“Of course not,” Jonas said. “I guess we’re back to the fact that she’s probably not thinking clearly, right?”
“I really hate the fact that everything comes back to blaming it on her pregnancy,” she announced. “I get that my sister is doing things in her own way, but she’s still in trouble right now, and we need to help her.”
“The bottom line is,” Jonas said, “we need to get Garret’s brother back. That she’s now gone missing is just another power play.”
“So what will we do to get her back then?”
“I’m not sure,” Jonas snapped. “You got any suggestions? It’s your sister, after all.”
“Ouch,” she said, “because the answer is no. I have no clue.”
“Neither do I,” Jonas said, still clearly frustrated.
“I do,” Garret said. “The guy that picked her up is Rick Santino, who used to work for Kingdom Securities. He also offered Gregg a job off the books, private, and Gregg turned him down, according to what we got from Astra, regarding some garbled message from Amy.”
“But we don’t know how factual any of that is,” Astra said.
“We never do.” Jonas raised both hands in frustration. “This is all just hearsay.”
“Sure, it is,” Garret said, “but it’s all we’ve got.”
“Of course it is,” Charles grumbled. “I’ve already got a run happening on this Rick.”
“No known residence in town. He’s actually a citizen of France,” Garret said.
Kano entered the conversation. “So what are the chances that Amy’s been taken across the channel?”
“God help us then,” Jonas said. “We’ve got alerts set up, and they are spot-checking everybody going across.”
“And would they leave, without my brother?” Garret asked.
“Not yet,” Charles said. “I don’t think that’s the plan. I don’t think they want to take these people back to Paris. Absolutely no reason for it.”
“No, that’s true,” Jonas said, “at least no reason we know of.”
“And what about Deedee from Kingdom? She said she’d help anyway, right?” Garret asked.
“Yeah, she’s playing games,” Kano said. “I’ll have to go over there and have a personal talk with her.”
“Well, you’re not going now,” Jonas said. “Nobody else is leaving. You’re not splitting up. I don’t want to track any more of you down again.”
“Right,” Kano said, looking at Garret. “I’ve tried to contact her, but she’s not being cooperative.”
“Gee, what a surprise,” he said. “Do you know this Rick guy?”
“No. I really don’t,” Kano replied.
“But she does?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’m just not sure.”
“We need more. We’ve got to have something more from her,” Garret said.
Kano groaned and pulled out his phone. Moments later, he said, “Deedee, it’s Kano.”
Everybody else heard the woman laughing loudly on the other end.
“Listen. This Rick? What kind of an asshole is he?”
They couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, so waited, not even pretending not to eavesdrop.
“Great, so one of the worst. And you don’t have anything to do with him anymore? You’re sure? Okay. You just haven’t been very forthcoming with any kind of information, and I know you must have some. I know you want something in return, but right now we’ve got a problem, since Rick has taken Gregg’s girlfriend.”
He listened again and nodded. “Yeah, you say you don’t know anything about him. But you must know if he has any haunts in England, any places where he’d go? … He better not. Use your network.” Kano sighed loudly. “Well, I don’t want him using my network either,” he said, “but that doesn’t change anything. We still need to have some idea of what he’s got going on. We haven’t tracked down any of his family, though hopefully he hasn’t brought them into this bullshit anyway.”
Kano rolled his eyes at his audience. “Good. Okay, let’s see what—what do you mean, he has a friend?” Kano shook his head. “You know he’s doing deals himself, right?” With that, there was a shout on the other end of the phone. He nodded slowly. “Well, apparently he offered Gregg a private job. What do you know about that?” He grinned. “Well, sorry if that shit’s going on right under your nose, but it sounds like it is, and I would think you’d want to do something about it.”
Astra listened to the conversation between Kano and this other woman, who was apparently pretty high up in the Kingdom Securities hierarchy. As in possibly the owner now, after taking control a decade ago. Astra was slowly piecing together bits and pieces of what she’d learned. Not only was the airplane explosion supposedly targeted at Bullard, but it had also taken out Garret and another man. Bullard was the only one missing. He had had a relationship with this woman, so the team was looking fairly closely at Kingdom.
Astra quietly asked, “Wouldn’t it kind of muck up the business for everyone if one company attacked another?”
Garret looked at her, nodded, and said, “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening though.”
“Do you suspect her?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. She once had a thing for Bullard. Then she always hunted for younger men.”
“There’s nothing more dead than a dead relationship,” she said.
He smiled. “I get that,” he said, “but, in this case, I think she really did care for him.”
Astra nodded and didn’t say anything for a moment. “She doesn’t seem to know what’s going on in her own backyard though.”
“And that seemed to be a bit of a surprise to her,” he said. “That’s interesting because that means she doesn’t have her fingers on all the pulses that she thought she did.”
“Which is bad news for everybody,” she murmured.
Finally Kano got off the phone. He looked at them and said, “There is a friend here in town who apparently this Rick guy spent a lot of time with. Deedee did not know anything about private jobs, and she’s fairly unimpressed with the concept,” he said, “so that’s one thing.”
“But it’s not enough,” Garret said, “not enough for anything yet.”
“No, you’re right,” Kano said. “We still have to do some more digging.”
“Not just more digging,” he said. “The issue is, we’ve got to find these people, and we’ve got to find them now.”
“And what about the threat I got?” Astra asked, worried about her sister.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a diversion or not. Obviously your sister’s been taken.”
“What is it they want with your brother?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like they necessarily have my brother either,” he said. “That threat was fairly ambiguous. Just we’ve got your sister.”