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TWO WEEKS LATER
Fish took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and hesitated at the door to the twelfth floor conference room in the San Francisco headquarters of Blackthorne, Inc. He’d been up here twice before, both times to Dalton’s office. Once for his entry interview, then after his failed mission. What amounted to Jinx’s perverse choice for Fish’s final training assignment—the one he’d later discovered was a setup—was doomed to fail from the get-go. His final exam for the job was more like it.
That Jinx, senior intel chief at Blackthorne, was a die-hard Star Trek fan was no secret. That he designed no-win scenarios, triggered by the Kobayashi Maru scenario in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, was. Operatives were sworn to silence. Not a hardship, as most preferred not to remember what they’d been through or how they were sure they’d washed out. The tests weren’t designed to measure combat skills—those had been honed in training. It was a head game.
Fish shoved his memories of failing his test aside before twisting the old-fashioned cut-glass knob on the door.
Inside, Dalton, Manny, and Adam sat at a gleaming wood conference table. A pod coffeemaker, bottled water, as well as a fruit platter and assorted pastries sat on a credenza against the wall. A glass jar of wrapped butterscotch candies rested on the table, near Dalton’s place at the head. A woman, her head lowered, her face hidden behind a waterfall of blonde waves, sat at Dalton’s right. File folders, pads of paper, and pens had been set at five places, four already claimed, so Fish assumed he was the last to arrive. He checked the time. He was six minutes early.
“Welcome, Mr. Frisch,” Dalton said. “Help yourself to coffee and a snack. We’re about to start.”
The woman looked up from her papers, her green eyes shining like emeralds.
Fish stopped. Grabbed the back of the nearest chair. “Lexi?”
She smiled. “Good to see you, Marv.”
When they’d first become partners, she’d refused to call him Frisch as was custom. Later, she’d admitted calling him Marv had started as a way to bug him. He’d been saddled with his great-grandfather Marvin’s name, part of the traditions of his heritage, a tradition he’d be happier without. After he and Lexi had been partnered for a while, he’d found he rather liked hearing her say it.
The others didn’t seem surprised that Lexi knew him, so he rounded the table and pulled her up from her chair into a hug. “Good to see you, too.”
He released her, stepped back, and took her in. Bright green cable-knit turtleneck under a chocolate-brown leather jacket. Deep brown slacks. She smelled the same—the fresh blend of citrus and spice that had lingered in the vehicle they’d shared on the force. She’d let her hair grow out from the chin-length bob she used to wear. New creases at the corners of her eyes, dark circles under them. To be expected, he guessed, after what had happened. What he assumed had brought her to Blackthorne, Inc.
When Fish had heard about the domestic gone bad—not an uncommon experience, sadly—he’d called to check on her. Lexi had sworn it was a routine SNAFU, and her injuries were minor. He’d been on his way out of the country, hadn’t followed up.
He brewed a mug of coffee and put a muffin and a few strawberries on a plate. He wasn’t hungry, but it felt wrong to reject the offerings. The unclaimed paperwork put him across from Lexi. He turned his gaze in Dalton’s direction. The man took a butterscotch from the jar, unwrapped it, and popped the candy in his mouth, followed by a sip of coffee.
“Ms. Becker, I’ll let you fill everyone in.” Dalton threw a smile in her direction, and Fish had a glimpse of why the man had the reputation of the ultimate scammer. Fresh, innocent, friendly—the smile said You can trust me. And undoubtedly, based on Dalton’s reputation, people had.
Lexi’s smile was more hesitant, more wary. “Thank you, sir.”
She shuffled papers in the file folder in front of her.
Fish opened the one at his place and leafed through it. Printouts of internet articles, copies of newspaper reports, and the familiar format of law enforcement database searches. All dealing with drugs, many dealing with the Falcon she’d told him about.
He set them aside, sat back and listened as Lexi explained what had brought her here.
She recapped what she’d told him that night on the phone. “I’m hiring Blackthorne to locate and deal with a drug dealer who calls himself el Halcón. The Falcon.”
“Why not the police?” Adam said. “You’re on the force, you’ve got connections.”
“Was on the force,” Lexi said. “Technically, I’m on medical leave, but I have no doubt they’ll find a reason to keep me from returning.”
“Wait.” Fish set the papers aside. Tried to do the math with the dates. Two weeks? “Medical leave? After the domestic? You said those injuries were minor. I figured you’d be back at work.”
She shrugged. “The Chief finagled a—” she smiled in Fish’s direction— “cockamamie excuse to keep me out of the station.”
Fish knew there was a story here, but he’d work on pulling it out of Lexi later. He shifted his gaze to Adam, to Manny, then to Dalton and pulled his briefing notes to hand. “Sorry for the interruption.”
“Understandable. Go on, Ms. Becker,” Dalton said. “Start at the beginning to make sure everyone is up to speed. In our line of work, it never hurts to hear things again. We don’t want to miss what could be pertinent details.”
Lexi sipped from her coffee mug, set it down and exhaled an audible sigh. “It’s complicated. I’m not a hundred percent sure I have things right, which is why I came to you. Your reputation for handling situations like this one is stellar.”
A flush rose to her cheeks, as if she knew she was stalling. “Bottom line. I want to expose the Falcon. To answer your question, Mr. Dalton, I wouldn’t—couldn’t—go to the cops even if I hadn’t been put on leave. I’m convinced the Falcon has people in the department in his pocket. I don’t know who I can trust.” A glance at Fish. “I’m afraid the corruption might be deeper—much deeper—than a few patrol officers. I’m afraid my digging for information might be at the root of my current forced leave.”
