“What kind of conversation?”
“One that includes you disliking the way I’m suffocating you, but I’m going to think on exactly what I want them to hear.” She’s twirling that compact again, nervous I think, or anxious, and I get to the point. “What do you want to know? Ask your questions.”
She straightens, setting the compact on the desk, and getting right to it. “You said Walker Security is run by three brothers?”
“Right. Royce, who’s ex-FBI, Luke, who’s ex-Navy SEAL, and Blake, who’s ex-ATF. Royce is in charge because, well, Royce decided he’s in charge. He’s gruff, direct, and thinks he’s always right, but he gets away with it, because he usually is. He’s also one of the best agents the agency ever saw and one of the best men I’ve ever known. ”
“And Luke?”
“The calm one. Steady Eddie and the peacekeeper in the family.”
“I’m afraid to ask what that means about Blake, if Luke’s the calm one.”
“Blake’s the wild one, for sure. He likes things fast, hard, and wild. He’s also solely responsible for my overuse of the word “Fuck”, considering he uses it like it’s a common vowel.”
That earns me a small smile. “That bad?”
“Yeah. That bad. To a friend, Blake greets you with, “How the fuck are you?” and to an enemy it’s, “I’m going to fuck up your already ugly fucking face”. Though giving credit where it’s due, Kara has tamed his usage by a good twenty percent on at least Monday and Friday.”
She full-out laughs this time, and there’s a delicate little musical quality to that, as illogical as it might be, has me imagining her naked body arching toward me, right before my mouth came down on her. “And he’s you best friend?” she asks, snapping me back to the present, where I’d like to repeat that fantasy in flesh and blood.
“For a decade,” I say, “and on more than one occasion, Blake was the one who pulled me back to the real world when I came out of deep cover. He was also the one who knew how badly I needed to end that cycle.”
“Why?” she asks. “What was it doing to you?”
“Well I sure as fuck wasn’t turning into my father, but Blake scared the hell out of me, and convinced me I was.”
She picks up the compact again, this time holding it close to her palm. “You still resent your father.”
“Yeah,” I openly admit. “Probably too much, which in hindsight is why I never would have ended up like him. But I’m glad I made the change.”
“And that change means what? What exactly does Walker Security do?”
“Aside from being contracted consultants for most of the major airports around the country, whatever the hell we want, which is half the appeal. Right now, a handful of us, including your sister, are working a missing person’s case that started in the States and seems to be leading to Italy.”
“Oh wow. That’s interesting. Who’s the missing person?”
“A woman named Ella. She eloped and then disappeared. Her best friend Sara, and her husband Chris, are paying for the search. She’s a lucky girl. They’ve thrown a lot of money and resources into finding her, and I hear we got a lead on her yesterday, which I hope pans out.”
Her expression tightens. “Michael makes sure the women he kidnaps have no one to look for them.”
“But you had Kara, who was an FBI agent at the time.”
“I wasn’t a planned abduction. I went to San Francisco for a job that fell through and took a job waiting tables at one of his restaurants to pay the bills. He came in and took a liking to me.” She holds up the compact. “I want to show you the data I collected.” She faces the desk and opens the compact, removing the center disc that holds powder, to reveal several tightly folded pieces of paper.
I twist my chair around and join her. “How in the hell did you find out that could be removed?” I ask, starting to unfold one of the sheets, while she does another.
“I dropped it one day. I’m just hoping the information I gathered is enough to save at least some of the women.”
“Let’s see what we have,” I say, flattening out the page I’ve just straightened, and scanning a half dozen addresses to include cities and states, as well as if each is a recruiting site, or what she calls “holding camps” or “staging areas”, as well as very detailed notes about how and when she knew those locations to be open. “How did you get this information?”
“A lot of eavesdropping and sneaking into places I wasn’t supposed to be.”
I turn her to face me, my hands on the arms of her chair. “That was stupid and brave.”
“I’m not sure if I should say thank you or fuck you,” she says. “It’s not like I thought I was going to survive.”
That comment punches me in the chest. “Yes you did, or you wouldn’t have kept fighting and you wouldn’t have created the best damn opportunity anyone has ever had to take down the Alvarez operation.”
“You really think we can?”