And now he’s here?
Verena snapped a photo with her phone, doing it as discreetly as possible. She opened the encrypted thread and sent the picture to Mia with a single line.
The man from Sóller. He’s heading into the office.
She sat back down, hand clamped on her phone, waiting for Mia’s reply. The response came quickly.
Stop him. Now! I’ll back you up, but I need six minutes to get there.
She stared at the message, her stomach tightening. She was too late to stop the man. He was already crossing the final stretch of the promenade. He was less than ten seconds from the door. She considered texting back to tell Mia the truth, that she’d missed her window. But she didn’t. Instead, she slipped her phone into her pocket and stood.
Her hands moved automatically, aligning the chair she’d just vacated so its back was perfectly parallel to the one beside it. She straightened the small table, adjusted the salt-and-pepper set by less than an inch, even though every single fiber in her body screamed that she was wasting precious seconds. She wasn’t doing this by choice; her mind simply wouldn’t let her leave the table disorderly.
Satisfied, she stepped away, her chest hammering. There was something in the way Mia had worded her message that suggested this wasn’t a request, but a directive. One that Verena had no choice but to successfully handle. She had the distinct impression that she was being tested, and that if she didn’t act now, decisively, she wouldn’t get another chance.
Chapter Forty-One
Valencia, Spain
The air-conditioning hit Caspian as soon as he stepped through the door of the brokerage office. Even after finishing the small cup of chocolate frozen yogurt just minutes ago, sweat clung to the base of his neck and along the spine of his shirt. The midday heat outside was climbing toward brutal, and the light breeze off the water hadn’t done much more than move the humidity around.
The woman he’d spotted hadn’t set off any alarm bells in his head, but while her face was partially hidden behind round sunglasses and a brimmed hat, he thought she looked somewhat familiar. But he wasn’t worried, at least not enough to alter his plan.
Caspian let the heavy glass panel swing shut behind him. He kept his sunglasses on, if only to buy him a few seconds to survey the space discreetly.
A woman sat behind a sleek reception desk. She was in her late twenties, sharply dressed in navy and white, and was tapping a stylus against a digital tablet. Two men—who Caspian assumed were brokers—stood farther back near a glass-walled office, reviewing what looked like a set of yacht specs. They were both in their thirties and were dressed as if they were on standby for a regatta shoot. None of them looked up. Caspian stepped forward.
“Good afternoon,” the receptionist said in Spanish, then repeated it in English without missing a beat.
Caspian answered in lightly accented Spanish. “Afternoon. I’m hoping you can help me. My client received an invoice from your office. The charge was over five thousand euros, and it was processed through his credit card without his authorization. I was never contacted about this, and now my client thinks I withheld information from him.”
The receptionist was alarmed enough to set her tablet down on her desk. “Are you a broker?”
“No. I’m a lawyer.”
The receptionist sat straighter in her chair. “Do you have the reservation number?”
“I do, but my phone’s dead. It should be easy for you to look it up, though. It’s still ongoing.”
The receptionist stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you saying your client got an invoice while his charter is still underway?” she asked.
“Yes. He’s not thrilled about that. And I’m not, either, considering I wasn’t even informed. Now I have an angry client mid-voyage and no information to work with.”
The receptionist hesitated, but only for a moment. “Shit,” she murmured, then asked, “What’s the name of the yacht?”
“Veloce,” Caspian said. “It’s an Azimut S8.”
“Let me check who the broker of record is,” she said, pivoting to a different monitor behind her. “I’ll need to access the charter log on our secure server. It will just take a moment.”
“Of course,” Caspian said, feigning mild irritation. “I’d appreciate it.”
She began navigating through the internal system. Caspian shifted his backpack to his other shoulder as he scanned the office. The two men he’d seen earlier had now moved deeper inside the office. They weren’t interested in him.
“Here it is,” she said. “The broker of record is Francisco Morientes.”
“That’s right. He’s the one who handled the booking for us.”
“And just to confirm, your client is Blackstone Security, right?”
