Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(60)

Hell with it. Kev could wait. There was only so much abuse a guy could take. That chick was not done with him yet tonight.

Not by a mile.





14


Z





oe crossed one long leg over the other and listened again to the recorded conversations that had taken place in Davy McCloud’s living room. She squeezed her thighs together as she did so, privately relishing the deep, throbbing ache.

Melanie, one of the agents who had handled the job at the baby store this afternoon, tapped at the keyboard, manipulating the filtering program that enhanced the sound. Nadia and Hobart looked on.

The ploy had worked. The source of sound was a remote-activated speakerphone in the phone buried inside Rosa Ranieri’s purse, crowded with junk and tossed who knew where in the McCloud house. So many variables, but she’d decided to risk it, and the risk had paid off.

Zoe felt surprisingly fresh and alert, considering how long it had been sine she’d slept. She’d coordinated Melanie and Hobart’s baby store gambit from the plane, as soon as she’d seen the old woman and her handler, Miles Davenport, coming out of the McCloud residence on the long-range hidden surveillance cam. She was pleased with herself. So was King. He’d told her she was special. Made her team leader. He’d promised to read her one of her reward texts tonight over the phone.

Her thighs and buttocks contracted, provoking a spontaneous orgasm that pumped tingling heat down her thighs. Fortunately, the climax was not powerful enough to startle her into vocalizing, but she did miss a few seconds of the recording.

“Run it back, please,” she ordered. “The last twenty seconds.”

Melanie looked puzzled, but she did as she was told. The voice came through again. Sean McCloud spoke, his voice tinny through a cloud of static fuzz, but the one-sided conversation was audible.

“. . . booked a room at the Marriott downtown. At midnight, Miles meets us. I take his rig and head down to you guys. Then Miles drives Liv and Eamon to Tam’s the next day. So even if they’re tracking our vehicle, I won’t have to worry about . . .”

The sound of a newborn baby swelled into the foreground, and the voice of an older woman, speaking Italian. “Dai piccina non piangere, dai . . .”

“Can’t you filter that baby stuff out?” Zoe snapped, irritated.

Melanie’s fingers drummed madly on the keys. “Working on it.”

McCloud’s voice came back into focus. “. . . when do you need an invitation to trash someone’s life, property, and livelihood? . . . Is that so? We’ll see how it shakes down in the end. Wait, wait. Hold on. Zia Rosa wants to talk to you.”

“Stop it there,” Zoe said. “Have you arranged for Miles Davenport’s vehicle to be tagged?”

“Manfred went up to cover it right away,” Melanie said.

“And Seth and Raine’s island? Who are Seth and Raine?”

“Seth Mackey and Raine Lazar,” Hobart supplied promptly. “Mackey is a colleague of the McClouds. They have a private island in the San Juans. Stone Island. Here’s the map. And a satellite picture.”

Zoe glanced at the printouts Hobart was holding out and waved them away with a finger flutter. “Later. What do you have on Aaro?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” Hobart said. “He did a stint in the Army Rangers with Davy McCloud. It was very difficult to find any info on him before that, because he had changed his name. His original surname was Arbatov. From Coney Island, New York. Ukrainian in origin. His family was famous for arms trafficking, but they wound down after the patriarch Oleg Arbatov was diagnosed with cancer. The current boss is Alex’s cousin, Dimitri Arbatov.”

“Alex hasn’t been involved in the family business since before the army, and not much then, either,” Nadia said, eager to be seen as useful, though from the look Hobart gave her, he’d done all the work. “They consider him a black sheep, it seems. He appears to have gone legit.”

“How admirable of him,” Zoe said. “And now?”

“He runs a one-man security consultancy,” Hobart broke in as Nadia began to reply. “Private referrals. Cyber security stuff for private corporations. It’s extremely difficult to find personal data on him.”

“But you managed,” Zoe purred. “Of course?”

Hobart’s smile was smug. “Of course.”

“Is someone on it?” Though it was hardly necessary to ask.

“I’m on it,” Nadia broke in eagerly. “I’ll head to Portland now.”

“And Detective Sam Petrie? Is anyone assigned to him?”

Melanie’s mouth hung open, clearly taken by surprise. “Ah . . .”

“I need the same software loaded onto his phone that you put on the Ranieri woman’s,” Zoe said. “I would have assumed that was self-evident. Bruno Ranieri spoke to Petrie today, and I would have loved to have heard that conversation. They have the cadavers of four of our operatives. Is it just me? Is this not painfully obvious? To anyone?”

Melanie’s mouth worked. “Ah . . . I’ll just go down tonight, and—”

“No” Zoe said to her sharply. “Not you.”

“But I can—”

“No.” Zoe raked the woman with her eyes. “You don’t have the look. You’re the one we use when we need the fresh-faced suburban mom. But you don’t do a convincing slut.” Her eyes cut to Nadia. Nadia’s chin tilted up, proud to be the slut of choice. Zoe had never liked the bitch. Special series twats. Thought they were such hot shit.