“I love that you want to be here, and so does Zach, and you are always our main source of nourishment, but…”
“But what?” He gave a classic Uncle Nino wave of his hand. “Ehhh? I’m too old to be a Guardian Angelino?”
“No, not too old.” Guilt warred with irritation as he entered the office without waiting for an invitation, lifting the corner of the dish cover to let a tantalizing and wonderfully familiar aroma of oregano and freshly crushed tomatoes fill the room. “Want some?”
“Am I human? Of course.”
He snapped the lid back on and gave her a not-quite-yet look, then jutted his chin toward the desk drawer. “Whatdya hide in there?”
Her jaw slackened. “What makes you think I hid something?”
“Viviana.” He drew her name out, all displeased and Italian. “This is Nino you’re talking to. I heard you when I walked in. Little gasp, scrapy scrape into the drawer, fake smile. You’re hiding something.”
She let out a quick laugh. “That’s good, Uncle Nino. That’s really good. You could be an Angelino yet.”
His face said “no shit” but he just asked, “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He lifted the dish and pulled it away like a petulant child. “No parmigiano for you.”
She snorted softly, fighting a smile. And the need to share her plans with someone. Zach wouldn’t like it. Marc wouldn’t like it. But Nino? The jigsaw man? Her pulse kicked up a notch. He might do more than like it. He might solve it.
“Uncle Nino,” she said conspiratorially. “What would you think if the Guardian Angelinos brought in Finn MacCauley?”
He lifted his big salt-and-pepper brows, wrinkling his forehead all the way back to his balding crown. “I think I’d get a Viking stove in that little break room.”
“Exactly!” She snapped and pointed to him. “It would be such a coup that we’d be turning away clients.”
He pointed to the desk. “Is he in that drawer?”
“Part of him is.” She sat down slowly and inched the drawer open. “Look what I found down in North Carolina.”
She’d only reconstructed about three-fourths of the torn paper, stymied by the fact that so many pieces didn’t fit, and some were clearly missing.
But she had enough to know Finn MacCauley and Sharon Greenberg were on a first-name basis, and he wanted something from her, bad.
There was a reference to the year 2009, which told her the correspondence was fairly recent.
Nino put the dish on the credenza and sidled around her desk, dragging one of the director’s chairs with him so they could sit side by side. Gingerly, she took out a spiral notebook and opened it to the page where she’d been laying out the pieces of the torn letter. She also had the envelope she’d taken from Dr. Greenberg’s house and tapped it so that the remaining twenty or so shreds tumbled out. Some were a half inch in diameter, some even smaller.
She explained where she’d found it and brought Nino completely up to date on who Sharon was, how much they knew about her, and what Devyn was doing in Northern Ireland. While she talked, Nino began to finger the pieces.
Like he did with his thousands of jigsaw puzzles, he turned each one round and round, studying it and the possible places for it.
“I have a few complete sentences, see?” She pointed midpage where she’d been able to match all the words.
There’s no one else I’d trust this with but you, Sharon. You have that special…
“Do you think they’re still in love?” Vivi asked.
Nino just shook his head, not speaking. He never did when he went into the puzzle zone.
At the bottom, she still had the Best, Finn piece, which struck her as an odd way to sign off a love letter. And she had money will be astounding, at least four…
That line really intrigued her.
Nino reached for a random slip that had come out of the envelope, then lifted it. Some pieces had to be missing; some were just so small it was impossible to figure out where they fit. But she had enough to know that Finn MacCauley was very much alive, and had, as recently as 2009, communicated with Dr. Sharon Greenberg. About love and money.
After all, what else was there?
“Look at this,” Nino said quietly, lining up three pieces.
They’ll put you through some tests and make sure you’ve got
“Oh,” Vivi exclaimed, reaching for the one sizeable piece that said what it takes.
“Look at that,” Nino said softly. “Big sentence. And what’s this?” He twirled another piece that had part of a word—tox.
“Toxic?” Vivi asked.
“Hello?” The greeting was accompanied by a hard rap on the lobby door as it opened. “Ms. Angelino? Are you here?”
She bit her lip and jumped up. “Jesus K, it’s the client. Quick, put this away.”
“You’re not going to show him?” Nino looked up in surprise.
“Ms. Angelino?” Lang was coming toward the office.
“Hang on, just finishing a call,” she hollered. Then, in a whisper, “No, I don’t want him to see this. He’ll be all over it, taking away any chance for our moment of glory.”
Nino gave her a chastising look.
“Nino!” she cried softly. “Not until we’ve finished it. That way it’ll be so much more impressive.”
“I’ll finish it,” he said quietly. “Go handle the client.”
She shot him a grateful smile and popped around his chair and out into the hall. Lang was already on his way back, moving like he owned the place.
Well, he was their only client.
“Hello, Assistant Special Agent.” She grinned, closing the door with two hands behind her. “Did I get it right?”
“Hello, Vivi.” He added a just-this-side-of-seductive smile. “You forgot the ‘in charge’ part.”
“How could I?” She smiled, pointing at Zach’s far more impressive office. “Let’s go in here. My brother’s out.”
