Courting Passion (11 page)

The tone rang a number of times before the line was picked up. Katherine leaned closer so she could hear both sides of the conversation, intrigued as to how Victor was doing and what his reaction would be.

“Yes?” a male voice answered.

“Victor, it’s Garth, mate. How are you hanging in there?”

“I’m about ready to get out of this bed, Garth. No one will tell me a damn thing and I’m going crazy. Update me on what’s been happening.”

In the background Katherine heard a female voice admonishing Victor.

“Dad, you’re staying put. You have three broken ribs, a fractured collarbone and the worst series of bruising the doctor has ever personally witnessed. You are not getting out of this bed—”

“Come on, Skye, let the man talk to Garth in peace. We need some tea and sandwiches anyway.”

“I’m bringing you back vitamins, Dad. Lots of vitamins.”

Both Katherine and Garth snickered as Victor sighed. She had a feeling Victor’s daughter’s threat was a serious one, based on years of experience and possibly even a mimicking of words her father had said to her in the past.

“I can’t wait, sweetheart,” he replied, his tone seeming to be caught between amusement and resignation.

Garth explained what had occurred since they had parted.

“Both Katherine and I feel strongly there’s more than just luck at play here. We were wondering if you could look into the burying of these documents in more detail from your end? I’m sure Jack can get a laptop to you and it’s sure to keep you occupied while you work on getting the doctors to release you.”

“That’s good work, Garth, I’m impressed,” Victor replied. “It sounds like you and Katherine have things well in hand. You’re a solid partnership and mesh well together. I presume the two of you will be out there chasing down leads and following Jennings?”

“We plan to compile a list of all other holdings of MacKenzie Industries and anything else this board of directors currently rent under other names. I think Katherine and I will visit them all, sniff around until we uncover Jennings himself, Connor or a new lead to trace.”

“Of course,” Victor said. There was silence for a moment as the older man thought.

“I think that’s a good course of action,” Victor spoke again. “I‘ll do everything possible from this bloody hospital bed. I might even call in a few markers to speed things along.”

Katherine relaxed and grinned at Garth. They were on track.

“We’ll keep you up to speed with how things go on our end. Keep in touch?” Garth wrapped up once Victor promised to call them if he discovered anything solid.

Exchanging farewells, the men hung up. Katherine threw an arm around Garth and drew his head down for a passionate kiss. Pulling away, she leaned her forehead on his and caught her breath.

“That could have gone a lot worse.”

“Only problem we now face is making that list,” Garth grumbled good-naturedly. Katherine laughed, kissed his lips a few more times then stood up.

“I’ll make us some more tea. You get out pen and paper and we can get cracking.”

Chapter Six

Katherine parked the car in front of the fourth block of office buildings they’d tried in the last two hours. She frowned and nibbled her lower lip.

“Do you think we should go back to MacKenzie Industries? If we put the scare on someone there they should be able to give us contact details for Connor,” she suggested. The thought had been circling in her head over the last twenty minutes while they had battled against the end-of-day traffic.

“I’ve been mulling over the same thought,” Garth admitted as he unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to face her. “Two things have kept me from mentioning it. The first is Connor’s first point of contact almost certainly would have been to Oscar to inform him of the close call he’d sustained. He’d likely have insisted Oscar offer him protection, hide him or give him somewhere else to safely decrypt the programme.”

“Since it’s been hours and the laptop Scott set up for us hasn’t traced any work on that line, Connor would have thoroughly searched the hard drive, found the ring we inserted on to it and destroyed it,” Katherine realised.

 Garth nodded.

“It’s the logical deduction. The data will still have been encrypted—that happened irreversibly as soon as they tried to download the information on the hard drive. But removing the ring and destroying it means they’re no longer working on our frequency and we can’t trace them like we did earlier.”

“Okay, so now Oscar knows we’re after him he will have cleaned MacKenzie Industries up or at the very least destroyed anything useful we could find there. Got it. What’s your second thought?”

