Exposed in Darkness

by Heather Sunseri

  “We’ve got a car waiting for her downstairs,” Mike answered. “She’ll pull up to the curb at Thoroughbred Park. Lexington PD is in the loop—they’re part of the team who has the drop location under surveillance.”

  Ty handed me a phone. “Put this in your pocket. Max Voigt has the number.”

  “Max Voigt?” Declan asked.

  “That’s the name the buyer used,” I said.

  “He’s a famous chemist.” Declan seemed to want to say more about it, but he stopped when Carlos spoke.

  “Ready?” Carlos said.

  I nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  Declan set the cooler in the back seat, and Mike opened my door for me.

  “Don’t be a hero,” Mike said. “When the mope arrives, take the money, give him the bag. The task force will take it from there. We’ve put a GPS tracker in the bag. He won’t make it far.” He handed me a listening device. It looked like a hearing aid.

  I took the device and slid it just inside my ear. “Don’t be a hero,” I repeated. “Got it.” I nodded to him, and after one last glance at Declan I got in and started the car.

  “Can you hear me?” Ty was in my ear.

  “I can hear you, Ty.”

  It took less than five minutes to travel the six blocks to the meeting spot. I pulled up in front of Thoroughbred Park and immediately saw girls splashing in the fountains. “Those agents look like babies,” I said.

  “Fresh out of Quantico,” Mike said through the earpiece.

  I got out of the car and immediately felt for my firearm under my blouse. I shouldn’t need it, but it did give me a bit of comfort. I opened the back door and started to grab the cooler out of the back, but the phone in my back pocket rang.

  I straightened. Reaching with my left hand, I put the phone to my ear. “Yes,” I said.

  “I thought I said to send MBlahnik.” The caller was using a device to alter his voice.

  I tensed. “This is MBlahnik.”

  “Don’t play me for a fool. And don’t bother getting the bag out of the car.”

  “You don’t want the tacin?”

  I heard the agents in my ear—they knew something was wrong. I also heard Declan’s concerned voice, and Carlos instructing him to relax or he would be kicked out.

  “Oh, I want it,” the man on the phone said. “Walk toward the horse statues.”

  “Okay.” I closed the door and turned toward the thoroughbreds. The agents playing in the fountains were doing a great job of not looking like agents. I reached the first horse, a foal lying in the grass, and turned around. Ty spoke in my ear. “Stay calm. I don’t see anyone yet.”

  “I’m at the statues,” I said to the caller. “Now what?” Irritation was starting to show in my voice.

  “Go to the statue at the very end of the line of racehorses. I left you a clue. It’s tucked next to the horse’s right hind leg.”

  What? When I reached the last horse, my heart began to race. I squatted next to it and felt around until I came up with a thumb drive that was wedged in the metal. “What is this?” I asked angrily.

  “A gift. We’ll consider it payment for the small amount of tacin I was able to get my hands on.”

  “But I haven’t—”

  The phone went dead.

  “Ty, did you get a trace on that call?”

  “No, sorry.” He cursed in my ear. “What did he mean? Payment for the tacin?” And only a small amount?

  I walked quickly back to the car. The bag was still safely inside. Mike and Carlos pulled up behind me and exited their car.

  I held out the thumb drive in the palm of my left hand. My right arm was already aching. “We’ve been played.”

  “Call the lab,” Mike ordered Carlos. “See if they’ve examined the chemical retrieved from Darren O’Roark’s office.”

  “On it.” Carlos pulled his phone out and began dialing.

  “You okay?” Mike asked.

  “I’m fine. The caller was disguising his voice. It was too deep to be his own.”

  Carlos’s voice sounded pained as he spoke to someone at the FBI labs. “What? Are you sure?” He looked from me to Mike. “What about the other tests? What did Hahn say about those?”

  As soon as Carlos hung up, I pounced. “What is it? What did they say?”

  “Let him speak,” Mike said.

