“Yeah, ignore it, VV,” Gage said.
Veena barely looked up, and her friends exchanged looks.
“At least we know it wasn’t Darya,” Ali said. “I had to sit next to her in the van for hours when we were stuck on Vail Pass.” Her voice was morose. She hadn’t had a great competition. She’d qualified for finals but bit it on the landing in her last run and finished sixth.
I glanced across the dining hall at Darya sitting at a table with Jake and some others who didn’t seem to include her.
I left Veena buried in books that evening to go see Brown. Kids stared at me as I walked through the lobby. In the span of twenty-four hours, the threats and attempted kidnapping became international news, given all the Olympic hype. The question was: would the kidnappers back off thanks to the extra press? Or double down?
“We need to talk about Switzerland,” Brown said as I sat in my usual chair by the window. He rubbed his forehead repeatedly like he had a headache. A bottle of Advil sat on the kitchen counter. “The press involvement changes our plans.”
“How so?”
“Well, on the positive side, we might be able to get you into the Olympic Village now. The Olympic Committee had been insisting you stay in a local hotel, but thanks to the media, now they’re seeing what they can do.”
“Who’s going with us?” I didn’t want to think about how much the plane tickets to Europe alone would cost. Not to mention transportation, accommodations, meals, and salaries. You name it; the Venkatesans were paying for it.
“Bart, Ice, Owl, me, you, and two additional men for each shift. The clients will be there for the Games with their security crew, too. Unless they fire them first, like they should.”
That was still nine people on top of Veena and Nate’s expenses. I wondered if handing over the nanotechnology to the kidnappers might be cheaper.
“The Olympic Village has security we’ll need to coordinate with.” Brown pushed his smudged reader glasses up to his forehead and rubbed his eyes. “And all those athletes coming and going will complicate everything. I wish she’d stay at a hotel of our choosing.”
“She wants the full experience,” I said.
“She’s lucky she’s going at all.”
I eyed him. “You think she’s spoiled.”
“Hell yeah, she’s spoiled. That’s a given. I like the girl, but if I were her daddy, I’d have pulled the plug long before this. The Olympics come around every four years. She could go next time.”
“You’re probably right, but four years is a long time to wait when you’re sixteen. She wants to be the first Indian-American to medal in the Winter Games. It’s a big deal.”
His look was withering. “Yeah, I get that Green, and I sure as hell don’t need a lecture from you about it.” I flushed. He probably didn’t. “I’m just saying I wouldn’t let my daughter take things this far.”
I softened my voice. “But, Chief, this is Veena’s Olympics. She’s ready now. She could get hurt sometime over the next few years, and maybe she wouldn’t ever be able to compete.”
“Yeah, well, she could also get dead. Then what?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Anyway, no one asked me for parenting advice, so we’ll do our jobs.” He woke up his laptop. “Here’s what we know about the suspects so far. The laundry truck was rented from a company in a nearby town. They used a fake company name and fake identification. The Escalade came from the airport in Denver, rented to the same company. Highway patrol finally found the car after the storm, abandoned and wiped clean, at a trailhead near Leadville. They probably stashed another vehicle there.”
“How much money do these guys have?” An operation like that couldn’t be cheap.
“The FBI suspects an international group. The IDs were high quality. The cybercrimes unit haven’t been able to trace the online threats yet. And you heard them speaking in another language.”
“Like maybe Belarusian.”
Brown rolled his eyes. “They mostly speak Russian in Belarus. Look, Darya might be involved, but our contacts at the State Department made it clear they aren’t diving any farther down that rabbit hole. Not until we have real proof. Which we don’t have, Green.”
“She’s involved, Chief.”
A vein pulsed in his temple. “Drop your obsession with that girl. We got bigger fish to fry.”
“What about the mystery man? Have you learned anything about him?”
“Nope.”
Then why did he look shifty? “Right. Some man from Vail, who’s always in the ski club, happened to be in Copper, noticed an abduction in progress, and gave chase with a weapon?”
“I don’t have the resources to investigate someone who, while a wild card, seems to be on our side, all right? Whoever he is, whatever he knows, so long as he stays out of our way and doesn’t endanger our principal, I’m good with him.”
“But—”
“You need to stay focused right now. Our best lead is your identification of the men who grabbed Veena.”
“I didn’t see them. They wore balaclavas.”
“You heard them, and you saw more than anyone else. Every free minute, you’re gonna be listening to language audio samples and checking out mug shots from the FBI and INTERPOL.”
“Seriously?” I wanted to help, but that sounded like a giant time suck, and frankly, futile. How likely was I to find someone who I only knew had black hair, black eyes, and spoke a foreign language I’d only heard a little of?
He pushed his chair back hard. “Don’t even start with me. Get back to school. I’ll send a link to the files in the morning.”
Any thoughts of what I might do with my free time: keeping an eye on Darya, watching for the mystery man, perfecting my toe-side turn with Connor—or maybe even studying chemistry—were over. I would spend the next two weeks until we left for Switzerland in a close and personal relationship with my laptop and a pair of
