Chapter 5
The next morning, Eden was at her desk before anyone else. She hadn’t been able to sleep. In fact, she’d spent most of the night continuing her search for Maks. Which proved much more difficult than she wanted to admit.
When Kyle walked into the office, Eden followed him with her eyes.
He got situated for the day and typed in his password before pulling up the page he’d been working on.
As his specialized algorithms began to work with the facial recognition software they all had access to, he rose and went to get coffee.
Eden knew she couldn’t get to his computer in time to discover anything before he returned.
Not to mention, his desk was out of the way, just as hers was.
The last three big clients they had competed with each other for had him winning two, and her one.
She didn’t care about that, though. What mattered was that she found Maks first. She couldn’t explain why, only that she knew she had to.
She looked to where Kyle was and glanced at his computer again. Something in a red box kept flashing on the screen. She couldn’t read it from her location and the fact that he had a film over his screen that prevented others from seeing what he did.
With nothing to lose, Eden got up and walked toward his desk. Her hands were shaking, her heart racing. She knew that she could get caught by Kyle at any moment, and she didn’t know what she would say to him. The more she tried to come up with a plan, the more her brain refused to work.
Her mouth was dry, her ears ringing. How did anyone do things like this for a living?
She feared that her heart might burst from the stress and kill her right then.
But, somehow, she reached Kyle’s desk without incident.
Once there, she didn’t know what to do. She looked around, hoping something would jump out at her. But there was nothing.
She turned her head, her gaze locking with Kyle’s.
She tried to smile, but she wasn’t sure her lips actually lifted in a grin.
Kyle started toward her, anger blazing in his eyes.
Eden moved a lock of hair behind her ears and glanced at the screen.
She memorized the location then faced Kyle when he reached her.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
She laughed. “I work here.”
His lips didn’t even twitch.
Eden cleared her throat and licked her lips. “I wanted to apologize for yesterday. I was rude to you, and I’m sorry.”
He continued staring at her, his face showing nothing.
“All right then,” she said with another forced smile. “Later.”
On the way back to her desk, she felt her knees shaking.
She didn’t breathe normally until she was once more seated in her chair.
When she looked up, Kyle was still staring at her.
She ignored him and hurriedly typed Amsterdam Centraal into her search.
She put in filters for the last week and then added in the facial recognition software.
While that ran in the background, Eden looked at every Maks Volkov in Europe between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-eight with blond hair and blue eyes.
That narrowed down her search to four hundred thousand seven hundred and forty-eight.
She’d done the same search last night on her home computer and had come up with the same number.
She hadn’t had his photo to scan in to match, however. Eden did that now, and it didn’t take long for the computer to give her an answer: No Match.
Wanting to be sure she hadn’t missed anything, she ran the search twice more. Each time, it came back with the same answer. The next time, she expanded the search worldwide. It gave her over two million hits.
It took longer for the detailed search to run, and she was confident that she would find something this time. No sooner had that thought gone through her mind than her computer dinged that she’d gotten a hit. But it wasn’t on the name. It was on her search of the Amsterdam Centraal train station.
Eden switched screens and found a snippet from a CCTV camera that showed someone who looked like Maks, at least in profile. She glanced at Kyle, but he wasn’t at his desk. When she searched the floor, she found him in Janice’s office, no doubt giving her the news. That didn’t deter Eden, however.
She hadn’t actually thought she would get a hit on Maks so soon using facial recognition and the cameras from the train station.
Based on what she saw, he’d definitely been there the night before.
She quickly got the footage from the other cameras in the station and added in the facial recognition software.
To her surprise, she caught sight of a man who could be Maks twice more, but he was always careful about his face being turned away from the cameras.
That was something someone who had been trained did. Something done consciously. Normal people didn’t notice or care if a camera picked up their face. But a select few did. Criminals.
And spies.
Which one was Maks?
Eden continued looking through the CCTV footage to see if she could find anything else.
Just as she was about to shut it down, thinking it was a dead end, her gaze snagged on a man leaping in front of a train.
She feared that she might have found someone committing suicide, and she had to know if they were okay.
She lost sight of him as the train stopped, so she switched cameras to find another angle.
She found him again. He wore the same type of jacket that the other man in the footage had, but he now carried a backpack and had on a baseball cap.
He landed from jumping in front of the train, easily clearing the tracks.
Then he took off running to the other side before climbing up to that platform.
No sooner had he straightened than the train opened its doors, and people flooded out, swallowing him.
But she had her gaze locked on him. Switching from camera to camera, she followed the unknown man up the stairs to the main floor of the train station. When he turned a corner, she got another profile shot of him. This time, she was positive that it was Maks Volkov.
Instead of taking the information to Janice, Eden encrypted all of it then pulled out a pen drive from her purse and put all the footage on it.
Kyle might be able to uncover what she had eventually, but she wasn’t going to worry about that right now.
