Carol Ericson - Alpha Bravo Seal

“We do, but there’s also the possibility that Dahir is working with the other side.”

She landed a fist on the granite. “Never. I tried to get him and his family out of Somalia. His life wasn’t going to be worth much there after that rescue on the high seas. He’d become a target in Mogadishu even before Giles and Lars died.”

“Tell me more about your feelings of being followed. Do you have any proof? Any evidence?” He watched her over the edge of his glass as he drained it.

Her instincts had been right about him following her, so she could be onto something. She might be a pampered rich girl, but she’d spent time in some of the most dangerous places in the world—and had survived.

“No hard evidence—a man on the subway who seemed to be following me, a persistent guy at a club one night, a jogger who kept turning up on the same trails in the park.”

He studied her face with its high cheekbones, patrician nose and full lips and found it hard to believe she hadn’t experienced persistent guys in clubs before. “These were all different men?”

“All different. I can’t explain it. It’s a general creep factor. I know you think because I come from a privileged background I don’t have any street smarts, but I’ve been in some rough areas around the world. We do have to keep our wits about us or wind up in hot water.”

“I believe you. I looked you up online.” He wouldn’t tell her that he’d researched Nicole Hastings long before he’d gotten this unusual assignment. She might start feeling a general creep factor about him.

“Who sent you here? The Navy?”

“I’m reporting directly to my superior officer in the Navy, but it goes beyond that. I’m also reporting to someone from the intelligence community—someone named Ariel.”

“Why would the intelligence community be interested in a couple of documentary filmmakers getting into trouble with some Somali pirates?”

“I doubt a bunch of ragtag pirates have the reach and connections to commit two murders in Europe and make them look like accidents.”

“So, the CIA or the FBI or whoever thinks our situation is linked to something or someone else?”

“Could be.”

She tapped a manicured fingernail on his glass. “Do you want more water?”

“No, thanks.”

As she tipped a bit more in her own glass, she said, “What did you hope to find in my mail, anyway?”

“I’m not sure. I’m a sniper, not a spook. I was just checking out what I could.”

“And what did you discover other than a request from Harvard?” She moved out of the kitchen with the grace of a gazelle and swept the mail from a table where she’d dropped it.

Hunching forward on his stool, he said, “Nothing. I wasn’t lying when I told you I didn’t have a chance to look through it all.”

She returned, shuffling through the large stack of envelopes and mailers. “Bills, junk, junk, bills, postcard from my mom, who’s the only one I know who still sends them instead of texting pictures. More bills...”

Her face paled as she plucked an envelope from the fanned-out pieces of mail.

“What is it?”

“It’s a letter from Lars—from beyond the grave.”

Chapter Three

Nicole held the thin envelope between two fingers, fear pulsing through every fiber of her being, her mouth suddenly dry.

Slade launched from his stool and hovered over her shoulder. “How do you know it’s from Lars? There’s no return address, and it definitely wasn’t sent from Denmark.”

“I’d recognize his chicken scratch anywhere.” She flicked the postmark with her fingernail. “New York, not Denmark.”

“Was he in the city?”

“Not that I know of, but then, I haven’t even been here a month.”

“Are you going to open it or stare at it for a while?”

He was practically breathing down her neck, so she took a few steps to her left. She ripped into the envelope, and a single sheet of white paper fluttered to the counter.

As Slade reached for it, she snatched it up and squinted at it. “His handwriting always was atrocious.”

“Do you want me to try?”

“It says—” she plastered the note against the granite and ran her finger beneath the squiggle of words “—‘I instructed my friend to mail this letter to you if anything happens to me.’”

She gasped and covered her mouth. “He knew.”

“Go on.” Slade rapped his knuckle on the counter next to the paper, clearly impatient for her to continue.

She wanted to read this in private, shed tears in her own way. But Slade was here to help. He’d saved her once, from a ramshackle boat in the Gulf of Aden, and she’d trust him in a heartbeat to do it again.

She took a deep breath and started reading. “‘It’s the film, Nic. Somebody wants that film we shot in Somalia. I gave it to my friend in New York and told him where to hide it, and I’m putting out the word that the footage was damaged during the hijacking of our boat. Maybe they’ll leave me alone. Maybe they’ll leave us alone. If nothing happens and you never get this note, I’ll put it down to paranoia and we’ll retrieve that footage and make a hell of a documentary. If I die, don’t look for it, and watch your back. Whatever happens, it was great working with you, Nic.’”

A spasm of pain crumpled her face, and one hot tear dripped from her eye, hitting the back of her hand and rolling off to create a splotch on the paper. “Oh, my God. He must’ve known someone was after him, too.”

“Who’s this friend?” With his middle finger, Slade slid Lars’s note toward his side of the counter. He studied the words on the page as if they could tell him more than what she’d just read.

“He didn’t mention the friend’s name.” She flipped the envelope back over and ran her thumb across the postmark again. “It was mailed two days ago, so his friend must’ve waited to send it, unless he just learned of Lars’s death.”

“Do you know Lars’s friends in New York?”

“I met a few of them, but just casually at a dinner once and then at a party in SoHo.”

“Was the party given by one of his friends?”

“I think it was, but this was a few years ago. These were people I didn’t know, so they must’ve been his friends.”

“We need to find this guy.” He smacked the note on the counter and drilled his knuckle into the middle of it.

“Maybe we shouldn’t.” She threaded her fingers in front of her and then couldn’t stop twisting them. “Maybe I should keep spreading the story that the footage was damaged and unusable.”

“Because that story worked so well for Lars?”

“If they hear it from both me and Lars and they didn’t find the film when they...killed Lars or Giles, maybe they’ll believe it this time.”

“If someone is looking for that footage, it must be important.”

“Important?” She pressed the sweating glass against her cheek, hoping the cold moisture would bring her out of this nightmare. “It was footage of interviews with Somali women discussing education and property rights. I understand how that might mean something to the men in Mogadishu and the towns and villages where these women live, but I can’t see those men traveling to Denmark or Scotland to carry out a hit to retrieve the footage.”

“It must be something else, something one of the women said. Lars and Giles were murdered for a specific reason, not just because a few men were upset about the women’s rights movement in Somalia.”

She turned her back on Lars’s note and put the bottled water back in the fridge. “I can’t imagine what our interview subjects could’ve said that would get us in trouble—or how anyone would even know what they said.”