Hank worked quickly, capturing the general outline of Romulus’s features. She would fill in the details later. But first, the basic bone structure—
She started when her cell phone buzzed. Why was Ashe bugging her? He knew she was working... She glanced at the face of the phone. She didn’t recognize the name on the caller ID, but it was Russian.
Crap.
Cautiously she answered it. “Hello? Who is this?”
The male voice at the other end spoke in hushed Russian. “If you want to see your brother alive, come to the Jefferson Pier. Tell no one and come alone.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“I have no idea where the Jefferson Pier is or how to get there.”
The man sounded exasperated. “It’s on Bayou Rigolettes. Drive south to Lafitte and take a boat from there. Hurry.”
She was only vaguely familiar with the area south of New Orleans. It was isolated, and she would be far from help. Not to mention it was a great location for a secret meeting. Or a murder. Was she walking into a trap? For there was no question about her going. It was the first actual lead she’d gotten on Max since he disappeared, not to mention the first suggestion whatsoever that he might still be alive. She had to take the chance and check it out.
The first order of business, of course, was to get out of here and ditch Ashe and his scary boss. This room wasn’t any good. It had no windows and only the one exit. She poked her head out into the hallway and asked the first person she saw—a nearly bald young man with an insanely fit physique—where the ladies’ room was. He pointed further down the hall. She headed for it.
When she stepped into the small room, she was relieved to see a window. She locked the bathroom door behind herself, opened the window and hopped out into the night. Now to get a car and get off this base.
She headed for the big paved area behind the building she’d just exited. It looked like some sort of parking lot for all kinds of utility vehicles. Everything from staff cars to dump trucks was parked there. It took her longer than she would have liked to find a vehicle that was unlocked, a heavy-duty pickup truck with dual rear wheels, a diesel engine and a gooseneck hitch in the rear truck bed. Whatever. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
It had been a long time since her brother showed her how to hot-wire a car, and she didn’t know if a diesel vehicle worked differently from a regular one or not. But she had to try. Sitting awkwardly on the truck’s floor and working in the dark, she pried off the panel covering the ignition wiring and stared at the jumble of electrical wires. She needed ignition wires. Working as much by feel as by sight, she traced the wires coming off the back of the ignition switch. She yanked two random wires loose and touched the ends to one another.
Nothing. Rats.
She pulled free another wire and tried it with each of the first two. Still nothing. It took her several more tries before she finally got a spark and a momentary growl from the engine. She tried again, holding the wires together this time as she pushed down on the gas pedal with her elbow. It was as awkward as could be, but the engine caught and roared to life.
Cripes. The navy apparently didn’t believe in using mufflers on their trucks. How the vehicle hadn’t woken everyone on base and brought them running, she had no idea. And she didn’t plan to stick around long enough to ask. Now to get off this stupid military base and go find her brother.
That turned out to be much easier than she expected. She simply drove out the front gate and smiled at the guard who waved her through as she rumbled past him. And then she was free and clear.
She pointed the truck south. As she recalled there was really only one road to speak of all the way down to Lafitte. All points beyond that into the bayou required transportation by boat.
It took her a few wrong turns and backtracks, but she finally found Jean Lafitte Boulevard and signs pointing south to Lafitte. Any minute now, Ashe was going to discover that she wasn’t in the conference room working on that drawing. And he was going to be pissed. She glanced down at her cell phone lying on the seat beside her. She expected it to ring momentarily and for him to chew her up one side and down the other for going on this wild goose chase without him.
She probably ought to turn the phone off in case Ashe and his boss had some way of tracking it, but she was worried that she might miss another call from the anonymous man who’d called before. Swallowing hard, Hank drew a deep breath. She would just have to trust that her head start in leaving New Orleans was enough to get her to Lafitte and the rendezvous before Ashe caught up with her.
It took her over an hour to make the drive, but it was dark and she was unfamiliar with the roads. Finally, houses and businesses came into view, and then a big sign welcomed her to Lafitte, Louisiana.
She glanced down at her phone in worry. Why hadn’t Ashe called? Surely he’d discovered her escape by now. His silence was almost more worrisome than an angry phone call.
It was obvious that Ashe and his boss thought her father was a spy. Which was ridiculous. Sure, her family’s secretive life looked suspicious. And her father’s work hadn’t always been exactly on the up-and-up. But her parents had also been immigrants to a country known to be hostile to their native land. Her father had just wanted to make a living and not attract any attention. That, and he had handled large amounts of cash. On more than one occasion when she’d been little, she’d seen briefcases full of money sitting open on the kitchen table or spotted her mother counting and bundling stacks of currency. Shady? Yes.
But spies? Not her parents. Surely she would have known if they were.
She jolted as she saw a sign for the Jefferson Pier. She slowed the truck and turned in to the parking lot. Here went nothing.
It was a little past 4:00 a.m. There wouldn’t be anyone here to rent her a boat at this hour, would there?
She parked the truck and pulled the ignition wires apart. The engine died, and silence fell around her. She climbed out of the cab and was assaulted by the smell of fish and the vibrant sounds of night insects.
