Tess Gerritsen - Vanish

She just stared back at him, resenting how well he knew her. Resenting the accuracy of his arrows, which had so cruelly hit their mark.

“Jane.” He reached across the table. Before she could pull away, his hand was on hers, holding on with no intention of releasing her. “You don’t need to prove yourself to me, or Frankie, or anyone else. I know it’s hard for you right now, but you’ll be back at work before you know it. So give the adrenaline a rest. Give me a rest. Let me enjoy just having my wife and daughter safe at home for a while.”

He still held her hand captive on the table. She looked down at their hands and thought: This man never wavers. No matter how hard I push against him, he is always right there for me. Whether I deserve him or not. Slowly their fingers linked in a silent armistice.

The phone rang.

Regina gave a wail.

“Well.” Gabriel sighed. “That moment of peace didn’t last long.” Shaking his head, he rose to answer the call. Jane was just carrying Regina out of the kitchen when she heard him say: “You’re right. Let’s not talk about this on the phone.”

Instantly she was alert, turning to search his face for the reason his voice had suddenly dropped. But he was facing the wall, and she focused instead on the knotted muscles of his neck.

“We’ll be waiting for you,” he said, and hung up.

“Who was that?”

“Maura. She’s on her way over.”

Maura did not show up at their apartment alone. Standing beside her in the hallway was an attractive man with dark hair and a trim beard. “This is Peter Lukas,” she said.

Jane shot Maura an incredulous look. “You brought a reporter?”

“We need him, Jane.”

“Since when do we ever need reporters?”

Lukas gave a cheery wave. “Nice to meet you, too, Detective Rizzoli, Agent Dean. Can we come in?”

“No, let’s not talk in here,” said Gabriel, as he and Jane, carrying Regina, stepped out into the hallway.

“Where are we going?” asked Lukas.

“Follow me.”

Gabriel led the way up two flights of stairs, and they emerged on the apartment rooftop. Here, the building’s tenants had established an exuberant garden of potted plants, but the heat of a city summer and the baking surface of asphalt tiles was starting to wilt this oasis. Tomato plants drooped in their pots, and morning glory vines, their leaves scorched brown by the heat, clung like withering fingers to a trellis. Jane set Regina in her infant seat under the shade of the umbrella table, and the baby promptly dozed off, her cheeks a rosy pink. From this vantage point, they could see other rooftop gardens, other welcome patches of green in the concrete landscape.

Lukas placed a folder beside the sleeping baby. “Dr. Isles thought you’d be interested in seeing this.”

Gabriel opened the folder. It contained a news clipping, with a photo of a man’s smiling face and the headline: Reston Man Found Dead Aboard Yacht. Businessman Missing Since January 2nd.

“Who was Charles Desmond?” asked Gabriel.

“A man very few people really knew,” said Lukas. “Which, in and of itself, was what intrigued me about him. It’s the reason I focused on this story. Even though the medical examiner conveniently ruled it a suicide.”

“You question that ruling?”

“There’s no way to prove it wasn’t suicide. Desmond was found in the bathroom on his motor yacht, which he kept moored at a marina on the Potomac River. He died in the tub, with both his wrists slashed, and left a suicide note in the stateroom. By the time they found him, he’d been dead for about ten days. The medical examiner’s office never released any photos, but, as you can imagine, it must have been quite a pleasant postmortem.”

Jane grimaced. “I’d rather not imagine it.”

“The note he left wasn’t particularly revelatory. I’m depressed, life sucks, can’t stand to live another day. Desmond was known to be a heavy drinker, and he’d been divorced for five years. So it made sense that he’d be depressed. All sounds like a pretty convincing case for suicide, right?”

“Why don’t you sound convinced?”

“I got that tingle. A reporter’s sixth sense that there was something else going on, something that might lead to a bigger story. Here’s this rich guy with a yacht, missing for ten days before someone thinks to go looking for him. The only reason they could pinpoint the date he went missing was the fact his car was found in the marina parking lot with January second stamped on the entry ticket. His neighbors said he traveled abroad so often, they weren’t alarmed when they didn’t see him for a week.”

“Traveled abroad?” said Jane. “Why?”

“No one could tell me.”

“Or they wouldn’t tell you?”

Lukas smiled. “You’ve got a suspicious mind, Detective. So do I. It made me more and more curious about Desmond. Made me wonder if there was more to the story. You know, that’s the way the Watergate story got started. A routine burglary case blows up into something much, much bigger.”

“What was big about this story?”

“Who the guy was. Charles Desmond.”

Jane looked at the photo of Desmond’s face. He wore a pleasant smile, a neatly knotted tie. It was the sort of photo that might appear in any corporate report. The company executive, projecting competence.

“The more questions I asked about him, the more interesting stuff started to turn up. Charles Desmond never went to college. He served twenty years in the army, most of it working for military intelligence. Five years after he leaves the army, he owns a nice yacht and a big house in Reston. So now you have to ask the obvious question: What did he do to amass that huge bank account?”

“Your article here says that he worked for a company called Pyramid Services,” said Jane. “What’s that?”

“That’s what I wondered. Took me a while to dig it up, but a few days later I learned that Pyramid Services is a subsidiary of guess which company?”

“Don’t tell me,” said Jane. “Ballentree.”

“You got it, Detective.”

Jane looked at Gabriel. “That name just keeps popping up, doesn’t it?”

“And look at the date he went missing,” said Maura. “That’s what caught my eye. January second.”

“The day before the Ashburn massacre.”

“An interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”

Gabriel said, “Tell us more about Pyramid.”

Lukas nodded. “It’s the transportation and security arm of Ballentree, part of the range of services they provide in war zones. Whatever our defense needs abroad-bodyguards, transport escorts, private police forces-Ballentree can do it for you. They’ll go to work in parts of the world where there are no functioning governments.”

“War profiteers,” said Jane.

“Well, why not? There’s a lot of money to be made in war. During the Kosovo conflict, Ballentree’s private soldiers protected construction crews. They’re now manning private police forces in Kabul and Baghdad and towns all around the Caspian Sea. All paid for by the US taxpayer. That’s how Charles Desmond financed his yacht.”

“I’m working for the wrong damn police force,” said Jane. “Maybe I should sign up for Kabul, and I could have a yacht, too.”

“You don’t want to work for these people, Jane,” said Maura. “Not when you hear what’s involved.”

“You mean the fact they work in combat zones?”

“No,” said Lukas. “The fact they’re tied in with some pretty unsavory partners. Anytime you deal in a war zone, you’re also making deals with the local mafia. It’s merely practical to form partnerships, so local thugs end up working with companies like Ballentree. There’s a black market trade in every commodity-drugs, arms, booze, women. Every war is an opportunity, a new market, and everyone wants in on the booty. That’s why there’s so much competition for defense contracts. Not just for the contracts themselves, but for the chance at the black market business that comes with it. Ballentree landed more deals last year than any other defense contractor.” He paused. “Partly because Charles Desmond was so damn good at his job.”