“So Gordon’s in Monaco on private detail for Khasan Idrisov, one of the most dangerous leaders in the world,” Ronan said.
“Word is even Putin’s scared of this guy,” Declan said.
“Any idea where Gordon’s going next?” Ronan asked.
“None,” Nick said. “Clay’s trying to hack their comms, but the encryption is pretty heavy.”
Julia wasn’t surprised. After they’d narrowed the face of the suited man onboard the Elysium, she’d combed the internet for everything she could find on all three men, hoping for a clue about which one had been on the yacht with her sister.
Nothing she’d found had taken them any closer to narrowing the field, but Mark Gordon’s bio kept her plenty busy. Viribus had been commissioned not only by private companies, but by governments and dictators around the world, including the U.S. government during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
She wouldn’t expect a government security contractor to make it easy to get into their comms, but if anyone could do it, it would be Clay Reddy, the freelance hacker MIS kept on retainer.
“So we hit him in Monaco,” Ronan said.
Nick wiped a hand over his face. “It’s not going to be easy.”
Ronan’s face was stony. “When has easy ever been a requirement of the job?”
Julia could almost hear the inner workings of Nick’s mind. She’d learned a lot about the way MIS worked in the past few months, to say nothing of Braden and Nora when they’d been in Greece.
Nick was thinking about Monaco.
Julia had never been there, but when she thought of the pictures she’d seen of it she could think of two potential problems: the country was tiny and densely populated, and the roads were winding and narrow.
“Not easy is one thing,” Nick said. “This is something else.”
“There are challenges,” Declan said. “But for every challenge there are upsides too.”
“Upsides?” Nick looked skeptical.
“Gordon’s on the job in Monaco. He’ll be focused on covering Idrisov, not protecting himself,” Declan said.
Ronan nodded. “Exactly. Catching him at home would put us at the mercy of his personal security, and I’m betting that’s bigger and badder than anything he provides on the road for clients like Idrisov.”
“You don’t catch guys like Gordon off guard,” Nick said. “Ever.”
Ronan grinned. “Now you’re just being fatalistic. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
“Maybe we should take the time to do that before we pack our bags,” Nick said.
“Can’t.”’ Ronan held out a hand to Julia and pulled her off the chair.
“Why not?”
Ronan turned to look at him. “Because we have a plane to catch.”
9
Ronan scanned the streets as he drove, navigating the Land Rover through Monte Carlo. The city was just as he remembered it, busy and sun-washed, the beaches littered with topless tourists and deeply tanned men in speedos, the streets packed with billionaires and high rollers looking to spend their money.
He looked over at Julia, her face turned to the window, and wondered what she thought of the place so far. They hadn’t had much time to talk in the three days since they’d gotten the news that Mark Gordon was working in Monaco, although they had had time to argue over whether or not Elise would accompany them.
Ronan glanced in the rearview and met Elise’s eyes. It happened a lot: he would turn to check on her, to make sure she was okay or to gauge her reaction to something, and find she was already looking at him, her expression unreadable.
He had no idea what she thought of him, if she approved of his relationship with her sister or if she thought Ronan was just another lawless thug like the men who had taken her.
He looked in the side mirror and caught sight of the second Rover, Nick driving Declan and Clay, who had come along for good measure. Braden was working a job with Locke, but Nora had promised to come if Ronan needed her.
It was a last resort. The fact that Nora lived for danger was irrelevant. He admired her, respected her professional expertise, but when push came to shove, she was still his little sister. He wouldn’t put her in danger unless he had no other choice.
They drove along the coast, the crowded roads slowly thinning, although growing no less narrow, as they left behind the bustle of Monte Carlo.
“Where are we going?” Julia asked.
Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, legs bare in shorts, hair tawny in the sunlight and blowing in the wind from the open windows. After today, their mission wouldn’t allow for open windows while driving — too dangerous — but he hadn’t been able to deny her when she’d rolled the window down and inhaled the fresh air with such obvious delight.
They’d been careful in concealing their flight plans and other arrangements. Even if Manifest had been monitoring them, it was too early for anyone to know they’d arrived in Monaco.
“Cap-Martin,” Ronan said. She lifted an eyebrow like the name didn’t mean anything to her. “It’s a smaller town outside Monte Carlo.”
“And we’re going there because…”
“It’s where we’re staying,” he said. “Monte Carlo is too crowded. It’ll be harder there to be sure we aren’t followed, to be sure we have privacy while we’re setting everything up.”
“How far is it?” she asked.
He pulled up to a black gate and checked his rearview mirror to confirm that Nick’s Rover was the only car behind him. When he did, he keyed a code into the control pad near the gate.
He looked at her as it swung open. “Not far at all.”
He pulled forward and hit the brake, watching as Nick pulled through the gate. He waited for it to swing shut to continue up the drive.
Verdant lawn spread out on either side of the driveway, leafy palms blowing in the breeze off the Mediterranean. The house rose up in front of them, a series of white modernist cubes stark against the blue sky.
“Whose house is this?” Julia asked as Ronan pulled the car to a stop outside two teak garage doors.
