Frailty of Things

by Schultz, Tamsen

  For a moment, no one said anything; then Caleb spoke. “There’s more to it than that. We think that Louis saw you taking the video and knew you could prove not only that he’d been in the US, but also, more importantly, that he’d been with her,” he said, with a nod to the girl in the image.

  “Why would he want to hide the fact that he’d been with her?” she asked.

  “That’s Yael David,” Drew said, sitting down as he took up the narrative. “Her father is the public face of Mossad.”

  “The Israeli intelligence agency?” she asked.

  Drew nodded then continued. “Yael was found dead in San Francisco the evening after you took that video.”

  Kit drew back in surprise. “Dead? Was she murdered?” she asked, the pieces starting to fall into place.

  Again, Drew nodded. “Yes, she was. Strangled with a cord, her face beaten, and her body left for dead in an alley.”

  Unbidden, tears formed in Kit’s eyes. She hadn’t known the girl at all, hadn’t even known her name. But that brief conversation they’d had, a conversation between strangers, had made Kit smile. The girl—Yael—had been sweet and happy and thrilled to be living and dancing in San Francisco. And now she was gone.

  “The death was reported but her identity, or rather that of her parents, was played down because neither country was certain if it had been a random act of violence, something that had to do with Yael’s new life, or something to do with her father. Everyone agreed to keep it mostly quiet until there were some leads.”

  “And did you have any? Before today, I mean.”

  Drew lifted a shoulder. “We have the print of the side of a fist, but nothing usable from a fingerprint perspective. And some DNA. But it didn’t show up in any systems of offenders, so it was useless until we found a sample to match it against.”

  “Was useless?” she asked.

  “We don’t have Louis’s DNA, but we do have a sample taken from his mother from when she toured some classified locations. We analyzed the two and there are maternal markers in the sample found with Yael,” Drew said.

  “So he killed her,” Kit said softly, looking at the picture sadly.

  “Yes, we think he did. And because you could identify him, we think his parents, or at least his mother, used her connections with her family to protect her son—her only child—by getting rid of you.”

  Kit let that information swirl around in her brain. The situation made more sense now that she knew about Yael, but she didn’t understand that kind of allegiance to someone—not when what her son had done was undeniable. Hell, look what Kit had done to her own father—as far as she’d been concerned, locking him up in jail hadn’t even been good enough. How could anyone, let alone someone sworn to uphold the law, do what Maria Costello was trying to do?

  “Kit,” Caleb said quietly, maybe sensing the direction of her thoughts. She looked up and met his eyes. “I don’t understand it either,” he continued. “We’ve seen a lot doing the work we do, and it seems like maybe we should be able to make some kind of sense of it sometimes, but I’m glad when we can’t.” It’s what makes us feel more human, was what she heard, even though he didn’t voice it.

  Garret reached over and took her hand. For a long moment, they all simply sat there.

  When she finally spoke, it was to ask an obvious question, but one to which she couldn’t find an answer.

  “So, if Louis recognized me, or knew I’d seen him, why did it take so long for him, or his family, to come after me? I mean, these events,” she said, gesturing to the picture of Yael and Louis, “happened in October—five months ago. Does it take that long to find a hit man? With her family’s connections, I wouldn’t think so.”

  Caleb reached for a folder lying on the table and pulled out a piece of paper—a printout of the front cover of a Times book review from early February. A cover with her picture on the front in tribute to the award she’d won.

  “We think he had no idea who you were, only that he knew you’d seen him,” Garret said.

  “And then, when that came out,” she said with a nod to the image in front of her, “he suddenly knew who I was. And where I would be,” she added, remembering that she’d mentioned going to Rome in the interview.

  “Yes,” Drew said. “That’s what we think.”

  She studied her own image for a beat. “And they say no publicity is bad publicity,” she muttered.

  No one answered, but Garret squeezed her hand.

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, so where do we go from here? Are you going after Maria Costello? What about trying to get Kašović?”

  “Let me handle Costello,” Garret said, surprising not just her, but judging by the look on Drew and Caleb’s faces, all of them.

  “No.” Drew’s response was swift and certain.

  Garret’s eyes darted to her and then to Caleb before landing back on Drew. “I have connections that could be useful.”

  “I know exactly what kind of connections you have, Cantona—” Drew drawled.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Garret interrupted.

  Drew shot him a disbelieving look. “Whatever connections you think you have, do not, I repeat, do not use them. The US government has a vested interest in how this is all going to play out, and I do not want you to be the one responsible for screwing it up.”

  “You mean the US has an interest in using this little situation to turn Maria Costello into an asset,” Garret snapped, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  Drew gave him a withering look, but to Kit it looked more like he was disappointed that Garret didn’t seem to place as much value on having Maria Costello dancing to the strings of the US government as he should.

  “Whatever your thoughts on the situation, we have people on Maria Costello.” Drew hesitated, then continued. “But we’re holding off. For the moment.”

  Kit didn’t need the oaths coming from Garret and Caleb to figure out just what Drew and his people had been waiting on. They’d been waiting on her.

  “You don’t want to alert Maria and risk her calling off Kašović, do you?” she asked Drew.

