Cooper Security 06 - Secret Intentions (22 page)

“Not sure,” she answered. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, her answer appearing on the screen.
I’m fine, but I need to see you. In person. Where are you now?

A few seconds later, Endrex typed back,
Closer than you think.

“Does he know where you’re living now?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah, I talked to him briefly a while back and mentioned I’d moved here permanently.” Evie typed in a new message.
Tell me where to find you and I’ll come to you. We need to talk.

“How do you think he’ll respond to that?” Jesse murmured, pulling up a chair before his shaking knees betrayed him.

“I don’t know. He tends to paranoia.”

The wait for an answer seemed interminable. When it finally came, it was brief.
They’re here. Can’t talk.

“What?” Jesse asked.

Who’s there?
Evie typed in.

Come visit
came the response.
Look for the Storyteller. Noon.

“Who the hell is the Storyteller?” Jesse asked.

“I don’t know. She typed in a request for more information, but Endrex’s name disappeared from the chat list. “I think he’s gone.”

“How paranoid is this guy? Paranoid enough to imagine people are after him when they’re not?”

“Possibly. But if General Ross’s journal was right and Endrex has actual evidence that could bring down the Espera Group, do you think they’d hesitate for a moment to try to take him out?”

“But how would they know he has it? As far as we know, the only record of that is the general’s journal, and we only just now deciphered the code. Even if we had a mole standing right there in the room with us this morning, there hasn’t been enough time for anyone to figure out who he really is and how to find him.”

“I don’t know,” Evie said, looking worried. “I have a really bad feeling about this. What if someone’s found him? They might be taking him captive right now and torturing him to find out what he has on them.”

Jesse hoped not. If the SSU got the information from Endrex that they wanted, they wouldn’t leave him alive. Their best hope to bring down the Espera Group would be gone.

“He said he was closer than I thought. Could he be in Alabama?”

“I don’t know.” Frustration drove him to his feet, and he started pacing the floor of her small living room, trying to focus his mind on nothing but the question of where to find Endrex. But focus was hard to come by when he was surrounded by Evie’s light, fresh fragrance. The apartment seemed to be permeated by the scent. “If he was here in the state, where would he settle? Did he have any connections here?”

“Not that I know of, but I didn’t know very much about his personal life. I don’t even know his real name. My dad might be able to find out.”

Definitely a place to start, Jesse thought, pulling out his cell phone. He got his sister Megan on the line. “Megan, I need to talk to General Marsh. Is he anywhere around?”

“Sure, he’s right here.” Megan passed the phone to the general.

“Have you learned something?” Marsh asked gruffly, skipping the greetings.

“We’re not sure. Evie doesn’t know Endrex’s real name. Do you have any contacts who might have known his given name? It would help us track him down much more quickly.”

“Sure, I can make a call or two.”

“Thank you, sir. Call me back when you have it.” Jesse hung up and turned back to Evie, who sat tense and hunched at the computer as she scrolled through search-engine results. The screen changed, bringing up a page with a large photo of a fountain in the middle.

She straightened suddenly and twisted to look at him. “Look at this.”

He sat beside her again and looked at the computer screen. The photo that filled the screen featured a fountain in Birmingham, Alabama. Inside the fountain, a bronze statue of a man with a ram’s head was reading a book to an assortment of animals situated on bronze circles, while bronze frogs shot streams of water from their mouths.

The caption under the picture read, “The Storyteller, a bronze sculpture by artist Frank Fleming, sits in the fountain in Five Points South.”

“The Storyteller,” Evie murmured, her eyes wide with excitement.

* * *

“
W
HAT IF IT’S THE OTHER
Storyteller?”

Evie looked away from the fountain visible across Magnolia Avenue and met Jesse’s dark gaze. “The other one was in Buckhead outside Atlanta. Definitely not an Endrex sort of place.”

“And Five Points South is?”

“Absolutely.” She ticked off the reasons. “Artsy, bohemian, popular with the college crowd, has a thriving slacker-chic underground—”

“And?”

“He’d want to blend in. His notoriety was all in cyberspace. In the normal world, he’d want to stay as low-key as possible. Not attract attention.”

