Nico (The Mavericks Book 8) Read online

  Nico snorted. “Isn’t that always the kicker? I don’t get why this woman was taken from her hotel.”

  “You should,” Keane said. “She’s an activist, and somebody wanted to shut her mouth.”

  “But you heard about the family connection?”

  Keane nodded, and his face turned grim. “We need to know if it is connected to her kidnapping. Because, wherever that guy’s name is listed, there’ll be mentions of other US operatives too.”

  “In which case they’re all compromised.”

  “Apparently they were all over the world, including Russia. If someone finds them, they’ll get a bullet.”

  “Well, if we hear of anybody showing up dead or missing over the next couple days, we’ll know why.”

  “Unless they’re smart enough to spread out the killings,” Keane said. “And these bad guys are getting pretty damn smart.”

  “Well, let’s hope it’s not connected,” Nico said. “This could be just a simple kidnapping.”

  “Could be. She’s also an anthropologist.”

  “So she studies dead societies and dead people’s lifestyles,” Nico said, shrugging.

  “Something like that, yeah, which is also why she doesn’t want the current aboriginal groups to become extinct.”

  “We’ll all be dead here in another couple hundred years with this climate change and the political distresses,” Nico said. “The world’s a mess.”

  “Well, we can agree on that,” Keane said.

  Nico stared out at the huge vistas full of vivid colors all around him. The one thing about Australia that always got him was how everything seemed to be in Technicolor. The sun was super bright, and the leaves seemed greener, while the yellows seemed more yellow, and the oranges looked almost neon. “She was taken from her Sydney hotel. There were no last-minute changes to her hotel or to her flight info. So no sign of any known issues or threats facing her?”

  “Not that anybody has told us,” Keane said. “Not that I found online. But I researched a lot of the more recent rallies where she was in attendance. Of course, with these groups, whether she’s there or not, injuries and arrests are commonplace. I remember finding an incident a few years ago at a rally she attended. A couple guys throwing bottles tried to get past security, and it got pretty ugly but nothing worse than at any music concert. Still I did run across an article about a death at another rally. Accidental of course.”

  “Only one? That’s not as bad as what could happen at these events.”

  “Apparently she was distressed by it and stepped back out of the limelight. It took a lot to convince her to return to Sydney.”

  “She should have followed her instincts and not come here,” Nico said.

  “Yeah, that won’t work so well,” Keane said. “I’ve heard her speak. She’s very compelling.”

  “Well, I listened to a couple of her videos on YouTube and also a TED talk,” Nico said. “I had a long flight, and it gave me the chance to delve into her life.”

  “What do you think of her?”

  Nico was silent for a moment and then said, “I think something started her on this pathway, and I think it was an impassioned route. Probably something to do with her first husband’s death.”

  “I couldn’t find much about his death.”

  “Right,” Nico said. Pulling out his phone, he quickly texted Miles. I need to know the details of her husband’s death. And he left it at that. “I think something pushed her in this direction. She’s very obsessive about her subject.”

  “I think she’s also passionate about saving the planet and saving the people. Maybe she’s just that kind of a person.”

  “Maybe,” Nico said in a more noncommittal tone. The information came in almost immediately via the chat window. Nico whistled. Then shared the info with Keane. “Makes sense now. Maybe. Apparently she lost her husband to brain cancer and he’d been big on aboriginal and environmental issues. She’s more or less picked up his battle as he couldn’t any longer.”

  “Sounds like she’s carrying the torch for her dear departed hubby.”

  Nico nodded.

  They were only a few minutes from the hotel. They pulled up, and Keane said, “Hop out. I’ll be up at the room in a few minutes.”

  “Good enough,” he said. “I’d like ten minutes of shut-eye, and then I’ll need some food.”

  “Already arranged for food,” Keane said, handing over one of the hotel cards. “Good luck getting a nap.”

  “Did she have the same kind of a security key card?” Nico asked. “To get in and out of her room?”

