38
YOU KNOW THE DEAD RUSSIAN? How?” Mila said. She’d plugged the portable drive into her own computer and was looking at what I’d stolen from the thief Nic.
My voice felt thick. “The day of the bombing in London… I gave a presentation on a guy who we believed was tied to financing for international crime rings, ones that even reach into governments. We called him the Money Czar, a guy no one could put a finger on. Nothing on him, he was a blank slate; we only had the one picture and mentions of him by a couple of informants who ended up dead. This is the guy. This is the guy I was hunting, that I wanted to catch. I thought the scarred man might have been working to protect the Money Czar. Instead, the scarred man kills him.” I could hardly breathe, my chest felt cut from stone. “They killed my target. Who the hell are these people? What are they after? Why did they take my wife?”
Mila stared at me.
“This was no ordinary bombing,” I said. “This was a hell of a lot more. This was a murder. I need to go through everything we lifted off Nic’s laptop. I have to find a reason for him to bring me into the operation.”
“Then let’s find you one,” Mila said, leaning over the computer.