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Rubbing her brow, she sat watching the late afternoon sun moving quietly through her large office window on the fifth floor of the skyscraper in downtown San Jose, capitol of the country. Allegra shook her head. Sky Lambert was clearly North American by her speech patterns. Who knew where Don Tobar came from? The servants were all Costa Rican from what she could observe.
Her phone rang.
“Yes, Maria?” She was the receptionist outside her office who took all incoming calls.
“Dr. Zapata, there is a call from a Don Tobar? He said it is urgent…”
Speak of the Devil…Allegra sighed. The man had called her at least three times a day since she’d examined Sky Lambert. She looked at her watch. It was 4:45p.m. In another fifteen minutes she would leave to go home to her family. Her husband, Jaime, was planning on taking her and their two young daughters to a picnic, a special outing for them. “Put him through, Maria.”
“Dr. Zapata?”
Why did her skin crawl? “Don Tobar?”
“Yes, Dr. Zapata. I’m inquiring about the results on Sky Lambert? I’ve called you repeatedly and your office assistant is a very unnecessary guard dog to reach you.”
“I haven’t yet received them. Tomorrow,” Allegra lied.
“I’m not a person accustomed to waiting, Doctor. You’ve tried my patience tremendously. I paid you well and I expect results quickly.”
“With all due respect, Don Tobar, I’m a very, very busy fertility specialist and I have many demands on my time. I promise, I’ll get to the lab reports tomorrow.”
“Very well.”
Allegra heard the growl in the man’s voice. Why did it feel like a warning? She placed the phone down in the cradle, concerned. Things just didn’t feel right about this case at all.
Cal was going through hundreds of photos from the satellite fly overs across Central America when Lauren and Alex entered the room. Looking up, he saw Lauren’s face was radiant, like a hunter who had located her prey. He sat back, expectant.
“What did you find?”
Lauren grinned and sat down at this left elbow. Alex sat opposite her. She slid some paper in front of him. “First, every call made from that area of Monte Verde Cloud Forest in northern Costa Rica, near the Arenal volcano, went to ONE phone number.” Triumphantly, she tapped the paper, the phone number on it. “They all went to a Dr. Allegra Zapata, an M.D. in San Jose.”
“What about the caller?” Cal demanded.
Alex roused himself. “All throw away phones. We cannot track any of them. There have been a total of sixteen calls in last two weeks to this doctor. Perhaps it is White Hawk? There was one encrypted phone call from that same GPS coordinate, and it wasn’t a throw-away cell phone. I am thinking it is from the same person.”
Cal rubbed his brow. “Who is this doctor?” he demanded. “Have you done any background checks on her?”
“She’s a fertility expert,” Lauren provided. She pulled more papers out and pushed them in front of Cal. “She’s clean. Dr. Zapata is a specialist in fertility. One of the head honchos in Central and South America.”
“Any law enforcement ties to her? Does she have ties to Russian mafia? Al-Qaeda? ISIS?”
Lauren shook her head. “She’s forty-five years old, a mother of two young daughters, is happily married to a rich businessman, Jaime Zapata. Allegra is considered one of the top ten world experts on infertility treatment.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Cal growled.
“No,” Alex said, “but I think we need to move a step closer to this woman.” He risked a look over at Lauren and then focused on Cal’s scowling face. “I suggest Lauren and I fly down to San Jose and check her out. We should have photos of Sky and Yerik Alexandrov that we can show her. If she positively identifies one or the other, then this is a genuine lead.” He saw Lauren’s brows drop, very unhappy with his suggestion. Holding up his hand, Alex argued passionately, “This COULD be our break, Cal. If we go down there and pose as a husband and wife with an infertility problem, we will be able to get in to see her. Once Dr. Zapata is in her office, we can show her the photos. We can verify if she has seen Sky.”
Cal rubbed his chin, giving Lauren a glance. She was glaring at the medic. “We have clues. Nothing solid.”
“This fertility expert,” Lauren said, her voice tight, “could have patients up in that region of northern Costa Rica. Maybe a patient in crisis? That would account for the phone calls, perhaps?”
Alex gave her a studied look. “My hunch tells me there is something to this.” He opened his hands. “If I walked in there alone to Dr. Zapata’s office, it would look suspicious, Lauren. You are the only woman on the team, and we would have to go there undercover. We will have to pose as man and wife, so it would not tip the doctor off. What we are really after is for her to verify she’s seen Sky or Alexandrov. That is all.”
Lips quirking, Lauren barely nodded. “That’s a three-day round trip,” she told Cal. “Can you really afford to have us gone that long? There’s so much intel to plough through here.”
“Hey,” Jack muttered. He was at another table with his laptop, his voice suddenly turning excited. “Holy shit, look at this! Get over here, now!”
All three of them walked over and huddled around Jack and his laptop.
