Run Girl: Ingrid Skyberg FBI Thrillers Prequel Novella (5 page)

Ingrid walked with Angelis to the elevator in something approaching amicable silence. Just as she was wondering how long it might last, Angelis opened his mouth.

“I suppose you’re wondering why we chose you and not your colleague,” he said, and punched the ‘down’ button with a knuckle.

“I hadn’t given it any thought,” she lied.

“Of course not. You Feds are known for your lack of competitiveness, I was forgetting.”

Angelis’ sarcasm was going to grow tiresome pretty quickly. She had to nip it in the bud. “If we’re going to work together today you can drop the lame attempt at humor.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“In case you’re wondering, yes I
can
take a joke, but sarcasm is a little beneath you, isn’t it?”

“Ouch. You are harsh.”

“But fair.” Ingrid allowed herself a smile. She decided to change the subject. “So… you’ve worked with the embassy before?”

“I’ve lost count of the number of times. Sol Franklin is a very good agent. One of the finest it’s been my pleasure to meet.” The elevator doors opened. They stepped inside and Angelis hit the button for the first floor. “What I was saying before… aren’t you even mildly curious?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re fooling no one with this innocent act. You’re dying to know why we chose you instead of your colleague. Admit it.”

Ingrid shrugged. Of course she wanted to know what she’d done right. A little positive appraisal was always welcome, no matter how long you’d been on the job. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him know he was right.

“Sol and I agreed that agent Gardiner didn’t seem to be in the right… mental state to take on an active mission. She seemed rather preoccupied. About her children and so on. Wouldn’t actually shut up about them, in fact, would she?”

“You were listening to our private conversation?”

“I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you. You seemed to adapt quickly to the possibility of surveillance. You barely said a word all the time you were in there. You kept your own counsel magnificently well.”

The elevator doors opened and they made their way down a long corridor toward the main entrance.
 

“Where are we headed?” Ingrid asked Angelis when they’d exited the embassy compound.

“Imperial College—I thought we’d put some pressure on the friends of Rachel Whitticker’s online chum. See what we can winkle out of them.”

“I thought you said they were refusing to speak.”

“That’s why we need to exert some pressure.”

“Seriously? Is that all you have? Some guy Rachel Whitticker spoke to online is your only lead?”

“It took our tech people a while to uncover his identity. The girl’s been covering her tracks extraordinarily well.”

It didn’t seem to Ingrid that Fortnum Security’s intelligence gathering capabilities were up to the job. Surely the Bureau could find a better option. “What did the French bodyguard tell you? Anything we can use?”

“Unsurprisingly, she’s been saying very little. Whether she’s trying to save her own skin or protect her company, is not entirely clear. We should learn from her example, however. Never underestimate a determined teenager.” He laid a hand on Ingrid’s arm and steered her to the left. “I’ve parked the bike on the other side of Grosvenor Square.”

“Bike?”

“Motorcycle, naturally—I don’t expect you to balance on the handlebars of a bicycle! It’s the best way to get around town.”

Ingrid pulled her arm away from his grasp.

“You have ridden pillion on a motorcycle before, I take it?”

“I’m more used to riding solo.”

“You’re a biker? I didn’t read that in your Bureau profile. How simply delicious. Now I know we’ll have some fun.”

Ingrid wondered at Angelis’ way of speaking. What was this guy on? At times he sounded like some flamboyant dandy from a period drama. “Fun? We have a job to do—helping promote world peace, remember?”

“I’m sure you weren’t taken in by Sol’s spin any more than I was.”

Just as they were about to walk through the entrance to Grosvenor Square, which to Ingrid’s eye was basically a patch of frozen grass criss-crossed with cinder paths, a woman and a man started to rush toward them.

“I know you!” the woman said, pointing a finger at Ingrid.

Ingrid looked the woman up and down. She’d been in the embassy earlier, attempting to get her press accreditation approved.
Great
—that was all they needed, a curious journalist latching onto them.

