The phone on the wall rang, and Mia turned to it, surprised. Very few people had her direct line. Ric. Vivian. Panic shot through her, and she lunged for the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me,” Sophie said. “I’ve got an Agent Delmonico on the line for you. He says it’s urgent.”
“Damn it.” Mia took a deep breath and tried to steel herself. Ready or not, it was time to face the music. “Okay, put him through.”
“I’ll let you take that.” Mark dropped the file onto her counter and nodded as he slipped out. “You’ll be the first to know if we get a hit.”
“Thanks,” she said, as Sophie connected the call.
“Glad I caught you,” the agent said. “Just this morning, someone told me you were on sabbatical.”
Caught. Mia wondered if that word choice had been intentional. “What can I do for you, Mr. Delmonico?”
“I’d like to meet with you, if it’s not too much trouble.” His voice was friendly, but something in his tone bothered her.
“About what, exactly?”
“I’ve got an offer for you.” He sounded as if he was smiling now. “You might say it’s an offer you can’t refuse.”
She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it. Surely she’d heard wrong.
“Sorry,” he said. “Bad joke. Miss Voss? You still there?”
“What is it you want, Mr. Delmonico?”
“Meet me at your house in one hour. I’ll be happy to explain it.”
Ric watched from one of El Patio’s back corner tables as his brother entered the bar. With his short-cropped hair, overcoat, and dark suit, he looked like the quintessential fed, and Ric tried not to let that irk him.
Rey pulled off his coat and tossed it over the back of the chair. “Holy shit, Ric.” He sank into the seat. “You put your foot in it this time.”
Ric turned his attention to the waitress who’d just appeared. “Another Jack Daniel’s. Rocks.”
Rey asked for his bourbon with Coke and waited for the waitress to get all the way back to the bar before tearing in again.
“You think you could have given me a little warning? A few hours’ lead time before dropping this bomb?”
“I didn’t drop anything,” Ric said. “You guys already had him on the radar.”
“Yeah, for misusing campaign funds. For hiring hookers. But three homicides? You know what’s going to happen when this hits the news?”
“How’s it going to hit the news?” Ric asked, although he knew it would. Everything did, eventually. “You guys got a leak?”
Rey glowered.
“Okay, cheap shot,” Ric conceded. “But I’d keep an eye on that Ranger. I don’t like him on this task force. He complicates things.”
“Funny, Laranya Singh said the same thing about you, and people listen to her. You’re lucky to be in on this investigation. So am I.”
“Why are you, anyway?”
He scowled. “My boss seems to have this idea that I can play nice with the locals, maybe rein in my hothead brother.”
Rey sighed heavily as he leaned back and loosened his tie. He looked stressed, tired, and Ric felt a stab of guilt over it, because his brother had spent the better part of the weekend doing him a favor by helping Mia.
“You really stuck your neck out,” Rey said. “And you know what’s going to happen if you’re wrong? You’re going to go down in flames. Not Singh. Not Delmonico. Not the pretty district attorney. You.”
“You think I’m wrong?”
“I don’t know yet.” The waitress returned with their drinks, and Rey switched to Spanish to keep the conversation private. “What have you got on him? Besides what you shared in the meeting.”
“You think I’m holding back.”
“I know you’re holding back. You wouldn’t get in front of a room full of badges and make a statement like that based on some clerk at a country club. What else you got?”
Ric paused, choosing his words carefully. “These two prostitutes—”
“Three, if your hunch is right about the bones up at Lake Buchanan.”
Ric nodded. “Right. These three cases, they’ve all got the same MO. Sexual homicide, with some extra kinky elements. The bondage, the piquerism. These are lust murders. Then you’ve got two other murders, linked to those three, but they’re pretty much execution-style. And those shootings were carried out with the same gun. To me, that says we’ve probably got a wealthy and well-connected john. He’s into pain, bondage, whatever—he gets off on some really twisted shit. And every now and then, he gets carried away, actually kills the girl, then calls in his janitor to clean up the mess.”
Rey stared down into his drink, as if digesting the scenario.
“There might be another victim,” Ric added.
“Who?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know yet. It’s a bludgeoning death from Burnet County. Girl was dumped in a lake, weighted down with a cinder block. They’re still looking for an ID.”
“So, what’s the link?”
“Young, blond, defensive cuts on her hands. It’s a pretty thin connection so far, but I’m working on it.”
“Tell me about Ashley Meyer. You’ve got a lot more on her. What’s the ME say?”
“That she was killed indoors. He found carpet fiber on the body and abrasions on her back.” Ric paused. “What I’d really like to get a look at is the inside of Jeff Lane’s lake house. You ever been up there?”
“No.”
“Big place on Lake Buchanan. Not too far from where that skeleton was recovered.”
“The lieutenant gov’s lake house,” Rey scoffed. “Good luck getting a warrant.”
“I was hoping you guys could help with that.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“I won’t. Anyway, Jonah’s got his own theory of the case. He thinks maybe this guy’s into plain-vanilla sex, but if anyone ever realizes who he is and tries to shake him down, he calls his fixer in to get rid of her. The guy makes it look like a lust crime to draw attention to the fact that she’s a hooker, barely worth anyone’s time to investigate. Either way, the john’s directly involved, and he’s looking at murder charges.”
