Chapter 18
Janice stared out at the city from the window in her office. Her people had been searching for any trace of Maks and Eden since the train station in Budapest and had gotten nothing. The Elders weren’t at all happy, and if she didn’t get some results soon, she wasn’t sure what would happen to her.
Her people had everything at their disposal to locate Maks and Eden.
If it had been anyone else, they likely would’ve already found the couple.
But Maks wasn’t just anyone. He was better than any other spy.
He’d been nicknamed the ghost because of how good he was.
All this time, everyone at the Saints had assumed that they had control of him.
That was laughable. No one had ever had control of Maks Volkov. That much was painfully obvious. The fact that he’d duped not only the CIA and the FSB but also the Saints wasn’t something anyone was taking lying down. In fact, heads were going to roll. Quite literally.
All she could do was pray that hers wasn’t among them.
A knock on her door caused her to turn around as it opened. She stared into the brown eyes of the head nerd. Damn, but she really needed to try and remember his name. Eventually. “Yes?” she asked.
“You might want to come down. We might have something.”
She frowned as she strode toward him. “You should’ve told me that as soon as you knocked. Come on.”
Every second wasted was a second that might very well cost Janice her life. She used the code to get into the room as the nerd hurried past her and got into his chair.
“Show me what you found, people,” she called out.
The nerd was the first to say, “Once we lost the two subjects in the station, we expanded our search outside of the building. Unfortunately, we didn’t get anything.”
Janice drew in a breath while trying to hold onto her patience. They wouldn’t have brought her down here if they hadn’t found something.
“We soon realized that they would’ve likely left the city. So, we began using the CCTV cameras, going grid-by-grid. That’s when we found this.”
An image of a man getting into a car and bending over to hotwire it filled the screen.
A second later, a woman joined him in the vehicle.
All the while, their faces were obscured.
Right until the car drove away, and the woman’s head turned to the side.
There, filling the large screen on the wall, was none other than Eden Fontaine.
“Where did they go?” Janice demanded, hope filling her.
There was a beat of silence before the nerd said, “We lost them.”
Her gaze snapped to him. “Again?”
“There aren’t cameras on every corner of the city.”
“But you know what they’re driving. Look for that.”
The nerd visibly swallowed. “We did. And nothing. Until just a few minutes ago. One of the new cameras set up at the border of Hungary and Romania caught this.”
Janice looked at the screen to see the same car Maks and Eden had stolen in Budapest, now leaving Hungary and heading into Romania. “Where did they go?” When no one answered, she sighed loudly. “Let me guess, you lost them again.”
“We’ll keep looking,” the nerd hastily replied.
“I want every border crossing out of Romania watched. Send teams of men to Romania for when Maks is found. I want boots on the ground within two hours,” she barked.
Fingers flew over keyboards, and voices filled the room as calls were put in to carry out her orders.
She stared at the screen. Why would Maks take Eden to Romania?
What was there for him? Nothing, at least as far as Janice knew.
But Maks wasn’t stupid. If he went to Romania, then he had a reason.
In order to figure out what he was up to, she needed to know what was in that country for him.
Janice turned on her heel and left the room, confident that her orders would be carried out.
Once in her office again, she picked up the phone and dialed.
Her call was answered on the second ring.
The American male voice wobbled with age and often fooled people into underestimating the intelligence still there.
“He’s in Romania,” she said.
There was a beat of silence. “Interesting. Do we know what’s there?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you know where he is exactly?”
She pressed her lips together. “Not yet. My team just found footage of him crossing into the country.”
“How many hours ago?”
“Lunchtime yesterday.”
There was a snort through the receiver. “So he could’ve already left Romania and gone somewhere else. Don’t call again until you have him. And, Janice? You better find him. Alive. We want answers.”
“Yes, sir,” she said as the line went dead.
Janice drew in a breath, hating that her hand shook as she lowered the receiver to the base.
There was no way she was going to let someone like Maks Volkov ruin her career.
He was nothing but a speck on the road she’d been on.
But if she wasn’t careful, he could spin her out of control and have her rolling downhill to end in a fiery crash.
“Not going to happen,” she told herself. “He’s merely a spy who has forgotten what it means to give someone loyalty. He needs to be reminded.”
And if that meant taking his life, she wouldn’t hesitate.