“Get a couple of shots of these two, Frank,” she ordered the overweight, disheveled man standing next to her. Immediately he raised the camera that was hanging around his neck and clicked. The flash temporarily burned on Ingrid’s retinas. “Can you tell me what your business was in the embassy earlier, Agent…”

Nice try
. Ingrid started to turn away.

“Does it have anything to do with the Secretary of State’s impending visit? Expecting trouble? Is the embassy recruiting extra manpower? They seemed super keen on getting your ID sorted out in a hurry.” She turned her attention to Angelis. “And who are you?”

“You’ll have to delete those photographs,” Angelis told the photographer, ignoring the woman’s questions completely.

The overweight man clutched the camera to his chest. “It’s a free country.”

“You’re English? Working out of the American embassy?” The journalist stepped so close to Angelis, Ingrid thought the woman might bump right into him. “There has to be a story in that. Who do you work for, the Met, MI5, MI6?”

Angelis’ hand was outstretched toward the camera. “Either I watch you delete the images or I get a very amenable policeman to confiscate the camera.” He glanced around. “Oh look—there’s a cop just over there. He looks bored. Shall we give him a little something to do?”

The photographer looked first at the policeman, who was sitting astride a motorcycle, then at the journalist. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, “it could take me all bloody week to get this back.” He pulled the strap over his head and showed Angelis the screen. Then he scrolled through the images, hitting the delete button for each of them.

“There,” Angelis said, when the process was over, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“You do realize your actions have only served to reinforce my hunch?” the reporter said.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Angelis grabbed Ingrid’s arm again. She was getting a little tired of it.

“If you hadn’t overreacted like that, I might have decided hanging around the embassy had been a waste of time—freezing off my whatnots in the sleeting wind for no good reason.” She thrust out her hand at Ingrid. “Angela Tate, Senior Political Editor at the
Evening News
. I expect we’ll meet again.”

Angelis practically dragged Ingrid away across the square. The only thing that stopped her yanking her arm away from him again was the photo opportunity it might give the photographer. Angelis didn’t speak again until they’d reached the other side of Grosvenor Square. “Jesus Christ that woman doesn’t let up.”

“You know her?”

“Only by reputation. Once she sinks her teeth into a story, she won’t let go until she’s made it onto the front page.”

Great
. Ingrid hoped they didn’t bump into Tate again.

When they finally reached Angelis’ motorcycle, Ingrid discovered it was a classic old Ducati. Immediately she was envious. She had a Harley at home, and was so fiercely loyal to the company she’d even bought shares in it. But there was something about the curve and the line of these Italian bikes that she’d admired for as long as she’d been riding.

“Impressed?”

“Not too bad.”

He smiled at her and unlocked a large storage box on the back of the bike. He handed her a shiny white helmet with a tinted visor.

“So, imagine, if you can, that you’re an eighteen-year-old American, a stranger in London, about to meet your online ‘lover’ in the flesh for the first time—”

“We don’t know that—maybe they’ve met before.”

“It’s her first trip to Europe and, according to US Homeland Security, he’s never been to America.” He shoved his motorcycle helmet over his extravagant quiff. “If we assume the two lovebirds are holed up together somewhere, where do we start looking?”

“You’ve checked out his home?”

“He lives in halls. Not the most salubrious location to impress a girl.”

“What about his folks’ place?”

“We’ve had their house under surveillance for a couple of hours. There’s been no sign of him. Besides, he wouldn’t go somewhere so obvious.”

“Would he even expect anyone would be looking?”

“He might not, but she would.”

“Maybe they’ve eloped—isn’t there some place in Scotland where people do that?”

“Elopement? My, Agent Skyberg, I didn’t have you pegged as a romantic.”

“I didn’t realize you’d judged me already.”

“Oh yes. The moment I first saw you.”

10

They checked in with the registrar’s office at Imperial College in South Kensington, and headed straight to the math department of the 19
^th
century college campus, assured by the clerk in the office that the student’s friends were just finishing up a lecture on vector calculus.

“Seems he’s quite a geek,” Angelis commented, mild disgust in his tone.

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Try telling that to the unfortunate individuals who have been afflicted with an obsession with Star Trek and The Hobbit.”