He peered at the building through the windshield. “Apparently, I do.”
“Apparently?”
“Nick says it’s mine,” he said. “So I guess it’s mine.”
She shook her head. “How many of these places do you have stashed around the world?”
He knew she was thinking about the apartment in Florence where they’d prepared to infiltrate the Manifest party that had led them to the Elysium, and eventually, to Elise.
“I don’t know actually. Maybe I should ask Nick.”
She laughed a little. “Yeah, maybe.”
He looked around, taking in the cliff behind the house and the flashes of ocean that stretched out in front of it. The roofs of a couple other houses were barely visible in the foliage that blanketed the mountainous hill, and he thought of Chief, being looked after by Ronan’s dad in their absence, and wished he’d brought the dog along. She would have loved exploring the hills.
Nick had chosen wisely. Between the water and the mountain, it would be difficult for anyone to breach the property without being seen, and that wasn’t including the security system Ronan was willing to bet Nick had installed on the property. The properties Nick had purchased on their behalf had been bought not only as tax shelters or investments but as places to run if they ever needed to lay low. As long as they battened down the hatches, they would be safe here, for a while at least.
He opened the door. “Come on. We have work to do.”
10
The house was extraordinary, perched over the Mediterranean with walls of windows that made Julia feel like she was floating in the sky over the water. It was sleeker than the apartment in Florence: that had been all deep moldings and burnished wood and antiques she’d been afraid to touch.
The house in Cap-Martin was so minimalist it could almost be described as bare, with long, low-slung sofas, a marble fireplace, and a kitchen that looked like it belonged
in a hotel.
She walked to the wall of glass overlooking the water, an infinity pool disappearing at the edge of a cliff as if the water ran right into the sea. To the right of the pool, a set of dark concrete steps appeared to descend to the water. Julia couldn’t see past the edge of the pool, but she assumed there must be a private beach.
“Wow,” Elise said next to her.
“You can say that again,” Julia said without taking her eyes off the water in the distance.
“He really is rich.”
Julia laughed and shook her head. They’d talked about Ronan’s money, about his business. It would have been impossible to hide the truth from Elise after her rescue aboard the Elysium even if Julia had wanted to, and she hadn’t. The flight home from Greece on MIS’s private jet, the big house in an expensive part of Boston, and the nice cars Ronan and his brothers drove weren’t ridiculously ostentatious as the rich in Boston went, but it was still pretty obvious that the Murphys had money.
“Don’t make a big deal of it,” Julia said.
“Who’s making a big deal? I’m just glad I threw a fit about coming along for the ride.”
It was the first time since Elise had been home that she sounded almost like herself, a hint of her old breeziness under the words.
Julia looked at her. “You’ll have plenty of time to enjoy the pool. Just remember not to go down to the beach or into town without someone with you.”
“You got it, Mom.” The words were lighthearted, but an unmistakable hint of annoyance clung to them.
“Mom wouldn’t give a shit.” The words came out more harshly than Julia intended. “She’d be too busy pouring drinks and looking for the pool boy.”
“She wouldn’t be wrong,” Elise said. Julia glared at her and Elise shrugged. The smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth looked strange on her face. “I’m just saying maybe you could lighten up on Mom. It seems like she’s trying, and it’s not a crime to have fun.”
“So we just forget about everything she’s done?” Julia asked. “Just pretend none of it happened? That she didn’t totally fuck over our childhood?”
“I don’t think there’s any danger of that,” Elise said. “I just…” She turned her eyes to the glass and shook her head.
“What?” Julia prompted.
“All those hours I spent being hauled from place to place, sometimes with a blindfold over my eyes, I had a lot of time to think, and you know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“I didn’t think once about all the shit Mom pulled when we were kids. I didn’t think about that guy Brian — remember him, the one who used to drink rum from our old sippy cups? — or about Jimmy or even about Pete. I didn’t think about the times you made us dinner because Mom was out partying or about the times we turned the TV up so we didn’t have to hear her having sex.”
It all flashed in front of Julia’s eyes: Brian and the sippy cups, the guy named Jimmy who’d wrecked her mom’s car, Pete who’d lived with them long enough they’d started to think maybe this one was going to last before he finally left in the middle of the night while they were all — their mom included — asleep.
“What did you think about?” Julia asked.
“I thought about us — about you and about Mom and about Gramps. I thought about the times you and me and Mom piled on the couch to watch those claymation Christmas shows and the times Mom took us out for ice cream when we couldn’t really afford it and how she’d sometimes let us have backwards dinner.”
Julia smiled in spite of herself. She’d loved backwards dinner: dessert first, then the main course.
“She was there, Julia. Not the way we wanted her to be or even the way we needed her to be, but she was there,” Elise said. “When I was alone all those weeks, when I thought I might die, that was what mattered to me."
Julia knew what Elise was saying, knew she was thinking about their dad, who hadn’t even bothered to stay. Staying had always seemed like such a low bar, but Elise wasn’t wrong.
Strong hands came down on Julia’s shoulders and Ronan leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Will the house do?”
Julia smiled. “It will definitely do.”
