Page 49

J ordan shifted down a gear as he drove through narrow, windy streets more suitable for horse and carts than modern vehicles.

After his conversation with the librarians and Smith’s uncle on Friday, he’d spoken to both Daniel Ackers and Reid Armstrong, and they’d agreed it might be worth digging deeper into Rowena Smith’s disappearance, especially with those faint echoes of Kurt’s cell signal along the road to Mutare.

On Monday evening, he’d boarded a plane to Heathrow and then driven the rental car for four hours to Shropshire.

At least he was arriving before the library closed, which was four p.m. on Tuesdays.

This trip was strictly under the radar. His bosses had decided it wasn’t necessary to alert the legal attaché in London, so he’d bypassed that step and hoped it didn’t bite him in the ass if the Legat discovered he was in-country.

He was hoping to use his dubious charm to talk his way into looking around Smith’s home.

If, as her uncle suspected, she’d found something that had sent her on some urgent quest, perhaps he’d be able to find it, and it might tell them why she’d been on Kurt’s radar—and why she’d disappeared.

A full two weeks after the crash, after extensive and unrelenting pressure from the US government, investigators from the US’s National Transportation Safety Board were finally being allowed access to the hangar full of pieces of the aircraft and personal effects of the victims. Unofficially, a bomb tech from the FBI was also part of the team to verify it was an accident and not terrorism, but the team had been told they weren’t to analyze or photograph anything without the express permission from the Zimbabwean officials in charge of the investigation.

Plane crashes in foreign countries could be difficult to examine, but the aircraft hadn’t come down in a conflict zone.

Why was the Zimbabwean government being so territorial?

Was the airline to blame? The manufacturer?

Or was it something more sinister like a bomb, and if so, had Kurt Montana been targeted specifically?

The idea drew a low-level rage inside him that wouldn’t quit. Until he knew the answers, he couldn’t rest.

Finally near his destination, he drove past the impressive red-brick building with its arched upper windows and felt as if he’d dropped into some Georgian novel. He parked around the back and walked inside to The Anstice and made his way to the small library.

The tiny woman behind the desk might also have been from the late eighteenth century.

He cleared his throat.

“How may I help?” The woman smiled tremulously with neon orange lips.

“Ma’am.” He leaned against the counter and kept his voice low. “We spoke on the phone on Friday.” He slid his business card across the counter, and she gazed at it through her thick bifocals. “Jordan Krychek. I wanted to follow up?—”

“Have you found her?” She grabbed his hand with deceptively strong fingers .

Jordan shook his head and opened his mouth to speak when she cut him off again.

“Is it about the fire?” Her voice shook.

Jordan narrowed his gaze. “Fire?”

“Careful, Betty.” A man joined them. Dark hair shaved close to his skull. Broad features. “We haven’t verified his identity.” He reached out for Jordan’s card and then went to the computer and pulled up the FBI’s government website.

They spoke in hushed voices, as if they were in church.

Jordan pulled his creds and slid them across the counter.

“You won’t find me in the database, I’m afraid.

The FBI is big on keeping our identities out of the public eye as a safeguard from all the lunatics and criminals.

Plus, I’m not here officially.” He decided to level with them.

He opened his cell and found a photo of him and Kurt standing with Victoria Falls in the background.

He held his cell out. “Look up the passengers for the flight that crashed in Zim. An FBI agent named Kurt Montana is listed among the dead. He was a good friend of mine.”

Betty’s brimming eyes went from Alasdair to him as Alasdair entered the search. When Kurt’s official FBI mugshot appeared on screen, looking like a handsome motherfucker, she reached out with her soft wrinkly fingers and firmly squeezed his hand.

He found it difficult to swallow.

“What does that have to do with Rowena?” Her voice was a rough whisper now.

He swiped his photos avoiding any that could be deemed classified, such as images of the bugs from his home and any of his HRT buddies—not that they felt like buddies right now.

The rift between them grew with each passing day.

He found the grainy image of Rowena Smith that Kurt had taken outside the Jam Café on January 11.

They both looked with concern at his phone and then at one another. “Montana asked HQ to run a background check on Rowena Smith the night before the crash. It was the last time we heard from him. ”

“You’re not suggesting?—”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m simply looking for answers.” He didn’t have time for Alasdair’s overprotective outrage. “Would Rowena be the kind of person to”—Christ, there was no diplomatic way to put this—“take someone’s cell phone?”

