Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [129]
Rachel wrinkled her brow. “She did, actually. Now what was it?”
“You mean where she was going, specifically.”
“I said what and I meant what.” Rachel clicked her fingernails on the crown of her diamond-studded gold watch. “Let me see. What were she and I discussing? Oh, yes. The secret bank account my husband keeps. The moment I mentioned that her face lit up.” She laughed, and for a moment the years, and with them the care and worry, seemed to slip off her face. “I knew that look. I knew it would be useless to ask her to stick around.” Then she pointed. “Now you’re doing it.”
“What?”
“Lighting up like a beacon.”
With good reason.
“A bank, you say.” And Heroe thought, Middle Bay Bancorp. Bingo!
TWENTY-SIX
“JACK, I need to talk to you.”
Alli came and sat next to him. The 737 had been in the air for forty minutes. It would be less than twenty until they set down at a secured airstrip outside Vlorë. Since speaking with Chief Detective Heroe he had been sunk deep in thought. His mind wanted to go to his upcoming reunion with Annika, but it kept slipping back to Naomi. He felt her loss acutely. She had been of great help to both the FLOTUS and Alli after the accident in Moscow that had killed Edward Carson, proving herself quick-witted and unflustered by even the most grievous of events. Afterward, she had kept in touch with him. She always asked about Alli’s emotional state. He could still remember how genuinely happy she’d been by the news that Alli had decided to go to Fearington. “Finally,” she’d said, “she’s on a path that will serve her well.”
In addition, he was concerned by the widening gyre of the conspiracy he found himself investigating. The mission given Dennis Paull and, by extension, him, was on the surface a simple one: Track down and terminate Arian Xhafa. And yet, now, only days later, it wasn’t simple at all. If Naomi was dead, it was at the hands of her partner. McKinsey had been extracted from the Metro police by Andrew Gunn, not McKinsey’s boss, who had somehow been neutralized. McKinsey and Naomi had been pulled out of Secret Service and seconded to Henry Holt Carson. Why them? Was McKinsey secretly working for Carson, as Gunn seemed to be? The odds seemed to favor that theory. But how did these people tie in to Arian Xhafa and his American representative Mbreti? And then there was Annika’s involvement.
Every investigation had a trajectory, but Jack’s mind worked in three dimensions. He saw the layers at work here: Carson, Xhafa, Annika. He now knew Annika’s connection with Xhafa, but not what she had been doing in D.C. For the life of him he couldn’t see the connection between Carson, Gunn, McKinsey, and Xhafa. Was it the Stem? The sex trade? And who the hell set out to frame Alli? The puzzle, complex as it seemed, had nevertheless taken on dimension and feel. It was the context that was missing. He was too close to the trees to see the forest. He needed to pull his perspective back and look at the disparate pieces as a whole.
At the same time, another part of his mind was busy working on the name equation he suspected would lead to Mbreti’s real name. Grasi = Thatë; Mbreti = X. Despite his best efforts, it remained unsolved. And yet, he couldn’t help believing that the solution was right in front of his face. If only he could see it.
Turning his mind away from these conundrums, he smiled at Alli, grateful for the distraction. Let another part of his brain unravel them, he thought, while she engaged him in conversation.
“You’ve done extremely well with Edon,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”
She seemed stunned, and sat back in the seat. “Huh! No one’s ever said that to me before.”
“I’m sorry I’m the first,” he said with a wry smile, “but I’ll have to do.”
Impulsively, she left her seat to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for believing in me.”
“Always.”
Alli returned his smile, but almost immediately she became serious. “Are you going to tell me about Annika?”
“She’s in Albania, that’s where we’re going now. The plane will drop us off, refuel, then take Paull and