Alec's Royal Assignment (Man On A Mission Book 3) (17 page)

She placed her hands around his face. “It will just be a little sooner than I originally planned, because now there is you, and the life I want to share with you. A life that includes your child.” Her eyes held his, willing him to understand, to believe. “Not just any man’s child, Alec. Yours. Can you understand the difference?”

His eyes were suddenly damp, but he blinked the moisture away. “I can understand the difference,” he told her in the deep voice that never failed to move her. “Because I feel the same way.”

Then he was holding her in a crushing embrace, an embrace she returned. Her heart was full—so full she couldn’t believe she was the same Angelina Mateja who three months ago had never known what love between a man and a woman could be. Who three months ago thought her life was complete. Who three months ago would have scorned to think she would ever give up what she had for something else. Something better. Far, far better. Not trading her job for Alec, but trading her life without him for a life with him.

* * *

Five days later, Aleksandrov Vishenko’s chief brigadier charged into Vishenko’s office and wasted no time. “She has been located,
Pakhan.
” He didn’t have to specify a name.

Vishenko rose to his feet. “Where?” he demanded.

“After she was spotted in Denver by the man who missed taking her out”—a man whose failure to kill Caterina Mateja had been a fatal mistake—“we concentrated our search efforts there. We have just learned a woman resembling her was arrested by immigration agents a week ago and taken to a detention facility outside Denver.”

“A detention facility?” Vishenko frowned. “Can you get a man inside?”

“That will not be necessary.” The brigadier’s smile was cold and confident. “We merely need to spread the word that the man who kills her will be deported with a fortune. There will be no shortage of volunteers.”

* * *

Alec put down the report he was reading, sat back in the chair in his office at the embassy and sighed.
Damn it,
he told himself.
We’re no closer than we were last week.

That wasn’t strictly true. McKinnon had turned over the witness statements to Nick D’Arcy’s contact at the DOJ, and they now had search warrants and wiretap warrants on the seven former and current embassy employees. Wiretaps were already being installed. And McKinnon’s interview with the three other Zakharians in custody had also borne fruit. Based on McKinnon’s sworn statement as to what the three had said when they thought McKinnon didn’t understand Zakharan, they were also able to obtain limited warrants on Vishenko in addition to the wiretap warrant the FBI already had.

But that was all McKinnon’s doing. Alec had accomplished exactly nothing. He’d faithfully turned over Angelina’s detailed report on her cousin to his sister the very next day. But so far Keira hadn’t been able to come up with anything based on it. He’d known up front it had been a long shot, but...

Alec ran a hand over his face and realized he was tired. Very tired. It was late—he should have left the office hours ago. He was pushing himself too hard. He knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop. If he wasn’t careful, he’d miss something because he wasn’t at his best. But he wanted to get this case solved. Needed to get it solved so he could get on with the rest of his life.

Things were far from settled in his personal life. From everything Angelina had said, she wasn’t envisioning leaving Zakhar. Yes, she would transition jobs when and if she got pregnant—as she’d already planned to give up her position when she could no longer function at the peak proficiency she demanded of herself—but her license to practice law was here in Zakhar. Her current job as a bodyguard on the queen’s security detail and her fallback job as an attorney both required she stay in Zakhar.

She’d already met him more than halfway. Now it was his turn. He couldn’t ask her to follow him from place to place, from job posting to job posting. He couldn’t ask her to give up
everything—
family, friends, home, job. And country.
No,
he told himself with clear-cut determination.
Time for you to step up to the plate, Jones. Time for you to give up something for her.

He knew what he had to do. If he left the DSS, they couldn’t transfer him away from Zakhar. Angelina wouldn’t need to sacrifice her career for him—he could sacrifice his career for her instead. Which meant he needed to start looking for another job. Security, maybe? A lot of US companies had offices here. Maybe security was a possibility.

He wasn’t going to ask Angelina to marry him until he could support a family. Old-fashioned? Yeah, but he couldn’t change
everything
about himself overnight. He’d wait to ask her until he had his new job all lined up. Until he could promise her they’d never have to leave Zakhar because of him.

But he couldn’t start looking for another job until he could resign from the DSS without destroying his conscience. And that meant he had to close the trafficking case and bring everyone involved to justice. Because he’d never given up on
anything.
Ever. And he couldn’t do it now—not even for Angelina.

