Fear No Evil
Page 16
She couldn’t answer that.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re coming to the island with me.”
“How can you think I would jeopardize her life?” Kate felt sick to her stomach. Maybe she deserved it.
“Because I think you are so blinded by revenge that you can’t see the whole picture. I also think we should call Peterson.”
“No,” Jack and Kate said in unison.
Dillon glanced at his brother. “I thought you were sleeping.”
Jack opened his eyes and leaned forward. “I think Kate is a wack-job, but she’s right about this.”
“Thank you,” Kate said sarcastically.
Jack continued. “This bastard so much as smells a fed, Lucy’s dead. I know men like Trask. They have a sixth sense when it comes to the authorities.”
“We can’t act like a bunch of vigilantes. The FBI has resources, surveillance, and equipment. Manpower. I’ve worked with SWAT. They can come in low and quiet and no one will know they’re there.”
“They’re not going to believe me anyway,” she said. “Especially after the trap your brothers walked into.”
“But Trask contacted you,” Dillon said.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s my word they don’t trust.” Kate glanced at him, the green glow from the controls and gauges giving her face an odd, ethereal presence. “I’m surprised you even trust me. I almost got your brothers killed.”
“Connor and Patrick are grown men. They did what they thought was right. And you were right about the trap,” Dillon said. “You warned them.”
“And this could be another trap. And another. If it weren’t for the second set of coordinates I don’t think—” She paused. Full disclosure. “I think they have an undercover agent inside Trask’s operation.”
“What?” Dillon exclaimed. “How can that be? Lucy was raped. They couldn’t possibly allow that.”
“Normally, I’d think not, but you’re forgetting that Trask killed two federal agents. They want him as badly as I do.” Kate stared at Dillon. “I’m the one who had to run from my country, blamed for Paige’s death, yet the powers that be can infiltrate Trask’s network and Lucy becomes collateral damage as long as they take down the organization.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Believe it,” she said. “That FBI code is definitely in-speak. Possibly an agent who turned, or undercover. I think the latter. Because I recognized the man onscreen before Trask pulled Lucy.”
Dillon shook his head. “This is ridiculous. A conspiracy theory run amok.”
Kate looked at Jack. He agreed with her, she could see it in his eyes. “Jack agrees with me.”
“Nothing surprises me,” he said calmly.
Kate frowned. Maybe Dillon was right. How could she go into this alone? She felt like she was covering her ass, wanting to call Quinn Peterson and give him the information. So that when Lucy died she wouldn’t feel guilty.
Nothing could stop her from feeling guilty.
“We’ll call Peterson when we’re in Red Rock,” Kate said. “Give him the information. But I don’t think anyone in the Bureau is going to believe me anymore. I’ve sent them out on too many wild-goose chases.”
“But Peterson must know about the undercover agent.”
“Maybe, by now, but there’s something very odd about this setup. The FBI doesn’t handle clandestine missions like this, jeopardizing civilians. And even if a civilian was in jeopardy and the agent couldn’t save her, there would be some mechanism to know where the agent is. Like a GPS microchip implanted under the skin.”
Jack snorted from the rear of the plane.
Kate ignored him. “Trask has been playing me for a long time,” Kate admitted, the realization terrifying and angering her. “This time I know he’s there. But I feel like the girl who cried wolf.”
Dillon put his hand over hers. “No one is going to die. Not Lucy, not you.”
She wished she believed him.
He forced her to look at him. She flushed under the intensity of his gaze. “I mean it, Kate. We’re going to find Lucy and everyone is walking away alive.”
EIGHTEEN
QUINN PETERSON GLANCED at the clock. Three fifteen in the morning. Six fifteen on the East Coast. Late enough to rouse his pal Hans Vigo from sleep.
“What?” Vigo asked.
“I need you to dig around for me.”
“It can’t wait?”
“No.”
He moaned. “Okay, what?”
“Merritt has an undercover agent with Trask.”
Vigo was silent. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“For how long?”
“Longer than he’s had Lucy Kincaid.”
“Fuck.”
“You can say that again.”
“Fuck. What do you want?”
“Who, what, when, and how.”
“Why?”
“I know why.”
“Paige.”
“Bingo.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Who do you trust up north?”
“No one.”
“Seriously.” Quinn tried to sound lighthearted, but failed.
“I am serious. Exactly where?”
“I need someone to interview Charles Morton. My records show him living in Boston.”
“Boston. Abigail Resnick.”
“I’m going to e-mail you a list of names. Kids who went to school with Charles Morton’s son nearly two decades ago. What I need is for him to identify anyone Roger Morton was close to.”
“Roger Morton, as in the man who raped Paige Henshaw and killed Evan Standler?”
“That’s him.”
“You’re going to get fired. I have seniority, I’ll probably just get my ass kicked and demoted to the basement to read cold case files. But you? You’re already on the hot seat for working off-the-clock on the Butcher investigation.”
“Water under the bridge. I’ll take care of Merritt.”
“The man’s a serpent.”
“I know.”
“What are you thinking? That one of these guys Morton went to school with is Trask?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“A forensic psychiatrist out here has this theory that—”
“I’m a forensic psychiatrist.”
