by Nina Croft
“I’m Kaitlin,” the girl said. “Since no one bothered to introduce us.”
“Melody,” she replied.
“Nice to meet you, Melody.” She kicked off her boots and rested her feet across Quinn’s thighs. He didn’t seem to mind.
Kaitlin smiled. “You don’t need to worry. I’d never have anything like that to do with Quinn.” The way she said his name made it sound as though the mere thought was unbelievable. “He’s way too old and jaded for an innocent little thing like me.”
Mel’s gaze flashed to Quinn, but he had a lazy smile on his face.
“Brat,” he muttered again, but it sounded like an endearment.
The flight attendant wheeled in a trolley at that moment. The scent of food wafted across the small area, and Mel’s stomach rumbled. She’d come straight to the airport after the jump, with no time to eat. And as always, she was starving.
The attendant opened the champagne, but once that was done, Kaitlin jumped to her feet, waving the woman away. “I’ll serve.”
After pouring four glasses of champagne, she passed them around. Mel peered at her glass suspiciously. She’d never had alcohol in her life, but she’d heard about it. Still, perhaps now was not the best time to experiment. But no one else seemed to have a problem, and she didn’t want to appear out of place.
“To Quinn and Melody.”
What the hell did that mean? She looked from Quinn to Kaitlin.
“Kaitlin,” Quinn growled a warning.
But Kaitlin just shrugged, raised her glass and drank it down in one go. Then she peered at Mel. “Hey, what does your father do? He’s not an asshole, is he?”
Mel took a sip of her drink. It was icy cold, and sharp, and had bubbles. She took another, then looked up to find Kaitlin waiting for her answer.
“No, he’s a good…man.” Actually, he wasn’t a man at all, at least, not a human one, but best not to go into that. “He’s an agent, like me. That’s why I joined up. It was all I ever wanted to be.” She drank some more, waiting for some sort of reaction, but there was nothing discernable. Kaitlin topped off everybody’s glass and then perched on the arm of the sofa, one leg swinging.
Quinn emptied his glass and placed it on the table. “Okay. Time to find out what’s going on.” He focused on Mel. “But first, tell me something. How did you escape, back at the house?”
She hadn’t been expecting the question. She should have, but she’d thought they would go straight to business. Now she scrambled for an answer. Shrugging as casually as she could manage, she sipped some more champagne. Finally, she felt it. Like a buzz in her head…interesting. “I had a lock pick. You didn’t search me very well. I used that, picked the cuffs, then the door.” She shrugged again. “It was easy.”
“Well, I’d hardly be expecting an FBI agent to carry a lock pick.”
She shrugged again. “It’s standard procedure.”
He had a frown between his brows, but there wasn’t any way he could prove she was lying. She hoped.
“Okay. And once you got away, you reported in to your office?”
“No.”
“No?”
“For certain reasons, I’m working alone on this case.”
“You don’t trust the FBI?” The question came from Martin, and she turned to study him. He appeared much better than he’d looked the previous day. His expression was relaxed, and he’d lost the sense of despair she’d noted when they’d first met in the prison.
She took a deep breath. Time to sound convincing.
“No. I have reason to believe there is someone inside the agency with their own agenda.” She glanced around at them. “Do you think I’m crazy? Seeing conspiracy theories everywhere?”
“No, actually it makes perfect sense to me,” Quinn replied. “So, start from the beginning. How did you get involved?”
So far so good. She took a deep breath. “I was asked to investigate the death of the senator as a personal favor.”
“For who?”
“His son. David didn’t believe his father’s death was an accident. We knew each other in college.” This bit was a total fabrication, but she thought it added authenticity, and it was unlikely they would check such details. “He knew I worked for the agency and asked me if I could look into it.”
“Go on.”
She drank the rest of her champagne and placed the glass on the table. Kaitlin leaned over and emptied the bottle into it. Then she opened the second bottle.
“At first, I thought he was wrong. The senator died following a gas explosion at the house he was renting in London. But then I dug deeper into what he was doing there and came across the deaths—also seemingly accidental—of the people he’d been working with. It was clearly no accident. They’d all been taken out. But when I submitted my findings to my boss, he came back and told me to leave it alone, that it was being dealt with via external means.”
“I take it you didn’t leave it alone?”
“At first I did. Then someone tried to kill me.” Again—total fiction, but she had to make them believe there was a valid reason she was working alone.
“What?”
“Obviously, they didn’t succeed, but it was close. I suspected it had something to do with the investigation. Then I went back to the office and found out that my report had been deleted, as though it had never been there. Clearly, I was onto something.”
“How did you get to Martin?”
At least this part was fact. “I discovered that someone had requested the oversight committee be set up a few years previously. Nothing had been done back then. The request came from a Martin Rayleigh. I did some research—found an interesting article about an ancestor of his, but little else. And he’d vanished more than four years ago. Then a few days ago, he popped up on the system as a prison transfer.”
“So you thought you’d pay him a visit?”
