Chapter 13
Jack jumped up from the floor. His muscles reacted for combat, his arms arching and fists forming, but he cautioned himself. He never hit a woman. Unless that was his only option.
But what she’d just told him!
“You are with the ECU?” he asked, utterly stymied. “I don’t understand? What the hell?”
“I need you to know this going forward. So we’re on the up and up.” Saskia pulled off the knit cap and tossed it onto the bed. “You’re my job, Jack. The Elite Crimes Unit had a suspicion that you’d go AWOL sooner rather than later, and they assigned me to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Jack ran his fingers over his scalp. Processing what she was saying proved difficult, and yet, at the same time, he well knew that the ECU had him under surveillance. All the time. He wore a damn chip, for fucks sake! And he lived in an apartment the ECU had assigned him. He drove a beat-up old BMW the ECU had given him. And he received a minimal salary for his work.
Yet still, they could have no idea why he wanted out at this particular moment. Could they? No. He’d been careful. He hadn’t made any traceable calls, written anything down. All the texts from those holding Jonny had been received on a burner phone. Had the ECU managed to hack into it? Anything was possible. And with expert hackers at the helm? He should never doubt that they knew every step he took.
Saskia had been assigned to make sure he didn’t leave? Was she supposed to convince him staying in the ECU would give him the best life, make everything all romance and roses?
Now that he considered it… Was she seducing him in order to ensure his alliances remained to the ECU?
She had been very forward sexually.
“I thought if I didn’t fulfill my contract to the ECU I was to serve the remainder of the prison sentence,” Jack said. Or end up six-feet under. “Why did they send you to do this? Whatever this is. Are you screwing me in hopes I’ll fall in love with you or something?”
“What? Give me a break. I don’t need to seduce a man to make him do what I want.”
“Yeah? What is it then? Are you going to bring me in so they can lock me up and this time throw away the key?”
“I don’t have that information. What the ECU decides to do with you is classified. I’ve only been told to keep you from going off the grid. That’s my real assignment. Yours is the heists. You don’t know what a bitch it has been serving Clive for a month just waiting for the ECU to send you to me.”
“I can’t believe this! They expected I’d run?”
Impossible. He’d only been contacted about Jonny last week. Could the ECU be involved? If they were, what kind of fucked up—
“I followed you to the surgeon’s place the other day,” Saskia said. “Did you make an appointment to have that chip taken out?”
He squeezed a hand at the back of his neck. He couldn’t feel the tiny chip, but had been conscious when it had been planted at the base of his skull with some kind of injection gun. Just like chipping a dog.
How had he not noticed a tail when he’d gone to meet the doctor? Of course, she couldn’t have looked like the woman he would expect to see and get suspicious about. She’d probably been wearing a disguise. She was a goddamned chameleon!
“How do you think you’re going to stop me?” he challenged. “Are you going to physically detain me? You haven’t the chops for that, little girl. Even if you do stop me now, nothing will prevent me from leaving sooner or later.”
Though it was now or never for him. He was all in. Because he had to be for Jonny.
“Why the escape, Jack? You agreed to serve your time to the ECU in exchange for getting out of prison. You owe the ECU.” Straightening, she crossed her arms. “I gotta tell you. I thought you had more integrity than to ditch a contract.”
That one stung. Jack prided himself on integrity. As larcenous and bloody as it had been. But he was a man of his word. Only, that word always favored family first. “You don’t know me.”
“Oh yeah? I know you’ve got a thing for me, and you want me to go on the lam with you.”
“I suggested you tag along for a while. We like fucking each other. That’s all.”
She paced before the window. But when she cast a knowing smile at him, Jack had to caution his needy heart. “If you stay with the ECU, you can fuck me whenever you like.”
“Really?” He shook his head. “That’s how you’re going to do this? Prostitute yourself to achieve success?”
Saskia inhaled sharply and shook her head. “It’s not like that. I would never do that. And don’t you dare accuse me of such. Jack, I—” She fisted the air. “I know the urge to run is strong. I’ve felt it once in a while, too. But then I get smart. What’s so terrible about your life that you have to abandon it? I mean, you’re doing something you enjoy, aren’t you?”
“You think I like busting faces and breaking ribs?” Jack strode out of the bedroom, incensed that her opinion of him was so low.
Saskia followed and grabbed his arm. He roughly pulled away, not wanting to be near her. She’d revealed herself as the enemy. And he—he needed to get out of here and think about this. Get his head on straight.