“The best, but you weren’t working this case five years ago.”
“True.” Vigo sighed. “Okay, I’ll call Abby.”
“Abby?”
“Abigail,” Vigo corrected. “She’ll do it for me. Just cover her ass, Peterson. It’s a mighty fine ass, and I don’t want to see it bruised.”
“Consider it covered.”
Trask sat locked in his office doing research. Research Roger should have done. Perhaps on the surface Roger made a stab at checking out who Mick Mallory was, but no one was as good as he was. Trask prided himself on knowing everything about everyone.
And, to be truthful, he had been blinded by Mallory’s performance on the last job. The guy had watched Rayanna die and hadn’t done anything about it. Obviously he was who Roger said he was—an ex-con who had violated parole and didn’t want to go back. He was willing to do anything.
But he’d supposedly been in prison for rape. Trask had given him the perfect woman—practically a virgin, restrained, beautiful—and he hadn’t done anything. He’d approached her as if he wanted to be her lover.
That in and of itself wasn’t a red flag. Perhaps Mallory was a bit sick in the head, an obsessive type who fixated on a woman over time. Women loved being fondled and admired, up to the point where a man showed his balls and finally did something about it. Then they cried rape and abuse and any other thing to get attention. Saying that they’re scared.
Trask showed them what being scared meant. Some pathetic loser stalking his ex-girlfriend was child’s play. Nothing. A jerk. But Trask knew fear, had tasted it, and he gave it back to the bitches times ten.
The contact had originally interested Trask. Few people knew Roger or how to contact him. But it was Skud McGinley who’d set up the meeting—Skud was an old friend from the early days of Trask Enterprises who’d been in and out of prison for a variety of drug-related charges, then got life for whacking his old man for the insurance money. He and Roger had kept in touch over the years, and Skud had met Mick in prison.
Trask believed it. Skud couldn’t be bought, he was as ornery as they came. Hated authority. So if Mick was a plant, it had been planned for well over a year. He had to have been in prison at some point to meet up with Skud. That’s deep cover, and Trask didn’t think any of the FBI pricks had the balls to do any real prison time.
Everything checked on Mallory. So Trask went to look for Bowers. There were several of them in the country, but Mallory had been arrested in Massachusetts—Bowers should have lived there at one point. Trina—that was the name on the court documents, but those could be forged. Trina could stand for Katrina, Trinity, Christina, any number of names.
Court documents. He looked through the transcript. Looked legitimate, but he didn’t have an original. And he didn’t have time to send someone out to Massachusetts to pull the hard copy.
There was no Trina Bowers who would have been twenty-four six years ago. There was no thirty-year-old Trina Bowers in Massachusetts or the bordering states.
Then he found it.
“Trina” filed charges that Mallory had followed her home from her place of employment, a law firm in downtown Boston.
Branson, Ordello, Kimball & Associates.
Sounded legitimate, but no such firm ever existed.
The devil was in the details, and Mick Mallory had just been sacrificed by those details. Probably some FBI bureaucrat screwing up. No surprise there.
Did Kate Donovan know him?
No matter. Trask would serve his head on a silver platter to Kate. Then he’d make her watch Lucy die.
Don’t rush, he admonished himself. He had more work to do. He pulled down the digital film of the feds who’d walked into his trap off Baja. They looked like cops, a little too rugged to be feds, but they were probably among the cream of that particular crop. They looked familiar, but Trask knew he’d never met either of them.
Trask ran their images through his photo-recognition program.
Almost instantly their identities popped up. He straightened, tense.
Patrick James Kincaid, thirty-two, San Diego, California, sergeant in the San Diego Police Department.
Connor Mateo Kincaid, thirty-five, San Diego, California, private investigator.
Lucy’s brothers.
Something wasn’t right. Why weren’t the feds working on this? Why would they bring in outsiders? He’d sent the false Baja coordinates to Kate, which meant she was in touch with the Kincaid family.
Did that mean she hadn’t called the FBI? Playing maverick herself? Why work with the Kincaid family? How had they gotten together?
He ran the third image through his program, wondering if the man was another Kincaid brother. Instead, he learned that the man was Quincy Peterson, special agent in charge out of Seattle. Peterson…the name wasn’t familiar. He must be new, or hadn’t been involved five years ago. Different team. Maybe the feds were falling apart. They’d trusted Kate Donovan’s information and come up dry several times.
He smiled.
He’d done his research on Lucy and knew she was high risk—her family were cops and military, the epitome of authority.
In the beginning, nearly a year ago, he’d joined a Georgetown chat room and waited for the right girl. Listened, watched, conversed with the students. He’d picked Trevor Conrad as his identity because Trevor had planned on going to Georgetown all those years ago. Had he lived, of course. Seemed a fitting tribute.
In January, incoming freshmen started flooding the chat rooms. That’s when Trask really perked up. Young, eager, excited. They assumed everyone in the chat room was a student, freely shared information about where they lived, what they planned to study, their families, their photos.
