“Yep. Something like that. That job David offered me is looking pretty good. Nice cushy work here at home. No more dragging my ass halfway around the world for months on end.”
“Why don’t you just quit if you want out?”
Grant shrugged. “I can’t leave you without someone to cover your hairy ass, so hurry up and nail you a woman already.”
Caleb gave Grant a steady look. “You know there’s not enough therapy or antipsychotics in the world to fix what’s wrong with you.”
Grant waggled his eyebrows. “But the ladies love it.”
“Lord help them.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while, and that nagging feeling in Caleb’s head wasn’t going away. “Pul up that diagram again, would you?”
Grant did and handed Caleb the laptop. Caleb stared at the screen, letting his eyes wander, trying to see a pattern. Nothing stood out, but he kept looking at the bookshelves again. Something wasn’t right.
Then he remembered. That night he’d rushed her into the shower, he’d seen footage of someone looking through one of her books.
Caleb went to his duffel, took out his own laptop, and puled up the surveilance footage. He saw Grant’s shadow hovering over his shoulder as they watched the intruder come in, replace a bug and pick a single book off the shelf.
“Can you tel which one it was?” asked Grant.
Caleb squinted at the screen. “No.” He zoomed in on the area, but the image was stil fuzzy. The only thing he could make out was that the book had a spiral binding.
Grant had seen it too and went to the same shelf, running his fingers over the spines, puling out three of the books on the shelf. “They’re al sketchbooks,” he said, handing one to Caleb.
“Why would someone be interested in her sketchbooks? I already checked for hidden compartments.”
There was no obvious answer, and Caleb leafed through the book, looking at sketch after sketch. Lana’s skil was impressive. Whether she drew people or animals or landscapes, they were al detailed and lifelike.
“Is your book ful?” asked Grant.
Caleb flipped to the end. “Yeah. Yours?”
“The first one is, but check this out,” said Grant. “The second one is only half ful, and the last sketch is dated December before last.”
Right before she’d left for Armenia.
Caleb tried to compare the book to the one in the surveilance footage, but he couldn’t tel if it was the same one or not.
“Maybe she kept something hidden in the book?”
Caleb felt a cold feeling of dread rol around in his gut. Lana’s hand had shaken when she’d tried to draw a puppy. She hadn’t put a new sketch in that book since before her kidnapping. Al the cameras in her apartment were aimed in such a way that they’d catch the image of anything she drew, whether sitting at her desk or on her couch or on her bed.
Whoever was watching her wanted to know what she drew, and he could only think of one reason why. “Whoever is doing this thinks Lana saw something in Armenia, and they want to know if she puts it down on paper.”
“What are you talking about? She was hooded. What could she possibly have seen? And if she did see something, why haven’t they just kiled her?”
Caleb wasn’t sure how much Grant had been told. They’d been briefed on the op separately, and Grant hadn’t been there in Armenia. Caleb had been working alone until the very end. “What do you know about Lana’s background?”
“Just that she was the only surviving member of a group of hostages taken by a group of loonies trying to get into the Swarm. Her file says she was banged up pretty bad.”
“Banged up” didn’t even come close to what Lana had endured, and Caleb had to bite back a hostile criticism of Grant’s casual attitude. Grant had no way of knowing what she’d gone through.
Grant continued, “A team went in and extracted her, taking down a smal group of Swarm wannabes in the process.”
Caleb’s hands tightened into fists. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”
Grant’s golden eyes widened with understanding. “You were there.”
Caleb nodded, unable to speak past the clump of bitterness lodged in his throat.
“That was the op you did solo, wasn’t it? The one you came back from al fucked up?”
Caleb stood and turned his back. No way was he going to talk about this with Grant. He couldn’t stand to even think about it.
“I can’t help if you don’t tel me what happened. If she did see something, then it’s going to take more than two of us to keep her safe. You know anyone wiling to take innocent civilians as hostages and kil them won’t stop until she’s dead, too.”
Caleb felt like pounding a hole in the wal, like tearing the couch apart with his bare hands. He needed to vent some of this frustration before he did something stupid. “I can’t tel you what I don’t know. She doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame her. She was an easy target before I showed up, but they didn’t kil her. They must want something from her—something she can’t give them if she’s dead.”
“Could it be a rival terrorist group—an enemy of the Swarm?”
“As far as we know, the Swarm is gone. At least, they haven’t claimed credit for anything since that op we went on six months ago.”
Grant gave Caleb a feral grin. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
Satisfying maybe, but not fun. “Let’s assume the Swarm isn’t gone and they could have something to do with this. She was hooded and kept in a separate cave from those running the show. What could she possibly have seen?”