Chapter Eight
“You lost her again?”
Miguel Osuna sat in the leather client chair, legs crossed, fiddling with an unlit cigar. He was, as always, immaculately groomed in a custom silk shirt and well-tailored slacks that did little to disguise the heavy body. The soft Hispanic accent belied the innate cruelty and anger Peter knew lurked beneath the surface. The fact that he allowed the intensity of his rage to creep into his voice was not a good sign.
Miguel and his ugly bodyguard had arrived unannounced, as usual, at the Burke-Fleming offices.
Why doesn’t the man stay home where he belongs?
“I wasn’t the one who made the mistake in identity.” Peter fidgeted with his tie, knowing he was twisting the tiger’s tail by pointing out whose men had screwed up. The chronic headache he’d developed the past few weeks set up a rhythmic banging behind his eyes.
“Are you implying that this is my fault?” Osuna’s voice was soft and deadly. “You’re the one who gave me her picture.”
“Listen. The men told you themselves this woman was a dead ringer for Kathryn,” Peter insisted. “She looked enough like her to be her sister.”
“It didn’t occur to you that she’d make some kind of effort to change the way she looks?” A sour look washed over his face. “I should have thought of this myself. This woman is not as stupid as you’d like us to think she is.”
“At least we know she’s taking buses, probably sticking to the big cities.” Peter tried to meet Miguel’s hard stare. “Airplanes would require identification, and there are hardly any trains any more. On top of that, she ditched her car. So what else is left?”
Osuna twisted his unlit cigar. “We know nothing, only that she accidentally left a trail of bread crumbs, and we didn’t follow them properly. It’s clear to me she’s unpredictable and far more resourceful than any of us expected.”
“We have our people out there everywhere now,” Peter pointed out. “We’ll catch her out.” He picked up a pen from his desk and flipped it in his hands, something to ease the almost unbearable tension gripping his body. “What about the woman from the terminal?”
“Safely on her way to heaven. It will be a long time before they find the body.” Osuna leaned forward in his chair. “Pedro, I can’t tell you enough times. Leaving that flash drive out where anyone could get it is one of the more stupid things you’ve done. Maybe we misjudged your abilities all along.”
“How many times do you want me to tell you? No one was supposed to be in the office that night except us.”
“And I will tell you again, if the policia or the federales get their hands on it, we’ll be sitting ducks.” His eyes turned so dark the irises all but disappeared. “If I get my hands on that woman, I’ll kill her myself.”
Peter ground his teeth. “Listen to me. Those files are encrypted. No one can break the pass codes. I wrote them myself, and I’m the only one with the key. She’ll be stymied.”
“Don’t delude yourself, Pedro. There isn’t a code that’s been written yet that can’t be cracked by someone. The government employs people who do nothing but that kind of thing all day.
“Fine. You’ve given me my lecture for the day.” Peter was getting tired of all this bullshit, and he hated it when they called him Pedro. He was doing what he could to track Kathryn down. Threats from the cartel didn’t make things work any faster. No one wanted to find that bitch more than he did. “I’m on it,” he repeated. “I’ll get her. You have my word.”
And I’ll take her apart piece by piece when I do.
“If this organization is destroyed because of your carelessness and poor judgment, the results for you will be very unpleasant. That’s my personal guarantee.”
A tiny bead of sweat worked its way down Peter’s spine. “We’ll get her. That’s a promise.”
Miguel Osuna stared at him, unblinking. “Is it? My brother and I have come to believe we can’t afford to count on your promises any longer. That’s why I’m here today, to give you an…update. He and I are taking charge of this search. We have called in reinforcements, and the word is out. Wherever she is, someone will find her. When they do, they’ll report to one of us.”
“But—”
“No buts. You need to remember that your neck is on the line, too.”
Peter swallowed hard against the nausea that rolled through him. “I understand. I will continue to pursue my own avenues.”
“Fine. But we can’t let her slip through our fingers again.”
Peter allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief when Miguel and his bodyguard took their leave. Those two men could frighten the devil.
Shit!
He swept the papers on his desk aside in a gesture of frustration. Who would have thought dull Kathryn Burke, the quiet little mouse, could do him so much damage? If that flash drive fell into the wrong hands, he wasn’t sure he could find a deep enough hole to crawl into.
How rosy everything had looked when the Osunas moved him into the law practice. They’d gotten rid of one brother. Now it was time to slide the other one out, they’d told him. And Peter, with his computer knowledge and extensive modern legal expertise, was taking the operation further and higher than either of the Burke brothers ever could.
But John Burke had been tougher than they’d expected. He’d finally had enough. He’d leave, all right, but he was taking his story to the feds. He was tired of being covered with the same slime as the cartel. When threats and pressure didn’t persuade him to keep quiet, they got rid of him and his wife.
