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“What do we know about the dentist?” I asked.
“He’s on the up-and-up,” Alder reported. “And this falls on her six-month, routine-visit schedule.”
“One thing has popped, though,” Sparks said. She nodded to Jensen, who pulled up an image of a fitness club in Silver Spring. “Armand has been going here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon since a few weeks after we rescued her.”
I glanced at Martin, remembering a HEAT job we’d been on together in earlier days, before the existence of the Alpha Team. “Anything suspicious about it?”
“She takes a kickboxing class on Mondays and Wednesdays and works with a personal trainer every Friday,” Sparks said.
I couldn’t help picturing Ashlee with her curly hair hanging down her back, her skin glistening, her tight tank top and short shorts clinging to her curves as she punched and kicked and… I shifted in my seat refocused my attention on what Sparks was saying, “But…”—she glanced around the table, building the suspense—“every Wednesday, she gets a massage.”
Jesus, take the wheel. Now I could only picture Ashlee naked, lying on her back instead of her front.
“A once-a-week massage?” Li asked. “If her job is half as stressful as ours, that sounds about right.”
“I’m guessing something popped with the masseuse,” I said. My voice came out as a croak, and I took a sip of water. Thankfully, only Bond glanced at me.
Sparks shook her head, holding back a smile. “That’s just it. I can’t find any masseuse’s schedule that aligns with that appointment.”
“Just Ms. Armand in an empty room.” I glanced at Martin again. “Like the Kyiv job, where we met our contact in a health club steam room. Do we have security footage of anyone else entering the room while she’s there?”
“There are no cameras in that hallway,” Penn said. “We need someone on the ground.” He glanced at our tactical team.
“Not one of them,” I said. “Same problem as Saturday night. I don’t want Armand to recognize them from the party the night of her kidnapping or from her rescue. Since she’ll need to be monitored in the women’s locker room, as well, it’s Alder or Sparks.”
“I’ll need Alder analyzing data we can pull from any devices Armand or her contact have on them.” Jensen glanced at X. “Assuming we have warrants in place by then.”
Sparks grinned. “Looks like I have a day at the spa coming.”
“And we’re still sitting on our hands,” Li grumbled.
There are few operatives harder to manage than kick-ass adrenaline junkies like tactical team members when they’ve been sidelined.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll come up with something to keep you and Kessler busy.”
“We have a thought,” Kessler said, glancing at Li to indicate both of them. “Jensen and Alder have been using publicly available information to track the subcommittee senators and their staffers, but nothing actionable has come out of that. So, maybe we need to stir things up and create a little action.”
“I already hate the sound of this,” X said.
“I know it sounds reckless on the surface, but it gets better,” Li said. As a former Army sharpshooter and the daughter of a deeply respected Navy admiral, her pronouncements carried a gravitas that sometimes seemed lacking in her senior partner Kessler’s delivery, but the truth was, together they were a dynamic duo that held our team together.
“I’m willing to hear the plan.” I slid into a chair to avoid staring down at them as they spoke, a new technique I was trying that would foster a more collaborative atmosphere. That had been one of the bullshit, micromanaging suggestions of the subcommittee, one of the few I was actually willing to implement.
“Jensen can fake credentials to get us in anywhere,” Kessler continued. “Someone from our team can be at every event they host or attend, keep our eyes and ears open. It’s amazing what you can learn at those kinds of things, especially fundraisers where the booze is flowing.”
X pinched the bridge of her nose. “You want to build HUMINT dossiers on sitting US senators,” she said, referring to human intelligence, good old-fashioned spy craft. She sighed audibly, but she didn’t say no.
“Alder, can you build a program to analyze the data we need to set up a schedule of events and prioritize them?” I asked.
“On it,” she responded.
“I’ll check with the other teams and bring in some other tactical crews to carry the load,” X said.
The energy in the room shifted. For the first time in far too long, there was palpable excitement about the possibility that we could turn the tide of negativity.
“Anything else we can do to support the effort?” Penn asked.
X sighed again. “If you’re religious, pray. If you’re not, get religion.”
