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As Dela walked through the surveillance room, Dede waved her over. “Did you find something else?” Dela asked.
The woman nodded. “Yes. I don’t know why someone didn’t think to look at the parking lot footage when the boy went missing. I found this.” The woman pointed to the monitor directly in front of her and the parking lot in front of the Starfish appeared.
A van drove up to the building and Felicity walked out with her son. She and the child got in the van and a man with another boy stepped out, the little boy holding a stuffed dog. The van drove off and the man and child went between the buildings to the beach.
“Does that van bring Felicity back?” Dela asked.
“No. She’s dropped off by the fancy limousine.” Dede fast-forwarded and the long dark car drove in about ten till two by the time on the bottom corner of the video.
“West was in on the kidnapping,” Heath said.
“Did he help Felicity and not the Feds or was he helping her for the Feds?” Dela asked not expecting an answer as she peered into Heath’s eyes.
“If helping the Feds, they’ve known all along where the boy was. Why go along with the charade?” Heath said, anger vibrating his words.
“They knew Rowena was taking the photos. It has to have been someone in Hugo’s payroll who killed her. He is the only person who would want to know what happened to his son.” Dela’s anger at Quinn and the FBI grew. “We need to have another talk with our friend.”
Heath held onto her arm as they descended the stairs. With him keeping her steady she could move faster.
“Don’t go after Quinn like a pit bull. He’ll only bristle up and clamp his mouth shut,” Heath said at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’ll be as subtle as I can considering I was right all along and the FBI planned the whole thing and then left their agent out to dry when they should have been keeping tabs on her.” Dela marched out the front entrance and straight across the parking lot, even though she’d nearly been run over not that long ago.
Heath kept up with her stride for stride. “You know he may not even be in the suite.”
“Good. Then I’ll talk to the agent who came here to clear things up.” Dela stepped up onto the sidewalk as that woman strode out of the Starfish building.
The woman stopped the other two agents behind her and said, “Ms. Alvaro, I didn’t expect to see you again today. Did you get looked over after that fall you took?”
“I need to talk to Special Agent Pierce,” Dela said.
The woman’s gaze landed on Heath. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
Dela glanced at Heath. He studied the woman.
“You do look kind of familiar,” he said.
“I’m Special Agent Cora Leland.” She smiled. “We butt heads at Pine Ridge eight years ago.”
Something flickered in Heath’s eyes before he said, “Agent Leland. Yes, I remember.”
“What are you doing now? Still undercover or...” her gaze flit to Dela and back to Heath, “on vacation?”
Dela decided if the two had history, she’d use it to her advantage. “We wanted to talk to Agent Pierce about the kidnapping. But if you have time to listen...”
Heath’s hand pressed on her back as if he was urging her to move along.
Special Agent Leland turned to the two agents behind her. “You two go on. I’ll catch a ride with someone else.” When the other agents walked away, she motioned to the building. “Come on up. We’ll have the suite to ourselves and you can tell me what’s been happening around here. I don’t feel like I’m getting the truth from any of the agents who have been here.”
Heath held onto Dela’s elbow, slowing her pace. He whispered in her ear, “Be careful. You can trust her less than you can trust Quinn.”
Dela glanced into his eyes before stepping onto the elevator and realized, that the emotion she’d seen flickering in his eyes was distrust. What had happened in Pine Ridge that had him cautious of the woman? Now she wished she hadn’t been so bold and had instead asked to see Quinn. At least they knew why he did what he did.
At the suite, Cora invited them to take a seat while she made them coffee. As soon as the woman walked into the kitchen area, Dela leaned over and asked, “Why not trust her?”
“In Pine Ridge, she was taking money to look the other way. If she’s been monitoring this whole operation, she could be the person giving whoever is killing people the information.”
When the woman walked into the room with three cups of coffee, Dela took the first one and Heath the second. Cora sat on a chair across from them, sipped from her cup, and studied them.
“What did you need to tell Agent Pierce?” she asked.
“It wasn’t telling him so much as asking him something,” Dela said, now trying to figure out what to say that wouldn’t give the woman more information to pass on, if indeed, she was still on the take.
“I’ve been monitoring the operation from the beginning. I should be able to answer your question.”
Heath cleared his throat as if warning her to tread lightly.
“Whose idea was it to help Felicity Benedict fake her son’s disappearance?” Dela decided to go with the obvious.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Hugo Benedict kidnapped their child. We’re trying to help her get him back.” The woman’s expression was neutral, but her eyes were boring into Dela as if she could read her mind.
Dela laughed. “Ok. For the sake of making you happy, we’ll say Hugo took his son. Then if he took his son, why are he and his muscle man still around here killing people to find the boy?”
Heath held out his phone. “Excuse me, I need to take this call.”
Dela caught his warning glance and wondered what he was up to.
Cora’s gaze followed Heath. “How do you and Heath know one another?”
“We were high school sweethearts who reconnected when we both moved back to Nixyaawii.” She smiled. They were more than sweethearts, they were soulmates, but she’d only told her best friend Molly that.
“How nice. Then he told you about his time at Pine Ridge?”
Dela could tell the woman wanted to say something to put a wedge between her and Heath. “He did. I felt for him when he said his father had died before he was able to see him.”
