woman, dark hair, young, wearing sunglasses. She looked like a journalist, ambitious but weary. The picture was taken in the desert somewhere; judging by the colorless beige background Dani would place it in the Middle East. It wasn't the face she was looking for.
Setting it aside, she looked at the second photo. A single form was in focus, a young man, not the man she was looking for. But the photo was taken at a café so she pulled out her magnifying glass and scanned all the other faces. No traces of the blue-eyed man whose face was burned in her memory.
Methodically, Dani went through all thirty-six photos before sagging against the headboard, closing her eyes, and admitting defeat. One day, it might be different. One day, she might see the man who haunted her nightmares. She had to hope that, one day, in some photo, she would see the face of the man who had killed her parents.
Chapter 10
“I MADE BLUEBERRY SCONES,” Dani announced as Marmie walked into the kitchen the next morning. “Want one?” she asked. Dani saw Marmie glance at the clock and didn't miss the look of concern that passed over her colleague's face.
“Everything okay?” Marmie asked, reaching for a pastry.
“Fine. Did Adam find anything on Smythe's daughter?” Dani poured a cup of coffee, offered it to Marmie, then poured another cup for herself.
“He did. We have some evidence she might have met with Keogh a few months ago in Morocco.”
“Some evidence? Might have met? How close are we to getting anything more definite?”
“Close,” Adam said, entering the kitchen followed by Spanky.
“God, that smells good.” Spanky sidestepped Adam and went straight for the scones.
“How close?” Dani asked, leaning back in her chair. The two men joined her at the table after filling their own mugs and loading up on scones. If she didn't know better, she'd think they looked like a group of old friends enjoying breakfast together.
“I know they were in Morocco together.” Adam said, catching a falling blueberry. “I even know they attended the same party. But I'm waiting for a contact to send me his surveillance data to see if I can get a photo of the two of them together.”
“Can we sketch this whole thing out?” Dani asked Spanky, their resident artist. “We have a lot of players and having to divide up the board and keep our investigation into the drugs separate from the investigation into the weapons is making me crazy.”
“Sure.” Spanky rose from his chair, grabbed a pen and paper from the counter, snagged another scone, then sat down again. Flipping over a clean sheet of paper, he wrote ‘Drugs’ on the left-hand side. Under it he wrote ‘Savendra’ and ‘Sonny.’ On the right-hand side he wrote ‘Weapons’ with Smythe's name under it.
“We need Getz's name on there somewhere,” Dani pointed out. “He's a key player in all this.”
“More than the others?” Marmie prompted, even as Spanky added the name in the middle of the sheet.
“He's the place where everyone meets.” Dani paused and took a sip of coffee. “I can understand how Smythe might come in contact with Keogh, given their similar circles. And since Sonny has lived in most of the major drug producing countries and Savendra has family connections to the Colombian cartel, I can understand how Sonny and Savendra might be the drug contacts. But what I can't figure out is how Sonny and Savendra got hooked up with Eagle's Wing and how both Eagle's Wing and Smythe got hooked up with Getz.”
Dani took a sip as she leaned forward to study the paper. Next to her, Adam did the same, while Spanky tapped the pen on the table.
“Something smells good.” Drew walked into the kitchen. Dani glanced up. He caught and held her eye for a moment.
“Blueberry scones,” she said, turning back to the paper.
“Did you make them?”
“If you consider ‘making’ adding water and an egg,” she replied without raising her eyes.
“Good enough.” Scone and coffee in hand, Drew dropped into a seat beside Marmie. “What are we doing?”
“We're trying to figure out the connection each of these parties has to Getz,” Adam answered.
“What more did you find out last night?” Dani asked Marmie.
“I spent my time on the weapons piece of this case. I figured we can do the other part, researching Sonny and Savendra, anytime,” Marmie said.
Across from her, Drew gave a tight nod. No one on the team liked operating this way—breaking the investigation up into several parts. It obscured connections