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jade-green coffee cup on the
glass table between them. “I’ll get my people right on it—I’ll tell the board,
if they ask at all, that I’ve taken on a promising new client.” She reached
over and brushed her fingers over the top of his weathered hand. Dev looked up
at him and he could see the warmth in her eyes as the noise from the city below
disappeared.
    He folded his arms over his chest, his
shirt sleeve sliding up slightly to reveal an old, jagged scar on his left forearm.
He noticed Dev staring at and shook his arm to lower the sleeve.
    “That’s one you haven’t told me about,”
Dev said with her eyebrows raised.
    “Some things aren’t worth talking about.”
His face tightened at his words. “Will you call me when you have something—anything
on Bob or this mystery woman?”
    Dev could tell by the crooked shape of the
scar that it wasn’t caused by a knife or shrapnel from an explosion but was most
likely from a bullet round that grazed his skin. She’d seen the type before and
knew that such wounds went beyond the flesh. She nodded in response to his
query then raised her empty mug, changing the subject.
    “We can stay here and try to imbibe more
of my mother’s water-drowned coffee or head downtown for drinks, if you’d
like.” She nudged his shoulder. “I’ll even buy the first round, cowboy.”
    He grinned slightly. “That’s mighty fine
of you, miss, but that’d just be plain wrong to let a lady get drunk on her own
tab.”
    “Who said anything about getting hammered?
Besides, I can probably outdrink you.”
    “Really—you think so? Then this game is
on.”

 
     
    Chapter 6
    Gideon Consulting was a three-story
building nestled near the center of Tel Aviv, its glass-lined exterior blending
in with the rest of the corporate facilities lining the bustling downtown
region. The business nameplate on the exterior lobby doors only indicated GC in gold letters above the address and revealed nothing about its role as a premier
kidnapping and ransom company that had its hand in global operations. The
entrance was key-coded and a plain-clothes guard stood inside to the right,
greeting staff as they entered for the day shift. The burly man’s
shoulder-holstered Glocks went unnoticed by visitors and their discreetness belied
the fact that all of Gideon’s staff were armed. Even the secretary behind the stainless-steel
desk near the elevators had an MP-5 mounted under the frame.
    Gideon was the creation of Anatoly
Leitner, Dev’s father, and a large photograph of his image was mounted on the
wall opposite the lobby doors. Since his untimely death in the U.S. three
months earlier, Dev had struggled to hold onto the reins of his business. The
pressures of managing a large company of over one hundred and twenty staff comprised
largely of alpha-male warriors while coping with her own grief made for a rocky
start.
    Under Dev’s direction, the company was
starting to explore work in Latin America and expanding their operations in Eastern
Europe. She had worked enough in Africa to know just how volatile and deadly
that region was and she wanted to avoid any further assignments there if
possible. Working in Somalia and Sudan had gotten her too jaded to military dictatorships,
armed bandits, and the frequent sight of decaying bodies in the alleys and she
had vowed to pull Gideon’s involvement out of those perilous third-world
countries despite the protests of senior Gideon advisors who reminded her of
the lucrative nature of those contracts. Most of her father’s former clients
were corporations who signed on with Gideon as a sort of pre-emptive kidnapping
insurance policy. Many were multi-national oil firms that employed workers in
politically charged climates and needed assurance that their staff could be
rescued without months of red tape and negative attention from the press.
    Dev had just finished her morning briefing
with her board of directors when she returned to her office, where Mitch