Storm Warning

by Michele Hauf

  “Got the prisoner’s name,” Bay said to her. “Rutger Lund. You know him?”

  She shook her head. “Should I?”

  “He’s an Interpol agent,” Jason said.

  Yvette’s jaw dropped open. And Bay pulled up a chair to sit down.

  * * *

  “YOU GOING TO do this, or am I?” Bay asked Jason.

  Jason pulled his desk chair back and gestured for Yvette to sit down. “I’ll do it.”

  “You guys suspect me now, don’t you?” Yvette sat, and when neither of them answered her, she beamed her big blue gaze up at Jason. “You do.”

  “Didn’t say that,” he said.

  “Well, I’ll say it,” Bay tossed out. “We’ve got an Interpol agent hiding out in Frost Falls under an assumed name...” He handed Jason another sheet of paper from the file folder. “Her real name is Amelie Desauliniers. Has worked at Interpol for two years. Six months in the field and another eighteen—”

  “For their tech department. I know,” Jason said. “She’s told me as much.”

  Bay stood and leaned his palms onto the desk. This was the first time Jason had seen the fire in him show in his curled fingers and tense jaw.

  Jason took an instinctual step toward Yvette. He stood beside her but a step away from touching her. “She was sent here because she had sensitive information in her head that her boss feared could get her killed,” Jason said.

  “What sort of information?”

  Yvette turned the list Jason had set on his desk toward the agent, and he took it and read it. Bay shrugged his shoulders. “What does this mean?”

  “Not sure,” Jason offered.

  “Well, ask her!”

  “I don’t know what it means,” Yvette replied. “It was a strange email that turned up in my inbox. It didn’t have an origin, and it self-destructed after a few minutes. But it was enough to put my boss on the alert and want to send me away for a while.”

  Bay winced. “I’m not following.”

  “She’s got a photographic memory,” Jason explained. “She remembers things she reads, like books and lists, but doesn’t necessarily know what it is she has seen.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “I’m the one who’s been the target,” Yvette said firmly. “I’m not on a case, or running a ploy or—I haven’t been a field agent for a long time. I’m just trying to stay alive while we figure this out.”

  Agent Bay scanned down the list. He tapped his fingers on it. “Three columns of data. Looks like a date column, possibly location and...”

  “Time,” Jason offered.

  “But this fourth column is a mix of numbers and letters. A password? For what?” He shot a steely gaze at Yvette.

  But she had no answer. If her boss had wanted this out of everyone’s eyesight, including his own...

  Over her shoulder, Jason asked, “How do you code operations?”

  “That’s probably need to know.”

  He gave her an exasperated look. “I’m not asking for state secrets. I’m trying to keep you alive.”

  “Right. Uh, usually a three-or four-letter sequence. First few letters of the operation code name. If something were called Blacktail, for instance, the code would be B, L, A, C.”

  “Gotta be a lot of operations that begin with black, don’t you think?”

  “That’s true. Maybe I don’t know for sure. You think there are operation code names on that list?”

  “I don’t know. Let me see that list, Bay.”

  The agent handed it over, and Jason took a few moments to read it.

  “This last column for each entry is eight to twelve characters long. It’s gotta be passwords. What makes you so sure your boss, who sent you off to a foreign country and then basically left you here without contact, isn’t working for someone else?”

  “If he was protecting himself, then why not take me out right away?” she asked. “Fire me or have me eliminated that night I went home. Instead he sends me to Minnesota? For what reason?”

  “To get you far away until he figured out what to do with you,” Bay offered. “And it would it be cleaner to take you out on foreign soil.”

  “How so? Taking out a target on home territory would be neater, more contained and something a person could control.”

  “True, but the evidence would no longer be in Interpol’s backyard.”

  “And if my guess about the mafia connection to France is correct,” Jason said, “then perhaps he wanted her in his hire’s range. Maybe Jacques is a double agent. Or he’s protecting a double who has been taking payouts.”

  “But agencies employ double agents all the time,” Yvette said.

  “Don’t I know it.” Jason shook his head and growled at the same time.

  “Oh right,” Yvette said. “Her.”

  Bay and Jason exchanged a look.

  Jason scrubbed his brow with the heel of his hand. “That’s not what we’re discussing. Maybe Jacques wanted this information hidden,” he tossed out. “Forever.”

  “Are you implying he had no intention of ever bringing me back in?”

  “I don’t know. He is the one man who knew what was on this list. And is he still alive?” He looked to Bay.

  “I asked and was told that was need-to-know information,” Bay said.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little strange?” Jason asked.

  Bay shrugged. “Yes, but they have their secrets just like we have ours. They work much more closely with the CIA. Do you think the prisoner in your jail cell knows what the list is for?” Bay said. “He has to.”

  “Why does he have to? He’s only been sent to take out the target.”

  “He didn’t want me dead,” Yvette said. “He wanted me incapacitated.”

