“Fletcher, maybe Agent Daniels could start looking for Souleyret’s sister for us. Save us some time? Since he’s already here.”

Daniels gave her a small smile. “I can find her.”

Fletcher ran a hand through his dark hair. Sam saw the gray at his temples had spread, and felt a small shock. He’d aged in the time she’d known him, which wasn’t very long, all things considered. A few months, really, cherry blossoms to autumn leaves.

And in that time, she’d never seen him as rattled as he was right now.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. That’s a good idea. Since you’re already in this, Marcos, let’s get you in all the way. You can work from here—you’ll have everything you need, especially privacy. Do you need to call your boss? Tell her we need you?”

“She’s already given me the day, sir. I’m yours. Do you have any information on the sister?”

Sam slid him the thin file State had given them, and the one from the FBI. “Here’s everything we have on her. The sister’s name is Robin. Robin Souleyret. Find her, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

He gave her a smile. He had a nice smile. It made him look even younger than he was.

“How old are you, Agent Daniels?”

“Twenty-eight yesterday, ma’am. Today’s my first day working for NCAVC.”

Chapter 30

Georgetown

XANDER SLAMMED THE phone down and unplugged it from the wall. How the media had found him so quickly was astonishing. No one was parked outside yet, and he hoped that wouldn’t happen, but he wasn’t at all convinced he could avoid it. Sam would be upset with their life being played out on the news again. And so would he.

He joined Chalk at the kitchen table, where they’d been sipping water and booting up their respective computers. Xander had eschewed the idea of them having an office, much preferring to work out of the town house in Georgetown, but now, he was rethinking that decision.

“I don’t know if we’re secure here. That was CNN. This isn’t good.”

“I’ll fight them off for you, cupcake. Just point me at the nearest news van with my grenades and they won’t bother you anymore.”

Xander clutched his hands to his chest and batted his eyelashes. “Chalk, you’re my hero.”

Chalk flipped him the bird and started typing.

The smile left Xander’s face. He wasn’t kidding; he didn’t feel secure here. Not with a professional contract hitter down by his hand, a client/target taking a nap on his living room couch and three possible suspects having Diet Cokes in the backyard under Thor’s watchful eye.

Xander had come across a professional assassin once, been assigned to cover his ingress into a hot zone outside of Kandahar to take out a brutal Taliban leader, an executive order kept so quiet the press had no idea it was happening, back when the greater good was actually a point of sale in the war. The ride had been a long one—at night, overland in dangerous territory, scooting around known IED hotbeds, making sure they weren’t seen. They talked. It was the natural thing to do to pass the time.

The assassin had his own code. He wasn’t a believer, wasn’t attached to any sort of dogma. If the job paid, he went, simple as that. But he’d felt it was his duty. There were too many lives being lost fighting unjust wars unnecessarily. He felt the best way to end a conflict was to take out the leadership, do it quickly and brutally, and watch the rebellion fall apart.

Xander had seen enough rebellions pop up after a leader’s death to think this wasn’t exactly accurate. He told the man—his code name had been Atlas—that he felt like they were fighting a hydra. The insurgents were true believers, and cutting off the head in this neck of the woods simply created five hundred more heads, all desperate for power, and the desire to crush the West.

Atlas had laughed and told him it didn’t matter. There would always be another leader to eliminate. That was what made the world go around. One rebellion quashed, another rising from its ashes. More money for him. He was just the trigger. And in keeping with his pragmatic philosophy, he pointed out there were plenty more where he came from, too.

Xander supposed he was the same as the assassin, albeit with a slightly different code. He only killed under orders, too. He dragged himself back to the present, to his current crisis.

Beloved by many, Denon was still despised by a few, and they were clearly the ones behind the assassination attempt. The old axiom was true: powerful men and women drew powerful enemies. Xander had no illusions on that point. It was the thesis that would keep him and Chalk in business, long into their careers in close protection.

More importantly, if Xander could find who was funding the hit on Denon, they’d be able to stop the contract.

And he had no illusions on what that meant, either.

He was about to go hunting.

He knew he’d done the right thing protecting his principal. But now he’d brought down a world of hurt on himself and everyone around him. He couldn’t stand the idea of putting Sam in danger. She managed to get herself in enough trouble without him adding to the mix.

Xander pulled up a file on his laptop. Maybe someone from Denon’s past had a beef they’d missed, and was using his private staff to get close.

In the manner of all great—and rich—men, Denon had his fingers in a number of lucrative pies. The biggest entity by far was his interests in Britain’s oil and gas. Twenty years earlier, as a young driller on an ocean platform, he’d seen a way to make their jobs more efficient, and his work resulted in a new method for getting the oil from the ocean’s floor, one that had been adopted by every oil company in the world. Which made him a multibillionaire.

It was complicated stuff, and since he couldn’t find any links from the past to support the current issues, it had no bearing to Xander’s thoughts. He closed the backgrounder and moved into more recent information.

The specialized software Chalk had developed for their use was taking forever to run. Xander’s internet connection was overloaded by the five laptops connected to the router. It was taking quite a bit of effort not to rip the house apart in frustration.

“Anything yet?”

Chalk shook his head. “Patience, grasshopper.”

Chalk was more tolerant than Xander, always had been, which was what made them a good team. He was quiet, tapping industriously into the program he’d designed, waiting for it to work. The software could search the netherworlds of contract hits, looking for any moves by the known hitters. Assassination was primarily a word-of-mouth business, but there were still people who used their computers and email to ask for “help,” and Chalk was a genius when it came to programming. He’d written a software program that looked for the lingo special to the field. When it found a match to the usual buzzwords, it made a note, downloaded a piece of ingenious tracking software.

Some would call that hacking, but he didn’t use the information he collected for his own personal gain, he simply fed it into his program to identify the threat. So white-hat hacking, definitely. The program followed everything from the computer of the person who’d initiated the contact, especially funds transfers. It was a handy tool to gauge where in the process certain plans were. Talk was one thing. When money started changing hands, it was clear matters had gotten more serious.

It was only one tool, and helpful or not, now they knew it was fallible. The program had picked up nothing of interest relating to James Denon before their detail began.

Chalk cracked his knuckles, drawing Xander’s attention. “We’re going to have to invest in a better wireless connection for you, my friend. I think I’ve got it finally.” He clicked his mouse a few times. “Yeah, we’re up.” He read for a few seconds, shaking his head. “I see nothing here—no warnings, no threats. No contracts on Denon. No mutterings at all, in fact. I’ve been scoping conversations from the past two weeks—I did this before, too, and saw nothing, figured we must have missed something—but I’m coming up blank.”