Treacherous

by Sara Rosett

  “Yes,” Munez said. “We can now make some connections. We know from what Ms. Espino told you that Novall had already sent her the hack, so Novall must have told Fossa that. I’m sure Fossa made it clear to Novall that he would make it extremely painful for Novall if he didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. Novall was lucky to escape with only a bloody nose and some bruises. Novall must have disclosed the plan to send the flash drive to Ms. Espino and for her to put it in the painting, which led to Fossa’s attack at the gallery.”

  “But how would he know where I was? Or where to find Gloria?” Zoe asked.

  “Fossa would wring every piece of information from Novall.” The flat way Munez said the words sent a chill through Zoe. Violence was a given with Fossa, it seemed.

  Munez went on, “Fossa would not leave without all the details on where Novall had sent the flash drive, which would include Ms. Espino’s address as well as the name of the gallery. I believe that once Fossa realized his mistake of taking the wrong painting, he returned to the gallery and spotted you with Gloria. You said you ate lunch together after the police interview, no?” Munez shrugged. “It would be easy to follow you back to your hotel. He did not need to follow Ms. Espino. He would have already extracted her address from Novall.”

  Zoe rubbed her forehead. It was a lot of information to take in, but at least the pieces were beginning to fit together. Kaz and the computer programmer, Robert Novall, were connected. He sent the hack to Gloria to put in the frame, but another detail troubled Zoe. “But if Novall and Kaz were coordinating with each other to distribute the hack, how did anyone else know about it? You said word got out about it in the criminal world. How did that happen?” Zoe asked. “Did they discuss it online in a way that could be traced?”

  “It was simpler than that,” Munez said. “The downfall of so many—arrogance.”

  Jack said, “Novall must have bragged about it to the wrong person.”

  “Exactly,” Munez said. “One of our confidential informants heard that Novall hinted to a work associate about his plans to release the information in a way that left little to the imagination, at least for someone in the same line of work. Novall’s colleague saw an opportunity to make some money and put the word out that the hack was ‘in play,’ which attracted the attention of Fossa’s employer, Izydor Mato, who would be eager to have that sort of hack. Mato sent Fossa to get it. Fossa wouldn’t want to return empty-handed. That’s why he didn’t give up. After his failure to get the flash drive from the gallery, he followed you.”

  “And searched my hotel room, and then tried to talk his way into my new room.”

  Munez chuckled. “I’m sure you frustrated him. When you disappeared, he contacted Gloria Espino to get her to convince you to produce the flash drive.”

  “More of your close surveillance of Fossa?” Zoe asked.

  “Yes, our observation methods are quite…advanced, yet still imperfect. We were not able to follow exactly what was said, but we do know they met. Fossa is holding a threat over Ms. Espino—perhaps revealing her part in the release of the hack—or he’s provided an incentive that she can’t resist.”

  “Money,” Zoe said. “She admitted to us that the cash was what convinced her to help Kaz in the first place.”

  “Her involvement does complicate the handoff of the flash drive,” Munez said, his gaze fixed on Zoe. She shifted in her chair, uncomfortable with his observation. “If the instructions were for you to simply drop the flash drive at a location and leave, then we could find someone to go in your place. It would involve a wig and makeup, but it could be done. However, you said Fossa rode in the hotel elevator with you. Was he close enough to get a good look at you?”

  “Yes,” Zoe said, her heart sinking. “He stared. It bothered me.”

  Munez’s lips turned down in a grimace. “That changes things. We have fewer options. If he didn’t work for Mato we could forget about the handoff and send police officers to arrest him at the temple in connection with the gallery robbery. Unfortunately, we can’t do that. We are at a sensitive point in an operation to bring down Mato and the Trullas organization. I can’t risk Fossa becoming suspicious and relaying his concerns. It could ruin the plans to close in on the Trullas gang.”

  “Then there’s only one thing to do, I think,” Zoe said as she looked at Jack. “I have to take the flash drive into the temple.”

