That had been the payoff. Cheap. Twenty thousand for six lives. Of course, the pilot had only actually managed to take out himself and the hostess. "Well, it was smart to pull cash."
"Yeah," Dominic agreed. "Hard to follow that trail. I have a few ideas. I've been pulling all the CCTV feeds from around the palace and in the surrounding city for the days before the crash. The wife claims the money wasn't in the safe when she looked two days before her husband died, and we got his day planner. He was supposed to have a meeting with someone, no name, of course, the day before the crash. All I have is the time the meeting supposedly took place in the al Mussad marketplace."
Which about twenty thousand people walked through each day, so it would be damn hard to find the culprit, even if they knew who they were looking for. "Damn it."
"Riley's got some hotshot facial recognition software. Let's give him some time."
Lan didn't have a choice on that front. "Let me know if you find anything. In the meantime, we want you to look into everyone who knew she would be on that plane, starting with that British asshole who let her take his place."
"Thurston-Hughes? Absolutely. I started that investigation the minute I heard the plane hadn't made it to Sydney. The funny thing is, ol' Oliver claims that his brother received an e-mail the day the plane went down, claiming responsibility for killing him and his wife. Anti-monarchists, supposedly. I thought it was rather convenient, especially since we can't really trace the e-mail. Best we've managed so far is to determine it was sent from somewhere in the Middle East."
Where Oliver was currently spending his time.
"And why would the pilot go through with the job once he was in the air? I get that he might not have gotten an updated passenger list. He's not the one who loads the fuel and takes care of meals and drinks, but the hostess would have informed him." It didn't make a lick of sense to Lan. He'd been involved in a lot of operations, and rule number one was to take out your intended target.
A long sigh came over the line. "Yeah. I thought about that, too. This pilot routinely flew to London, so he could have connections there, but it doesn't make sense to continue that job if the targets aren't on board. People who hire assassins tend to want their money's worth, and they wouldn't have a problem coming after a pilot's wife to get their dough back."
"Do you have anything incriminating on Oliver? If he's lying about this so-called threat, he's probably doing it to cover his own ass."
Lan was thinking about offing the guy any way he sliced it, but having an actual case might help at his eventual trial if he got caught. He hadn't liked the way the Brit had been sniffing around Alea. If the asshole had really wanted her, maybe he'd been the one to have her kidnapped and kept for him. Perhaps he'd decided, since the first plan had failed, that if he couldn't have her no one could. He'd made it perfectly plain that he didn't appreciate her guards. Maybe he'd known she had a thing for him, Coop, and Dane, so he'd decided to kill her.
"We've had this case on hold for a few weeks while Law and Riley aided in the search for the princess. Riley can do some amazing things with other people's satellites. The wreckage wasn't deep and the water is fairly clear in that part of the world. He narrowed the search to a hundred possible sites, and we've been checking every single one of them, combing all those little islands. Law was going to take the plane up and go over that particular chain, but the government of Palau told us it's some sort of eco-sanctuary, and today was the day their scientists came out to check on birds and shit. They were not happy to see you. Apparently, you four are a plight on the delicate ecosystem. How many fucking pigs did you have to kill?"
He'd been hungry. He would fucking do it again. "I want you back on the case."
"Already on it. And I'm on my way out to the palace right now. Lawson is on Koror attempting to keep the press in line, but you should know they are all over this story, and some of it isn't good, man."
He moved away from the shower. "What do you mean? People are really that upset that I killed some pigs to survive?"
"No." Dominic hesitated. Lan hated those nasty little pauses because he knew that whatever came next would be shitastic. "It's about Her Highness."
He felt himself go cold. "What about Alea?"
"Ah, there it is. I thought you were going to keep up the professional pretense forever, but I was pretty sure something was going on there. So you three finally got the princess to come around. Good. She's going to need you." Dominic sounded satisfied, as though he'd thrown out a bit of bait that had gotten a nice-sized bite.