How unfortunate for everyone that Kathryn had left the house early that night. The plan was supposed to eliminate all of them at one time. Still, it hadn’t taken long for him to bring her under his control.
Only he’d made the fatal mistake of underestimating her. Now a billion dollar organization teetered on the brink of disaster because of it. Life was full of surprises. Too bad for him not all of them were pleasant.
How many times could this scene repeat itself, Miguel invading his office with the same threats? But that was the man’s habit. He used his threats like a hammer, and Peter could feel it banging against his brain. Well, it was working. He was consumed with frustration at his lack of progress. And fear. Yes, fear.
He’d better find her before the brothers did, or he would be in deep, deep shit. She couldn’t disappear indefinitely. She had to leave a paper trail somewhere. And wherever it was, he’d find it.
****
The silence in the library was, as usual, so thick you could touch it. Kate’s nose twitched at the familiar smells of printed pages and rubber stamps. People filled the room like ghosts, walking with whisper-soft steps and mouthing their words to eliminate vocal sounds. She shut it all out so there was just her and the machine.
Not knowing how long she had until Quinn returned, Kate didn’t waste any time. Finding anything about either Peter or the firm was a long shot, but she had to try. Her lack of knowledge made her feel incredibly stupid. She wanted to be able to tell Quinn something besides, “I don’t know.”
Maybe she’d get lucky. “You can do this,” she muttered as she flexed her fingers over the keyboard. “Just think. Blank everything else out of your mind. That’s all you need to do.”
Caution was important. She knew how to build layers of anonymous servers to hide the original source. In market research, clients often wanted their identity kept secret.
She began with the law firm, a more likely subject to find information on. But everything that came up was so innocuous she might have been reading about air. Burke and Burke was described as a quiet corporate law firm dealing in a few major clients. Although there were a number of articles, they told her almost nothing. There was a little background on her father and his uncle, but that was it. Still, she sent them all to the printer, figuring anything was better than nothing.
She got a little more when she did a search on her father’s name, including social items that documented any entertaining they did. But nothing she wasn’t already aware of.
She glanced at her watch, wondering just how soon Quinn would be back. Chewing her bottom lip, knowing Quinn would probably be angry but unable to kill her curiosity, she decided to see what she could find out about Peter.
The work was tedious and time consuming. She wanted to bang the computer in frustration every time a page opened only to have a message pop up that read, “Server Error. Remote server could not be accessed.” Several times, she closed down everything, rebooted, and started again, but the same results stared her in the face. Something was wrong, and she couldn’t seem to fix it with the skills she had. No matter how many times she tried, the results were always the same.
“Damn, damn, damn.” She smoothed strands of her hair away from her forehead. “Who are you, Peter? Did you emerge one day from under a rock?”
In the end, she had little more than when she started—a bare bones profile, mostly gleaned from the UVA site where he’d received his law degree. Peter Fleming indeed appeared to have sprung whole from the atmosphere, with an undergraduate degree from MIT, a law degree from UVA, and no family history. What the hell did that mean? Everyone had a family. Didn’t they?
Tired and frustrated, she sat back and rubbed her eyes, trying to ease the strain of reading fine print for so long. Her head ached, her back was stiff from sitting hunched over the terminal, and she was irritated beyond belief. And what did she have to show for it? Little more than a big fat nothing.
She sensed Quinn’s presence even before he spoke. Although he’d moved up quietly, in that stealthy, catlike way he had, she knew he was there. Her Quinn radar was fast shifting into overdrive.
“Find anything interesting?” His voice, that deep, rusty sound softened by the warm Texas drawl, floated in from behind her. “It’s nearly three-thirty, and I’d like to get out of town before rush hour.”
When he touched his hands lightly on her shoulders, shivers skittered along her spine. “Yes, I’m done. I’m sorry. Were you waiting downstairs all this time?”
“No. I just got here, as a matter of fact.”
“How was your…meeting with your friend?”
He rubbed her shoulders, easing the strain. “Okay. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Oh-oh.” A whisper of fear raced through her. “I won’t like it, right?”
“Later,” he insisted. “Meanwhile, let’s get out of here.”
Kate pressed the key to return the screen to the main menu and stood up. “Just let me get the sheets I printed out. I figured anything was better than nothing.”
She felt the possessiveness in his touch as he gently guided her to the elevator, his fingertips at her elbow, and she leaned into him. The lightest of touches, yet that surge of electricity kicked in again. Oh, yes. They were definitely connected. It seemed as if their relationships had existed for light years rather than hours.
The headache that had begun in the library was building steadily, a combination of the hours at the computer and the tension of waiting for Quinn’s information of his meeting. She was happy to kick back as he guided them through traffic and back out onto the Interstate.
