A Covert Affair (Deadly Ops #5)(74)

Yeah, neither did Nathan.

Lopez’s expression darkened as he continued. “She might be who your client is after. It’s only a potential lead and I’m going to keep pushing my contacts for more, but I wanted to tell you this now. If she’s behind all those women being found—shut that bitch down.”

Selene glanced at Nathan. He kept his expression neutral even as inside his blood had turned icy. Amelia had been around Collette on more than one occasion. Just yesterday, in fact.

“I’ll wire your normal fee if this pans out,” Selene said, standing. Nathan stood with her.

Lopez shook his head and followed suit. “This one’s on me.”

“Thanks,” Nathan said quietly as Selene murmured the same thing.

Once they were on the road, Nathan tried calling Amelia to check in. He needed to hear her voice and to make sure she was headed home. He needed her safe.

When it went straight to voice mail, he called Elliott and relayed everything. If Collette was involved in kidnapping so many women, they’d figure out where she was keeping them. Once they had that, ripping apart her life should be easy enough, especially for Elliott.

“Can you ping Amelia’s phone?” Nathan asked Elliott as Selene pulled onto the highway. He didn’t care if he was being paranoid; he wanted to know where she was. She’d told him in her text she’d be heading home after errands. Didn’t matter, he needed to know she was safe. And it bugged him that her phone had gone to voice mail right away. As if it was turned off.

“Yeah, just a sec . . . Her phone’s not pinging.” He could hear the slight confusion in Elliott’s voice.

“At all?” That was not good. His heart rate kicked up and he swallowed back the sharp taste of fear.

Elliott was silent for a moment, the soft clicking of fingers over a keyboard the only sound coming over the line. “No. Her battery has to be out. I can’t get a signal.”

Nathan looked at Selene. Panic gripped his chest, the talons digging in and making it difficult to draw breath. “Get off on the next exit.” They were headed to Amelia’s restaurant now.

He knew her last location, so he’d work from there. Maybe he was being completely paranoid, but Amelia wouldn’t just turn her phone off, much less take her battery out. Not with everything going on.

A gnawing feeling in his gut told him something else had happened. “Try tracking her credit cards and run her face through—”

“Already on it.”

“Run Collette’s phone and—

“Running that too. Not getting anything. She’s probably using a burner.”

Of course he was on it, Nathan thought. Elliott wasn’t an amateur. “I’ll call you back in a sec.” He hung up and dialed Detective Sinclair. The last place he knew Amelia had been was her restaurant. Since Sinclair had already questioned all her employees once before, he was going to get the detective to do it again.

Nathan could go in and start questioning everyone, but Sinclair already had a rapport with a lot of the people who worked for her. While Nathan hated asking for outside help, he’d do anything to find her.

As the phone rang, he tried to tell himself that this was just a mistake. Maybe she’d dropped her phone in water and shorted it out. Even as he had the thought, he knew it was utter crap.

If Collette was kidnapping women, some from Amelia’s restaurant, it wasn’t out of the realm of reality that she’d make a play for Amelia. Maybe out of revenge. The reason didn’t matter.

If she had, she was going to pay. No matter what, he was going to find Amelia.





Chapter 20


Infiltration: the secret movement of an individual (or small group) penetrating a target area with the intent to remain undetected.





“Have you done a thorough sweep yet?” Wesley asked Cade as he glanced down at the dead body on the kitchen floor. The woman’s pale eyes were open in shock and her limbs stiff, rigor mortis having set in. As far as dead bodies went, he’d definitely seen worse. Her clothes were on and there was no blood. A slight puncture wound on her neck told him she’d been poisoned with something. At this point it didn’t matter what.

“As thorough as possible.” Cade pointed behind Wesley with his gloved hand. “This way.”

He fell in step behind Cade. Cade and the rest of the team had been following up various leads, specifically people from Maria’s center or Amelia’s restaurants who’d had contact with multiple missing women. Lita Clark had been one of Maria’s volunteers—and she’d abruptly quit yesterday after two years of steadily putting in hours at Bayside.

Burkhart didn’t like the time frame and Elliott had confirmed some interesting financial data on Clark. Her husband had left her three years ago for a much younger woman, screwing her out of decent alimony, yet she’d somehow managed to pay off her house and continue volunteering regularly without much extra income. They’d missed some of the info on the first round of digging because she had no red flags and she paid for a lot of stuff in cash.

“There was either a safe inside or stacks of cash.” Cade nodded at the giant cutout hole in Clark’s walk-in closet.

Wesley nodded. “Yep.” He’d seen the same thing too many times. Drug lords and various criminals liked to keep their cash close at hand. Hiding it in walls or burying money underground was a favorite. “Explains why there wasn’t a digital link to her and whoever’s behind this,” he muttered more to himself than Cade. Cash was damn hard to trace.