by Rachel Dylan
He leaned back in his chair. “I do, and that’s what scares me. If you’re going to do this, let me help you.”
“Now it’s my turn to tell you to stay out of it. I’m going to be working directly with NCIS. It makes sense. But you can extricate yourself from this. Now that Tobias is dead, you won’t need to touch this thing.”
“I still think I have information, and maybe I can work my sources to get even more. I’m not saying I’m going to be running anything on the ground, but let me do what I can. Use me and the information and connections I have. Please.”
His plea hit her in the gut. There were so many dark and awful things happening, but Derek was a ray of sunshine. She reached for his hand and squeezed. “Thank you. Not just for that, but for everything you’ve done tonight. Your friendship means so much to me.”
For a moment they just stared at each other before she pulled her hand away and picked up her coffee mug.
“So, can we talk about what you have?” she asked.
“Sure.”
Given the change in circumstances, there was no longer any pending prosecution. She planned to get all the information from Derek that she could. “All right. When we spoke before, you said your boss was pushing you on the case, but you thought he was getting external pressure.”
Derek nodded. “Yeah. And I can’t say for sure, but I think the person putting in calls to him is high up at the DoD.”
She hadn’t expected that turn of events. “Why do you think that?”
“Just based on the conversation with my boss and what I was able to sweet-talk out of his assistant.”
“All roads lead back to WSI,” she muttered.
“What is WSI?”
“It’s a defense contractor that we believe all three men were secretly working for.”
Derek’s eyes lit up. “Maybe we’re dealing with a dirty defense contractor and someone on the inside at the DoD who is in on it? Someone who had enough of a vested interest to make pointed calls to the DA’s office.”
“Yeah.” She started to think out loud. “What if the victims were going to be whistle-blowers about some illegal activity? WSI got wind about it and had them killed.”
He leaned in. “And they needed Kappen to take the fall to make it look like it was a SEAL gone rogue. Kappen was completely unconnected to WSI. It places the attention squarely on his shoulders while everyone tries to unravel how he could be connected.”
“And if that wasn’t enough, then they murdered him and made it look like a suicide.” She fiddled with her watch to distract herself from getting emotional again.
“A convenient way for them to tidy up their mess. Because if Kappen had lived and was prosecuted for any of the three crimes, then at some point there would’ve been a possibility that his innocence could be proven. Which would mean everyone would know the real killer was still on the loose, and the investigation would have to continue. They couldn’t let that happen. But once he was dead, then they would think there was no reason to push the investigation any further.” Derek shook his head. “This is so much bigger than we could’ve imagined.”
Lexi felt sick to her stomach thinking about this heinous possibility. “Especially if someone powerful at the DoD is involved.”
Marco sat with Bailey by his side in the interrogation room across from Cullen Mink and his high-priced attorney, Theo Channing.
“My client is here voluntarily in the spirit of cooperation, so please be mindful of that,” Channing said. His sparkling gold cuff links were probably more costly than Marco’s best suit.
“We appreciate you taking the time,” Bailey said.
“I must say I was a bit surprised to find out that the two of you are not DoD auditors,” Mink said. “But I assume you have a very good reason for that little charade.”
Arrogance dripped off him. Mink clearly thought he was untouchable, but Marco had another plan. “Mr. Mink, I know you’re a busy man, so we’ll jump right in and get to the heart of our questions.”
“Thank you,” Mink said.
Bailey leaned forward. “Mr. Mink, we believe that three men who were employed by WSI have been murdered.”
Mink’s icy blue eyes widened. “What?”
Marco pulled out pictures of the three victims and placed them in front of the WSI VP. “These three men, two of whom were active US military personnel, have been killed. But I believe you already knew that, because a man like you would be up on current events, and the stories of their deaths have been on the news.”
Mink looked at his attorney but didn’t speak.
Marco didn’t have time for his games. “We have tangible evidence that they all worked for WSI. There’s no use denying that. What we don’t know yet is why they were killed, and that’s where we need your and WSI’s full cooperation.”
“Can I confer with my attorney for a moment?” Mink asked.
“Of course,” Bailey responded. “Take the time you need.”
Marco was interested to see how Mink was going to play this. Would he claim ignorance or actually bring something useful to the discussion?
The two men spent a minute whispering back and forth. Marco looked at Bailey, but her expression remained stoic.
When the conferral ended, Mink turned back to them. “I can tell you that all three men were indeed WSI employees. What I can’t answer for you is why they were murdered.”
“Why didn’t you come forward when you knew three of your employees had been killed?” Bailey asked.
Mink looked at her. “I didn’t want to cause any trouble for their families. I understood that they were operating off book and without telling their commanding officers. I was afraid that it might impact their benefits from the military. That’s the last thing I would ever want, so I kept silent. Nothing I said would bring them back, but if I did talk, the ramifications to their loved ones could be huge. I didn’t want that on my shoulders. These men knew the risks they were taking and the need for ultimate discretion. I was trying to respect that.”
