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They talked for a couple more minutes, ironing out details, but as soon as Alec hung up he let out a whoop of excitement that reverberated through his office, and he pumped his fist. “Yes!”
He reached for the phone to call Angelina but changed his mind. What he had to tell her could wait until he could tell her in person. But he had one other call he had to make. He dialed a number, tapping his pen impatiently against the desktop while he waited for the switchboard at the palace to answer. When they did, he said, “Trace McKinnon, please.”
Another minute passed before the phone was answered. “McKinnon.”
“Are you sitting down?” Alec asked him, not even bothering to identify himself.
“Should I be?”
“Hell, yeah. We’ve got her.”
Chapter 17
“Gone?” Aleksandrov Vishenko roared like a wounded lion to the brigadier who had dared to beard him in the lion’s den of his Manhattan apartment before his day had even properly started. “What do you mean she’s gone?”
“She is no longer in the detention center. Our sources say Nick D’Arcy of the agency intervened personally, and she has been spirited away—no one knows where.”
“Find out,” Vishenko hissed, furious that his prey had eluded him once again. Furious...and afraid. It was his worst nightmare come true—Caterina in the hands of the agency. It wasn’t just the evidence Caterina had stolen about his criminal activities, though that was bad enough. If anyone made the connection between David Pennington and him from years ago, he would never escape justice. “Find her,” he told his brigadier as fear clutched at his heart. “Find her now.”
* * *
The Zakharian Airlines plane landed in Denver only twenty minutes late, despite the snowstorm that threatened to shut down the airport.
Alec’s brother-in-law, Cody Walker, was waiting for them outside, and Alec was glad to see him. He introduced Angelina to Cody, but decided to keep the personal aspect of his relationship with Angelina to himself for the time being. Not that he wasn’t bursting to tell the world, but just as Angelina had wanted to keep their relationship secret for fear of being misjudged by her superiors, Alec didn’t want anything screwing up their interrogation of Caterina Mateja.
“Hotel first?” Cody asked as he and Alec threw the luggage in the back of Cody’s SUV. “Do you need to rest after the flight? Or do you want to go right to the safe house?”
“The safe house,” Angelina interjected before Alec could respond. “It has been eight years since I have seen my cousin.”
“You heard the lady,” Alec told Cody.
“Then the safe house it is.”
They’d only been driving for ten minutes when Cody said quietly, “Don’t look now, but we have company.”
Angelina’s right hand went inside her jacket, but then she gave Alec a stricken look. “My gun is in my luggage.”
He didn’t hesitate. He bent down and retrieved the spare SIG SAUER he carried in his ankle holster and handed it to her. Then he said to Cody, “You think they’re following you or us?”
“They weren’t following me to the airport,” Cody answered. “That much I can tell you for sure.”
“Then they’re following us. Maybe they’ve been following us since we left Zakhar, thinking we’ll lead them right to Caterina.” Alec thought for a moment. “You have someplace we can set a trap?”
Cody’s eyes met Alec’s in the rearview mirror. “You read my mind.” He tapped a button on his SUV’s steering wheel and the Bluetooth’s automated voice system answered.
* * *
Caterina Mateja sat on the piano bench in the living room of the safe house, picking out a tune from memory on the keys of the piano. She had not played the piano for more than eight years, but somehow, when she sat down, it was as if her fingers had a memory all their own. From Beethoven’s Für Elise, she moved right into one of her mother’s favorites—also by Beethoven—Moonlight Sonata. She hit a few wrong notes, wincing each time, but she managed to put remarkable feeling into the overall piece, and the couple guarding her—who’d introduced themselves to her as Dara and Walt Barron—exchanged speaking glances.
“That was beautiful, Cate,” Dara said gently when she was finished.
Cate shrugged her shoulders. She had not spoken a single word since she’d been brought to this house, not even to ask why she was there. She’d spent a week in the ICE detention center, and all she’d told them there was the name on her ID card—Cate Jones. They’d tried to question her several times—for hours on end. But she had listened to their questions in stony silence and never answered.
