He almost smiled. “I’m fine.”
“Right,” she said, the word dry as salt. “Try not to be late. I’ve got a lot to say.”
“Don’t you always?” he said, but his tone softened. “Thanks, Joey.”
“Don’t thank me yet. See you at four.”
The line clicked off. He stared at the quiet street, the dusting of snow already melted and a new layer of frost formed last night.
Somewhere inside, Norah would wake up soon. She’d make coffee and start digging again. Because she never knew when to stop.
A black SUV pulled up in the lane beside him. A quick glance confirmed it was Landon, and Marshall felt a wave of gratitude at the way his team had his back, no questions asked. He leaned forward, turned the ignition, and finally pulled away from the curb. In his rearview mirror, he watched Landon skillfully parallel park in the vacated spot.
Joey was right. He needed a break. But he was grateful he had his team behind him.
CHAPTER 9
MARSHALL
It was reallyunfortunate that the bad guys didn’t take weekends off. There was nothing worse than being called into the office on a Sunday afternoon. It had been nearly impossible to pull himself out of bed after finally catching a few hours of sleep.
Marshall leaned against the end of the table, watching the monitors flicker through Joey’s data feeds. NorthBridge. Summit. The spiderweb of shell companies. And Norah, right in the middle of it—her name now typed into the reports like she was one of theirs.
He hated that.
She wasn’t one of theirs. She was a civilian who’d stepped into a minefield because her moral compass pointed due north. She hadn’t learned that truth could blow up just as easily as lies.
Joey sat nearest the screens, laptop half-open, her fingers in constant motion. Miranda was across from her, calm and composed, a legal pad already filled with tight, even notes. Ryder leaned against the window, tossing a stress ball and pretending not to listen while tracking every word.
None of them wanted to be here.
But Joey had made a breakthrough on Saltykova. And Norah had delivered what she promised on the roster of shell companies.
“Okay,” Joey said briskly, filling the silence. “Sidarov update, then NorthBridge. Let’s do the broad picture first. Jackson, you guys there?”
Jackson’s face was in the corner of the screen, on video call. “We’re here. It’s 10 PM here, though. I need my beauty sleep.”
Marshall blinked in surprise. He’d all but forgotten that his brother and Will had been dispatched to Geneva. President Coulter had asked for Ross to send them. Apparently, he wasn’t feeling quite as confident about the trade summit as his press secretary had claimed.
Joey keyed a sequence. The screen flipped to the black-and-white photograph of the same severe, older woman they’d seen before. Ksenia Sidarov.
Joey’s voice was steady. “I’ve been learning everything I could about Sidarov. Her only son died in the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. Official story? He was ‘one of many brave soldiers lost in service to the Motherland.’” She dropped the fake accent and the eye-roll that almost came with it.
“Translation? Andrei Sidarov was a twenty-year-old kid shoved into a five-day war nobody remembers. Basically, Russia used him as a pawn, and American-trained Georgians made sure he didn’t come back. So now, as best as I can tell, Sidarov blames both governments for the body she buried. She’s been stockpiling her revenge ever since. And considering her Rolodex of billionaires and politicians, she’s got the firepower to pull it off.”
Ryder let out a low whistle.
Miranda’s pen resumed deliberate strokes. “So she somehow...profits if tensions escalate. Both targets take a hit. Then what?”
Joey shrugged. “That’s the part missing from the slide deck. She’s not exactly publishing a manifesto.”
“Stay with what we can prove,” Marshall said. He forced the words to stay level. He refused to look at the empty chair across from him where he could picture Norah sitting, jaw set, sayingIt’s a pattern.
Miranda flipped to a clean page. “What are NorthBridge’s ties to Sidarov’s web?”
“Besides Trip Harrington and our friend from Texas? Someone is pushing hard internally for Summit to take ownership of NorthBridge. But the NorthBridge Energy portfolio isn’t exactly on the up-and-up. Norah sent over intel on the shell companies she has identified.”
Joey swiveled her laptop toward the big screen. “And—because the universe loves symmetry—the shell names rhyme with two we’ve seen before.”
