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“Why did they travel with families?”
Ovianar cast a look at Conor. “A trust exercise otherwise nobody would have shown up. They brought their families along because—”
“No one thought they’d kill their wives and children,” D intoned grimly.
“No honor among thieves,” was all Ovianar said. “But some of the six were faces we see on the news. Politicians. I guess they figured they were safe because you know what the US is like. You can barely be a politician without a spouse at your side. Kids just pretty up the family image.”
“Go on,” I demanded. “What happened?”
“There were complications from the start. There were definite trust issues, especially withourtarget. He traveled in a separate car from his children so that made it easier for us.
“Dagda shot the father but he clipped the driver. They crashed into the car in front. When the secondary car took off, we knew we had to follow because if it got back to our director that we’d let the kids live, they’d add an extra year to our sentences as punishmentandsend someone out to kill them anyway.
“I was tracking the cars so Dagda managed to follow them, but the driver was good at his job. They almost got away but there was a head-on collision. The driver and one of the kids were killed. The girl, well, Dagda took her in. We had barely any time to deal with her but we knew we had to do something.
“After you took off, we didn’t stop investigating the Sparrows. We’d managed to uncover some of their transactions before I got arrested. Not much, but…” She shot me a wary look. “There was a shipping manifesto. I didn’t have time to think. I just acted. I doctored the manifesto, put the kid’s mother on there, and set it on sale on Silk Road.”
“I asked Thyme to pass you the link,” Minerva admitted.
My brow puckered as the memory lifted. Conor had asked me how I’d found the manifesto among thousands of other listings and I genuinely hadn’t been able to remember how. “I’m surprised she was willing to help.”
“She did it for me,” Minerva intoned darkly.
“Thyme as in the hacker who shut down the power grid at Svalbard?”
I nodded at Conor’s question. “That’s her. She’s whacko. She thinks there’s a portal to another planet there.”
“Never meet your heroes,” he muttered under his breath.
“Dagda didn’t have much time but he took the girl to a church and offered the priest a donation to take her in and drop her off with social services a few days later.
“For something that we cooked up under pressure, it still stuns the shit out of me that it worked. Especially because I kept my eye on her and I knew they were hunting her in the foster care system. I’d have left her there if I thought it’d keep her anonymous, but they were sniffing around—”
“How do you know?”
“I put checks on her file in social services. The girl’s records were accessed by too many people, some high-ranking officials at that. It was odd. Dagda and I agreed that we needed to put her somewhere safe.
“That was whenyoucame to mind. I knew you’d protect her, knew you’d love her like she needed to be loved and would help her get over what had happened to her. I’m guessing you have, otherwise you wouldn’t be here now. Is she in danger?”
My mouth tightened as I folded my arms across my chest. Ignoring her question, I stated, “She wasn’t in the car alone.”
“I know you’re fostering her. I recognized your alias—”
“I’m asking the goddamn questions,” I snarled.
Ovianar bowed her head. “Her cousin was with her. He was with Bogdan because the kid was his ‘heir.’ Never seen Dagda so cut up in my life when he found the dead boy. He’s like a robot when he’s on the job. After he’d settled the kid at the church, he came back to our motel room and he cried.”
Reaching up to rub my temples, I muttered, “She’s never mentioned any of this.”
“Retrograde amnesia?” D queried.
“Maybe. She was fucked up when I got her. The trauma… it would explain a lot.”
My poor little girl.
Misery twisted inside me, making me wish she were close by so I could give her a hug. So I could try to make this better. But, for all my concern, Kat was fine now. The nightmares still happened from time to time but there hadn’t been a bed-wetting incident in years.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t a ticking time bomb.