  “She did, but there had been problems with it,” Keane said. “They couldn’t lock it properly and ended up giving her a different key that eventually worked.”

  “Of course there had been problems,” Nico said. He hopped out of the car and grabbed his bag, then walked into the hotel and completely ignored the front desk. He headed to the elevator and up to the room. Much better nobody knew he was here. He wasn’t sure what names they were registered under, if even names had been used. Often the Mavericks members operated under aliases and sometimes fake company names. But Keane got here earlier this morning, as he had been closer, and already had their room set up. Nico tossed his bag on the bed to see a gun case sitting on the floor beside it.

  He opened it up and smiled. A long-range rifle and a handgun. Both already fitted with silencers. Perfect. He quickly picked up the handgun and checked that it was loaded, then put it back down again on the table beside where he would be working. Not back in the case. A gun was no good if packed away. He was one of those who never pulled it unless he needed to shoot. And, when he shot, he never intended to hurt. It was always to kill. As far as he was concerned, if he was in such a scenario where he needed a damn gun, then it was bad news, and he would take whatever way out that he needed to.

  As Keane walked in, he pushed a trolley.

  Nico smiled, looking at Keane, and asked, “Was it waiting out there?”

  Keane shook his head. “It was just arriving.”

  Nico nodded, and they quickly served themselves from the trays. Steak, vegetables, and potatoes. “Looks good to me,” he said. He glanced down at his watch. “Who are we working with for an update?”

  “No one local,” Keane said.

  Nico swore. “I still don’t understand that. Even with the undercover brother issue, why can’t we tell the locals to just do their jobs as usual, get their help, and never mention the brother?” Still shaking his head, he brought up his laptop. Into the chat window, he typed, We need an update for the last twelve hours. Are we working with anyone locally? Does anybody know we’re here?

  None, no and no.

  No update?

  None yet.

  Nothing from the cops?

  No. But Keane was first on the scene and asked us for the basics, like to run facial recognition against all street cams focusing on the hotel and even satellite footage of our crime scene. So far we haven’t seen her anywhere. Keane’s been running through the traffic cams in and around the hotel, looking for anything suspicious. Ask him for particulars.

  When Nico pointed at the latest text for Keane to read, he just shook his head.

  Nico swore again. Does the hotel have a security camera on her floor?

  The two hotel security cams on her floor were covered up with something before she went missing, right before midnight on the day of her arrival, Thursday.

  And uncovered, I presume, afterward?

  Yes.

  And, of course, nobody saw her or the person who covered up the cameras. What are the chances she’s still here at the hotel?

  Since we can’t confirm her leaving the hotel, it’s possible, Miles said in the chat window. But I doubt they’d keep her that long at the scene of the crime. It’s been twenty hours and counting since they took her.

  Nico thought about that as he cut another piece of steak.

  Keane read the exchange on Nico’s laptop. “Yeah, but
,” Keane added, “I was in the neighborhood and was already here, scouting out the place, as soon as we got word of her being missing, as soon after eight this morning as I could get here. Of course I’m not in uniform. But, because of the rally’s presence in their city, the cops were everywhere. I noticed an uptick of uniforms here in this very hotel. Maybe our kidnappers didn’t take that into account.”

  “But still, held for twenty hours at her hotel? Surely you’d want to get her spirited away as fast as possible. What’s the easiest way to do that?”

  Keane gave him a one-arm shrug and said, “That’s easy. Take her down into the laundry room, must be in the basement, and go out that way.”

  Nico thought about it, then nodded, and said, “That’s almost too cinematic, but it is the simplest because how else would you move an unconscious woman? She had to be unconscious. Otherwise, no way they’d have gotten this one out of here quietly.”

  “No, I think she’d have been very vocal about being mistreated.”

  “I also didn’t see any martial arts skills in her file.”

  “No,” Keane said, “none that I know of.”

