Owen watched his email ping again. But it didn't contain the information he needed.
Call me. I have things you want.
While Owen wanted the things, he didn't want the vocal contact. During his years with the Bureau, Nguyen had been his go-to guy, so much so that Owen had told the Bureau to simply fly the scientist out for certain cases that came with big red bows. Nguyen had broken open so many clues in that investigation, given Owen the leads he needed.
To this day, Nguyen had no idea that Owen had eventually found the ninja. Spoken to her face to face. Befriended her as best she would allow.
It was Nguyen who kept Owen abreast of developments after he left the Bureau. When Owen stopped tracking the Ninja, the lab tech had picked up the discarded mantle and run. With his Agent friend no longer supplying his fix, Nguyen was searching her out himself. He was tracking the gunner, too, maintaining files on each of them, cataloging possible cases.
Even Owen didn't know if the two had been out and about, if they had done anything to merit getting another case file. He didn't ask, didn't want to know. He was a lawman to his core . . . or so he'd thought until she'd come along.
Nguyen was a scientist to his core. He loved a puzzle and he like to grab clues out of the air. The man had been in the business longer than Owen, long enough to know what was important now, what to ignore, and what to file away for later. He could incriminate a suspect from a misplaced eyelash or the position of a footprint. He could string together partial fingerprints. Owen didn't doubt the investigator could pick up stray thoughts that hapless criminals had left lying around at their crime scenes.
So Owen was very afraid to speak directly to Nguyen without the filter and time lapse of email. But he was going to have to give to get. And he was going to have to guard his words carefully, or Nguyen would tease out the details without Owen's consent.
Since it wouldn't serve to wait too long, Owen picked up the phone and waited out the ringing. He had not been this nervous in a long time.
"Dunham!" Owen could imagine him standing in the morgue, in front of a filleted body, more involved in the death of the person than the life. "So you're back on the trail of our girl?"
Owen cringed at the terminology of Sin as 'our girl.' Though he hoped otherwise, it was crystal clear that Nguyen's enthusiasm for Sin's style and skill had not dimmed.
Shit.
He had to say something. The two had kept in touch a bit, so there was no room for a "how's it going?" or "what have you been up to?" Owen dove in. "Yes and no."
"Go on."
Yes, Owen thought, somehow tell him only what he needs without outing Sin and without tipping him to what's really happening. Easy. "I've heard some rumblings, that's all. There was nothing, then you said Roman Kurev was brought into a Chicago hospital, gut shot. Spent hours in surgery."
"Please." Nguyen's disdain shone across the distance. "Kurev's suffering a gut shot and a shoulder wound. Probably a street kid. Did you get more than what I sent you?"
"On the internet. Just a little side blip on a page, but it popped." Owen rubbed his temples. He wasn't a good liar, and was glad he'd actually found something on the internet regarding the shooting before he contacted Nguyen via email. "So what did you find?"
"Death of a high-ranking Kurev associate, Bear Kimmel."
"Kimmel?" Owen had never heard of the guy. It was both gratifying and disturbing to know that his work had moved on without him. The Kurevs had changed in new ways that he was not informed of.
"Bear Kimmel is—was—an enforcer for Kaspar Kurev. Not the smooth operator kind that we can't get a hand on, but a big, meaty, greasy beast that no one wanted to tangle with. We know exactly where he's been and what he's been doing, but he's Teflon in the courts." Nguyen's sigh gave Owen the much needed reminder of why he left the problems of the Bureau behind.
"So why did that pop on the Ninja radar?"
"Because when we found Bear he was tied up with a big red bow."
What?
Had she worked a hit? With all the trouble with Lee? "When did he die?"
"A week ago."
It wasn't Sin. The time frames simply didn't work, but he couldn't tell Nguyen that.
Nguyen went on, running roughshod over Owen's thoughts. "The bow was all wrong. Different kind of ribbon, let alone different dye lot. And the methods weren't as precise, but there was something there."
"So why does it pop? Just as a copycat?" He was confused now but working to not give anything away.
"The method, maybe the killer talked to our girl."
"Suspects?"
A laugh came across the phone. "Yeah, that's part of the pop." He couldn't see Owen's frown. "The only suspect is the wife, Ann Evalyn. But she's as Teflon as he is."
"What's the tie?"
