Page 68 of Last Chance

She sighed. “All right. I’ll try.” Janie studied the pile of sandwiches and chose one filled with chicken and cheese.

Although she ignored the chips, Sawyer didn’t push. If she ate the sandwich, he’d be happy.

When they finished lunch, Sawyer retrieved his laptop, logged on, and handed the computer to Janie. “Take your time. Brody and I have work of our own to do.”

“I can wait. I don’t want to interfere with your job.”

“I’ll use the safe house laptop. Brody has his own computer with him.”

“Thanks for letting me use your computer.”

He squeezed her shoulder and left her to work. Sawyer retrieved the safe house laptop, logged in, and transferred the photos he took to the computer and loaded them into the databases to see if the faces of the strangers were in the database system.

While the search ran, he researched Janie’s brother. The deeper he dug, the less he liked what he was seeing. David Moran had a long history of making bad choices. While he’d never been in trouble with law enforcement, he was heavily in debt, despite drawing a good salary from the engineering company employing him.

He’d fared marginally better since he moved to Chile and married Maria. However, his debt load was growing at a rapid rate again. From what Sawyer had dug up, David was borrowing heavily against his house and didn’t have enough equity to borrow against it again.

Lately, he’d started taking advances on his credit cards to fund his expenses. Sawyer frowned. No sign of where he spent the money. Ferreting out that information might require someone with more computer expertise than he had.

Immediately, he thought of Simone, Jesse’s girlfriend. She was a computer whiz. Since his team already had Zane running checks for them, Sawyer sent Jesse a text message. He received a reply less than a minute later.

Excellent. Sawyer messaged Simone and thanked her for taking the time to see what she could find out about Janie’s brother.

That done, he shifted his attention to researching Vatos Locos. A very organized and regimented group from what he could tell. Hard to believe the group at large was 10,000 strong, the members stretching from Chile all the way up into Canada. Of course, they didn’t have a formal roster for him to see. The leader’s lieutenants had been photographed frequently. The leader? Nowhere to be seen. Like the tech team at Fortress had said, no identity on the leader.

So how did the group keep the members accountable? They must have divided the membership among the lieutenants. The leader’s underlings kept their assigned members in line. This was a slick operation, more like a military campaign than a group of thugs bullying their way to the top of the food chain.

He frowned. Was it possible some of the gang’s top lieutenants were former military? That would explain the ruthless organization. It would also mean these guys were more dangerous than he originally thought. Former military meant an actual plan instead of a fly-by-night operation.

Why had these men targeted Janie? Had she seen or heard something that she shouldn’t have? If so, what could it be? Was Brent right about her missing fellow hostage?

His laptop signaled a result on the search for identification of the two men arguing with Moran. He clicked on the tab and scanned the results.

Sawyer’s jaw tightened. Not good.

“Sawyer?”

He glanced up at Janie. “Yes?”

“Is something wrong?”

Did he hold back the information that was sure to upset and disillusion her? Less than a second later, he answered his own question. No way was he starting a relationship based on lies with this woman. She was too important to him.

He wouldn’t be able to tell her everything because of mission security. However, this wasn’t a case of protecting information for the sake of mission security. He simply didn’t want to bring more pain into her life. Since there was no way to prevent it, he’d rather not bring her wrath down on his head. Let David deal with his sister’s anger and disappointment.

He pushed back from the table and set his laptop in front of Janie. The two men appeared on the screen side by side.

“Who are they?”

“The two men arguing with your brother. They’re known members of Vatos Locos.”

Janie stared for a moment, then she sighed. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“We’ll have to talk to him again, won’t we?”

“You okay with that?”

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