Whispered Lies Read online

  For eleven years she’d searched, wondering what had really happened to Linette, unwilling to believe the story Senor Tassone had told about his daughter.

  But how could she argue with no evidence to the contrary?

  She’d finally buried the memories, accepting that she’d never again have anyone she could trust like Linette. Until this card arrived. Gabrielle might not be able to help Linette, yet, but she wouldn’t let her dear friend down in the meantime.

  She flipped the card over, decoding the first line again.

  Gabrielle-You can’t help me, but I need you to save others from ending up where I am.

  She didn’t need to read the rest, knew the text by heart now, including an odd reference to the kidnapped girl being sent to the fratelli-an Italian term for “brotherhood.” The card had arrived at a postal delivery center in Peachtree City after being forwarded from her father’s ancestral home near Paris. Gabrielle quietly thanked him for forwarding the occasional mail he received for her, or Mandy might have had no chance at all.

  South American kidnappers were after the young American woman, but Linette had said Mandy was in “grave danger” and “no one will know” about the kidnapping, which made no sense. Regardless, Gabrielle had faith in Linette, so she’d fed an electronic message into the right channels, those scanned by trained intelligence observers.

  She’d made it beyond easy for the intelligence agencies.

  So why hadn’t they posted online to confirm they were acting on the information or that Mandy had been found? If Gabrielle didn’t hear something soon, she’d…what?

  Call the CIA? They would dismiss it as a crank call if she called anonymously. Sending a second e-mail would be too risky. Might as well just send the intelligence world her address since another electronic link might lead them right to her, if the first one hadn’t given her away.

  Okay, so she was a bit anal about this, but she’d protected her anonymity too many years to get caught now.

  She scoffed quietly at herself. Few people in the world could track her electronic trail; so far, none of which were employed by intelligence agencies had. Stop worrying.

  No one had found her during a decade of hiding.

  But she wouldn’t take an unnecessary risk. She’d already put herself and others on a bit of shaky ground, so the damn spooks needed to do their part.

  She’d done all she could.

  Few people, even those in the intelligence community, could have found out as quickly that the men in South America after the diplomat’s daughter belonged to Durand Anguis or that Mandy would be taken to a château in St. Gervais, France.

  But then no one in the intelligence community would have spent the past decade committed solely to finding a way to bring down everyone connected to Durand Anguis.

  Gabrielle rubbed her gritty eyes. Her skin rippled with an eerie sense of something not right. She ran her hand over chill bumps pebbling her arms and glanced around.

  No sensor had been tripped or an alarm would have sounded.

  She reached for her laptop, tapping two keys to bring up the digital video cameras monitoring the outside of the house. Crime was so low in Peachtree City she thought of it as Pleasantville. Her protection devices weren’t for the run-of-the-mill burglar.

  A thief’s first priority wouldn’t be to slit her throat.

  Images popped up from all six cameras. Nothing but the drizzly wet exterior surrounding the house. If someone had approached from the driveway or come up through the woods, the intruder would have tripped one of the many sensors she’d hidden. That would trigger outside floodlights. Then an inside alarm would sound with two quick dings like a phone ringing continuously until she cleared the alarm. The property was a virtual Charlotte’s web of underground wiring.

  She hit the keys once more to bring up the bulletin board on her monitor and searched for a message from REBOUND that referenced Mandy as “the babe,” the name she’d told them to reply with. And there it was finally…

  Her heart thumped hard. The message read, “Babe in danger of being lost. Needs your help. Now.”

  Oh, mon Dieu!

  ONCE THE TWO guards outside the château were neutralized, Carlos signaled Sandman to patrol the perimeter, then Carlos and the team inserted.

  Inside the dimly lit garage, a Land Rover and four snowmobiles were parked, ready to drive straight out. Carlos slipped off his goggles and drew a breath of musty air. Snow shovels and other household tools hung from one wall above an empty washtub with too many rusty holes to be useful. Faded blue cabinets and a workbench filled another stretch of whitewashed wall.