“Steal, you mean?” Alasdair’s nostrils flared. “Never.”

Maybe Kurt and Rowena had shared a night of passion, and he’d accidentally left his cell behind. “What if she found it and knew it was important. What would she do?”

“Drop it at the nearest police station or do her best to find the person it belonged to and mail it to them.”

Hmm. That was worth thinking about. “Tell me about the fire.”

A woman with two young children came and checked out a stack of books that Betty scanned through with some kind words for the youngsters.

When the woman left, she waved him through into the admin office of the library.

“Rowena’s house burned down on Saturday night. More than two centuries old, and now it’s gone.”

Alasdair crossed his arms and nodded pointedly. “Less than twenty-four hours after we spoke to you.”

Jordan stared at the man as his brain whirled. He was thinking not about the conversation he’d had with Betty, but the one he’d had with Rowena’s uncle when the man mentioned the possibility Rowena had found something in her grandmother’s attic that had started her on her quest to find her father.

Could someone be somehow intercepting his phone calls?

They were supposed to be encrypted, but the timing seemed like too much of a coincidence.

Regan had assured him his cells were clean but what if someone, somehow, had found a way to unravel the code.

Or perhaps they’d tapped the uncle’s phone… that would be a hell of a lot simpler.

“Was everything destroyed at the house?”

Betty’s bright lipstick flattened into a thin seam of tangerine.

“ The brickwork is intact, but the fire and water destroyed everything inside. Can’t blame the firefighters.

They’re only doing their jobs, but all her grandmother’s things.

All her things.” Tears filled the woman’s watery eyes and drew a line down her papery cheek. “Gone.”

“Did they say how it started?”

“Garry, chief firefighter, suspects arson.” Alasdair spoke. “Figures some kids got inside as they knew she was away. Put a little gasoline on the curtains and ‘whoosh.’ No witnesses though.”

“Poor Rowena. If she does come home, she’s got nothing left except her car. I don’t even know what to tell the insurers. Until she comes back, she can’t make a claim.”

“Not ‘if,’” Alasdair corrected with a pat on the woman’s shoulder.

“When. Our Row is made of stern stuff, and she’s smart and resilient.

I’ll talk to my friend who works in insurance.

He’ll tell me the best things to do so she can deal with it more easily when she gets home.

I know she took videos of all of the rooms and uploaded it to her cloud like you’re supposed to before she went away. ”

Jordan’s ears pricked up at that, but he decided to talk to Ackers and Armstrong about whether or not they should apply for warrants to access her cloud and see what else was in there.

“Did she ever discuss her father with you?”

The two of them exchanged a glance. “Well, she mentioned something about looking for him. She also mentioned putting her DNA on one of those family tree sites.”

Jordan stared. Could this be related to who her father was? Had she found him? Was he some puritanical bigwig who couldn’t afford for his sins to catch up with him and was willing to pay any price to keep a secret? Was it Bjorn Anders? Was Rowena Smith dead just like Kurt?

“Any idea which database?” They gave him a name, which he wrote down. “May I see her car?”

“Sure. I’ve been driving it most days since she’s been gone to keep it running—she told me to, and it meant I could pop down quickly to the Bower Yard to check her house.

” He looked crestfallen. “Not that that will be an issue now. Saved me the walk up the bridge bank. Car’s outside.

” The man was babbling now. “Can you manage alone for five minutes, Betty?”

Jordan’s hopes faded as he followed Alasdair to a gleaming powder-blue Mercedes hatchback. The inside was equally immaculate.

“I was hoping to collect a DNA sample. See if I could use it to run against…”

Alasdair went pale. “Against the DNA of any unidentified bodies you mean.”

Jordan pulled a face. “Sorry. It’s a tool in the box.

Like fingerprints. Doesn’t mean she’s dead.

” But perhaps this could also help him track down her father and investigate that angle too.

“I could swab the seat belt perhaps for epithelial cells. I’d need to visit a drug store first and pick up some supplies. ”

“I can do better than that if you want her DNA.”

Alasdair sprang the lever for the trunk and waved a hand at a purple sports bag.