.” That little trick got Abrasha out of France. Con wouldn’t let it happen again.
“On it,” Ethan said again.
Fury’s voice broke the silence. “Con, the facial rec.” Con glanced over at the screen.
“What do you need?”
“Confirmation of identities from the police response,” Fury said.
“Working it.” He focused on what Fury asked him to do, not because he liked the guy; he didn’t, but the cooperation was necessary because of Jewell being out sick. “Initial transcript of radio communications coming to you now.” He sent the files to Fury and Archangel. Then he isolated the power loss and prayed the cameras were working on battery backup. He smiled when the clock continued to click. There. Flashes. He called up the sliding bar and moved the video back to the instant before the flash. He started the video again and froze each frame, advancing the footage by 0.12. He captured each flash and blew up the image as far as he could without degrading the pixels. He sent them one by one to the screen they were all monitoring.
Ronnie was sitting next to him. When she’d sat down, he couldn’t tell anyone, but she pointed to the screen. “There. That isn’t Abrasha, is it?”
“No. Abrasha’s in the white tux jacket with the red rose in the pocket,” Con said as he worked.
“So, one of the men in his group killed that guy. Two bullets to the chest,” Fury said as each picture appeared.
“A shot in the air,” Ronnie said when he posted the next frame. “Keeping the sheep from thinking about helping, no doubt.”
Fury grunted, and Con assumed it was in agreement. The final picture was the assassination. Abrasha had a gun pointed at the woman who was falling backward. The back of her brain was frozen in the air via the pixels. “That’s all I have on the video.”
“The woman. Do you have a clearer shot of her when the lights are on? The facial rec program couldn’t find a match above fifteen percent,” Ronnie asked.
“Hold on, give me a minute. I can play the video backward and see if I can grab one,” Con said, working the slide on the video. “I’ll do the same for everyone, including Abrasha’s horde.”
“Here you go.” He found a picture of the woman before she’d entered the shaded corner, just as she exited the ladies’ room. He tossed the picture up on the screen and started facial rec again. Bells and whistles chimed almost immediately. Con looked up at the screen and swore bitterly. “Is that right? Is that her?” Things were getting ugly fast.
“Yes,” Archangel said. “I need to call POTUS. Fury, you have the helm.”
“They all have masks on. Any chance of facial rec?” Fury asked.
“If I can’t get a clear picture during the party, I can try with AI assistance.” Con stopped long enough to pull off his tux jacket.
“Do it,” Fury commanded.
Con cracked his neck and bit his tongue. Ethan sent a picture. “This is the airstrip.” He circled a jet. “It took off as soon as the limos dumped them on the tarmac.”
“Flight plan?” Con asked.
“Sending.” Con glanced at the information. “His filed plan is to Switzerland.”
“Yeah, but he’s flying due north, not northeast toward Switzerland.” Ethan’s map was a scattering of hundreds of dots on the overlay of Europe. Ethan zoomed in. “This is his squawk code.”
“Due North. To France or England?” Fury asked.
“He’s a wanted man in France, and they’re still hot about it,” Con said. “My bet is on England or Scotland.”
“Why?” Ethan asked.
“Don’t know, and that’s not our primary job right now. Ethan, take the goons with Abrasha, run the video backward, and see if we can get pictures without the masks on.”
“On it.” He could see Ethan access and copy the video, so he could work on it independently.
Con acknowledged Fury stating he was going silent but monitoring the work. He continued to monitor the police channel for information and relayed what was put into the computer system to both Fury and Archangel’s accounts.
A glass of ice water appeared before him, startling him momentarily. He looked up, and his jaw was damn near unhinged. Ronnie was wearing one of his T-shirts. It fell to about mid-thigh. Her hair was down and combed out, wavy and full. She’d taken off her makeup, and damn, she looked fantastic. “Thanks.” He took the water and downed it.
“You’ve been at that for over an hour. Are you hungry?” She walked back toward the kitchen.
He cleared his throat and answered, “I could eat.” You , he thought, then rolled his eyes at the corny thought. Horny, not corny. He shook his head. Shut up and focus . He glanced back toward the kitchen. “On your work, asshole,” he muttered to himself as he pulled his eyes from her and dropped them back to the screen. Con glanced at the position of the aircraft. “England,” he said to himself. “Ethan, anything on those AI facial reconstructions?”
“Not really. The simulation only has the bottom third of the face and the hairline of some of the smaller masks. There’s nothing coming up on the one we believe is Abrasha.”
