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“You mentioned a team?”
“Do you think I found the object on my own? I had a team of treasure hunters.”
“Are they here?” Joel’s gaze scanned over the room.
“My team? I don’t know how it would make any difference to you one way or another.”
As Red heard that in her ear, she thought the group of men she spotted circling Elena all evening made a lot more sense. She had counted four, possibly five.
The Pied Piper guy didn’t quite fit with the others. But he was one of a handful that circled Elena. Red had almost convinced herself it was Kamal’s security. Kamal would have enough money to pay someone to stay home that night so they could access the much-sought-after tickets.
Did Elena have that kind of cash and connection, too?
Now, Red was assessing the idea of Elena on a deadly team. Elena was probably in her early thirties. Like most thirty-something women she’d met, Elena took her exercise routines seriously.
How seriously? “I want to be strong and healthy” seriously or “prepared to go hand to hand, trained for military missions” seriously?
Was she just there to hire the shooters and saunter onto the scene to take control of the briefcase containing the Fire of the Desert? Or was she the leader of the pack with sharp enough teeth and claws that she was able to take down anyone and everyone who stood in her way?
Red’s mind went to the movies she’d seen about Russians who took control of beautiful girls who they trained as special agents with feats of incredible (and off-screen impossible) gravitation-be-damned acrobatics, killing a whole platoon as she raced down the stairs.
Red tried to imagine that of Elena, but she wasn’t sure.
Luckily, in a setting like this, with her mission being to “follow the ring,” Red’s job was to absolutely not get into a fight with the lovely Elena.
Red turned her attention to the grandmotherly woman with her chin drooped to her chest, sitting upright but asleep on the sofa. She hadn’t budged.
And there behind her was Pied Piper.
Their eyes locked momentarily.
He’d clockedherand not Grey.
Shewas on his radar.
In Red’s experience, if this exchange happened as a romantic overture, the man immediately slid his gaze to her dance partner to see if they had noticed. To see if they made some physical display of dominance or possession, a puffed chest, or physically turning to block the visual path to the woman.
Pied Piper didn’t do that. His eyes were on her. She got nothing else—not curiosity, not interest, not a decision to invite her to dance next.
Nope. He was as stoic as a seasoned operator when he locked in on her face. He’d remember who she was later.
Why would that matter?
Why. Would. That. Matter?
It mattered. Red was sure of it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nomad
Red haunted Nomad’s thoughts.
Ever since he’d looked through the window of that Lebanese hotel, something about that woman had caught hold of him. That sensation stayed with him even as her ambulance roared away amidst flashing lights and blaring sirens. There, left standing in the shadows, Nomad felt raw and strangely directionless.
Command deemed the mission a success because the team met their objective: Find Johnna Red and get her back into American hands.
Nomad didn’t know, from her point of view, if Red would consider the mission successful or not.