The woman’s eyes widened and then she regained her composure. “Yes, that’s what brought him to Pine Ridge. But he stayed. Did he tell you the reason for that?”
Heath walked back into the room. “Dela and I keep no secrets from one another. She knows everything that happened at Pine Ridge.”
Dela steeled her expression. She knew something had happened there that Heath had yet to tell her. And she had things that had happened to her in the Army that she’d yet to disclose as well. She nodded and smiled. “Whatever friction you’re trying to put between us, you might as well give it up. We make a good team in our private life and our professional lives.”
The door to the suite opened and Quinn strode in. “Cora, I thought you and your people were going back to Portland.”
“I was waylaid by Ms. Alvaro. She wanted to tell me something.” The woman smiled with a full set of teeth that looked as sharp as a shark’s.
Quinn faced Dela. “Did you want to talk to Cora or to me?”
She realized Heath had called Quinn and he’d hurried here to stop her from telling this woman anything. While she didn’t trust Quinn, she trusted Heath and if he thought giving this woman any information would hurt their efforts, she’d abide by that. “Yes, we wanted to talk to you. I’m glad you made it back.” She stood and studied the woman. “It was interesting meeting you.”
Cora glared at Quinn and held out her hand. “I hope we meet again.”
Dela shook hands, noticing the woman had a firm grip.
Quinn walked to the door. Dela and Heath followed him out into the hallway. “Let’s go for a drive,” Quinn said, leading them to the elevator as Cora followed them down the hallway.
All four of them rode down in the elevator. When they stood on the sidewalk, Cora asked, “I don’t have a ride back to Portland. Do you have anything you want me to do, until a ride picks me up?”
Quinn smiled and waved his hand. A tan-colored SUV pulled up in front of the building. “Agent Smith will take you to Portland.”
The woman glared at him again and climbed into the passenger side.
“We can go back up to the suite now,” Dela said.
“No, we can’t. She might have bugged the room.” Quinn pointed to a federal vehicle parked close to the entrance. “We’ll take my vehicle, myself or Swanson has been in it the whole time she’s been here so she or her little gremlins couldn’t touch it.”
Dela studied Quinn. He had the same distrust of the woman as Heath. “I see there is no love loss between you two.” Dela climbed into the front passenger seat where Heath held the door for her. He slid into the back seat behind her.
Quinn slid in behind the steering wheel and pulled out of the parking lot. “You don’t know the whole of it. She is my ex-wife’s niece, and she believes that Cora just needs to grow up and she’ll make a great agent. What my ex-wife doesn’t see is her darling niece will do anything for a buck. Even if it means going against the agency’s policies and taking money from the people we are supposed to be catching. We, Swanson and I, believe Cora is on Hugo’s payroll. We try to keep her out of everything we do to catch him, but she always pops up.” He glanced over at her. “What have you learned?”
Dela wished Heath had sat behind Quinn so she could take cues from him if she said too much. “I want a straight answer. Did the FBI start out helping Felicity kidnap her child and then she took things into her own hands?”
Quinn glanced at her as he turned south, driving through Lincoln City. “Yes. We, along with West, had planned the kidnapping to put Benedict in a bind and have him use unlaundered money to pay for the boy. Only Felicity decided to use the kidnapping as a way to get herself and the boy away from Hugo.”
“Did she know Rowena was filming the kidnapping?”
“Not unless West said something to her. Why?”
“Because we saw the video today of Felicity driving off with Asher in a van after a man and a boy Asher’s size got out of the van. Someone taking photos would be able to look at the photos and know the boy seen with the man wasn’t Asher. The only other person who would have reason to want the photos would be Hugo to discover what happened to his boy, but he and Ferris entered the building after Rowena was already dead.” Dela had decided Felicity killed Rowena after hearing the information Sherman, Enos, and Trent had found out. She was the only person with something at stake that wasn’t accounted for at the time of Rowena’s death.
Quinn chuckled. “You think Felicity killed Rowena? She was helping us.”
Dela shook her head. “Think about it. Was she helping you? Or was she helping herself? If Hugo had taken the bait and used unlaundered money as ransom for his son, she would be rid of him legally and have her son without Hugo continually taking her to court for custody of the boy.”
“That makes sense,” Heath said. “But who beat up the agent and killed West?”
“I think the agent was beat up by Ferris. He discovered he was being followed and wanted to get away. That’s when he disappeared and was at West’s house. I believe he tortured West to find out what Felicity had done with the boy, but I suspect it was either Reuben or Felicity who killed West. They had the most to lose if the agent told Hugo that Felicity had the child. He was the one who brought Felicity back after she’d driven away in the van with Asher. He had to know the kidnapping hadn’t gone as planned by the FBI.”
“But what about Ferris beating up Sherman and threatening Trent?” Heath asked.
Dela shrugged. “He’s a thug. He beats up anyone he thinks isn’t helping him. And you and I both figured out Trent is a coward. I’m sure Ferris saw that and used that to get what he wanted, Trent not helping me.”
“But that doesn’t make sense?” Heath leaned between the two seats.
Dela twisted in her seat, wincing, and stared into his eyes. “Why?”
“Because he could have followed you around and learned what they wanted to know. You were on the inside and could learn things he couldn’t. If he was a good P.I. he would have recognized you as a person that would help him get the information he wanted.”