“We have a better chance of finding Connor at one of these offices, not at his home,” Garth rationalised. “Connor will know we are after him, and he’ll expect Oscar to hide him out. Even if we somehow got his address from MacKenzie or some other means, the odds are in our favour of finding him around here somewhere. Plus, we might get really lucky and find Oscar, too.”

Katherine frowned and thought about that.

“You think Oscar will want to keep an eye on Connor, meet him somewhere neutral and safe and watch over his work?”

“Well, think about it. Not only is Oscar desperate to get his hands on all this blackmail material and contact protocols for these people, but also Connor is now a liability. He’s come to the attention of the Agency and can tie Oscar with the hard drive, not to mention the possibility Connor knows about the mole, even if he doesn’t realise it.”

Katherine felt her jaw drop.

“You think Oscar will use Connor then kill him?”

Garth shrugged and opened his door.

“Why not? He’s not one of the good guys. Killing a small fry fish like Connor would be nothing to Oscar. Indeed, it probably makes sense to him to tie up the loose end and make his life simpler.”

Katherine swallowed hard.

“We better get lucky soon then. I didn’t think much of Connor but he certainly is playing out of his league. He doesn’t deserve to be sacrificed for trying to make a bit of money on the side.”

“We don’t know Connor is just being opportunistic, either,” Garth reminded her. “But I do agree it would be a waste to lose him. Not to mention we could use the connection he gives us to make a case against Oscar and hopefully someday whoever the mole in the Agency is.”

Katherine nodded and opened her door, climbing out of the car.

“Then let’s hope we get lucky soon and find him.”

They met on the edge of the footpath, keeping well out of the way of the bustling peak-hour foot traffic. Everyone kept their heads down, focused on making it home—or to the local pub—after a hard day’s work. Katherine could commiserate, but her day had barely got moving yet. It seemed a long way out of reach for her to be able to go home, put her feet up and soak in the tub, preferably with Garth naked and beside her.

While they were not in the heart of central London, they were not far from it. Tall buildings vied for space with the older stone structures. Gargoyles stared out at them from floors above, looking protective or antagonistic depending on the frame of mind one viewed them in. Katherine dragged her thoughts back on point and glanced at Garth as she gathered herself and checked her weapon under her jacket.

“So this is Lennin’s Temp Agency, up on the sixth floor,” she recalled. “Owned by one of the board members and claimed on their taxes but with no other visible ties. Another shot in the dark but it’s between the computer suppliers we just came from and the next place, Trojan IT Support, which is a few blocks farther down the street.”

“Pretty much,” Garth agreed. “Most of these are a shot in the dark, but also recon. We need to gather more evidence, or at least a solid connection, before we can get warrants or act with any force.”

“Okay,” Katherine gathered herself and tried to not get her hopes up again. “Let’s go bust some balls. I’ve got a good feeling about—”

She halted mid-sentence and froze as she caught sight of a lanky man with a scruffy mop of blond hair paused at the entrance to the building they had been about to move towards. Katherine reached out and grabbed Garth’s elbow to halt him, but he, too, had seen Connor the exact instant she had.

The young man paced for a moment and checked his watch, looking up and down the street. Garth and Katherine turned their back to him so as to not be seen and possibly recognised.

“Who’s he waiting for?” Katherine hissed. They looked up and down the street, not spotting anything out of the ordinary or anyone lurking, looking mysterious or unusual. It was a fluke that Katherine looked on to the street. Her gaze had been moving farther afield, checking over the road to see if anyone lingered there, when she saw the small hatchback with the pizza sign on its roof.

Checking her watch, she figured it was early for the dinner hour. Had Connor’s lunch been ruined or missed owing to their interruption of his routine? It was quite possible Connor was starved. The hatchback squeezed into a tight spot, double parked a door down from where Connor stood and a pimpled, teenaged youth stepped out on to the street, two steaming boxes under his arms.

Katherine nudged Garth and nodded towards the delivery boy. Garth wrapped an arm over her shoulder and bent to whisper in her ear.

“It’s even money whether Oscar is up there or not,” he murmured. “Do you want to call in back-up and possibly have egg on our faces if it’s only for that idiot Connor, or do you want to play it safe and make it an official Agency bust?”