****
They’d been driving for about fifteen minutes when Quinn’s cell phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Can you talk or just listen.”
“Uh-huh.” Quinn hoped Jake caught onto the brief answer.
“Okay. Got it. Listen, then. When I got back to the office, Dean was waiting for me to discuss something about the Osuna case.”
Dean Morgan was Jake’s immediate boss, and once had also been Quinn’s.
Damn you, Jake. You told him about our talk, didn’t you. “Yeah?”
“And before you start chewing me out, I didn’t give away any secrets, but he could tell I was holding something back. Jesus, Quinn. You have no idea how big this thing is.
“And how is our old friend?” Quinn asked, sliding a glance at Kate.
She was leaning back in her seat, eyes closed. Maybe, hopefully, even dozing.
“I’ll try to do this as briefly as possible, buddy,” Jake said.
“That would be very good, since my patience is getting shorter by the minute.”
“I’m going to give you a little more detail than I did when we met. Then you’ll understand why I couldn’t keep this to myself.”
“Well, that’s very nice of you,” Quinn drawled, his voice edged with sarcasm. He glanced sideways again. Kate hadn’t moved, her eyes still closed.
“Listen,” Jake protested. “Friends or not, I have a job to do and a duty to perform. Even if you were my wife, I couldn’t just ignore what I think is going on.”
“If I were your wife, we’d really be screwed up. So give.”
“Okay.” There was one heartbeat of silence. “Here it is. Our office—especially Dean’s staff—is part of a Strike Force involving the FBI and the Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section of the Department of Justice. For more than two years, we’ve been after the Osuna cartel. Ever since a major dealer killed a DEA undercover agent, was careless afterwards and left a trail that led back to the Osunas. The DEA caught him and managed to flip him.”
“Well, that’s real interesting, buddy,” Quinn drawled. “And how are those boys doing now?”
“Better than we are,” Jake told him. “He told us the Osuna distribution center is here in San Antonio, which is why this is where they set up the Strike Force. But Miguel, the younger brother, runs the money operation from Florida where the law firm we discussed is located. That brings in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami.”
“Well, sounds like all our old friends are having a great time.” Quinn was trying his best to keep the edginess out of his voice. What the hell was Jake getting at here? “But what’s going on? Are they having a party or something? You know I’m not much for socializing anymore.”
“We’ve been stymied everyplace we tried to crack the wall. Electronic surveillance doesn’t help us. Their computers have multiple firewalls, and their satellite phones use complex encryptions. We can’t get evidence of anything. Nada. I’m telling you all this for a reason, you know.”
“Who’s that?” Kate stirred in her seat and looked at Quinn.
He pressed the cell phone to his thigh, blocking out the sounds in the cab. “The friend I met with this afternoon. He has some more information for me. This is part of what we need to discuss later. Meantime, darlin’, just close your eyes again if you can.” He put the cell back up to his ear. “So, Jake. Is there a point to this call other than shooting the bull a little more?”
“These people aren’t just involved with drugs. You can add arms sales to terrorists, human smuggling, white slave trade. You name it, they do it. These are not nice people, Ace. If you’ve got John Burke’s daughter tucked away somewhere, we have to talk to her. She could be our first break. This is critical, Ace, and that’s no shit.”
“Thank you very much for that report.” Quinn was getting very impatient. “I’ll see if I can find out anything to add to it. Oh, and Jake?” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Thanks for keeping the lid on things.”
“Quinn, I don’t want to come barging into your house looking for her. Give this some serious thought and call me, okay? And quickly.”
“I’ll get back to you.” He snapped the phone shut, put it in the console, and reached for Kate’s hand.
“It’s not good, is it?” she asked, her eyes open her voice troubled.
“No, but we’ll handle it together. When we get home we’ll lay it all out and make some decisions.”
“I’m scared, Quinn.”
He felt her trembling beside him on the seat. “I know you are, darlin’. But the important thing is to get the right information in the right hands. And get these people off your back. Right?”
“I guess so.” But her voice trembled and her hand clutched tightly at his.”
“Then maybe I can think of something to help you forget about it for a couple of hours,” he teased.
He was rewarded with another hand squeeze and a sliding glance at her saw her effort at a smile.
“Okay. I trust you, Quinn. I never thought I’d say that to anyone ever again.”
“I promised you’d be safe with me, right? I don’t intend to break that promise.” He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers.
I hope I’m doing this right. God knows how close they are to finding her, especially with headquarters in San Antonio. But who the hell would look for her up here? The tough thing will be making Jake and the others understand that.
The worst part was, he knew in the end they might not have any choice except for Kate to talk to Jake. If God forbid there was a leak in that office… No, he wouldn’t think about that. He’d protect her whatever he had to do.