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The meeting broke up, and he was glad the guys were still away. Lying to them was eating away at his insides. He led Crisco to his office and found her a chair from the briefing room. The compound was quiet as a morgue.

He plugged in his laptop and hooked it all up.

“Wait, you’re doing this all by eye? Yourself?”

“I’m looking for things that seem off. Hard to put that into a computer program.”

“Well, it seems you’re really looking at who and what is loaded onto that flight and any sightings of your buddy, correct?”

Jordan pinched his lips together. He was tired. He’d barely caught an hour of sleep last night. “I guess.”

“So, give me five minutes to set up a couple of filters and then we’ll start from there.”

Fuck. He felt like a dinosaur as her fingers flew over the keys. “Want a coffee?”

“Yeah. Please. ”

Jordan met Dinah Cohen in the break room.

“Quite the little meeting you had this morning.”

He stared at her silently.

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not the enemy.”

He exhaled. She was right. He didn’t have to trust her to work with her either. “You guys find any more signs of you-know-who recently?”

“No, but…”

“What?”

Dinah pulled a face. “We’ve heard rumors that maybe he has a kid that he cares about. And a wife, but whether he cares about her is up for debate.”

A kid ? “Any idea where this kid might be?”

She shook her head. “At the moment, it’s pure speculation and possibly another red herring, but we’re working backwards and trying to see if there’s any truth in it. Pity that everyone on that island for any amount of time is dead.”

“Except Alice Alexander.” The woman had been held with her husband for months on Hurek’s Indonesian hideout.

Dinah’s eyes widened. She put a finger on her chin as she considered. “Good idea. I’ll see if I can get an interview. See if she remembers anything that could tell us either way.”

“Go easy on her.”

Dinah narrowed her eyes at him. “What exactly do you think I have planned? A cattle prod and a bucket of water?”

Jordan picked up the two coffees. “She went through a lot, and it matters how we treat people like that.”

Dinah lifted her hands. “I agree.”

He yawned widely. “Sorry.”

“You okay?”

He held her gaze. No, he wasn’t okay, but he’d handle it.

“Let me know what you find out,” he called back.

“Ditto, Krychek. Ditto.”

Jordan nudged his office door ajar and placed Crisco’s mug on the desk. She was nose to the monitor and had another screen open. She finished whatever black magic she was doing and then sat back, lifting the mug. “Thanks.”

A screen appeared in the other monitor then another and another.

“Okay, these are the clips we want to watch first. You see something interesting you click the star icon at the top. Close anything else.”

He started watching the arrival of the doomed aircraft from Zambia. The luggage operators loaded the aircraft with bags, and other staff loaded food and drink aboard.

“There’s no way I can tell if a bomb is inside any of the baggage they’re loading or not. Can we hook into their screening machines?”

“Unfortunately, not.” Crisco frowned. “The bomb could have already been on board the plane from Zambia.”

Jordan swore and dragged his hand through his hair. “Everything seems to change after he meets Bjorn Anders at that restaurant and he bumps into Rowena Smith. We don’t need footage from the airport, we need it on those other two people to see where they go and who they talk to.”

A clip caught his eye. He leaned forward. “Hey, what’s this?”

He pressed play and a figure that looked hauntingly like Kurt Montana scaled a security fence and left the airport.

Jordan watched it three times and felt his heart roll around his chest like a tumbleweed. He watched it again and then pressed the star button. He frantically searched for other clips of Kurt. Through the airport. Past the boarding desk and down the steps to the tarmac.

“Where’s the feed showing passengers getting on that plane?”

Crisco chewed her lips. Typed some instructions.

“It’s this one here, but the algorithm didn’t pick him up.

That’s not surprising as the people are generally facing away from the camera.

” She let it play from the time Kurt had his boarding card scanned to the time they closed the doors on the aircraft.

Jordan was afraid to believe his own eyes as his pulse pounded. “Run it again. We’ll check off every person from the manifest.”

It took an hour, and his hands were shaking by the time they finished.

“He’s not there. He follows the woman with the baby and then…

he isn’t behind her when she climbs onboard.

” Jordan’s throat was sore from suppressing emotion.

“He didn’t get on that flight.” His mouth opened at the implication.

“Holy fuck.” He lurched to his feet. He wanted to kiss Crisco.

He needed to tell Ackers. He needed to tell his teammates, Montana’s family.

Kurt Montana never got on that doomed plane.

“Wait,” Crisco warned. “Look at this.” She found another glimpse of him walking around the outside of the airport terminal before he scaled the fence.

“I have to tell everyone?—”

“Krychek. Stop. Think.” She grabbed his sleeve. “If the Zimbabwean government suspect it’s a bomb, they would have already reviewed this footage. They’d know Montana wasn’t on board.”

And they hadn’t told them.

“Perhaps they didn’t bother looking because they assumed he got on board, and maybe they know exactly who planted that bomb so didn’t examine the evidence too closely.

But,” she swallowed, “if they truly don’t know it was a bomb and we tell them it was and then they see this footage… he’s going to be their prime suspect.”

Jordan dropped back down in his seat. “We have to find him first, before news of the bomb leaks, before we tell anyone he’s still alive.”

Shit, shit, shit . He rubbed his forehead. His throat was as dry as a sandstorm, but joy filled him. His friend was alive, and he was damned well going to find him and bring him home.