Ironclad Cover

“Of course not.” Anita, gracious as always, met him halfway and took the mail.

He gave Brant the once-over then threw Anita a questioning look. She shook her head with a barely repressed grin.

“Goodbye, then.” He was pouting as he walked away.

Brant rubbed his hand over his face. He didn’t even want to know what that was about.

“What do we know about the assault weapon?” Gina asked once the door was closed behind the guy.

“A nine millimeter handgun. I’ll know more when the paperwork on the bullet comes back.”

“Tsernyakov?” Gina threw out the name.

“That would be bad news all around.” They weren’t anywhere near Tsernyakov yet. If he had somehow been tipped off about the mission, the women would be sitting ducks. The safest thing to do would be to evacuate them as soon as possible. Which would end the mission.

Damn, but he didn’t like that option. As little chance as he thought the women had of succeeding, he had no better ideas just now. They had put too many resources and too much effort into this to abort before seeing the operation to the end.

And they had made some progress. They had formed something that was beginning to resemble a team. They had identified a handful of possible links to their main target. If they could figure out who the true connection was to Tsernyakov they could get close enough to him maybe to get a location on the man, which would be more than any unit trusted with his capture had ever been able to accomplish.

Except, that now there was the extra complication of the shooter. Who was he? And what did he want?

“Any enemies?” He looked at Anita.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“How about your family? They know you’re out, right?” Gina’s and Anita’s families had been told the women had been released and entered into some kind of rehabilitation program where they weren’t allowed visitors for now. Carly and Sam had no close family who needed notification. “They must be ticked off over the money.”

Anita looked uneasy as she glanced at the other women, then at him. “No,” she said that too fast, as if wanting to close the subject.

What was the matter? Hadn’t she told the others that she’d stolen from the family business? Pellegrino’s was one of the largest construction companies in the state of Maryland, all of it family owned and operated. He watched her as she brought her expression under control. You wouldn’t know that she was a thief by looking at her. Beautiful on the outside, treacherous on the inside. Now why did that sound familiar?

Probably because he’d gone down that road before.

“I have an off-site consult today,” she said, probably looking for an excuse to leave.

“Cancel it.”

“Could be the shooter was connected to Cavanaugh,” Sam remarked from the reception desk. “Maybe someone connected to him picked up on Anita following him at that party or whatever.”

Samantha Hanley, the youngest member of the team at twenty-one, wore nothing but black and had a fair number of facial piercings. Small scars around her eyebrows indicated that even now she was holding back for the sake of the professional image she was supposed to be projecting.

“Like Michael Lambert,” Gina said.

“No, I don’t think so.” Anita shook her head.

Sam shrugged. “I mean, it’s an option, but not likely. I think in that case someone would have caught her and questioned her. You know, like what she wanted, who she worked for kind of stuff. Probably wouldn’t want to take her out without getting some explanation out of her first.”

“Correct,” Brant said. But he was going to look into it anyway. And he was definitely going to look into Michael Lambert. He had already sent off a request to his office for a full background check on the man.

“You stay put for now,” he said to Anita.

“If we cancel work every time something happens, we will never catch Tsernyakov.” Gina was watching him. “It’s a dangerous mission. Stuff is going to keep happening. Right?”

Gina Torno was a tough one. He supposed she had had to be. Being a cop was no cakewalk and being an ex-cop in prison was downright hazardous to a person’s health. But Gina had made it through—although, not without some scars.

She was right about the mission. He just hadn’t expected something like assassination attempt to start happening this fast. First Carly and now Anita. Were the two connected? If not, it was a hell of a coincidence. And yet, as Gina had pointed out, they were working a risky case. Incidents were going to happen, dangerous incidents because they were entering increasingly dangerous situations. And that was exactly why they were here. He had known the score from day one. And so had they.

“I’ll go with her,” Gina offered.

He took a slow breath and considered that option. He would have preferred going with Anita himself, but if one of Tsernyakov’s men was watching her, it wouldn’t be smart for him to spend too much time with her, risking them identifying him. Tsernyakov had connections, “bought men,” in just about every branch of law enforcement in every country that counted, the reason why they needed a team with a one-hundred-percent authentic criminal background, an unbreakable cover. “Okay,” he said. “Be careful.”

It was good for Anita and Gina to work together. The whole idea had been to forge the women into a team that could handle anything. He had to trust these two enough to let them head off to a business meeting in broad daylight.

He looked at Anita. “Mind if I use your office while you’re gone?”

The look of panic that flashed across her face was quickly covered up with a forced smile.

“Of course. Let me gather up a few things for the meeting.”

“I’ll grab my bag,” Gina said on her way out as she passed him.

He stayed and kept his eyes on Anita as she rummaged through the files on her desk. She wore a light suit that covered considerably more of her than the silk gown she’d worn the night before. Her hair was pinned back. She had the tight look of business efficiency. He tried not to linger on her red stiletto sandals or her toes that were tipped with matching shiny red polish. She glanced up at him and smiled again, and he got the distinct feeling that she was playing for time, waiting for him to step out.

Not a chance, he thought as he willed his gaze not to return to her legs. Not a complete victory as his attention was now captured by her full lips. Man, he was a fool. Women always smiled the sweetest when they were trying to screw you over the worst.

HE HADN’T PLANNED on tossing her office, but once she was gone, the idea that something was off wouldn’t leave him. He glanced through her files. Nothing jumped out. Nothing on her desk, either, or in her drawers. She was neat and orderly—that was about all the information he gained.

The space she created fit her. It even smelled like her—some exotic scent that included Caribbean fruit.

