Sandman (Unknown Identities #3) (2 page)

December 29, 8:05 a.m.

“Mr. Galloway, I am going to need the location of your hostage.”

From his side of the one way glass the agent known as Sandman waited patiently. The prisoner hadn
’t said a word since he’d been shuffled into the tiny room. Even now, the slime ball stared blankly at his well-dressed interrogator. This guy wasn’t going to budge anytime soon.

The building had once been a Cold War bomb shelter
. Somehow Messenger had acquired it and repurposed it to serve as a detention, interrogation, and information bunker for Unknown Identities agents operating in the northeastern part of the country.

Sandman had only reached this level of clearance two years ago. Now he realized the real gift ignorance had been. He sighed. Certain things, once seen, couldn
’t be unseen. Knowing about this place tied him ever tighter to the group he was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with. He wanted out, permanently, but knew he’d be lucky to score forty-eight hours leave.

“
What do we have on this guy?”

Scott Tisdale,
the young technology expert with a sun-deprived complexion sitting at the computer station in the observation room tapped at a keyboard. “Too much. None of it good.”

That was rare. Sandman looked away from the staring contest in the other room and gave his
full attention to the computer monitors arrayed in front of Tisdale.

Galloway
’s background wasn’t clean. Not even close. “Trained by the IRA,” Sandman observed, skimming through the rap sheet from Interpol records.

“
And conveniently recruited as a CIA asset,” Tisdale said.

“
Surprised they didn’t scrub some of that out of his record.”

“
He needed it to stay there if they kept him working both sides…”

Tisdale
didn’t have to finish the sentence. They both knew exactly how to interpret the glut of information. Galloway was the most dangerous kind of spy: the kind with no clear loyalty. Many would claim him as an asset, a fact that kept him alive, and he likely had incriminating intel on a variety of people and organizations.

Sandman
frowned at the screen, looking for a pattern of behavior among Galloway’s criminal exploits that would shed a little light on things. There was a way to narrow this down. Had to be.

Messenger claimed the hostage was an innocent bystander, just another pawn in one of Galloway
’s notorious schemes. While nothing in their line of work was ever that simple, Sandman figured Messenger would know. As the face of the Unknown Identities system, he seemed to have unlimited access to information around the world.

If fear hadn
’t been drummed out of his system as part of the rigorous UI training, Sandman might find it a little scary. But when a man reached the point where death became a welcome respite to an intolerable life, fear was no longer much of a factor.

Sandman
had been inching closer to that point of desperation for the past year. Last week… well last week had marked an all new low in his career.

Done is done
. He shook off the useless train of thought and got back on task. This mission could have a happy ending – if he could find where Galloway had stashed the hostage. “What records do we have of this guy coming and going to the States the past two years?”

The monitor went blank momentarily, then a short list of dates, airports, aliases, and security camera glimpses filled the monitor.

“Narrow it down,” he said. “Give me everything you have about his trips to New York City specifically.” Tisdale’s fingers rattled quietly against the keys, and Sandman watched as windows changed, pictures came and went. He looked back at the ongoing interrogation, waiting for the data to settle out.

“
Now do the same with whatever you have on the hostage,” he said, listening to the men in the other room.

“
We dated. We broke up,” Galloway was saying. “I just wanted my stuff back.”

“
Kidnapping her seems excessive.”

“
Obsessive is what you mean,” Galloway countered.

Victim was female.
Not good. If Galloway had a personal interest, that could push this thing sideways. What had been a hostage rescue situation an hour ago was starting to sound like a recovery mission.

Messenger
’s polite expression remained in place. “If that’s what you prefer.”

Galloway leaned forward.
“I prefer to get back to my business interests,” he said with a cold smile. “I believe
you
would prefer that as well.” The prisoner sent a smug look toward the glass.

A deaf
and blind man would have picked up on the implications in that loaded statement and cocky body language. Instinct raised the hair on the back of Sandman’s neck. Prisoners said all kinds of things to rattle their captors. Rarely did those insinuations change anything.

Recognizing the tactic, knowing he
’d done it himself in the past, should have made it easy to ignore. The opposite was true. Something was off in that interrogation room, but Sandman couldn’t dwell on it. His job was to recover the hostage the moment they had a lead on the location.

B
orrowing trouble and working outside of mission parameters were not allowed in Messenger’s system. Hell, he hadn’t even been read in on the victim’s identity yet. Sandman’s stomach clutched. God, but he was fed up with the UI system, he just didn’t have the clout or bargaining power to break free.
Yet
.

“
Why hasn’t anyone reported this woman missing?”

“
Far as I can tell, her schedule is fluid,” Tisdale said. “Not sure how anyone would even know she’s missing until after the holidays.”

Something Gallowa
y had surely taken into account when he’d set this in motion.

Behind him
the tech whistled softly. “Whatever they were to each other, he didn’t bother to hide his real identity with her.”

Terrific. This guy was a first class player and edging closer to predator,
in Sandman’s estimation. If he didn’t care about hiding his identity, he considered the woman disposable.

