The Devil's Triangle (A Brit in the FBI 4)

He frowned, then slowly nodded. “All right. I’ll have Lilith put up a message board that will connect to this Agent Nicholas Drummond. I have no doubt the FBI will escort the thief, and they’ll all be together. Kill two birds with one stone.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Venice, Italy

After breakfast and a gallon of coffee, Kitsune said, “Adam, I have an idea—came to me in the shower this morning. I have video surveillance of Grant’s kidnapping at our house. I already accessed it, but naturally I didn’t recognize any of the men who took Grant and I didn’t have access to a facial-recognition database. You do. Also, if you can get Major Russo to give us photos of the shooters in the piazza yesterday we can compare them to the men who took Grant. We get matches, we get IDs, then that will settle it, right? We’ll have a definitive link.”

Mike said, “Louisa, can we get photos?”

Louisa gave a huge grin and waved her cell phone. “We don’t even have to take the chance of Russo trying to arrest us, Nicholas, I’ve already got photos of all the dead bad guys.”

This time, Kitsune walked to Louisa and kissed her. “Trust the forensics expert. Thank you.”

Because she wasn’t stupid, nor completely trusting, Kitsune drew Adam and his laptop away into the second bedroom Mike hadn’t yet used. They sat down side by side. Kitsune laid her hand on his arm. “I would appreciate your keeping this private. All right?”

Adam thought about Nicholas holding him up by his heels, but he approved of dodging Big Brother whenever possible. “Hey, so long as you don’t screw Nicholas or Mike, you’re golden with me.”

She rewarded him a smile. “I promise I will do nothing to jeopardize you, or them. Do we have a deal?”

Adam nodded.

“Okay then. I have an extensive video surveillance system. There are cameras around my house, all egress and ingress points, and on the neighboring estates.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“One can never be too careful. The camera feed backs up to a secure server farm in Ohio, in the States. It is very discreet. I would prefer you allow me to enter the information and access the feed, without you monitoring my keystrokes.”

Adam handed her the computer. Three minutes later, she’d pulled the feed. She knew it had geolocating tags in it, but she trusted Adam not to access them.

He saw the tension in her shoulders, knew she was afraid her husband was already dead. He said nothing, accessed the video feed.

“There.” She pointed.

He studied the screen. Four men, a team, all with dark hair, sand-colored pants and shirts with vests—clothes too heavy for such a warm day—walked down the long drive toward an incredible white house on the cliffs.

He froze the screen, tapped the keyboard, said, “Operators, no question.” He hit play again.

The men looked neither right nor left. When they hit the bottom of the drive, they fanned out, coming at the house from four directions.

“Can you get their faces?”

“Already grabbed them.”

She watched as his computer screen changed. The four men were sectioned into four quadrants. Adam had downloaded Louisa’s photos of the eight dead shooters lying where they died in the square. The matches happened quickly—the four at Kitsune’s house matched four of the dead shooters.

“Bingo. Now, let’s see who the rest of these gentlemen are.” Adam called up the FBI’s facial-recognition system. Red lines began running down each face from forehead to chin to create a baseline, then reconstructing it into gridded lines that the computer would run for a match.

“You want to watch what happens next?”

“No,” she said, “I’ve already looked at it a dozen times, looking for clues, anything. They were careful. There are no cameras inside the house, so all there is to see is fifteen minutes after they enter, when they come out the front door, dragging my husband. I’d love to know how they incapacitated him, it must have been drugs of some kind. We need to find out how they got on and off the island.”

“This is Capri, isn’t it?”

She nodded slowly.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything. My dad used to work with a rare book dealer on the island of Anacapri. They were great friends. We visited when my sister, Sophie, and I were kids. I remember the little boats we had to get on and the rope the guy used to pull us into the Blue Grotto.”

Adam typed a few commands and a new segment of screen popped up. “How many public and private cameras are there on Capri?”