“Shit,” Malcolm muttered, turning the dial on the receiver board in front of him. The spot they’d picked to set the van had been bogged down by yesterday’s storm, so they were a good hundred meters farther away than anticipated.
But Malcolm was hearing enough to be very, very fucking unhappy about what Marie had stepped into. As if Dimitru had known she would come back. He couldn’t shake the feeling they were mere puppets.
Maybe Dimitru had one of those crystal balls the gypsies were known for.
He thought about the gold on the East Coast. He’d done a quick internet search after she mentioned it. It was real. How long had she been thinking about it? How long had it even been on her radar?
“Where does this lead?” Marie’s voice came through the earpiece again.
Dimitru replied, but his voice was too muffled to distinguish.
“Uncle Bert.” Alarm rang through her words. “What have you done?”
“I’ve done what I can for him. I have a nurse on staff who is watching him.” Dimitru’s voice came through more clearly now.
“Bad shape?” She was angry, and Malcolm ached a little at the panic he heard. “He needs a doctor.”
“He needs a niece who isn’t a lying thief.”
Malcolm’s heart beat a little harder. Hearing every word meant Dimitru was close. Too close, most likely.
“She’ll be fine,” Hawk said from behind him. The man might be blind, but he didn’t miss anything.
“I don’t like to be sitting here, doing nothing.”
“She needs to know you’re here. It’s only been an hour. Give her time. She’ll get what we need. It’s what she does.”
Malcolm ran a hand through his hair and stood—sort of. He braced his hands on the computer platform, gripped it, and rolled his shoulders. He touched his feet next, and then, with first one hand and then the other, pulled each elbow over his head and stretched the muscles in the back of his arms. Fucking van. The small space was likely to drive him mad.
He sat abruptly.
He could sit.
He could handle the discomfort like he’d handled a lot of uncomfortable shit in his life.
This was Marie.
“Let me take him. I can get him looked at.”
“No. No hospitals—”
“Not a hospital. A friend who…is used to our eccentric ways. Someone who will care for the bullet wounds but not report them. I promise.”
Hawk sat up straighter and reached out to put a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder.
How? Malcolm had no idea. Fucking miracles? Maybe Hawk was faking it. The thought had crossed his mind over the last few years as they’d all dealt with his loss.
“Please,” she said. “There’s no risk to you if you bring my friend in. We live in a world of secrecy.”
“Don’t give too much away,” Malcolm muttered. “Be patient.”
“We have not come to trust yet.” Dimitru’s voice was hard and cold. “Besides, who will you bring in? John from Hawk Elite?”
“No—” Her denial was struck short by a resounding slap.
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.” Her breath came out ragged. “Uncle Bert has a friend, up the coast—”
Another smack had every muscle in Malcolm’s body tense with the need to fuck this entire operation.
Dimitru sniffed. “The armband, my dear.”
“Hey, Uncle Bert.”
Silence. How bad off was her uncle?
“What are you doing?” Vladimir said sharply.
“The armband isn’t here. If he survives the night, we will partner for Lot 26 and the national treasure. And then we go for the armband where it is hidden…and safe.”
“Fuck.” Malcolm’s heart fell. “She doesn’t have it? I gave it to her with a tracking device in it,” he whispered. God, she was too courageous. She had more morality than her reputation indicated.
He clicked through several screens until the one with the armband pulled up.
His eyes slowly closed. “On the coast,” he confirmed for Hawk. “Fucking coast. She left it under the house.”
There was another lengthy silence.
“Gregory, bring in Dr. Bantwal. Albert will survive the night. And then we will partner.”
“Stand down,” Hawk advised when Malcolm rose and leaned over the desk in the back of the van. “She did it. She got in.”
Malcolm gripped the edge of the computer console. Nothing was making him feel better yet. So he focused on the facts. Marie is incredibly smart. She is strong. She is conniving and sneaky. He almost laughed. Those were the very things he’d berated her over for the past year.
“She’s talking.”
“Uncle Bert,” she said quietly, a mournful sound, like one he hadn’t heard in a long time. “There’s so much blood. A wound under his shoulder is still seeping blood. There’s—”
“Shh, niece,” Uncle Albert said, his voice barely coming through the earpiece. “I will make it through the night. I promise you.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Malcolm ripped the headphones from his ears and gripped the plastic. He couldn’t listen anymore.
“She’s got company,” Hawk said, as he flipped a switch so the transmission came through the speakers.
“Come. Albert is in good hands,” Dimitru said. “You and I have business.”
Malcolm sat back down as the tension through the transmitter faded. He took a deep breath.
“She’s going to be fine,” Hawk reassured him again.
“Yeah,” Malcolm said, knowing it but hating it. “I wish she’d get a chance to do what she needs to do.”
“Give her time.”
“Fuck time.”
Hawk’s silence spoke volumes.
“Sorry,” Malcolm said.
“That’s a first.”
He chuckled. “Don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
Neither of them had to say it. Malcolm knew.
Marie.
***
Marie picked up Uncle Bert’s hand. “I love you, Uncle Bert.”