“What about Rogers?” Marco asked.
The WSI executive looked down. “I just thought it best not to say anything about any of them, given my concerns. I couldn’t have spoken up about Rogers in a vacuum. It’s all connected, as I’m sure you see now.”
Marco remained highly skeptical of what Mink was saying, but he needed to push forward. “When did you recruit them?”
Mink arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“When and how did you bring these men in to work for WSI?” Marco didn’t know how much clearer he could be with the question, but by the confused look on Mink’s face, he had to be missing something.
Mink looked directly at him. “WSI didn’t recruit any of them. They came to us.”
“What?” Bailey jumped in. “You’re saying WSI didn’t reach out to them? Tell them how much money they could make in the private sector? Give them the sales pitch? Come on. We’ve heard how WSI and other defense contractors try to entice special-ops guys with a different kind of life.”
Mink shook his head. “None of that. We have and do recruit men who are in the military, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But these men came to us.”
“Do you have any documentation to show that?” Bailey asked.
The executive pulled out his cell phone. “I think there are probably emails between me and our CEO and then our head of HR.” He started to scroll through his phone, and his lawyer reached over.
“Let’s just wait a minute.” Channing lifted his hands. “My client won’t be turning over his emails without a subpoena.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be receiving one right away,” Bailey said. “But I want to get back to the point. Did all three men come to you individually?”
A frown pulled down at Mink’s thin pale lips. “Actually, no. Sean Battle came to me first. He then recommended the other two men. Rogers didn’t have a military background, but Sean insisted that he was a jack-of-all-trades.
The recommendation from a SEAL was enough for me.”
Marco glanced at Bailey, who was focused intently on Mink. Marco couldn’t tell whether Mink was truly trying to be helpful, or if his goal was to lead them astray.
Bailey laced her fingers together on the table. “Let me recap here. You’re saying that Battle came to you looking for a job, and then he suggested the other two men would be good hires as well.”
Mink nodded. “Yes. I guess I’m missing the point on why you think that’s a big deal. We have referrals all the time. The only thing that was even slightly odd was that he came to us, but that’s not completely out of the ordinary.”
“But Battle wasn’t full-time,” Marco said. “He still had his SEAL duties. We’re going to need a list of every job the victims did for WSI.”
“We can put that together, but as you can imagine, some of our work is highly sensitive. So we’ll have to get all relevant parties to sign off and the requisite clearances.”
“That won’t be an issue,” Marco shot back. There was no way he was going to let governmental red tape and bureaucracy throw up roadblocks when they’d gotten this far.
Mink looked down at his watch. “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to leave it there for now. I’ve got a meeting that I can’t reschedule.”
Marco highly doubted that, but he would let Mink go for now. They had a lot to follow up on and dissect.
Bailey stood. “We’ll be in touch today with the document subpoena.”
“Of course.” Channing led Mink out of the interrogation room.
Bailey turned to him. “I wasn’t expecting that. Battle went to WSI?”
“It’s strange.” The closer it seemed they got to the truth, the murkier things became.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
After the Mink interrogation, Marco had called an all-handson-deck meeting to regroup and go through everything. The team had expanded by one member with Lexi’s presence, which Bailey welcomed. She was a firm believer that having more voices in the room could be a good thing on complicated investigations like this. But there was no mistaking that Marco was still the team leader.
He was becoming a lot more than that to her. As much as she was trying to move slowly where her heart was concerned, it was apparent that was going to be easier said than done. The two of them had already been through so much together. She didn’t know how they could ever turn back the clock and reset the relationship to try to make it begin in a normal way.
On the other hand, in their line of work, relationships were often tested and many failed. So maybe it was worth taking a chance on someone who understood the demands of her career. But then, she’d suffered a devastating loss with her parents’ untimely deaths. Could she give her heart to someone who faced danger on a daily basis?
Hearing Marco start talking, she forced herself to refocus.
“Lexi is joining our team as we continue this investigation. Lexi, do you have any updates?”
Lexi nodded. “Actually, I do. And for everyone in the room’s benefit, I’ll tell you everything I have from the beginning. I met with Derek Martinez. He’s a senior prosecutor in the Arlington DA’s office and was working the Rogers case. Before Tobias’s death, he was going about his normal process as he would on any other case, but he started getting phone calls from his boss. His boss wanted him to strike a plea deal and do it quickly. Derek thought it was strange that his boss would intervene and not provide him with much context or rationale for his direction. Of course, Tobias wasn’t going to agree to a plea deal for something he didn’t do. So I communicated that back to Derek.”
“Is it really that odd for a prosecutor’s boss to encourage a plea deal?” Izzy asked.
“It isn’t abnormal, but it was more how he went about it.” Lexi turned to Izzy. “Even when NCIS told Derek that Tobias was no longer looking good for the murder, Derek’s boss still pushed him.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound right,” Jay said.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Bailey asked.
