Echoes (22 page)

“We've always known the two of you shared a heritage.”

“Yes, but to have both parents . . . It seems so much closer, somehow. Like we could have been raised together.” What would it have been like to have had a sister, someone close to her own age with whom she could share all the joys and sorrows of her life?

“But you weren't. For which you should be damned grateful. Christ, it's no wonder Nikki was so screwed up. A mother who claimed her as her illegitimate daughter but never actually carried her, a father who knew she was his but didn't recognize it publicly, and a brother who probably hated her for having the genes he didn't and for taking half his inheritance: the ideal family. No surprise Nikki couldn't tell the truth to save her life.”

“You think you failed her.”

“I know I failed her. I always wondered why the hell she married me, but I never asked. I figured it was at least half to piss off big brother, but it never even occurred to me she might have been afraid. I should have listened better, watched more carefully.”

“Juarez gave me a deadline.” The words were involuntary, but she felt no regret when they popped out. Whatever might happen, Erin had a better chance with Mac's help, and Callie couldn't stand the idea of becoming another “should have” in his future.

“A deadline.” He didn't sound surprised.

“By six, I'm supposed to shed you and any trackers.” She remembered Juarez's description of what would become of Erin if she didn't and couldn't repress a shudder. Mac reached for her hand, twining his fingers with hers. The sensation was becoming too familiar, far too easy to accept, but she needed the comfort too much to pull away. “He'll call back then and give me specific instructions.”

***

Her hands were shaking. No doubt she already regretted telling him about the meeting. Mac couldn't imagine why she'd confessed. He'd just finished admitting how completely incompetent he'd been with Nikki, how he'd been unable to protect her, and Callie chose that moment to trust him with her own life and that of her roommate? He'd never understand women.

But whatever twisted female logic lay behind the decision, Callie had put her faith in him. And he wasn't about to let her down. He checked his watch.

“That gives us a little under three hours. Can I call Nash?”

She swallowed, weighing her options. “Do you think that's the right move? Juarez was . . . adamant about not involving anyone else.”

“I do. Nash has the manpower, and he knows Juarez. More important, he knows Falcone. This setup is too elaborate for Lewis to manage on his own, which means Falcone is involved at least peripherally, and I have no idea about the scope of his influence. But this is your ball game; you call the shots.”

Callie examined him, her dark eyes giving no indication of her thoughts. He'd never met a woman so hard to read. As he waited, he found himself recalling the expression in those coffee eyes when he'd lain naked beneath her. He forced the image away—she needed to see him focused on the case, not sidetracked by memories of pleasure. But he couldn't prevent his body's reaction, the tiny zing of anticipation. He wasn't done with Calliope Pearson. Not by a long shot.

Evidently, he succeeded in masking his thoughts because after an interminable moment, she nodded. “Call him, then. In for a penny, in for a pound.”

“Give me an hour,” Nash said once Mac explained the situation. “I'm in the middle of something that may prove useful.”

“No problem.” Mac hung up the sat phone and met Callie's eyes. “He's in, but he's working on something and can't get here right away.”

“Okay.” She rose and collected the shopping bag from by the door. “I'm going to change. Be right back.” She stepped into the bedroom and shut the door, and Mac's mind followed her, imagining her stripping off the skirt and tee, until he yanked it back.

He reopened the computer and logged into HSE's databases. Nash had provided him with a password that could be used only from the laptop. When Mac logged in, the system automatically generated a second password, which was sent to the sat phone. He had to use yet another code to collect it from the message bank on the phone and enter it on the laptop in order to gain access.

Once he'd finished entering all the appropriate codes, Mac began checking on properties owned, or used, by Falcone. Nash had mentioned the man's homes, but he wasn't looking for houses. If Falcone or one of his men had Erin stashed somewhere, it wouldn't be in an upscale residential area. It would be a factory, an office park, a half-deserted slum.

