The Missing Father

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

“Hey there, Luke,” Sienna said. Her blond hair hung long and loose, and she wore a navy dress and pumps. She was slender and tall, at five foot seven, and she had been working with their team, gathering intelligence, for four years. She was the CIA side, with assets he didn’t want to know about.

“Sienna, you’re looking rather fetching in that dress,” he said.

That was another thing about her: She gave the impression of being a PTA mom, a former cheerleader from the Midwest, but in fact, she was really good at what she did.

She strode up to where he stood in the team’s hotel suite on the top floor of the five-star Emperor Hotel in Geneva, where he was cleaning his HK 416. Even though he couldn’t carry it under his suit, it was his go-to weapon of choice. However, the spot of sniper on the team was held by Matthew and then Rex. He’d be limited to his Glock today, hidden under his tailored blue suit, and he’d carry a spare strapped to his ankle.

“Ah, thanks, Luke,” she said, then shrugged and smiled. “I take it Jess talked to you, letting you know it was a dead end, that Wisconsin lead you had. Sorry about that. I would have told you myself, but I had to hop a plane here for a meeting and thought it seemed urgent.”

Bullshit!

He knew by the way she said it. Her hazel eyes, which he couldn’t read at times, seemed so noncommittal, and there was something there now that didn’t sit right with him. Being straight with the team, with him, was something he expected from her, but whatever this was wasn’t straight at all.

“Yeah, about that,” he said. “You said you’d do me this favor, checking into someone for me and keeping it on the q.t., but then you went running to Jess with that dead-end nonsense, which we both know is bullshit. When I said this was delicate, sensitive—”

“You mean personal?” she said, cutting him off. She had transformed from friendly and easygoing to unsmiling, in his face. She glanced over her shoulder to where Rex and Matthew were going through their guns and ammo. Luke could hear Jess on the phone, talking, he knew, to the colonel. It would be showtime soon, and he could see something about this still wasn’t sitting right with him.

“So what’s your deal, Sienna?” Luke said. “We have each other’s backs, so I can’t figure out why you went to Jess and told him it was a simple dead end when you were all over that lead, wanting to help me when I was searching the database. You said a flag came up on the name I was searching in Wisconsin. You, Sienna, were the one who came to me and asked to check it out for me, so don’t give me this crap about it being personal and then blow me off. Everyone here uses the resources we have for personal things, including you, and I made no secret about it.

“I know you, Sienna. You seem to forget I know how good you are, but I also know when you’re hiding something, up to something. There’s no such thing as a dead end with you. There was something. Seems to me you’re hiding it, so I have to ask what it is. You know something. Or is this you trying to jam me up? Who else did you go to?”

He knew he sounded paranoid, but he kept his voice low, wondering what game she was playing.

She slowly crossed her arms, leveling him with a gaze that told him she wasn’t taking any s**t, appearing very much the image of a woman who was all business. “All right, the name Raymond O’Connell raised a red flag in Wisconsin, a sealed file that even I couldn’t get into. I started looking around, and as I’m sure you’ve already figured out, the Raymond O’Connell you’re looking for didn’t exist before 1983. Then he suddenly did. He married your mom, Iris O’Connell, and his name is on your birth certificates. He worked for the railroad, seemed to have the perfect, normal all-American life, and then he was gone one day. You also know that no police report or missing persons report was filed. Let me ask you this: You find anything on him from that November day he walked away?”

He just stared at her, sensing that cocky side of her, wondering how she knew everything he did. Evidently, she’d figured out the same things he had.

She looked over her shoulder again and stepped closer to him. “You ever ask yourself, Luke, how a man can disappear into thin air, without a trace?”

“You mean he was a spook. Is that what you’re implying?” he said. He wondered if anyone was listening.

She rested her hand on his arm, a touch that meant nothing to him. She was pretty, not hot, and as single as all of them, considering every one of them had the same screwed-up life that left them far from stable or dependable, without healthy relationships and families.

“Or dead,” she said. “That’s the more likely scenario that I’m talking about.”

“But that wouldn’t explain the red flag you said popped up on his name—or the fact that you did blow me off by going to Jess. That has me wondering what you really found out.”

“Okay, let’s saddle up,” Jess announced. “Luke, you, me, and Rex are going to pick up the target, Stefan Schwartz, at the Harris Group. Sienna, you’re with Matthew and Shaun at his apartment. The orders are to take his place apart, find everything he has on the company, every trade secret, everything confidential, anything that belongs to the corporation. I want no mistakes. He doesn’t know we’re coming, so let’s get in and get out. Anything you find at his place, tag it, bag it, and pack it up. It goes back to Washington so they can figure out what they’re going to do.”

The group started to head off. Just as Sienna went to step away, his hand landed on her arm.

“Whoa, we’re not done,” he said.

Her gaze went right to his hand. She was slender, fit, and he could feel how tense she was. He didn’t pull away, but she did. “We are,” she said, then took a step in her pumps before turning back to him. “Oh, and no, I wasn’t trying to jam you up. Just FYI, the Wisconsin Raymond O’Connell isn’t who you’re looking for. The flag on the file was from the Feds. The man’s in witness protection. They just happened to pick your dad’s name.”

He let his hand fall away, and Sienna walked off, and Luke didn’t miss the fact that Jess was watching all of it.