  Gotthard produced a valve-stem puller and squatted down to begin disabling tires. He’d remain behind to cover the exit point and have the snowmobiles ready on word from Carlos.

  Korbin slipped up the wooden stairs and into the house with Carlos and Rae on his heels. The toasty smell of logs burning somewhere inside swept through the warm air. At around four thousand square feet, the building fell short of spectacular by wealthy standards, but the owner wasn’t slumming either.

  When Carlos reached the first landing, he motioned with hand signals for Korbin and Rae to deal with the guards on the main floor, secure the building.

  Taking down a guard should cheer up Rae.

  As Korbin and Rae started to move, shouts in the house froze all three of them. One guard was yelling to the other in Spanish, “She’s bleeding…get me bandages-”

  Carlos took the lead, waving to Korbin and Rae to follow him, until they reached a hallway where they were faced with the option of going up a wide staircase to the third floor or to the kitchen on the right.

  Drawers were being opened and slammed shut in the kitchen, followed by cursing between two men.

  Carlos sent Korbin and Rae to the right, then he raced softly up the stairs. At the next landing, he caught a deep voice muttering snarled curses down the hall to his left. Carlos followed the sound to a room where the sharp smell of fresh blood hit him as he quickly took in the scene.

  A massive guard in a black turtleneck and matching cargo pants intent on his task was hunched next to a heavy mahogany bed. Chunks of broken glass from a shattered water goblet lay on the nightstand and the floor as if the drinking glass had been struck against the edge. A shock of blond hair spilled over the side of the bed alongside the man’s leg.

  Carlos slipped his knife from its sheath and entered silently. He moved two whispered steps and reached for a fist of thick, black hair. As he whipped the man’s head back, exposing his throat to the razor-sharp blade, Carlos got a clear shot of a young woman lying still as death-Mandy-her wrists bleeding profusely. Merde.

  The guard arched up, but Carlos finished the kill before the man’s next breath and shoved him out of his way, then checked for a pulse on Mandy. Weak, but she wasn’t dead. Yet. He yanked up the flannel bed linen covering her limp body and started hacking several long strips. The teenager’s camo T-shirt barely moved with each faint breath. Her gray bottoms looked like a child’s pj’s.

  The white sheet had more color than her bloodless face.

  Damn those bastards for whatever caused her to do this.

  “All clear,” Korbin announced, entering the room with Rae.

  Carlos nodded, too busy trying to keep Mandy alive to answer. At least radio silence was no longer an issue now with the resistance neutralized.

  “Find a snowmobile suit,” Carlos ordered.

  “I saw one downstairs.” Rae snapped out the statement on her way out the door.

  Korbin lifted Mandy’s wrist, allowing Carlos to bandage her faster and finish by the time Rae raced back in with a snowsuit that would swallow the teen. Exactly what Carlos wanted. He crossed her arms over her chest to keep the injuries above her heart, then used more sheet sections to wrap her arms to her body so they wouldn’t flop around.

  They used the suit like a cocoon, sliding Mandy inside and leaving nothing exposed. Carlos lifted her into his arms and followe
d Korbin out the door. Rae covered everyone’s back down the hallway to the stairs.

  “All clear here, we’re heading out,” Carlos said into his commo transmitter for Gotthard’s benefit. “Package is damaged. Fire up the rides.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Carlos cursed. “Check for-”

  “-marks on the bodies,” Rae finished. “The three I searched all had the tattoo on the left chest area.”

  Carlos never slowed on his way to the garage, thrumming with the urge to see the bodies himself if not for one problem.

  He couldn’t question another team member’s assessment.

  And he sure as hell couldn’t explain why he had to see the tattoos for himself.

  The informant had been dead-on. How? He’d kill for some time alone with Mirage, who’d been so accurate about the kidnappers, the teenager, and this location, about everything right down to the Anguis. Anyone who knew that much about the Anguis family probably had an ax to grind with them.