Falcone didn't own any properties like the ones he was looking for, but Cauca Café, a boutique coffee roaster with five shops in the New York area, owned a small roasting and packaging plant on Long Island in a building behind the original café. HSE had flagged Cauca because the owner, one Paul Rivers, bought the entire output of Falcone's coffee plantation every year. Rivers also picked up coffee from other small plantations in Brazil, Colombia, and Africa, just like other boutique roasters.

Nash's files revealed nothing unusual about Rivers's business or his personal life. He traveled extensively in all the countries from which he bought coffee and lived well off the profits from his enterprise, which included packaging specialty coffees for several high-end hotels as well as his shops. Mac clicked over to a list of the hotels serving Cauca coffee, hoping to find the Paradis. No such luck. All the hotels were in the United States, in New York, Florida, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC.

“Cauca Café?” Callie came up and peered over his shoulder, her body too close for his comfort. “There was one of those near my father's house in Montauk. What do they have to do with anything?”

“Small world. The owner is connected to the coffee plantation Falcone owns. The business ties could be legitimate, though.”

“I thought people used coffee to smuggle drugs, not guns.”

“People still try that, though it's never hidden the scent of the drugs from dogs. But I doubt Falcone is actually shipping arms with the coffee. More likely, the coffee business serves as a money laundry. Falcone claims to grow and sell more coffee than he actually does; Rivers—the guy who owns Cauca Café—claims to buy and sell more coffee than he does, and everyone shows a nice, healthy profit. The government gets their chunk in sales tax and income tax, and no one looks too closely at the business.”

“But what would that have to do with us?”

“Maybe nothing.” He explained his search for a building where Juarez could hold Erin, then pointed at the address of the Cauca roasting building. “Do you know where that is?”

“Atlantic Beach. No, I don't.” She glanced at the aerial map he had opened, then leaned over his shoulder and pressed the keys to zoom out. “Okay, that's Nassau County. An hour or so from here, maybe more depending on traffic.”

“I wonder how soon Nash could have people there.”

Callie laughed, surprising him. “Nash may be a miracle worker, but you're talking New York traffic. If they leave now, right this instant, they have a chance. But all those people you were complaining about on the street? Come four o'clock, they all start heading out of the city, and most of them in the direction of Atlantic Beach. The non-beachfront towns in Nassau County are primarily bedroom communities, places where people live when they work in the city. The Long Island Expressway, the main artery out of the city and down the whole length of the island, isn't called ‘the longest parking lot in the world' for nothing, and the other highways clog just as badly. And during the summer, traffic is at its worst because people want to squeeze in every second they can get at the shore, and it looks as if Cauca Café's building is right on the beach.”

“Damn. If the area's that crowded, maybe he wouldn't keep Erin there.”

“He might.” Callie tapped an area of the screen near the thumbtack icon that represented the Cauca Café. “I've been to this town. Point Lookout. It's not low rent, but it's not the Hamptons, either. People mind their own business, and when the beach day is over, it's over. Cauca seems to be on a boardwalk. I bet half an hour after sunset, it's deserted.

“But why use a place connected to him at all? Why not rent a moving van or panel truck and keep Erin in the back of that?”

“Because it's not secure. If he's driving, he could be pulled over if his taillight goes out, his turn signal malfunctions, a rock breaks someone's windshield behind him. He could get a flat, and a helpful officer could stop to help him. If he's parked, Erin could attract attention by banging on the walls. If these guys had more time to set up the op, I wouldn't even bother with the property search because they'd have found something untraceable. But the way this went down, the schedule will have forced them to use the best thing they had at hand.”

“Which you think is Atlantic Beach.”

“Possibly.”

“Let's assume for a minute you're right. What happens next?”

“Nash's men pull Erin out of that building before Juarez calls you back. Let me talk to him, see what he's got on the location and who's available to check it out.” Without waiting for her reply, he called HSE.

“He's on the way to you,” Lexie explained.

“Then how about while we wait for him, you tell me what's not in the file on Paul Rivers and Cauca Café?”