“We don’t believe it. We know it,” Con said. “I saw him at the event. It was him. Of that, I’m certain.”
“How do you know?” That was Fury.
“I’ll show you.” He called up several pictures they’d gotten from the takedown in France. He blew up the picture and used an arrow to point to the mole on the guy’s neck. Then he did the same with a picture from tonight’s clusterfuck. “There. I recognized this. It’s him.”
“You recognized him from a mole in a picture pulled offline a week ago?” Fury sounded stunned.
“Contrary to certain people’s assertions, I’m fucking brilliant. My Mensa membership would corroborate that statement if you cared to look.”
“Nah, I’d rather judge you from what I know about you. You’re an asshole.” The man’s sinister laugh floated across the connection.
“Right back at you.” Con would have come up with a more scathing response if he wasn’t still trying to figure out where Abrasha would be landing. “Okay, if we follow his current strategy of landing at unregistered airstrips, we have a total of thirty-seven possibilities if the satellite images are still correct. The others are too short.”
“How can they be unregistered?” Ronnie asked from the kitchen, but her comm device was active.
“If they’re operated less than twenty-eight days a year, they aren’t subject to Civil Aviation Authority. They’re called farm strips in England,” Con said as he continued to remove airstrips because of location and proximity to cities.
Ethan came online. “I have one long-distance video of all the members thought to be with Abrasha.”
“How?” Joseph asked before Con did. Con mouthed asshole and continued to work as he listened.
“I went into the surveillance systems for the airfield and scanned each day’s activities. The plane landed four days ago. When they were exiting the aircraft, they weren’t masked. The footage is grainy, but if I feed this information into the AI program …”
“The proprietary AI we’ve developed will have the information to fill in the rest of the face.” Con laughed. “Has anyone ever told you you’re one smart cookie?”
“Yeah, well, to quote a coworker of mine, contrary to certain people’s assertations, I’m fucking brilliant.” Ethan tried to sound like him and did a pretty damn good impression. Con laughed and kept narrowing down the possibilities of the landing strip.
“Fury, I’ve got this down to about seven possibilities. I used the ease of access to major metropolitan areas, outside the flight path of both B and C class aircraft, and long enough to accommodate his type of jet.”
“Send them. I’ll get with Alpha and see who we have in the country.” Fury audibly yawned over the connection, which started a domino effect.
Both he and Ethan yawned. “Stop that shit, Fury, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“What the fuck ever.” Joseph muted himself. Thank God.
Ronnie came back with two plates. A huge sandwich on one and a smaller version of the same thing on the other. She put the plates down and headed back to the kitchen area. Did he watch that fine form with gorgeous legs walk all the way across the room? Yes, yes, he did . He shook his head and returned to his computer.
She returned with two frosted glasses filled with beer. He sighed and rolled his shoulders. “Ethan, I’m grabbing a bite to eat.”
“Go for it. I’ve got this,” the other man said in a distracted tone.
He muted his comm device and sighed. “Thank you. I was going to eat after I put in my time at the gala tonight.”
“Is that why there’s food in the kitchen?”
He snorted. “No, that’s my mother’s doing. She swears I don’t take care of myself. When I’m home, I’m a health food junkie. When I travel for business, eating is hit-and-miss. So is sleep, for that matter.” He took a bite of the sandwich and groaned. “This is so good.”
She smiled at him. “It’s literally bread and meat.”
“So good,” he said again with his mouth full. She laughed and took a delicate bite of her sandwich. Con swallowed his food and reached for his beer. “So, tell me why you don’t date.”
“Tell me why you were at the gala first.” She took another bite.
Con wagged his head from side to side. “Ultimately, it’s because of the Joseph thing. He’s an asshole.”
“I believe he feels the same way about you, but how is Joseph responsible for you attending one of the most sought-after invitations of the year?”
“Well, see, there was this time I put a child’s song on his cell phone. It got progressively louder, and he couldn’t stop it.”
“Why did you do that?” She took a sip of her beer.
“Because he impugned my abilities.” Con shrugged. “I didn’t like that.”
“Huh, you don’t say.” Ronnie put her glass down. “And for that, you were sent to the gala?”
“Indirectly. See, the tit-for-tat got out of hand. One thing led to another, and our mothers decided to use their influence to force us to call a truce. We ended up in the middle of nowhere.
Mountains higher than you could see to the top of, left in the freezing cold, looking for stupid gold coins and following longitude and latitude directions I had to decipher to get to a certain location by a certain time.” He rolled his eyes. “It was horrid.”