Fish was tempted to ask if she’d found proof her rookie partner was on the take but held off on interrupting.
“Backtracking,” she continued. “From what I’ve learned about the Falcon, he has a huge network across the country. For reasons I’ve yet to understand, he chose his base of operations in Burnside, Oregon, rather than a major metropolitan area.”
“To remove himself from suspicion, I’d guess,” Manny said.
“Likely,” she said. “He keeps several layers between himself and crime.”
“You know who he is?” Dalton asked.
“Only suspicions,” Lexi said. “I believe his name is John Gunther. His public persona is the CEO of an organization called Merlin and Associates. He’s more of a figurehead. I doubt anyone who uses the company’s services ever meets him personally. I did searches on him, and his name doesn’t send up any red flags. Makes charitable donations, attends the right—” she made air quotes with her fingers— “functions, and his outward appearance is of an upstanding citizen. In fact, his charitable donations include a sizeable one to my police department.”
“You said the man was known as el Halcón,” Manny said. “Yet John Gunther isn’t a Latino name. Is he Hispanic?”
Lexi shook her head. “Caucasian. I think it’s another one of Gunther’s methods of keeping himself from being associated with a drug dealer.”
“How did you connect this—” Adam made air quotes of his own— “upstanding citizen to a major crime lord?”
“Promise you won’t laugh,” Lexi said.
“Not to worry,” Dalton said. “Everything said here is taken seriously.”
“I noticed he wears a falcon lapel pin.” She held up a photograph of John Gunther at a banquet.
Fish found the sheet in his files.
“I know it’s grainy, but I enlarged the image on my computer. It’s a falcon,” Lexi said.
Manny squinted at the image. “Or an eagle. Could be a patriotic statement.”
“Seems to me if he was your Falcon, he’d be hiding any potential connection,” Adam said.
Lexi trapped Fish’s gaze with her emerald eyes. “Something about Gunther didn’t feel right. I’ve never met the man in person, but nothing connected him to being the Falcon. I was a patrol officer, told in no uncertain terms it wasn’t my concern, that when I’d come aboard I’d known I was starting at the bottom. Their concession to my prior rank was to make me a training officer.”
“But you dug on your own,” Fish said.
Lexi smiled and pointed her fingers at herself. “Leopard. Spots. Not changing.”
Her smile faded. A hint of anguish clouded her eyes. “I think the Falcon killed my husband. And I think I’m next.”
***
LEXI FUSSED WITH HER paperwork, pretending to be looking for a specific page. She thought she was over the emotional responses. She’d been cool, matter-of-fact, when she’d approached Dalton—no Mister, just Dalton, he’d said. Maybe it was because Marv was sitting across the table from her. Her former partner. Confidant. Support system.
Her shoulder. As in to cry on. That one threatened to unleash her tears. She moved deeper into cop mode. She’d never shown emotion in front of a bad guy. These men were on her side, and she wasn’t going to show any now.
Lexi blinked, hid behind another sip of coffee—long grown cold—raked her hair away from her face, and went on. She’d given plenty of reports to superior officers in her career. This one was no different.
“I think John Gunther is an arrogant SOB,” she said. “So confident he can’t be tied to the underworld dealings that he flaunts it.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” Fish said.
“Or paying for silence,” Manny said.
“Yes. By the time I made the connection, tenuous as it was, I was getting vibes I’d better keep my mouth shut. Being on leave, I didn’t have access to the departmental databases, which left me with time on my hands and Google at my fingertips. That’s when I discovered this.”
Lexi held up the printout, waiting as the men around the table found the corresponding one and studied it. She watched their eyes, wondering if they’d buy her assumption. Or if they’d laugh and dismiss her.
“Interesting.” Adam gave a low whistle. “Not a connection I’d have made.”
“Nor I,” Dalton said. “My immediate reaction was the magician. King Arthur. Camelot. Play up the wizardry, tout their company as one to get the results you wanted.”
“I think that’s his private joke,” Lexi said. “Until I went deeper than the obvious hits, I was unaware a Merlin is a kind of falcon.”
“If John Gunther is the Falcon, why do you think he killed your husband?” Dalton asked.
“My husband was a prosecuting attorney.” She allowed what she hoped would pass for a chuckle. “I don’t think we’d have stayed married very long if he was defending the people I was trying to put away. To make a too-long story a little shorter, while I was digging into anything related to the Falcon, I uncovered a connection between him and one of the creeps my husband prosecuted.”
Dalton leaned forward. “You’re saying killing your husband was Falcon’s retaliation for putting one of his underlings in prison? Do you have any kind of proof?”
“Proof?” Lexi shook her head. “People like the Falcon make sure there’s never any proof.”
“What happened to the convicted henchman?” Adam asked.
Lexi gave a wry smile. “Strangely enough, less than a month into his sentence, he died in prison.”
“Imagine that,” Dalton said.
“So he couldn’t talk,” Fish finished.
Lexi closed her file folder. “The Falcon doesn’t like loose ends. Which is why I’m here. Being connected to my husband made me a loose end. Yes, I want to get a drug dealer and all-around bad guy off the streets. I’d also like to make damn sure I’m alive to see it happen.”