She thought fast while Connor eagerly exchanged a handful of bills for the pizzas and disappeared back inside the building.

“We know he’s here, for now at least. But I still worry about this mole. I’m not keen to make it official and go through the proper channels until we’re certain either paranoia is rabid and there is no leak, or until we’ve identified who the mole is and have a plan to deal with that issue.”

Facing each other, their faces remained close while she debated within herself.

“I suggest we call Walters, Peterson, Jack and Skye in,” she put forward. “We know we can trust those four. Jack and Skye aren’t, strictly speaking, Agency at all, plus they have an invested interest in the successful outcome of this mission. They’ve both been involved in the exchange of the hard drive for Victor, Jack is good with a gun and will protect Skye, and Skye is Victor’s daughter and likely would enjoy getting her pound of flesh for the damage and pain Oscar has caused.”

“And your reasoning behind bringing in Walters and Peterson?” Garth asked, sounding far more curious than upset.

“They’re in charge of working out who the mole is and, as a side note, recovering the hard drive. This is technically their mission, though it’s far more ours than theirs. They deserve to be in if this turns into a legitimate bust and I think we can trust them. It’s worth the risk to me, at least. We’re partners, though, equals. What are your thoughts?”

Garth looked thoughtful for a silent moment. He nodded and pressed a light kiss to her lips.

“Make the call to Walters. I’ll call Skye,” he said. “I like the way you plan. Six of us are enough to contain almost anything we find up there, but not so large we’ll look foolish if it’s pointless. Plus we get rid of most of the red tape by not making it an official, sanctioned mission. I love your brain.”

“Just my brain?” she teased as she pulled out her mobile. Garth winked as he pressed a series of digits.

Katherine scrolled through her phone’s address book and selected Walters’ number. Hitting the call button, she waited a few seconds as it rang. It was picked up almost immediately.

“Walters,” he said.

“It’s Katherine. Can you speak freely for a minute?”

“Peterson is here, no one else. Is that all right?”

“Perfect. Garth and I have been following up a few leads on Oscar Jennings. We aren’t sure, but we might have found something. We don’t want to make this official in case we’re jumping the gun, but also… Well we don’t want to possibly tip our hand to Jennings again. You with me?”

“Depends on what being with you comprises. What have you found?”

“Scott set us up with a locator for the ring Jack Berick had placed as an encryption device on the portable hard drive. That beacon had us after a skinny blond tech called Connor. No surname as of yet. He’s a twitchy bugger, had a gun but no experience with it. Sadly he had two friends there—unknowns and seemingly not related to this job at all—and they covered his escape. Garth was shot and things went to hell, but we’ve run him down. Confirmed the building he’s in, but we don’t want to be taken by surprise again.”

“So you want us as back-up?” Walters finished.

“Partially,” Katherine hedged. “It’s pure conjecture at this point, but there’s the possibility Connor turned to Oscar for help when he was compromised. The reason we don’t want this official, just two mates helping us out, is because it’s totally unsubstantiated. If we turned to the Agency with the possibility of our number one current terrorist target, this place would be sealed up tighter than a virgin’s arse. We’d be a laughing stock if Connor is hiding out with a tech mate and they’re in there with a bunch of pizzas and beer downloading porn.”

“So the four of us go in, seal the place up tight and question Connor and find the whereabouts of Oscar or, at the minimum, how to contact him, or the best case scenario is we work the bust of the year ourselves?”

“Six of us. Garth is calling Jack Berick and Skye Adams in too. They were part of the initial exchange for Victor. They might be handy to have present and in part Garth feels we owe them this much to give them some closure. I agree with him on this.”

There was a brief silence while Walters appeared to confer with Peterson. A moment later he replied.

“We’re in. Where are you?”

Katherine gave him their address, then recommended they park in the side streets.

“The main road here is packed. You’ve no chance of getting anywhere directly around here, not for at least another few hours.”

“We can be there in fifteen. Buzz me if something happens between now and then. Otherwise, we’ll see you in a few.”