Michael as a Russian agent. As for Joanna’s husband, she couldn’t find much about him on the Internet. His name, Frank Brown, was all too common. Nothing popped. No arrests, no convictions. No LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram pages. No record of where he’d gone to college, no family members listed. And he stayed in the background at Silver State Gaming.
Frank was so boring he was interesting. For him she needed some law enforcement databases.
* * *
Back to Los Angeles. Lucky her, working counterintel meant she could show up at any bureau office and not face turf battles or sticky questions. She flashed her identification, asked for an empty office, a secure one.
Ten minutes later she was looking at Brown’s driver’s license records to find his date of birth—May 31, 1975—and make sure he shared Joanna’s address.
Turned out he’d had a New York license before Nevada.
That fast she struck gold. 287 Brighton 4th Street, Apt 5G, Brooklyn, New York—
Brighton 4th Street?
As in Brighton Beach, also known as Little Odessa because so many Russians lived there? What exactly had Frank Brown been doing in Brighton Beach?
Then again, maybe he hadn’t always been Frank Brown.
Name change records were public. In fact, New York State required them to be published. And there it was, in the New York Law Journal, the words dry and bureaucratic, hiding their secret in plain sight:
“Notice is hereby given that an order entered by the Civil Court, Kings County… grants me the right to assume the name of Frank Brown, the date of my birth is May 31, 1975, the place of my birth is Moscow, Russia, my present name is Fyodor Borodiev.”
The place of my birth is Moscow, Russia…
* * *
How could he?
She was glad she had an office to herself. She found herself shaking her head at the absurdity of it. Follow that pronoun, Officer! Not Fyodor, she knew exactly how Fyodor could have done what he did. He’d gone to the courthouse, filled out the forms, just as someone in Moscow had told him to do, We don’t know when we’ll need you, but one day we will, and when we do you’ll be more useful to us if your name isn’t Fyodor—
Forget Fyodor.
He was Brian Unsworth, her lawfully wedded husband.
How could he have let Kira suffer? Knowing they’d taken her to punish him. Because he’d told them he wouldn’t spy for them anymore unless they gave him more money, or more respect, or more women, whatever it was that his desperate insecurities demanded.
But he had. He’d let them steal his daughter. And if she hadn’t freed herself—
Time to close the loop. Rebecca logged into the bank account she and Brian shared, scrolled until she found what she was looking for. The great advantage of investigating your spouse, so much less paperwork.
She reached for the phone, then stopped herself. She needed to have this conversation in person, which meant another trip to Las Vegas. It would have to wait for the morning.
Instead she called Brian. Let him see she really was in Los Angeles.
“Miss me?”
“The pain is unimaginable, Becks. You’ve been gone a full fifteen hours.”
He sounded the same as ever.
How could he?
“I think we should move to California. It’s seventy-eight degrees here.”
“Trip good?”
“Yeah, I’m finding what I came for.” You have no idea. “Anyway, see you tomorrow night, if you need me I’ll be at the Hampton Inn in Hollywood, I’ll text the number.”
“Classy.”
“Government rate. Kiss Tony for me.”
“I will not.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too, babe.”
Since the kidnapping, he called her babe. Since the kidnapping, they said they loved each other. They were closer than they’d been in years. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe this was just a bizarre coincidence.
Yeah right.
* * *
The next morning, 8:30 a.m., she stood outside the Bank of Nevada on South Durango Drive. The wire transfer to the bank account she shared with Brian had come from this branch. She carried a national security letter asking for the financial records of Silver State Gaming Consultants.
Now she was breaking the law, no way around it. She had never before abused her power as an agent this way, never come close to crossing a legal line like this. The letter was simple enough, no different from a dozen others she’d written. It ordered the bank to provide her with access to Silver State Gaming’s accounts: “I certify that the information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence operations…”
Honestly, she didn’t love using national security letters.