Concierge (Black Raven Book 3)

by Stella Barcelona

  Ignoring his brother’s warning, Gabe zeroed in on her, as a spider would a fly. He walked into her body space calmly. Coolly. And continued walking as she backed up. When she was against the wall, he gripped her forearm and shoved her ahead of him up the stairs, to the guest bedroom with the pedicure chair. The foot tub was drained. Cleaned. Towels were folded, neatly. A faint trace of lavender lingered, but other than that, there was no evidence that a manicure or pedicure had recently happened.

  Shutting the door, he took off his jacket. Rolled up his sleeves, and said, “Ragno. Start talking to me. All things Juliette.” He nodded to Brandon, who stepped into the room and stood to the side, giving Gabe a clear sign that he wasn’t going to interfere with whatever Gabe had planned.

  “How dare you!”

  To Juliette, Gabe smiled. For the hell of it, he made it a charming smile, as he flexed his hands. “This is how I dare.”

  Chapter Forty Three

  Gabe

  “Zero minus one hour ten minutes. Adjust lines of communication.” Ragno’s voice was calm and steady. “Six teams. Multiple channels on line C, for individual teams. Line A-team leaders—Brandon, Gabe, Zeus, Marks, Ace, Me. Line B—all teams. My team’s monitoring all comms. Team Leaders—go to A.”

  Half-running down Royal Street, with Agents Stevens and Todd in step next to him, Gabe opened his mic to Line A.

  “Copy that. Crisis team is fully mobilized.” Ace’s audio mic carried his low voice as well as the faint noise of helicopter engines.

  Gabe knew Adam Cooper Evans. Ace for short. Typically quiet, he worked primarily on high-risk jobs. Like Gabe, a few times a year, Ace trained newer agents at Last Resort, which was where Ace had been at zero hour. Gabe considered Ace the best of Black Raven’s best. Knowing he was on the job brought a small measure of comfort.

  “Gabe.” Ace said.

  “Copy.”

  “I’m operating in just-in-case mode,” Ace added. “As in just in case I need to unleash the wrath of hell as we rescue. Three choppers en route. Packed to the rotors with support. Pulling in additional resources from the surrounding area. When we know where she is—” Ace’s hard, matter-of-fact tone had shifted to one that conveyed consideration of the personal drama that was unfolding for Gabe. Ace had been drafted as a team leader within minutes of Andi’s non-arrival. As a team leader, data was not censored. Team leaders needed to know everything. Every gritty detail. “I’ve got every conceivable contingency covered. Do not worry about my end.”

  “Thanks, Ace.”

  “Gotcha. Going silent. But listening.”

  Engine noise disappeared as Ace switched off his audio.

  Heart pounding in a chest that felt compressed by the devil’s red-hot tourniquet, skin clammy with nervous sweat, Gabe struggled for focus as he ran the last block to Marvin’s car. With each minute that ticked past zero hour—the moment Andi was taken—circumstances became more dire.

  From Zeus and Ragno’s position in the corporate think tank, he heard the reassuring, yet indecipherable, din of keyboards clacking, monitors humming, beeping electronic devices, and multiple conversations. Too loud. “Hey Ragno. Zeus.” Calm, he reminded himself. Just like I’d be on any other job. “I can hear you guys thinking.”

  “Sorry. My bad.” Zeus said, as the ambient noise of the cavernous cyber room drifted to the background. “Better?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Admirable restraint, Angel.” Ragno was clearly referencing his demeanor while interrogating Juliette.

  He’d been threatening, but his actual physicality was the opposite of what he’d used with Richie, due to significant doubt about Juliette’s complicity in anything criminal. And, unlike Richie, she didn’t make the mistake of smirking.

  “Second that,” Zeus added.

  “Not looking for approval. Looking for you guys to start flexing cyber muscle. Give me something helpful. And I’m not done with Juliette.” Gabe, Stevens, and Todd, slid into the rear seat of Marvin’s SUV. Marvin drove, while his son Billy rode shotgun.

  “Where to?” Marvin asked, over his shoulder, as he eased into traffic.

  “Away from congestion. We’re staging. More details to follow.” Brandon was doing the same thing with another team in a Black Raven vehicle, heading east of the city.