  Nico nodded and brought up the chat window again, then asked Miles about the laundry theory.

  I’ll check into it. And Miles signed off.

  Nico finished his steak and jotted down more requests into the chat box. With the laundry theory, let’s get fresh eyes on this and expand our viewing area. I need a four-block radius on the video feeds from an hour before she went missing to several hours afterward up until today. Like until right now, considering she may not have left the hotel as soon as we expected, he said. The easiest way to take her out would have been via the laundry chutes or a laundry bin and then with a laundry truck. I’ll sweep through them and have one of your people do the same. I’m sure a room-to-room search was already done by the hotel management or its own security staff, since the local cops aren’t in on this investigation, but that would be pretty easy to avoid anyway.

  Shouldn’t have been, Miles said. But, yes, without you two doing the searching, then we must remember that the others wouldn’t have been as experienced or as good.

  Nico didn’t add anything to that and just waited. He cleaned off his plate and put it on the trolley, then waited until Keane was done and said, “We need to set up a plan of action. We’re gonna look again at satellite feeds, and I’m getting more traffic cams from this area.” He stopped as he looked around. “What about helicopters?” He glanced at Keane. “We need to find out if this hotel has a helicopter pad on the roof and if it’s been used in the last twenty-four hours.”

  Keane immediately brought up his laptop and started looking. “I might just have to go downstairs to the reception desk for that.”

  “Go ahead. Let’s see if we can find out who has the penthouses in this hotel. It could be long-term residents. It could be a standard booking. Or it could be empty. Empty is also good.”

  “Yeah, because empty to the registration desk doesn’t mean it’s truly empty.”

  Glad that he and Keane were on the same wavelength, Nico waited for the links to come in. The first one arrived, and he started in on the feeds from the nearby streets to the hotel. This batch started at seven o’clock last night—three hours before the time she initially arrived last night at this hotel—around ten o’clock. He checked, writing down notes as the vehicles came and went. It was a large hotel, and it was busy. Nothing seemed suspicious.

  The second link was more street cam activity from earlier today, which gave Nico a good idea of the standard activity at this hotel. At five o’clock in the morning, the laundry trucks and delivery trucks arrived. The laundry trucks went to one bay area, while the delivery trucks went to another in a completely different section of the hotel, and cameras definitely watched them come and go.

  What Nico couldn’t see was what was being loaded or unloaded. They all backed up to their respective loading bays, and so he asked the chat window for a hotel camera view from inside these loading bays, only to find out there weren’t any. He didn’t understand that. “Why wouldn’t you have a camera if you have materials being moved from your own damn hotel? Isn’t that the easiest way to keep track of theft? Particularly employee theft?”

  “Ours is not to wonder why,” Keane said.

  Nico snorted at that. “We’re supposed to find answers, and yet places, like this hotel, go out of their way to stop us from getting them.”

  “According to the hotel manager, Charlotte used the key card to unlock her door a couple times. However, the last time she used her key, she supposedly held the door open—probably for her night visitor or her friend who she was with—while she grabbed something and left.”

  Nico stopped and thought about that. “I suppose that would work. What about her luggage?”

  “After her coworker reported Charlotte as missing to both the hotel and the local authorities, the hotel’s cleaning crew was ordered to stay away from that room. However, the manager did open the door and looked inside, probably to see if any damage was done to the room or to see if she was there, dead or alive. Regardless he says her belongings were not visible, seemingly all gone.”

  “Which goes along with the kidnapping theory.”

  Keane nodded. “Of course the kidnapper will take everything he can.”

  “I want to start there,” Nico said. “I want to get into her room.”

  “I was ordered away from that floor, so nobody pegged me as interested in this matter, so I’ve been mostly watching the lobby and the loading bay for anything suspicious when not going through the street cam footage. I’ve been told her room has been cordoned off.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’ll mean that most people can’t get in and mess up my crime scene. What floor?”

