The Black Sheep and the English Rose (24 page)

Finn listened while Sean rattled off the intersecting streets surrounding the area that Chesnokov was in. Then he signed off and tapped rapidly on his screen.

“Is this close to Julia's shipping location?”

“That's what I'm trying to figure out.” He tapped a few more times, then urged the information to pop up faster. “Satellite phones are great, but they aren't always the fastest with linkups.”

Felicity scooted closer and looked over his shoulder. He smelled like fresh soap and shampoo. She tried not to let that distract her, but it was every bit as tantalizing as breakfast had been. She'd been starved for that. She shouldn't be starved for Finn. She'd just had him. But tell that to her body, which was reacting as though he hadn't touched her in a week.

The map popped up on the screen just as she was leaning in a bit more closely, saving her from behaving any more unprofessionally than she already had.

“Same general area, but not the same place,” Finn said. “A few miles off, actually.” He tapped the screen. “Julia's place is here.”

“The two places don't even connect. He'd have to come back out to the main street to cut over to that industrial park.”

“Maybe she's using a different location. It's too much that he's near any shipping docks on the day the sapphire shows up in San Francisco.” He leaned over. “Your hair smells really good.”

She smiled at him, but internally rolled eyes at herself. He made it seem so effortless, which made her feel as if she was making it way more complicated than it had to be. Except if she went around saying everything she felt about him when she felt it, then he'd know that she—She pulled herself up short there. He'd know that she
what?

“So does yours,” she blurted out, then laughed.

He smiled, looking a little surprised at her outburst. “Thank you.”

When her laughter didn't subside right away, he laughed, too. “What's funny about our hair smelling good?”

She waved her hand, knowing it was partly fatigue making her giddy, but also realizing that that same fatigue was causing her to lower her defenses. And, now lowered, she sensed that the harder she tried to tuck her feelings for Finn in one neat little box, so she could concentrate on her work, the more impossible the task became. Because there was no compartmentalizing her feelings for Finn. The only difference between the two of them was that he was the one being honest with himself. And her.

That sobered her up. “Nothing. It was charming and sweet. You're charming and sweet. It's just me. I'm being ridiculous.”
What's ridiculous is you staring a perfectly good man in the face—maybe the best man you'll ever know—and not acknowledging what is really happening here.

“I've lost him,” came Sean's voice over the speaker-phone, jerking their attention back to the matter at hand.

“Where?” Finn demanded.

“Last spotted turning into the Bayside Industrial Park.” He rattled off the address.

“We can be there in five minutes. Stay close, but out of sight.”

“I'll…do my best. Standard form of transportation around here is front-end loaders and paneled trucks. I stick out a little.”

“So does a Silver Cloud, I'm guessing. Just do your best. I'll let you know what's up next.” He clicked off, then gave the cabbie directions.

“This isn't such a great part of town,” the cab driver said. “I can drop you, but I'm not waiting.”

Finn and Felicity exchanged glances. Then Finn said, “I'll double your rate. We won't be long. Ten minutes, tops.”

Felicity hoped he was right about that. But then, she doubted Chesnokov would want to hang around the area for very long, either.

The driver looked at them in his rearview mirror, clearly still skeptical despite the increased fee. “Half up front. After ten minutes, I leave.”

“Deal,” Finn said.

She leaned closer to Finn. “We have the other car, do we need to keep him here?”

“Until we find out what's what, I say we keep all our options open. Worst case is it takes longer and he splits and we go find Sean.”

She nodded, then looked out the window when the cab slowed down as they entered the warehouse district. “How do you want to approach this?”

“Pull over here,” Finn said.

By her estimation, they were still a good half mile or more away.

It was close to midday, and there was a fair amount of activity in and around a few of the warehouses. Some of the sections were abandoned and had become quite derelict, but there were a few in operation, with trucks going in and out. Still, it wasn't exactly a tourist spot, and they were in the only cab she'd seen since they'd left midtown. Once the cab pulled to the side of the narrow road, Felicity put her hand on the door.

Finn put his hand on her arm. “I don't think it's such a good idea for you to go along.”

“I thought we went through this.”

“That was before I knew that Chesnokov was going to visit boarded-up dockside warehouses.” He ran his gaze over her. “You stand out just a bit, you know. It's attention we can't afford to draw.”

“And you look so like a dockworker.”

“I could be an investor, owner, city official. I've been there, done that, in worse locations than this.”

“I can hold my own, just the same.”

