Defender (19 page)

NINETEEN

A simple call to the police shouldn’t have warranted this kind of attention. After phoning in her report about seeing what looked like a kidnapping attempt, Anya had been picked up, forced into a police car. And, most confusing of all, she’d been transported to the local NATO air base.

Waiting alone in a small interrogation room, Anya eyed her coffee suspiciously. It had come from the authorities, after all. Growing up, she’d seen authorities take money from her father and later from her aunt. She had even tried reporting her aunt to the police before leaving, only to have Aunt Marta threaten her the second she got home. Of course the police were on her payroll.

Their track record made her wonder why she’d reached out to them this time, but who else could she have called? Her conscience wouldn’t allow the incident to go unreported, even if the end result had her trembling in fear. She slid her hands under the table to hide her nervousness.

Anya studied what looked to her like a two-way mirror and wondered who waited on the other side. She’d heard of women disappearing into the justice system here. Of course, those stories had been from her family and their friends, so she hoped perhaps they were distorted out of their disdain for the law. She rubbed her throat, already aching for outside air.

The doorknob twisted. She stilled, tamping down nausea. The thick metal door swung wide for a man in loose-fitting dress pants and a button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves. His tousled black hair attested to multiple finger combs of frustration.

How nice to know she wasn’t the only one having a stressful day.

Her eyes skipped to the man standing behind him. She studied Omar, the door guard back at the Oasis and apparently an undercover detective for the Turkish police. Having him respond to her call to the authorities had been a surprise, but she should have guessed. The police were always tied up in her aunt’s dealings. They must have been watching her. Sharing the family name had distinct disadvantages.

She hated to think the Oasis might be as corrupt as her aunt’s holdings. Was there any safe place for her? Anya sagged back in her chair and waited for the man with Omar to quit lurking in the doorway, staring at her like they were caught in some childhood blinking contest. Fine. She would blink first.

Then she blinked again, but this time in shock.

Anya straightened in her chair slowly. “Miguel?”

Gone was the aristocratic tilt to his head, the slow grace with which he moved. The man before her now did not appear a privileged heir enjoying life to its fullest but an intense, driven man with a light in his dark eyes she’d never witnessed. Most telling, he unmistakably belonged here in an official manner.

Had he been following her, too? Getting close to her for the sake of trying to reach her aunt? Did he suspect
her
of something sordid?

Her stomach roiled upward, and she lurched for the trash can beside her to empty what little churned around in her gut. She had missed a meal, after all, thanks to her no-show dinner companion, a dining companion who might well have been lining up a warrant for her on some bogus basis rooted in the accident of her birth into a crooked family.

A handkerchief appeared in her line of sight, proffered by a hand now devoid of expensive jewelry.

“Thank you,” she dabbed at her lips, straightening. “I do not appreciate being stood up for supper.”

She met his dark eyes again, hoping perhaps she’d somehow misread the situation. But no. His freedom of movement in this place left her with no doubts. He was some kind of police official or military personnel, and she’d been used.

Miguel showed no emotion. “I’m sorry about the past week.”

He didn’t even have an accent? Of course not. Everything had been a lie, even his kisses.

She moved the coffee aside, leaning forward on her arms and to hell with Omar, she did not care what anyone thought. “For lying to me or for using me?”

That stopped him cold for two heartbeats before he recovered. Miguel—oh God, she did not even know if that was his real name—pulled a chair out and sat across from her.

“I can send someone to find food if you’re hungry. Would you like a doughnut to go with your coffee?”

“No thank you.” She couldn’t sit here and simply eat a pastry with him in some sad mockery of their dinner plans. “I just want to get this over with as soon as possible.”

He withdrew a small tape recorder and pressed a button. “Tell me more about your aunt.”

Irony burned away any tears welling inside, and she laughed, painful gasps that grated her throat on the way up and out. She should have known.

Everything always came back to Marta.

Moving to the next holding room at the base security police station, Nunez worked like hell to put Anya’s look of betrayal out of his mind for the moment. She’d maintained her innocence throughout, but her distrust of the police couldn’t be missed.