  On a wing and a goddamn prayer, more details better follow. I’ll find you, Andi. I swear it. And after I do, they’ll pay the price.

  As Line A remained ominously quiet, Gabe’s gaze crawled along the endless stream of traffic on Esplanade Avenue. As each minute passed without Andi appearing through the door of an ER, his questions to Juliette had become more pointed. But after ten minutes of interrogation, Juliette still seemed exactly what she purported to be: a provider of at-home spa services to wealthy clients. She’d responded to questions with a mix of perfect concern for Andi, coupled with irritation that they wouldn’t allow her to leave the townhouse until Andi walked through that goddamn door. And though he hadn’t laid a hand on her, he’d made it perfectly clear that he’d be happy to do so. She’d responded just as an innocent person would—scared and indignant.

  Although she was the last person to see Andi before whatever the hell had happened to her had happened, given her reaction, Brandon and Gabe had mutually decided that the face-to-face conversation was going nowhere fast.

  They’d left Juliette with her ass firmly planted on the floor, hands cuffed behind her back, a leg of the dining room table providing a solid anchor. An agent’s eyes were on her. No doubt she was continuing her tirade of how much shit she and the powerful people she knew were going to rain down on Black Raven.

  Bring it on.

  Cyber-support had used satellite footage to trace the ambulance to a position near an I-10 on ramp. Under cloud cover, though, it had disappeared and had not been seen on the interstate. Going on the premise that the ambulance had traveled away from the French Quarter, Brandon and Gabe assumed they needed to do the same thing.

  They were in the unenviable position of a Hail Mary move—making a leap without a planned landing. They were leaving the congestion zone of the French Quarter and downtown, but without a clue as to where the hell to go from there. It wasn’t the first time Gabe had launched a Hail Mary on a job. But it was his first time having so much at stake.

  One break for them was that, unlike Richie, Juliette did not live off the cyber grid. Zeus and Ragno’s teams were scrutinizing every Juliette-related transaction they could find, following cyber trails, putting the flesh of cold-hard facts on a life in a way that words alone wouldn’t.

  “Gabe—thoughts clear?” Zeus asked as he worked.

  A legitimate question to an agent who had personal feelings thrown into a job that had gone sideways in just about the worst way imaginable.

  Taken. I will not think about what is happening to her right now. How scared she must be. How this is her goddamn night terrors come to life. If she’s alive or de—No!

  “Gabe?” Zeus prodded. “Question pending.”

  “I’m good.” And flat out lying.

  “I’ll keep asking. Answer honestly. I know how hard this is. No shame in stepping down from the helm.” Zeus spoke in a professional tone that conveyed both a field-agent’s perspective and a brother’s concern.

  “Not gonna happen. Work on answers. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Roger. Had to ask.”

  “We’ll find her,” Ragno said. “People don’t simply disappear on Black Raven’s watch.”

  “I told myself that very same thing this morning, as I looked for Pic. Reality is different, and we all know it.”

  “So acknowledged. Now move on. We’re better. We win.” Ragno’s words and tone made it clear no wallowing was allowed. “Slight bit of good news. We’re getting flags on odd financial transactions from Juliette’s bank account. Richard’s getting crafty with encryption cracking to trace the source. Stay tuned.”

  “Zero minus one hour fifteen minutes,” Ragno said.
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  “Ragno, encryption difficulty’s raising red flags over there, right?”

  “You bet, Angel.”

  “Serum One will be delivered by noon,” Brandon said. “If we don’t have Andi by then, I’ll personally administer it to Juliette. And Richie.”

  “Toilet report. All checked. Nothing.” Stevens, in charge of operations at the townhouse, came through loud and clear on Line A.

  Dammit to hell. That would’ve been too goddamn easy.

  Juliette’s phone—the one she had handed to Brandon in the midst of her 9-1-1 call—had revealed a call origination at nine thirty-seven. Black Raven had verified the legitimacy of that call with Crescent EMT’s, and no calls had been made from the phone in the hour before. On the theory that Juliette had made a dupe call to the fake EMT’s who had actually arrived on site and taken Andi away, Stevens’ team had torn the second floor’s toilets apart, looking for another phone that Juliette might have dumped.