He plugged in his laptop and read through his e-mail, thought about asking Nick to scan through hers. Thinking of the devil, Nick Tarasov had forwarded some background info on Xiau Lin whom he still hadn’t located, although he had found some kind of a trail. Brant sent that file to the printer, but nothing happened. Out of paper. He grabbed a handful from the cardboard box under the desk and refilled the tray. As he did so, the printer moved a half an inch, revealing the corner of a dark blue folder.

Damn. He pulled it out, looked at the shiny new cover for a second or two without opening it. She wouldn’t have hid it unless she was doing something she didn’t want anyone to know about.

He wouldn’t have minded being wrong about Anita, but he wasn’t surprised. She had betrayed her family. And family should have been everything to her. It certainly was that to him. He couldn’t imagine any of his sisters doing something like she had.

He read through the papers inside, press releases about Pellegrino’s, about some of her family members who were now running the business: her two brothers, her younger sister, her brother-in-law. There were a couple of financial statements, too, and other stuff—calculations.

On what?

Then it hit him.

She was, at the moment, the managing director of a consulting firm that did money laundering on the sly. If she hadn’t before, now she sure knew all about that subject. Hell, the FBI had trained her on it.

Brant slapped the folder shut and swore.

She was working on accessing the four million dollars she had embezzled and hidden and was getting ready to wash it squeaky clean. She was manning her own operation, probably thinking of skipping the second she had everything in hand.

Not if he had anything to say about it.

Chapter Three

She was out of prison.

He rubbed the headache at his temple. She was out and at the worst possible time. And she had lied. Whatever she was doing, this was not some government program to help her to readjust to society after her years of incarceration.

Where had she gotten the car from, the apartment and the job? He had expected some halfway house where he could get to her easily, where there’d be a bunch of other ex-cons and weapons and drugs, so when her body was found, not much would be questioned.

Instead, here she was in the Caribbean, as high and mighty as she had ever been, with another company and employees and money. What game was she playing?

And who was her guy? They’d left the party together, drove to the ritzy part of the island and parked. Probably making out. He should have taken care of her then and there. Maybe both of them. But it had been dark and to top it off the car had tinted windows. He didn’t want to miss.

So he had waited until they were at the restaurant, all lit up, and he had missed anyway. And then they disappeared. He’d spent the rest of the night in front of her apartment, waiting for her to come home as anger and frustration boiled in his guts.

She wasn’t going to let the last four years go. She would investigate, had started already, the alarms he had set in place had been going off one after the other.

He had to get to her before she got to him. It was as simple as that.

SAM WAS SLAPPING STAMPS on a stack of envelopes at the front desk as Anita walked in the door, back from her business meeting that was likely to net them another contract, but was—thank God—uneventful otherwise. No sign of the shooter from the night before.

Gina, who had reassured her that as far as she could tell they hadn’t been watched or followed, passed her and went straight for the bathroom. They’d been circling the block for a parking place for nearly thirty minutes.

They needed to make contact with Cavanaugh. The weekly paper she had read in the car on the way back gave her an idea the other three women were likely to resist. Not that it would stop her from trying.

“The coffee vendor brought some flavored coffees and I made the Italian Delight. You’ve gotta try this,” Sam said as she worked. “We’re on our second pot.”

The way she angled her head had a familiar slant to it and déjà vu hit Anita with a pang of homesickness so sharp it cut her off at the knees. She stopped and stood there, let it wash over her. Diosmio, how many times had she walked into her old office like that and been offered coffee by her sister? And Sam looked a little like Maria, too, around the eyes.

Was Maria still the first from the family to arrive to the office each morning? Dee, Anita’s ex-secretary, had always come in late and left late, an arrangement she’d been happy to make for the single mother who needed the flextime to work around her babysitter’s schedule. Dee worked for her brother, Rob, now.

Anita wondered if Dee was in love with him yet. Dee had the habit of falling in love with the men around her. Unfortunately, they tended to use her then discard her. She couldn’t remember how many times this had happened since she’d known the young woman. But Dee dusted herself off each time then tried again. Some people accused her of being promiscuous for going after so many men. But Anita understood what was behind it all—a deep-seated, desperate need for love that she was always trying to find in all the wrong places.

Rob wouldn’t take advantage of that. He simply wasn’t that kind of guy. And Dee wasn’t Rob’s type, in any case.

Roberto, her oldest brother, handled safety at Pellegrino’s. Maria, the youngest of the four siblings, did human resources. Nigel, Maria’s husband, headed sales. Chris, the middle brother, just a year younger than Anita, worked IT. Anita had been responsible for the finance department. The rest of the directors were outsiders, hired for their skills, well paid and well appreciated, but the family definitely formed the driving force behind the business. They wanted to keep it like that for as long as possible.

On any given day, family members who were in the office would have coffee together in the morning, catching up before heading off to their individual departments. Pellegrino’s was a beehive compared to Savall, the difference between an established company and a struggling new one.

Pellegrino’s had more than two dozen employees in the office alone, in addition to the hundred or so construction workers and specialists they employed. They worked on several projects at a time, mostly residential. The hours were murder, but she wouldn’t have traded her job for anything. Although, William, the last man she’d been semi-seriously seeing, had tried to talk her into quitting often enough. He’d been jealous of the time she’d spent at work. He never understood her—one of the reasons why they had broken up eventually. Still, the relationship hadn’t been a complete wash. Her sister, Maria, met William’s brother, Nigel, and the two were blissfully married to this day.

Nigel didn’t resent the company like William had, instead, he became part of it. He understood that Pellegrino’s meant family to them, especially to Anita.

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