It was easier to be alone.
And so what if Pip West wasn’t impressed by him. Was his ego really that fragile?
The study was old-fashioned and classically cool. A hardwood floor and dark wainscoting. A hunter-green leather couch and wingback chair gathered around an open fireplace with a large screen TV off to one side.
What would Pip do with the place? Sell it for fast cash? Settle down and raise a family?
He ignored the irritation the thought brought with it, unsure from where it stemmed. The fact she’d felt good in his arms even if he’d been holding her for all the wrong reasons? The fact he found her attractive but had no intention of acting on it? Or the sense she wasn’t the sort of woman who’d go for a brief no strings fling?
He shook his head at himself. He must be more tired than he’d realized to be thinking of flings. She was a journalist and he wouldn’t trust a journalist if they were bound and gagged.
Pip walked over to an old-fashioned looking oil painting and took it down off the wall. He followed and watched as she typed in a six-digit code and opened the door.
She pulled out a box of ammunition from her purse and stuffed it inside the safe.
“I didn’t see a paper copy of her thesis, but she might have put a backup drive in there at some point. You may as well replace the gun, too. I’m obviously a liability until I learn how to use it.”
He put the gun to one side and methodically emptied the contents of the safe onto a sideboard. Old passports, birth and death certificates. Cash. Jewelry boxes that he’d bet held the real deal. Pip had inherited the motherlode. He glanced at where she stood, biting her lip and watching him. She didn’t look too happy about it. He knew all too well, money didn’t replace the people you loved.
His fingers wrapped around something cool and plastic. A small black data stick. “Can I take this?”
She hesitated, then nodded, arms crossing tight over her chest. “If you promise to tell me if you find any evidence of where she got the drugs from?”
He stared at her suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because I don’t believe she took them willingly,” she conceded. “I’d like to talk to the person who sold them to her to confirm.”
Like anyone would admit to that.
She looked away. “And maybe you’re right and the reason I can’t accept it is I’m feeling guilty about the argument we had.” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “But I need to know.”
“I can’t make that promise,” he said regretfully. He held out the thumb drive toward her. “I won’t jeopardize any ongoing or future investigations.”
Her shoulders slumped in defeat as she exhaled. She shook her head. “Fine. Just take it.”
The fact he was taking advantage of her exhaustion should have bothered him. It didn’t. He’d do whatever it took. He loaded everything else back into the safe. Held up the weapon. “You sure you don’t want this? I can show you how to load it and how to turn off the safety.”
The muscle in her jaw flexed and she seemed to lose color. “I hate guns.”
“Why did you take it then?”
She didn’t answer him.
He frowned. “You have reason to believe you’re in danger?”
She shrugged.
He wasn’t getting anything more out of her. He double-checked the pistol was unloaded and placed it gently in the safe. He closed the safe door and pressed “lock” on the menu and the thing beeped. He replaced the painting.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pip walk over to the printer that sat on top of a low file cabinet behind the desk. She gathered up a thick stack of paper from the printer tray. His pulse started to beat a little faster. She turned the stack toward him and showed him the title page.
“Is this what you’re looking for?”
Cindy’s thesis. Jackpot. He went to take it but she held up a finger. “I want a copy, too.”
“The university might object.”
She raised an eyebrow. “They’d like you having it even less.”
This was true and from the angle of her jaw he’d run out of free passes. It took ten minutes to duplicate the thing on the printer-copier that was fancier than the one they had in the field office.
When they were done they left the house via the kitchen door, each carrying a copy of Cindy’s apparently groundbreaking research. Pip armed the security panel and he walked her to her car, handing her the house keys the cops had borrowed from the neighbors on Monday.
He and Pip had spent the last hour communicating without arguing which marked progress. So maybe she wasn’t digging for a story. Maybe she was genuinely trying to find a way to deal with her loss. He remembered the devastated little boy he’d been when his father was killed. The only thing that had dragged him out of it was meeting an FBI agent and being told the bad man who’d murdered his father during the bank robbery had, in turn, been killed by an HRT sniper.
Perhaps she was simply pursuing the same sense of closure, but he wasn’t ready to trust her yet.
She climbed behind the wheel, but before she could close the door he stopped her. “Stay safe, Pip.”
She opened her mouth to say something but changed her mind. She closed the door and drove away.
He wished he could tell her something to put her mind at rest about her friend, but he doubted she’d listen to him when she wouldn’t listen to a well-respected medical examiner. And, of course, there was no way he would let a journalist sniff out a link to bioterrorism that might jeopardize innocents. He ran his finger around the inside of his collar and climbed into his truck parked near the curb. Best if he kept far, far away from the sexy and intriguing Pip West.
Eyes on the prize.
Chapter Thirteen
The phone call at three-thirty in the morning sent a jolt through Hunt’s bloodstream.
He grabbed his work cell from where it was charging and unplugged it. The name of an Atlanta PD detective he knew, Cyril White, flashed up on the screen.
“Kincaid here.”
“I have a dead body down here with one of your business cards in their wallet.”
