Page 64 of Lure

“We won’t let anyone touch you. But we can and will tear this apart to find outwhoandwhy.” Voodoo’s promise wasn’t as reassuring as it could be, but I believed him. I believed them.Thathelped.

“How? You want to dig into court cases, check out these accounts, and keep looking, but what about Amorette? Is there a chance we can still find her? Is she still here in the States? Or in one of those other places?” Because that was the real fear. What if she disappeared into the ether? What if I never saw her again?

I raised my clasped hands and bowed my head, pressing my lips to the knuckles of my index fingers. These were not outcomes I even wanted to consider.

“What about law enforcement? What if we report this? I don’t know how much of what you do is illegal… I can report it without involving you…” No sooner did I make the suggestion than I sighed. “But how would I explain any of it without involving you.”

“If it were just a matter of using our names to get you into the right hands, Grace,” Bones said in a rock-steady voice, “we’d have already done it. Talking to law enforcement might help here in the States, but you’d have to get into it with Interpol, or other agencies for the global search and we don’t have enough to direct anyone to a possible where.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I battled back the tears. I did not want them to fall. Period.

“As for the rest, we’re not taking you back because we don’t think Homeland or the FBI or one of the others wouldn’t look… we’re not releasing you because we don’t know that they could protect you.” A harsh, if blunt reality and Bones didn’t soften it.

“What he’s saying,” Lunchbox said, picking up, “is we don’t know if they don’t have people on their payrolls. These types of operations are incredibly sophisticated. Whether they are moving one person or a dozen. You shut down one conduit, another opens. It’s just as likely that you would go into their custody, nothing happens for a few days, maybe a few weeks, they send you back to your life and the ones who were waiting just scoop you up then.”

That was horrifying.

“Or worse, you get someone on a protection detail with a gambling debt or underwater financially and they take a bribe or a payment to look the other way. Corruption isn’t always about evil,” Alphabet said. “We like to think of the world as a balance of good versus bad, but… it’s not that simple. Some things? Yeah, some are absolutely heinous. So the demarcation is clear. But not everything.”

“This is why you’ve kept me all this time and didn’t want to answer my questions?” I focused on Alphabet.

“Yes. And no. I know that’s not as clear-cut as you would like it. My instincts said you needed to stay with usespeciallyafter the attack at your apartment.”

“Agreed,” Lunchbox said. “My instincts said the same.”

“Mine too,” Voodoo admitted. “It’s why we brought youherewhere we could see anyone coming and we know the lay of the land. No one is getting near you.”

“At the same time, we also had other jobs that could not wait. They had to be completed and as frustrating as that is for you, Grace,” Bones said, his cool tones helping to tamp down some of the wilder bits of frustration. “We’ve done what we can for those at the moment.”

“So, you don’t have any other jobs?”

“We have the job to find your sister, and find out who is targeting you.” Voodoo offered me a small smile. “We know you are still a target because we received another call this morning.”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure my heart could sink any further.

“Itcouldbe connected.” Alphabet put a hand over my clenched ones as I lowered them back to the table. “At the moment, wedon’thave confirmation.”

“What?”

I searched their faces. It had to be something. Or they wouldn’t be this intense. Right?

“There was a plane crash late last week, a private flight headed for Europe, crashed somewhere in Nova Scotia not that long after takeoff. Mechanical failure is being investigated.” Bones' expression was utterly unreadable. “It may not be connected, but the coincidence would be a little far-fetched.”

“Who was on the flight?”

“Jock Giardan and Lloyd White as well as two assistants, a hair stylist, and…”

He kept talking but the roar in my ears drowned out his words. Jock and Lloyd. I’d known them forever. They were fantastic photographers and genuinely gifted. I knew their stylists and their assistants.

“…at the time, there were no survivors.” The words fell like heavy stones.

“It may have nothing to do with you, Gracie,” Alphabet said.

“But you don’t believe that.” They were dead.

"I don’t know what to believe yet,” he qualified. “But Bones is right about coincidence being unlikely. Your agent and manager being eliminated makes a certain amount of twisted sense. This could be exactly what it looks like. An accident.”

Could be. Maybe. But we didn’t know.

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