“Hey, Missy. Can I he’p y’all?”
She turned in shock to a man striding toward her from the direction of the dock. “Umm, I need to rent a boat, actually.”
“You goin’ fishin’?” He looked at her skeptically. Given her complete lack of fishing gear, she probably couldn’t pass for a fisher.
“No. I’ve just got to meet someone. At Jefferson Pier. Do you know where that is?”
“Yeah, sure. Jeff’son Pier’s ’bout three mile’ down de bayou from heuh. What you wan’ wit’ dat place, chère?”
“I’m meeting a friend. And it’s urgent that I get there as soon as possible.” She’d always considered herself to have a fairly thick New Orleans accent, but this guy’s Cajun drawl put hers to shame.
“You know how ta’ steer a boat?”
She shrugged. She knew it involved a rudder and not much more, but she wasn’t going to admit that to this guy.
“C’mon, then. Don’ wan’ ta’ keep yo’ frien’ waitin’.”
She followed the guy to a small office. He unlocked the door and ushered her inside. Then he swiped her credit card and made a photocopy of her driver’s license while she fidgeted, antsy to get out of here before Ashe arrived and put a stop to this madness. He might not have called her, but she could feel him pursuing her. It was as if his presence was drawing closer with every passing minute.
“All righ’. How ’bout a nice bass boat for ya? Gots a fancy chair that won’t get yo’ nice clothes wet. Comes wit’ a life vest an’ a full tank o’ gas. Y’all fill it up befo’ you return an’ it’ll cost you less. I gotta charge y’all fo’ a full tank otherwise.”
“Okay. Fine,” she replied, standing up eagerly.
The guy took a set of keys off a pegboard on the wall and strolled down to the dock with her all but jumping up and down behind him in frustration at his leisurely pace.
The guy must have sensed her complete unfamiliarity with boats because he boarded the vessel first, helped her aboard, and then gave her a maddeningly thorough tutorial on starting the engine, moving in reverse, steering, where the fishing map of Bayou Rigolettes was stored, and even basic boating traffic rules.
He handed her a life vest, which she shrugged into and tightened, and then, at long last, he put the keys in the ignition and started the engine for her.
“’Kay then. Y’all be careful. Y’heuh?”
“I will. Thanks.”
The eastern sky was starting to lighten and she’d nearly had a stroke in her impatience, but finally she backed out of the marina slot and pointed the prow of the boat out into open water.
The boat guy had painstakingly pointed out a half dozen landmarks along the eastern shore of the bayou that would help her navigate down to Jefferson Pier, and as night faded into dawn around her, she was belatedly grateful for his thoroughness. The entire shoreline looked the same—green and thick and impenetrable.
Every now and then a home interrupted the wall of green. Sometimes a nice house sat back from the shore with a mown lawn, and other times the dwelling was no more than a tin shack on stilts at the water’s edge. Further out into the open water of the bayou, shrimp boats passed by her.
Was this where her brother had been hiding all this time? Why? Had he crossed a client who posed a threat to him? If so, why hadn’t Max at least let her know he was alive and lying low? If he’d had a way to get a message to her last night, surely he’d had the means to reach out to her long before now.
Although the pier that was her destination was supposedly only three miles down the coast, she made the trip cautiously. It was one thing to get a phone call and decide it was a good idea to go rescue her brother. It was another thing entirely to be all alone in the middle of a creepy bayou with no backup and no safety net, meeting a potentially dangerous stranger who could be leading her into a lethal trap.
If only Ashe was here. He would know exactly what to do and take charge of the situation. Nope, this had not been one of her more brilliant moves. But there was no turning back now.
Finally, as morning light broke over the open water in a glorious spill of gold and pink and peach hues, she spied Jefferson Pier.
It was just like the guy back in Lafitte had described: a long dock running parallel to the shore with tie-ups for boats ranging from flat-bottomed mud boats to a plush yacht with sleek lines and black-tinted windows. The yacht definitely looked closest to her brother’s style of all the vessels at the pier.
She slowed her little boat, letting it glide slowly toward the dock. Nobody was visible on shore, and no movements caught her eye. But as she searched for an open spot to tie up to the pier, a figure came out onto the aft deck of the yacht and waved at her. The man gestured at her to bring her craft over to the yacht directly.
In the blinding glare of the sun at the man’s back, she couldn’t make out his facial features. But he seemed to know who she was.
She steered the boat over to the yacht, and a lean, darkly tanned, middle-aged man called in Russian for her to toss him her mooring line. She looked around and spied a neatly coiled length of nylon rope near the front of her boat. She made her way precariously to the line and gave it a heave in the Russian’s direction.
He caught the pile of rope and lashed it around a metal cleat mounted on the yacht, reeling her boat up tight against the side of the yacht in the process. He shoved a pair of foam tubes between the hulls of the two vessels and tied off the line he snagged from the back end of her boat.
In under a minute, her boat was completely tethered to the yacht whether she liked it or not. Then the man growled, “The boss wants to talk with you. Follow me.”