  She saw the flicker of unease in his eyes. He was torn, that much she knew. And knowing Drew like she did, she’d wager that he’d argued with his own team against the idea of using her as bait, but had been overruled. Like her, she knew he saw the sense in it, at least in trying to get Kašović, though she appreciated the fact that he didn’t appear eager to employ the tactic—using Maria as an asset was one thing, staking a friend out for a professional hit man was quite another.

  “It’s your call, Kit. If you say no, no one will think less of you,” he said with dead certainty. A certainty she didn’t feel sitting in a room with three men who regularly risked their lives, in one way or another, for king and country, so to speak.

  She took a moment to mull over what she’d heard and what she hadn’t. She had enough friends and acquaintances who had survived the Balkan War, and other wars, that she knew what it meant to the victims to bring war criminals to justice. But she needed to better understand this world she was stepping into—if she was going to go in, she was going to do it with her eyes wide open.

  “You said he would likely weigh the risk of a third attempt once he learns this one was unsuccessful. What does that mean?”

  “Kit, don’t,” Garret said from beside her.

  She looked at him but didn’t say anything. She knew she had to and so did he. He just didn’t like it, which she could understand. She didn’t either, but rarely in life was doing the right thing the same as doing the easy thing.

  “Well?” she prompted, turning back to Drew.

  “There are likely two things that motivate someone like Kašović. One is ego and the other is money. When he fled Serbia and was indicted as a war criminal, his assets were frozen. He probably had a chance to move some of them out before they were frozen, assuming he saw the writing on the wall, but we know he didn’t move them all.”

/>   “So he probably had enough to live on for a while, but not forever?” she asked.

  Drew inclined his head. “We’re pretty sure that’s why he took that first hit for the Salazar family. And probably why he took this one.”

  “So his risk analysis is going to weigh the risk of getting caught against the potential payout if he succeeds,” she said more than asked.

  Again, Drew inclined his head.

  “And his ego?” she said.

  “That’s a little trickier,” Drew responded. “By all accounts, his ego won’t allow for an untrained woman to get the better of him.”

  “But?” she pressed.

  “At his core, he’s an egoist,” Garret answered for Drew. ”And in the end, the most important thing to an egoist is himself. So if he thinks he’ll get caught, he’s unlikely to proceed.”

  “But isn’t it true that it’s really not until the last minute that the egoist will admit defeat and try to preserve himself?” Kit asked. “Don’t they, until that last moment, always think they’ll succeed?”

  She could tell by the silence at the table that she was right, although no one wanted to confirm it and send her further down the path of staking herself out as bait.

  “How much money is at stake?” she asked.

  Drew shrugged. “We don’t know. We do know that several years ago, one of our undercover operatives was approached to handle a highly visible target, and the going rate was two hundred grand.”

  “And I’m not highly visible. Not really,” she added with a skeptical look at the newspaper copy.

  “But given what’s at stake...” Caleb said.

  Because what was at stake wasn’t the testimony or word of someone the Salazar family could easily impeach. She wasn’t a drug dealer; she’d never touched that world. And not only was she who she was, she had irrefutable proof of what Maria Costello, and by extension her family, didn’t want to come to light—that Louis Ramon had been in the US with Yael David.

  If she made it onto the witness stand, she knew she’d be a prosecutor’s dream witness. She wondered idly if what she’d seen would matter now that they had the DNA evidence; scientists could link Louis to the scene. They didn’t need her. She assumed this would mean that maybe the Salazar family would take less of an interest in her since she was no longer the lynch pin.

  But then again, maybe not. If anything she’d ever heard about the bigger cartels was true, her guess was that how much interest the Salazar family invested in the situation would depend on whether Louis himself held any significance for them or if having Costello indebted to them was important. If either of those factors held value to the Salazar family, they would be more likely to expand their circle of targets to include additional people—the scientists, the lawyers, and folks of that realm—rather than diminish it and cut their losses.

  But that line of thinking was jumping the gun. As it was, since there had been no move made against Louis by law enforcement, the Salazar family probably thought she was still the only one who could identify him, the only one who could place him with the victim. So, until the family heard otherwise, it was likely that they still intended for Kašović to complete his task.

  “He’s tried shooting me and poisoning me. If he doesn’t cut his losses, what do you think he’ll go for next?” she asked, her question intended for no one in particular. But judging by the looks the three men exchanged, it was something they’d all considered, if not discussed.

  Finally, after a long pause, Garret spoke. “It’s hard to make a definitive guess, but if it were any of us, it would be something up close and personal.” It was more the soft tone of his voice than the words themselves that sent chills down Kit’s back.

  “To make sure I’m dead,” she said more than asked. “And it makes sense he would want to do that, wouldn’t it? I mean, if he’s an egoist and he’s committed to the job of killing one naïve woman writer, he’d want to make sure I’m actually dead, right? Or it would be a blow to his ego.”

  “And his reputation,” Drew added, earning him dark looks from Caleb and Garret.