He didn’t answer, as he’d slipped back into sleep. She leaned over him and kissed his cheek. The door opened behind her, and she stood.
Gregory—Burly Guy—came first, followed by a short Indian man who wore a stethoscope around his neck. The doctor’s gaze flitted from her to Dimitru. This was not a happy man, but he was all she had. When he found Uncle Bert, he lost the nervous air about him and went into business mode. He set his bag down and opened it to pull out a large syringe and a vial of medicine.
“What are you giving him?”
“Antibiotics,” he answered as he lifted the bandage under Bert’s shoulder. He hummed in disapproval. “Water and towels.” He looked at Gregory when he said it, as if they often worked together. Greg nodded and left the room.
Marie got a funny feeling these two had secrets they could divulge. Dimitru’s secrets. Secrets about why a man like Dimitru would need a doctor on staff in the first place…like women brought into this country.
Her heart twisted at the thought of the women who’d come through these walls, possibly injured and sick.
“He has cancer,” she told the doctor. “He’s under the care of a doctor in Cannon Beach. He’s…not well.”
“I will see he does not die on my watch. Yes?” The doctor looked directly at her, and there was fatigue as well as sympathy in his eyes.
She nodded, resigned to leave her uncle. “Thank you.”
Dimitru took her arm in a firm grip. “Come. We will eat.”
“I’d like to stay with my uncle, at least until he’s doing better.”
Dimitru rolled his eyes and then glanced at the phone in his hand. “Very well. I will show you to your room. There I have a store of clothing from other female guests. You can utilize what you need.”
She wasn’t fooled by his affability. She had no doubt her every move would be monitored. “Thank you. I would love a change of clothes.”
She followed him out into the dark hallway and then down to the east wing. They passed doors, lots of them. The entire wing, rooms. Dorms. Prison cells?
They turned a corner and entered a more brightly lit area of the house. The walls had paper, and the shiny finish of the hardwood floors gave this area of his home a feel of wealth that the other wing, with its stone walls and dim lighting, didn’t have.
Where her uncle was resting was not part of the main living or guest quarters.
Dimitru stopped in front of a door and opened it. “I must leave you to answer a few calls.”
Her heart raced. Was this her chance? Already?
Then he took her chin in his hand and lifted it. “Sometimes I think you are incredibly readable. But then I think, how can that be of this con woman? You want the gold. I know it because I know your family. Don’t get greedy. Don’t break my trust. If you do, I will kill you.”
His thumb caressed the length of her neck as she swallowed, hard, revealing to him she wasn’t unaffected. She wanted to break her gaze free of his but couldn’t. She was trapped in some kind of spell.
“Good.” He turned and left, his phone already at his ear.
She slowly let out the breath she was holding and pressed a hand against her stomach. “Fuck.”
***
“Fuck.” Malcolm tossed his headset to the flat surface where his computer sat in the back of the van, slammed the back door of the van open, and stepped to the ground. He wanted to call her, text her, get a message to her.
Don’t break my trust.
He couldn’t now. Not without possibly sending the wrong message to Dimitru…and Gregory.
Before he could change his mind, he clicked off his phone.
He could hear through the device she had in her earring. It was going to have to be enough. He wasn’t going to be part of any supposed betrayal. She was on her own because she’d wanted to go in.
“FBI report.” Hawk stuck his head out the back of the van, and Malcolm climbed back in.
“The Coast Guard and border patrol are tracking a container ship off the coast. Been hanging out in the High Seas for thirty-six hours. Activity from the Dimitru end doubled. Someone’s blowing up his phone.”
Malcolm suppressed the urge to panic, to go in there and break this whole assignment wide open. He trusted her, no matter how convincing she sounded. He trusted Dimitru to be the son of a bitch who would sell women to the highest bidder.
“Good,” he finally answered. “This is what we need. Dimitru to be moving things around, taking the next step. It proves he’s trusting Marie, not letting her reappearance in his life stop him. Radio check.”
John checked in, as did Emily and Jamie.
Craig sat in the front of the van.
Stacy checked in from the police station in Portland, where she was working with the FBI, DEA, and immigration.
The next step would be the hardest—waiting.
Malcolm picked up the small Bluetooth receiver and hooked it on his ear. He pulled his leather jacket over his shoulders.
“Where you going?”
“Taking a walk, sir. Five minutes.”
Hawk nodded. “Take it easy, man.”
He kept to the darkest part of the forest, climbed the hill to the rocky crest, always keeping the estate to his east, until he pulled up onto the ledge. He sat to the south and watched Dimitru’s home over his left shoulder.
Windows were dark now.
Night had come.
The truck bay on the back of the house had the one spotlight.
He knew where each and every camera was located. He could picture every hallway and could imagine every room, every dark crevice.
He rubbed the heel of his hand over the scar on his chest. She’d helped him when it was his turn to prove his spot on the team, to show he was back at a hundred percent. He’d been ninety-nine percent, and the one percent could have cost them both their lives.
Despite how she’d slid back into her old habits, he wanted to help her prove her place as well, because he couldn’t imagine the team without her on it.