Page 97 of Rafe’s Future

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Try that camera again.” Rafe stood over his daughter’s shoulder.

Alice leaned closer to the monitor. “I am trying it.”

He watched lines of traffic cameras fill up the screen.

The Tac-Ops conference room had transformed in minutes, switching from a place to announce his retirement to a full-on command center. Phones, tablets, laptops, and printed maps littered the large table. Alice had arrived within minutes of her call.

Fearful at first, she was at her computer now, committed and fully locked in.

That was his Alice. Give her a problem to solve, and she attacked it with everything she had. Her fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard.

“I’ve got the coffee shop camera,” she announced. “I’m pulling footage from the surrounding businesses now.”

“Can you track the SUV?”

“If it stayed on major roads, maybe.” Her fingers flew. “But if these guys know where the cameras are, they could’ve deliberately avoided them.”

Rafe stared at the screen, every second feeling like a never-ending amount of time. His jaw tightened as he prayed with everything that he had.

Please, God. Please let her still be alive.

“Run every possible route from the coffee shop and work your way out.”

“Already doing it.”

He looked around at the other men in the room. Digger stood near the windows, talking quietly with Falcon. Bones and Apollo were working from the opposite side of the table while Coulter hovered over a tablet, studying a digital map.

No one was sitting, aside from Alice. Not a single soul in the room was relaxed. They were Tac-Ops, and one of their own had been taken. They wouldn’t stop until Lena was safe and those responsible were either dead or brought to justice.

This is what they did. It was who they were at their core. Protecting the innocent was in their blood.

The phone in Rafe’s hand began to ring. He glanced down at the screen to find Derek West’s name and immediately answered the call.

“West?”

“Rafe. I’ve got something.” The former SEAL’s voice was clipped and focused.

His spine straightened. “What?”

“I traced the financial activity we’ve been watching.”

Alice sent him a questioning glance, and he put the call on speaker as West continued.

“The money moving through the shell companies wasn’t random. Whoever set this up went to considerable lengths to obscure the beneficial ownership.”

“Walk me through it.”

“I started with the offshore accounts we already had, then I worked backward through the shell structure itself.” West paused. “Several companies were registered through nominee directors.”

“What’s that?” Bones looked up from what he’d been working on to join the conversation.

Alice quickly explained, “A nominee director is a person who holds an official title of company director on public records. Basically, it’s a name-only position, because the nominee actually takes direction from someone else within the company.”

“Those I found held accounts in multiple jurisdictions,” West added. “Cayman, Luxembourg, and a couple of private banking institutions in Switzerland.”

Alice frowned. “How did you break through the nominees?”