Chapter 10
“We lost contact with our agents on the train.”
Janice stared at the screens that filled the wall before her, each one depicting a different point within the Wien Hauptbahnhof train station. Those working in this room had been locked on tracking Eden Fontaine since she left her flat that morning.
With one agent having gone missing not long after Eden left her flat, and the other two silent since the train had taken off, there was only one answer: someone was helping Eden.
Janice had been the one to recruit her from the States.
Eden was good at her job. So good, in fact, that the Saints wanted to make sure they could control what she saw and who she dug into.
It hadn’t taken long for Eden to agree to the job offer, making Janice’s job that much easier.
And everything had gone exactly as planned from the moment Eden arrived in Vienna.
Every employee working for SynTech was monitored daily.
Their whereabouts, who they spoke with, their communications, and anyone they interacted with.
Only a few had been upgraded to having their homes bugged with audio and video.
Eden had never gotten to that point, and Janice now realized that had been to their detriment.
Had the surveillance equipment been in place, they could’ve known what she had done in her flat after she left work the previous day.
“Ma’am?” the technician nearest her asked.
Janice looked down at the skinny white male that would forever be classified as a dork no matter what clothes he wore or the position he held.
It was in his bearing, his very essence.
He’d told her his name a dozen times, but she’d never remember it.
And it was him and others like him in the office that allowed the Saints to stay ahead of their enemies. At least, for the most part.
“Walk me through it all again,” she ordered him.
He swallowed and cleared his throat. “Put video 2C on the main screen,” he told someone.
In a blink, the monitors shifted. Janice crossed her arms over her chest as the CCTV footage began to play.
“This is the south entrance of the station,” he told her. “In four seconds, our target will come on screen.” Once that happened, he snapped his fingers, and the next video popped up. “From there, she walks through the station and to the terminal with the train headed for Budapest.”
“Does she stop and talk to anyone?” Janice asked.
The guy shook his head of brown hair parted to the side and slicked back. “No one. We have clear shots of her here,”—he clicked a button—“here,”—he clicked another button—“and here. No one bumps into her, stops her, and she doesn’t speak to anyone.”
“That we know of.” Janice said it more to herself than to anyone else. “Next.”
He shifted in his chair. “We pick her up right as she enters the terminal. The train is just getting there, so there’s little time for her to interact with anyone.”
Janice’s gaze took in every face around Eden to see if she recognized any of them. As explained, the train got there seconds after Eden, and she quickly boarded. “And our agents?”
“One is a few people behind her,” the nerd said.
She nodded when she spotted him. “And the second?”
“We picked him up two cars behind her, here,” he said as the screen changed to show the second agent.
Janice barked, “Stop. Back up the recording a little.” Her instructions were immediately followed. She peered closer at a man who bumped into her agent. It seemed harmless enough, but at this point, she couldn’t take the chance. “Can we see the man’s face? The one who ran into our agent?”
The nerd began issuing orders, and the room hurried to comply, each doing their best to give her what she wanted. Minutes passed as she watched and rewatched the footage of the man jostling her agent.
“Sorry, ma’am,” the nerd finally answered. “The guy is wearing a cap, and none of the cameras can get a good angle of his face. Not even using the windows as a mirror.”
“I see mobile phones out,” she said. “Check social media and see if anyone got a hit on his face.”
Once more, the room erupted in a flurry. There was a really good chance that she was chasing nothing. But there was also a chance that this could be something.
“Got it!” a female shouted a few minutes later.
Janice jerked her head to the side at the sound of the voice. The large screen in the middle of the room was filled with a profile that she recognized instantly. Maks Volkov. She’d had a feeling that someone was helping Eden, and now she knew for sure.
She leaned over the nerd and typed in Maks’ name, pulling up and image of his face. “Go back to our target leaving her flat and check all cameras for any sign of this man, Maks Volkov.”
But despite her request, they found nothing.
There were too many streets without cameras to see everything.
However, the train station was a different story.
Maks was seen following about thirty feet behind Eden.
There could be an argument that they were working together.
Maks wasn’t seen leaving her apartment, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there.
Janice spun around and left the room. Once outside, she dialed a number and brought her mobile to her ear. “I need a team at Fontaine’s house immediately. Take prints. If there’s a sign that anyone but her has been in that flat, I want to know who it was.”
She hung up and made her way to the lift to head back up to the top floor. Kyle had found footage of Maks in Amsterdam, but no one had been able to find another trace of him until now. And had Eden not done a search on the Saints, they might never have found another sign of Maks for several weeks.
He was good at what he did. Very good.
And she should know. They’d briefly been lovers.