  Worry flickered in his eyes. “I don’t like it. If someone has to go, I’d rather do it.” He sat with his ankle propped on his knee and one hand resting on his ankle, but Zoe could see the skin whiten around his knuckles. “I’ll make an excuse—you got sick or something.”

  “I appreciate that you’re trying to keep your wife out of danger, Mr. Andrews, but with your training you know a substitution is not a good idea.”

  “You were going to try it,” Jack said.

  “But only if Fossa hadn’t come into close contact with your wife. He has, so that plan is off the table,” Munez said. “And unless I am mistaken, Mrs. Andrews has been in some tight spots before and handled them well, no?”

  Jack looked at Zoe out of the corner of his eye. “I do have to concede that point.”

  She put her hand over Jack’s. “I appreciate that you want to protect me, but I can do something as simple as drop off the flash drive. I’ll be in and out of the temple in less than a minute. And we’ve already called Gloria and told her we’re bringing the flash drive tonight. If someone else shows up, she’ll be suspicious.”

  “That’s true,” Munez said.

  Jack blew out a breath. “I can see I’m not winning this argument.” He turned his hand under hers and linked their fingers. “You’ve got to wear a wire, though.” He looked to Munez. “You can do that, right?”

  “Oh, yes. In fact, I’m adamant on that point. We may even pick up something useful.”

  Jack leaned forward. “The temple is a horrible place for the handoff.”

  “I agree,” Munez said. “Not a smart move on Fossa’s part, but a lucky break for us. With only one entrance, and the temple’s position at the top of the rise of land, it will be easy for us to keep track of him.”

  “Could it be an initial meeting point?” Jack asked. “Then instructions will be given to go on to another location?”

  “No, I don’t believe so. Fossa’s cousin is a guard at the temple. He’s scheduled to work tonight. I’m sure that in Fossa’s mind, it’s a good out-of-the-way location where he can check the flash drive in privacy while his cousin provides external security, preventing anyone from approaching the temple after hours—except the one person who is expected.” Munez tilted his head toward Zoe, and she felt a flutter in her stomach. Despite her confidence that she could handle the drop off, the thought of meeting someone linked to a gang of criminals was frightening. Add in the element of a two-thousand-year-old Egyptian temple at night, and Zoe liked the idea even less.

  Munez’s phone rang. He asked a few questions in Spanish, then hung up, a small smile on his face. “It is good news. The little girl, Sophia, is indeed with her Tomás. She is fine.” He tucked his phone into a pocket and pressed his hands to his knees as he prepared to stand. “We must prepare.” He checked his watch. “We have an hour until the meeting time.”

  Zoe closed her hand more tightly around the tube of lip balm with the flash drive inside it as she and Jack made their way to the meeting with Gloria. The night pulsed with activity. Traffic whizzed along the road. Pedestrians filled the sidewalk. Laughter and conversation spilled out of the packed sidewalk cafés.

  “How are you doing?” Jack asked.

  “My palms are sweaty, my heart is racing, the tape holding the microphone in place is making me itch, and I’m wondering why in the world I agreed to do this.” Not words to inspire whichever police officer was listening to her conversation through the wire, but she wasn’t going to lie to Jack.

  With every step, the tape that held the microphone in place under the neckline of her dress pull
ed against her skin. How could something so small be so irritating? Not even the size of a tiny button, the device lay flat against her skin. It wouldn’t be obvious if Fossa insisted on patting her down. Her stomach roiled at that thought—much better to think about the itchiness instead. She clenched her free hand so she wouldn’t scratch. They’d had enough trouble just getting the wire to stay in place in a way that would let the sound come through clearly. “Once you’re in there, try not to move too much,” the female technician had said a few minutes earlier. “This type of fabric causes a lot of interference.”

  Jack reached for her free hand. “Sounds like a typical undercover operation. You’re on high alert, which is good.” Although Jack still didn’t like the idea of Zoe handing off the flash drive, once he’d realized Zoe was set on it, he hadn’t tried to talk her out of it. She was sure she was the only one who noticed the strain around his eyes and the slight tension that underlined all his words.

