Parker didn’t say a word.
King said, ‘That puts more suspicion on you, buddy. Whether you want it to or not.’
Parker said, ‘Hence why I didn’t say anything.’
Slater said, ‘So you didn’t say anything about your little presidential campaign, and then you didn’t say anything about your briefcase, and now you’re expecting us to believe this is one crazy coincidence that you couldn’t possibly have anything to do with?’
Parker didn’t blink. He leant forward, eyes fixed on Slater, and hissed, ‘Why the fuck would I kidnap my own daughter?’
Slater didn’t say anything.
Good point, he thought.
King said, ‘What was the information?’
Parker didn’t respond.
King said, ‘Aidan.’
The man looked up.
‘What was the information?’
‘The locations of a dozen of our temporary HQs back on U.S. soil.’
‘Whose HQs?’
‘Black ops. Anything the government can’t officially disclose. The workforce that operates behind the scenes has secret locations they set up in, but it’s on a cycle. We all pack up and move shop every few months. I was arranging a future move, but I started nodding off in bed and I closed the laptop and packed it away and figured I’d wake up early and finish it in the morning.’
‘That’s idiotic for someone at your level.’
‘I know. Another reason I didn’t say anything. I’m terrified it will ruin any credibility I’d built up with the connections I’ve made. It’ll ruin everything I’ve been planning for years. I want to do great things for our country, but I can’t if this fucking laptop gets compromised. I made one mistake, and…’
He trailed off.
King thought about it.
Weighed it up.
And, strangely, believed him again.
‘What are you thinking?’ Parker said.
‘I think you made a couple of moronic decisions in a row and then the worst-case scenarios for each of them wound up happening. You kicked your protection detail out to spend more time with your daughter, and then you made a lapse in judgment with information you’d been handling with confidence for decades. So, no, I don’t think you’re malicious — I just think you’re an idiot.’
Parker shrugged. ‘That’s fair enough.’
No-one said anything.
Parker said, ‘Where was the briefcase found?’
‘Discarded on the trail right outside the teahouse.’
The man breathed an audible sigh of relief. ‘If they couldn’t get into it, maybe they threw it aside…’
‘Did Perry know the code?’
‘Yes.’
‘So if he’s behind it, we’ll get there tomorrow night and the briefcase will be empty.’
‘The porter could have got it out of him.’
‘How big was the porter?’
‘Tiny. Barely over five feet.’
‘How big is Perry?’
‘Big.’
‘Think about that, Aidan.’
Parker looked at them like they were stupid. ‘You ever seen someone held at gunpoint?’
‘Too many times to count.’
‘Then you think about that. I stand by my opinion that it’s not Oscar Perry. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s the porter, either. There could have been a—’
‘It’s one of them,’ King said. ‘That’s for sure.’
‘And what makes you so certain?’ Parker said.
‘Because they were spotted on the trail earlier today with your daughter.’
Slater said, ‘What?’
Parker said, ‘What?’
King said, ‘Perry was leading the pack. Raya was in the middle, unhurt. And the porter was bringing up the rear with the mother-of-all black eyes. The witnesses said it looked like a golf ball under his eyelid.’
Parker went quiet, and Slater said, ‘Shit.’
King stood up. ‘Aidan, I think you need to reconsider your stance that it’s not Oscar Perry. Might make it easier when the truth comes out.’
He left the room to coordinate the rest of the details with Violetta in privacy.
26
Slater didn’t feel the urge to sit around shooting the shit with Aidan Parker — partly because he had little in common with the budding politician, but mostly because until the case was closed they weren’t ruling out anyone, and it wasn’t wise to befriend potential suspects.
So he went to his assigned room, trudging through the creaking upper level of the teahouse, and shut the door behind him. King had the room next door, so for now he was by himself. He breathed in the quiet and savoured it. He still liked being alone. He didn’t think that sensation would ever leave. He shed a couple of outer layers and spread out on the bed, then went through the same routine physical check-up he’d conducted on himself after every fight he’d ever been in. He was sore as hell, and anyone unaccustomed to the gruelling nature of physical combat would probably assume they’d broken a dozen different bones in the aftermath of a fistfight. His joints ached from the max-effort rattle of punches and elbows ricocheting off bone. He closed his eyes and visualised a soothing river flowing downstream, working its way from his head to his toes, dissipating the traumatised muscle tissue and rattled joints.
That’s what the movies didn’t show.
Punch someone in the jaw as hard as Slater could, and your fist is going to ache for a week.
Thankfully, he was used to it.
But he didn’t know how it would bode for the following morning.
They had a lot of ground to cover. There were endless questions and muddied motivations and no clear answer. No gameplan either. Whoever was behind Raya’s kidnapping was doing the right thing — climbing higher and higher, reaching altitudes that had the potential to neutralise even the fittest, hardest, toughest men on earth. Altitude sickness was a cruel bitch.
That reminded him…
He rolled over, fished through his pack, and popped a couple of Diamox. The altitude sickness tablets would at least do something to prevent any issues that might crop up when they trekked above thirteen thousand feet.
He lay on his back, staring up at the wood-panelled ceiling, and found himself thinking…
…nothing at all.
Was that odd? Here he was, about to undertake a monumental physical task in the hopes of finding a kid who didn’t deserve what had happened to her. There’d be sweat and blood and toil and relentless