“Yes. Derek was naturally a bit suspicious about how this was playing out. He believes someone outside the prosecutor’s office was pressuring his boss.”
“Who?” Marco asked.
“Derek doesn’t have a name, but he believes it’s someone from the DoD.”
Bailey straightened. “That could make sense. WSI has substantial government contracts for the DoD.”
A muscle in Marco’s face twitched. “Maybe someone at WSI was calling in a favor from their friends at the DoD. Trying to get the entire case closed through a plea deal so there would be no further investigation into WSI. The deal would guarantee that this would be wrapped up and no one would look at it further.”
“Only the deal was rejected by my client, and now he’s dead,” Lexi said flatly. “My getting him out on bail may have signed his death warrant.”
Silence fell over the room for a moment.
Marco stood and went to the whiteboard. He jotted down notes from what Lexi had said and drew a diagram including the DoD, WSI, and the victims. “We know that the victims worked for WSI. According to Mink, Sean Battle came to WSI looking for work. He then recommended his two friends.”
Jay jotted something on his notepad before speaking. “I’ve verified again with Wexford’s commanding officer that he had no clue that Wexford had any off-the-books job—much less with one of the country’s biggest defense contractors.”
Bailey knew there was more to all of this, but they hadn’t quite found that missing link yet. “Let’s assume, just for a moment, that Mink is telling the truth. Yes, employment at WSI is going to be more lucrative than many other opportunities, but as Mink said, it wasn’t a full-time gig. He’s supposed to be getting us everything that the victims worked on, but could there be another reason beyond money that they made the choice to work there?”
“What about some type of revenge?” Lexi suggested.
“How so?” Bailey asked.
“I was reading through the mission files, and about three years ago, Battle’s team got ambushed and one of their own was killed. What if he thought he could settle the score by working for WSI? He recruits two of his buddies to help him track down those responsible for the ambush, because he’d have to do that off book, since the military wouldn’t sanction that kind of mission.”
“Not a bad theory,” Marco said.
Bailey spun it out in her head and then spoke up. “Maybe in their quest for revenge, they crossed the wrong people, and it got them killed? What if WSI isn’t directly responsible?”
“I think we have to consider all scenarios,” Marco said. “Both the option that WSI had them killed and that as part of the work they were doing for WSI, they got themselves into some kind of trouble.”
“If they were in trouble,” Bailey said, “then wouldn’t they have gone to someone else for help? And after Rogers was killed, why didn’t the other two put up their guard?”
“Remember,” Lexi said, “Battle was killed only three days after Rogers. It’s possible they didn’t even know Rogers was dead. It wasn’t until after both Rogers and Battle were killed that Wexford should’ve really been on high alert.”
“Izzy and I will take another stab at tracing Wexford’s steps after Battle was killed,” Jay said. “We might want to take another trip down to Fort Benning now that we have all this additional intel.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Marco said. He turned to look directly at Izzy and then Jay. “Even though you’ll be out of state, the rules we’ve set up still apply. No rolling solo. You need to be each other’s shadow.”
Lexi leaned forward in her seat. “You all are that worried about your own personal security?”
It occurred to Bailey that Lexi wasn’t privy to everything they’d endured. She took a minute to get Lexi up to speed.
“Wow,” Lexi said. “I thought Derek was being a bit overzealous and overprotective, but I see now that he was probably right.”
Bailey wondered what Lexi’s relationship with Derek was. Based on Lexi’s comment, it seemed that Derek and Lexi were at the very least on friendly terms.
“I’ll be careful,” Lexi said.
Marco started pacing the front of the room. This case was taking its toll on all of them. “Let’s talk later, because we may need to bring in someone else to work with you to make sure you’re covered. I don’t want anyone investigating alone. Whoever is behind all of this has shown that they have no problem not only with murder, but also with threats and intimidation tactics. We need to be buttoned up on that front.”
“Understood. I could get another JAG to help out, if needed. Could be a good training experience.”
Marco nodded. “Sounds good.”
They took the next twenty minutes to map out their plan in detail as to who was going to do what and with whom. As the meeting finally broke up, Bailey rubbed her temples. She could really use another cup of coffee.
Everyone scattered, leaving her alone with Marco.
He took a seat beside her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “Yeah, just feel a big headache coming on. Nothing that more caffeine can’t cure.”
He smiled. “Coffee is the answer to many of our problems.”
She looked up into his dark eyes. There was no doubt in her mind that he was starting to care for her, and the feeling was mutual. “I guess we should get back into our WSI and Mink files. I’m ready to go through the background check.”
“Do you think he’ll be clean as a whistle?”
“Well, I don’t think he is. Whether the files will support that or not is another question. Men like him have many ways to cover their tracks.” She straightened her shoulders. “But I told my FBI colleagues that we needed everything they could get.” She looked down at her phone. “They’ve sent me the links to the encrypted files for us to review.”
“We got the subpoena served on Mink for documents. We’ll see how long it takes his lawyer to turn things over. I think we need to push him aggressively.”