  “Roger,” Ragno said. “We’re logging it.”

  Juliette had been alone with Andi for a full half hour before she alerted agents to the emergency. That was plenty of time to administer a drug, let it take effect, call for a pick up, and dispose of the evidence.

  The toilets in Andi’s house had reliable, old-fashioned plumbing. The pipes were large and capable of delivering a dismantled phone to the city sewage system. And that fact bothered the hell out of Gabe, because the system was also capable of disposing of anything, such as a syringe, used to administer a dose of any number of drugs that could have promoted the symptoms that Andi had exhibited.

  What had Pic said? ‘They came at me with a syringe.’

  Fuck me to goddamn Hell!

  “Ragno,” Brandon said. “Taylor just sent you a text of every person she knows who is a client of Juliette’s.”

  “Got it. We’re analyzing payment records and phone records as we speak. Spider webbing out from there, chasing the contacts.”

  “Taylor says there are probably some she doesn’t know about. Evidently, Juliette networks well with the New Orleans upper crust,” Brandon said. “How many clients can she possibly have that are willing to pay $150 per hour for nail polish?”

  “Statistics show average price nationwide ranges from $35 to $75 for manicures and pedicures. That fee puts Juliette solidly at the top,” Ragno said. “She charges two hundred per hour for massages. And there are add-ons for each service. She also represents three lines of beauty products. Pricey ones. Last year’s income for IRS purposes was two hundred ten thousand. But that’s what isn’t adding up on my ledger. She spends more than her reported income, and that’s on transactions I can find. Assets are off-kilter with income. The woman lives an extravagant life.”

  “So where is she getting the money from?” Gabe asked, as knee-jerk, traffic-inspired irritation flared. They were on Loyola Avenue, at a point where there were three lanes of traffic. The bus station was a block up the street, on his right. Interstate ramps were ahead of them. Marvin had braked at an intersection where their lane of traffic had a green light.

  Gaze focused forward, noting brightly colored parade floats, with a police escort, traveling slowly on the street under the interstate, without regard to whether anyone else in the city needed to goddamn be somewhere that didn’t involve parades and partying. Just as Marvin tried to edge into another lane for an escape route, a city bus blocked them in.

  “Wait. Wait. Ah. Yes,” Ragno whispered. Louder, she explained, “We’re partially in an account that she uses for a slush fund. Richard’s working on more access, as in trying to trace incoming wire transfers. And though we haven’t yet figured out the source of funds in the slush fund, it’s hefty. Balance is two point three million plus some change. Slush fund is in another name. Not identified anywhere else with Juliette that I’ve found. Yet. That warrants a few questions, I’d say.”

  “I’m heading back to Andi’s,” Brandon said. “I’ll be glad to ask her some questions.”

  “I’ll go,” Gabe said, happy to have another crack with questioning Juliette. “It isn’t like I’ve managed to get that far away. We’re blocked by parade floats right now.”

  “No. I’ll need your team to act on any answers she provides.”

  “Jesus H. Christ.” Excitement filtered into Ragno’s voice. “She uses the fund for travel. In fact, she booked a ticket yesterday for Dubai. Departing at six p.m. this evening.”

  His tone dripping with sarcasm, Zeus said, “Sweet. How many manicurists travel to Dubai? Vegas—probably. Grand Canyon—definitely. Dubai—odd, at best.”

  Pulse pounding with the damn interesting news, Gabe said, “Ragno. Tell us where she’s been in the last few years.”

  “Working on it. Luckily, international travel records are pretty easy searches, given government watch lists, which we have access to through Jigsaw.”

  As Ragno talked about Black Raven’s anti-terrorist cyber-assimilation program, Gabe tuned her out. He didn’t care how they found answers. He just cared that they did. “Brandon. Send me Juliette’s client list.”

  “This is what we’ve got so far,” Ragno said, as Gabe’s watch vibrated with the incoming text from Brandon. “Bhutan, Dubai, Vietnam, Maldives, Russia, Bhutan again—evidently she liked the happiest place on earth—Kazakhstan, Hong Kong…”

  Gabe sat up, straight. “Holy shit. She’s visiting countries that don’t have extradition treaties. Planning an exit strategy?”

