Noble Intentions: Season Four (14 page)

She'd spent most of the night following up on leads. Most led to dead ends. Jack Noble had been a ghost for most of the past month. That didn't stop
someone from checking on him, though. Did he know? Was it because he was getting back in the game? Or was someone after him?

She opened up the same alert program she had used in her office the day before. Overnight, while she had slept, there'd been another hit on Jack's file.
This was no coincidence. Something was about to happen, and he was going to find himself in the middle of it.

A red LED burned millimeters above the Samsung's large screen. She grabbed the phone off the nightstand. As she tried to power it on, it slipped from her
hands, slapping the hardwood floor. Sasha cursed again, holding her breath as she reached for the phone. Wouldn't be the first time she ruined a phone
dropping it. Most cases were too bulky for her since she preferred to keep her cell in her pocket and not in a purse. In fact, rarely did she carry a bag
other than the one for her laptop. Fortunately, the screen was intact, and the phone powered on. She tapped the appropriate icon, and the cell dialed the
last number she had called.

"Come on, Jack," she said three times while the phone purred in her ear.

No answer.

No voicemail.

Constant ringing.

She hung up, then entered another name into the program. Riley Logan. Unfortunately, the software had limitations, and a history search would not always
return a positive match if the name had not been previously monitored. The search yielded no results.

Perhaps she had his contact information in her address book. She searched through her digital memory, but found nothing. She could've sworn it had been in
there. With four hundred contacts listed, it was more likely her brain was playing tricks. They'd only worked together briefly, and only because he'd
turned up in London the day she met Jack the first time, at the bombing site. In order to get Bear's information, she'd have to travel to the office. A
couple large gray clouds trudged across a blue sky beyond her bedroom window. Better than the day before. And with it being Saturday, a jaunt to Legoland
wouldn't eat up too much time.

She tried Jack's number again.

No answer.

No voicemail.

Constant ringing.

"Christ, Jack, where are you?" She rose and tossed the phone onto her bed, then paced the length of her room, from the window to the door and back again.
The process always jogged her memory.

And it didn't fail today.

Erin Carlisle.

Jack's ex and the mother of his daughter, Mia. Perhaps she had spoken to him recently, or could reach out on Sasha's behalf.

Sasha rushed to her laptop. She launched a new instance of the program, tapping on the shift key while urging the software to load quicker. Once the cursor
appeared in the dialog box, she entered Erin's name. At Jack's request, she had kept tabs on Erin and Mia for him while he was away from London. If someone
had accessed her information, anywhere, Sasha would know. She continued to tap on the shift key while the program cycled. A multicolored wheel spun on her
screen, center of the window.

Then it stopped and returned a hit.

Someone had accessed Erin's file within the past twenty four hours.

Sasha searched through her folders until she found and opened another program. This one top secret as well, and used mostly by MI5. It searched multiple
government databases and returned contact information. In addition, it allowed them to access any recent financial transactions on credit, as well as
travel arrangements for a specific individual. She plugged in Erin's name and waited while the program connected to and cycled through multiple databases.

Two hits came back within thirty seconds of each other.

Sasha waited another thirty seconds for the program to finish its search and terminate operations. After, she clicked on the first item. A financial
transaction. Over two thousand pounds paid to Air Europa. There was no doubt what the next item on the list was. She opened it up and found travel
arrangements for Erin, her daughter Mia, and Hannah, the nanny from the States. They were departing Heathrow in ninety minutes on a trip to Tenerife.

The next program she needed wasn't installed on her computer. No one she knew at MI6 had access to it. But she knew a man that did.

Mason Sutton answered on the third ring.

"I need your help, Mason," Sasha said.

"My help," Mason said. "You know, I'm afraid this relationship has become quite one-sided and I don't see it benefiting me these days."

"I don't have time for this. I need your help." She paused, then added. "And Jack needs your help, too."

Mason's tone changed. "What's going on?"