  “The chemical our agents seized from O’Roark’s office was not tacin. Our lab tested it, and Hahn looked at it too. Hahn confirmed that the containers weren’t even the kind of vials used inside their labs.”

  Mike and I just stared at each other.

  “What does this mean?” I asked.

  “Hahn did have one piece of helpful information,” Carlos continued. “He said the tacin used to poison Centers and DeBeers came from the same batch, and that it was military-made.”

  After leaving Thoroughbred Park, we had driven straight to the FBI’s Lexington offices.

  “Pull up what’s on the thumb drive!” Impatiently, I knocked my rebandaged arm against Carlos’s shoulder.

  “Relax,” Carlos said. “I’ve got to make sure there’s no malware or ransomware on the device before I connect it to the server.”

  Ty tugged on my good arm, pulling me back. “Give him space. Only I can work with your dragon breath on my neck.”

  I paced behind Carlos while he worked. Ty leaned against a metal desk, his arms and legs crossed. How did he do that? How did he remain so calm when we’d obviously just been duped by someone who was making a mockery of all of us—and who now had a ridiculous amount of deadly poison in his possession?

  I straightened when the door to the conference room opened. In walked Mike, members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and officers from the Kentucky State Police.

  “Okay, I’ve got it pulled up,” Carlos announced. “Looks like another video.”

  I moved in to watch over Carlos’s shoulder, as did the others. It was a video of servers and bartenders mixing bourbon drinks. It played for about fifteen seconds and then stopped.

  “That’s it,” Carlos said. “That’s the whole video.”

  “What?” Mike looked astonished. “Someone went to all this trouble to give us a fifteen-second video of… that?”

  “It’s footage from the night Centers was murdered,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Mike asked.

  “Watch them pour the drinks. All but one drink is poured into julep cups.”

  “That’s right,” a state policeman said. “Centers’s drink was served in the commemorative glass.” He leaned closer to the monitor. “Right there.” He pointed.

  “Right,” his partner agreed. “There was a problem with the glasses. The whole batch wasn’t ready yet, so only Centers drank from one.”

  “So why send us this video?” asked Mike. “Clearly someone”—his eyes flicked to mine, and I knew he was thinking of Romeo—“is trying to tell us something.”

  One of the state policemen spoke up. “Maybe the video shows someone poisoning the drink. Can we see it again?”

  Carlos replayed the video at half speed. This time we all watched Melissa Centers’s glass very carefully. But we saw nothing suspicious. In fact, it was quite clear that no one even had an opportunity to put anything in her glass. Everything was out in the open. Was that what our source wanted us to know?

  “Where did the julep cups come from?” I asked. “They look like real silver.” I knew this because my grandmother had a beautiful collection of sterling silver julep cups; she used to let me use them for tea parties when I was a young girl.

  “They were. They were part of the lieutenant governor’s personal collection.”

  “And the commemorative glass? Who delivered that?” I asked.

  One of the KSP detectives flipped through his notes and read from them. “Darren and Sasha O’Roark delivered it in a royal blue box along with the case of bourbon used in the drinks. When we questioned them, Darren said that his brother, Declan, couldn’t make
the public appearance, and had asked his siblings to step in for him.”

  “The bourbon tested from the bottles was clean,” the second KSP detective said. “And all the drinks from the julep cups were free of poison. Only the one glass tested positive for tacin.”

  “Which is why no one has shut down the distillery,” Mike said. “But I’m told that all distribution has been halted by O’Roark himself, until he can be certain the poison was never inside Elkhorn Reserve.”

  “But the drinks at the kickoff party two nights later all had tacin in them,” Ty said. “We tested over a hundred drinks. All tested positive for tacin.”

  “But no trace of poison was found in the bottles.” I was pacing, stating out loud what everyone already knew, cradling my arm as I did. The sling was starting to make my shoulder ache. “And when Ty and I toured the distillery, we saw no way for someone to contaminate the bourbon during bottling. Plus, according to Fritz Hahn, the poisonous effects of the tacin probably wouldn’t last in the alcohol longer than a few hours.”