  Keane checked his notes. “She’s on the sixth floor on our side of the building. You want to go from inside or out?”

  “If her lock is registered, then somebody will know if we go in.”

  “Unless the hotel’s management or security or household staff are allowed back in there, but I haven’t heard any update on that. So we’ll presume that room is not to be disturbed by the hotel personnel.”

  “We’ll have to go in from the outside,” Nico said. Then he headed out on the balcony and took a look up. “It would be easier if we had police cooperation. But, if we have to stay undercover because of her brother, well, … we climb up, or we hinder the hall security cameras again and climb over one balcony.”

  “There’s no help for it,” Keane said. “These are our options.”

  Nico nodded. “I presume the room numbers align for each floor. So our room isn’t in a straight line to hers. However, if we disable the hall cameras long enough to get into one of the rooms next door to hers, then we’ll use the neighboring balcony to enter her room, avoiding the whole key card issue. So we need to find out who’s in the rooms beside her and go in from one of those, if at all possible. These balconies aren’t the easiest to get in and out of, which I’m happy to see. The span’s too long for a jump or even a temporary walkway, but we can use ropes to get from one to the other.” He went back to his bag and brought out what he had, then said, “Not that I came too well-equipped for skyscraper climbing.” He had several carabiners and some rope with him but not enough.

  “I’ve got a big bag of gear,” Keane said, “one full of tactical equipment.” He brought it out of the closet and dumped it onto the carpet. They quickly sorted through the equipment, and Nico nodded with satisfaction.

  “You know what? We’ll be okay to do this. Let’s get going now. First thing is to check where she was taken from, and then we’ll come back and fill in the rest of the details. We have to at least have a starting point.”

  The rough cotton band tied too tightly around Charlotte Ankerby’s mouth bit into the sides of her gums, and she knew she was bleeding. Unconsciousness was a gift her kidnappers weren’t prepared to give her. And that didn’t bode well for her end result
. She could see their faces and hear their conversations, yet she didn’t know who they were and neither were they giving much away. But the fact that they weren’t hiding themselves meant they didn’t care if she saw them or not, so either they would be dead soon or she would be dead soon, and she knew it would most likely be her. They’d taken her phone and left her in three-quarter length jeans, a T-shirt, and slip-on sandals on her feet.

  They’d caught her as she had unlocked her door to return to her hotel room. She’d been just so tired that she hadn’t even recognized when the men came upon her. She had just pulled open her hotel room door when they snagged her. They’d shoved her inside, subdued her, then quickly picked her up and her luggage, and took her back out again. All before the door closed. She figured they must have jammed it with something somehow, but she didn’t know.

  Now here she was, lying in the back of a large vehicle of some kind. Maybe a refrigerator truck? She had no clue, but she was cold, and she was tired. She was beyond tired, and four of them sat at the end of the large five-ton truck, talking. Two of them were smoking and filling the back of the truck with that pungent odor that she couldn’t stand. Nobody had been happier than she was when her city passed the no-smoking-in-public ban. But, in places like this, nobody gave a shit. She coughed several more times, trying to free her lungs of that smoke. One of the men laughed at her, but the other guy said, “Jesus Christ, I wish you’d stop smoking in here. There’s no air.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” the smoker replied.

  She could put voices to their faces. She just didn’t know why they were doing this.

  She’d been warned several times that her activism would get her in trouble, but she seemed compelled to keep doing what she was doing. It had occurred to her that maybe she would be better off to put her words onto paper and to write books that incited people to reconsider their actions and to rethink their places in this world. And she’d made a concerted effort in that direction.

  Australia had never been part of her new plans, until she had been coerced to go. She’d been so adamant against coming. She was tired and worn out from her schedule, wanting to just curl up in her cave. But the organizers had already promoted her presence here, saying that, due to a communication mix-up, she had to honor it. It was a long trip from California to Sydney, and she felt she had no choice.