She cocked her head. “You had to work as a team?”
“Yeah, he used dynamite to scare away the wolves, and I navigated.” He took another bite of his sandwich.
“Dynamite to scare away wolves?”
“Yep. Real ones, the wild kind. They’re a lot bigger than you’d think.” Con made a face. “That was pretty ingenious, but I won’t tell him that.”
“And that has what to do with how you got to the gala?”
“Well, to get my ass off the top of that mountain, I promised my mother I would do a few family obligations for her. The gala was one of them.”
“Why would she send you to the gala?” Ronnie took a bite of her sandwich.
“You don’t know my mom, do you?” When Ronnie lifted her eyebrows and shook her head, he sighed. “My mother is Olivia Solomon.” He tilted his head and looked at her. The blank expression told him she didn’t recognize the name. “Better known as O. H. Solomon.”
Ronnie's mouth dropped open before she snapped it shut. “Oh.”
O. H. Solomon was the richest woman in the world—well, the richest woman who didn’t inherit her money from her husband. She and his two older brothers ran a worldwide company that spanned the breadth of global investing. Anyone who didn’t know about O. H. Solomon Investments had no television access or had been living under a rock.
“‘Oh’ is right.” Conner laughed. “My mother detests Sophia Laurelton, our ever-so-kind hostess tonight. But one must make an appearance and, by all means possible, outdo each other.” He said the last part with his nose in the air and disdain dripping from his voice, just like his mother.
“But not tonight?” Ronnie leaned forward and picked up her beer.
“No, she had other engagements. Which means she’s taking over another company or something like that. At least, I’m assuming that’s what she’s doing. She loves shoving a couple of handfuls of humble pie down Sophia’s throat once a year.” He took another bite of his food, looked at her, and pointed.
“Why was I at the gala?” She smiled at him. That was not the question he wanted answered, but he’d take it. He nodded.
“I’m a dress designer, a good one. The dress Sophia was wearing was one of my originals. She saw it during fashion week in Paris. The fashion house I have my label with allowed me to present my gowns this year.” She smiled, and it was a genuine one. God, he could sit there and watch her smile all night.
“But how did you get invited?” He reached for his beer. “Sophia does not invite the hired help.”
Ronnie chuckled. “On a recent telephone conversation, a well-placed individual suggested that inviting her dress designer and flaunting the fact she’d discovered me would enhance her status and the appreciation of her gown.”
Con narrowed his eyes. “Would I know this well-placed individual?”
Ronnie smiled. “More than likely, you’ve heard the name before, but I’m not at liberty to discuss that contact.”
“And that leads me back to my original question. Why don’t you date?”
Ronnie made a face. “How did that conversation lead you back to my social life?”
“I’m not sure, but it did. Why don’t you date?”
She lowered her eyes and stared down at her beer for a moment. She drew a deep breath and sighed. “Several reasons, actually. A family that’s all up in my business, even though I’m an adult. History with several complete douche canoes and my current occupation.”
“You mean your part-time gig? The one where you go skydiving?” He took a sip of his drink.
“That’s the one.” She laughed.
“Well, let’s see.” He put down his glass and leaned forward. “You can’t have a more intrusive family than I do, and I’ve learned how to keep them at arm’s length. I’m assuming you have, too.”
She lifted her glass without answering, so he went on. “The douche canoes are regrettable, but they’ve paved the way for a certain someone, namely me, who was raised to treat a lady as a lady should be treated, and thirdly, I know all about your side gig.”
“Not all about it,” Ronnie said as she put her beer on the coffee table.
Con leaned back. She wasn’t going to be an easy conquest, but he’d get her to agree to go on at least one date with him. Somehow . “And that is very intriguing. How did you know I was looking for you?”
She chuckled. “I will never reveal my sources.”
“Jewell?” He shook his head. “No, she’d have no reason to ghost my keystrokes. Besides, I didn’t use my Guardian computer.”
Ronnie leaned back into the cushion of the couch. “It was no one at CCS.”
Con’s eyes shifted to his computer. “This is becoming interesting.”
Ronnie shook her head. “Don’t do it. You’ll get slapped and slapped hard. The Joseph incident will be nothing compared to what will happen if you keep going forward with that search.”
“Then save me from this abuse and go on a date with me.” He spread his arms out. “See, simple.”
Ronnie leaned forward, away from the couch cushions, and smiled. “Con, I’ve made you a meal, we’ve had a drink together, and we’ve gotten to know things about each other. In case you didn’t know it, this was a date. Mission accomplished.”