"I've kept tabs on him since he left. Deemed it necessary, especially in light of what happened in Florida."

"Yeah, sure." Mason was aware of what had occurred when Jack got mixed up in a murder investigation that turned out to have major implications in the
espionage world.

"Well, someone recently accessed Jack's files. Twice now. I've been unable to reach him. That number he gave us, you remember it?"

"Yeah."

"It just rings and rings. In fact, I'd like you to try it. Are you around another phone?"

"Yeah, hang on a sec." His cell banged against something heavy like a counter or dining table. Thirty seconds passed before Mason returned. "Same thing,
Sash. No answer, only ringing."

"Christ."

"So who's accessed his information?"

"I can't tell that. But no one should be looking at him. It was quite the coordinated effort to expunge much of what could do him harm. It's very
concerning that anyone would be looking into him."

"Right, well, what can I do to help?"

"Short of hop across the pond and check in on him, I need you to investigate the passenger list of an Air Europa flight to Tenerife, departing this
morning."

"Tenerife? Why?"

"You remember Erin and Mia, right?"

"Of course."

"I got a hit on Erin. Then I dug into that program you MI5 chaps use, and, well, it told me they are departing from Heathrow in about ninety minutes from
now."

"What's the flight information?"

Sasha read it off to him.

"OK," he said. "So, I suspect you think someone undesirable will be on that flight, yeah? Well, what I'll do is run this through ATIPLs, get the passenger
list. Then I'll cross-reference those names and see who, if anyone, stands out."

"Can you do that while mobile?"

"Absolutely. Why?"

"Meet me at Heathrow," she said. "Get there as soon as you can. If your program returns anything while en route, call me."

Sasha terminated the call, then phoned a taxi service. Ten minutes, max, they told her. That'd put her at the airport in under forty.

She took a shower, cold, as there wasn't time to wait for the water to warm up. Nor did she have time to put on makeup after. She threw on a pair of worn
jeans and a faded blue t-shirt. With her laptop bag and cell phone in hand, she hurried down the stairs, tossed a cold mug of coffee in the microwave and
grabbed an apple and banana out of the fridge.

The taxi driver honked to let her know he was there five seconds before the microwave signaled that the coffee was ready. She emptied the contents of the
scorching ceramic mug into a travel container, then exited her house.

She avoided eye contact as she slid into the rear seat, and pulled out her laptop to signal that she needn't be disturbed. The cabbie already knew her
destination.

Along the way, she phoned Mason. Her end of the conversation was spoken in generalities.

"Nothing yet," he said. "I'm about ten minutes out."

As was she.

The cabbie drove on.

When they reached the airport, she paid him and exited the taxi, laptop bag and phone in hand. Inside, she made her way toward the Air Europa check-in
counter. Mason waited for her there, a few feet away from the roped off maze they put travelers through prior to obtaining their boarding passes.

"Anything new?" he asked her.

"No," she said, scanning the passengers in line.

"Yeah, well, I've got something." He also searched the faces, studying each one a second before moving to the next, as though looking for someone in
particular. "I had one of the guys manning a terminal at the office dig in since my mobile signal is shit today."

"And?" Sasha's heart pounded against her chest like a sledgehammer trying to take down a cinder block wall.

"No terrorists. Nobody wanted in England, or anywhere else, at least places we can check."

"Am I just being paranoid, then?"

He grabbed her wrist and led her to an empty spot in the phone bank.

"One name came back, Sasha. Former US Special Forces. Now a mercenary. Name's Jared Akers."

She searched her internal database but came up with no match. "What else?"

"He purchased his ticket in the past twelve hours."

"Oh, God. Do we have a visual reference?"

Shaking his head, Mason grabbed the back of his head and glanced down. "Working on it. So far, it's been scrubbed from any file we have access to, and
given how things are looking, I didn't feel it appropriate to peer into other networks and tip them off."

"What would we be tipping them off to?"

"I'm not sure. But something doesn't feel right. Surely you understand that?"