“It’s not a disease.” Ingrid noticed the unexpected passion in her voice only as the words left her mouth.

“Do I detect an element of defensiveness, agent? Surely you don’t expect me to believe you were ever a bespectacled swot?”

Ingrid chose not to answer. Instead she said, “What’s our cover story with the students here?”

“Same as it was with the registrar’s office. An American girl is missing and the embassy—at the behest of her parents—is doing all it can to track her down.”

“But these students might actually know her name. If her online pal has spoken to his friends about her.”

“Not her real name—the story would be all over social media by now if anyone was aware of her true identity.”

They reached the lecture hall and slipped in quietly just as the lecturer was giving the students their assignment for the holidays. As far as Ingrid could tell, it was an impenetrable algebraic formula that Einstein himself would have struggled with. She’d majored in languages. Applied math was definitely not her strong point.

Angelis strode toward the lectern, had a very brief and quiet word with the lecturer, then leaned close to the microphone. His voice boomed through the hall as soon as he started speaking. He quickly pulled back from the mic. Before he had a chance to resume, the students started to get to their feet. “Sit down!” he bellowed. Immediately the entire audience dropped back into their seats. “Thank you. I promise to keep you just a few moments.” He surveyed the hall, smiling all the time. “My colleague and I are very interested in speaking to anyone who knows a Mr Adam Oxley. Please make your way in an orderly fashion to the front of the room.” He stood back and waited as the majority of the students shuffled right out of the lecture theater.

After a little while the hall was empty, save for only a handful of students dotted around in far flung seats. It didn’t seem the young student was exactly popular among his peers.

Angelis clapped his hands together. “Come on, then. Don’t be shy. Come down to the front row, would you? This is a private conversation, after all. I wouldn’t want to broadcast it.”

Reluctantly, all five students—three boys and two girls—slouched toward the front and slumped into seats that still allowed for some distance between them.

“You can do better than that. You two move in.”

Ingrid patiently waited for Angelis to rearrange the small group, conscious time was slipping away.

“What’s this about?” one of the male students asked Angelis. “What’s Adam supposed to have done?”

“Whoa! Back up. You’re getting way ahead of yourself. As far as we’re aware, Mr Oxley has done nothing wrong. We’re just interested in having a little chat with him.”

“And you are?”

Ingrid stepped forward. She held up her badge and explained who she was and where she was from.

“The American embassy? What’s that got to do with Adam?” The vocal student’s friend nudged him in the ribs.

“We haven’t seen Adam for a couple of days,” the rib-nudger said.

Angelis turned his attention to him. “Do you know where he might have taken himself off to?”

“Have you tried his parents’ house?” the student suggested.

“He’s not at home with them.”

“Maybe he’s having an early Christmas break somewhere.”

“You still haven’t explained why the American embassy is involved,” the first student said.

Ingrid and Angelis exchanged a glance.

“We’ll get on to that,” Angelis said. “How did Adam seem, the last time you saw him?”

“Seem?”

“Happy, sad, distracted, excited. I’m looking for an appropriate adjective.”

“He just seemed like Adam. A bit miserable, but basically OK.”

Ingrid noticed the two female students had said nothing. They were sitting next to one another, but the one on the left was leaning away slightly from the girl next to her. She seemed keen to keep her distance.

Angelis pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. He carefully unfolded it and smoothed it out on his thigh. He showed it to the male students. “We believe Adam may know where this young woman is. We need to speak to him urgently to find out.”

“Who is she?” The vocal male student plucked the color copy of a head and shoulders shot of Rachel Whitticker from Angelis’ grasp.

“We believe she’s a very close friend of Adam’s,” Angelis said.

“She also happens to be a US citizen, which is why the embassy is involved,” Ingrid explained. “This girl has gone missing and her parents are desperate to ensure she’s safe.”

“‘Very close’ friend,” the rib-nudger repeated. “You mean like, girlfriend?” He managed to tear his gaze from the portrait of the young woman with the long brown tresses, hazel eyes and full pink lips, to glance briefly up at one of the female students. She glared back at him.