  “The alcohol would break down the chemical,” Ty clarified.

  “Exactly.”

  “So how did someone manage to contaminate more than a hundred glasses of bourbon at the kickoff party without anyone noticing?” asked a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. He had joined me in pacing around the room.

  I mentally pictured the glasses all lined up waiting to be filled with ice, bourbon, a simple syrup concoction, and a fresh mint garnish. Then I tried to picture someone pouring anything other than those items into the glasses.

  “The poison was already in the glasses,” I said softly. I stopped and faced the room. “It’s so simple. Whoever poisoned the drinks had access to the glasses ahead of time.”

  “Of course.” Ty sat up straighter.

  “Hahn didn’t say that the chemical was rendered ineffective just by being outside the vials. Just if it was left in alcohol for an extended period of time.”

  “And someone knew this,” Mike said. “O’Roark knew this.”

  I frowned. I thought we’d moved past Declan. “Or someone military.”

  “True,” a state police detective agreed.

  Mike’s phone rang at his hip. “Donaldson,” he answered. “Yes… Okay… Not yet… Fine.” He hung up. “That was O’Roark.”

  I shifted slightly.

  “His security team is having trouble pulling the security tapes. When we’re done here, I’ll check in with our agents that are there monitoring the situation.”

  I narrowed my eyes. What kind of trouble? Mike’s gaze slid toward me, making it apparent that he wondered the same thing, though his speculation was probably more suspicious toward Declan than mine.

  “He also asked if we had figured out who’d left the thumb drive and if we thought the same person had taken the tacin from his office.”

  “That would make the most sense,” Carlos said. He’d turned in his chair and was facing us now.

  Ty was staring at me. “Romeo?” he asked.

  I worked through what Romeo would have to do to pull all that off—and the possible reasons he would want to. “I think it’s likely he left the thumb drive, but…” My voice trailed off. I just didn’t think he’d stolen the tacin. Yet he did claim that the thumb drive was payment for what he took. “He said the device was payment for the ‘small amount of tacin he’d managed to get his hands on.’ Those were his exact words.”

  “That was no small amount that came from O’Roark’s lab,” Carlos said.

  “Exactly.” I looked at Ty, who was still staring at me. “What?” I demanded. “What are you thinking?”

  “His patterns have changed again.”

  Mike and Carlos lifted their eyes to Ty, then looked at me. “He’s right,” Mike said. “Romeo seems to be getting closer to you, pulling you out into the open, showing you he can get to you even with a team of agents and police officers around you. I don’t like it.”

  “He’s not acting like a source any longer,” Carlos added.

  “No, he’s acting like a stalker.” Ty was no longer being helpful.

  I threw my good hand in the air. “Okay. You’ve made your point: Romeo is no longer a helpful source, but a person of interest. We have agents working on where he might have gotten the tattoo. He’ll make a mistake.” And I would be there to arrest him. I wanted, more than anyone here, to know why he was so fixated on me.

  Seeming satisfied with that, Mike looked at his watch. “Let’s get a few hours of sleep and reconvene tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll have the feed from O’Roark’s security cameras by then.”

  Chapter 31

  First thing Friday morning, Ty and I met Mike, Carlos, the governor’s state police detail, and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force at the fusion center in Frankfort to discuss security for the Bluegrass Derby Charity Gala to be held that night. Thanks to a couple of meetings in the fusion center, and at the governor’s insistence, Ty and I had opened the lines of communication between local and state law enforcement and the feds. We had a long way to go to re-establish Kentucky’s Office for Homeland Security, but it was an accomplishment just to get the feds talking to, let alone working closely with, local and state law enforcement.

  While the men and women in the room went on and on about logistics and the number of agents and police officers they would have on hand that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about how terrorists might have gotten the chemical into glasses ahead of the kickoff party.

