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Erik rubs the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up higher as he considers my question.
“Shiloh!” he shouts.
A young woman with bright blue hair twisted into pinwheels on the top of her head appears. The overhead lights reflect off her eyebrow and nose rings.
“Yeah?” She rocks back on the heels of heavy black boots. Rips cover her jeans, and her loose, unbuttoned flannel partially hides a faded cropped t-shirt.
“Can you pull stock price history for Sullivan Arms for the past five years? And set up an alert. I want to be notified of any sharp swings in the stock moving forward.”
“Yep.” She shoves her hands in her front pockets.
“What?” Erik asks her.
“I don’t know if it means anything. But I’m working the deets on the company executives.”
Erik tilts his head at her and gives her a wilting look. Patience isn’t his strength. Since he’s normally up in Napa, I don’t often get to see him interact with his employees, but Shiloh appears unfazed.
“I got their photos off the company site. I ran facial recognition through the security footage, and a couple of these guys visit his house all the fucking time.”
“He works from home,” Erik says, and his fingers fall back to his keyboard.
“But there are a couple who come by when he’s not home. To the point I started wondering if, ya know, there might be a little reverse age gap going on. You know, back when we thought she might have run away. So, I started cataloging the dates. I don’t have names for all of the men, because, you know, they aren’t all board members, but I’m filing the unknowns by face. If you want to see. I mean, the super-frequent visitors…I doubt there was any romantic action. The age gap would be pretty massive.”
“Send me one photo of each unidentified visitor. We’ll send to Sullivan for identification.”
She spins on her heel and speeds out of the room.
“FBI will be getting involved.” Erik states this as fact and directs his attention to me. “We’ve got two dozen working this. Let me know when to pull them.”
“I’ve got an FBI contact stopping by this morning. We’ll show him what we have. We stay on it until we’re told otherwise. Let me call Sullivan again. When I called earlier, his friend Wayne answered. Said he made him shower.”
Trevor raps on the door. “Guys. We’ve got an issue.” He pauses, pointedly staring down Alex.
“It’s okay. She’s working with us,” I tell him. Although I should have Stella send her an NDA.
“One of our security details in Syria. Bomb. One hour ago. Jagger’s on a medivac. Critical condition. Our client is in a safe house, but the team is short. Stella is working on reassignments so we can get some coverage asap. I’m heading to Damascus.”
Jagger hadn’t been on my team, but we’d been over in Afghanistan at the same time.Fuck. We should have never debated staffing up the project.
“What happened?” I ask.
Nothing in Syria would be considered a cushy assignment, but as far as assignments go, providing security for the family of a CIA officer shouldn’t result in a tango with explosives.
“They were targeted. Not sure by who. I’m hearing AF.”
“Israeli forces?” Also known as the “men of silence,” AF are comparable to Navy SEALs, and they fight the war between wars on covert missions. If they wanted someone dead, then that sucked for the target. And the CIA officer would probably never share what he did to get placed on a hit list. The guy was supposed to be over there under cover as an expat businessman. Regardless, Arrow had a job to do. And an injured friend.
Stella, our HR director and Trevor’s girlfriend, wraps her arm around Trevor’s lower back. She peers up at him with concern and love.
“Backup is on the way to the safe house. Best I could do is commercial. We need to get you to the airport,” Stella updates Trevor.
Sending Trevor off into a dangerous situation when he has his first real relationship, the kind that could last fifty years, hits me wrong.
“I should be the one going,” I tell Trevor. “If we can get the FBI engaged today, then I could be on a plane tomorrow.”
“You’ve got your hands full. I’ve got this,” Trevor responds with characteristic aloofness. To Stella, he says, “I’ll send updates.”
“Don’t take any unnecessary risks,” I command. What I don’t tell him is to get his ass back home in one piece.