  Zeus gave a low whistle. “And today, she’s traveling with her longtime friend. Brandon?”

  “I’m on it,” Brandon said. “Once they drop me off at the townhouse, I’ll send agents to intercept her travel companion. Zeus, how close are they? That information might prove to be a useful, truth-inspiring tool as I question Juliette.”

  “Analyzing relationship,” Zeus said. “They look close. Partner’s name is Alicia Clements—”

  “Wait.” Gabe’s gaze absently followed the procession of floats, while his mind raced. “Partner? As in lesbian lover? Nothing wrong with that, but curious.”

  “Double checking. Hold for a second.” Through Line A, he heard his brother breathing. Fingers hitting the keyboard, clicking with speed. “Bingo. Cyber profiling hinted. My eyes confirm. Two women. Both in early thirties. They’ve lived together for five years. They share credit cards, bank accounts, and phone plans. Alicia isn’t shy on social media. Whoa. Women who are just friends don’t kiss like that at Melissa Etheridge concerts. Rainbow logos. LGBT marches. Pattern of communication confirms closeness. Consistent travel together. There’s no record of a marriage, but, yeah. Lesbians. Lovers. Why?”

  As he listened, Gabe scanned Taylor’s list of Juliette’s clients. First three names he didn’t recognize. Then there was one that he did, with a jolt. Muscles at the base of his neck tightened. “Ragno, send me Sonja Long’s address.”

  “Sure,” Ragno said. “But why?”

  “Two whys pending,” Zeus said. “Wanna tell us what you’re thinking?”

  As his back tensed, Gabe’s mind dwelled on the tiniest sprout of a hunch that he’d ever had.

  Chapter Forty Four

  Gabe

  “I met Sonja at the gallery opening,” Gabe said. “Didn’t like her.”

  Thinking back, he remembered the way Sonja had looked at Andi. Sonja’s gaze alone had clued him into the fact that he was looking at one of Andi’s former lovers, and Gabe had gotten a double dose of that feeling with both Sonja and Stapleton, when they’d been at Andi’s house the day after the gallery opening. Holy hell.

  And on that day, Sonja had fixated on the sketches of the homeless kids. “Sonja also had an interest in Andi’s sketches of homeless kids. They made her think of how people use blue-eyed homeless kids and pregnant ones. Which seems damn odd, right now, doesn’t it? Given that Pic, a blue-eyed blonde, is missing. And others. And—as Andi pointed out—the sketches were in black and white.”

  “I’ve now seen a few of those sketches. Pic. Jak
e. Monica,” Zeus said. “They’re amazing. I’m guessing any collector would have more than a passing interest. Give us a few more minutes. We’ll come up with something better.”

  “The minute you guys come up with something better, I’ll head there.” Gabe shifted in his seat, hesitated over what he was about to say, and realized he didn’t have the luxury of decorum and discretion. “Sure as hell wish you’d hurry up. In the meantime—” His gut twisted as he fought to keep his voice calm. “—we have to assume for a moment that Andi’s been taken by someone, correct?”

  “Zero minus one hour twenty minutes,” Ragno said.

  “Yes, Gabe, you are correct,” Zeus said. No one needed to voice the obvious—that if Andi hadn’t been delivered to an ER yet, the likelihood of her ever showing up at one was nonexistent. “Assume taken.”

  Drawing a deep breath, Gabe continued, “It was targeted and well-planned. Given Andi’s net worth, there’s a strong financial incentive. But that scenario doesn’t make sense. Domestic kidnappings for financial profit are few and far between, and there are plenty of wealthy targets. There’s also the stalker angle, which would mean someone from Andi’s past has come back with a vengeance. Most likely from back in her pre-kidnapping past, since her social interaction since then has been severely limited. Right?”

  “Correct,” Zeus said. “And we’re working that angle. Remember, though, Andi is outside all the time. Anyone could’ve been watching. We’re analyzing all of Andi’s contacts as we speak. But you’ve been there. Until we come up with something better, go with your gut for a while.”

  And hell, but now it’s going to get really personal. Sorry, Andi.

  “A former lover could’ve been watching her while she was outside, correct? All this time,” Gabe speculated.

  “Yes. It’s possible,” Zeus said, “or had someone do the watching for him.”