We stared at each other for a moment, neither one saying anything. A car drove past on the road, its headlights briefly illuminating the otherwise dark living room. I curled my hand around the Glock resting on the windowsill, but the car moved on without slowing down. I let it go and Maggie asked, “Are there really more people coming? Bad people?” She may be my tough one, but it was obvious she was terrified. She was only seventeen, after all. Facing the prospect of her own murder—after barely surviving an attempt already—was not something she could simply ignore, no matter how much she tried to convince herself.
I hesitated just a second before nodding. No point in lying to her now.
“Can’t you do anything to call them off? Aren’t you their agent or something?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “I find them, yes, but they don’t work for me. They work for the people who pay me to find them.”
“What about the stuff you and Robert were looking at all night?” she asked, her voice hitching a bit. A stray sob that betrayed her fear. “Anything useful in there?”
“Not yet. It’s just a bunch of companies and random people. Nothing connecting them, at least not that we can see.”
“Do you recognize any of them?”
“Some. The people are not the kind you want to make friends with, but the companies are all legitimate ones. I even had a few as clients back when I was in my old job.”
“Do you know anyone who still works at any of them, someone you could call and get more information?”
I shook my head. “No, we never did a lot of business with them. They’re all big, global companies who use vendor management—”
Systems. They all used vendor management systems.
“They all used vendor what?” Maggie asked, confused.
“Hang on,” I said, standing up. My phone was at 90 percent now, so I pulled the connector from the jack and opened up my dropbox. I was flipping through documents, scanning the emails between the task force agents when Maggie came up behind me.
“What is it, Dad?”
“We didn’t work with those companies because they were all part of a VMS,” I said, my eyes never leaving the screen and its bright, bluish-white glow. “VMS stands for vendor management system, which basically means they paid one agency to do all of their staffing and recruiting for them, instead of farming out the work to multiple firms. The VMS company didn’t actually find the candidates, though. They just turned around and used smaller firms like ours anyway and funneled all the candidates we found through them, charging both sides a fee for being the go-between. It’s cheaper and easier for the big hiring company but smaller recruitment firms like mine hated it because it meant we had to go through whatever VMS company they hired, which paid us less for our candidates than we would charge on our own.”
My fingers moved quicker as I started to find what I was looking for. I created a new folder and began sliding documents into it, both from the Suspects and Companies folders.
“I don’t understand,” Maggie said, looking over my shoulder. “What does that have to do with the people who are after us?”
“Maybe nothing,” I said, glancing at the time in the top-right corner of my screen. It was 12:17 a.m., which meant it was 5:17 in London, and 7:17 in Saudi Arabia. Too early for normal working stiffs to be in the office, but the exact window when most high-level executives liked to clock in so they could have the place to themselves for a bit before the worker bees arrived. I thumbed through the Companies folder until I found the one in Saudi Arabia where Robert and the FBI suspected the smuggled uranium came from.
Coperion Industries. Ahmir Uddin, CEO.
“Only one way to find out,” I said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
By the time everyone else woke up, I was in the zone at the kitchen table. I’d made my way through all the Middle Eastern companies in Sergei’s files and was halfway through the ones in Eastern Europe, starting with the C-Suite and working my way down until I found the person I was looking for, the connection between that company and Trish. Almost all the employee profiles were on LinkedIn, and getting their extension was as easy as dialing in and entering their name into the company directory.
Just like the old days when I lived on the phone, prospecting to either poach a candidate away from a client’s competition or pitch my services to a brand-new company. I was damn good at it, and even though I hadn’t flexed those particular muscles in a while, I was happy to see they hadn’t atrophied at all.
It was Headhunting 101, and never while I was sitting in any of those boring, all-day training seminars my old boss loved so much did I ever think those particular skills would one day save my life. Yet here we were, because apparently the universe has a nasty little taste for irony.
Erica was standing guard by the door and Maggie, who had vowed to stay up and help in any way she could, was asleep on the couch beneath the hand-knit afghan that Irene had given me when I slept on that same couch all those years ago. Robert was the first one into the kitchen, bleary eyed and slovenly with a thick morning stubble. Not that I looked any better.
I had just punched in the last name of the CFO for a Hamburg company called Innovative Technologies and was listening to it ring while it connected to her extension, wondering if it would be a live voice or a recorded message that answered. When she picked up and said her name, I got the same little thrill I used to get sitting in my old office, when every answered call held the possibility of a future commission check.
“Marianne Muller,” she said, her German accent thick. I decided to reply in English and see how it went.
“Good morning, Miss Muller,” I said. It had been easier to slip into my polished, professional recruiter voice than I’d anticipated. Like putting on an old jacket from high school that still fit.
“Good morning,” came the reply, in better-than-expected English. Her LinkedIn profile did say she studied at Cambridge before moving back to Hamburg. So did one of the seven emails between the FBI and MI5 in which her name was mentioned.
“My name is Rick Carter, I’m a recruiter. I came across your profile on LinkedIn and have a proposition I’d like to discuss with you. Do you have time to talk, or did I catch you at a bad time?”
“I’m sorry, Mister . . .”
“Carter.”
“Yes, Mr. Carter. I’m quite happy in my current role and am not looking to make a move at this time.”
“Of course, I’m sorry for not being clear. I’m not calling you today about a job, Miss Muller, but more of a business opportunity.”
“Whatever it is, Mr. Carter, I’m not interested. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m very busy—”
“I know about the processing chips you’re buying from Patricia Baum. The ones your competitor came up with a year before you did but they haven’t been able to patent yet.”
Dead silence, other than a small click that might have been her pen falling from her fingers onto a desk that probably cost more than Aunt Irene made in her best year at the textile mill. Robert replaced the tea kettle on the stove and leaned against the counter with his freshly topped off mug of instant coffee, watching intently. When Denise plodded into the kitchen with a loud yawn, he politely shushed her and pointed at me.
“How did you say you got my name?” Marianne asked after she picked up her pen. I could hear her clicking it furiously in the background.
“LinkedIn. Wonderful platform. Connecting people from all over the world.”
“Well, while I appreciate your phone call, I have no idea what you’re—”
