by Lori Ryan
“I don’t see anything that jumps out,” Merlin said and Duff nodded his agreement.
Heath had to agree with them. He was really hoping they’d find something obvious. A gambling problem or large deposit of money.
“Sharon Geiger is the newest person in their office, but she’s been with the foreign service for ten years. Exemplary record.” Merlin shuffled the pages in front of him.
“I don’t like Geoff.” Heath stood and paced as he spoke. “The guy is always asking for details on where we’ll be going and how things are going to work when we’re getting ready to move.”
Duff shook his head. “According to Eleanor, he didn’t have access to her flight information. Only Marcus and Beth had that information.”
Heath shook his head. “Marcus or Beth could have easily shared that information. They’d have had no reason to hold that back from another member of their team.”
Merlin looked at him. “You sure you’re being objective here? I’ve seen you glaring at Geoff when he asks Eleanor if she wants to join them for dinner.”
Heath probably shouldn’t have let the small growl slip from his lips, but Merlin was right. The guy really was bothering Heath. Eleanor might not see it but Geoff was hitting on her.
“He shouldn’t be making a pass at her. She’s his boss.”
Duff laughed, earning a glare from Heath.
It was Merlin who answered, though. “I’m pretty sure that pass you’re talking about is called politeness and manners, big guy. You’re seeing shit that isn’t here where Eleanor Bonham is concerned.”
Heath turned on the two men, his chest filling with anger at the accusation. They didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand.
Eleanor wasn’t just a job to him. She meant something and even if he couldn’t let that go anywhere past these next few days, he damned sure wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.
If that meant he saw danger everywhere he looked for now, so be it.
Merlin raised his hands in surrender but Heath saw amusement in his expression.
His anger dissipated. They were just razzing him. They had his back.
Duff had been tapping away on his computer but he looked up now. “Sharon has a sick mom. She requires a lot of care and I don’t see where the money is coming from for that. She’s in a high-end assisted living home in DC. It’s possible someone is paying for that care in exchange for Sharon’s help?”
Heath turned to the door, but Merlin was standing in his way.
He crossed his arms and looked at the unofficial head of their team. “We need to question her.”
Merlin put a hand up. “Take a step back from this. Let me question her while you go sit with Eleanor. You’re of no use to us like this. Let us handle looking into who might be after her and who might be feeding them information.”
Heath went hands on hips and shook his head. “I want to be in on the questioning. When we go back to the talks, we can’t go back with this leak in tow.”
He saw Merlin and Duff exchange a look but Merlin acquiesced, giving a small nod.
Merlin stood. “Duff, you stay on the research while Woof and I pull Sharon out of there and talk to her.”
Heath ignored the look Eleanor gave him when they asked Sharon to leave the brainstorming session with the team minutes later. They led Sharon down the hall to one of their empty rooms. If he had anything to do with it, when Eleanor and the team went back to the camp later that afternoon, she wouldn’t be taking the traitor with her.
“What is it?” the dark-haired woman asked, her blue eyes going wide. “Has something else happened?”
Merlin pulled out a chair and gestured to it in the small hotel room. The tight space worked well for the situation. They wanted Sharon feeling the pressure and putting her in tight quarters with two who were trained to kill with nothing more than their hands was one way to do that.
If she wasn’t their leak, he’d apologize, but until he knew for sure, he wasn’t going to pull punches and coddle Eleanor’s team.
“Tell us about your mom, Sharon,” Heath said. It wasn’t a gentle suggesting. He put menace behind the words.
Uneasy didn’t begin to describe the look that crossed her face as she glanced at the door of the room.
“My mom?” Sharon looked from Heath to Merlin and back. Then she stood suddenly. “Is my mom okay? What happened?”
She wasn’t looking like someone who was guilty of working with the enemy, but he wasn’t ready to take her off their list yet. People can be damn good liars and anyone who would be feeding information about Eleanor’s whereabouts to the people trying to take her out had to be damn good at lying to have gotten this far.
Merlin went with the good cop here, probably knowing Heath didn’t have it in him just then.
“Your mom is fine, Sharon. Have a seat.” Merlin put the sympathetic hand on Sharon’s shoulder. “Nothing’s happened to your mom. We just need to know a little about her care.”
Sharon’s brow furrowed and she shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why do you need to know about my mom’s care?”
Heath answered. “She’s in a very expensive care home, isn’t she? Do you want to tell us who’s paying that bill for you?”
He watched as understanding dawned on her face.
It was followed quickly by anger. “You think I’m the one selling information about Eleanor. You think I’m working with whoever’s been trying to hurt her.” Her eyes flashed and she looked ready to take their heads off. “I would never hurt Eleanor that way. Never.”