  “Right.” Jason had forgotten that detail. “So he could then extract what you know. Maybe he does know. And if he’s Interpol...something doesn’t add up here. Someone knows something. And I need to find out who and what that is. We need to talk to him again, Bay.”

  “I agree.”

  “Come on.” Jason headed out of the office but called over his shoulder, “Yvette, or Amelie, look over that final column again. See if it makes any sense to you now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jason paced before the cell bars. It was cold down here, but the prisoner had not taken the blanket to wrap about himself. A sturdy man, he was about Jason’s height and build and had slick black hair and dark eyes. He sat on the bed, back to the cinder-block wall, knees bent. He faced the bars. Marjorie reported he’d eaten every bit of his food. (And Jason would, too; those meals came directly from The Moose.) He was also fastidious about his personal grooming and had requested a book, any book, to read. One of Marjorie’s romance novels sat splayed open on the bed beside him. Jason wouldn’t even smirk at that. He’d sneaked a peek at a few pages when Marjorie wasn’t looking. Those books were interesting.

  And written in English.

  The BCA agent stepped up beside Jason and gave him a look. Yes, he was ready.

  “Interpol, eh?” Jason said to the prisoner.

  The man maintained his gaze but said, “I wasn’t able to place a call.”

  And now he spoke English perfectly well. “I know. Repairman has been called for the faulty wiring.” Yes, like a year and a half ago. “By law, I’m supposed to report your whereabouts to Interpol.”

  “That is not correct.”

  “How do you know? Are you familiar with Interpol procedure?”

  The man looked aside, bowing his head.

  “Did Jacques Patron send you here to pick up Amelie Desauliniers?”

  The man crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head back against the wall. No comment.

  “You weren’t sent to kill her,” Jason said. “So I have to figure that
means you either came to take Desauliniers home—though, why you’d do it in such a covert manner does puzzle me. And if you’re not returning her to Lyon, then the only other option is to extract information.”

  “Phone. Call.”

  “Like I said, a repairman has been called. Another storm is headed toward us, though. Makes travel difficult. You’d better hunker down for the wait.”

  “You have a cell phone in your pocket. Desk phones elsewhere,” the prisoner insisted.

  “I do, but you are not in a position to access them, are you?”

  The man crossed his arms tightly and looked aside.

  Jason toed the base of a cell bar. “This is what we’ve learned from a database search. You are Rutger Lund. An Interpol agent. Home base, Marseille. Seven years in the field. Expertise, black ops. Apparently, covert sniping and operating a snowmobile were not in your training.”

  “You have no idea what you are sticking your nose into.”

  Jason propped his forearm against a couple of the cell bars and peered between two of them. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  He didn’t mind getting flipped the bird. He hadn’t expected the man would engage in a sharing session with him. But he had gotten a roundabout confirmation that he was Interpol. And that only troubled him further.

  “I’ll let you sit on ice awhile longer.” He glanced to the thermostat on the wall, right next to the phone. “These concrete walls are thick, but they don’t insulate against the weather well. Talk to you in the morning.”

  The man swore in French as Jason and Agent Bay headed up the stairs.

  * * *

  UP IN JASON’S OFFICE, Amelie studied the list. With the CIA headed this way, they had their work cut out for them. She knew the CIA would take over the case, and she also knew that Jason would take that as an affront. He hadn’t come right out and told her, but he needed to solve this case. A small-town cop planted in the middle of nowhere who had once traveled the world on covert missions? Hell yes, he probably needed this like a person needed oxygen.

  And if she could help him, then she would.

  She scoured over the paper. Cash payouts? To whom and what for? Interpol was huge and employed thousands across the globe. If this was a confidential list, it could only have been meant for Patron’s eyes. The fact she had received it? Someone wanted to out Patron.

  Because if it implicated anyone other than her boss, why wouldn’t he have acted on that information immediately and—maybe he had.

  No. Then there would have been no reason to send her out of the country.

  “I’m missing something.”

  The final column, Amelie had postulated, could be passwords. But for what? Each was associated with a different date, location and dollar amount. Was it a locker that held the payout, accessible only with the correct password? But the dates were all past. Why include the password if the pickup had already occurred?

  She closed her eyes and recalled the day she’d opened the suspicious email. Unless she wrote things down, she wouldn’t recall it all exactly, but she could remember the layout of the document on her computer. Two single eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch pages. Four columns. The final column...had those characters been underlined?

  She opened her eyes. “Like clickable links?”

  The email had disappeared after ten minutes. It hadn’t gone to the trash file. Not recoverable. Yet nothing was ever completely lost from a computer’s hard drive. Security agencies employed talented individuals who could access even the most buried information on a hard drive. It wasn’t in her skill set, but the tech manager was certainly qualified.

  The first hit man had to have been ordered by someone who didn’t want the information falling into other hands.

  But as for the suspect sitting in the jail cell below? He’d wanted her alive. And had very likely taken out the first hit man.

