“Listen, I’m not saying you’re looking for an exit ramp, but if you are, I know Liesel will be there waiting for you.”
Caspian wasn’t so sure.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Teterboro Airport
Bergen County, New Jersey
Everett Westcott didn’t like being blindsided, and he certainly didn’t appreciate being told minutes before boarding that the man he trusted most wasn’t getting on the plane with him.
“What do you mean you aren’t coming?” he asked.
“I apologize, sir,” Mpassi replied. “I really need to get to the bottom of this. Give me a couple of days, and I’ll catch up with you in Geneva.”
Westcott stared at him, trying to process what Mpassi had told him.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” he asked, incredulous. “There must be at least two hundred women named Mia Hernandez in the country. Chances are it’s not even our Mia.”
“It’s her. My contact at the FBI confirmed the name’s been run in several federal databases. Same from my guy at the IRS. And the date of birth attached to the query is Mia’s. There’s no doubt.”
Westcott slammed his palm against the driver’s seat in front of him.
“Fuck,” he hissed. Then louder. “Fuck!”
They were still in the armored Escalade, which was parked fifty feet from the waiting Gulfstream G550. The plane’s engines hadn’t started yet, but the pilots were on board, and the flight attendant was ready. Westcott and Mpassi were scheduled to fly to Paris for several high-levelmeetings before continuing to Geneva, where they would meet with a delegation from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
But now it seemed like he’d fly solo.
Westcott had been in regular contact with President Mutombo, who had not only regained control of the National Assembly but had also secured the necessary votes to pass Westcott’s initiative. The stakes had never been higher. If things stayed on track, his hydroelectric initiative would begin funneling money into the DRC’s government coffers within five years. It would be slow at first—an infrastructure of this scale always was—but the outcome would be transformative. He would live to see the people of the DRC receive the universal health care his wife Nailah had fought so hard for. A rare, near-impossible feat in any developing nation.
But here we are ... on the cusp of greatness.
The health care system he had envisioned with Nailah, one that was professionally administered and publicly funded with the funds coming from Hearts United’s project, would lift an entire nation out of generational neglect. The DRC would go from having 0.2 doctors per thousand habitants to one. Far from the European Union average of four, but still a big step forward, and hopefully enough to drop the maternal mortality rate from 345 deaths per one hundred thousand live births to under 150.
Westcott wasn’t doing this for vanity or for accolades. He was doing this for women like Nailah’s mother, whose life might have been spared had there been even the most basic medical care within reach.
Nothing was more important than that.Not even Mia.
“How exposed are we?” Westcott asked, forcing himself to stay focused.
“We’re not, for now,” Mpassi said without hesitation. “And that’s true across all our operations. But if Mia gets captured—”
“She’d never talk,” Westcott said instantly, knowing he sounded desperate.
Mpassi met his gaze. The man’s eyes were steady, and there was a weight behind them. One Westcott didn’t appreciate.
“Not willingly, I know,” Mpassi said. “But people break, sir. Even the best.”
Before Westcott could respond, Mpassi’s phone buzzed. He answered it quickly and said almost nothing. When the call ended, he slowly brought the phone down to his lap and stared ahead, as if the world had just tilted beneath him.
“Who was that?” Westcott asked.
“Director Cortés. CNI.”
Westcott knew Lucía Cortés well. She was the head of the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, Spain’s foreign and domestic intelligence agency. She was more than just a contact; she was one of his most reliable special assets.
“What did she say?”