Nguyen's laugh was both hearty and heartened. "She's a ninja-wannabe. She started taking mixed martial arts as an adult—so she doesn't seem to have the stealth or poise our girl does."
Owen noted the lab guy still spoke of Sin in the present. Though, to the best he could figure, there'd been no new breaks or any real news on the case for years.
"She's a regular at the shooting range, too."
Owen made a noise of understanding. The info was nice, but not enough. He'd never lost his old agent sense of need for more—more clues, more evidence, more hunches, more to hold onto.
"Thing is, Mrs. Kimmel is known to be batshit crazy." He paused a moment. "The agents pulled interviews from the shooting range. She draws faces on the targets. Writes her husband's name across the chest. Her fellow black belts don't like to be paired with her in class."
"What?" This sounded like an active case.
"Yeah, apparently one of the agents went in to 'try out' the class, and she kicked the shit out of him. Dirty style too." Nguyen chuckled a bit. Maybe he just had a thing for women who could kick his ass. "Anyway, the manner of Bear's death roused concern our girl was teaching her. It's also possible Kimmel just heard the stories from the inside track, but it's being investigated."
Owen had no doubt that Sin did not have any part in that one. She'd been a cop for too long, the blue lights suiting her sense of justice and need to balance the scales when she was living in the open as Diana Kincaid.
"Thanks man." The words didn't stop his brain from wondering what would have been different had Ivan Kurev not found her just outside Atlanta. Lee would be alive, that cop the assassin Shvernik had killed would be alive. And Lee and Sin would still be living quaint lives in a quaint house; something Owen had always wanted for her. He wanted her to taste the normality that had fled her life years before, become the most she could be.
But maybe she had. Maybe it would have happened anyway. It seemed Ivan was trying to impress his brother by finding the ninja. Well, he'd found her. The sad fact was that Sin and Lee had left a very wide swath of destruction behind them and there was no way someone wouldn't turn around and find them. Maybe it had always been a matter of time.
Owen hung up as Annika came into the office.
But she spoke before he could. "It's summer. Cancel your classes. Help her."
His head was shaking before his wife finished her words. "I don't know that I'm the right kind of help. Let's just say that her style doesn't fit my morals."
Annika sank into the comfy chair in the corner. It was there for when the kids needed help with their homework, for reading and looking at blue sky out the window. And now Anni used it, rubbed her palms out over her knees, took a deep breath, and stared him down. "Why not?"
"I don't kill. I don't get revenge. I don't stalk, invade, . . ." He shrugged, not knowing what else he could say. Sin was an assassin; he wasn't.
"Your morals are not offended. You understand that you might have made the same ones had you walked in her shoes." For a moment Annika paused, waiting for him to tell her she was wrong. He wouldn't. She wasn't. "You only know that you aren't built to enact her methods. But you can help her. You can find the information she needs. Go to Chicago, check in with the Bureau there and help her find her husband's remains. Should she cripple the local crime lords while she's at it, more power to her."
"Anni—"
She didn't let him finish. "Your morals would be more offended if you don't help."
It was his turn to breathe deeply, and he spoke his concerns though his wife seemed to believe the decision was already made. He was starting to think it was, too, but he tested it for firmness anyway. "I have classes to teach."
"There are other professors to teach them. They need a professor. She needs you."
"What about the girls? It's summer."
Annika laughed at him. She did that often when he was being stupid. "You were going to spend the summer teaching. Now, you'll go help a friend, be a good person, come back happier and spend the rest of the summer with them."
"The money? There's a baby on the way." Another child, another mouth. It could be easier or harder depending on the money situation. He worried about those things.
"We have savings. And it is still very early. We don't really know that there will be a baby. It's gone south on us before." She shrugged, seemingly at ease with the fact that fate could and just might deal her another bad blow.
"What if something happens and I'm not here?"
"What if?" She threw her hands up. "I'm a big girl, Owen. You cannot hover over me. I'll survive and if I really need you, I will call you on this handy device called a 'phone' and you can come home on this thing called an 'airplane.' I hear there are flights nearly every day now."
Her sarcasm wasn't lost and he had to grin.
Yes, they had both known how this would go. Yes, she was right. She usually was. Still he threw out his concerns just in case she hadn't thought of them. And mostly because once Annika was done slicing and dicing his logic, he felt better about the decision. He wanted to help Sin. Anni made it okay to go.
He plucked the burner phone from his pocket.