Merlin pulled the chair over and sat opposite Sharon. His voice was soft when he spoke. “We have to go through everybody Sharon, tear apart everybody’s lives. It’s something that has to be done. Even if it’s just to rule you out so we can find the person who is doing this to her, we need to make this happen so we can move on and find the right person. You understand that, don’t you?”
Sharon nodded, just as Merlin had wanted her to. Heath knew Merlin wanted her agreeing with him so that when it came time, she agreed to answer his questions, too.
Merlin continued. “You know how important it is that we stop these people, right?”
She nodded again.
“And you know how important it is that these talks aren’t derailed, don’t you?”
Another nod.
“Help us out. Let us cross you off the list. That’s all we want,” Merlin said. “Tell us how your mom’s care is being paid. When Duff was looking through your files, the cost of your mom’s care home stands out as a pretty major expense. You understand we have to account for that.”
Sharon sighed. “My brother pays for her care and I don’t ask how he does it.” She looked away, wrapping her arms around her middle.
“I should ask, but I don’t because my mom needs the home and the medicine and physical therapy she gets there. My brother has never been one to follow the rules, and more and more I’m pretty sure he’s not really living off honest money right now. But I don’t have any contact with him, I’ve got nothing to do with whatever he’s doing. He pays the bills and that’s all I know. So it’s got nothing to do with Eleanor or my work or whoever it is that’s trying to derail these talks.”
He watched her. Her face was flushed pink and he could see she was miserable at having to admit that her brother might be involved in something illegal. And that she was turning a blind eye to it.
Could he really throw stones, though? If someone he loved needed the kind of medical care her mother did and somebody was paying the bills for it, would he look very deep to find out how that was happening?
His thoughts went immediately to Eleanor. What would he do to keep her from pain? To pay for her medical care if she was sick or worse? Even the thought of it gutted him.
Heath didn’t know. But he did know he believed Sharon. He didn’t think she was the one leaking information. Just to be sure, though, he followed up. “And there’s no way your brother could be getting informati
on from you?”
Her voice rose but she met his eyes when she answered. “No. Absolutely not. I don’t talk to my brother. He visits my mother and I visit her, but we both go at different times. And I don’t share any information about my work with my mom. I don’t share that information with anyone. I’m not someone who engages in pillow talk with the guy I’m dating, I don’t brag about what I do in bars, or share details with family members that might get my team into trouble.”
She looked to Merlin. “This information is getting out there, but it’s not coming from me. I promise you that.”
Heath believed her and that really sucked because it meant they were back to having no leads. They were back to a situation where they couldn’t trust the people around Eleanor but they couldn’t send them away either. She had to have her team with her during the talks, as much as Heath would like to just isolate her so he’d know she was safe.
They were back to a place where he hated to be, a place where he knew he might not be able to protect Eleanor. Again.
Chapter 18
Eleanor was relieved to find she hadn’t overplayed her hand with Demir. They didn’t return to the compound immediately after lunch in light of the truck trying to run them down, but they did go back later that afternoon.
And her ploy had worked. Demir was ready to talk about the hostages.
“I could be convinced to release the hostages if you can get me access to military satellites when I need them.”
Eleanor kept her face schooled and didn’t let her shock show. How did he think they were going to give him access to military satellites any time he demanded that?
How would that even work? Did he think she could arrange for him to call up a general at the Pentagon whenever he wanted intel?
He had to know that wasn’t possible. So what was his game?
“That’s certainly something I can talk to my people about,” she hedged. “I’m going to need to see the hostages, though. I need to know they’re safe and well.”
“I will arrange for a video chat with them. They’re not here on-site.”
She wasn’t about to let him know that she knew exactly where the hostages were. “I’ll need to see them in person before I can bring this request to my boss.”
She didn’t love the fact that she was going to have to go to her boss for approval of something like this during the talks, but she couldn’t make any promises about satellite imagery without getting a whole lot of higher-ups involved. But maybe she could use this to get her eyes on those doctors and nurses and make sure they were safe and being cared for.
It wouldn’t hurt to confirm that they were in the bunker either.
“They aren’t in the region,” Demir said. “A video call will have to do.”
She didn’t know if he was bluffing or if their intelligence was that far off. Or maybe they’d somehow moved them in the last twenty-four hours.
Her gut told her that something about this whole thing was off, though. Demir was a smart man. He had to know this ask was too much. So why was he asking for it? Was he purposely trying to sabotage the talks? Or was he just trying to buy time?
She was beginning to wonder if there was more to his taking doctors and nurses than the simple fact that they had been in country and available to be grabbed. She needed to talk to her people back in the office. There had to be more going on here than any of the analysts had discovered yet and she needed them hunting down that information if she was going to have a shot at being successful here.
“Set up the video call and I’ll see what I can do. I can’t make any promises, though. I can almost guarantee you my boss is going to want me to have eyes on those doctors and nurses in person before this goes any further.”