“Does he have a new assignment?”
Yeah, buying a house. She didn’t answer and slipped around him to snag Zach’s chair behind the desk, wanting a little position of power with this man. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like a full status report on Marc’s progress.”
“I was just putting that together,” she said. “It’s a real… jigsaw puzzle.”
He frowned, his hazel eyes taking on a green hue today, thanks to a dark green polo shirt pulled just tightly enough to show off his broad shoulders. A golf shirt. Of course Lang would be a golfer. Dull, precise, plodding along the fairway of life.
“How is it a puzzle?” he asked.
“Well, it’s all just very small bits and pieces of information.” Some less than an inch. “You know, communication is shaky sometimes, and with the time difference, we don’t hear from him every single day. But he does try to call in every evening.”
“Before I forget.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded business-sized envelope. “Some money toward the advance for expenses as promised.”
Her heart danced. “Thank you.”
“Call him.”
“Now?” Her dancing heart tripped. The possibilities for disaster loomed large.
“This minute.”
There was no arguing with this guy, was there? “I can try, sure. Let’s see, it’s about six o’clock there. We could try to reach him.”
“He carries a cell phone.”
“Of course.” She flipped hers off her belt loop and hit speed dial, half hoping for voice mail. “Let me just tell him you want to talk to him.”
He leaned forward, reaching for the phone. Instead of taking it, he put strong fingers on her wrist and lowered her arm. “Put it on speaker, and don’t tell him I’m here.”
Resentment made her recoil. “Sorry, Mr. Lang. We don’t work like that around here.”
“From the looks of this place, you don’t work at all around here. Unless”—he sniffed lightly—“you c
all making spaghetti work.”
She gave him a hard look. “It’s parmigiano.” Not that a white-bread guy like Lang would appreciate the difference. “And I’d rather be completely open with Marc and tell him you’re here.”
“Don’t.” The single syllable command was clear and unequivocal. “Dial and hit speaker.”
She did, just as Marc answered with, “I’ll call you back.” He was breathless, air whooshing over the receiver as though he were running.
“Now,” Lang mouthed.
“Now,” Vivi repeated. “We need a status report, stat.”
Did Marc pick up the we? Lang did. He gave her a dark look of warning.
“We are in a fucking hornet’s nest, Vivi.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, wishing he’d sense her odd reaction was a sign that they weren’t on the phone alone.
He didn’t answer for a minute, mumbling something, then, “No, just hold the gun. Use it if you have to and run faster!”
Vivi and Lang exchanged a long look, his gaze a mix of horror and what-the-fuckery. Marc was supposed to be taking this woman to dinner, convincing her to leave Belfast, if not the country, not running with guns.
“Where are you running off to, Marc?” she asked, keeping her voice calm.
“Jesus, Vivi, I can’t talk now. I only answered on the off chance this was Gabe returning a nine-one-one I just put in to him.”
Lang stared her down.
“Gabe?” Getting his brother on the phone would be like pinning down a ghost. Why would he want Gabe? “What’s going on that you’re trying to reach Gabe?”
“The kind of shit that Gabe knows about,” he said.
Lang was pretty much annihilating her with narrowed, accusing eyes, a little vein jumping in his muscular neck.
On the phone, a long pause, then, “There, the car, Dev. Get in, now.”
“What is going on, Marc?”
The answer was an engine and squealing tires.
“Vivi, listen to me,” Marc said.
She braced for anything, holding Lang’s gaze. “What is it?”
“Get me anything you have, anything at all, on a guy named Liam Baird.”
Lang tried not to react, but she picked up a very subtle widening of his eyes, and the vein in his neck went ballistic.
She grabbed a pencil and a small notepad from Zach’s desk. “B-a-i-r-d?” she asked.
“No clue. Just look up every permutation. Find out who the hell he is and why the MI5 would want him.”
The MI5? “You mean, like British intelligence?”
Lang whipped the phone up, putting it to his mouth despite the speaker. “Rossi!”
Silence.
“This is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Colton Lang speaking.”
More silence.
“Listen to me, and get every word. You had a simple, clear-cut, safe assignment when you left this office. One woman, one name, one easy job to get her the fuck out of there. What in God’s name is going on there?”
The background sounds died instantly, and the silence was no longer a dumbstruck Marc but a dead connection.
“Son of a bitch,” Lang muttered, throwing the phone down and looking hard at Vivi. “You get him back on that phone, and you tell him that whatever he’s doing, wherever he is, whoever he thinks he’s found”—he leaned forward, slicing her in half with a look of pure power and command—“he needs to stop. Is that clear?”
She nodded.
He snapped the sheet off the pad with the word “Baird” on it, and balled the paper in his hand. “And if I were you, I’d forget you ever heard that name.”
He stuffed the paper in his pocket and left. She didn’t move until the front door opened and closed, her heart clumping against her ribs. She picked up the phone to call Marc, heading back to her office to make the call with Uncle Nino at her side.
When she walked in, he looked up from the puzzle of Finn’s letter to Sharon, much further completed than when she’d left. He was just putting two pieces together, nodding. “Now that sounds right.”
“What sounds right, Nino?”
