Page 6 of Dagger’s Shield

“We can help,” Delfino offered, motioning to her husband, Hornet.

“As can we,” Beacon added.

“Appreciated,” I said, sharing the links we’d gotten from the CIA and MI6. We were still waiting for images from the DGSE, the NGA and the NRO, along with other lesser-known intelligence channels.

We spent the next couple of hours searching through hundreds of images while Dagger and Hornet picked up new threads on Vasiliev’s financial history. Most were of Vasiliev standing on street corners, hotel terraces, and the steps of buildings in dozens of cities around the world.

The facial recognition software had already gone through them, identifying as many people as it was able. What was impossible to tell was who were actual associates. The rest, the ones it couldn’t match, I had to sort through myself. Most of them led nowhere—a driver, a waiter, a man who happened to cross the street behind him. I marked a few to come take another look at later, then moved on.

The sun set early at this time of year, so the hours got away from me. When I last checked, it was twenty hundred. Blackjack, Beacon, Hornet, and Delfino had quit for the night. I was close to ready when Dagger asked if I wanted help with the photos.

“I can manage,” I said.

“I know you can.” He smiled. “I was looking for an excuse to sit closer. The photos were the best reason I could come up with.”

“You have your own computer. You can remain seated where you are,” I said without looking up at him.

“You wound me, woman.”

“I’m certain that no matter what I say to you, it goes in one ear and out the other, as they say.”

His brow furrowed, but only momentarily, as if I’d hurt his feelings. I doubted that was the case; however, I regretted my words anyway. “I was teasing, you know.”

“I know,” he said, returning to the table where he’d been seated before.

Two hours later, he got up again. “Time to call it a night. We’ll pick up in the morning.”

I was stunned when I looked at the clock. “How is it twenty-three hundred?”

“Time flies when you’re doing mundane, mindless work,” he deadpanned.

“I’m not finished with this batch. Go ahead. I will be fine on my own.”

Instead of leaving, he sat down beside me, with his already open laptop.

“I don’t need company, Dagger.”

“But I do.”

I rolled my eyes, then returned to the images, but stopped at a photograph of Vasiliev seated at a café table across from another man I thought I recognized from a previous batch.

“There he is again,” I mumbled after reopening some I’d marked.

Dagger looked up from his laptop. “There who is again?”

“This man is in a few photos I marked before.” I turned my screen toward him and loaded all the images on it. “Now, here are more.”

He dragged his chair closer. “Who is he?”

“Facial recognition didn’t come up with a match.”

“Run it again.”

I continued running each image I found as I went through the rest of the batch. By the end of it, there were more than twenty photographs of the two men together. The oldest and the newest were years apart.

“Every agency on the planet has a file on Vasiliev,” I muttered. “Someone has to be able to ID the person with him.”

“Agreed.”