  “There’s Gloria.” Zoe blew out a long breath, coaching herself to forget everything she’d learned about Gloria’s lies. Zoe couldn’t let her knowledge of that come through in her attitude.

  Gloria stood a little farther down the street. The light from a restaurant window behind her created an aureole around her head. She was pacing back and forth, nibbling on her thumbnail. The moment she saw Zoe and Jack she hurried toward them. She gave Zoe another crushing hug and then gripped both of Jack’s hands. “I’m so relieved to see you. I was worried that something had happened. Do you have it?”

  “Yes, everything is fine.” Zoe marveled at Gloria’s acting ability. If Zoe didn’t know that Gloria’s daughter was safe, she would have believed that Gloria was a genuinely distraught mother. Gloria checked her watch. “Right on time. You go on, I’ll be here.”

  Jack said, “Remember, I’m waiting with you.”

  “Oh, yes, I’d forgotten that,” Gloria said with a trace of irritation in her tone.

  As Zoe reached up and gave Jack a kiss on the cheek, he whispered, “Break a leg,” so softly that only she could hear.

  She set off for the corner and moved across the street in a crowd when the light changed. Once on the other side, the cluster of people continued down the street. Zoe was the only one who moved into the park and headed up the incline to the temple. A distant playful shout carried through the air from the street, but the only sounds immediately around her were her own muted footfalls. Not even a breeze stirred the leaves on the bushes that lined the path.

  Munez had said he would put a ring of officers around the park. They would encircle the temple and prevent anyone from entering except her. She searched the shadows for hidden figures as she walked, but she didn’t see anyone.

  When she reached the temple, the pool of water reflected back the lit pylons without a ripple. The rest of the park stretched out dark and quiet. Beyond the black outlines of the park’s foliage, the skyline of Madrid glowed, a study in contrasts that ranged from blocky streamlined modern architecture to the elaborate façade of the royal palace.

  Zoe made her way around the pylons, feeling as if she were on stage instead of in a deserted park.

  34

  Zoe half expected a guard to stop her, but no one blocked her way as she walked toward the quiet temple. She approached the modern double glass doors that reminded her of a supermarket entrance. The doors swooshed open, and Zoe started at the sound, which seemed extremely loud in the dim and silent surroundings. After a second of hesitation, she stepped over the threshold, and the doors closed.

  The scent of cigarette smoke filled the air. A narrow, high-ceilinged corridor lined with hieroglyphic reliefs ran from the main entrance to a square cut doorway directly ahead. Panel displays about waist high with educational descriptions and graphics about the hieroglyphics lined both sides of the corridor. About halfway down the corridor, a halogen lantern sat propped on one of the panel displays. It leaned against the stone wall, its glow lighting the display and throwing the etchings on the wall into sharp relief.

  Fossa—Zoe realized she had stopped thinking of him as Jug Ears after the conversation with Munez—stood beside the halogen lamp, a cigarette in the other. A small laptop sat beside the lantern. “Thank you for being on time. Very considerate.” A Spanish accent flowed through his words, but Zoe was able to understand him. The low angle of the light shining up from below him highlighted his nose and large ears and threw his enormous shadow onto the corridor wall behind him.

  He wore a sport coat over a dark button-down shirt with black dress pants. His attire and his courteous statement almost made Zoe feel like she was at a business meeting. She’d been prepared for a confrontation or even anger, not this straightforward manner. He took a deep drag on his stub of a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the top tier of hieroglyphics. Zoe was pretty sure smoking was not allowed inside the antiquity, but she kept that thought to herself. He dropped the cigarette butt to the floor.

  “You’re welcome.” Zoe matched his professional tone, but her heart was beating hard. Yep, just chatting with a gangster—that’s me, she thought as a bubble of panic rose inside her as she thought of everything that could go wrong.

  “You have it?”

  “Yes.” Zoe fought down the giddy almost out-of-body feeling. Just hand off the flash drive, she coached herself, and get out. She took two steps forward and held out the lip balm.

  His dark eyebrows went up at the sight of the tube. The lantern’s shadows carved extra-deep lines in his forehead.

  “It’s the flash drive,” Zoe said. “This is what I found in the frame.”