Demir waved a hand to one of his people and spoke quietly to him when he came over.
Then he looked up at Eleanor. “Why don’t we break while the video call is being set up?”
Eleanor held in a sigh. At this rate they were doing more breaking than talking during these negotiations. It was part of the reason her gut was telling her something was off with this whole thing. If they didn’t have more than one reason for wanting to support the overthrow of the current regime in Kazarus, she might tell her boss this wasn’t going to go anywhere.
But these talks could very well be the key to stopping a resurgence of ISIS and Al Qaeda. And she’d be damned if she would shut down anything that gave them a chance of doing that before she tried everything in her power to make it happen.
She would keep at this as long as she could to see if she could make headway with Demir. Headway that would keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Chapter 19
“I don’t like it,” Marcus said.
“Then we’re in agreement,” Eleanor said as she turned to Heath and his team. “Did any of you see anything on the video feed that makes you think our intel is wrong about where the doctors and nurses are being held?”
They all shook their heads. There hadn’t been much to see in the background when they talked to the hostages. Nothing more than a basic room that might or might not be part of the bunker. Its walls had looked like plaster but they could be plaster over concrete in a bunker or they could be the plaster walls of any windowless room in any country. Hell, for that matter, they could be on this compound in a building right next door.
The hostages hadn’t been able to talk much and the video feed hadn’t been long, but from what she could see they were in good health. They didn’t look like they’d been starved or tortured or anything along those lines. But she had felt like they were trying to convey something to her with their eyes. She just didn’t know what.
“His request for access to US military satellites is completely off-the-wall,” said Geoff.
“I agree. I can’t for the life of me figure out why he thinks that’s something we could offer,” Eleanor said.
“Maybe he doesn’t,” Heath said.
Eleanor turned to him. “What you mean?”
“Maybe he knows it’s an impossible ask but he also knows that you’ll need to take it to your boss before you can officially turn him down. He had to know you wouldn’t have come here with prior authorization to put satellite intelligence on the table. So it would take you some time to run it up the pipeline.”
“And time is what he wants.” Eleanor closed his eyes. “He’s playing us. He wants to delay for something and I guarantee you it’s something that has to do with those hostages.”
“But what? And why did he agree to these talks if he’s just going to screw around like this?” Marcus asked.
Eleanor shook her head. She didn’t know. And she hated feeling so out of her depth in an arena where she should have been in complete control.
Chapter 20
Eleanor and Demir spent the following morning working out the details of the weapons and training support the US would provide to Demir’s army. They also negotiated for medical support and food for his people.
The stronger his people were, the more likely his efforts in the area were to succeed, so medical care and food were an important part of his plans.
She had met his mother and father earlier in the day, confirming for her that this man’s family was important to him. His father walked with a severe limp and she learned it was the result of the battle that killed Demir’s grandfather when King Barrera’s regime overthrew his predecessor’s party.
As far as Demir and his family were concerned, they were attempting to right old wrongs with their fight against King Barrera. Their’s was a battle to return the country to the rightful hands of the people.
Their conversation so far had convinced Eleanor that Demir wouldn’t slaughter or persecute the Muslim population of Kazarus if his army succeeded in toppling the current regime. She only prayed she was right about that and was reading him correctly.
But as things stood now, Christians in Kazarus were being oppressed and in many cases worse so she had to h
ope that her efforts here would help put an end to that without flipping the situation from one religious sect to another.
“I think we are close to an agreement, wouldn’t you say, Ms. Bonham?” Demir asked.
“We’re close. And I’m truly hoping we’ll be able to commit to an agreement here today,” Eleanor said. She meant it.
Demir smiled. “There is the matter of the satellite access.”
Eleanor tilted her head. “And the hostages.”
Demir gave a slight shrug as if to say they were unimportant and Eleanor had to wonder if she was putting more faith in this man than she should. “Yes, the hostages,” he seemed to add almost grudgingly.
“I can’t offer you on-demand satellite access anytime you want. I’m sure you understand our country can’t simply put our military satellites at your disposal. What I can offer you is a one time still image of Kazarus, everything we have access to from our satellites at this moment in time. You’ll know where the government has military forces, and the level of forces you’re going up against, where the king might be holding his largest weapons. It’ll give you an enormous advantage you don’t currently have.”
Demir was shaking his head. “You know as well as I do that forces change locations routinely. The regime can move troops from one area to another in a matter of days. A one-shot moment in time tells me nothing.”
“It tells you a great deal more than you know at the moment.”
He looked at her, waiting, and Eleanor weighed how much she could give to him.
“If the hostages are released safely in the following 24 hours, I’ll see that you get satellite images taken immediately after that and an additional set of satellite images at a time of your choosing. This is a one-time offer that won’t be made again.”
She could see his hesitation and had to wonder again why it was so important that he hold onto these hostages.