He looked up. “The name Liam Baird. So Irish. Mean anything to you?”
CHAPTER 22
Marc hung up on Colton Lang only because his caller ID showed a much more important name. The chances of getting Gabriel Rossi on the phone were slim to none, and right that minute, he could get more information out of his deeply connected, black ops, super-spy younger brother than the FBI agent who was screaming in his ear.
“Make it fast,” Gabe said as a greeting.
“Got any MI5 connections?”
Gabe just snorted. Yeah, Marc thought so. “How about a guy named Liam Baird?” he asked.
“I’ll look into it. Anything else?” No wasted words with Gabe.
Marc tucked the phone against his shoulder and reached out his hand. Reading the silent request, Devyn gave him the ID card they’d taken from the man in the bell tower. “Does the name Nigel Sutton mean anything to you?”
“No more than John Fucking Doe,” Gabe said. “That’s standard-issue SIS no-name identification. They’re all named Nigel Sutton when they get captured. Where the hell are you anyway?”
“Enniskillen.”
“Northern Ireland?” Gabe sounded surprised. “Well, no wonder. Every other guy in that place’ll be named Nigel Sutton. It’s a hotbed of SIS activity. A clearinghouse for British spooks. What the hell are you doing there?”
“Long story.”
“You in trouble?” Gabe asked. He might be younger by two years, but he was a protector, and the tone of concern came through in just a few words. “ ’Cause I’m not”—he hesitated—“that far away. Same side of the world anyway. I can be there in less than a day.”
“I’m good, but stay reachable.”
“No promises, dude.”
“You on a job?” Marc asked.
“I’m on a chick, and you’re interrupting me.” He heard the smile in Gabe’s voice. “But I could be persuaded to fly to Belfast if you need me.”
“Just get me everything you can on Baird, and get it fast.” Marc glanced at Devyn, next to him in the passenger seat of the rental. She wrapped her arms around her middle, a slight tremor vibrating her slender form. “I really need something concrete on what he’s doing and where he is. I need an address, near Milltown.”
“If he’s in Milltown, brother, he’s dead.”
“I know, but where in the area he’d be. What’s it called, the Falls Road? West of the city.”
“Gimme some time. I’ll get back to you.”
And just like that, Gabe was gone. Still holding the phone, Marc considered calling Vivi back, but he didn’t want to deal with Lang right that minute. From his standpoint, this assignment was a bust. He tossed the device onto the console and checked out the rearview mirror again.
“Anyone following us?” Devyn asked.
“Not at the moment. We can go back to the inn and figure out a plan.”
“Can’t we go straight to Milltown?”
He shot her a look, bracing for the fight. “No. We’re not going to Milltown.”
“Then why did you just ask someone for an address where Liam Baird could be? And your cousin for information on him?”
“Because I’m an investigator first and foremost,” he shot back. “I move with information. The only information I have now is that we’ve just walked into a land mine, and I don’t want to get blown up.”
“Who were you just talking to? I thought it was Vivi, then you took another call.”
He hesitated a minute. Gabe lived a top secret existence. Only the family knew what he did, and some of them, like their mother, didn’t know all of it. “My brother,” he finally said. “He’s pretty connected.”
“With MI5?”
“With the CIA, which puts him in the same line of work, with access to a lot of information.”
She pushed deeper into the seat.
“Yo
u cold?” He flipped on the heater and got a blast of warm air.
She didn’t answer but looked out the window. “In a million years, I can’t imagine why Sharon would be involved in anything like this. She’s a science nerd.”
“You really know nothing about her, Dev.”
“I know…” She hesitated, obviously not able to answer that. “I know I don’t. But at least, whatever she’s doing, maybe she’s not Dr. Evil after all.”
“But you still want to risk your life to find her? Even though every person we run into over here seems to think that is a very bad idea?” He heard how harsh his voice was, but he didn’t care. At some point, she had to back off. “You have no idea what she’s doing, other than it involves some pretty dangerous people.”
She turned away completely, shutting him out, silent as they arrived at the tiny inn, parked the car, and slipped into their room, which had an outdoor entrance.
The minute he locked the door behind them, she headed to the bathroom. But before she entered, she turned to him.
“Here’s the thing, Marc,” she said suddenly, as if she’d been holding the thought in for the entire drive and simply couldn’t wait another minute to speak her mind. “You have this big amazing family who are all just one phone call away from saving your life. You have parents you know and trust and… and a childhood that was probably like a damn Norman Rockwell painting.”
“Not exactly Rockwell.”
She just waved off the comment. “You have skills and jobs—more than one, if I understand correctly. And you have purpose. You’ve never known what it’s like to belong to no one, to have no real reason for being on this earth, no connection to anyone, anywhere.”
No, he certainly didn’t. “Surely you have connections to people. Friends, the parents who raised you, someone.”
She let out a soft, rueful laugh. “My parents are like robots. The house was gloomy, the conversations were distant, the love was… Well, Hewitts don’t show affection.”
“So that’s what you’re looking for from your mother?” he asked. “A purpose for living? Some maternal affection? You’re willing to risk your life and the lives of others for that?”