Eyes traveling from the pilfered bottle of rubbing alcohol, to the bloody dress in the waste bin, to the baggy T-shirt Eve had pinched from a hook on the back of the door, Yolande’s frown deepened.
Without asking, she lifted the hem of the now-blood-speckled cotton, and at the sight of the angry gash slicing across Eve’s abdomen, she sucked in a full breath through clenched teeth. “Infecté,” she said.
No translation required. Eve nodded. She knew the cut had become infected. Bryan had attempted first aid, forced her to take acetaminophen, but the skin around the wound remained red and inflamed. Even now, she could feel another bout of fever building inside her.
She hoped the additional cleaning and disinfecting would help. If not, she’d have to risk an emergency room visit somewhere along the way to wherever she was going.
North.The bossy voice in her head insisted, and Eve had no energy to argue.
“S’okay. I bring ointment and bandages,” Yolande said, dropping the fabric. “You keep it covered.”
Feeling vulnerable, Eve pulled the shirt down to cover her panties, the only article of clothing left belonging to her. “Thank you.”
She meant to say more, wished to say more, but didn’t know where to begin. How do you express the depths of your appreciation to someone who risked her life to save yours?
Her expression fierce, the tiny woman with the heart of a lion took Eve’s hand and squeezed. “What they did to you, n’est pas correct. But you still live, yes?”
Too overcome with emotion to speak, Eve nodded once more, her gratitude for Yolande’s courage spilling onto her cheeks.
CHAPTERELEVEN
If Adam neededproof of Jay’s superior intellect, he had it listening to him speak now. Seated in front of a bank of monitors, Intel processors processing the shit out of who the hell knew what, the man behind the electronic curtain looked like a black-haired Albert Einstein with a cereal addiction.
Assorted bowls containing various amounts of leftover milk littered the already cramped desk space, some still floating a soggy flake or cluster of bloated rings. Abandoned spoons, handles sticking out at odd angles, created a minefield of expensive accidents waiting to happen.
“So, what you’re saying is the money’s untraceable.” Brain about to explode from the impromptu lesson on money laundering, Adam had started to register the beginnings of a tension headache. He wanted to be on the road, focused on what lay ahead, but first, he needed to safeguard the people he was leaving behind.
“Basically.” Jay leaned forward and pointed to one of the four screens. “If you look here, you can see the dummy corporation I set up called JML Inc.”
“JML?”
“Jay’s Money Laundering. And here”—he tapped a few keys, and a page containing the logo for Farbor Financial Services popped up—“are the offshore accounts you asked for. I arranged it so the interest on the principal investment will be drawn on as salary and transferred in equal amounts to each of these on the first of the month. You follow me?”
On the outs with the Department of Homeland Security, and the man who formerly paid their salaries, Adam wanted to ensure his team would be supported financially. Not hard to do when sitting on a couple billion earning enough in interest and investments to eliminate the national debt of most third world countries. “Yeah, I follow. How many accounts?”
“Twelve,” Jay replied. “One for each member of the JTT, plus Grant, Gray, Mutt, and Davis. I also went ahead and created a separate account for general operating expenses.”
“Smart thinking. What about the rest? Did you get confirmation on the coordinates for Hoyt?”
“Squatting in a shack behind a mobile shithole off Palm Street, fifteen minutes from downtown Las Vegas, coordinates sent to Grant an hour ago.”
“And Tak? Any leads?” Adam asked, although he already knew the answer.
“Nothing.” With the look of a beaten man, Jay flung his back against his chair. His eyes, black and intense, expressed his frustration with the lack of progress. A top-shelf computer hacker, if he hadn’t uncovered any sign of their missing teammate, there wasn’t any to be found.
So, if the video was a fake, whoever had Tak planned to keep him, or they would have proposed a deal. One sniper in exchange for 2.5 billion. A fair trade as far as every member of the JTT was concerned. However, in the month since his capture, there’d been no attempt at communication. Not from Johnson. Not from his backers.
Handcuffed and operating in the dark, the JTT had no idea where Tak had been taken, what the fuck his captors were doing to him, or if he was even alive. The only thread they had to follow started in Washington, and Adam planned to be there, finger on the trigger, Johnson’s frontal lobe in point-blank range, by midnight.
“Johnson won’t be difficult to crack, give me twenty-four hours, and I’ll have a lead you can work with.”
“At what cost, for fuck sakes? You? Chase? Who’s next? Grant?” Jay snorted in disgust and shook his head, anger sharpening his words. “We don’t know if he’s alive and going off half cocked isn’t what he’d want us to do. Tak always put the team first no matter what. He’d expect you to do the same.”
Out of necessity, Adam had confided in the one person he needed help from, and they’d spent yesterday working out the logistics for his solo mission. Fake identification, fake flight itineraries, fake everything made legitimate by Jay.
Even if he hadn’t asked for the tech genius’s assistance, Adam was positive he monitored all communications on the JTT’s network. Guaranteed, Jay would have uncovered his plan inside of ten minutes.
Not really a problem, the man was a vault when it came to privileged information. No need to worry about him spilling his guts to the others, whether he agreed with Adam’s course of action or not.