Lexie hesitated. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Yeah, you do. The file's just facts; it has to be, so current speculation doesn't taint future investigations or send them in the wrong direction. But I've read the facts. Now I want the dirt, even if it can't be proved.”

“Ask Nash.”

“We can't afford to wait. You came from DEA with him, and you run HSE. What he knows, you know.”

Another long pause, and Mac clamped down on his tension. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had to beg someone to trust him. Had his steady decline since the knife fight stole his peripheral vision and his career had taken such a visible toll? Could Lexie tell he wasn't as powerful, as trustworthy as he'd once been? Could Callie?

“Paul Rivers started Cauca Café in 1990,” Lexie said, and Mac let out his breath as quietly as possible. “The first couple years, it was your average local coffee boutique. Rivers had a thirty-year mortgage on the property, which he paid regularly, and a substantial ten-year small-business loan, which he couldn't keep up with. In 1996, he suddenly switched from buying exchange-grade coffee through the New York Coffee Exchange to buying premium grade coffee, single-origin stuff he purchased directly from plantation owners, primarily in Colombia. This track he found considerably more profitable. Enough so that in 1998 he paid off his entire small-business loan, which brought him to our attention.”

“‘Our' meaning the DEA?”

“We tracked his shipments, set dogs on his containers when they came into port, put people in his shops to watch sales volume—but he always came up clean.”

“Still, you suspected him.”

“Yes. The best coffee grows from soil seeded with coca plants, often soaked with blood and tilled with scythes of political unrest. None of the plantation owners Rivers buys from care much for human or civil rights. At some point, he may get dinged by the fair-trade movement among folks willing to pay his ridiculous prices for a cup of coffee, but at the moment he's doing very well. His contract with Falcone kept us on him after we might have given up.”

“What's their history?”

“Rivers is a second-generation American, but he has strong familial ties to Colombia. His second cousin, Diego Rivera, manages Alegría Verde, Falcone's plantation, has since before Arturo Rodriguez, the previous owner, died. The connection could be as simple, as legitimate as that.”

“Or Diego could hold a more integral position in the organization.”

“Yes.”

Everything Lexie said reinforced his belief that Falcone's men would stash Erin at the Cauca building. Even if Rivers wasn't dirty, he might cooperate because of his family's financial dependence on Falcone.

“There's a good chance Juarez is holding Erin at Rivers's building in Atlantic Beach. Do you have anyone who can check?”

“I'll look into it, but you don't give the orders here, Mr. Brody. Have Nash call me when he gets there.”

“Of course.” He rang off, then relayed what he'd learned to Callie.

“So when Juarez calls, he'll tell me to rent a car and drive to Atlantic Beach?”

“No. Whatever you mean to Lewis, Cauca Café is far more important to Falcone than either you or Erin. He won't let Juarez risk such a valuable asset by revealing its location just in case you manage to survive the meeting. They'll take her some place else for the meet, which gives us even less time to get eyes on that building.”

A sharp rap at the door signaled Nash's arrival. Once again, Mac went over his analysis. Before he finished, Nash pulled out his cell and called Lexie.

“Get Dylan and Nick out to Atlantic Beach. Do we have anyone else uncommitted? Do we know anyone out there?” Lexie spoke for some time, Nash commenting only occasionally, while Mac rubbed at his scar, which itched as badly as it had the first few weeks of healing. Twice, when Nash ordered Lexie to leave men where they were, Mac swallowed protests. What could take precedence over a woman's life? But as Lexie had reminded him, he wasn't in charge.

“Dylan, who drove us home the other night, has family in Valley Stream,” Nash said when he hung up. “He'll find someone to watch the building until he and Nick can get to the place.”

“I take it that's close by?”

Nash shrugged. “Closer than we are, assuming usual amounts of traffic.”

“So what do we do in the meantime?” Callie asked.

“Script,” replied Mac. “His questions, your responses.”