And make a call to London before everything went bonkers tonight.
“Clive doesn’t trust you,” she said.
“What the hell do you care? Apparently that’s not even your job, is it?”
“It is and it’s not. Clive is leery of you, Jack. He told me.”
“So what will he do? Poison me? I doubt that. The man hasn’t the bollocks. Besides, if you ask me, his suspicions lie with you. And apparently for good reason. But I don’t get it. You’re not working the heist? You have no stake in catching Clive out with the goods?”
“That’s my secondary mission. You are my first.”
“Christ. I need some air.”
“You have to stick around for the heist, Jack!”
The job was to occur tonight. He would drive getaway, and secure the break-in along with Niles. And yet, he’d already reported to the ECU his suspicions regarding what the focus of his assignment had been: to learn what Clive was doing during the heists. Anything that happened from here on was not on his ticket.
“Jack, stay here and talk to me!”
He grabbed his coat and shoved his feet into his shoes. “You don’t get to tell me what to do! In fact, maybe I’ll make sure Clive’s trust for you fails. How would you deal with that?”
“We’re working for the same team. At least until you decide to go AWOL. Jack!”
He slammed the door behind him and clattered down the stairs, cursing himself for such a childish comeback. He wouldn’t do anything to endanger Saskia because—
No, he wasn’t going to think it. To do so would acknowledge how much he cared about the woman. Because he did. He’d asked her to go along with him and he’d meant it.
She had scammed him. Played him from the moment he’d set foot on the ferry to Helsinki. Stupid, idiot bastard that he was.
“Bloody hell, this mission is cocked up.”
* * * *
Saskia tossed a shoe across the room and slammed her body down onto the lumpy sofa cushions. She shouldn’t have told him.
She had to tell him. Maybe?
Part of her had wanted to tell so she could solicit his trust and confidence. They were working on the same team! They had that in common. And she had divulged information that Jack might like to know so he could alter his path. He didn’t want to get sent back to prison.
Unfortunately, she might have just given him a reason to never trust her again.
And she might have blown the mission.
She should have followed him out of the apartment and tracked his every move. He could be headed to the surgeon’s office right now, to have the GPS chip removed. After which, she’d never find him.
But no. She knew Jack Angelo. Not well. But she knew his pride and his heart. He had committed to this heist and he would see it through to the end. And on the brief report Saskia had gotten as an e-mail a few days before she’d begun following Jack, the ECU psychologist had indicated he didn’t believe Angelo would take off until the mission was complete. He never left a job unfinished. The man was a stickler for integrity.
He needed air right now. Had to be his reason for storming out. It would be wise if she let him boil until he settled to a simmer.
And now that it was all out there, and he started to think clearly, they could work together during the heist and nail Clive. The man intended to poison someone. She should have asked Jack if he’d called in to the ECU with the information about the poison.
She’d been deep undercover and hadn’t communicated with headquarters at all, save for immediately following the previous heist. She’d initially been assigned to work with Clive because the man had completed a heist before the first one she’d worked and he’d walked out with nothing. And then after she had joined, nothing for a second heist. The ECU had thought it best she go deep, keep contact minimal. Because they had no clue who Clive was connected to and how close they were watching.
Only the day before she’d been alerted by the ECU that her mission had been altered—that they were sending in a new man to work the heist case—had she broken that deep cover. She’d been pissed about the altered mission, but also intrigued. Keep an eye on one of her own? What did they expect him to do, exactly, besides going off the grid? And why was he so valuable to them that they’d make the effort of trying to keep him on board? Jack hadn’t shown her any remarkable skills that she believed the unit would find singularly valuable.
Unless there was an aspect to this assignment she didn’t know about. Very possible. The ECU liked to keep back details. Need to know were three words that drove her crazy.
A lot was going on, and Saskia suddenly felt as if she hadn’t a finger on a single bit of what was happening in her orbit. She wasn’t sure about her position with Clive. She had no poison to hand over to him; she’d have to concoct the fake this afternoon. And she might have lost any ground she might have gained with Jack.
“I need to call the ECU,” she muttered. Yet a call-in would be like signaling her failure. “Right. Not going to make that call. I can do this. As soon as the heist is complete I’ll stick to Angelo like glue. He won’t have a chance to go AWOL. And with luck, we’ll have confirmation on what Clive is up to. He’ll be arrested, and the case can be closed.”
