“I’m Gabrielle Saxe,” she finally admitted.
Silence invaded the room.
She waited for some acknowledgment. None.
An interrogation tactic? Most likely. Her skin chilled at facing an uncertain future.
She glanced at Carlos, and for a brief moment she could swear worry slipped into his gaze. Was it a sincere emotion or just part of his professional routine?
Whom was she kidding? He didn’t care. This was his job.
“That’s correct,” Gotthard finally confirmed. “Just got the results of the search.”
She let out a breath, glad she’d jumped ahead of the report coming back. That was too close.
“What exactly do you do all day?” Rae interjected.
“I use my computer skills to keep an eye on groups that threaten world peace,” Gabrielle said. That had a positive spin, not too much and nothing they could call a lie.
“Who do you work for?” Rae asked.
“No one. I’m financially secure.”
“Wait a minute.” Korbin tapped a finger on the shiny obsidian surface of the table, then stared at her, eyes squinted. “Gabrielle Saxe, as in the Gabrielle Saxe that married Roberto Delacourte years back? The actor who knocks down about twenty-five million a movie?”
“Yes. We were married…for six months.”
“That explains the financially secure part,” Rae quipped.
“I have my own money.” Gabrielle rarely discussed her finances, never in fact, but Rae had made it sound as though she’d been a gold-digging groupie. She’d been taken by Roberto’s sexy smile and charm, but she’d never wanted anything but to be loved by him. In the end, she’d realized she’d rushed into marriage out of loneliness. He’d lied to her from day one, playing her like the na?ve fool she’d been back then.
She’d been faithful every miserable day of those six months, too. Every painful day.
Murmuring erupted in the room.
Carlos raised his hand. The room quieted immediately. “We’re not interested in your tabloid love life, Gabrielle. You’ve established that you can afford to sit around all day playing on the computer.”
Tabloid love life? Playing on the computer? She clamped her teeth so hard they clicked.
“But you have yet to explain how you know about the Anguis,” Carlos continued. “Your blanket ‘I want to help world peace’ statement isn’t going to fly. You’ve broken enough laws in enough places to end up in prison somewhere. If you don’t have anything significant to share at this point, we might let you choose which country you’d prefer to be prosecuted in.”
Could he really do that? Gabrielle knew a great deal about international law, having studied that on her own, and had felt relatively certain she’d covered her tracks well enough to never get caught. But this group had found her and possessed electronic evidence to prove what she’d done.
She had no training to deal with situations like this. Or yesterday. Understatement.
“Fine, I admit I’m Mirage.” She leaned around, speaking to all of them. “Since I’m the one who shared information to begin with, I think it only fair you tell me what happened to Mandy.” All of this had happened because she’d tried to help a young woman in trouble. “If you found me, then you have to know what happened to her. Was she rescued?”
Carlos wanted to shake some sense into Gabrielle. Hadn’t she figured out her game was up and she had no more moves left? “We ask questions and you answer them. Understand?”
Gabrielle had been taking deep breaths and speaking calmly as if buying time to gather her thoughts and guarding her tone. But she answered through clenched teeth this time.
“I’m trying to cooperate, but if you want any answers from me, you’ll at least tell me if Mandy is safe. She’s the reason I took a risk that landed me here.” Gabrielle held her posture as rigid as a school principal in a room filled with faces lacking compassion, but Carlos could see her hands clasped in her lap. White-knuckled.
She maintained that same regal calm in the face of the threat he’d lobbed at her about handing her over to a country that would prosecute her.
Damn if he didn’t admire her spirit and backbone.
Her intense violet-blue eyes searched his for something. A degree of help or support?
Not now.
That silent reply must have come across loud and clear when disappointment dulled her bright gaze. She changed body language faster than most women switched shoes. Rattled earlier, then hurt, she now seemed determined to shield her emotions from everyone, or specifically him. To hide that she was terrified of her precarious future. She was wasting her time. She couldn’t cloak the vulnerability he’d already witnessed that was eating at his insides.