“Not this time.” He pulled cash out of his wallet and peeled off a few twenties, which he handed to the cabbie. “Ten minutes.” He looked at Felicity. “If I'm not back by then, find Sean and wait there for me.”

“Finn, let me—”

“If the situation were reversed, what would your professional assessment be?”

She scowled. “Not fair.”

“I know, but such is life.” He leaned in and kissed her hard. “Keep your phone handy,” he said, breathing a bit less steadily when he lifted his head. “I'll stay in contact. If you don't hear back from me, don't come in after me, go find Reese. Make him talk.”

“Finn.” But there was nothing else to say. The trust and faith he was putting in her, leaving her here, complete with driver at the ready—a driver not on his company's payroll—was enormous. And she knew, despite his smile, that it wasn't lightly placed. That kiss he'd just planted on her had said as much. He turned to go, and she abruptly pulled him back and kissed him, quickly, but intently.

“And that was for?”

She stared at him, knowing this was her personal moment of reckoning. Nothing in life was guaranteed. Not her safety. And not his. “Just…don't let anything happen to you.”

His response was an immediate broad grin. “Of course I won't. We've only just started.”

He slid out of the car, and she scooted over after him. “Finn.”

He turned.

“We are a team,” she said, realizing, fully, that it was true. In every sense. She just had to figure out how to make it all work. And, in that moment, she determined that whatever it took, she would find a way.

His smile stayed, but concern clouded his eyes as he said, “The best.”

She squeezed her hand into a fist so he could see. And the grin reappeared, the concern gone. Then he was loping across the street and cutting through a scrawny hedgerow before ducking behind the nearest row of warehouses and finally, completely out of her line of sight.

She waited a few moments longer before sliding her phone out to check the incoming message. Whatever the intel was, she was going to find a way to incorporate it into what they were doing together. She would simply have to find a way to make her superiors understand why she was bringing him into her confidence. The one way she knew how was for them to get the sapphire back together, irrefutable evidence that her faith had been well placed.

Then she'd do whatever she had to, to broker a deal between Finn and her government. They could use the stone as evidence in their case…after which, if his documentation was what he claimed it was—and she couldn't imagine he'd be risking himself like this if it wasn't—the stone would go to Finn's client as rightful owner.

She smiled then, feeling calm for the first time since Finn had walked into her hotel room. This was the right thing to do. She kept her fingers curled into her palm, so certain of her decision it should have surprised her, but instead made her feel as though she'd simply been blind to it for too long. She'd never been a partner to anyone before, in any real sense. With Finn, she wanted that partnership, in every sense. And that was going to start right now.

She punched in the code that unscrambled the text of the message.

Then her mouth dropped open on a soft gasp. And her stomach knotted right back up again as she read the words on the screen.

Find John Reese. Bring him Home. Mission completed.

F
inn caught sight of the Silver Cloud two buildings over and immediately stopped and ducked back around the corner of the building he'd been skirting. He transmitted the exact location of the warehouse to Felicity and Sean, then crept closer while trying to determine exactly how to handle this.

First, he wanted to see what kind of business Chesnokov was visiting, banking that this was some kind of back-up facility of Julia's. Probably owned by a friend or contact, as it hadn't shown up at all in any of their background searches on her. And if Reese knew anything about it, he certainly hadn't shared. In this case, given the situation, it made more sense for Julia to be going off trail with the location than sticking with anything that Reese had been privy to.

And it was that point exactly that had his hopes rising that maybe they'd finally managed to track down both target and seller. What exactly he was going to do with them now that he'd possibly found them was another story entirely.

There were no windows on the backsides of the buildings, allowing him the freedom to move across the open area between one and the next without worrying about being seen. At this end of the lot, all the buildings were either boarded over or vandalized. His guess was this place was far more active at night, with the main business being drug dealing. And he doubted anyone was exactly paying rent on the space to conduct said business. At this end of the row, there was no real activity of any kind. Except for the beat-up white pickup truck and Silver Cloud parked in front of the building he was presently behind, the immediate area was deserted.
Wonderful.

He stayed in the shadows and slowly scanned the edges of the target building and those around for any mounted detection cameras. Not that the area seemed to warrant any high-scale security, but someone was conducting some kind of real business out of this building, and so it was hard to say what measures they'd felt compelled to take. Especially given the location.