An image of Pip West burst through his brain. Sweat broke out on his cold skin and he knocked a glass of water over on the nightstand. Fuck. The glass rolled onto the floor and shattered.
“A young woman named Sally-Anne Wilton. Anything you can tell me?”
Hunt covered his mouth with his hand and breathed deep for a moment. The strength of his reaction surprised him. Pip West had snuck under his skin. He couldn’t afford that weakness or attraction. He rolled over to the other side of the bed where he started pulling on pants.
“Give me the address. I’ll be right over.”
Thirty minutes later, Hunt stood outside the doorway of the cheap one-bedroom apartment and signed the crime scene entry log sheet held by a uniformed Atlanta PD officer with a clipboard. The flash of a photographer’s camera came from inside the apartment. Other residents loitered in their doorways to see what was going on.
Nothing good.
He slipped white paper booties over his shoes even though first responders had tromped all over the place when they’d first arrived. Atlanta PD was calling it another drug overdose in an epidemic that was out of control. The problem wasn’t just heroin or cocaine, it was what dealers put in those drugs. Fentanyl was supposed to create a more “euphoric” high and was a hundred times more potent than morphine. The opioid crisis was making the cocaine influx of the eighties look like training camp.
He stepped into the room. The scent of burnt food mixed with the familiar odor of death.
It was an ugly scene.
At least Pip had been spared this, he thought grimly. The lake had washed off the physiological trauma of poison and rendered Cindy Resnick’s death clean and sterile. She’d looked almost peaceful lying on the banks of that lake.
Pip hadn’t had to see her friend like this.
This girl was bone thin and very naked. Her clothes were
scattered around the floor as if she’d ripped them off and thrown them away. A vibrator lay next to the couch and a bottle of olive oil beside that. She was lying on her back, a fine dusting of what he hoped was coke, rather than weaponized anthrax, coating her skin.
Blood dripped from her nose. The whites of her eyes were shot through with crimson and the sharp scent of vomit permeated the atmosphere.
The stink of death hit him unexpectedly and he moved into the kitchen to try and distance himself from the stench. Sally-Anne Wilton who he’d met at the hotel when talking to Pip. She’d worked in the same department as Cindy Resnick. Coincidence? Unlikely.
Dumb fucking smart kids.
Hunt popped some latex gloves from the box on the counter and pulled them on. Checked the fridge.
It was full of diet cola. An open bottle of white wine. Cheese—strong cheddar. Brown bread. Margarine. Free range eggs. Some homemade smoothies. He looked in the freezer. Frozen pizzas and chili. No dope.
A pizza box and wrapping sat in the recycle bin. He touched the top of the old electric ring stove. Slightly warm. He opened the oven door and there was a burnt-out piece of cardboard.
The woman’s coat was on a chair near the entrance. Her phone was on the counter. A beer bottle lay overturned on the carpet.
So…she’d gotten home, horny and hungry after her meeting with Pip at the hotel, stuck a pizza in the oven and decided to get high and masturbate during the twenty minutes it took to cook?
“Did someone turn this oven off?” he asked the room in general.
The cop near the door piped up, “Smoke alarm was screaming and the neighbors complained to the custodian. He let himself in, turned off the oven, and called the EMTs.”
The sight of the dead girl turned his stomach and he knew it was wrong to be so repulsed, but…the fact that this had been her own choice drove him crazy.
Nothing would ever induce him into the drug scene. Hell, he’d even avoided painkillers as much as he was able during his rehabilitation after his motorcycle accident. It was too easy to get hooked, especially with doctors over-prescribing and exacerbating the problem.
Detective Cyril White walked up to him in the kitchen. They’d worked together before on the City Hall investigation and on some bank robberies when Hunt had first transferred to Atlanta. Cyril knew more about police work than Hunt could ever hope to learn.
The detective had endured Katrina and its aftermath. Had grown up in the ninth ward and watched his parents’ house get destroyed by the floodwaters before moving to Georgia.
“Why did she have your card in her pocket?” the detective asked.
“I met her today at a hotel downtown. She was the friend and co-worker of a young woman who was found dead after taking cocaine out at Lake Allatoona day before yesterday. I didn’t interview Sally-Anne. Spent about sixty seconds with her before I had to leave so I gave her my card in case she had anything she could tell me.”
“Any similarities with your DB out at Allatoona?”
Hunt eyed the white powder. “Yeah, lots. But dissimilarities, too. They were both working on their doctorates at Blake. Same department. Different supervisors and specialty areas. Lake victim was also naked but the body was found outside and manner of death was drowning. My vic had money—cottage at the lake and a house in the city. ME found traces of fentanyl in the coke at Allatoona. It would have probably killed her if the water hadn’t.”
And both victims had known Pip West, he realized. Could she be involved?
“Foul play?” the detective asked.
“Still unclear.” Hunt shook his head.
“Why’re the Feds looking at it?” Cyril asked bluntly.
“I’m the FBI’s WMD coordinator and the vic worked on a Category A listed substance. We decided caution was warranted.”
“Anything I should be worried about in this case?” White stared warily at the white powder on the vic.
