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So where was this awkward jealousy coming from?
Mulling it over, Alex realized she’d never been jealous of Jerry and his work colleagues. Never even gave it a thought.
Huh.
She glanced at Gideon. Found him studying her. She smiled, and he smiled back. She could almost imagine she saw promises in his eyes.
Which was crazy. They barely knew each other.
They knew enough.
After the past week, she knew what Gideon was made of, and she liked it. A lot.
And he knew her.
The scrape of chairs over the floor alerted her that lunch was over, and she pushed away from the table. Followed as everyone carried their dirty dishes over to a table against the wall.
There were four bins, and each had a different sign. Compost. Burn. Recycle. Wash. Alex watched everyone sort their dishes, silverware, napkins and scrape food scraps into the appropriate bin, then followed suit.
As they walked out of the dining room, Mel stepped over to Gideon. “Ten minutes in our office?” she asked.
“We’ll be there,” he assured her.
* * *
Gideon guided Alex to Mel’s office in one of the buildings. All the operatives had offices there, but they rarely used them. Most of them spent very little time at the compound -- Mel and Devlin’s business was growing quickly, and the demand for their services was high.
“Nico’s running Blackhawk’s operations in Seattle,” he told Alex as they walked over the shoveled path. “Mel’s sister Zoe has a business there, and after they caught the guy who’d been trying to kill Nico’s fiancé, Zoe’s been promoting Blackhawk Security to all her fellow business owners. Word of mouth has spread about how effective Blackhawk is, and we have lots of jobs in Seattle. We might need to add another full-time Seattle operative before too long -- Nico has his hands full.”
“Good for business,” Alex said as they climbed the stairs to the door.
Once inside, they walked down a hall lined with doors to the office at the far end. When Gideon knocked, Mel immediately said, “Come on in.”
Mel was seated behind her desk, and Devlin lounged against her bookcase, his arms crossed. Mel turned and smiled at Alex. “Have a seat.” She nodded at Devlin.
“Wolf, you’re with me,” Devlin said. “Let’s go to my office.”
Alex shot him a questioning look, and Gideon touched her arm. “More efficient than one person taking both of our statements.” But he knew Mel was separating them so that Alex could be frank.
And he could be frank with Dev.
He glanced over his shoulder at Alex as he left the room, but she was already studying Mel. He didn’t have to worry about her being intimidated or nervous. She’d kept her wits about her during a harrowing trip. Talking to Mel? Piece of cake.
He followed Dev into his office and dropped into one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. Devlin threw himself into his fancy desk chair and leaned back. “Tell me what happened, Wolf.”
Gideon started with dropping the tracker into Alex’s bag, then talked about his meeting with Trotter. It took about twenty minutes to recount everything that had happened after that, including his encounter with the Russians at the Parkside Motel in Boughton.
Dev raised his eyebrows at the mention of the Russians. “How the hell are the Russians involved?”
So Gideon laid out what he’d deduced, and what Trotter had told him. “The idiot was skimming money he was laundering. For the Bratva, I suspect,” he added. “They figured it out, of course, and they want their money back. So he took out a big insurance police on Alex, then hired me to kill her. Paid me a total of seventy thousand dollars so far, with another fifty thousand due when it’s done. Fifty was up front, in cash. Then he called me after I’d told him not to, and I made him pay an additional twenty thousand.” He smiled at Dev. “Most of the money is in the business’s account in the Cayman’s. Trotter wouldn’t have bought my identity as a shadowy assassin for hire if the account wasn’t somewhere with lax banking laws.”
He smiled. “I kept enough for expenses on the road.”
“Yeah,” Dev said. “I saw it and transferred it to our account in Seattle. Good thinking to use that one.” He leaned toward Gideon. “What are you going to do about the guys who shot at you? And Trotter?”
“I was hoping you and Mel might have some ideas. They won’t get inside the fence, but we can’t stay here forever. Alex has a law practice she needs to get back to, and I’m sure you’ll have more jobs for me. In the meantime, I’m going to keep digging into Rudy Kramer at the FBI. I think he’s dirty, and he’s probably in the Bratva’s pocket.”
Devlin scowled. “Yeah, good use of your time here while we figure out what to do with Trotter and the Russians. Nice work on this case. It’s always good when the client is safe and no one’s injured.”
