| |
What went before... Six years ago, San Diego, California
San Diego should have been a cherry assignment, especially since it was my first. But a basement is a basement is a basement. Doesn’t matter how gorgeous it is outside when all you get to look at are computer monitors and row upon row of financials.
I, like every other rookie, had lusted after a field position, one where I’d be out protecting Joe Sixpack. But those assignments were few and far between, and I’d been told my “special skillset” was tailor-made for helping to keep an eye on all of the illegal shit coming across the border.
My brain hurt. And I was no closer to finding a way to take Moreau down.
––––––––
Now...
“I know him,” Sara whispered. I glanced around the room, trying to make sense of the men’s expressions. Farrell and Roney were pissed, each pulling a cell phone to their ear. Jonah just looked flummoxed. And not one of them had moved to her side.
So I did the chick thing and sat down next to her. “You know who, honey?” See, I can be as caring as the next girl, really.
“Dave Gordon.” Her breathing was still a bit short and choppy, and it took me a minute to place the name.
“The pharmaceutical rep?” As the words left my mouth I felt the “holy shit” moment wash over me. No wonder the guys looked like someone had stepped on their Johnsons. A suspect had been in the room with them, and they’d let him walk.
I pulled Jonah down into a chair next to me, then poured Sara a glass of water and pushed it front of her. “Drink,” I ordered, then turned to Jonah. “You, talk. What the hell did I miss?”
He pushed a hand through his hair, a now-familiar gesture of frustration. “We were replaying a video of the conversation with Gordon, trying to see if there’s anything we missed and Sara walked in and went pale as a ghost. Thought she was going to pass out. She’s sure he’s the kid who supposedly died back at CASI all those years ago.”
I wracked my memory for what Sarah had said regarding her classmate, and when she sent a glare Farrell’s way, it bubbled to the surface. Farrell had told Sara that Gordon was dead. But why would he lie?
Had he been played like the rest of us, or was this part of something else, an even bigger game none of us could begin to comprehend?
I weighed my options. Give Farrell the benefit of the doubt, or fall back on my training and do what I’d spent twenty weeks at the Academy and six years on the street learning. In the end, it wasn’t much of a choice.
I inched my hand under my jacket, loosening the Glock in its holster, but not unleashing it quite yet. Roney caught my movement and his eyes widened for a quick second before a myriad of emotions flooded his features.
He didn’t want Farrell to be a suspect, but he couldn’t discount it either. And Sara would always be his number one priority. Yeah, it was all there, all apparent, and I was glad to have an ally in my corner. But would Jonah feel the same way?
And I couldn’t discount Trang, even though the little man was supposed to be unarmed. He was nowhere to be seen, so I swiveled in my chair, as if reaching an arm around Sara for comfort, but really putting my back to the wall.
Jonah knew me, knew my body too well, and his expression said he didn’t like what he was seeing. He didn’t get it yet, but he knew something was wrong. I gave him a quick shake of my head and waited for Farrell and Roney to disconnect their calls.
Roney did first and ranged behind Sara, laying a big hand on her shoulder in support. He’d also refrained from pulling his piece, but I knew he was carrying since he and Sara had come in on Farrell’s private jet.
When Heath turned, his face was bracketed in lines of pure fury. “It’s him all right. What I want to know is who the hell left CASI in a body bag over ten years ago? And Jesus, how does he tie in to all this?”
“I don’t know, Farrell, how does he?” My tone was level, but the meaning was just as clear and sharp as it had been a few minutes ago when I laid it on Sara and Jonah.
Farrell actually sputtered for a long moment. “You can’t think I had something...” He faltered as he looked at our faces. “But you do, don’t you?”
I shrugged and watched Jonah out of the corner of my eye. He hadn’t as much as twitched, so both Farrell and I were in the dark as to his intent. Not a good feeling when the man could control either of us with a twitch of his little finger.
It hurt to realize that, to know the suspicions I’d laid to rest a short week ago had now flared back to life, and twice as high. I pushed myself even further away from Jonah and used the voice activation on my phone to call in the cavalry. “Kavenaugh.”
