Aria poured her a cup of coffee plus one for Cole, who had retreated to the guest house, probably to change out of the rumpled clothes he’d obviously thrown on in ahurry.
“So you’re working on Malcolm?” Ariaasked.
Nora nodded. “And Anastos, though I haven’t gotten very far with either ofthem.”
“Very far?” Aria asked. “I thought they were completely off-grid.”
Nora took a sip of her coffee. “More or less, but I still have friends at theBureau.”
The Bureau. TheFBI.
Now Aria remembered; Nora was the woman Damian told her about in La Jolla: a former FBI agent dating another former FBI agent, both of them now working forLocke.
“How does the Bureau help us at all if Malcolm and Anastos are off-grid?” Ariaasked.
“Two words.” Nora reached for the bag she’d set down. “Incidentalcollection.”
“Incidentalcollection?”
Nora removed a laptop from the bag. “The Bureau doesn’t have to surveil Anastos or Gatti to pick up their conversations or movements — they just have to surveil people who might be talking to or meeting with Gatti orAnastos.”
Aria immediatelyunderstood.
“They picked one of them up making contact with someone else who was under surveillance,” Ariamurmured.
“Exactly. They can stay off-grid all they want, but everyone has to eat, and from the sound of things in New York, Gatti and Anastos have also been coordinating bombings and executions in the city. That means contact with someone, or multiple someones, as it were,” she said, opening the laptop. “No guarantee you’ll be able to trace either of them from what we got, but Locke said to bring it all just incase.”
A flare of hope sparked to life inside Aria. After nearly a week of making contact with people she knew in New York, she’d begun to despair of ever finding out anything that might help them trackGatti.
Damian wasn’t faring much better with Locke and Derek. They’d been pounding the pavement in Athens every day, but even with the large amounts of cash they were pushing around, no one wastalking
Either everyone in Athens was extraordinarily loyal to Anastos — or extraordinarily scared ofhim.
This was the first break they had. Aria didn’t know how helpful it might be, but it had to be better than what theyhad.
Which wasnothing.
“You came all the way from California to bring this stuff to us?” Ariaasked.
“On Locke’s orders,” Nora said, her gaze straying to the ocean beyond the house. “Although I have to say, it’s not a badgig.”
Aria laughed. She had a feeling she was going to like working with NoraMurphy.
“Tell you what,” Aria said, turning to the fridge, “let’s have breakfast. After that, we’ll go over the intel before we hit the beach for abreak.”
Nora grinned. “Intel and the beach? I like youalready.”
She was already tapping at the keys on the computer when Aria started cracking eggs into abowl.