He didn’t want to feel anything for her, but those gorgeous eyes meeting his televised both compassion and fear for Mandy. The mistake would be allowing himself to see Gabrielle as anything other than what she was-a player in a deadly game.
One who should be answering questions to save her own butt.
Instead, she was worried about Mandy. So was he.
“Gotthard,” Carlos said. “Got an update on Mandy?”
The air sobered with apprehension for the young girl.
“Mandy went into a coma from blood loss-” Gotthard read further, then finished with “Bottom line, she’s still alive.”
A collective release of sighs filled the room.
“A coma?” Gabrielle gasped. “What went wrong? Who screwed up the rescue?” She’d winged that at the whole room.
Anger visibly bristled in response to the criticism.
She blew all her sympathy points with that outburst.
“Look, Gabrielle.” Carlos was not reining in his temper one inch. She’d leaped over a line into the proverbial fire. “We went wheels up twenty minutes after receiving your last message and made a HAHO jump into the French Alps at night during a damn blizzard to save Mandy.” He’d leaned forward, stabbing his index finger against the desk on each point. “If we’d gotten the information sooner, we might have reached her before she broke a glass to cut her wrists. You’re in no position to question anything my team did and had better start giving answers if you hope to ever see daylight again.”
Carlos straightened away from her and crossed his arms to wrestle his calm back in place. He’d wonder for the rest of his life where he could have shaved minutes that might have put the team on-site faster. He would not, however, allow another person, particularly a civilian-a suspected felon-to criticize his team.
Gabrielle opened her mouth to speak, but he didn’t give her a chance.
“Back to our questions,” he snapped. “How did you know Mandy was being kidnapped or who the kidnappers were?”
Her rosy cheeks lost color, but he would not be swayed this time. Carlos questioned if Gabrielle was as vulnerable as he’d first thought or just a damn impressive actress.
“Guest arriving,” announced from a hidden speaker in the room.
Who the hell was coming now? Had Joe traveled that fast?
Carlos turned to Gabrielle, whose face had washed out to the color of sand on a beach. If she didn’t give them something soon, she’d be facing Joe. Or worse. Tee.
TEN
CARLOS NODDED at Korbin, who reached over to lift a remote sitting on a low, black-lacquer cabinet along the wall. He punched keys to activate the flat screen, generating an image from the camera covering the driveway.
A red Ducati Monster S4R motorcycle slashed through the gate.
“Why is he here?” Carlos asked the room in general.
“Don’t know.” Korbin clicked off the screen image and dropped the remote on the cabinet. “Joe said we had one more coming, so Hunter must be it.”
The door upstairs opened and closed with quiet civility that fit one particular agent. Bootheels thumped down the steps.
Carlos turned to Hunter Wesley Thornton-Payne III, who always managed to piss Carlos off without even opening his aristocratic mouth. Carlos detested aristocrats, anyone who believed bloodline granted you unearned respect.
Hunter angled his chin in that I’m-so-much-better-than-you-miscreants way that made Carlos want to test the arrogant agent in the barrio after midnight where attitude wouldn’t save his ass. They’d use Hunter’s blond hair to scrub the brick walls.
Ex-CIA or not.
“Morning, Rae, Korbin, Gotthard.” Hunter lifted his chin to each, who nodded in return. Then he took in Gabrielle and shifted his gaze to Carlos. “I take it this is Mirage.”
Carlos nodded.
“What have I missed?” Hunter eyed Gabrielle once more before he stepped past her to sit on the other side of Rae.
Carlos nodded at Gotthard, giving him the floor.
Gotthard leaned back from hunching over the laptop and faced Hunter. “Mandy is alive, but in a coma, and fingerprints confirm this is Gabrielle Saxe of Versailles, France.”
“What have you got, Hunter?” Carlos crossed his arms, sending his best silent message of “Just give me the facts without the attitude.”
“If she is our informant, she’s no amateur,” Hunter began. “She bounced that post through at least two different compromised servers. She might have hacked them herself or just bought them from one of the big hacker groups on an IRC network like Freenode or EFnet. I almost didn’t find the address.” A hint of respect and irritation entered his arrogance. “We had a forty-eight-hour window of authorization to monitor network traffic going to or from the compromised computer at a waste-disposal plant in Russia. The minute she replied to my post about the babe being in danger, we had her.”
