Chapter 8
Austin
Back in my nondescript chain hotel room—I didn’t care that the hotel wasn’t five-star; all I needed was a clean room and hot water—I plugged my phone charger into the wall and attached my phone.
I wished more people knew that their personal information could be hacked if they plugged into the USB ports the hotel conveniently provided.
Not that most hotel staff would, but bad actors with hacking skills wouldn’t think twice.
The CIA, hell, the entire alphabet soup, FBI, DEA, DHS, all sent memos regularly reminding us not to use provided USB ports.
I opened my laptop, authenticated my VPN, another security protocol, and checked on the aging app results. They’d probably been available for hours, but I’d been busy playing nice with my family.
Nice job, Winchester. Less than twenty-four hours ago you were promising to reconnect, and now you’re blaming your family for not seeing the results sooner.
After typing in my password, I reminded myself to be less of a dick as the program loaded.
I clicked on the Singer file.
An image appeared.
I blinked.
It can’t be.
I blinked again. And again, thinking I was seeing things.
I wasn’t.
I whistled out the air in my lungs.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit.”
The image wasn’t a perfect match, but it was close enough for me to know with confidence.
Nina Novak—owner of an ancient red hatchback, college student, and Grannie’s assistant manager—and Nina Singer—missing daughter of two missing, presumed dead, CIA officers— were one and the same.
I ran my hand through my hair, making it stand on end.
Obsessed with the case and wanting to see the rendering, I hadn’t bothered taking off my coffee stained pants.
I looked at the now dry stain. What were the fucking chances I’d walk into my aunt’s coffee shop and literally bump into a person of interest in my case?
Not just any person.
The missing child of two missing CIA officers.
Not that I knew that when I’d held her at arm’s length, worried she might have burned herself.
When I looked into her deep blue eyes, eyes that had haunted me the entire drive back to Dallas, I hated myself for thinking about how beautiful she was, how alluring her eyes were, how kissable her apologetic lips were.
I’d told myself she was too young.
Now I know exactly how ‘too young’ she really is.
But those eyes. So expressive. So beautiful. So deep. It was like staring into the depths of the Atlantic.
What the fuck, Winchester? Waxing poetic wasn’t my style. Hell, most people would hesitate to call me friendly. My brother called me a robot more often than he used my name.
I opened the file and pulled up the CIA credential photos of her parents.
That’s why she seemed so familiar.
Nina had her mother’s eyes and her father’s wavy hair. Features I’d seen a thousand times after my current case linked to their cold case. Features I hadn’t thought much about.
Until now.
Where are they? They’d been presumed dead for twenty-five years, but that didn’t mean anything. The CIA ‘killed’ people off anytime they had to give them new identities.
Would they relocate them without their daughter?
Are they alive? And why wasn’t there any record of Nina’s birth in their files?
Only one answer made sense: they had been in danger before Nina was born. Or they suspected they were.
From who?
I used a delivery app to order a medium rare T-bone steak, garlic mashed potatoes, and a side salad before going over my file notes again.
It wouldn’t matter that my dinner would get cold before it arrived; I usually worked through my meals and rarely ate warm meals.
With wet hair and a scratchy hotel towel wrapped around my waist, I messaged an old friend from the farm, from my personal phone to his.
You have time to talk?
My phone rang as I stepped into my navy blue boxer briefs.
I hit the answer button and put the phone on speaker. “Winchester.”
“It’s been a hot minute. Where are you calling from?”
I laughed, it’d been almost a year since the last time I’d talked to Ryan Gibson.
“Dallas.”
“As in Dallas, Texas?”
“That’s the one.”
“Work or vacation?”
Gibson wouldn’t know that I rarely came home during my virtually non-existent vacations. I had months of accrued time off that’d make for a nice paycheck when I retired.
“Work, but I’m visiting family while I’m here.”
“Two birds and all that…” he trailed off.
The repetitive noises in the background had the rhythm of fast moving traffic.
“Are you driving?”
“Surveillance.”
“On a fucking highway?” My laugh sounded dry to my ears.
His sounded entertained. “No, but it’s close by. Give me a sec.”
The background noise continued while I waited.
“I’m back.”
“Are you working on US soil?”
“Helping out a friend, off the record.” He laughed. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected chat?”
“I need a second set of eyes.”
“On the record or off?” Given that I’d called his personal phone to ask, it was a valid question.
“Off the record.” Gibson didn’t cringe at the idea like I did.
“How deep is the creek you’re in?”
Gibson had always had a way with words.
“Not sure yet. Are you still in the Dallas office?”
It seemed impossible, but I’d swear I heard him nod.
“I am. Fill me in.”
So I did. I told him how my case connected to a cold case, and how it led me to Nina in Weatherford.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He laughed through the shock. “Dude, we never get that lucky. You need to play the fucking lottery.”
It wasn’t my thing, but he was right about our luck. Running into Nina was a once-in-a-career kind of luck.
“I kid you not, it’s her.”
“You just happened to run into the woman you’ve been looking for at your cousin’s engagement party?”
Looking for wasn’t an accurate statement, since I hadn’t seen the computer-generated image of what the baby in the photo might look like as an adult.
Officers Singer and Singer might not be missing anymore. I discovered two decayed bodies during my investigation. The items found with the bodies led me to believe they were Travis and Melissa Singer. I’d know for certain when the DNA results came back.
“Technically, she ran into me.” I had the angry red spots to prove it. “And I wasn’t actively looking for her when it happened.” It might seem like a trivial correction, but details were important when working a case.
“Whatever, dude, what do you need from me?” Gibson was a field officer with military special operations experience. He didn’t worry as much about dotting I’s or crossing T’s. That was for guys like me, the ones who were more comfortable behind a desk.
Not that I couldn’t handle fieldwork; I’d trained with the SEALs, because following the money turned out to be dangerous as fuck, and relying on the SEALs to save my ass wasn’t a smart self preservation plan.
Plus, I wanted to be an asset rather than a liability when the Navy attached me to DEVGRU, formerly SEAL Team 6.
It was a highly sought after position, and the experience I gained with the team earned me a visit from the CIA.
“Can you run a background on Nina Novak and review the Singer cold case file without setting off any alarms?”
Thinking there might be more to my cases than met the eye, I had reservations about ID’ing Nina this early in the investigation.
“Yeah, but I won’t be able to do a deep dive. If we need more help, I know a guy.”
I didn’t doubt it for a minute.