“Everything’s unloaded from the cars,” Ronan said. He looked at Elise. “Bedrooms are upstairs, take your pick of the ones that are open.”
“Thanks.”
Elise turned away from the glass and headed for the stairs. Her words were still ringing in Julia’s mind. Could she give her mom credit for staying? For doing her best even when it hadn’t been good enough? For continuing to try all these years later?
Julia didn’t know. It was too much: Elise’s recovery, her mom’s desire for forgiveness, the threat of Manifest, still out there somewhere.
She pushed it all away and turned toward Ronan, touching her hands to his chest, his defined pecs visible under his fitted blue T-shirt, a perfect match to his eyes.
“What about me?” Julia asked, smiling up at him. “Do I take my pick of open bedrooms too?”
He growled, pulled her closer, and leaned his forehead against hers. “You’re with me. Right?”
She nodded. “Always.”
She wondered why the word struck a note of fear inside her, like the universe was already mocking her, like they were tempting the fates. Was it a warning? A bad omen? Or just paranoia, the understandable result of a lifetime of things gone wrong?
She tightened her arms around him. She didn’t know. She only knew that he was right.
She was with him. However long always turned out to be.
11
Ronan waited while the waiter cleared their plates, watching the group around him in the light thrown off the flickering candles running the length of the table. Declan and Clay were huddled at one end of the table, laughing about something, while Nick and Elise talked quietly, their heads bowed close together. Ronan had been watching them closely since Nick’s assertion that they were just friends and he had to admit he wasn’t picking up on any romantic energy. He’d finally scolded himself for being sexist by assuming men and women couldn’t be simply friends when that’s exactly what Nick and Elise seemed to be.
Julia’s hand slipped into his and he looked over and felt her beauty like a punch in the gut. The dim light on the patio of La Cigale, the oceanfront restaurant where they’d had dinner, cast her multifaceted eyes in shades of amber, chestnut, and moss. Her shoulders were bare under a sleeveless dress with slim straps, the candlelight making them look like liquid gold. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the slope of her breasts in the neckline of the dress made him want to tug her onto his lap and pull down the fabric, close his mouth around her nipples.
They’d spent the last three days in Monaco tailing Mark Gordon and Jesse Martin while they worked guard detail for Khasan Idrisov, making scrupulous notes on their procedures, the timing of their movements, anything that would help them develop a plan for kidnapping Mark Gordon.
It sounded impossible, like planning to kidnap the German Chancellor or the Queen of England, but the more they’d observed, the more they’d seen windows of opportunity. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Ronan was more and more convinced it was doable.
The waiter returned with two more bottles of wine and a coffee for Elise, then ducked discreetly out of sight. Ronan had made it clear they sought privacy both by his rental of the patio in its entirety — prime culinary real estate in Cap-Martin — and by the way conversation ceased entirely when the waiter delivered food or refilled drinks.
They all knew better than to speak about the upcoming mission if there was a chance in hell anyone might overhear, but despite the house’s luxury, they’d all gotten cabin fever from being cooped up, especially Elise who had left the house less often than anyone else.
The patio at La Cigale was situated right on the water, providing them cover on one side, and renting the patio ensured no one but the waiter was within earshot of their table. Ronan was confident the precautions were adequate, an
d he could tell the rest of the group had needed the night out.
“So,” Nick said, leaning over the table, “do we have a plan?”
MIS was an equal partnership, but they each had their strengths, and they played to them whenever possible. Ronan’s time with the SEALs had given him both strategic field planning and on-the-ground (and in the air and sea) tactical experience. He was usually the one to draw up their plans, which were then refined in the sometimes combative fire of his relationship with Nick and Dec.
They’d tag-teamed the surveillance on Gordon and Martin, but it was Ronan’s job to distill the data into a workable mission.
“The casino is our best shot,” Ronan said. “Idrisov is there for at least four hours every night, sometimes longer, and Gordon is usually inside while Martin stays with the car.”
“But Gordon is the body man,” Nick said. “That means he’s more or less on top of Idrisov.”
“More or less,” Ronan agreed. “But Idrisov plays with the high rollers, and Gordon only accompanies him as far as the VIP room,” Ronan said.
The high-roller room was for players only. The guards waited in a cushy holding area with a bar, a TV, and a host of attractive cocktail waitresses.
Nick nodded. “Right, and if Gordon needs a break, he calls Martin in from the car to relieve him.”
“How long is he away from the VIP room when he takes a break?” Clay asked.
“An average of two minutes and twelve seconds. He has to leave the VIP room, cross the hall, and pass the elevators to get to the restrooms,” Ronan said.
“There aren’t bathrooms in the VIP area?” Julia asked.
“There are, but they must be reserved for the players because the guards use the restrooms in the main casino,” Ronan said.
“I could probably loop the cameras in the hall,” Clay said.
“I take it you’ve done some preliminary recon?” Ronan asked him.
“A little.”
It wasn’t a surprise. They’d known taking Gordon might involve the casino, and few things could be more fun for a hacker of Clay’s caliber than sneaking into a casino’s notoriously tight computer network.
Murphy’s Love: Murphy’s Law Book Three Page 5