“I should have known that was a trap,” she muttered.
Gotthard raised his wide head to face Hunter, deep furrows of concentration carving the bridge of his nose. “Was there any evidence on that Russian server, maybe something that might indicate who she’s working with?”
Not much for the techno side of this business, Carlos enjoyed anytime someone who was an electronic wizard tweaked Hunter. And Carlos doubted that had even been Gotthard’s intention.
“I’m not working with anyone,” Gabrielle interjected.
No one so much as blinked her way in acknowledgment.
Carlos might have suffered a weak moment for her last night, but he knew better than to believe anything she offered now. She could have told him her real name was Saxe last night.
“Let’s just say I was thorough.” Hunter angled his head slowly at Gotthard and pursed his lips with just enough vigor to let everyone present know he felt imposed upon to answer. “The origination point was a private IP that belonged to I. M. Agoste.” He pronounced the last name with a heavy accent on the hard e. A smile of triumph glimmered on his too perfect lips.
“What?” Rae squinted in thought, tapping her pen against a notebook she’d been writing in. “I’m A. Ghost?” She paused, thinking, then nodded. “Bloody well is since you know she wouldn’t use a real name.”
“The puzzle queen’s got you there, Hunter.” Humor lifted one eyebrow and the corner of Gotthard’s stern mouth.
Carlos smothered a chuckle. That son of a gun Gotthard had been poking at Hunter after all. The pompous agent’s smile dissolved into a flat line. Getting one up on the never-wrong Hunter was a favorite pastime among the team.
“Gabrielle will now tell us how she knows Mandy and how she found out so much about the kidnapping.” Not ready to play hardball just yet, Carlos coaxed, “This will go much easier if you cooperate.”
The spark of anger she’d fired up earlier had dissipated, leaving a graceful statue, breathing so softly the material clinging to her br**sts hardly moved.
He knew without a doubt she wore no bra. Don’t look there.
His sigh came out tired. Anyone capable of hacking past firewalls should be bright enough to realize when she was getting a break. He hadn’t threatened her…yet. “Gabrielle-”
“From a postale card.”
Carlos gave her a dubious look. “I sent a scan of that postcard to headquarters this morning.” He cut his eyes at Gotthard, then Hunter. “Anything back from decoding?”
The look of surprise that rolled into disappointment Gabrielle gave him shouldn’t have cut, but he felt it just the same. Had she thought just because of what happened yesterday and last night he wouldn’t search every possession she had?
“I got a text the postcard is indecipherable,” Hunter interjected. “If that’s all she has to offer, I say we call security and be done with her.”
That got Gabrielle’s attention. “I can explain the message on the card.”
“Then explain,” Carlos ordered.
“It’s in code,” Gabrielle said, glancing at everyone. Not a face around the table registered belief.
Gotthard rubbed a finger across one eye and read further. “I’m online with the decoding department right now. Nothing from the Monster.” He looked at Gabrielle and simply said, “Our supercomputer.”
Carlos stepped around Korbin and opened the low cabinet. He withdrew the postcard and a stack of copies he’d made of it for the meeting, then passed the copies to the BAD agents.
Gabrielle cringed when she realized one major downside she hadn’t considered. The postage stamp indicated the card had been mailed a couple weeks ago.
Carlos raised a gaze flooded with suspicion. “Who sent this?”
Stalling wasn’t helping her. Gabrielle accepted that she had to give him something for any hope of getting a break with this group. “A girl I knew in school a long time ago. She disappeared before I graduated. That card was the first time I’ve heard from her in eleven years.”
Carlos tapped a finger on the table in a silent rhythm.
Sound bizarre? Welcome to her world for the past forty-eight hours.
“I’m in no mood to ask twenty questions to get one answer,” Carlos warned quietly. Distant and foreboding. Nothing like the seductive vibration she’d experienced from his sleep-roughened voice this morning.