She nodded, drawing up the confidence she needed. She could do this. She would do this.
* * * *
Jack had picked up a plain white van at a used car lot across the city. Every chrome part on it was rusted and the muffler was dangling, but the engine was clean and the heater worked. Now he sat parked, the engine idling, in a supermarket parking lot across the street from where he’d been staying with Saskia. The rain had stopped, and no ice had formed on the roads, yet the weatherman on the radio had suggested everyone stay in tonight because that’s when the storm was coming.
A rain storm in January. In Helsinki. Bollocks. But he could drive on ice or snow. Didn’t matter.
He thumbed his cell phone, vacillating on whether or not to call the ECU and demand an explanation for the shite he’d just learned about. The call would only put them on high alert. They couldn’t know that Saskia had revealed her role in this case to him.
So why had she? She wasn’t stupid. Very smart, in fact.
He had to stop going over this, thinking it would give him answers that weren’t there. There was a new snag. But that didn’t change the fact he’d started something here in this icebox and he was going to finish it.
He’d never leave a mission half finished. And despite his mental arguments that he’d served his purpose, if he walked off the crew now, he’d raise too many red flags and Clive might call it all off, thus negating the chance to have him arrested.
So he called the ECU and connected with Kierce Quinn.
“I was just going to call you,” Kierce said. “I’ve got the list from the Helsinki bank of all the safe deposit box holders. There are quite a few names that stand out. Dignitaries, celebrities, foreign advisors and council. Funny how a little bank in the middle of the tundra attracts so many heavy rollers, eh?”
“Just tell me what you’ve got, Quinn.”
“Right. When I take into consideration the previous victim’s political ties, I was able to narrow the list down to five possibilities. Oh, and there was another heist before the Belgian job that Clive did. Same MO. No money taken.”
“And why am I only hearing about that job now?”
“It was on the dossier. Are you okay, Jack? Feeling all right?”
“Of course I am,” he said huffily. He’d read the dossier. Briefly. Those tiny little files on his cell phone screen were a pain to read. “I’m sure I saw that information. Now don’t get off track.”
“Okay.” The least convincing reassurance Jack had heard.
He didn’t want to blow it with Kierce because the guy would go straight to the top and—hell, did it even matter anymore? They knew he was going to run. How incredible was that? Now the challenge was to make sure they couldn’t follow him. And that included Saskia.
“I’ve run the list for the first bank and come up with a name,” Kierce said. “There were actually two people who had safe deposit boxes in the first bank that have died within the last month. One was a little old lady who owned a dozen cats so I marked her off.”
“So you’re saying Clive is making hits on people through their safe deposit boxes,” Jack interrupted. Because if he didn’t lay this out, Quinn would talk up a storm. “Why?”
“He has to have a boss. Which has always been the ECU’s suspicion. Someone pulling the strings. Can you find out if he has a hit list?”
“Yeah, that’s an idea. We’re pulling the heist tonight.”
“We need you to stay in contact the whole time, Jack. We’ve got to have eyes on Clive Hendrix.”
“Why don’t you—” Jack rubbed a hand over his mouth. He’d almost asked why they didn’t get Saskia to do that. But then, she’d have eyes on him as well as Clive. Busy woman. Very busy. “Yeah, all right. I’ll stay in touch. Text me the names you’ve got.”
“I just did. Now that we know Clive Hendrix is murdering people the stakes just sky-rocketed. You’ve got to nail him. And the only way to do that is to have proof he’s placing poison in a safe deposit box. As soon as you’ve got that confirmation, we’ll send in the local authorities. I’ll have the Helsinki police and Interpol on standby.”
“Brilliant.” But he could only think “shite.” With Interpol in the area that would make his escape more difficult. But not impossible. “Talk to you later, Quinn.”
He didn’t wait for a reply and clicked off and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
Turning around to inspect the empty back of the van, he knew they’d have room to fit in the drill and three people back there. And no haul from the bank’s vaults?
“Genius,” he muttered of the method used to make a hit. But also a logistical nightmare for him. He’d have to find a way to catch Clive in the act tonight. With the poison in hand. Which wasn’t going to be real poison. And he wasn’t sure if he could trust Saskia to have his back.
He tugged out the burner phone and reread the last text. Less than two days until Jonny was dead.
It would take him a good day of travel, via boat and train, to get back to London.
Jack shook his head. “Looks like I’m going to have to conquer my fear of flying.”