Midnight Fever (Men of Midnight #5)(45)

She hadn't eaten in the breakfast room. Maybe she'd had room service, but since he didn't know the name, it would be pointless to check room-service orders.

That left the lobby. 

And the lobby's cameras were blank from 9:15 to 10 a.m. The same for the cameras in the hotel corridors.

Christ.

Where had she disappeared to? He needed to find her and eliminate her, now. Not via the virus. No way could he have two choking deaths in one small city. And there'd be a connection between her and Hammer. Using Superdeath would be insane. But there were plenty of other ways.

Now it was a question of finding where she'd gone.

His drone had picked up on the three identical black SUVs. The woman hadn't left the building complex all day. Not on foot. Every instinct said she was in one of those SUVs. Or definitely in one of the many vehicles that had exited the department store.

This went way beyond his skills and his crunching power.

Okay, now it was time to spend some money.

He contacted the Badboyzz, patiently waiting for the call to be bounced from the US to Europe then back to the US, through Singapore, and on to Vladivostok via Riga.

"'Allo?" Fuck. It was the joker who tried to pass himself off as French. Baker didn't have time for this.

"Cut the crap. I'm sending footage of three SUVs in Portland, Oregon. I need you to follow them, find out where they went. Inspect who comes out. Give me shots if a woman dressed in turquoise pants steps out from one of those vehicles. And follow all the vehicles exiting a department store in a specific time frame. I'm sending coordinates and as much intel as I have."

"Duuude." Oh shit. Now it was the one who pretended to be a California dope dealer. "That would have to be off Keyhole 15. That's going to take time and monn-ayy."

"Find her. A million."

Even over the bounced line he could hear his interest. "Yeah, dude? A mill? You got it."

"How long will it take you?"

"Mmm."

The mercenary shit was going to bargain. Not going to happen. Baker put command into his voice. "Get me footage of the inhabitants of as many of those vehicles as you can, and particularly those SUVs. It has to be inside twenty-four hours or forget it." He hung up. There. That was a challenge. He knew the hackers would turn themselves inside out, both for the money and to show that they could.



Kay slumped into Nick's arms and they sat there, under the shower, for a long time. The sex had kept the bad memories at bay, but as she nestled her head against his neck, tears joined the water falling on him from the shower.

Finally, he turned the shower off and started drying them.

She was physically and mentally depleted but above all, he understood, shocked. Though she'd been raised by an FBI grandfather, Nick knew Al Goodkind enough to know that he'd have shielded Kay from the dirtier side of the job.

She'd talked about her relationship with her grandfather while they'd waited in Goodkind's house, his blood on the floor, for news of him. Goodkind had been kidnapped by monsters and Kay had been out of her mind with frantic worry. She idolized her grandfather. She saw him as a knight in shining armor, and goddammit, he was.

So was Nick.

But Goodkind had never told her that he'd killed seven men in the line of duty, four of them in one raid when he was a rookie. Nick couldn't count the men he'd killed.

Goodkind had shielded her from the nature of the world, which was raw and predatory. He knew she'd been dedicated to her studies, had lived in a lab coat since she was eighteen and was a world-renowned expert on things no one could see or hear or taste. She lived in a world where knowledge was precious and people were smart and dedicated to the common good.

She'd just found out that she'd been living a lie her entire life.

People were stupid and greedy, capable of vast cruelty. There were people who would kill for pennies, let alone for wealth. And there were people willing to kill for the knowledge she and her colleagues worked so selflessly to produce.



       
         
       
        

It was a real fucked-up world.

Nick had known this all his life. His dad had been a cop and his brother and two sisters were in law enforcement. The youngest, Roberto-Bobby-had inexplicably decided to become a spook, but was forgiven this transgression, because he was a kickass spook.

The entire Mancino family fought the bad guys and protected the innocent.

Nick had always had backup in school. Nobody, nobody bullied a Mancino because you'd have your ass handed to you, broken and bloody. In turn, he'd provided backup to the younger members of the extended family-which was three brothers, two sisters, twelve cousins and twenty-two second cousins. All of them lived in Philly and they all got together often. He'd grown up in a huge clan and though he knew the world was big and bad, he had a lot of tough guys-even the girls in the Mancino clan were tough guys-on his side.