The Rescue(54)
Harlow sipped a hot cup of coffee and stared at the neat latticework of distant rooftops and trees beyond the sparkling blue infinity pool. Located high in the Hollywood Hills, a few blocks north of Mulholland Drive, the house had expansive views of San Fernando Valley. If the property had been situated on the opposite side of the road, they would have been looking down on West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
She still hadn’t asked Sophie what the house had set them back. Regardless, she had to admit it felt great up here. Breezy and light. The direct opposite of the valley below, where the traffic, crowds, and stifling temperatures felt oppressive. The rarefied air up here came with a hefty price tag, but it also came with privacy and security, which they desperately needed with three well-funded, serious-as-hell organizations trying to find them.
As long as the firm’s known partners kept their trips out of the hills to a minimum, and employed both active and passive countersurveillance techniques when doing so, they could run operations out of this exclusive enclave indefinitely, or until the money ran out. Her partners had unanimously agreed to continue helping Decker during a quick meeting this morning, but she suspected that their enthusiasm would wane if this dragged on for too long.
They’d put most of their active cases on the back burner at the start of this. For the next few days, or however long the Decker situation lasted, not only would they be digging into their cash reserves, they wouldn’t be generating anything close to their normal levels of income. Stuck in this house, there was only so much they could do on behalf of their regular clients. Harlow gave it one week before her partners started to pull away, which put them on a compressed timeline.
Sophie sat down next to her, pushing her jewel-bedazzled, black-rimmed glasses back on her nose before sipping a fresh orange juice. “I could get used to this view.”
“It’s a little out of our price range,” said Harlow, raising an eyebrow.
“If this thing drags out past a week, we can think about changing locations. It’s always a good thing to stay on the move, anyway.”
“I’m worried about Jess,” said Harlow. “She has a full schedule of court appearances, and the FBI no doubt has her tagged.”
“She’s a silent partner, so there’s no exposure beyond the FBI’s interest in her timely arrival at the airport,” said Sophie. “Which any investigator will conclude was completely coincidental. That’s actually true, by the way. Her return ticket was purchased nearly two days ago.”
“I’m more concerned with the Russians and this Gunther Ross guy,” said Harlow. “It’s no secret that she does a lot of legal work for us. If the wrong people find out about the little stunt at the airport, they’ll connect the dots. I’d feel better if we put some security on her. Something obvious, so anyone interested in grabbing her will know she’s a hard target.”
“I’ll make the call right away,” said Sophie. “What else?”
“We wait and see what our surveillance teams report from the city and hope the operations crew can dig up some actionable intelligence for Decker.”
“Finding someone who went off the grid that long ago is going to take a miracle.”
“That’s if someone went off the grid,” said Harlow. “A big if. My money is on the investigation in LA. If we can identify and track Gunther Ross’s people, we can link them to Aegis and whoever is pulling Aegis’s strings. Once we identify the source, I strongly suspect the entire picture will become clear.”
“Steele’s abduction still baffles me,” said Sophie. “If she was never meant to be found, what was the point of it?”
“Revenge? That’s the only reason I can imagine.”
“Someone wanted to send Senator Steele the unmistakable message that nobody is untouchable.”
“If so, they got their point across.”
“Then there’s Aegis, if Gunther Ross is still working for them,” said Sophie. “Did Decker ever mention Aegis being involved in the Steele kidnapping?”
“No. As far as he knew, the only other group actively searching for Meghan Steele was the FBI.”
“And you think Penkin was telling the truth? Everything ties back to the Russians very neatly. They’d be at the top of my suspect list.”
“Too neatly,” said Harlow. “I don’t know if Penkin was completely truthful, but given the attempt on Decker’s life at the mall and Gunther Ross’s appearance at Ares Aviation, an Aegis-owned company, I think it’s fair to say that a second group played some kind of a role in the Meghan Steele tragedy.”
“If it’s Aegis, this is going to be huge.”
“It’s going to be a huge mess,” said Harlow. “For all of us. Even if the truth comes to light and Decker is vindicated—we could all get buried under the fallout.”
“Everyone is fully aware of the risks.”
“I know. I just feel responsible for bringing this down on our heads.”
“Harlow. We’ll survive. No matter how big of a bomb we set off.”
“It’s going to be a big one,” said Harlow.
“The bigger the better,” said Sophie, nodding at the view. “That’s what it takes to truly change things out there.”
Harlow scanned the horizon, seeing it differently for a few moments. Nearly a million people lived within view of her seat. From people barely making ends meet to multimillionaires. Every race. Every religion. Every walk of life. Every conceivable vice to feed the population’s ravenous appetite, right alongside the inconceivable. This was where Harlow and her associates fought an exhausting war against the traffickers. A seemingly never-ending and unwinnable war—until now.