Rey shook his head.
“What?”
“Our profiler likes the first one,” Rey said.
“You guys brought in a profiler?”
“He’s working long-distance. But he’s seen everything we have, and he thinks we’re dealing with two different perps. The hookers are sexual homicides— real ones, not staged—and the other two are hits, just like you said. Only Frank Hannigan wasn’t the target. Mia was.”
Ric bristled.
“I’m still not clear how she fits in, by the way,” Rey said. “Why go after someone like her?”
Ric rattled his ice cubes. He’d lost a lot of sleep over that question. “I think Mia holds the key to this case, whether she knows it or not.”
“You wanna explain that?”
“The things she can do with DNA. It’s really amazing. And people know how good she is, especially around here.”
“So she’s good at her job. So what?”
“She saw the first case when she was working up in Fort Worth. Didn’t have the resources to get the best tests done on that evidence.”
“You’re talking about Laura Thorne, the one killed out by Jeff Lane’s country club?”
“That’s right.”
“So Mia ran the evidence … ?”
“Couldn’t get the killer’s DNA, but she remembers the case vividly. Fast-forward six years, she’s at the Delphi Center, gets a similar case. Lane’s fixer gets wind of it, realizes she’s probably smart enough to make the leap between two totally separate cases in two totally separate jurisdictions, decides he needs to take her out. That’s what he was trying to do when Frank Hannigan got in the way.”
“How’d he know she was handling the case?”
“Called the lab,” Ric said. “T
wice. Claimed to be Jonah, too, which goes to show he’s got an inside line on this investigation, because he knows which law-enforcement agency to say he works for and which detective to impersonate.”
Ric watched his brother absorb all of this as he sipped his drink.
“By the way, Mia thinks the person who tried to kill her is a cop, or at least someone in law enforcement,” Ric said. “I’m convinced he also had some military background.”
Rey closed his eyes and swore.
“When he didn’t kill her in the first attempt—which was staged to look like a carjacking—he figures time’s been lost,” Ric said. “There’s a chance she might have told someone her suspicions about the cases being connected—which she did. She told me. So now he’s got to worry about a DNA scientist putting it all together and also an incriminating DNA profile sitting right in the lab. So he gets her to destroy the evidence before he goes after her again. Now, even if anyone tries to connect the cases, there isn’t any DNA to back it up.”
“Then why’s he still after her?” Rey asked. “The evidence is gone.”
“I don’t know.” Ric swigged the last of his drink, trying to take the edge off his mood. His brother had just touched a nerve. Ric knew more about these cases and about Mia than anyone else involved. And yet he hadn’t figured out why someone was still gunning for her.
“Maybe there’s something else, something she doesn’t realize she has yet,” Ric said. “Some sort of DNA evidence or test she could do that would shed light on all of this, and he doesn’t want that happening. Also, he spent some time in her car with her. Maybe he’s worried about her recognizing him somehow and making an ID one day. Murder for hire’s a capital offense. He gets caught, he’s looking at death row.”
Rey shook his head. “Or maybe he’s obsessed. He missed his shot twice, now he’s more determined than ever to get his payday.”
Ric checked his watch. He needed to give Mia a call. He’d be damned if he’d let another night go by with her sleeping at that SEAL’s house. Mia’s motives might be pure, but Ric didn’t trust Black for a minute. The guy was an operator, and he probably had no qualms about moving in on a vulnerable target.
Ric sure hadn’t.
“Where is she now?” Rey asked.
“Who, Mia?”
Rey just looked at him. His brother had always been way too good at reading him.
“Some friend from work gave her a ride home and offered her a place to stay,” Ric said. His last update was courtesy of Sophie. Ric hadn’t actually talked to Mia since he’d dropped her off yesterday.
“This the SEAL I ran deep background on last night?” Rey asked.
“Yeah.”
Rey lifted his eyebrows at this apparent lapse in judgment. How the hell’d you let that happen? his look seemed to say. As if Ric had had a choice.
Although he had. Mia had looked at him with those soulful blue eyes that practically begged him to lie to her. She’d wanted him to tell her that this thing between them was going somewhere. And he’d almost done it. All the right promises had been on the tip of his tongue, but he’d discovered he couldn’t lie to her, especially not straight to her face like that.
So, instead—like an idiot—he’d practically shoved her at Black with both hands. Ric couldn’t believe he’d done it. It was one of the stupidest moves he’d ever made. He deserved every bit of misery he was feeling right now and more.
“You know, the guy’s clean,” Rey said. As if that made it better. “It’s not a bad place for her to stay, considering.”
Ric looked away. His brother was trying to get a rise out of him.
“You serious about this girl or what?”
Ric didn’t answer.
“Because it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you this torqued up about something.”
“I’m not torqued up.”
“You look like shit, Ric. When was the last time you slept?”
He shook his head.
“Fine, keep it to yourself,” Rey said. “But if you do like this girl, you’re going to hate what I’m about to tell you.”