The other agent answered with his usual smartassery. “Really? I’m two rooms away, Arin. Get off your ass and come get me.”
“Need you in the conference room right now. Bring Underwood.” I disconnected before he could say anything else, and stared down Farrell as we waited. He stared right back, his gaze shifting from Roney to me and back again, never once tracking to Jonah. Huh. Guess he knew which side the good doc was on.
A bit of me ripped inside at the realization, but it was what it was. It was a damned good thing I hadn’t gotten more attached to him than I already had. Still sucked ass, though. I was a big girl. I’d made my bed, now I had to lie in it.
Kavenaugh and Underwood burst into the room, guns drawn, as if expecting all the Spetsnaz to be collected here, waiting for a showdown. They looked a little disappointed at the usual assembly.
“Roney, why don’t you do the honors?” I asked. He knew more than I did anyway, since he’d been there when Farrell declared Gordon to be dead. Hell, the guy probably knew more than the rest of us put together, if we took Sara out of the equation.
He gave the SAICs the rundown, never implying anything, just stating the facts in his Joe Friday baritone.
I watched their body language as they began squaring away from Farrell, distancing themselves. Good, so my impressions hadn’t been that off. And as it turned out, neither had Monica Foudy’s information, not when you looked at it in a different light. Depending on what happened in the next few minutes, I may be giving the PI a call, but with a different mission this time—to track down David Gordon.
Kavenaugh, as the agent in charge of this whole shebang, at least as long as we were sitting in his conference room, had to make the call, and he seemed to have no qualms about it.
“You’re a professional, Farrell. You know we can’t keep you involved; it would compromise the investigation. The safe house is still yours to use if you decide to stay in town. If not, I’ll make sure agents are watching CASI in case the Spetsnaz show up again. If anything comes up on your end, at least consider calling me. An agent will make sure you’re vested up before you leave.”
What he wasn’t saying was that the ex-spook was just as much a suspect now as Dave Gordon, and his FBI shadow would also be watching him. But we all knew what wasn’t being spoken. It had been a massive courtesy for Kavenaugh to offer up the safe house and bulletproof vests, but I wasn’t overly surprised.
Farrell nodded stiffly and moved toward the door. Jonah followed, giving me a condemning look. I dipped my head in response. Lives were at stake, damn it. Surely he understood.
Then they were gone. Kavenaugh and Underwood both stared at me as if I’d somehow caused the rift. “What?”
“Couldn’t have played along for a bit, let us know what was happening on the sly. Jesus.” Underwood shook his head. He was lamenting the lost potential intel, not my lack of acting abilities. But Sara immediately sprung to my defense.
“Leave her alone.” There was still a thin thread of panic to her voice that was only quelled by a squeeze of Brian’s hand on her shoulder. “At this point, she’s the only person I don’t suspect, besides Brian.”
I smiled inside at the SAICs’ sour expressions. But they knew what had to be done.
Kavenaugh summoned one of his junior agents from the bowels of the basement and set him to task running a personal history on David Gordon. Underwood sat down with Sara and had her recap everything she could remember about Dave Gordon, including what his super-duper power had been.
Ah, go figure, he’d been working on the power of suggestion all those years ago.
And me? I called Monica Foudy and asked her to open another file—and get her ass on a plane to Denver while she was at it.
When that was done, I returned to the smoker’s yard, pulled my knees to my chest, and just stared up at the cloudless sky, letting my mind wander. Letting myself grieve, just a bit, for what might have been if Dave Gordon hadn’t strutted his happy ass into the Denver FO’s interview room.
––––––––
We should have realized it from the get-go. While Sara recognized the boy in the man, and he’d represented himself as Dr. Gordon, there was no such person, at least not with that face. It’d been a taunt to rub in how clueless we really were. He undoubtedly knew Sara was there, and had taken an insanely high risk in guessing she wouldn’t be watching the interview. So he was a prick and a gambler. If the weasel thought he could get away with it, then he was either exceedingly stupid or protected on high by the prince of darkness.
Kind of like our Spetsnaz.
I was betting on the prince of darkness, myself.