He and Lucy started talking about things they had in common, such as speaking French. It was fun to pull out his rusty high school French and use it with Lucy. It only took a couple of weeks before she was sharing everything about herself with him. He knew her real name. Her hometown. That her father was retired army and her mother had escaped from Cuba. He learned about her brothers and sisters and wondered if he should seek out another girl. A kid with that much firepower around her could be dangerous to him.
Then she sent him her picture.
Her resemblance to Monique was remarkable. The same long, thick wavy hair. The big brown eyes. The flawless tan complexion, though Lucy’s was from her heritage instead of the sun. Tall, slender, with curves in all the right places.
So Trask decided taking Lucy was a challenge he was up to. Screw her family. He’d done this enough times without anyone, except Kate Donovan, getting close. They’d never find her. The pleasure of taking down such a noble and self-righteous family appealed to him.
If Connor and Patrick Kincaid were out of commission, either dead or injured, there were three viable Kincaids left since the oldest, a woman, wasn’t in contact with the family. Jack Kincaid, thirty-eight, was in the military, and even Trask, who could break into virtually every secure computer network, didn’t know where he was deployed. His file was beyond top secret. All Trask had was his rank, colonel. For all he knew, Jack Kincaid was working in Iraq or black ops in South America. He didn’t even have a photograph of him.
Dillon Kincaid, thirty-eight, was a psychiatrist. Certainly no threat, and Trask hadn’t spent a lot of time researching him other than knowing that he consulted with the District Attorney’s Office on criminal cases and had his own client list. Trask had no use for shrinks. What good were they anyway?
Carina Kincaid, thirty-three, was a cop engaged to another cop. Where were they? Looking for Lucy? Staying home? Trask brought up their most recent photographs, stolen off Lucy’s computer before he’d abducted her.
He hadn’t seen either of them, but he kept their images in mind. Carina Kincaid and Nick Thomas were a potential threat simply because of their law enforcement background. He’d kill them on sight, minimize potential damage.
He pulled down Dillon Kincaid’s photo as well to familiarize himself with the doctor. Just in case. You couldn’t be overprepared.
First things first. Mick Mallory had to die.
And Trask decided how best to execute him. He could hardly wait until Kate showed up at Mount Baker.
He checked his computer. Yep, she was gone. She hadn’t logged onto her computer for more than two hours. He didn’t know exactly where she was in Mexico; he’d misled her hoping she’d slip up and tell him. But it would take her at least twelve hours to get to Washington and she said she’d be at the mountain by two o’clock. He still had plenty of time.
He went to find the infiltrator. They had a trip to take.
NINETEEN
DILLON’S CELL PHONE RANG and Kate jumped. They were flying low over the desert. Kate had turned off the transponder to avoid being detected by radar. It was still dark, though the sun was tinting the eastern horizon.
“Who is it?” she asked.
Dillon didn’t respond. They hadn’t spoken in more than four hours. He’d slept uneasily, his thoughts flowing from Lucy to Kate to his brother Jack, whose motives he still didn’t understand.
Caller ID was unavailable. Dillon answered.
“Dr. Kincaid.”
“Doc, it’s Quinn Peterson.”
“Is Patrick okay?”
“He’s out of surgery.”
“And?”
“T
hat’s all I know. I’m at headquarters. I have some information about your Stonebridge Academy theory.”
“And?”
“Roger was close to three people in school. His roommate, Paul Ullman, is one. Ullman is a stockbroker for one of the big five in New York. Lives in a penthouse, high security, and nets five million a year. He’s from old money out of Vermont, estranged from his parents, and takes care of his mentally ill sister, who’s in an expensive assisted-living facility in Vermont.
“Adam Scott is a year older. Expelled with Roger and Paul over something Morton wouldn’t disclose. My agent out there is going to make a trip to the school, should only take a couple hours for her to get there and report back. Might be something. Morton got Roger back into Stonebridge, as did Ullman’s parents. But Scott never went back.”
“Why?” Dillon asked.
“Morton didn’t know. But get this: Roger’s other close friend was named Trevor Conrad.”
Dillon leaned forward. “Trevor Conrad? Where’s he now?”
“Dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Died on campus apparently. In an accident. Morton clammed up.”
“There was no Trevor Conrad on the list,” Dillon said, fearing he’d missed an obvious connection when he was putting together the list of names for Peterson.
“No, but when the agent asked who else Roger was close to, Morton named the kid.”
“And you’re sure he was a student at the school?”
“Yes, according to Morton they were roommates the year of the expulsion. I’ll let the agent know that we’re interested in more information about Conrad.”
“Could his accident have something to do with the expulsion?” Dillon pondered out loud.
“Could be. Morton threatened to call his attorney. We don’t have to jump through the hoops, my gal out there can threaten with the best of them, but she felt it would be easier to get the information from the school than from Roger Morton’s father. Who, by the way, hasn’t heard from Roger in more than five years. Agent Resnick believes him. The man hates his son.”
“What is Adam Scott doing?”
“Morton didn’t know. He’s familiar with the Ullman family, so he gave Agent Resnick that contact information. All he knew about Scott was that he’s from New York, his father was a judge, and his mother was from the established New England family of Mortimer.”