Yet she’d called for help.

As had Livia Cicero after her sprint for freedom.

He was lucky the whole flipping Turkish police force hadn’t come charging after them in a hailstorm of gunfire.

At least he’d convinced Turkish authorities this fell under the military’s jurisdiction, even allowing him to bring Anya back with Livia for questioning. If anything, the local cops seemed glad to turn the mess over to someone else. Anything involving Livia Cicero equaled paparazzi. They all agreed this would be best kept out of the press if possible.

They’d sent Omar, their undercover dude at the Oasis—and wasn’t the door fascist’s role a real kick in the ass?—to be their official representative. Beyond that, this was Nunez’s show. Thank God. Keeping this quiet was in the best interest of finding Chuck. They’d scanned a five-mile radius beyond where Kutros had pulled over and found no suspicious farmhouses, and Scanlon’s crew hadn’t found anything at the site farther north.

Work definitely required all his concentration right now. He needed to focus on questioning Livia Cicero and hopefully pry some answers from Spiros Kutros. If the bastard survived surgery.

Later, he would think about what Anya’s seeming innocence meant for him.

For now, he needed to find out why Livia Cicero had left the base and if she had any ties to Marta Surac. Jimmy Gage had requested to sit in on this interview. Since he’d been there when the goons brought Chloe to the cellar, he could well have impressions or memories that would help validate—or negate—Livia’s story.

The singer perched on the edge of the steel chair, cupping her coffee in both hands as if she couldn’t get warm enough. Nuances. Look for the subtle clues. Her makeup was smeared, unusual in and of itself for the always cool diva, but even more so, given her simple jeans and tank top. Not a sequin in sight.

She glanced up at the three men entering the room. The mug rattled against the scarred wood table as Gage and Omar set up shop in the corner by the two-way mirror. Ah, she held the cup to hide her shaking hands. A scared suspect he could work with.

Nunez grabbed a chair, flipped it around, and slammed it to the ground near her. Livia flinched.

He straddled the chair backward, leaning toward her, crowding her. “Why did you leave the base when you were told explicitly to stay put?”

Her chin quivered as she tried for a face tip of bravado. “I have already spoken to the Turkish police and the base security police. Why am I being questioned again?”

He stared at her without speaking, waiting.

“All right. Fine.” Her normally sultry voice turned curt. “I will repeat it all if you will just tell me what happened to Chloe Nelson.”

No one had told her? An oversight? Or downright cruel. “She’s alive and in our custody.”

“Thank God.” She blinked back tears as she crossed herself. “I left the base because I received a call from a friend performing with the USO.”

“A friend?”

“The American backup dancer, Steven Fisher, had a fight with his girlfriend, Melanie.” She swiped her fingers just below her red-rimmed eyes, sniffling but keeping up the steady stream of words. “He thought she was cheating on him, and he left base to track her. His taxi ride never showed up at the Oasis, and he needed my help to get back.”

The story would be easy enough to check out. In fact, his people taking notes on the other side of the two-way mirror were probably already dispatching someone to bring in the backup dancer for questioning. “Why didn’t you just call the security police to retrieve him?”

“He was drunk and crying. He was afraid of getting fired. He has a sick mother to support.”

The Kevin Federline look-alike had a mother? “You do realize your story sounds thin.”

“I have so many threats made against me. Perhaps I have grown a bit blasé when it comes to security.” She shrugged, her eyes flicking to Omar and Gage nervously. “Wrong of me, I realize now, but at the time, I never thought I would be in danger, and I believed I could help. He sounded desperate and pathetic, and yes, maybe I was looking for an excuse to leave this place. I’m just grateful no one was injured.”

Gage straightened from his post by the two-way mirror. “Do you really think your actions had no repercussions? Can you imagine what Chloe must have been thinking? How terrified she must have been?”

Her wide eyes flicked from one man to the other. “I truly am sorry. Tell me what you need me to do to make this right.”