Owen knew he shouldn't have it on him. Just having it was suspicious enough. Should anyone track the number it would triangulate to Sin eventually. She was smart enough to not read messages—and thus ping the cell towers—in areas she frequented. But how long could that go on? How could she stay in serious communication if she didn't have the phone readily available and check it often?
Things were getting tangled.
He punched in the text message anyway.
"I walked away from a bleeding brother!" Nick was frustrated as hell. "Dia—"
He didn't know how to do what she wanted, didn't think he could pull it off, and couldn't even seem to call her by the right name.
In the beginning, when he'd first located her, he'd known she was Cynthia Beller. But his research showed she was living as Diana Kincaid. Now, since she'd left that behind, she was probably the most herself. She seemed more comfortable in her own skin, even if her husband had been killed. "Sin."
"Tell them you were tracking me." She didn't throw her hands in the air, didn't waste gestures or even breath—as though she didn't have any of it to spare these days. "The Kurevs will let you back in. Tell them you knew Roman would get help, and you had to follow me."
"I kicked him." Nick hadn't believed that the Kurevs had come after Sin. He and his brothers had a standing agreement. Invading his sister's home, killing her husband, and attempting to kill her was a grievous betrayal of their collaboration.
Unfortunately, Sin had a point. Who else could it have been?
Unfortunately, if he had to choose, he'd choose her over the brothers. And she was going to make him choose. It didn't matter if the Kurevs hadn't been involved. Sin would hunt them, and force someone to tell her where her husband's body was. Even if she was proved wrong, all of Nick's carefully constructed holdings, webs of networks, plans . . . would all go down the toilet with her search.
"So you were trying to look like you were on my side." To her it seemed obvious.
To Nick it seemed like a terrible gamble to walk back into the Kurev den and explain that everything was okay. That he'd kicked the younger brother of the bloodiest crime family in the ribs and left him in the street to die of a gunshot Nick had done nothing to stop. Beautiful plan.
Sin, however, found no matching sarcasm to go with the track playing in his head.
She stared at him. Waited for him to agree with her. Waited for him to be the brother she needed, though she had never needed one before.
This was his fork in the road.
Help her now or she would disappear on him.
Of all the half siblings he'd found, she was the only one who'd wanted anything to do with him . . . which was maybe because he didn't tell her of their relationship until nearly too late to do anything. Of all the half siblings he'd found, she was the only one he actually liked. "I don't know that you're right about the brothers."
"I do." It wasn't arrogant. It was simply sad and certain.
"But count me in." Screw the empire that he had built. Stolen. Resurrected. There were a thousand ways to look at it. Now he only looked at it as a loss. Well, he'd been growing tired of that side of the business anyway.
"No." Her refusal surprised him. "Just talk to the brothers, like you usually do."
This time it was his turn to refuse. "No. I'm all in or I'm not. Lee was your husband; we find him. You bury him. You—"
Nick found he had no words because he had no idea what she would do after that. Her raised eyebrows and the sardonic twist of her lips suggested neither did she. He didn't let that stop him from what he was saying, so he started over. "I'm in or I'm not at all. That's it."
"You'll lose your badge." Her voice was flat. Her expression was, too. She'd never been overly demonstrative, never the bright bubble that Reese had been. But when they lost Reese, some of the spark she'd found fled with the loss of her friend. And now, what little had been left after that seemed completely snuffed out.
"My badge is just a front, we both know it."
"It's not. You love it." The small movement of her ribs as she breathed, the lack of movement of anything else, the simple statement told him she paid far more attention than he generally gave her credit for.
"I can afford to lose the badge. I can't lose my sister."
Behind the hard shell, she cracked.
His little sister. Too similar looking to dispel the rumors of her mother and Kolya Kurev. Too long on her solely focused path. Too damaged to even need a hug. Her surface didn't change, nothing he could put his finger on anyway. But he knew her. He knew her, and Nick could see the changes, see the hit his reminder had dealt. He couldn't grab her, shake her, yell that he loved her, that she was the only family he had left.
For a moment, Sin didn't move.
Then, after a long, shallow breath, she looked up at him, eyes clear if a little over-bright. "Once I hear from Dr. Dunham, we can head to Chicago. But you should try to keep your badge."
"I'll try to keep my head is what I'll try to do. It's far more important than my badge." He sat next to her in the shabby motel room, bouncing on the edge of the oversprung bed, and they began to plan.