Desmond seemed to stiffen before turning back to her.
“The clinic was not the answer, my dear,” Desmond sighed.
“You are as ineffectual where she is concerned as Harold was,” she snapped.
Desmond’s voice hardened. “This is not an argument I will have with you tonight.”
“You never wish to discuss it,” Angelica said. “It’s as though you want nothing more than to bury your head in the sand and pretend this situation does not exist.”
Desmond stared back at her coolly. “I can think of nothing better than burying the entire matter for good.”
With that he tossed back his drink, slapped the glass on a table, and stalked from the room.
A throttled, furious scream erupted from Lilly’s mother’s throat as she flung her glass at the door and watched it burst into fragments.
A tear slipped down Angelica’s cheek as Travis turned from the scene and leveled a look at Noah. A soundless whistle pursed his lips as Angelica left the room, slamming the door behind her.
Travis pulled the earbud from his ear and dropped it to the table as Noah activated the cameras throughout the house, tracking Angelica’s movements.
She stalked to her bedroom; minutes later, a manservant knocked. Angelica appeared at the door, handed a thick file to the servant, and pointed to Lilly’s suite.
“Hell of a thing for a woman to have to face at four in the morning,” Noah stated quietly.
“At any time,” Travis growled.
He hated that damned report. Hell, he had never agreed with the cover those girls had been given. They were called security “escorts.” Military trained, exceptionally lovely, and dangerous as hell. They were “hired out” to men who required beauty and brains in a deadly package.
They were rented to legitimate businessmen as well as criminal bosses and cartel leaders.
Sexual services were not part of the package, but few of the men who paid for their services admitted that. They thought they were hiring discretion and protection. They had no idea they had hired highly trained operatives who reported back to an agency created for secrecy and efficiency.
To the world, though, the girls Santos Bahre and Rhiannon McConnelly handled were no more than well-armed whores.
And that’s what Lilly would read in that file.
Would she believe it?
“Everyone is now in their respective rooms,” Noah reported as he continued to scan the house. “Nik is slipping through the garden now.”
Travis stood with a quick nod and moved to the single bed where he’d placed his bag earlier.
Noah eased the door open, stepped into the hall, and waited, while Travis quickly packed the gear needed into the pockets of his mission pants.
As he pushed a small tool pack into the pocket at the knee of his pants, Nik stepped into the room ahead of Noah.
The door closed silently as Noah stepped back inside. Nik carried a small backpack, filled, Travis knew, with the electronics needed to finish bugging the house for sound.
He handed the bag off to Noah and moved to the table where the portable monitors waited.
Travis slipped out of the room with Noah, moving silently through the house to the office both Desmond and Angelica Harrington worked from.
They had yet to get camera or audio in the room. Each time they had attempted it, Harrington or his bodyguard, usually both, had been too close, if not in the room itself.
This time, the office was empty.
Moving to the door, he attached the security device to the lock, activated it, and waited as the alarm was bypassed.
When the green light blinked, he turned the doorknob and they slipped in.
He reattached the device on the other side, reactivated the alarm, and then he and Noah went to work. Noah began installing video and audio while Travis moved to the desk.
There was no time to check the computer, that would come later. Picking the lock to the file drawer at the side of the desk, Travis began searching files and papers instead.
The drawer held nothing of interest. The desk was scrupulously neat. Working silently, Travis searched the room. There were business logs, files, contracts, all as boring as hell.
Rifling through them, Travis was ready to move on when he glimpsed a thick narrow envelope tucked into a file regarding real estate in the D.C. area.
Pulling the envelope free, he opened it quickly and pulled out several pictures and a three-page report dated a little more than a year before. The report wasn’t signed. It was handwritten. The last line held an account number.
Travis pulled a small digital camera from his pants and quickly snapped pictures of each page as well as the pictures.
Pictures of Lilly.
Each one had been taken in a different location for a different assignment. If he wasn’t mistaken, part of the report also held the name of the plastic surgeon who had supposedly changed Lilly’s face.
The same doctor who had been killed the day before Lilly had taken a bullet to the side of her head.
Desmond Harrington had known Lilly was alive long before he had been contacted by the hospital. Renewing his search through the files, Travis found two more similar envelopes, recorded the contents, and quickly replaced them.
It was nearly dawn before he and Noah finished. They were moving for the door when the sound of the alarm being deactivated had them racing for whatever cover they could find.
Noah headed for a heavily curtained windowseat while Travis ducked into the closet to the side of the desk.
Isaac Macauley stepped into the room silently, closing and locking the door behind him before moving to the desk.
Through the cracks in the folding doors, Travis watched as the bodyguard opened a drawer, pulled a device free of the desk, and opened it.
Well, now, there was a problem. That particular device was extremely difficult to come by and could block even Noah’s little electronic bugs.
Activating the device, Isaac pulled a satellite phone from inside his jacket pocket and keyed in a number. An international number if the amount of keys he hit was any indication.
“Harrington gave her the file,” Macauley stated, his voice low. “There was no chance to delay it.”
Macauley waited for whatever response came.
“Not as far as I can tell,” he answered moments later. “She appears less than stable now that Caine has shown up.”
Travis’s brows lifted. He thought Lilly was very stable.
“I’ve advised Harrington to deal with the mistake,” he reported after another silence. “He seems a bit squeamish at the idea, though.”