Sasha pulled her phone out and opened a travel application.

"Who are you messaging?"

She extended the phone so he could see. "Not messaging. Getting us two tickets to Tenerife."

"What?" He leaned back and peered over the short walls of the space they occupied. "Sasha, I can't leave now."

"Just for the weekend. I've got an awful feeling about this, Mason. And I told Jack that I'd watch over his daughter while he's away. How can I face him
again if something happened to her and I didn't do everything in my power to save her?"

Mason stared at her, lips drawn, slight shake of his head. Had she been so transparent that her feelings for Jack bled through in her words?

"Listen," he said. "We can call the authorities there. They can escort her."

"No, listen to me. I don't trust anyone but us to be involved in this." She finalized the transaction. "Besides, the tickets are paid for. You have to go
with me now."

He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "I'm armed."

"You're MI5. They'll be honored to have you on board."

"I've got no luggage."

"You've got two hours. Their flight was full. We're on a different one."

"You don't give up, do you?"

"Never."

Mason smiled, briefly. "Why didn't Jack stay, then?"

"Who said I've given up on the idea that he'd be back?"

The two agents separated for an hour, then met again near security. An hour after that, they were seated on their flight, bound for Tenerife.

New York City.

JACK HAD SPENT the remainder of Friday looking over his shoulder and hopping from cab to cab before finally returning to his apartment building and
entering from the rear alley. He waited inside the door for twenty minutes, where he observed the path he had taken. Then he moved to the front of the
building and watched for anyone lingering amid the foot traffic. Confident that he had not been followed, Jack headed upstairs and holed up with his
Beretta in his lap. He had placed a couple calls to Brandon, first to tell him about the tail near Central Park, and later to find out if Brandon had
uncovered anything. Eventually, worry faded, and he'd fallen asleep on the couch.

Now, five hours later, he woke in a cold sweat, unable to shake the image of Mia and Erin plummeting thirty thousand feet into the Atlantic.

Only a dream.

He repeated the thought over and over until it turned into a mantra, and the remnants of the chilling nightmare broke apart and faded into the recesses of
his mind. For thirty minutes he tried, and failed, to fall back to sleep. It wasn't so much the images that lingered, as the fact that he had to get moving
in order to reach South Carolina with daylight to spare. Attempting to locate Merrick, the owner of the condo where he'd had the strange meeting, in the
dark in unfamiliar territory could prove to be a problem. Best to avoid it.

Finally, Jack rose and started a pot of coffee and threw a pound of bacon into a large skillet.

As the fresh brew dripped, and pig fat sizzled, Jack placed a call to Brandon.

The man answered, sounding as though he hadn't woken yet. "I know you're a bad ass super spy and all, Jack, but some of us need to sleep. Is this
important, or can I call you back in three hours?"

"Three hours? It's six now."

"Your point?"

"It's important."

"You know what I have to go through to get up, right?"

Jack pictured the guy reaching for a metal triangle suspended from his ceiling, and using it to hoist himself out of bed, his frail, lifeless legs trailing
behind, weighing him down.

"Did you find anything last night?" Jack asked.

"No." Brandon hesitated, then said, "But I've got a laptop up here. Let me remote into the other system and check for you. I'll call back in fifteen, all
right?"

"I can hang on."

"No, you can't, 'cause I don't want to hear your Neanderthal breathing in my ear while I'm trying to help you."

Jack laughed, then told Brandon he'd call back if he didn't hear from him by six-thirty.

He stepped back into the kitchen and pulled the pot off the warmer despite the fact the coffee still brewed. Then he flipped the bacon over and waited for
the second side to cook up. Once it had, he scooped it onto a large plate, and carried it and the steaming mug outside.

Stepping onto the balcony was like passing through a soaked towel. The air temperature felt fine, cool even. But the humidity hovered in the mid-nineties
already. He hadn't eaten two slices of bacon before sweat formed at his temples and hairline.