He didn’t answer, just stared back at her through those dark, mysterious eyes that made her stomach tighten and her heart race.

He hadn’t wanted her to come with him to Birmingham, but she’d made him see the need. Endrex knew her. He’d trusted her enough to give her a clue where to find him.

Even with Jesse stopping at the office to pick up extra weapons and ammo and brief the others on their plans, they’d reached Birmingham well before noon. After driving around Five Points South a couple of times to scope out the area, they’d parked in the back lot of a restaurant near the Storyteller fountain on Highland Avenue. The mid-October weather was still mild, warm enough to lure a handful of patrons onto the outdoor patio across the street from the fountain. Jesse and Evie had joined them, ordering from the brunch menu.

Evie wasn’t hungry, even though she’d skipped breakfast. Too much nervous energy, she supposed. But she tried to eat a little of the cheese omelet Jesse had coaxed her to order as she kept an eye on the fountain.

“Are you sure you’ll recognize him?” Jesse asked quietly.

“I don’t know. It’s been eleven years.” He had been in his early twenties when she’d known him back in Virginia. In a decade he could have added weight. Started to lose his hair or go gray. For all she knew, he’d gone establishment, at least on the outside. Suit, tie, haircut and all. Had she been crazy to convince Jesse to rush down to Birmingham to meet a man she hadn’t seen in years who could be hundreds of miles from here?

Ten o’clock ticked over to eleven, and the waiter started to eye them resentfully. Jesse ordered another orange juice for each of them, buying them a little extra patience from the server.

“What if they’ve captured him?” she asked quietly, her stomach in knots. “Or worse? Maybe I should go wait by the fountain.”

His mouth tightened. “By yourself?”

“You’d spook him off.”

She could tell by the look in his dark eyes that he knew she was right—and didn’t like it one bit. “Okay,” he said, reluctance oozing from his voice. “But the second anything gets the least bit hinky—”

“I’ll get out of there,” she promised.

She felt his gaze burning into her back as she crossed Magnolia Avenue to reach the fountain. The splash of water on stone and bronze muted some of the traffic sounds of the busy five-point intersection, but it also made listening for any approaching footsteps next to impossible.

With the time beginning to approach midday, foot traffic had picked up as people from nearby businesses took advantage of the warm day to walk to area restaurants for an early lunch hour. Evie eyed each passing person as she pretended to study the fountain artwork.

There were men and women dressed in a rainbow array of medical scrubs, probably lunchtime escapees from the two hospitals in the Southside area. Men in formal business suits rubbed elbows with twentysomethings in sloppy plaids and jeans. Women in jewel-colored power suits, older teens in jeans and belly-ring-baring T-shirts, men in golf shirts and khakis—the variety was overwhelming.

And somewhere in this crowd of kinetic humanity, she was supposed to be able to pick out a man she hadn’t seen in over ten years?

She looked across the street, locking gazes with Jesse. He was on the phone but he didn’t take his eyes off her. Tension lined his face and thinned his mouth to a tight line as he watched from afar.

Suddenly his brow furrowed and he leaned forward, his muscles bunching as if he were ready to launch himself across the street.

From behind, a hand closed around her shoulder, making her jump. She whirled around, ready to fight, but the clear green eyes that met hers hadn’t changed a bit in ten years.

“Leatherbrat? Love the red hair.”

She started to relax, until she realized the smile in Endrex’s green eyes belied the tension his lean body betrayed in every taut tendon and nervous twitch. He hadn’t changed much in the time they’d been apart; he was still thin, loose-limbed and hungry-looking. He dressed a little more neatly, his sandy hair brushed back into a ponytail and his shirt a button-up rather than the faded graphic T-shirts he’d preferred when he was working in Virginia.

“You said to meet you,” she said carefully, not sure whether she’d misread his urgency.

“I can’t believe you actually came.” His words came out in a jittery laugh as he gestured at the fountain. “I didn’t give you much to go on.”

“Either here or Buckhead,” she said with a smile. “You’re not the Buckhead type.”

“Can we get out of here? It’s a little open for my tastes.” His gaze darted around, clearly looking for something.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“Always, Leatherbrat.”