“I’d reached a dead end with everything else.” Now for a little more fabrication. She had to convince them to work with her. Her gut instinct told her that her alert was somehow tied up with the group Martin’s ancestor had found in Africa. The group that—if the report she’d read was correct—looked a lot like Quinn and his friends. “There’s something else,” she said. “When I got out last night, I contacted my controller—he’s the one person I do trust. I’d planned to go in, but he told me to stay away. He’d gotten word that they were going to pull me in for questioning if I surfaced. I told you I was followed to the prison. Apparently, they think I might have got some information from Mr. Rayleigh.”
“Information about what?”
“He wasn’t sure, but he got the impression they were looking for a group of people. People they believe Mr. Rayleigh knows about.”
…
Now that was interesting. Quinn was aware the Conclave had been trying to locate the original tribe, or rather what they believed were the descendants of the original tribe. They’d interrogated Martin numerous times. Had he somehow, inadvertently, given them away?
Quinn couldn’t see why she would be lying, and her story did make some sense…
Christ, he wished he could get inside her head.
He relaxed back in his seat and studied her. She was leaning forward, her hands clasped together on her lap, an earnest expression on her face.
Did he believe her?
Ethan had told them he’d lost control of a faction of the Conclave in the States. A faction who, unfortunately, were aware of the Tribe’s existence. Ethan reckoned it was only a matter of time until he regained that control, but this faction was the reason that they’d moved forward on the prison break. It was entirely possible that they had people within the FBI. The Conclave had people everywhere.
“What do you think?” he asked Kaitlin silently.
“If she’s lying, she’s good. Have you done a background check?”
“Stefan ran her through the systems. She came up legit.”
“I’d presume she’s telling the truth
then. But I’d love to know why we can’t get into her head.”
So would he. “Just some sort of brain anomaly? Maybe there are others and we just haven’t come across them yet.”
It wasn’t inconceivable that there were others like Mel out there. Though Quinn had never come across any. “This is making my head hurt.”
“Aw, poor thing. But I like her. And I’m an excellent judge of character.”
“Of course you are.”
He turned his attention back to Mel. “So, what’s your agenda? What do you hope to get out of this?”
She gave him a quick smile. “Three things. First, I want justice for the senator and the others who were killed. Then I want to protect these people they were looking into, whoever they are. But I also want to clean out the agency. I’ve given my life to the job, and to know there are people, high up within the organization, sanctioning murder… I want to stop it.”
She sounded passionate. Clearly this was something she believed in. She was an idealist. Part of him liked that. He’d spent his life believing he was one of the good guys. But he’d also done things he’d known were wrong, because he trusted the people he worked for. They’d sanctioned torture and he’d justified it by telling himself that it was only to stop a worse atrocity—a bomb, or a serial killer…
But the fact was, their presence at an interrogation meant that conventional torture methods weren’t needed. The physical torture had been done to hide the fact that they could read minds. And unknown to them, much of the information they had collected had been used for blackmail and coercion by the Conclave, who had been controlling them by that point.
Kaitlin had been working with the senator up until the committee was disbanded. They’d been going to bring the Tribe out into the open, convince humanity that a world with no more lies was a possibility. Finally, they could be a force for good. And once out of the cover of secrecy, they would have a better chance of protecting themselves.
Look how well that turned out.
“You don’t believe there are circumstances where the end justifies the means?” he asked.
He presumed she’d deny it, but instead she sat back and thought about her answer for a minute. “Perhaps. But never as a strategy. As an individual, you might face a choice where you will decide to do something you consider unethical, if a life is in danger, or many lives, and you know only you can stop it. But it needs to be a hard decision to make. And there should always be consequences. And it should never be condoned by the authorities.”
“I like her,” Kaitlin said inside his head.
He did as well.
“So, what do you want from us?”
“Answers.”
“To which particular questions?”
“The group that Senator Gilpin was investigating—they have to be the reason behind all this. If I find them, I find the answers.” She turned to Martin. “You asked for an investigation a few years earlier. Who did you want investigated?”
Martin looked at him, one eyebrow raised, asking a silent question.
It was time to decide whether he trusted her or not. He wanted to, not the least because this was his way back in. His way to get back on the side of right. And to help her. She was clearly brave if she was willing to take on the might of the FBI. They had already tried to kill her once, and that hadn’t made her back down. He hated the idea that she was out there alone and vulnerable.
But this wasn’t his decision to make alone.
“Kaitlin?”
“I say tell her. We can still always push her out of the plane if we decide we’ve made a mistake.”
“Okay. I’ll go check in with Jake.”
“Well, don’t talk to that fucker Kane. He’ll definitely tell you to toss her out of the plane.”
She was probably right. He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to make a call.”
Mel’s lips tightened. “But—”
“We’ll continue when I get back.” He headed to the door at the back of the cabin which he knew led to a bedroom. He wanted privacy for this conversation. He sat on the bed and pulled out his cell phone, bringing up Jake’s number. Jake answered after one ring.