Gordon’s knowledge of the drugs had been real, though. He’d answered the questions with confidence born only of experience, so that area of expertise was where we looked first. Of course we came up dry in Denver (then the stupid option would have won out), but Kavenaugh’ agents continued the search as we tried to figure out what it was he was up to.
We’d ruled Farrell out as a prime suspect reasonably easily. While he definitely had the clout and the brainpower to pull something like this off, we’d all seen his frustration and outright anger over everything that had happened. And Sara hadn’t sensed one bit of deception in him, at least not when it came to the last week or so. Lastly, he had absolutely no motive.
When I brought up Trang, however, the mood in the room shifted south with a prevailing wind. Trang. The Null no-one could read. Trang, the guy who’d been about five minutes away from killing me (maybe) if Summers hadn’t stepped in. We could buy Trang as a suspect, and in about two seconds, at least when it came to opportunity. Motive was a whole ’nother story, because not one of us could think of one. The man was slavishly devoted to Farrell, and with Jonah out the door, we had no idea why. Even Foudy’s information didn’t wind down that rabbit trail.
So it all swung back to motive, but this time Gordon’s. Why, in God’s name, would he give us a massive clue like this? Let us know he’d been a product of CASI, that he held the cards. Part of it was pure arrogance. A bit screw-you to everyone. But there had to be more.
A trap? Maybe. And if it was for Farrell, then we’d probably just sent him directly into it.
I called Jonah’s number, and when no one picked up, I wrote it off as pissedoffedness. Farrell wasn’t an idiot, and had probably called in a private army to surround them all the way to CASI. If that’s indeed where they’d even headed. If I were him, I would’ve hunkered down at his half-sister’s place. The photos we’d gotten on that bit of intel showed a stupidly huge palace with guards out the ying-yang.
An hour after I’d placed the call I was starting to fret. Jonah might be mad at me, but he’d never put himself and Farrell in danger, nor would he worry me like this. He’d take a call from me, because he’d know I wouldn’t be phoning to grovel. Instead it would be for professional reasons. He knew me well enough to figure that out.
I told Kavenaugh the same thing, and when he tried to get in touch with the unit following Farrell’s car we came up dry as well. The team was still thirty minutes away from their first check-in, but one of them should be around, or at least in cell range. The areas an hour away from Denver just didn’t drop that many calls.
Anxiety cramped my belly. Had the Spetsnaz gotten them? Had they been the target all along, and now we’d done the baddies’ job for them, by isolating them? Scenarios ran through my head, each worse than the last.
And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. Kavenaugh sent another team south, just in case, and had a BOLO issued for both Farrell’s car and his babysitters’ SUV. Other than that, all we could do was wait.
By the time we finally got a hit on Dave Gordon, it was anticlimactic. “David was his middle name,” relayed the young agent who’d taken the reins on the manhunt. “First name of Crosious, so I can’t really blame him on that one. No primary education that we can find, but he made it into Baylor. Got his medical degree in record time and went straight to work for the pharmaceutical companies. Worked his way up from lowly gofer to department head of research. Works with a lot of experimental drugs for the military, black stuff even we can’t get into. Some government contracts, but nothing that would have set off any alarms prior to him showing up here. Genius-level IQ. Residence in Cherry Hills Village, but of course he’s not home. Single, never married. Worth about twenty mil based on last year’s taxes.”
They’d been thorough, and it gave me something else to obsess over. Damn it, we needed Jonah’s big psychiatrist brain on this one. Or at least the next best thing.
I got Simonson on the phone from Oklahoma City, and we filled him in over a secure video connection. When we finished, he sat in front of the camera, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “For starters, you caught me just in time. I was packing for Virginia, but I can change my tickets and be there using the next available commercial seat. Unless you think I should use one of the charters?”
Kavenaugh considered it, then shook his head. “I’m just not feeling the sense of urgency. Pissed off as hell, yeah, but nothing’s making the back of my neck itch. Take the commercial seat and we’ll hang tight on the profiling end until you arrive.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, I realized I’d been obsessing, but not armed and on the street looking for Jonah and Farrell, for one very important reason.
My neck didn’t itch either.