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On the video, men’s voices were raised in laughter offscreen, but she couldn’t decipher words. The front of the house showed no movement except for the leaves of the squat palm trees in pots by the front door stirring in the breeze. A stone staircase that marched up the side of the house had a metal gate closed across it.
“Where does the staircase go?” Quinn asked.
“There’s a roof terrace that has a view of the Adriatic Sea. The villa itself is a couple of kilometers from the coast.”
Mikel swiped at his computer screen, and life spilled across the screen. Half a dozen men sat or sprawled on white lounge chairs arranged on a terrace around a swimming pool. Several male heads bobbed in the pool among green and pink inflatable rafts.
She peered at faces and found Kodra pulling a bottle of Moretti beer out of a cooler. He wore a red Speedo and black beach sandals. She had to give him credit for looking a lot fitter than most of his buddies. His life of leisure hadn’t softened his musculature.
“Have you identified any of the others?” Quinn asked, even though she was sure that he had.
Mikel swiped around his touchpad and brought each face into close-up as he named them. “Balla and Tabaku are petty criminals. The others appear to be just friends of Kodra’s, mostly Albanian.”
“Send them to me, and I’ll start digging,” Quinn said.
“Not yet. I want you to stay with the doctors for now. I’ll put someone at CSIC on the first in-depth pass through these losers. I don’t see any of them as important.”
“How do you know that already?”
“Because Kodra might flaunt his money, but he doesn’t want to end up dead. When there’s a big, high-profile job like Gabriel’s kidnapping, the foot soldiers involved are expected to avoid associating with each other afterward.”
“To make it harder for people like us to find them and trace them back to their boss.” She nodded.
Mikel swiped on the touchpad again, and the view shifted higher. They were looking across the roof terrace toward the sapphire blue of the Adriatic. The terrace sported a round white metal table with a folded-down umbrella in the center. Five chairs were pulled in around the table.
“Does Kodra live alone?” Quinn asked.
Mikel snorted and shifted the view again so Quinn could see the last corner of the terrace. A lounge chair was angled so it faced directly into the sun.
The woman who occupied the chair was stretched out on her back and wore nothing but a pair of sunglasses and a headband.
“Oh!” Quinn still wasn’t used to the European predilection for sunbathing nude.
“There has to be a woman with a man like Kodra,” Mikel said. “She’s a third-rate model from the Czech Republic.”
Her hair was concealed under the bright yellow head wrap, but everything else was on display. She had cheekbones like razors and legs that were almost unnaturally long.
Mikel switched back to the pool scene. “She’ll leave once she finds someone with more money. Which won’t be that difficult the way Kodra spends his.”
Quinn nodded. The kidnapper’s bank account had shown a steady decline over the last year. An idea began percolating in her brain.
“What if we accelerated the drain on Kodra’s bank account?” she asked. “We could force him to go back to work, so to speak, so he’d have to reach out to someone about a job.”
Mikel sat back and narrowed his eyes a moment. “He’d want a big score now that he’s gotten a taste for this lifestyle.” He waved a hand toward the screen. “He might contact whoever set him up with the kidnapping scheme.”
Quinn nodded so hard that her glasses slipped down her nose. She shoved them back up. “We couldn’t make it obvious that his money was being drained, but he’s got a house, a pool, and a car. And an expensive girlfriend.”
Just the corner of Mikel’s lips turned up. “So many things to maintain.” He stood, the tiny smile still there. “Give me a list of ideas. But I think we’ll start with a nail in one of the tires of that fancy Mercedes.”
Chapter 5
The next morning, Quinn stared at the video clip of Dr. Stuart Ellis, world-renowned plastic surgeon, giving a speech at a medical conference. He leaned forward, gripping the podium with both hands, as he made a point with great emphasis. Dressed in a navy suit and a yellow tie, he exuded confidence and competence. He was also one of the three people she had on the short list of surgeons who might have been involved in the duke’s kidnapping.
Copying the doctor’s posture, she leaned forward and narrowed her eyes as she looked at the large, distinctive ring on his right hand. A college ring, possibly. Too bad he wouldn’t have worn that to perform surgery. The duke might have noticed it.
Then she looked at his hands, pausing the video and zooming in on them. The man had long, tapering fingers but slightly spatulate thumbs. She pulled up a clip of Dr. Juan Garcia and focused on his hands. Short, blunt fingers and square palms. Finally, Dr. Paul Ricci—the distal joints of his fingers were noticeably curved.
All distinctive shapes that would be evident even with surgical gloves on.