A few months back, he’d wondered if he’d ever meet a woman who understood what it was like to kill in the line of duty. Who understood that a man could regret the
necessity
of killing, while not regretting the killing itself, and that his motivation wasn’t money or power or greed, but rather the desire to make a difference and make the world a safer place.

Edward Everett Hale had said it best.
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.

His father had carved that quotation in wood and hung it over the fireplace mantel at home before Alec was born. His parents had instilled that maxim in all their children even before they’d learned to read. Wasn’t that why every one of the Jones children had gone into the Marine Corps when they turned eighteen? And wasn’t that why all of them had gone into public service of some sort after they’d left the Corps? Shane into politics. Niall into something so secret he couldn’t even tell his family what he was doing. Alec and Liam into the DSS. Keira into the agency. Because even though they couldn’t do everything, they could do something. They couldn’t
not
do something—that was deeply ingrained in them all.

Well, he’d met her. Met the woman who understood what motivated him, because she was motivated by the same things. A woman who was just as tough as he was. Just as uncompromising. Just as strong inside, where it counted. And just as determined to make a difference.

So, yeah, now it was his turn to sacrifice something, because he wasn’t giving up Angelina. Now it was his turn to—

The phone on his desk rang suddenly, startling him. He picked it up. “Alec Jones.”

“It’s Keira,” his sister said, her excitement bubbling over in his ear. “You’re not going to believe this, but we’ve got her.”

Alec straightened in his chair. “Caterina Mateja?”

“You bet. ICE picked her up a week ago,” she explained, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement by their commonly used acronym. “The fake identification she gave the arresting officers says her name is Cate Jones, but...”

“Damn, you’re good.” The compliment slipped out. Alec didn’t make a habit of praising his sister to her face—although he was quick to brag about her to others—but he couldn’t help himself this time. “You sure it’s her?”

“They ran her fingerprints against IAFIS, but nothing popped.”
The FBI’s Integrated Automatic Fingerprint Identification System,
Alec translated in his mind as Keira continued. “The same for IDENT.” He wasn’t exactly sure what that acronym stood for, but he wasn’t about to interrupt his sister to ask. “That didn’t surprise me. If the US embassy in Zakhar was issuing fraudulent visas, it’s not likely they were submitting legit digital fingerprints to the FBI for the women involved. But that didn’t matter. The agency has face-recognition software—so good it’s classified—and I’ve been running random searches on every database I can access. The picture ICE took when they arrested her matches the picture on her expired work visa. She’s a lot older now, but it’s her. I know it’s her.”

“Where is she?”

“Would you believe that she’s here in Denver? ICE is holding her at the Denver Contract Detention Facility. It’s actually located in Aurora, but close enough.”

“Holy crap. You’re right, I don’t believe it.” He thought a moment. “Can you get her out of there? Not that I don’t trust ICE, but wherever they’re holding her won’t keep her safe from the hit Vishenko has out on her. If he or his men find out where she is, think how easy it would be for a fellow inmate to shank her. And if she’s been there a week...”

“Already in the works,” Keira assured him. “The request had to come from Baker Street, but I called him as soon as I knew it was her. Two steps ahead of you, Alec,” she told him with a tiny hint of superiority in her voice, and he laughed under his breath. Keira was so damned competitive, especially with her brothers. But he didn’t care this time. All he cared about was getting Caterina Mateja to a place of safety, and the fact that his baby sister had solved it first wasn’t important.

“So what’s your plan?” Keira asked him. “Assuming ICE surrenders custody of Caterina to the agency—and I don’t see why they wouldn’t, given D’Arcy’s clout—what’s your next step?”

“I’ve got to question her. Find out what she knows, what evidence she has.”

“D’Arcy will stash her in a safe house here in Denver, so interrogating her in private won’t be a problem. But ICE says she hasn’t said a word other than the name on her fake ID the whole time she’s been in custody. What if she asks for an attorney when you get here? She’d be perfectly within her rights to do so. Then where are you?”

“Not going to happen.” Alec was boldly confident.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’ll have my other secret weapon with me,” he told her. “Angelina Mateja—Caterina’s cousin. They were like sisters growing up. If anyone can get Caterina to open up and tell us what she knows, it’ll be her cousin.”

