She nodded, but he could tell from the tension in her body that warning was way the hell too late. He was still worrying about that when he rejoined the group.
Angel stood up, putting a few images on the smart screen. “So about those silos. I did some digging. Colorado has its share of active silos, but it also has a large number of decommissioned ones, those were mostly built in the late sixties, like the one under the WKB compound. They stretch for miles in an almost straight line from north of the airport to south of Colorado Springs. Really, along the whole front range, like every ten miles. Some of them have been sold to private owners. Some are abandoned but are still on the government’s books. Some have dropped off the record completely.” He clicked a button and red dots showed up where the old silo sites were. “These were the ones I could find record of.”
A frisson scraped Kelan’s spine. “Can you overlay the arena where I fought?”
Angel did. “Here’s the farmhouse Fee called us from, and here’s that garage with the auto lift in it. I don’t have the coordinates for the exit Rocco and Jafaar used, but I bet it’s somewhere in this line.” His map showed a silo beneath the garage.
“Who owns the farmhouse?” Kelan asked.
“Same company who owns the arena and the garage.”
Kelan realized now that all the trees and the shrubs surrounding the arena weren’t to keep it cool in the summer or provide windbreaks; they were for privacy from the ground and air. “Who owns that silo?”
“That’s one of the ones that have dropped off the books. It’s not on DoD’s list, and it’s not on the EPA’s list of superfund sites.”
“Good work, Angel,” Kit said. “Do some more digging to find out where and when that silo and any others dropped out of the system. See if there was any remediation work done. Find the original plans for the site. Selena, give him a hand. Greer—dig into the company. I want to know everything there is to know about them—who they are, what they do, who works for them. And I want to know about this Erick Ansbach that King wanted Fiona to marry. If they engineered him, anyone who’s connected with him may be of interest to us. Rocco, Blade, Val, and I will crack open Bladen’s library.”
“Blade, let your dad know we’re getting into the boxes. He wanted to be here for that,” Owen said.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mandy stepped quietly to the doorway of the third bedroom in the suite she shared with Rocco and Zavi. Zavi’s smallpox vaccination still had a beige Band-Aid on it, but it no longer seemed to trouble him. The doctor was coming up to the house later to give Wynn her vaccination.
The two of them were sitting at a small table discussing the alphabet. The bedroom had been transformed into a cute classroom, with a couple of tables in different heights, a big whiteboard, and bookshelves filled with fun stories. Zavi even had a cubby where he could keep his schoolwork organized.
It all looked so ordinary, as if the room had never housed Rocco’s dark retreat. The closet was empty now. She wondered where he had moved his secret nest. He seemed to need ever more alone time since she’d told him about the baby.
Zavi saw her and his face lit up. “Hi, Mandy!”
“Hi, baby. How are things going?” she asked Wynn.
“Wonderfully. We’re learning about each other. Zavi’s showing me all the things he knows.”
“I know a lot,” Rocco’s boy assured her.
Mandy smiled. “You are the brightest boy I know. Are you hungry? Kathy has lunch served up.”
“Yes! Miss Wynn said we can go for a swim after lunch.” Zavi hurried over to take her hand.
“I think it’s time we introduced Miss Wynn to the rest of the team.” She looked down at Zavi. “Would you like to do that?”
He nodded. “It’s important. We’re a very big family now.”
“We are indeed.”
*
Wynn followed Zavi and his stepmom downstairs. The closer they came to the dining room, the louder things got. Men’s voices, deep and rich, laughing. Softer women’s voices. She was curious about the group and what they did. The house was big and rambling, lavishly decorated. Rocco and Mandy had been able to put together a perfectly equipped classroom for her work with Zavi. And the furnished apartment they’d provided her over the garage was even nicer than the one she rented in Cheyenne.
What did the people here do that made such an environment possible? She’d done a comprehensive internet search for Zavi’s parents. Other than some obituaries regarding Mandy’s parents and grandparents, she’d found an article about Mandy’s plans for her hippotherapy center…and its subsequent explosion from a faulty gas line. So sad. She found nothing on Zavi’s dad, but that didn’t surprise her, since he’d been serving overseas for a while.
She researched Tremaine Industries, too, but didn’t find anything other than their company website. She looked up the company’s founder and CEO, Owen Tremaine, but only learned that he had no social media presence, which for a man who headed a company like his wasn’t surprising.
Perhaps the most important element of her research into her new employer and living situation was the fact that they clearly weren’t wanted by the FBI or anyone. That gave her some small comfort. Hopefully, they weren’t associated with any crime families who knew just how to keep a low profile in a technology-driven world.
She felt her nerves tighten as they stepped into the huge dining room. Zavi took her hand, then stepped up onto the chair at the head of the table. She thought about correcting him about standing on the furniture, but his parents were there, and no one else in the room seemed to mind.