  And anyone who knew that much about the Anguis was a threat to Carlos’s existence and the secret he shielded. Durand killed anyone in his path, especially a snitch, so how could the informant have known Anguis business well enough to rat him out and still live?

  Carlos growled deep in his throat. If only the tips had come through early enough for his team to reach this child before she slit her wrists. He prayed she’d live.

  In the garage, Gotthard had the overhead door open and the snowmobiles outside and running. “Sandman sent the signal for the helo to meet us at the extraction point in one hour,” he told Carlos, who nodded, hoping Mandy would survive that long.

  The chopper would have a medic on board, but she might need more blood than they normally carried. He handed Mandy to Gotthard. “Strap her to my back.”

  Carlos pulled his goggles back into place and settled on the lead snowmobile with his feet on the running boards.

  Gotthard wrapped Mandy’s snowsuited body around him, fastening the long, empty sleeves in front of his chest with a wire tie. Carlos felt a belt looped around his chest, drawn just tight enough to snug her close to him.

  Gotthard secured her legs and slapped Carlos’s arm. “Go.”

  Carlos thumbed the accelerator sharply, grimacing over how lifeless her body lay against his back when the machine roared into action. He glanced behind him once more to see the other snowmobiles following, loaded with his team.

  All alive and accounted for. Mission accomplished.

  Except for the chance to inspect the bare chests of the guards. To see if they only had a snake-and-dagger tattoo over their heart marking them as Anguis soldiers or if a scar intersected the tattoo as well, indicating they were blood-related to Durand Anguis.

  Just like the scar across the same tattoo on his chest.

  INSIDE THE CHTEAU’S garage, the washtub moved up on one side then slid off the trapdoor to the basement. Pushing the trapdoor harder, the man lifted his head up and took in the silent room now empty except for the Land Rover. That had flat tires.

  He sighed and withdrew a cell phone.

  Report first. Find transportation next.

  His boss was not going to be happy.

  THREE

  GABRIELLE’S NECK HURT. Her arms hurt. Everything hurt.

  A dream shouldn’t hurt, should it?

  She fought through layers of drowsiness, struggling to open her eyes. Sleep pulled at her, but some annoying sound kept poking at her to wake up.

  …cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.

  The clock. How many times had that bird chirped?

  Her brain flickered to life. She lifted her head from the desk. She swallowed against the icky taste in her mouth and rubbed her sore eyes, blinking to focus. Fish swam across the monitor screen on her laptop. Life should be so happy and free.

  The smile she started to indulge vanished.

  Computer. Bulletin boards. Mandy!

  She reached for the mouse, moved it, and tapped, bringing up the message board. She read quickly. Thank God.

  They-whoever had received her first warning on Mandy-had asked for more help last night, specifics on the château and the Anguis. She couldn’t add anything new on the château, but after convincing herself Mandy’s life was worth the gamble, she’d shared a little more of what she knew on Durand that must have helped. The message posted to the bulletin board at just after ten this morning now read, “Babe in safe hands.”

  Would have been nice if she’d received that at six this morning when she’d finally crashed at the computer. She could have slept in a bed.

  Gabrielle squinted to focus on her cuckoo clock. Almost four o’clock? Light leaked into the room through cracks in the blinds. So, that would be four in the afternoon? Monday. No wonder every muscle ached. She’d only slept a handful of hours in the past three days and that had been bent over the desk.

  A bath, some food, and she’d go back to bed for a while.

  Food first or she might not make it through the bath. She scrounged around the kitchen, considered having food delivered, then changed her mind when she found Thai leftovers and a glazed doughnut for dessert.

  The bath was almost as refreshing as brushing her teeth. She spent every day in T-shirts and sweatpants, what she called frumpy comfort. But to sleep she slid on a silk camisole and lace panties, her little self-indulgence. Never having to think about her appearance was just one perk of living in seclusion. A sad chuckle escaped at the sarcastic logic.

  Gabrielle whipped back the covers on her bed, snuggled down beneath them, and drifted right off to deep sleep.

  An annoying noise infiltrated her swirling dreams.