They talked for a couple more minutes, ironing out details, but as soon as Alec hung up he let out a whoop of excitement that reverberated through his office, and he pumped his fist. “Yes!”

He reached for the phone to call Angelina but changed his mind. What he had to tell her could wait until he could tell her in person. But he had one other call he had to make. He dialed a number, tapping his pen impatiently against the desktop while he waited for the switchboard at the palace to answer. When they did, he said, “Trace McKinnon, please.”

Another minute passed before the phone was answered. “McKinnon.”

“Are you sitting down?” Alec asked him, not even bothering to identify himself.

“Should I be?”

“Hell, yeah. We’ve got her.”

Chapter 17

“G
one?” Aleksandrov Vishenko roared like a wounded lion to the brigadier who had dared to beard him in the lion’s den of his Manhattan apartment before his day had even properly started. “What do you mean she’s gone?”

“She is no longer in the detention center. Our sources say Nick D’Arcy of the agency intervened personally, and she has been spirited away—no one knows where.”

“Find out,” Vishenko hissed, furious that his prey had eluded him once again. Furious...and afraid. It was his worst nightmare come true—Caterina in the hands of the agency. It wasn’t just the evidence Caterina had stolen about his criminal activities, though that was bad enough. If anyone made the connection between David Pennington and him from years ago, he would never escape justice. “Find her,” he told his brigadier as fear clutched at his heart. “Find her
now
.”

* * *

The Zakharian Airlines plane landed in Denver only twenty minutes late, despite the snowstorm that threatened to shut down the airport.

Alec’s brother-in-law, Cody Walker, was waiting for them outside, and Alec was glad to see him. He introduced Angelina to Cody, but decided to keep the personal aspect of his relationship with Angelina to himself for the time being. Not that he wasn’t bursting to tell the world, but just as Angelina had wanted to keep their relationship secret for fear of being misjudged by her superiors, Alec didn’t want anything screwing up their interrogation of Caterina Mateja.

“Hotel first?” Cody asked as he and Alec threw the luggage in the back of Cody’s SUV. “Do you need to rest after the flight? Or do you want to go right to the safe house?”

“The safe house,” Angelina interjected before Alec could respond. “It has been eight years since I have seen my cousin.”

“You heard the lady,” Alec told Cody.

“Then the safe house it is.”

They’d only been driving for ten minutes when Cody said quietly, “Don’t look now, but we have company.”

Angelina’s right hand went inside her jacket, but then she gave Alec a stricken look. “My gun is in my luggage.”

He didn’t hesitate. He bent down and retrieved the spare SIG SAUER he carried in his ankle holster and handed it to her. Then he said to Cody, “You think they’re following you or us?”

“They weren’t following me
to
the airport,” Cody answered. “That much I can tell you for sure.”

“Then they’re following us. Maybe they’ve been following us since we left Zakhar, thinking we’ll lead them right to Caterina.” Alec thought for a moment. “You have someplace we can set a trap?”

Cody’s eyes met Alec’s in the rearview mirror. “You read my mind.” He tapped a button on his SUV’s steering wheel and the Bluetooth’s automated voice system answered.

* * *

Caterina Mateja sat on the piano bench in the living room of the safe house, picking out a tune from memory on the keys of the piano. She had not played the piano for more than eight years, but somehow, when she sat down, it was as if her fingers had a memory all their own. From Beethoven’s
Für Elise
, she moved right into one of her mother’s favorites—also by Beethoven—
Moonlight Sonata
. She hit a few wrong notes, wincing each time, but she managed to put remarkable feeling into the overall piece, and the couple guarding her—who’d introduced themselves to her as Dara and Walt Barron—exchanged speaking glances.

“That was beautiful, Cate,” Dara said gently when she was finished.

Cate shrugged her shoulders. She had not spoken a single word since she’d been brought to this house, not even to ask why she was there. She’d spent a week in the ICE detention center, and all she’d told them there was the name on her ID card—Cate Jones. They’d tried to question her several times—for hours on end. But she had listened to their questions in stony silence and never answered.

She’d never been arrested before, and inside she was terrified. Not just because she didn’t know what was going to happen—deportation wasn’t something she wanted to think about, but if they didn’t know who she really was how could they know where to deport her
to
?—but also because she feared Aleksandrov Vishenko’s men would find and kill her. Or worse, take her back to Vishenko.

