Page 5 of Thorn

Thorn focused on her photograph. It was probably a still frame captured from a video. The woman’s long, honey-colored hair was lifted as if she was swinging her head violently toward the camera. Her blue-green eyes filled with fear and what Thorn read as physical pain. Something in his gut squeezed down. His jaw clamped tight. Power surged through his muscles. It was the way his body felt as he threw himself into combat. A photograph had never pushed his buttons this way before. “Do you have a larger picture that includes her body?” he asked. “What’s happening to her right there?”

“The man who took a video on his cell phone focused in with his zoom at that moment. It’s the clearest picture we have of Juliette’s face. We’re still putting a case file together on the incident. We don’t have time to get a complete picture before we put your team on the mark.”

The child’s image came onto the screen. “This is the boy who was with her.”

The child’s eyes were wide with surprise, there was the blur of a man’s arm, wrapping around him. Thorn didn’t see a family resemblance between the two.

“Her child?” Gage asked.

“We’re waiting for answers on the child’s connection. Here’s what we know,” Titus said, putting Juliette’s picture back on a split screen so they could memorize both faces. “The woman is named Juliette DuBois. She is twenty-nine years old. A French citizen living in the United States on a green card. She is the daughter of Dr. David Dubois who is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency scientist. We all know how important it is to the United States’ interests to secure our DARPA scientists. Our reports indicate that Juliette flew to Toulouse, France yesterday. This morning she went to visit with her grandmother, Pascale DuBois who lives in the neighborhood where Juliette disappeared, according to our intake report. However, and here’s the interesting part, Pascale DuBois denies having a granddaughter. Madame DuBois’s caregiver turned Juliette away at the door just before two men pushed Juliette into their car at gun point.”

Honey bent closer to the computer. His face set with concentration. “Have the kidnappers reached out yet?” This was Honey’s forte. He was an Iniquus negotiator who made contact with the bad guys and manipulated an opening, then reached in and pulled the hostages out of the line of fire, getting them home as safely as possible.

Thorn knew that the cases Honey hated most were the ones with kids’ lives on the line.

“We havenotbeen contracted to deal with the kidnapping. But on background, the tick tock of the event is interesting. Juliette DuBois showed up at the house and is turned away. The caregiver called the police on Juliette because Madame DuBois said she didn’t have any grandchildren, and the caregiver thought Juliette was up to some scheme to hurt Madame DuBois.”

Thorn crossed his arms over his chest, his brow pulled in tight as he focused.

“After she was turned away, Juliette walked across the road. A neighbor walking his dog saw two men with guns force Juliette into their car. He filmed it on his phone. He said there was a child and that the child wasn’t there anymore once the car had driven away. Just as the kidnappers’ car rounded the corner, a taxi pulled up in front of Madam DuBois’s house. The video tape guy was in shock and told Dr. David DuBois, the taxi’s fare, what had happened. DuBois responded by jumping back in the waiting cab and left just before the police arrived. The man with the video of the incident walked over and showed it to the officers. Our client believes that the family was targeted in a kidnapping to gain leverage over Dr. DuBois.”

“Broad daylight,” Thorn said.

“Until the kidnappers make contact,” Titus said, “we don’t know if the kidnapping time frame, juxtaposed with the father’s arriving in front of Pascale DuBois’s home was a coincidence, a mistake, ortheplan. Our contractor believes it wastheplan.”

“We’re in the right place at the right time because Dr. DuBois is heading here to Brussels?” Gage asked.

“Affirmative,” Titus said.

“And David DuBois is with DARPA. His research is top secret, then.” Gage shifted around in his seat. He was engaged to a DARPA scientist who had developed the BIOMIST system for the military. Someone had come after her full tilt last December. It had been close. But Panther Force was able to pull her out of the net that tried to trap her. They protected her until the bad guys were brought to justice. Panther Force was well aware how vulnerable the scientists’ specialized military research made them to rogue players. “Dr. DuBois, do we know his expertise?” Gage asked. “Do we know why his family might have been targeted?”

“Right now, it’s irrelevant to your task,” Titus said as he put a new picture up for them. “Dr. DuBois,” he said.

David DuBois looked like an ordinary American male: glasses, balding head, paunch belly, with the jowly jawline of a man nearing retirement age.

“Dr. DuBois booked a last-minute ticket for a flight that left Washington D.C. last night. This morning he arrived in Toulouse. He must have gone directly from the airport to Pascale DuBois’s home. It was a one-way ticket.”

“Just this morning? And now he’s flying to Brussels?”

“According to our intake notes,” Titus explained, “the Brussels ticket was purchased during the time frame between his leaving Pascale DuBois’s house and getting to the airport in his taxi. He booked the first international flight available, which takes him here to Brussels. From Brussels, he has a ticket for a red-eye to Washington – again, it was the first available ticket to the US.”

“All right,” Thorn said, “the kidnapping is background. We think that Dr. DuBois is a target. He’s trying to get back on US soil. How can we facilitate that?”

“Your assignment is to put eyes on him from the moment he deplanes until he’s safely in the air heading toward the States. We’re trying to arrange for at least one of you to be on that flight with him. He’s not to know you’re there. Our client wants to be the one who discusses the kidnapping with him once he’s back on U.S. soil. They can better protect him, and they can better interview him from D.C.”

“Security watch, yes, sir,” Honey said. “Do we expect that someone might be trying to kidnap Dr. DuBois, as well? What are the risk factors here?”

The Panthers didn’t have permits to carry guns in Brussels. Conceal carry, silencers, combat knives were all big fat no-goes. If anything sparked, they’d be going at it hand to hand. None of them minded a good fist fight. The problem was, bad guys rarely played by the rules. They’d have weapons that Panther Force did not.

“We’re all working in the dark,” Titus said. “At this point, there’s no evidence to believe that Dr. DuBois is a target. There may be a different reasoning behind the disappearance of Juliette DuBois and the child, something that had to do with the woman herself. Or it could have been an opportunity attack.”

“Mother and child? Broad daylight in the street? It doesn’t read that way to me,” Honey said.

“Exactly,” their commander responded. “As far as I know, no one has reached out with demands from the bad guy side. After the police watched the video, and discovered Dr. DuBois worked for the US government, the police called the American embassy, who contacted the CIA and FBI, and so this very quickly trickled down to you.”

“Roger,” they said in unison.

Titus gave them DuBois’s flight information, and they checked their watches.

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