Chapter Fifteen

THORN

Brussels, Belgium

Saturday, Eighteen Forty-four Hours

"G lad that's over," Gage said as the three walked into the hotel and right over to the elevator.

Thorn reached out and pressed the up arrow.

"We have someone meeting you with your duffels and passports that were secured from the safe house. The housekeeper sent it with their courier. Even though that leg of the trip is done. The mission is not over. We're regrouping and reassigning."

They stepped onto the elevator and waited for the door to shut before they all said, "Roger that."

"Anything come of that message I passed you?" Thorn asked, tapping the number-six button.

"Our support team discovered your hotel room was not only under surveillance – it was basically a movie studio, it had so many cameras. I'd say at least one of them caught you at a good angle. I'll let you know if you show up on YouTube in all your glory."

"You do that, brother." Thorn laughed.

They piled out of the elevator car and moved down to their room. Honey pulled up a video connection with the war room on his phone and placed it on the table, leaning against a potted silk plant.

"What glory is this?" It was a female voice, Lynx.

"Morning, Lynx," Honey said, opening the door and moving into the nineteen-eighties-style room, done up in shades French blue and cranberry.

"We just edged passed noon here in DC. I was having lunch with Nutsbe and Margot and decided to stick my nose where it doesn't belong."

"I asked her to come along for the ride," Margot said.

"Good that you're there." Thorn followed Honey into the room. "I have some questions for you."

"Yes," Margot responded. "And I have some answers for you. Let me dive in. Brigitte is not with the DGSE."

"I figured." Thorn pulled one of the chairs from under the table and sat down. He planted his forearms on wide spread knees. His eyes rested on his laced hands, but his focus was strictly on Margot. "I figured Brigitte wasn't her name either."

"Her name is Adele Gutterman. She's with the Mossad."

"Crap." Israeli intelligence. Thorn wiped the back of his hand across his nose. "Was she born in Paris?"

"No, she was passing code on to me. First, I don't talk about you. I've never called any of you Bear, Brain, or Thor."

"I kind of liked that. Thor. " Thorn chuckled.

"I never talked about your diet. Except for the pie. That discussion we had here at Iniquus was repeated back to my friend in a public sphere. Obviously, the Mossad is interested in Iniquus – especially the Panther Force, but that only makes sense since we've had some of their citizens in our crosshairs since last February when KIA operators came to life as the Rex Deus and attacked Gage's fiancée, Zoe. I apologize for talking about you outside of our campus. It was probably the key to making you feel, uhm…so comfortable with her."

Thorn skipped over that. "She was passing you code? Can you go into that?"

"She said we were neighbors in Paris. That was a reference to a covert op. That I ‘left at ten' meant I completed that assignment and moved on after we took down a cell of ten. It was her verifying her identity."

"And you used to take baths with her?" Thorn asked.

"Refers to a classified mission detail," Margot replied after a short pause. "She told you I was allergic to rabbit fur, strawberries, and the color pink. A rabbit is someone who is on the run, strawberries is for the color red or blood, it tells me that they are injured or ill, the color pink, it's a female."

"She wants me to go after Juliette DuBois. We were told that Juliette was kidnapped. I gave Nutsbe the time line that Brigitte/Adele told me."

"Just keep calling her Brigitte for now in case you run into her again, you don't want to get mixed up. The police gave our client a copy of the video of Juliette being kidnapped," Nutsbe said. "I'll upload it into your phones in case you see any of the players as your team moves forward. The police said that the grandmother and the grandmother's caregiver both denied having seen David Dubois or a woman that fits Juliette's description. We believe Juliette's still missing. Assuming she's the pink rabbit, she's injured. Keep that in the back of your minds. She may not be ambulatory."

"It sounds like the Mossad know why someone wanted to scoop up Juliette," Margot put in. "It also sounds like what you thought, Brigitte was passing you intel, so you could pursue it. The question now is, why would she want that? We've just started our research. From our end, the DuBois security case came through, and we put you right on it. We thought it would be cut and run. An easy task that would hold you over in Europe for an extra day. Obviously, that's not the case."

"Allergic to pink, huh?" Lynx laughed, brushing her hand over the sleeve of her rose-colored dress. It looked soft and very feminine, and Lynx wore it on purpose, like a uniform. At Iniquus the work spaces were industrial and efficient. The teams wore gray tactical pants and gun metal compressions shirts. The support staff wore shades of gray and black. The executives, too, chose their suits in gray and black with subdued ties.

The only flash of color was Lynx.

The only soft spot at headquarters was Lynx.

And time and again, she had been such a soft spot amongst the hard and unyielding that mouths that had been clamped shut opened to spill secrets.

Thorn always liked it when Lynx came along for the ride. She was a good cook. And he wasn't thinking about her skills in the kitchen. He was thinking about her case solving skill sets. She'd take a pinch of this and a dash of that. Things that had nothing to do one with the other. She'd add them to the bowl. She'd mix, bake, and there it would be, something completely different than how things had started – an outcome that had been unexpected. Another crime solved. It never ceased to amaze him. And while she was a member of the Strike Force team, Thorn was glad that something about this case had intrigued her enough to walk down the hall to the Panther Force war room and take a look.

Thorn felt in his bones that this wasn't a run of the mill operation. This was bigger, badder, more complicated than anything they'd expected, especially after their assignment was to watch a guy get off one plane, covertly secure him overnight, and see he got on the redeye in the morning.

It was an odd set of feelings that were moving through his system. He'd never even met Juliette. But in the photo…Her eyes… The idea that someone might harm her boiled his blood. That she was the rabbit – hurt or sick? Yeah, this mission felt different to him.

He focused in again on Lynx. She wasn't saying a word. Her eyes had lost their softness, the laughter that was usually part of her joy in solving the case puzzles was gone. Her brows had pulled tight. She was looking through the camera straight into his eyes. She paused for a long moment, completely still. He could see the engine of her mind was humming. "Okay," she said. She nodded her head, pulling her lips in. "Okay. I get that."

"Get what?" Nutsbe asked.

Lynx turned toward Nutsbe and wagged her hand through the air as if batting away his question. It was the same question that Thorn had. She got what? Lynx was renowned for her ability to read truth on faces, and she had obviously seen something convincing on his. Instead of answering Nutsbe, she said, "Juliette isn't the bait the way Iniquus was briefed at the intake. I wonder if they've known all along that she's in play. Rabbit, strawberries, pink. She's hurt. She needs help. We need to check in with the client. Are we authorized to do this?"