Her physical condition was deteriorating.
At this point her entire body ached from a day of toting around a backpack and walking blocks of Fifth Avenue—despite Claire’s protests and frequent offers to help. She’d also climbed up and down three flights of stairs numerous times as she’d put in ungodly hours for the past two days. She was shaky and bone-weary, and the sharp internal flashes of pain she was experiencing, along with the rawness and pain near the site of her incision, were bad enough to red-flag her. She’d lost her spleen and a hell of a lot of blood to that shooting. No time to be a martyr. She had to make a call to her surgeon. Stoic or not, she wasn’t going to play Russian roulette with her body, not after three months of fighting to get back to herself.
Disgusted and a little afraid, she picked up her cell phone and called her surgeon, who, fortunately, was in his office at the hospital. As she’d dreaded, he instructed her to get to the ER pronto. He had one more virtual appointment, after which he’d meet her there.
So much for resting. She’d call the car service now, then text Marc from the car saying only that she had to go out. There wasn’t a prayer that she was sharing this situation with the team, or even with Hutch, for that matter. And not because she was angry. She just didn’t want to make a huge deal out of this. It was probably nothing more than her body’s protest at being overworked.
With that, she made the phone call to the car service, then rose, unsteady and with a bout of internal chills.
Not good.
Offices of the Zermatt Group
West Seventy-Fifth Street, Seventh Floor
Manhattan, New York
Saturday, March 18, 3:45 p.m.
Aidan had gone out to grab two sandwiches for himself and Terri. Now, he headed directly for the windowless room at the rear of his apartment—the room that served as the strategic command center for himself and Terri, the two key members of the New York City–based Zermatt Group who resided in Manhattan, rather than abroad.
He and Terri dubbed this space “the Cage” because the entire room was encased inside a Faraday cage. It blocked electromagnetic waves from entering, and thereby protected all the sensitive electronic devices within its walls from surveillance. All communications to the outside world were hardwired, heavily monitored, encrypted, and protected with multiple firewalls. When someone tried to reach either Aidan or Terri on their cell phone when inside the Cage, the call would be routed instead to the desk phone in the room.
Aidan barely paused in front of the solid steel door and the Hirsh keypad that controlled access to it. Adjacent to the keypad was a small red light that, when glowing, meant that either Terri or himself was inside, hard at work.
He punched in the code and stepped inside, sealing himself from the world. The entire long wall of the Cage was a panorama of LED monitors partitioned into smaller screens that displayed everything from international news broadcasts to PRISM to computers monitoring events all over the world.
He deposited the sandwiches on the desk where Terri was frowning in concentration, staring at her monitor.
“What have you found?” Aidan asked, knowing he’d get a solid answer. He’d left her digging into Scott Security and Charles Scott himself.
Terri Underwood lifted her gaze from the laptop screen, where she’d been concentrating as her fingers flew across the keys. She was nearly six feet tall and well-toned, with long, wavy dark hair and piercing brown eyes. Emma claimed she looked like Wonder Woman, and, other than her darker skin tone, Aidan had to admit that Emma was right.
“I inputted everything you gave me courtesy of Ryan,” Terri now reported to Aidan as he unpacked the sandwiches and handed one to her.
She nodded her thanks, opened the wrapper, and took a bite of her ham and cheese sub. “I reached out to our network of people and asked about Charles Scott and Scott Security,” she continued through bites. “The data matches what Caitlin Walsh provided. On the surface, Scott Security appears to be comprised of public relations fixers—people who solve various issues for rich, high-profile people. They have offices all over the world, in places where the rich people hang out, and an extensive network of contractors who extend their reach in places where needed. When the problems can’t be solved through the usual methods of nondisclosure agreements, payoffs, etcetera, they have a less visible organization that makes the problems vanish—an organization headed up by Charles Scott himself. Some of those problems have been known to take flying leaps off of balconies or vanish into thin air. Scott has a reputation of hiring psychopaths for this criminal arm of his business and paying them well for their services.”
“A wholesome arrangement,” Aidan said dryly, munching on his own chicken parm sub.
Terri nodded. “With regard to Charles Scott himself, he’s a dream come true on paper. The best private schools, the highest IQ, an avid sportsman and philanthropist—I think I’m going to puke. In reality, he’s the scum of the earth, a pro at running the dark side of his company. Scary high-level contacts, crimes like homicide—at some flunky’s hands, of course—littering his well-secreted path. No point in going on. You get the drift.”
“I do. Bringing him down will be one of the pleasures of this assignment.” Aidan put down his food. “Moving on to specifics of this investigation, do we have anything on Scott’s hire to kill Shane Walsh?”
“That’s what I’m working on now,” Terri replied. “I’m peeling back layers. It’s going to take some time. But, since we don’t yet have facts, I’m starting with suppositions that are damn close to hardcore facts. For example, there’s no doubt that after dispatching Shane Walsh, the killer’s orders from Scott would be to disappear, relocating to a country with no extradition treaty. That would take place either on the day of the murder or the day after—as soon as the right flight was available.”
“March 10 or March 11,” Aidan murmured. “That’s a weekend, which might mean fewer flights to bog us down.”
“Right. That’ll play in our favor. With regard to destination, I eliminated hostile countries like China and Russia, since it would be a major pain in the ass to gain permanent residency there, not to mention an unfriendly environment to live in. I did the same with other nations that are highly unlikely to be attractive to someone fleeing the US with the intent of making his destination a permanent home. The description we have thus far tells us only that the killer is male, and that he’s tall and lean—an unexceptional physicality that gives us very little to go on. It’s imperative that tomorrow’s interview with Caitlin Walsh yields additional clues to help fine-tune our search.”
Aidan nodded his agreement. “That will be Marc’s job. He’ll gently extract a more in-depth description from Caitlin—specifics she doesn’t even realize she knows. We’ll combine that with whatever you uncover in your research.” A thoughtful pause. “What you’ve just given me is enough of a start to get Simone involved. She’ll recruit the necessary Zermatt contacts and brief them. I want them leaving right after we speak to Caitlin Walsh. At that point, we’ll have a leaner list to pursue.”
“Do you want me to reach out to Simone?” Terri asked.
“No. I’ll handle that while you work.”
Simone Martin was the third core member of the Zermatt team, the fourth being former MI6 operative Philip Banks, who was based in London. Simone and Aidan had a very hot, very long-distance relationship, but her professional abilities were independent of that. Based out of Lyon, France, she spoke five languages fluently. In her “real job” as a managing partner for McKinsey and Company, she was head of recruiting. Her role was to find the best people in the world and convince them to join the firm. As the Zermatt Group’s human capital expert, she applied the same skills in recruiting talent for them.
Aidan relied on Simone, not only to find new talent, but when a project presented itself, to scan their talent pool and develop a short list of professionals with the skills and team chemistry to be successful.