  His eyebrows snapped down, and he jerked it from her hand, then ripped off the cap and exposed the end of the flash drive. As soon as he took it from her, she stepped back toward the double glass doors.

  He rolled his eyes, and muttered, “Amateurs. Always trying too hard.” He dropped the cap on the floor beside the cigarette butt. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye as he put the flash drive into the slot on the laptop. “Please do not leave until I have verified it.”

  Zoe swallowed. “Of course.”

  The seconds seemed to stretch out as he waited for it to load. A faint scraping, barely a whisper of noise, floated through the air.

  Fossa lifted his head and went completely still as he listened, his gaze probing the deep shadows at the edge of the lantern’s circle of light.

  Zoe looked behind Fossa to the dark inner sanctuary. She had found a layout of the temple on her phone and given it a quick look before she and Jack left to meet Gloria. She knew there were several rooms beyond the entry corridor, including a sanctuary room, a staircase, and what had once been the temple’s storage rooms.

  They both listened for a few moments, then Fossa said, “Rats.”

  That thought didn’t make Zoe feel any better. She licked her lips. “Yes, probably.”

  The light from the computer shining on Fossa’s face shifted to a different shade, which drew his attention to the screen. Zoe fisted her hands so she wouldn’t scratch at the tape holding the microphone. Almost done. A few minutes and she’d be back outside in the fresh night air.

  He gave a small nod, then a grunt of satisfaction. Zoe let out her breath slowly—it wouldn’t do to hyperventilate—and moved another inch closer to the door.

  A change in air pressure tugged at Zoe’s skirt as the doors swept open. Something slammed into her back between her shoulder blades, and suddenly she was gasping for air, her face on the dusty ground.

  Someone was shouting, but the words didn’t matter. She couldn’t breathe.

  She managed to suck in a dusty breath that seared her nasal passages. The air burned into her lungs as she struggled up onto her hands and knees. After another painful breath, the shouting resolved into words.

  “Keep your hands up! Where I can see them.”

  The words reverberated in the small space. Zoe, still stooped over, lifted her quivering arms, but then saw that the words weren’t directed at her.
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  In the glow of the lantern, Fossa stood with his hands in the air shouting in rapid-fire Spanish. Even though the other man was in the shadow beyond the circle of light, Zoe recognized the lanky figure with curly hair and thick-framed glasses. Kaz yelled, “Stay where you are! Don’t move.” He pointed a gun shakily at Fossa’s chest.

  The laptop had fallen to the ground between the two men, and Kaz squatted down, inch by inch, extending his free hand to the laptop while he kept his trembling gun hand trained on Fossa.

  “I know you can understand English,” Kaz yelled. “Stop shouting!” He punched the gun toward Fossa as he said the last few words.

  The wild dipping and bobbing of Kaz’s unsteady gun hand must have worried Fossa because he went quiet. Both men breathed hard for a moment then Kaz said, “I’m not going to let you mess up everything. Not when we’ve gotten this far.” His fingers connected with the edge of the laptop, and he dragged it across the floor. The light from the screen reflected off his glasses as he divided his attention between the laptop and Fossa. The fingers of his free hand danced over the keyboard.

  Zoe looked over her shoulder and out the glass doors, hoping to see Munez or some police officers closing in on the temple but the reflection of the lantern masked any movement near the ground and only a strip of black night showed at the top of the doors.

  Somehow Kaz must have slipped through the ring of officers Munez put around the temple. Surely the plan to let Fossa walk with the flash drive was off? With Kaz in here, wouldn’t Munez give the order to storm the building? Or was she on her own?

  Zoe shifted her weight back into her heels and studied the distance to the doors. Two steps and she could be at the doors, but then she’d have to wait for them to open. Kaz wouldn’t shoot her—would he? He only wanted the flash drive, right?

  Fossa let out another volley of shouting, and Zoe tensed.

  “I told you, shut up!” Kaz moved his free hand away from the computer and made a slicing motion across his throat. The energetic movement caused his hand with a gun to flicker off point for a moment.