Eden wasn’t even sure why she was suddenly rooting for Maks.
She didn’t know him, but something kept telling her not to give the information she had gained to SynTech or the client wanting to find Maks.
“He better not be some serial killer,” she mumbled to herself.
With her taste in men, it would be just her luck. She shook her head, refusing to go down that road again.
Eden decided to try and find out who it was that wanted the scoop on Maks.
That wasn’t something shared in an environment like this.
Though she had worked on her own long enough that she had gotten used to knowing who her clients were.
SynTech’s policy was that it didn’t matter who the client was.
They were paying for a service, and every IB had a duty to deliver.
This time, Eden wasn’t okay with that. Yet no amount of digging gave her anything.
She wasn’t used to coming up empty. There was always some information—good, bad, or ugly—out there on anyone and everything.
For Maks and this unknown client to both have nothing out there? Yeah, something wasn’t right.
Eden closed her eyes and stretched her neck to give herself a little break. The ding on her computer had her back at it again. She’d done a worldwide search for Maks’ name. Not a single result matched the picture they had been given.
Maks had been caught on camera in Amsterdam, so he wasn’t some made-up individual as a test for them. But if his name didn’t match any records around the world, then that could only mean one thing: Max Volkov wasn’t his name.
By the time lunchtime came, Eden could barely contain her frustration.
She decided to get out of the office and grab a bite as well as meditate a bit to try and get herself back in balance.
As she rose to leave, she saw that Kyle was still in Janice’s office.
The two men from the previous day were also there.
She didn’t give them a second thought as she left the building.
Once outside, she drew in a deep breath.
The temperatures were still chilly, but the sun was shining, and the sky was a beautiful, clear blue.
Eden found herself relaxing as she walked the streets.
There was something about Vienna that drew people.
After all, it was the best city to live in the world.
Not only was there culture, history, and amazing architecture, but the people were also friendly, and the vibe of the city was a beat that pulled in tourists as well as those who moved there permanently.
Eden chose her favorite café and grabbed a seat near the window.
Locals sat outside, but she preferred not to shiver as she ate.
After she ordered, she found herself watching passersby.
People watching was something she loved.
As her gaze moved from face to face, she did a double-take, her breath locking in her lungs as she thought she saw Maks.
But as she searched again, he wasn’t there.
She inwardly gave herself a shake. Her brain was too focused on Maks if she was seeing him in the crowd.
Thankfully, her food arrived, and she could stop thinking about him.
At least that’s what she told herself. As she bit into her sandwich, her mind went back to what little she had learned about Maks.
It wasn’t much. The only one who seemed to have found anything was Kyle, and she wasn’t sure if Kyle had found the CCTV footage of Maks jumping in front of the train and going up the opposite platform.
“Stop,” she told herself.
Eden put in her earbuds and turned on some music as she ate.
By the time she was finished with the meal, she felt a little better.
Then, she got comfortable and switched to a quick five-minute meditation.
She closed her eyes and let the words of the guided session clear her mind and balance her once more.
When it was finished, she felt immensely better.
There was a smile on her face, and she had some direction for what she needed to do next.
Eden paid for her food and gathered her things to leave.
She kept one earbud in to continue listening to music.
She still had about fifteen minutes before she had to be back at her desk, and she wasn’t going to go back any sooner than she had to.
She walked slowly, soaking in the sun’s rays.
Her mind drifted to the items she needed to pick up at the market since she hadn’t cooked all week.
The weekend was fast approaching, and she was seriously considering making a short trip to Prague.
She loved the city, and with so much to do there, it kept calling her back.
Eden was about to walk into the office when a man standing and staring at her while others walked past caught her attention. She searched for him as the crowd moved by, but by the time the area was clear, he was gone. Once more, she would’ve sworn it was Maks.
“I’m losing my mind,” she said.
She hesitated about going into the office.
The fact that she had slept very little last night and her unconventional connection to this new assignment made her take a step back.
She had vacation days. Perhaps she should take a couple and extend her trip to Prague.
Eden pulled out her phone and called Janice before she changed her mind. The secretary answered the call.
“Hi,” Eden said. “Please tell Janice that I won’t be coming back into work this afternoon, and I’ll be taking Friday off, too. I’m not feeling well.”
She dropped her phone into her bag and looked back at where she had thought she saw Maks.
That was twice in less than an hour. Eden thought about walking across the street and seeing if she could find him, but she knew it was a ridiculous thought.
Maks wasn’t there. He might be a spy, but he couldn’t know who was looking for him, or where the office was located.
Could he?
Eden shook her head. She needed to sleep. That’s all this was. She’d go home, take a nap, and then book her trip to leave either later tonight or first thing tomorrow morning. Without a second thought, she walked away from SynTech and toward her flat.
The moment she was in her home, she let out a sigh of relief. Without preamble, she locked her door and went to her bedroom to undress and get back into bed. In seconds, she was asleep.