  She took in a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, so up close and personal, it is. But I guess that’s a good thing, right? It means that if one of you is close to me all the time, then we’re likely to catch him, right? It would be a lot harder if he set up another sniper shot from some building far away like he did in London. Or will he recognize you?” she asked Garret. “If he saw you with me on the street when he poisoned me and made the connection between you and my brother,” she let her voice trail off.

  Garret shook his head. “No, he won’t recognize me. It was someone he used to work with that went after Caleb and even then, I wasn’t there when it happened. I came along a few minutes later. I know Kašović’s face, but he shouldn’t know mine.”

  She could tell it had cost Garret to tell the truth. It would have been so much easier to lie and stop what they seemed to be putting in motion.

  “So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

  There was some shuffling around the table as the men seemed to give it some thought. She supposed she should be giving it some thought too, but her mind was beginning to fog with fatigue.

  “I have a cabin in Vermont,” Drew offered. Everyone looked at him, and after a moment, he elaborated. “It’s not very big, but it is isolated. I bought it years ago when I needed somewhere I could just, well, go and be alone.”

  Kit frowned. She knew Drew’s job was tough, probably harder than anything she could imagine, but she had a difficult time believing that what he needed was more time alone. He was already one of the most “alone” people she knew. Even when he was standing within a crowd of people. There were some people who did need to be alone to heal, and she had no doubt Drew needed to heal after doing some of the things he’d done and seeing some of the things he’d seen, but she didn’t think he was someone who should be doing it alone—like he did everything else.

  Still, she held her tongue as he continued.

  “I don’t think anyone knows about it, I know my family doesn’t. It’s set out on about forty acres. The house is in a clearing of about four acres, but it’s surrounded by woods.”

  “So, easy to see if someone is approaching, but also an easy escape route through the woods, if needed,” Caleb said with an instantaneous level of understanding that Kit found disturbing.

  “That’s all well and good, but if we isolate her, how will he know where to find her?” Garret asked.

  Kit blinked and realized she could actually contribute to this conversation. “I’m scheduled to go on The Nation’s Morning Show on Monday,” she said. It was the flashiest appearance her publisher had scheduled for her during the few weeks she and Garret had decided to stay in the city. The show was broadcast across the country, and the fact that they’d been interested in her had come as a surprise. Yes, she’d just won a very prestigious award, but the show tended to cater to celebrities, self-help gurus, and the kind of chefs who could cook a four-course meal in ten minutes with two ingredients. But still, they’d been interested and her publicist was not one to let the opportunity slip through her fingers.

  “You’re not well enough to make an appearance,” Garret said, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand.

  “I am too. Or I will be by Monday,” she countered. “And I could let slip during the interview that I’m headed to an isolated cabin in Vermont to work on my next book.”

  No one said anything for a long time, then Drew cocked his head. “It has promise,” he said.

  “I hate it,” Garret grumbled.

  “I’m not a big fan, either,” Caleb muttered. And with that, she knew they had the start of a plan.

  CHAPTER 17

  “THANKS FOR HAVING ME, Lara,” Kit smiled as she spoke to the petite host of The Nation’s Morning Show. Kit and Lara Downey had known each other for a few years. They’d never worked together, but had been to receptions and dinners in the same company, so the smiles be
tween the two came easily.

  “I know we don’t have too much time, since you’re still recovering from some mystery illness?” Lara asked.

  Kit let out a little laugh and prepared to lie. It was all part of the plan, but she still felt her heart rate kick up a bit. “I am. It’s the strangest thing,” she said, imbuing her voice with as much good-natured confusion as she could muster. “About a week ago, I fell ill very suddenly, but luckily a good friend was with me and had the smarts to get me to a doctor right away. I’ve been doing some traveling lately and I think my body just shut down, you know?” she finished her story, laying the groundwork should Kašović be watching. The story she’d just told was one she and Drew had agreed on—Caleb and Garret remaining quiet—to put it out there that she had no idea what had made her sick in the hopes that Kašović would believe it and not think she’d been tipped off to what was really going on.

  “I can certainly understand that,” Lara responded. “But I have to ask—you attended that fabulous party for Marco Baresi in Rome, didn’t you? The one the Italian prime minister and all those celebrities attended? In fact, haven’t you known Marco for some time?”

  And so the conversation went for another five minutes or so—they discussed Marco’s award and career; they chatted about the glamorous party whose guests had taken up the entirety of one of Rome’s most exclusive hotels, and they even touched on Marco’s dashing reputation. When the topic of Marco had run its course, they moved on to other authors Kit knew, appearances she’d been making in the past few weeks, and Kit even managed to squeeze in a few mentions of her own book. Lara was the perfect host, a true professional. Kit knew that what Lara was really doing was putting a human face to a very literary book, and for that she was grateful.

  “So, what are your plans now?” Lara asked as they approached the end of their time together. “Are you working on something new?”

  Kit smiled. “I am, actually. But it’s always slow going for me in the beginning. A friend has a cabin in Vermont, outside of Burlington, that I’m going to ‘borrow’ for the winter. It’s pretty quiet where I live, but it’s still easy for me to get distracted by my friends and all their cute babies, so I’ve decided to hie off to the tundra, so to speak.”