  Yet her death was for the ultimate reason of...what? If they’d kept her alive, it had to be for a reason. To extract the information she knew? But it seemed as if Jacques might already know that info, so he couldn’t be related to the second shooter.

  Amelie leaned back in the uncomfortable office chair. She felt at odds and alone, standing in the middle of a flooding room. She had no allies. Even Jason couldn’t be considered one. He was only doing his duty. This investigation had begun with the body of a dead woman. An innocent woman caught in a fouled assassination attempt.

  She bit her lip. That poor family.

  “How’s it coming?”

  She stood abruptly with the list in hand. “I didn’t hear you walk in.”

  Jason lifted a brow and cast her a discerning look. Even though the look was meant to be questioning, she still swooned at the sight of that freckled gaze. “You figure out the final column?”

  “I think these are passwords,” she said. “I recall now, on the original document, the fourth column was underlined.”

  He lifted a brow.

  “Like clickable links,” she suggested.

  “Good going. How do we access the original document?”

  “We don’t. Not unless we turn this investigation over to Interpol.”

  “Not a good idea. I have reason to believe someone is involved in a cover-up,” he said. “And I’m beginning to think it was cash payouts.”

  “Payouts to whom?”

  Jason shrugged.

  Amelie wrapped her arms over her chest and bowed her head. The sensation of tears niggled at her, but she would not cry in front of him. That was not professional. And she had to look at her exile here as a continuation of her job. For her own sake, she had to stay strong and figure this out.

  “What is it?” Jason leaned over her and stroked her hair.

  His kind touch tugged at her tears, but she sniffled and shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s all so much. I feel abandoned. Out of place. Feeling sorry for myself, I suppose.”

  “You have every right. You are alone in a strange country. And a damn cold and inhospitable country at that.”

  “Why couldn’t he have sent me to Florida?” she said with a lighter tone.

  “Your boss ever mention friends in Minnesota? Allies? Employees?”

  “You think he chose this state for a purpose?”

  “The Minnesota mafia does have a connection to France.”

  Amelie met his gaze. Damn, he was so handsome. Why had she met Jason Cash in such a situation? Any other time, she would have reached to touch those cute freckles on his nose.

  He gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “What are you thinking about right now?” he asked.

  She set free the smile that was always so close when in his presence. “Your freckles.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “You spend a lot of time thinking about my freckles.”

  “They’re sexy.”

  Amelie leaned in and kissed him. She twisted on the chair, and he knelt between her legs. Cupping her head with his hands, he deepened the kiss in an urgent and insistent way. He tasted like coffee. His heat fired within her like no hearth fire ever could.

  She gripped his shirt and tugged him closer so she could wrap her legs about his thighs. He bowed his head and kissed down her neck and throat. She almost moaned with pleasure. But she was aware that Marjorie could be in the next room. A few minutes of this pleasure was all she asked.

  When his hand brushed her breast, her nipples tightened. And she dared the quietest moan. Jason answered with his own restrained sound of want.

  He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes. He breathed a few times, heavy and wanting, then stepped back and pulled her up to embrace.

  “I want you,” she said quietly.

  He nodded against her head.

  “I want this to happen.”

  “It will,” he said in a quiet, low tone that
stirred at her humming insides. So sexy to have to be quiet when all they wanted to do was rip each other’s clothing off. “Not here.”

  “’Course not,” she said on a breath. “You have an investigation going on.”

  He gave her another quick kiss. “I do, and it’s only just gotten started. Oh, you mean that other investigation? The one regarding the hit man and the French spy?” He smiled. “I prefer the first, but duty does call. Let’s solve this case. Save the girl. And then...”

  “And then?”

  “And then we’ll see what happens next.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Snow whisked across the tarmac, plastering the main road thick white. Jason stomped the flakes from his boots before entering the station. He’d walked Yvette across the street to Olson’s Oasis after Colette had waved her down. Said she’d ordered a helmet for her and it was in. The two women had started chatting, so Jason had pleaded off and told Yvette no more than ten minutes. He’d be watching the store out the station window.

  The station smelled like roasted turkey, gravy and lots of buttery mashed potatoes. Marjorie did not have a meal on her desk. She handed him a cup of coffee as he entered.

  “You already eat? You should go home, Marjorie. Storm’s not taking its time today.”

  “I intend to. Just grabbing a few necessaries in case you need me to make some calls while the station is closed. I’ve already talked to county dispatch. They are on call. I fed the prisoner again.”

  “I guess you did. A Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “Uff da, it’s freezing down there and we are not Guantánamo. I gave him back the pillow you removed, too.”

  “Marjorie.”

  She lifted an eyebrow, and Jason conceded with a nod. “Fine. He’s going to have to sit through the storm down there. I’ll turn the heat up a few degrees.”

  “Already done.” Marjorie pulled on her bright red parka. “I left some snacks, too. Cronuts and popcorn. He’ll be fine. Isn’t the CIA headed our way?”

  “You betcha. Just heard from them. On their way from the Minneapolis airport.”

  “Through the storm?”

  Jason shrugged.