CHAPTER 19
Mia lay in a eucalyptus-scented bath, waiting for the tension to seep out of her muscles. After days of running, she was back in her own house, in her own bathroom, taking a soothing soak in her own claw-footed tub. She should feel Zen, relieved, finally at peace with her situation after days and days of emotional turmoil.
Instead, she felt edgy. Aromatherapy was no match for a heavy sense of foreboding and the knowledge that a team of armed federal agents was staked out across the street. There would be no relaxing tonight. She’d be lucky to catch a wink of sleep.
She turned the hot water on with her foot and tried to push the worry away. This was her choice, and she wouldn’t second-guess herself. The FBI had offered, with Rachel’s blessing, to give Mia complete immunity from any charges related to stealing and destroying evidence. In exchange, they merely wanted her cooperation—as in sit at home and wait for someone to come after her. The plan was simple yet tantalizing, so tantalizing that Mia had agreed to it without even consulting her lawyer. Vivian probably would have advised her to take the Fifth on everything and let the FBI put their own asses on the line to catch their bad guy.
And yet Mia had jumped at the deal. Why? Same reason she did almost everything: her obsession with her work. She wanted her career back, her life back. As Ric had pointed out, her career was her life, so it was the same thing. Her professional reputation meant everything to her, and she’d never get it back if there was a shadow hanging over her each time she signed her name to a report or got up to testify at a trial. And if it ever became public that she’d stolen and destroyed evidence? The cascade effect on all of her previous cases was unthinkable. Every defense attorney whose client had been put away with the help of her testimony would challenge the conviction.
Mia couldn’t bear the thought. She needed immunity. She needed the assurance that her actions on that frigid, fateful day would never come back to haunt her. Cooperating with the FBI had been a snap decision.
And if Ric didn’t like it, so what?
His words on the phone an hour ago had been cold, clipped. He’d made it clear that he thought she was making a big mistake. But it wasn’t his decision. He wasn’t the one who had to live with the ramifications of what she’d done. Ric was a bystander in all of this, no more a part of her life than he had been two weeks ago.
Except that he was.
She couldn’t tell him that, but at least she could be honest with herself. She’d offered him something, and he’d taken it, just as she’d known he would. He was, after all, a guy. And she had no right to feel betrayed, because he’d warned her from the beginning about all of the things he didn’t want that he knew she did. Even yesterday, in the midst of an uncomfortable conversation, he’d held his ground. He hadn’t said a lot of things he didn’t mean just to avoid hurting her feelings.
So, yes, her feelings were hurt. Ironically, she trusted him now more than ever, because he’d been honest with her about where things stood.
Mia turned off the water again and settled back to relax. She did some yoga breathing and tried to focus on something positive. But all she could think about was her meeting with Delmonico that afternoon. He’s not finished yet. He’ll be back. And then Ric’s words crowded her brain: His pride’s at stake now. He won’t miss again. Both Ric and the agent seemed to think that this hired gun, whoever he was, had her on his hit list. And she’d agreed to sit there and wait for him to come after her. It went against every survival instinct she had, but she’d agreed to do it, because as long as he was out there, she would never feel confident about her safety or her family’s.
Creak.
Her eyes flew open at the sound. She sat up, sloshing water over the sides of the tub.
Ric stepped into the room.
“How’d you get in?” she squeaked.
Instead of answering, he propped his shoulder a
gainst the wall and watched her. His gaze didn’t leave her face, and she could tell by the glint in his eyes that he’d already looked his fill.
She pulled her knees to her chest. “What are you doing here?”
“Making sure you don’t shoot me.”
“You think I’d shoot you?”
“I penetrated your security, in case you hadn’t noticed.” His gaze drifted down, then back up again. There was something dangerous in his look now. “Didn’t Black give you one of his guns?”
She hesitated.
“Where is it?”
“My purse.”
Shaking his head, he pulled his phone from the pocket of his leather jacket and walked out.
Mia stared at the empty doorway. Then she scrambled to her feet and grabbed a towel from the rack. As she wrapped it around herself, a tirade of angry Spanish erupted from the hallway. Mia didn’t understand a word of it, but the meaning was clear. Ric was very, very unhappy with someone, and she guessed that whoever it was had a federal badge.
She darted into the bedroom and put on a terry bathrobe. The argument continued as she hurriedly pulled a comb through her hair.
And then it stopped. Not a sound. Nothing. Mia crept into the hallway and listened, wondering if he’d left as suddenly as he’d come.
Her phone chimed, and she jumped. She snatched it up from her nightstand.
“Hello?”
“It’s Special Agent Delmonico. Is Ric Santos with you?”
She heard her microwave oven being opened and shut.
“Um, yes.”
A curse on the other end of the phone, followed by some barked orders commanding someone named James to get his ass over there.
“It’s okay,” Mia rushed to add. “I let him in.”
A pause as the agent probably tried to understand this. Mia didn’t understand it herself. She hadn’t let Ric in at all, but now that he was there, she wanted to smooth things over.
“Remember the protocol, Miss Voss. All visitors must be cleared through the team leader, which means me.”
“It’s ‘Dr.’ ”
“What?”
“Dr. Voss. Not Miss. Is there anything else?”
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