  “Why aren’t we canceling this party?” Mike slammed a fist on the table, jerking me from my thoughts. “Securing this party tonight is going to cost the taxpayers a ridiculous amount of money.”

  Others around the table just shrugged in a “What are we supposed to do?” way.

  “Any word on the video surveillance from O’Roark?” Ty asked to my right, changing the subject.

  “Yes, they were handed over to agents at three this morning,” Carlos confirmed. “So far, everyone on the video has been identified, and none of them are out of the ordinary. We should have a list shortly.”

  I pulled my car keys from my pocket and stood.

  “Going somewhere?” Mike asked.

  “Yes. Ty and I are going to find out where the glasses came from, where they’re being stored, and who has access to them. Something tells me that at least one of our three neighborhood terrorists had access to them prior to both crimes.”

  “Good idea,” Mike said. “We’ll check in with the agents tailing Jenna, Ben, and Danny, and see where they are. We’ll finish up here with details for security for tonight’s gala. Let’s reconvene in the security tent at Shaughnessy Farm at five thirty, an hour before guests arrive.”

  Ty and I rode the elevator to Declan’s office on the thirtieth floor of Lexington’s tallest building.

  “I just don’t know,” Ty said when we were alone in the elevator. “I’ve studied the online habits of our three suspects and watched them in public. Are they capable of pulling off a mass murder all by themselves?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I used to think it took a completely psychotic person to commit murder. Especially in such a cold, calculated, and planned-out manner. But I’ve learned since I joined the FBI that people kill for many reasons. And sometimes ordinary people murder in the name of a cause larger than themselves.

  “I mean, look at all the people who murder in the name of religion. Or the people who destroy property in the name of activism. And do we really have to get into organized crime or why sociopaths do what they do? It’s this type of killer that scares me, because they feel justified in their actions. Like somehow it’s okay since they have a good reason.”

  “You’re right,” Ty said. “But while I think these three suspects are most likely involved, I’ve got a niggling feeling that someone smarter than them is orchestrating everything. I mean, just how did one of those yahoos get their hands on a chemical that was made by the military? Not one of them has served in any of
the armed forces.”

  “Good point. I don’t know.”

  The elevators opened into a sleek, metropolitan reception area. A woman with brown hair tied into a tidy bun sat behind a glass reception desk, a Bluetooth headset attached to her ear. Behind her, in large silver metallic letters, the words “O’Roark Industries” were etched into clear glass, and beyond that was a conference room. The windows looked out over downtown Lexington.

  The woman looked up at Ty and me, then gave me the once-over, eyeing my jeans, black ankle boots, and a black silk blouse that fit fairly easily over my thick bandage. I wasn’t dressed in typical federal agent attire; then again, I wasn’t a typical federal agent. “May I help you?” she asked in a way that told me she’d worked hard to hide her southern drawl. Unsuccessfully.

  I let the once-over slide. “We need to see Declan.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” She spoke with no hint of southern hospitality.

  I pulled out my badge and stuck it in her face. “No.”

  She pursed her lips, then made a few clicks with her mouse. She leaned in and pretended to put considerable effort into reading my badge. “Mr. O’Roark, an Agent Fairfax is here to see you… Yes, sir.” She clicked a button on her earpiece. “Mr. O’Roark will be right with you. Can I get either of you something to drink? Coffee? Spring water? Bourbon?”

  “Seriously? You offer your guests bourbon at…” I lifted my phone from my pocket and read the time. “Ten in the morning?”

  “We’re an international company, Agent Fairfax. It’s not ten a.m. everywhere.” She smiled sweetly.

  Declan came around the corner and smiled when he saw me. “Agent Fairfax, Mr. Jamison, what brings you here?”

  “We have some questions.” I glanced uncomfortably at the receptionist. “Can we speak somewhere more private?”

  “Of course.” He gestured back the way he’d come. Ty went first. I followed, and as I passed, Declan placed his hand on my back, the heat seeping through the thin fabric there. “Hold my calls, Sara,” he said to the receptionist.