“You can call me Evie.” She shot him a curious glance. “Do you have a name or are we just going with Endrex?”

He looked back at her, his eyes slightly narrowed. It took him a moment to respond, but he finally answered, “Call me Cav.”

“Okay, Cav.” She wished she dared look back at Jesse, but Cav was so wired that she was afraid any wrong move on her part would spook him away and they’d never be able to find him again. “Where do you want to go?”

“My bike’s over here.” He nodded toward the line of vehicles parked along Magnolia Avenue. She spotted a motorcycle parked about ten parking slots down from the intersection. “I brought an extra helmet just for you.”

Now the urge to look back at Jesse was overwhelming. He would be furious if she got on the motorcycle with Endrex—Cav—and rode away without letting him know where they were headed, even with the precautions they’d taken. And he’d be justified.

But she needed to know whether General Ross was right. Did Cav have evidence that could bring down the Espera Group and put an end to their crimes? He was the only person who could answer that question, and thanks to their former friendship, he might be willing to tell her everything he knew. Maybe even hand over the evidence to her and Jesse for safekeeping.

It was a risk she was going to have to take.

“Are you in danger?” she asked before she gave Cav a final answer.

“Like you wouldn’t believe. So are you.” He met her gaze without flinching. “You’re not surprised, are you?”

She shook her head. “I figured that out a few days ago when someone grabbed me at my sister’s wedding and threw me in the back of a truck.”

“After all that, I can’t believe you came here alone.” He leaned closer. “Why did you?”

She almost told him about Jesse then. But he looked like a skittish colt ready to bolt at the first provocation, so she kept the truth about Jesse’s presence quiet. “I want to know what you have that can bring down the Espera Group.”

His eyes widened. “How much do you know?”

“Enough to know they have to be stopped.” She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I know they’ve been killing people and manipulating foreign governments to clear the path for their plans.”

“Their hired goons are here, you know.”

“That’s what you said.”

“They’ve probably gone through my room by now. I got out before they spotted me.” He laughed nervously. “At least, I hope I did.”

“You can’t go back there.”

He shrugged. “I don’t keep the important stuff there anyway. Just a laptop they can have, for all I care.” He patted the messenger bag draped around his neck and shoulder. “I have what I need here.”

“What about the evidence?”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s somewhere safe.” Cav gave her a slight nudge toward the motorcycle and followed as she started walking in that direction.

What would Jesse do now? she wondered. He had to be on the verge of chasing them down and making a scene to keep her from going with Cav.

Please, Jesse. Please don’t do it.

Whether he liked it or not, she had to do this her way.

* * *

J
ESSE THREW A TWENTY
on the table to pay for their food and the tip, keeping his eye on Evie and her companion. He’d hoped this situation wouldn’t transpire, even as he’d prepared for the possibility. Short of leaving her behind, he couldn’t have prevented her from doing what she believed was necessary to get the evidence General Ross had died trying to protect.

And even leaving her behind would have been a temporary fix at best. She’d made bringing down these conspirators her mission the second she realized the implications of letting the Espera Group get away with their plans. She wasn’t the sort of woman who could sit back and watch a disaster unfold if she thought she could help stop it.

That trait was one of the many things he had come to love about her, even if it scared him out of his mind.

Evie and the man Jesse assumed must be Endrex stopped at a motorcycle just as he reached the parking lot. Endrex handed her a helmet, spurring Jesse to move faster before he lost them. He’d been forced to park at the farthest end of the lot, where there was no good view of the street, so there was nearly a minute where Evie was completely out of his sight. Hurrying, he backed the car out of the parking slip and headed for the Magnolia Avenue exit, scanning the street to see how far they’d gotten.

The motorcycle was sitting in the same place he’d last seen it. The helmet Endrex had handed to Evie sat on the motorcycle seat.

But Evie and Endrex were nowhere around.

Struggling to quell the first gush of panic pouring into his gut, Jesse turned onto Magnolia Avenue and followed the road to the five-point intersection, scanning the converging streets for any sign of Evie and her friend on foot. But there was nothing. No sign of them anywhere.