“Wow,” I said, drawing all the eyes in the room to us.
A tall, willowy woman paused what she was doing and lifted one eyebrow at us.
“Sorry, Carina. I need to take a break for a few minutes. Something important has come up.”
“I won’t keep him long,” I added. “I can see how busy y’all are.”
She gave me an appraising look, then turned to Noah. “Are you okay?”
He let out a breath and nodded. “Yeah, I hope so. Do you think we could use the staff breakroom?”
“That should be fine. Everyone’s busy setting up, so it’s probably empty.”
We went into a small room off to the side. There was a table with a couple of chairs, a fridge, and a counter with a microwave and a coffee pot.
“Do you want a cup of coffee?” He glanced at the half-full pot of coffee and rubbed at that poor lip he’d been chewing on earlier. I could think of better uses for those pretty little lips, but now wasn’t the place or the time for such thoughts. I was here to pass on the warning, not to take advantage.
“Sure. Black is fine.” I didn’t really want a cup, but he needed a minute to get ready to hear what I had to say, so I figured the least I could do was give him that.
He pulled two cups down off a shelf, filled one with coffee, and handed it to me. Then he added a tea bag to the other and filled it with hot water. “I’m not really a coffee drinker.”
“I wasn’t until I joined the military. I swear some days we lived on this shit.” I took a drink and waited for him to get his tea ready.
After a minute, he took a seat across from me. He used the tag on the tea bag to lift it in and out of the cup while he prepared himself to talk with me. Finally, he looked up at me and sighed. “Okay, hit me with it.”
“I know the basic details, but I won’t be able to answer your questions. For that, let’s give Wolfe a call.” He nodded, and I placed my phone on the table between us and called Wolfe. He picked up right away.
“Hey, Crowe, did you find him?”
“I did. He’s sitting right here with me. I’m on speaker phone.”
“Great. Hello, Noah.”
“Hi. Sorry I didn’t answer. I was just super busy at work, and I left my phone in the van and—”
“It’s okay, Noah,” Wolfe interrupted. “It was just our good luck that Crowe happened to be nearby, so he was able to go to you.”
“I haven’t told him anything yet,” I said so he would know where to start.
“Okay. Noah, do you remember Kat?”
“I do,” he said, nodding.
“Okay, well, I had her set up passive monitoring on your identity or any attempt to locate you. You know, pings on the dark web, social media searches, government webpage hits, things like that.”
“Okay.”
His voice was steady, but the up and down motion of his tea bag was growing more manic, so I reached across the table and stilled his hand and mouthedit’s okay.He took a breath and nodded as Wolfe continued.
“These things happen to everyone all the time. Most of the time, it’s totally innocent. Like those pre-qualified letters you get from credit cards or car warranty companies trying to get enough info about what you drive to sound legit, stuff like that.
“But we got a different hit on your name, overnight. One that was a little more invasive and a lot more persistent. We aren’t sure how much they were able to learn, and it’s concerning. Do you have any idea what country the man they were holding you for was from?”
Noah shook his head. “No, I don’t. I’ve tried to think of anything they said that would help, but like I told Agent Kelly, they called himthe prince,but not like he was actually a prince. Like it was a derogatory name they had for him.”
“Well, that tracks because Kat was able to narrow it down to the island of Selvaris.”
“Selvaris? I’ve never heard of it before. Where is that?” Noah asked.