Seeing nothing obvious, he quickly crossed the last section of open ground and flattened himself against the building Chesnokov was currently visiting. Coming in the way he had, there was no way to check for any group signage like there had been at the warehouse development last night. And the only way to see any sign posted on the front of the building was to put himself in plain sight. And he wasn't prepared to do that quite yet. Brick and cinder block buildings also didn't lend themselves well to voices carrying, and metal roofing didn't play well for alternate forms of silent entry. He crept closer along the side of the building, then crouched and tried to eyeball the parking lot without being seen.

Luck was on his side. An external, block cement staircase leading up to an elevated front door gave him enough extra cover to duck around front and, by risking a quick pop-up, check out the sign above the bay door.
Nelson Studios
. Great. He crouched back down and quickly tapped the name into his PDA, but nothing popped up on the Web for it. He transmitted the info to Rafe, but didn't hold out much hope on getting anything back in time to help with his decision on how to go about entering the structure. If he had any clue what kind of business it was, he could play a role accordingly. Going in blind, with there likely being, at best, a handful of people inside, wasn't wise.

He thought again about his intel on the Russian. This was not exactly a classy meeting place. Which meant either Chesnokov was desperate enough to agree to any meeting place. Or he'd had no choice.

Finn leaned back against the building and let his mind play out the possible scenarios. The stone was rare, and Chesnokov had certainly desired it, but he didn't see the man being that desperate to own what was, for him, simply another piece in the vast collection of antiquities he'd already amassed. Especially given the unusual circumstances surrounding the continued availability of this one. Which left coercion. But what in the world could coerce a man of Chesnokov's stature and wealth to agree to deal on a level that must certainly feel beneath him? Blackmail? But, in what way? Why would someone be forcing him to buy the stone? It made no sense. Finding another buyer couldn't be that difficult.

And yet, Chesnokov was definitely here, on the wrong side of the tracks, doing business of some sort.

“Finn.”

Finn's hand went to his heart as he swiveled his head to see Felicity poking her head around the corner. “What in the hell are you doing here? I thought we agreed—”

“You agreed,” she said, keeping her voice to a whisper. “I—”

Just then the front door opened right above where Finn was crouched. They both froze. Then he jerked his head, motioning her to duck back around the wall as he shrank into a corner of the staircase and building as best he could.

There was a sudden, angry burst of Russian as the door banged against the staircase railing. First by a deep, raspy voice, probably Chesnokov, followed by a decidedly feminine, much younger sounding woman. Finn knew a little of the language, but wasn't nearly conversant enough to follow their rapid-fire exchange. The girl came down the stairs first, but all Finn could see were mile-high black spike heels and black-seamed stockings on very long, slender legs. Next came the thump and slow progress of Chesnokov with his cane, though it didn't slow his shouting.

Then a third voice joined the first two. “Mr. Chesnokov, I understand you aren't happy with Natalia's decision, but you can hardly just—”

The old man turned rather quickly for someone of his advanced age and girth and, using the railing for support, jabbed his cane in the direction of the man's voice. “You have no idea what I can do,” he said in heavily accented English. He turned toward the girl. “I did not spend a lifetime building my empire to have my one and only great-granddaughter shame the family name by making such an outrageous alliance. I will not stand for it.” He motioned now toward the girl. “Get in the car. We will discuss what will be done about this—this travesty of a union once we've departed this…place.”

Finn was surprised he hadn't spit in disgust after that last point, and found himself trying not to smile.

“She is my
wife,”
the man shouted, coming down the stairs after them. Finn got a brief glimpse of a young man with shaggy brown hair, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, with what looked like several cameras slung around his neck. “I chose her over hundreds of other women. She agreed to marry me. I didn't force her to do anything. You can't—”

Chesnokov turned, his voice deadly cold now. “That is where you are wrong again. I can. And I will. It is enough you had to use some kind of service to find yourself a partner. Then you fill her head with ideas of becoming an international model. A
model
, Natalia?” He all but hissed the word, as if he'd found her in a brothel, hoping to be a hooker. “You allow him to photograph you like this? It is beneath you, as is this place, this—this
studio.”

The girl spoke again in Russian, but the pleading tone in her voice said it all.

“I will not discuss this further,” he said, then began moving toward the Rolls again. “Get in the car. And, for God's sake, cover yourself.”

There was another angry string of Russian from Natalia.

“You can't interfere like this,” the man tried once again. “We are consenting adults. You can't stop us from—”

“She is not an adult of any kind. She is not even of legal age. For that alone, I can have you imprisoned.” Chesnokov paused to let that sink in. “Do you care to continue this conversation?”

