More Than a Mission - Caridad Pineiro [43]
First, her obvious presence in so many of the areas where the Sparrow had had a kill attributed to her.
Her physical condition and martial arts skills, not to mention her driving abilities.
Now the deadly garden plants. As he remembered his first day in the kitchen, he recalled her nimble handling of the knife. A killer’s way with a knife.
If Elizabeth wasn’t the Sparrow…
“Walker’s got some leaves I snipped off the plants. Will you be able to do anything with that?”
Suddenly Xander’s face filled the screen again. He held up a test tube. “I’ve already done the PCR testing on the sample our crew lifted off the prince’s marble coffee table. Seems that’s where he decided to do the lines of coke.”
“So we were able to get more evidence at the crime scene?” Lucia asked her colleague.
Walker was the one who answered. “Our unit collected some remnants of coke, but no fingerprints, hair or fiber other than the prince’s.”
“What about fluids?” he asked, interested in a perverse and decidedly personal kind of way in whether the prince had shared himself with the Sparrow before biting the dust.
Walker looked at him and saw past the professional reason for the question. “No fluids at the scene,” he replied, concern lacing his words.
“What about on the body?” he pressed.
“No indication of sexual activity,” Xander advised over the speaker and Aidan glanced at Walker.
“What about good ol’saliva? I can’t imagine that the prince would have had someone as attractive as the Sparrow in his room and not have traded spit.”
Walker glared at him coldly. “Is that opinion based on personal knowledge?”
He stood, tired of Walker’s and now Lucia’s scrutiny. “You expect me to crack the Sparrow. That isn’t going to happen unless I use everything at my disposal. Everything.”
With that comment he started to walk from the room, but as he neared his door, he paused and faced Walker. “And may I remind everyone that I’m the lead agent on this assignment. While I appreciate your concerns, I need to do what I think is right to crack the Sparrow.”
With that, he grabbed hold of the knob, but as he opened the door, Walker said to Xander, “Make sure we’ve got swabs of the prince’s mouth. And if we don’t, get them pronto.”
Chapter 14
As usual, Elizabeth was up bright and early, flitting around the garden like a beautiful butterfly or a vicious little bee. Snipping here and there. Filling her basket with murder and mayhem, Aidan thought.
It was a trifle early for him to go to work, but there was little reason for him to hang out in the hotel room. Grabbing the special surveillance equipment Lucia had used to crack the safe and locker, Aidan stepped out into the suite where, as ever, Lucia vigilantly perused the monitors while typing away on her laptop.
“Anything?”
“Just the Sparrow’s typical morning routine.” Noticing that he was dressed and holding the equipment, she asked, “Where are you going?”
“Figured I’d take a look in those tunnels. See what I can make of them.”
Lucia gave him a heads up. “FYI—You’ll find my footprints—size nine—for the first few feet in the main tunnel and then in the path to the right. Once I saw that way branched out into multiple tunnels, I stopped.”
“Good job. Just keep an eye on Elizabeth and let me know if I’ve been compromised.” When she returned to her busy pecking on the keys, he asked, “What else are you up to?”
“Hacking the Silvershire DMV.”
“Why hack? We’re on the government payroll,” he began, but then he remembered Walker’s earlier concern about the Quiz and their source for information. “I get it. You don’t trust whomever we have to ask.”
“Too much leakage of vital details. If there’s a mole, I don’t want them knowing what we’re up to,” she confirmed.
He patted her on the back, but as he walked away, Lucia called out to him. He stopped, turned.
She seemed hesitant to speak. Unusual for the normally feisty operative. “You and the Sparrow. It