but I know she’s a schoolteacher in a small village in Romania and that she’s childless. Also that she was worked over by thugs when she was twelve and Antonov was eighteen. Antonov had got on the wrong side of some dangerous people and that was their warning to him. Care to do a bit of sleuthing?’
‘Sophia … schoolteacher … Romania … childless and her age,’ Damon replied dryly. ‘Good thing I’m brilliant.’
‘Ah, modesty. Guess it runs in the family. Call me when you have something.’
‘You taking anyone with you when you go to get him?’
‘Wasn’t planning on it.’
‘Will you tell Trig where you’re going? Or Lena? Anyone?’
‘Are you insinuating that I need to share more with the family?’
‘Yes. Save yourself a repeat of Lena going after you. Again. Because she will—and she’ll drag us all into it.’
‘Consider them told.’
Somewhere in the past two years Jared had lost control of his family entirely. Something to rectify. Eventually.
‘Hey, Damon?’ Jared considered his next question carefully. ‘I’m going to need a handler on this job. I need someone to plan ahead with. Someone to talk me through the options once I’m on the ground and steer me in the direction that’s safest for the kid … Would you do it?’
‘Are you asking me?’
There was something in Damon’s voice that sounded a whole lot like hope. Willingness—that was in there too. Need, even.
‘Yeah, I’m asking you. And I know exactly what kind of responsibility it entails, so if you don’t want—’
‘I’ll do it,’ his brother said gruffly. ‘Who better, right? It’s not as if I’d want anyone else doing it.’
‘Okay.’ Jared cleared his throat. ‘Okay, thanks.’
This family.
There was silence then, while their relationship settled into new territory, and then Jared took a deep breath. ‘This Amsterdam canal house? Where do I find it?’
‘I’ll send you directions. You going to ring the kid?’
‘You going to give me the number?’
The answer to both was yes.
Rowan hated it when someone else’s plan went awry and landed on her desk. She’d been keeping tabs on Antonov’s son from a distance, touching base with the officials responsible for placing the boy with his mother. So far she didn’t think much of their decisions. ‘Set and forget’ being their preference.
The child’s mother was a high-class courtesan who’d held Antonov’s attention long enough to beget him a child. He’d paid her handsomely for her trouble and she’d given up the child without a backward glance.
That was then.
These days Celik’s mother worked even more selectively, operating out of her own home in the middle of Amsterdam. She wasn’t a criminal, and she enjoyed a comfortable standard of living. She didn’t take drugs and didn’t drink to excess. On paper, sending Celik Antonov to live with his birth mother once his father was dead had seemed like an obvious solution.
Until one started factoring in the late arms dealer’s enemies and alliances.
The boy’s mother was smart, but she was currently beset by vultures she didn’t have the resources to deal with. She was out of her league.
It was time to do something.
Rowan sighed and reached for the phone.
She waited until the man that she and all the other directors answered to picked up. She needed to cover all bases with this one—her own base included.
‘Sir, I have the latest report on Celik Antonov in front of me. I’d like permission to bring Jared West back in on the case in an advisory capacity. He knows the child and he understands the situation. I’d like to run certain scenarios on relocation for the child past him.’
Her request was reasonable. She was just doing her job. But there was more to her request than that.
‘I also think Jared would want to be notified of this. It was his case. His fallout.’
And Jared would see it as his problem to fix.
There was silence on the other end, and then that dry, deep voice spoke. ‘Jared, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’ She’d known that the use of Jared’s first name wouldn’t go unnoticed. She wanted full disclosure on this. ‘I’m intimate with him. This is the one case within my portfolio that I would share with him—with your permission.’
Rowan’s palms were sweaty. Not only was a child’s wellbeing at stake, so too was her fledgling romantic relationship. It wouldn’t sit well with Jared that she had fresh information on Celik that she hadn’t passed on to him. She needed a yes from Management on this.
‘Sir …?’
Could be there had been a whole lot of pleading in that one little prompt. Could be she’d just altered the course of her own career irrevocably.
‘Do it,’ he said, and hung up.
Rowan slumped back in her chair and ran a clammy palm down over her face in relief.
One down. One to go.
Rowan put a call through to Jared next, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to like hearing that the child’s situation needed a rethink.
But all she got was an answering machine.
JARED ARRIVED IN Amsterdam and made the city his own. Bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly, creatively organised and full of water, the city appealed to him. The watercraft weren’t like the ones he’d grown up with, and the canals were a rats’ maze, but the place was beautiful and free-wheeling and it appealed to him on a visceral level.
He’d have liked to see Celik grow up here in safety, but that wouldn’t happen so long as Antonov’s parasites kept after him. Celik’s perceived inheritance was the magnet, but the authorities had frozen it. No one could get to it. Not Celik’s mother—bless her non-maternal soul—not Antonov’s debtors, nor his creditors. That money wasn’t going anywhere.
Two years ago he wouldn’t have hesitated to go in and take the child, with no one any the wiser. These days his world was not nearly so black and white.
Undercover work had shown him the many facets of every situation. Likewise, Rowan’s approach to problem-solving took into account and tried to balance many different needs. Celik had a mother—a woman who had taken him in—and before Jared put any plan for the boy in motion he needed to talk to her and take her needs into consideration.
Jared wasn’t going into this guns blazing.
He thought Rowan would approve.
Getting to see Celik’s mother was easy.
Damon invented an obscenely wealthy, fully verified background for him and booked him an appointment. Two hours, four-thirty to six-thirty p.m., cash only.
Damon’s wicked sense of humour at work, but it gave him a cover persona and a trail leading nowhere should anyone decide to investigate.
Damon had invented another persona for Jared as well. In this one he was a highly skilled government operative, specialising in witness protection. It was this second persona that Jared had to sell to Celik’s mother in order for any of their plans to