Nunez leaned forward, blocking Livia from Gage’s line of sight before the pilot blew a gasket. “Ms. Cicero,” he pulled an eight-by-ten from his file, a picture of Marta Surac taken at a bank in Germany. He’d been able to locate a clearer image after Anya listed some of her aunt’s bars, and Nunez started following the money trail. “Do you recognize this woman?”

Livia edged the photo closer with one finger, nail polish chewed off the tip. “No.” She shook her head, nudging the picture back. “I’m afraid not.”

“Have you ever heard the name Marta Surac?”

Again, she shook her head. “Does not ring a bell.”

Nothing in her body language indicated she was lying. She truly appeared to be a woman terrified after a near kidnapping. Either way, he sensed he’d gotten everything out of her that he could. “That’s all for now. You should return to your quarters and stay there. You’ll be pleased to hear the water is working again.”

Quiet ticked away seconds louder than the clock on the wall. She didn’t so much as fidget with any sign of guilt. “Thank you for bringing Chloe back safely.”

“I will escort you to your room. For your own protection.” Hopefully, Kutros would be out of surgery by then and ready to talk.

A smile ticked the corners of her mouth, chewed clean of lipstick. “I am not going to make a run for it.”

She shoved back her chair and rose with a prima donna grace, waiting for him to open the door for her. All of which would have pissed him off, but her hands still trembled.

Outside the interrogation room, Lieutenant Colonel Scanlon stood by a water fountain, lounging against the wall. Interesting. The man’s expression revealed nothing. His presence, however, spoke volumes. Maybe he was waiting to speak with Jimmy Gage . . .

But no. The commander’s attention stayed firmly fixed on Livia Cicero.

Scanlon searched her up and down with inscrutable eyes. “You’re all right?”

She nodded tightly. “I am sorry if I got you into any trouble by leaving the base.”

“I’ll survive. I’m glad you did, too.”

He shoved away from the wall and strode down the hall, rounding a corner and disappearing from sight.

Her haughty exterior slid into place again, but with a thin veneer. “I am ready to return to my room for my shower.”

Jimmy scrubbed his wet hair with a towel one last time before tossing it aside. The water wasn’t hot, but it was definitely wet. The pipes had been repaired, and so many people on base were lining up to wash off, the water heater couldn’t keep up.

All the same, the cold shower did nothing to lower his steaming blood pressure. The shakedown with Nunez had turned into a cluster fuck because the waitress had called local police. That paled, though, in comparison to the news here at the base.

His crew had returned, but without Chuck.

They’d run a cursory imaging scan of the building blaring the tracking device’s beacon, only to find no sign of their friend. But there had been plenty of ground fire. They’d hauled ass back to base empty-handed. Not that he’d expected anything positive to come of the flight once the kidnappers had asked about a tracking device. In fact, it seemed the crew may have even been set up.

The chances of Chuck being alive were next to nil.

Jimmy flung the wadded up towel under the sink. Even though he knew his presence on the plane wouldn’t have made any difference, he couldn’t dodge the sense of failure. From the start, this mission had carried a sense of doom he’d tried to attribute to too many reminders of his own POW experience.

At least Chloe survived. That much he could hold on to in a death spiral day. The need to check on her again kicked over him. He zipped his jeans, shrugged into a polo shirt, and toed on his deck shoes.

Jimmy jogged down the hall, knocked on her door—waited—no answer. She might be asleep. He knocked again anyway.

The next door down opened, and the stage manager stepped half-out in a black satin bathrobe. “She’s in the practice hall.”

“Thanks, dude.”

“No problem. It’s my job to know where everyone is,” Greg answered with an oblivious smile.

Greg sure had dropped the ball on that tonight.

Two flights of stairs down, Jimmy passed the commons area on his way to the rooms allocated for individual practice. Not a tough task finding her now, since he only had to follow the music.

He didn’t know a lot about the subject, but even a tone-deaf seven-year-old could have recognized the speed and mastery of Chloe’s playing. The emotions swelling from the notes, however, he wasn’t ready to think about.

He nodded to the guard outside the practice room door.