That kind of criminal just pissed
Sandman off. Galloway looked far too relaxed on the other side of the glass. Take away the cramped room and the handcuffs, give the Irishman a change of clothes, put a couple of beers on the table, and this would look like two buddies catching up.

“
They were in Jordan together,” Tisdale continued. “Just for a couple of days about six months ago.”

Sandman
hated the desert and he said a prayer this case wouldn’t go that direction. “What the hell does a CIA-reformed Irish street thug need in Jordan?”

“
Sunscreen?”

“
You’re not as funny as you look, Tisdale.” He turned back to watch Messenger’s interrogation. If he couldn’t get information, maybe he could learn something useful from Messenger’s techniques. “Give me something,” he muttered.

Messenger had told him the victim had checked in for her flight from New York, but she wasn
’t on the passenger manifest at the connecting flight to her final destination. He’d explained how Galloway had used pictures of the woman to coerce a cousin here in the city into recovering what definitely was
not
his personal property. None of the pictures had revealed anything about location. Messenger’s team of technical experts hadn’t been able to pull any GPS data from the pictures either. Galloway would have thought of that, and taken the steps to make any recovery difficult.

“
She has to be here in the States.” Galloway had connections all over the globe, but what the man didn’t have was patience. He was the sort to snatch a victim and put her to good use immediately rather than drawing things out.

Suddenly the prisoner laughed.
“My God. That’s it. Renata Vaccaro is working for you too, isn’t she?”

What the hell?
A low buzz started in Sandman’s ears. Galloway did
not
just use that name.

Messenger
’s stoic expression didn’t waver.

“
Ah, come on then. Tell me I’m right. I’ve earned that much.” Galloway laughed again when Messenger refused to comment. “Nevermind. You would never have interrupted my deal if you didn’t already have your hooks in her.”

Sandman
smothered his reaction to the sound of her name. There was no room for weakness in UI, not even in this small observation room with a tech expert. Everything was noted and analyzed for the ultimate preservation of Messenger and UI.

This was a c
oincidence, nothing more. Galloway wasn’t referring to the Renata that Sandman knew.
No
. He would not believe it. The Renata he knew was too wild, too pampered, and far too precious to have gotten tangled up with Messenger.

He turned to
Tisdale. “Pictures.” He forced the word past the dry lump in his throat.

“
Coming up now.”

Sandman
couldn’t breathe as candid shots of Renata –
his
Renata – popped up and filled the monitor.  There were shots of her alone, with Galloway, with other men and women in both professional and casual settings.

As much as he
wanted it to be someone else, it was her. Could Galloway’s outlandish theory be true? He refused to believe it. This couldn’t be happening.

This just got
too personal and UI agents weren’t allowed to have personal lives. Connections from the past were never tolerated.

“
If you give me the location of your hostage,” Messenger said, his voice almost friendly, “I can give you options.”

Galloway
’s sneer faded to something closer to curiosity. “What kind of options?”

No
. It was eerily similar to his first meeting with Messenger years ago. His blood slogged through his ears as the memory rushed to the front of his mind.

One day he
’d been having a picnic with Renata, the next he was in a sniper’s nest providing cover for the team on the ground in a hot, dusty desert. Two days after that he was on the wrong side of what had suddenly become an unauthorized kill.

Messenger had shown up
at the base and methodically reviewed the mountain of evidence against him. From an unfavorable psych profile he’d never seen to statements from the ground team that they’d never been in danger. No one cared about his differing perspective from the nest. There was no mention of the original order and no one could find any mention of the go-order telling him to take the shot. The communications records had been corrupted beyond recovery. It had been clear a court martial would not go his way.

Eventually the man in the gray suit had
extended an offer to join a developmental team, a covert program that would use his sniper skills for the honorable cause of national security. He wouldn’t be a Marine, but his life wouldn’t be a waste. All he had to do was abandon everything he’d known, everything he’d been and volunteer to become someone else – someone
better
according to the propaganda.

Galloway started talking, but it was only more bullshit. Sandman
would not stand by quietly and watch Messenger bring a treacherous mercenary like Galloway into the UI system. He pulled out his phone and sent a text message to Messenger, then watched through the one-way glass as the head of UI reacted.

“
Wait here,” Messenger said, cutting short Galloway’s rambling.

The prisoner made a smug sound that crawled under Sandman
’s skin, exacerbating the pressure building inside him. “Send everything you have on Galloway and the hostage to my phone,” Sandman barked at Tisdale.

“
Sure thing.”

Finally, M
essenger left the interrogation room.

Sandman waited another two seconds.
“Turn off anything that’s recording in there,” he said.

“
But –”

Sandman had one hand on the door handle.
“Do it.” He jerked open the door, cleared the hall and ducked into the interrogation room.

He didn
’t much care if Tisdale did record what he was about to do. They’d tasked him with a hostage rescue and damn it, he was going to make sure the mission stayed a rescue.

Galloway, the
arrogant bastard, didn’t even turn around. “That was fast.”

Sandman stepped up behind him and
slammed the man’s head against the table. Blood spurted from the resulting gash in his forehead, dripped down his broken nose. Before Galloway could recover, Sandman grabbed him by the ear and forced him to the floor. Galloway’s cuffed wrists pulled the table over with him.