“Are you in the air?”
“We are. We have a problem, though. Or rather a decision to make.”
“Go on.”
He relayed what Mel had told them, then waited while Jake processed the information. “You trust her?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“On the surface, I trust her. But it would be a hell of a lot easier if I could get inside her head.”
He heard a sigh, could imagine Jake running his hands through his hair—he claimed it helped his thought processes. “What do you want to do?”
“I think we should tell her the truth. I’ll send Martin to you as we planned, and I’ll stay here and help out Agent Lyons.”
“Rose said you have a thing for Agent Lyons.”
“Rose is a troublemaker. And that has nothing to do with anything.”
Jake chuckled. “There’s one other thing. We think we’re closing in on the location of the original tribe. There was a reply to Martin’s message—there are a couple more steps, but we’re expecting to know soon.”
“What do you want to do about them?”
“Nothing. At least, not at the moment. I think it’s safer to leave them where they are for now. In case someone is monitoring the chatter.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
“So you’ll land at Tallahassee as scheduled, then the plane will come here with Martin.”
“Yes.”
“One other thing,” Jake said. “See if you can persuade Kaitlin to come with Martin. Tell her she needs to keep him safe.”
“I’ll try, but I don’t think she’ll agree. She’s going to go find herself.”
“God help us all. Keep in touch.” And he was gone.
Quinn slipped the phone into his pocket and returned to the main cabin. Mel was eating a slice of pizza. She glanced up and licked her lips when she saw him.
Heat sizzled along his nerves.
Ha. Of course, he didn’t have a thing for Agent Lyons.
He tore his attention away to find Kaitlin watching him with an amused expression on her face. “What?”
“Nothing,” she replied.
He sat back down on his former seat. Kaitlin passed him a full glass of champagne. “Okay, we’re on,” he said.
“Thank you.” Mel smiled. “You’re doing the right thing.”
Was he? He had no clue.
“I think she likes you, too.”
“Go away, Kaitlin.”
She grinned.
Mel put down her pizza and turned her attention to Martin. “Who did you want investigated all those years ago? And why?”
“A covert operations group working for the British government. I believed the group was in some danger and wanted to make them more visible, and the people in charge more…accountable.”
“Who were this group? What did they do? And why would you think they were in danger?”
Martin looked at him and Quinn nodded.
Chapter Ten
Martin closed his eyes for a moment, as if deciding where and how to begin. “They were a group of telepaths used primarily for information gathering. And I believed they were in danger from the people controlling them who wanted to…experiment with their capabilities.”
Quinn watched Mel’s face as Martin spoke, but her expression gave nothing away. Did she know about telepathy? Was she aware she could not be read? He had no clue, and he hated that.
She ran a hand through her hair, tousling it even further. “But your request was refused?”
“They claimed they had no jurisdiction. But I believe the request was tampered with by the people who were then controlling the Tribe.”
“Then why was the committee set up four years later?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I was apprehe
nded shortly after I made the request.”
“Money,” Quinn said. “The group received a shitload of American money. I guess someone wanted to know how it was being spent. Presumably, whoever was in control didn’t see it as a threat at that point.”
“Do you know who was in control?”
Should they tell her everything? He didn’t want to mention the Conclave unless he had to. Sadie, Ethan’s girlfriend and a member of the Tribe who’d discovered she could see the future, had told them that there were reasons why the Conclave had to continue. Apparently, they had important work to do in the future. And the only way the Conclave survived was through secrecy. So, until there was a really good reason, he’d keep them out of the explanation. “Not specifically. A group with contacts in all the major organizations.”
“Including the FBI?”
“Maybe.”
“And you believe whoever this was had the committee disbanded and murdered?”
Here’s where things got murky. Because the Conclave hadn’t been responsible for the senator’s death.
“Are you going to tell her?” Kaitlin asked.
Was he? Kane had killed them, to maintain the secrecy of his existence. He was ruthless in pursuing that goal. Nothing could stand in the way of his mission. It was almost a religion to him.
Would he be putting Mel in danger if he told her of Kane’s existence and what he was guarding in the Mountains of the Moon? What his people had been guarding for thousands of years, if Kane was to be believed.
“No,” he replied to Kaitlin.
“Aw—why? Don’t you trust him not to off your nice new girlfriend? Very astute of you.”
He ignored the comment. “Probably,” he replied to Mel’s question.
Her eyes narrowed a little at his comment. Could she sense his lie?
She turned to Martin. “What happened to the people Malcolm Rayleigh found in Africa all those years ago? I found references to them being brought back to Scotland. Did they just integrate into the community?”
Martin glanced at him and he shrugged.
“No,” Martin replied. “They were deemed not suitable. They are highly intelligent but lacked the…aggression needed to survive in society. Though maybe aggression isn’t the right word. They were very passive. We believe because they were so isolated, they became inbred. Certain characteristics were intensified.”