Hunt pressed his lips together. Sally-Anne worked on Hanta virus, not anthrax. He’d run her background when he’d left the hotel earlier.
“I’ll talk to my boss but it looks more and more like these women scored some dirty coke, possibly from the same source. We’d better figure out who the dealer is before more people wind up dead.”
White shook his head. “This shit is getting worse rather than better.”
The sight of Sally-Anne’s lifeless body depressed Hunt. Why would she risk getting high right after her friend died?
What a goddamned waste.
“You informed next of kin?” Hunt asked the detective.
White shook his head. “They’re in Maine. Someone’s going there now.”
Hunt said nothing. He remembered a faceless cop coming to his door when he was seven years old to tell them his dad had been shot dead, and more vividly at his mom and stepfather’s door telling them Hunt’s step-sister had died in action. Different uniform. Same fucking pain.
“How do you want to handle this?” Cyril asked him.
Hunt thought about the likelihood of this being drug related versus bioterrorism. Pretty damn high. “I think this is a case for APD to try to figure out where this shit is coming from. FBI can assist and I’ll pass on any relevant information from the Lake Allatoona vic pertinent to the drug angle.”
Cyril raised his salt and pepper brows. He’d heard everything Hunt wasn’t telling him.
“Can I get a dump of her phone?” Hunt eyed Sally-Anne’s phone and laptop.
Cyril nodded. “I’ll send it over as soon as I get it.”
Hunt thanked the man and headed out the door, dialing McKenzie despite the hour. Although unlikely, if McKenzie wanted to treat this death as a biological hazard, things were about to get a hell of a lot more public and panic was guaranteed. No one wanted that, but no one wanted to be infected with anthrax either.
The proverbial choice between a rock and a hard place.
Chapter Fourteen
Insistent knocking on Pip’s door had her blinking awake and groggily sitting upright. The room was pitch-black so she fumbled to switch on the reading light above her bed. She nearly dislocated her jaw with a yawn as she peered at the display on the digital alarm clock.
Five AM. Who the hell was knocking on her door at this time in the morning?
She flung back the covers and staggered to the door. She stood on tiptoe but couldn’t see through the peephole that was apparently designed for people over nine feet tall.
The knock came again.
Pip put her hand on the handle, hesitated. “Who is it?”
“Kincaid.” He didn’t sound happy but her heart gave an unexpected leap of excitement, and not just because he was FBI.
Stupid heart.
She flicked off the security latch and opened the door.
His eyes traveled down her soft, pink, sleep-rumpled pajamas and quickly back up to her face.
“Can I come in?” he spoke quietly.
She didn’t feel like she had much choice so she let him slip inside before closing the door behind him. She followed him into her room and refrained from apologizing for the mess. A bunch of her belongings were stacked between the bed and the bathroom wall. She’d left boxes of books and non-essential items in the trunk of her car. Her open suitcases were on the bed she wasn’t using and she’d set up her computer on the desk.
He glanced around the room with a frown. “How long are you here for?”
She’d transferred from the suite to a double room last night. No point in wasting money, especially money she didn’t yet have. “Until after the funeral. I guess I’ll stay at Cindy’s house after that.”
“You gonna keep it? The house?” His eyes were still scanning the room. Maybe it was a law enforcement thing. Maybe he was just nosy.
“I don’t know yet. It’s difficult to imagine being there without Cindy.” Pip wasn’t a morning person. She needed coffee before she could handle the FBI. Especially this particular FBI agent. She grabbed a coffee filter and then fill
ed up the in-room coffeemaker with water and turned it on.
He stood beside her desk and she saw him scan her notes. Damn it. She went over and closed the file folder.
“You’re interviewing people who knew Cindy?” He stood way too close.
She was hyperaware of everything about him and that made her nervous and jumpy. “Not interviewing, just writing down impressions and thoughts.” She moved away from him. She felt self-conscious in her pajamas while he was once again wearing full federal armor. “I told you I’m trying to figure out where Cindy got the drugs.”
Pip scrubbed her fingers over her face, struggling to wake up. She’d been up until two after her run-in with Kincaid at the Resnicks’ house in Sherwood Forest. Making lists and notes, unable or unwilling to close her eyes, knowing today would be just as empty as yesterday and trying to prolong the horrible inevitability of it all.
Kincaid stared at her for a long time, searching her face but she had no idea what he was looking for. Guilt? Innocence? Absolution? Finally, he asked, “Mind if I sit?”
She shook her head. The man looked exhausted.
“Did you sleep yet?” She winced. The question sounded too intimate. It wasn’t her business. What if he was tired because he’d been tearing up the sheets with a lover? He’d told her he was single, not that he was celibate. He’d told her he liked many different kinds of women. An equal opportunity kind of guy.
She’d fallen for his type before. In fact, he was exactly her type, good looking, confident, verging on arrogant.
“I got a few hours. Enough.” He ran a hand over his hair, making it stand up. “Got called out in the middle of the night.”
“That happen a lot?”
He shook his head. “Less than you’d imagine. Up until a few days ago I was working white-collar crime.”
“What changed a few days ago?”
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