* * *
Ashe opened the door to the conference room carefully, a cup of tea the way Hank liked it in hand. Where was she? He backed out and stuck his head into the common room. “Anyone see the woman I brought with me?”
One of the guys piped up from his desk, “She asked where the restroom was a while back.”
A sinking feeling was festering in Ashe’s gut. What had she done? He headed down the hall to the ladies’ room and knocked on the door. No response. Swearing commenced in a steady stream in the back of his mind. He pulled out his pocketknife and popped the simple lock with a twist of his blade. Empty. And the window was open.
Son of a—
He whirled and sprinted down the hall to the main room. Perriman looked up sharply as he burst into the ready room. “She ran. Went out the restroom window.”
“How long ago?”
The kid she’d asked about the restroom was consulted, and Ashe was dismayed to realize she had nearly an hour’s head start on them. Worse, somebody volunteered the fact that a vehicle depot was behind the building. If she’d gotten hold of a set of wheels, she could be long gone by now.
A quick inventory of the vehicle lot revealed that a pickup truck was missing. A phone call to the front gate confirmed that it had left the base a solid half hour ago. Panic and anger warred with one another inside Ashe. To Perriman he said, “Her cell phone has a GPS tracker in it. Can Jennie get us a location?”
His boss made the call. Ashe was surprised when the ops specialist reported back a few minutes later that the phone was still turned on and on the move. It would take Jennie a few more minutes to pinpoint an exact location, but the phone was headed south from New Orleans.
“South? What’s down there?” Perriman asked in surprise. “I thought it was just swamps and the Mississippi delta.”
“You’re mostly right. There’s a little solid land south of New Orleans and a few small communities. And then there are a number of waterways and settlements in the bayou that are flotation-based.”
“Why would she head down there? Any ideas, Ashe?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. She’s a city kind of girl and not a bayou stomper by temperament. The good news is I have to head down that way today, anyway. My meeting with Vitaly’s boss is down in the Bayou Rigolettes this evening—”
He and Perriman stared at each other.
What were the odds? No way was it coincidence that Hank had taken off in the direction of the very people he was supposed to meet tonight.
Perriman asked grimly, “Does she work with them? Has she been the insider all along, spying on us for them?”
It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be a mole. Everything they’d had between them couldn’t have been an act. But doubt made his breathing hitch and his heart clench.
“Once she gets out into the bayou, we’ll never find her unless she wants to be found. That place can swallow a man whole.”
“I’m calling in reinforcements,” Perriman announced.
“Anyone in particular?” Ashe blurted. None of his teammates were nearby, as far as he was aware.
Perriman smirked. “I’ve got a pair of topflight snipers training a few hours from here along with a couple other operatives.” He glanced around the ready room. “And I’d lay odds there are a few old Marine Force Recon guys around here who know their way around a covert op, too.”
Several of the cops in the room stood up, grinning.
Ashe’s blood ran cold. Perriman was fielding an ad hoc team of Special Forces operatives to...what? Apprehend Hank? Kill her? “What do you have in mind, sir?”
“You’ve got a meeting to go to this evening, right?”
“Correct.”
“And we now know to expect Hank there. Furthermore, we can use her cell phone signal to pinpoint the location of the meeting right now. We’ve got almost eight hours to brief up, gear up, and get a team into position before the meet goes down.” Perriman gave him a pointed look. “I’m not sending you in cold tonight, Hollywood. You’re going in with a full support package.”
Truth be told, Ashe was relieved. He’d already seen Vitaly’s security procedures, and the guy was no amateur. A meeting with the guy and his bosses could prove extremely risky if he went alone.
But what about Hank? She could so easily get caught in the crossfire. He didn’t worry about his guys shooting her. But the Russians? Would they put a bullet in her head to shut her up and prevent her from revealing everything she knew? What were the odds he could talk Perriman into treating this op as a kidnapping recovery mission with Hank as the victim?
Unfortunately, he already knew the answer to that one. Zilch.
A strange ache in his chest caught Ashe’s attention. What was up with that? Was this why people called it a broken heart? He swore viciously under his breath. He had no time for hurt feelings right now. They had a ton of work to do to pull together an intel briefing, build a plan, rehearse it with their impromptu team and then get everyone into place before the meeting.
The good news was that Perriman would be able to pull strings and turn the whole naval air station inside out to get everything the team needed. Still, the next few hours promised to be chaotic. And Hank’s life hung in the balance. He only vaguely registered that his own life was also on the line. He was too worried about her to see beyond that.
As the op began to take shape, Ashe made plans of his own that did not fit in with the team’s agenda. He needed to get to Hank and figure out a way to speak with her in private. To find out for himself if she was a prisoner of or conspirator with the Russian mobsters. He had faith that if he looked her in the eye and asked her the question, he would know if she was lying or telling him the truth. Although, apparently, she’d successfully lied to him before. The doubt resurfaced, worse than ever. Did he dare trust her...or would she betray him if he tried to save her?
What in the hell was he going to do?