Finn couldn't see the other man, but the silence that ensued said enough.

“Natalia?” the younger man said at length, his voice shaky and broken.

In response, Natalia burst into tears. There was a soft moan from the man above; then he swore loudly and stomped back up the stairs and into the building, the door slamming shut behind him.

A few moments later, Finn heard the door to the Rolls shut. He experienced a moment of panic that his position would be revealed as they left the parking lot, but the driver swung them around the opposite direction. He doubted Chesnokov was looking back, but on the off chance Natalia glanced back for one last possible glimpse of her supposed true love, he remained crammed as far back in the corner as he could.

Once they'd left the parking lot, and he was as reasonably certain as he could be that the other guy wasn't going to come storming out, he quickly hustled around the corner of the building, only to find a silently laughing Felicity leaning against the cinder block, arms folded, waiting for him. “Well,” she said, “I suppose that answers the question of why he was at Talbot & James at the crack of dawn this morning. That poor man is fortunate Grandpapa wasn't carrying a weapon.”

“I think Chesnokov being Chesnokov is weapon enough.”

Felicity fell into step beside him as they quickly made their way back toward where the cab was parked.

“You look awfully chipper for a woman who just lost her last solid lead,” he said. “What possessed you to come after me anyway?”

“We didn't lose our last lead,” she said.

He paused, and turned to her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know where to look next. Or at least, who to look for. That's what I came to tell you.”

“I know I told you if this didn't pan out that we'd hunt down Reese, but—”

“I found out Chesnokov wasn't our link. So I thought I'd better come get you out of here before you inadvertently did anything to put yourself in a difficult situation.”

Finn held her gaze. “What are you telling me? How did you know about Chesnokov?”

There was a flicker of hesitation on her part; then she took a breath and said, “I received some intel of my own. I know John Reese is the man we need to find.”

Finn took a moment to process what she was telling him. Both spoken and unspoken. “I'm guessing you don't mean that Rafe contacted Sean, and he told you—”

She shook her head. “No. My own intel.” She paused, then said, “From my people.”

“You have people.”

She nodded, but held his gaze. “I have people.”

“People you've had all along.”

She nodded.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “And you're telling me now, because…?”

“Because I want us to go find the sapphire. Together.”

A part of him was deeply relieved to know his instincts had been right all along. At least, he assumed her “people” were part of a legitimate setup. And yet, another part of him still felt a bit betrayed that she'd held back when he hadn't. Which made no sense, since he'd known all along she was hiding something, and it certainly hadn't slowed him down any.

“And before?” he asked.

“Before, I wanted us to find the sapphire. I just had no idea what we'd do with it when we did find it.”

“But now you do.”

She smiled, though it was a bit shaky. “I do.”

Just then the white pickup truck came roaring out to the entrance of the parking lot, squealing wheels as it took a hard turn onto the street where they stood. Finn slipped his hands out of his pocket and took her elbow, pulling her toward him and away from the curb as the truck roared past. “No need to follow him, I'm assuming.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Felicity said. “He really seemed upset.”

“I thought you said men like him depressed you.”

She looked at him and shrugged. “The idea of it is depressing. He really seemed like he cared.”

The truck rounded another corner and sped off. Finn looked back at Felicity. “So,” he said. “Are you going to tell me? About you?”

“I've wanted to all along. I—I didn't have clearance for that kind of thing. It's never—been an issue before.”

“And you do now? Have clearance, I mean?”

Her eyes twinkled, and that smile of hers, the one that got him every time, surfaced. “Not exactly. But I will. I hope.”

“Felicity, if you can't—”

“What I can't do is wait any longer. I could have just told you I got the information on my own, made something up. But you've trusted me when you had no reason to. You've shared everything with me, made me a full partner in this, despite not knowing what we'd do with the sapphire when we got it back. You believed in me. And, all along, I believed in you, trusted you. I just—I didn't know if I could risk it. I would have if it was just me, but it's not just me I'm making decisions for.”

And it hit Finn then, how truly cavalier he'd been in his own client's best interests. It was one thing to trust his gut instincts when he was the only one risking anything, but this time, he'd been risking someone's entire heritage. He ducked his chin, then looked at her. “You've actually handled this better than I have.”

“What do you mean?” She looked worried.

He took her hand, and they crossed the street. “Let's talk when we get back to the limo.” He looked at her and tried to smile. “We do still have a limo?”