Page 86 of Philly
“Charming,” Hunter drawled.
“What’s it going to take to find the connection to Aiden?” Stella asked.
“Any chance one of those families is New York-based?” Callie asked.
Leo and Sabina looked at her, then at each other, before Leo answered. “The family Rose works for is New York-based.”
“Can you review the chatter, see if two of theirs disappeared in the past few days?” she asked.
The room fell silent, then Stella spoke. “You’re thinking that the hitman from Utah might have come from that family?”
“And that they wouldn’t be happy he failed,” Sabina said, nodding, her fingers already flying over her keyboard.
“It’s a long shot, but a possibility,” Callie said. “We’d have to then prove the family sent the hitman at Rose’s requestandthat Rose’s request originated from Aiden.”
“But it’s worth looking into,” Hunter said.
“Done. I put a few feelers out already. We’ll follow up tomorrow,” Sabina said.
Stella exhaled and shifted, as if sitting forward in her chair. “Good job, team. It goes without saying that regardless of whether it’s Rose or Kline in Aiden’s pocket, both are going down, so go do your thing. Keep us posted as things develop, and we’ll go from there.”
Callie murmured her goodbye, marveling at the difference between the HICC and the FBI. She no longer second-guessed leaving the Bureau, but at HICC, she did all the things she loved about her work—digging into the dirt and numbers and finding patterns and bad guys (and girls)—andshe had bosses that said thank you, trusted the team, and expected results without yelling or pressuring or questioning. A small part of her wondered if the way she’d been raised made her more easily accept—maybe even feel more comfortable in—the FBI, a place that constantly questioned her, that constantly had her wondering if she was good enough to be there. But that was an issue for another day.
“What are everyone’s plans tonight?” Sabina asked as they gathered their belongings.
“Joey and I are headed over to Mantis’s for dinner. Charley’s cooking,” Leo replied.
“What about you and Philly?” Sabina asked. “Once this is over, you two should take a honeymoon.”
“We’ve been talking about it, actually,” Callie said, dipping a toe in that blurry space between personal and professional. “We’ll see. Speaking of traveling, any news on Aiden’s whereabouts?” Yeah, the other thing they’d discovered in thepast two days: Aiden Nolan hadn’t traveled to Seoul as he’d told Rian. So far, though, they hadn’t been able to track him.
“The private flight he chartered landed on Grand Cayman island,” Leo replied. “But then it hopped back to Miami. I’m working on getting the CCTV from the island airport to see if he stayed there, but it’s…”
She tossed him a grin as they headed toward their respective offices. “Shouldn’t accessing CCTV be a walk in the park for you?”
Leo flashed her a wry smile. “The private side of the airport is used to having people fly in and out who would rather remain anonymous, so the coverage in those areas is nearly nonexistent. I did check the hotel he’s stayed at the past five times he’s been, but he’s not there. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be somewhere else, though.”
They paused in the hallway; turning right led to her office, the left to the cyber lab. “What else are you looking at?”
He grimaced. “I’m searching every local shop, bank, or business in the area that might have footage and seeing if I can get a glimpse of him that way.”
“Yikes,” she said.
“Yeah, that about sums it up. I’ve had worse situations. The island isn’tthatbig. But it takes time.”
“Is he still telling Rian that he’s in South Korea and having problems finding a flight back?”
Leo nodded. “Rian told him today not to bother since Joe has been upgraded again. He knows his dad isn’t in Seoul and figured if he stopped pressuring him to come back, then maybe Aiden would get more comfortable.”
“Comfortable enough to make a mistake?” Leo inclined his head. “What about at Miami? Could he have continued on to that destination rather than staying on the island?”
“It’s possible,” Leo replied. “But the airport in Miami has a similar setup to the one in the Caymans, although at a different scale. The plane taxied into a private hangar. An SUV arrived a few minutes later, windows so tinted I couldn’t see inside, then it left again fifteen minutes later.”
“And we have no idea if he was in that SUV,” she said, more to herself. “Maybe we shouldn’t narrow our focus to Rose and his connection to the New York crime family. The hitman was a New Yorker. But assuming he works for a New York-based family versus a Miami one is an assumption I shouldn’t have made. Any idea where the SUV went after it left the airport?”
“To a hotel—where Aiden didnotcheck in—then to a residence in Coral Gables.”
She stared at him. “How in the world did you track all that?”
