Page 12 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

On the video, men’s voices were raised in laugh­ter off­screen, but she couldn’t de­ci­pher words. The front of the house showed no move­ment ex­cept for the leaves of the squat palm trees in pots by the front door stir­ring in the breeze. A stone stair­case that marched up the side of the house had a metal gate closed across it.

“Where does the stair­case go?” Quinn asked.

“There’s a roof ter­race that has a view of the Adri­atic Sea. The villa it­self is a cou­ple of kilo­me­ters from the coast.”

Mikel swiped at his com­puter screen, and life spilled across the screen. Half a dozen men sat or sprawled on white lounge chairs ar­ranged on a ter­race around a swim­ming pool. Sev­eral male heads bobbed in the pool among green and pink in­flat­able rafts.

She peered at faces and found Ko­dra pulling a bot­tle of Moretti beer out of a cooler. He wore a red Speedo and black beach san­dals. She had to give him credit for look­ing a lot fit­ter than most of his bud­dies. His life of leisure hadn’t soft­ened his mus­cu­la­ture.

“Have you iden­ti­fied any of the oth­ers?” Quinn asked, even though she was sure that he had.

Mikel swiped around his touch­pad and brought each face into close-up as he named them. “Balla and Tabaku are petty crim­i­nals. The oth­ers ap­pear to be just friends of Ko­dra’s, mostly Al­ba­nian.”

“Send them to me, and I’ll start dig­ging,” Quinn said.

“Not yet. I want you to stay with the doc­tors for now. I’ll put some­one at CSIC on the first in-depth pass through these losers. I don’t see any of them as im­por­tant.”

“How do you know that al­ready?”

“Be­cause Ko­dra might flaunt his money, but he doesn’t want to end up dead. When there’s a big, high-pro­file job like Gabriel’s kid­nap­ping, the foot sol­diers in­volved are ex­pected to avoid as­so­ci­at­ing with each other af­ter­ward.”

“To make it harder for peo­ple like us to find them and trace them back to their boss.” She nod­ded.

Mikel swiped on the touch­pad again, and the view shifted higher. They were look­ing across the roof ter­race to­ward the sap­phire blue of the Adri­atic. The ter­race sported a round white metal ta­ble with a folded-down um­brella in the cen­ter. Five chairs were pulled in around the ta­ble.

“Does Ko­dra live alone?” Quinn asked.

Mikel snorted and shifted the view again so Quinn could see the last cor­ner of the ter­race. A lounge chair was an­gled so it faced di­rectly into the sun.

The woman who oc­cu­pied the chair was stretched out on her back and wore noth­ing but a pair of sun­glasses and a head­band.

“Oh!” Quinn still wasn’t used to the Eu­ro­pean predilec­tion for sun­bathing nude.

“There has to be a woman with a man like Ko­dra,” Mikel said. “She’s a third-rate model from the Czech Re­pub­lic.”

Her hair was con­cealed un­der the bright yel­low head wrap, but ev­ery­thing else was on dis­play. She had cheek­bones like ra­zors and legs that were al­most un­nat­u­rally long.

Mikel switched back to the pool scene. “She’ll leave once she finds some­one with more money. Which won’t be that dif­fi­cult the way Ko­dra spends his.”

Quinn nod­ded. The kid­nap­per’s bank ac­count had shown a steady de­cline over the last year. An idea be­gan per­co­lat­ing in her brain.

“What if we ac­cel­er­ated the drain on Ko­dra’s bank ac­count?” she asked. “We could force him to go back to work, so to speak, so he’d have to reach out to some­one about a job.”

Mikel sat back and nar­rowed his eyes a mo­ment. “He’d want a big score now that he’s got­ten a taste for this life­style.” He waved a hand to­ward the screen. “He might con­tact who­ever set him up with the kid­nap­ping scheme.”

Quinn nod­ded so hard that her glasses slipped down her nose. She shoved them back up. “We couldn’t make it ob­vi­ous that his money was be­ing drained, but he’s got a house, a pool, and a car. And an ex­pen­sive girl­friend.”

Just the cor­ner of Mikel’s lips turned up. “So many things to main­tain.” He stood, the tiny smile still there. “Give me a list of ideas. But I think we’ll start with a nail in one of the tires of that fancy Mer­cedes.”

Chap­ter 5

The next morn­ing, Quinn stared at the video clip of Dr. Stu­art El­lis, world-renowned plas­tic sur­geon, giv­ing a speech at a med­i­cal con­fer­ence. He leaned for­ward, grip­ping the podium with both hands, as he made a point with great em­pha­sis. Dressed in a navy suit and a yel­low tie, he ex­uded con­fi­dence and com­pe­tence. He was also one of the three peo­ple she had on the short list of sur­geons who might have been in­volved in the duke’s kid­nap­ping.

Copy­ing the doc­tor’s pos­ture, she leaned for­ward and nar­rowed her eyes as she looked at the large, dis­tinc­tive ring on his right hand. A col­lege ring, pos­si­bly. Too bad he wouldn’t have worn that to per­form surgery. The duke might have no­ticed it.

Then she looked at his hands, paus­ing the video and zoom­ing in on them. The man had long, ta­per­ing fin­gers but slightly spat­u­late thumbs. She pulled up a clip of Dr. Juan Gar­cia and fo­cused on his hands. Short, blunt fin­gers and square palms. Fi­nally, Dr. Paul Ricci—the dis­tal joints of his fin­gers were no­tice­ably curved.

All dis­tinc­tive shapes that would be ev­i­dent even with sur­gi­cal gloves on.

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