  She tried to ignore the sound. Her body pleaded for her to ignore it, but the stupid sound wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She’d have to disconnect her clock.

  Ding, ding. Silence.

  Ding, ding. Silence.

  Gabrielle’s eyes flew open. Not the clock.

  The security alarm.

  CARLOS GRABBED HIS bag out of the overhead bin and filed into line exiting the airplane and headed for customs at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

  He checked his cell phone for the local time-4:00 p.m.-then keyed a text message to headquarters, informing the director he’d arrived and would head to Nashville as soon as he made a stop at home.

  Calling the expansive four-bedroom cabin in the north-Georgia mountains home was a stretch since he didn’t own or rent it, but that was all he had. Telling lies about his past, such as that he’d grown up in Bolivia instead of Venezuela, hadn’t protected his identity. He’d even kept an apartment in Nashville at one time, until the Anguis soldier recognized him three years ago. After that, he stored his few belongings in the cabin, which served as a safe house. The only possession he truly cared about-the photo of him and his little brother when they were kids-was in the cabin’s safe. A rival of the Anguis’s had shot his brother to retaliate for a slight by Durand the day before the kid would have graduated, with honors, from college.

  The cabin served as one of their many secure residences where any agent could spend downtime or take a prisoner temporarily.

  All Carlos needed for a home.

  All he’d ever risk having.

  He scrubbed a hand over his cheek, scratching at the whiskers, too tired to bother shaving when he’d showered eleven hours ago. And if he didn’t get a haircut soon he’d have to start pulling his hair back into a ponytail. The yawn caught him off guard.

  He’d stolen a catnap on the flight back from Charles de Gaulle Airport in France, but it hadn’t been worth a damn. His mind had refused to let him forget the lifeless feel of Mandy’s body when he’d carried her onto the helo…or the gruesome image that blossomed when he’d cut her out of the snowmobile suit. The sharp scent of blood had clashed with biting-cold air. He’d sucked in a breath at her washed-out skin and blue lips, the makeshift bandage soaked with what had appeared to be every drop of blood from her body.

  A sick bal
l of failure had crashed through his gut.

  But miraculously she’d still had a pulse. The medics started an immediate infusion and kept her alive until they reached a secure facility outside Paris where he’d left her.

  Mandy’s prognosis sucked, but she hadn’t died in his arms.

  She had a chance.

  Gotthard would send word on Mandy as soon as he landed in Nashville. Korbin and Rae should be hitting D.C. and New York about now, everyone returning on separate flights for security.

  Carlos stepped up to the customs desk and gave all the standard answers to wary-eyed officials. Did they practice looking suspicious in mirrors?

  Welcome to the United States. Don’t even think about chewing gum the wrong way.

  He maneuvered around pockets of weary passengers flowing toward the exit like a lazy stream and had reached the upstairs main terminal when his cell phone started buzzing.

  When he flipped it open, one message popped up.

  Call office immediately. Translation: Urgent.

  Carlos keyed the speed dial.

  “You through customs?” Joe said without any salutation.

  “Yep.” Carlos pushed through the glass exit doors of the terminal. Smokers flooded the humid Atlanta air with nicotine as they sucked on either their first or last cigarette.

  “We found the source.”

  Mirage.

  Last Carlos had heard before flying home was that BAD had traced the IP address to a computer in Russia, where Joe had extensive contacts. That could mean anything or anyone. A UK team from BAD had also been closing in on a London location right before his airplane lifted off. Which one found Mirage?

  Carlos snapped to attention. He checked his watch, calculating the possibility of catching an international flight at this time of day.

  “Great. Fly to Gatwick?” Carlos strode quickly to the other side of the airport thoroughfare where traffic flowed between the parking garage and the terminal. He could be headed anywhere in the world since the post had been bounced to a hacked computer system in Romania, then Russia. But the minute BAD had pinned down the Russian IP and gained authorization to trace the path from there, a team of agents on the ground and in BAD’s headquarters had waited on Mirage to make a mistake.