Page 76 of Her Fearless Warrior

“Yeah. Paul. He was talking to Carlson, the guy who took Leila’s statement. Right now they have everyone in their office going through Grant’s old case files to see what might ping, because there is nothing that he’s currently working on that could have brought on this attack.”

“But he’s high up, right?”

“Yeah. I get where you’re going. They also talked about Grant’s subordinates, and what cases they’re working on. There are two that seem possible, but both are homegrown militia groups, so Leila seeing someone who wasn’t Caucasian knocks that possibility down a bit.”

“Linc, you’re going to have to spell it out for me. I’m tired. I did an extra circuit around the obstacle course to show young Landon Kelly that being young isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“It’s just that I was listening to Leila give a step-by-step accounting of what happened. I’m not totally convinced they were after her dad. I think they could have been after her.”

Jase sat up straighter in his seat and pushed aside the bottle of bourbon.

“How are you seeing that?”

“She kept thinking they were trying to take her dad away from her. Like they wanted to kidnap him. Maybe it was that they wanted to pull him off her so they could take her.”

Jace’s brown eyes roamed around the kitchen as if they were looking for someplace peaceful to land. Finally, they came back to look at him. “Are you thinking this goes back to Syria?”

“Well, I don’t think she made enemies while working as an interpreter for the Quebec Symphony Orchestra. I mean, I know there was some infighting between some of the various international performers, but I don’t think anyone wants to kidnap her.”

“So it’s Vugar.”

“That’s what I think. And that fucking Jerry Earnst didn’t give one flying fuck about him; all he seemed to care about was those diamonds and probably making sure that he didn’t get any blowback from the phone being a piece of shit.”

Jase nodded. “I can see that.”

Linc got up from the table and started pacing. He pulled at his bottom lip, then turned and did another circuit around the kitchen.

“But what makes this whole idea useless, is that we left Syria five months ago. Why in the hell would Vugar be after Leila now? Not sooner?”

“Maybe he didn’t know where she was?” Jase suggested.

“That’s bullshit. The way Leila explained it to me, the guy had her resume and her childhood immunization records with him. He would have known where to find her. So why now?”

“That’s a pretty big hole in your theory, Linc.”

He sat back down and picked up his glass of bourbon and took another sip. Then he looked at his watch.

“Don’t do it,” Jase warned.

“I’m not going to call him. I’m just going to send him a text.”

Jase rolled his eyes.

Linc pulled out his phone and took a good five minutes to compose a text to Gideon before he pressed send.

“I don’t feel comfortable going through their refrigerator for food. Wanna order pizza?” Linc asked.

His phone rang. He looked down and saw Gideon’s number and he smiled. “You know what I like on my pizza, you place the order.”

20

Linc had spent two hours at the hospital with Miray and Leila already that morning before leaving them there so that he could go back to the Cloud home and set up for a meeting. Traffic was tough, so Jase was already in front of his laptop with Gideon and Kostya on the screen by the time Linc sat down behind Grant’s desk.

Linc felt a little antsy getting Kostya involved, knowing he was blowing through Navy resources on his girlfriend, but Kostya nipped that in the bud right from the get-go.

“You’re not using Navy resources. You and a few of your friends are getting together on a call because they’re concerned about your woman. Gideon pulled me in because I have one or two friends over at Langley, that I would and have, trusted with my life. One of them has moved up in the world, so I called her before the sun was up this morning.”

“And?” Linc asked.