When the two men had come to fetch her from the detention center, she’d thought the worst. That they were taking her away to turn her over to Vishenko’s men. Vishenko had policemen on his payroll. She had the records. So when they’d brought her to what they referred to as a safe house and left her in the custody of the Barrons, she hadn’t believed them. When they’d unlocked her handcuffs and shown her to a bedroom with its own private bath, she’d been amazed. But she still hadn’t believed them.

Even when she’d been told she could change out of the prison jumpsuit into any of the clothes in the closet or dresser that took her fancy, she hadn’t believed them...although she
had
changed clothes. It would be easier to escape and hide when the opportunity arose if she wasn’t wearing prison-issued clothing.

She kept expecting Vishenko to show up. Kept expecting that it was all a cruel trick of some kind. She’d slept—if you could call it sleep—with the expectation that any moment Vishenko would walk through her bedroom door...and that the nightmare would begin again.

But night turned into day and no one else had appeared. Only the same two people, who claimed to be husband and wife, stood guard over her. They both wore guns, so she hadn’t tried to escape. Not yet. She was biding her time. Waiting for them to relax their vigilance for an instant and then she’d be gone. She was good at it.

* * *

The SUV’s windshield wipers were working overtime against the snowstorm when Cody turned right, into a middle-class suburban neighborhood. “They’re still back there,” he told Alec and Angelina. He drove halfway down the block and then pulled into the driveway of a house that had seen better days. He parked and said, “Showtime.”

Alec glanced over at Angelina, and she nodded. “Then let’s do it,” he said. The three of them exited the SUV and made their way to the front porch, rang the doorbell and waited, stomping their feet to clear the snow. When the door opened, they entered the fake safe house, and the door was closed behind them. Then they waited, with guns drawn.

Five minutes went by. Then ten. None of the agents who’d set up this trap said a word—the house was silent as a tomb. At the thirteen-minute mark, a voice from the top of the stairs whispered, “Here they come.”

The glass in the back door was shattered by a burst of submachine-gun fire and four black-hooded men kicked the remnants of the door open and swarmed into the kitchen. Three of them made it as far as the foot of the staircase before Cody’s agents tackled and cuffed them. The fourth, who’d been guarding the death squad’s escape route, heard the commotion from the other room and tried to run for it, only to find his escape thwarted by Alec and Angelina, who’d circled around from the front of the house to the back porch.

“Federal agent!” Alec shouted, identifying himself as he and Angelina confronted the hooded gunman. “Drop your weapon! Drop it!”

* * *

Cate’s fingers wandered into another of her mother’s favorites—Schumann this time.
Träumerei
. It had always soothed her to play it. She was almost to the end when the doorbell rang, and she froze, her heart nearly jumping out of her chest. Then she sprang to her feet. “Please,” she whispered to her captors in a breathless, desperate voice. “Please...” They were the first words she’d spoken in more than a week.

She didn’t run when the woman went to answer the door. What would be the point? And besides, she refused to show fear in front of
him.
Hatred, yes. And contempt. She would show him those emotions. But not fear. Never fear. She would slash her own wrists before she would let him force tears from her. She’d cried once. Begged him once. Never again.

She steeled herself to face him, locking her muscles so she wouldn’t tremble. The front door opened wide, and a tall blond man walked through. Not Vishenko. He shook snow from his overcoat and stamped his boots on the rug just inside the door. He was followed by a woman who did the same thing, but she was shielded from Cate’s view by the blond man’s broad shoulders and the woman’s coat hood. Cate’s gaze was drawn to the third person to enter, another tall man, younger than the first one, but with auburn hair and a determined expression. Again not Vishenko, and Cate breathed a sigh of profound relief. Then the woman moved into view. “Caterina,” she said, and all the gladness in the world was in her voice.

Cate’s eyes grew big and her breath stuck in her throat. Then the stress she’d lived under for the past week suddenly caught up with her. The terror she’d felt when the doorbell rang and she’d thought it was
him
took its toll. The blood drained away from her face when she recognized the woman. Light-headed, her muscles no longer able to support her, Cate quite simply fainted.

Angelina was the first to reach Caterina, but Alec was right behind her. He lifted Caterina’s slender body in his arms, noting as he did so that for all her height, her weight was relatively insubstantial, as if she’d eaten barely enough to keep alive for years. “Where should I put her?” he asked Dara Barron.

“Probably best if you take her up to her bedroom. Let me show you.”

Alec followed her, and Angelina followed him. When he laid Caterina on top of the bedspread, Angelina was right there. She stripped off her coat and dropped it heedlessly on the floor. She took her cousin’s hands in hers, chafing them gently, trying to bring Caterina back to consciousness. Then he heard a choked sound from Angelina. Not tears. Rage. A Zakharan curse he recognized issued from her lips, and then she whispered in Zakharan, “Animals. Animals! What did they do to her?”

Alec frowned, not following. “What do you mean?”

“Look,” she said in English. She held up Caterina’s wrists, first one, then the other. That’s when Alec saw the scars. Nearly identical scars almost an inch wide encircling both wrists. Old scars, from wounds long healed. But he knew how those wounds had been inflicted. Even worse, he knew why. And Angelina’s rage was transferred to him.

* * *

Not quite two hours later, Alec quietly excused himself and made his way into the bathroom. His whole body seesawed back and forth in alternating spasms of hot and cold, and there was a churning in his belly he tried desperately to control. Then his face broke out in a sweat and he knew he wasn’t going to make it.

He was vilely, miserably sick.

Afterward he felt much better. He ran cold water over his hands and wrists and splashed some on his face and the back of his neck after rinsing out his mouth. Still sickened by what he’d heard, he could barely stand to look at himself in the mirror. Could barely stand to know he belonged to that half of the human race who could do what had been done to Caterina.

Angelina found him there. “You are okay?” she asked gently.

“Yeah.” He wiped his face and hands on a towel and looked at her in bewilderment. He would have thought she’d be as upset as he was, but she was calm. Composed. And though there was a militant light in her eyes, by no other sign did she betray she’d heard the same despicable tale he’d just heard. “How can you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Remain unmoved.” He gestured toward the other room. “Hearing what happened to Caterina. How can you—”

“I am not unmoved. I want to kill him. I want to kill every man like him,” she said fiercely. “But the king is right. Killing him is easy. Bringing him to justice is not. He must be
seen
to face justice. Otherwise...” Her jaw set tightly. “He is not the only one, Alec. I have heard this kind of story before, when I first became a prosecutor. Not exactly like this, and not nearly as bad. But men have been doing things like this to women for thousands of years and will continue to do so until good men—men like you—stand up and say,
‘This stops here!’
”

He put his arms around her and held her tight, feeling her heart beating in sync with his own. “This stops here,” he said, fighting the unexpected restriction in his throat. “I promise you, Angel, this stops here.” He vowed to do everything he could to stop not only Vishenko, but the trafficking of women everywhere.
Thank God it’s included in my job description,
he told himself fervently.
Thank God fighting human trafficking is part of the DSS’s mandate. Even when I’m transferred, I’ll still be—

A sudden realization deluged him like a cold shower. If he resigned from the DSS, if he took a job in the private sector, fighting human trafficking would no longer be part of his job description. If he left the DSS, those women who were counting on him to help them—women like Caterina Mateja and thousands more just like her—would look in vain for help. Not just from men like him, but from
him.

He’d joined the DSS for a reason. A damned good reason. He wanted to make a difference. How could he have forgotten? “‘I am only one, but I am one,’” he whispered to himself.

Angelina stirred in his arms. “What did you say?” she murmured.

“Nothing.” He couldn’t tell her. His dreams were dissolving before his eyes—dreams of her, of them, of having a child with her, of being a family—because he couldn’t
not
do what he could do to save the world, or at least his little corner of it. Edward Everett Hale’s words came back to him in all their stark reality, reminding him of who he was.

For just a moment he raged against his better self. Raged against a conscience that wouldn’t
let
him do nothing. And by doing nothing, have his heart’s desire. His arms tightened around Angelina, as if by holding her he could hold back the dictates of his conscience through the dictates of his heart.

He couldn’t do it. But he couldn’t tell Angelina, either. Not now. Not when she was still reeling—as he was—from Caterina’s story of the two years she’d been Vishenko’s prisoner. Not when they were both so emotionally ravaged by a reality far worse than they could have imagined. A reality it would always torture them to know.