“We’ve been reviewing entry and exit logs for the BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs at Blake and it looks like you used your card to access Professor Everson’s lab on three separate occasions over the Christmas period.”
Dexter frowned and leaned forward. “What? No. Cindy had my keycard. I assumed she’d given it back to the department ages ago.”
“I spoke to the departmental secretary,” Hunt watched the guy’s body language, which was tense, but that wasn’t necessarily unusual. He was more worried by people who acted natural and easygoing in the face of questions from the FBI. “She never received the card.”
“That’s hardly Pete’s fault.” Angela was quick to defend the guy.
Was there something going on there? Was she the drunken hookup?
“So,” Hunt said slowly, “you’re saying you didn’t access the labs at that time?”
Dexter’s laugh sounded forced. “Why would I go there when I have my own, much better labs here?” He raised his hands. He was justifiably proud of this set up.
“Maybe to keep an eye on what Cindy was doing?” Hunt said casually.
“Cindy was pretty mad with Pete,” Angela cut in. “I can see her using the access card on purpose just to try and get him into trouble.”
Blaming the dead girl. Hard for her to defend herself.
“I’ll have the laboratory techs check for it,” said Hunt.
“Lab techs?” Angela came to her feet.
“Crime scene techs,” he elucidated.
“I thought she overdosed?”
“We have new guidelines when investigating the sudden death of anyone working on a Cat-A biological agent.”
“I hadn’t heard about this.” Angela’s gaze darted off her partners in the room. “Why haven’t I heard of this?”
“USDA is just rolling it out. Cindy Resnick is pretty much our test model. Well, thanks for your time. I take it you heard about Sally-Anne Wilton?”
Dexter nodded and looked upset. Angela nodded. Corker was watching her, as if waiting for direction. Hunt was starting to think Angela was the brains of this operation.
“We heard she also suffered an overdose.” Angela squeezed her fingers together. “It’s a terrible tragedy.”
“I knew Sally-Anne took drugs occasionally,” Pete said. “I just never knew Cindy did.”
“Who knows what she did after you two broke up.” Angela consoled him and condemned Cindy in one short sentence.
Pip wouldn’t like Angela. Hunt would bet money on it.
“I’ll be in touch about the training op,” Hunt said. The whereabouts of that keycard was a mystery. He’d have to see if he could talk Pip into letting him search for it at Cindy’s properties without an explanation or a warrant.
Sure.
“Thanks for showing me around, Mr. Corker. Doctors.” Hunt nodded and headed out, spotting the redheaded PA with her neat bun and handy pencil. “Ms. Grantham.” He nodded as she gave him an exasperated little sigh.
“Follow me, Agent Kincaid. You have a tendency to get lost.”
“Am I causing trouble, Ms. Grantham?” he asked. She was cute. He wished he was even vaguely interested. Instead, the image of Pip West in her soft pink pjs filtered through his mind.
“I don’t know, Agent Kincaid. Are you?” she asked archly.
He laughed as he headed outside the building into a scorching hot spring day.
He was definitely causing trouble.
Chapter Seventeen
Someone rapped on the side window of Pip’s Honda and she almost had a heart attack. She quickly unlocked the door.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice squeaked embarrassingly high.
Kincaid slid into the passenger seat, and raised a brow, the hot gold in his eyes glinting. “I could ask the same about my favorite unemployed journalist, except it’s obvious she’s staking out a local biotech firm.”
She rolled her eyes even though her heart gave another embarrassing little hitch at being his “favorite” anything. She’d seen his ugly car enter the facility an hour ago, but was chagrined to admit she hadn’t seen him leave, nor had she noticed the tan Buick pull up behind her.
“You mind if I…?” He pointed to the extra bottle of water she’d stashed in the console.
“Help yourself.”
He took a long drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His gaze took in her clothes and ball cap and sunglasses she’d worn to prevent Pete Dexter from easily recognizing her should he happen to drive by. But she was parked down a side road, well away from their security cameras.
He tipped the bottle at her outfit. “Is this your incognito look?”
She eyed him narrowly.
“No hot blooded heterosexual male is not gonna notice you sitting here.”
She rolled her eyes. He must want something. “Sure they are. Happens all the time.” She was trying to pretend that intense sizzle hadn’t zapped her earlier when he’d been leaving her room and she’d thought he was going to kiss her. More mortifying was the fact she’d wanted him to.
“Maybe you just don’t notice them looking,” he suggested.
She made a rude sound. “Are you flirting with me, Agent Kincaid?”
His widening smile pissed her off. “You’d know if I was flirting with you, Ms. West.”
Her pulse did one of those disconcerting little skips. With those distinctive eyes, stubbled chin, and sandy-haired good looks the guy pushed every one of her buttons. She drew in a deep breath to calm the blood rush, pretty sure he was deliberately trying to put her off her game.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I wanted to see if anyone at the firm drove a black SUV,” she told him calmly.
His eyes widened in surprise, but he still said nothing and she found herself filling the silence.
“I spoke to Cindy’s other ex—”
“Mr. good-looking-but-dim?”
She sipped her water as guilt washed over her. “He’s nice.”
“Nice?” Kincaid turned in his seat to stare at her. “Wasn’t he as gorgeous as your friend told you?”
“Au contraire.” She shook her head rapidly. “He’s probably the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. Why do you care?”
“I don’t.” He flipped the sun-visor to catch a look at his reflection in the small mirror and winced theatrically.
Hot.
The voice in her head was Cindy’s. She was pretty sure her friend was haunting her. “Dane said—”
“Dane?” Kincaid’s cynicism leaked through.
“That’s his name.”
“Of course, it is.” His lips curled even though he tried to contain his amusement.
“Dane said that he saw Cindy with another guy when he followed her home once, just before they broke up.”
Kincaid grew serious. “And that didn’t scream crazy stalker to you?”
She was close enough to smell the scent of Kincaid’s skin and made a conscious effort not to lean closer and sniff. Talking of stalkers. “Yes, it did, so did the fact he has an assault charge on his record. But I checked his story and I don’t think he lied to me. They were together at the time, but he didn’t confront her on it.”
She saw his mouth twist with disbelief. Ignored it.
“He said the other guy drove a black SUV with tinted windows.” Kincaid’s bland expression made her add. “Like the one that almost ran me off the road before I found Cindy.” In case he’d forgotten.
“You know how many black SUVs are registered in the great state of Georgia? Over sixty thousand.”
Her shoulders sagged. “You checked.”
“I checked because I’m thorough, not because I believe the person in the car had anything to do with her death. She died between midnight and two AM. Remember?”
Unexpected emotion pricked tears behind her eyes but she blinked them away. This was just a job to him. To her it was the death of her best friend.
“Why are you here specifically?” he asked.
She shrugged, knowing she’d sound naïve. “I thought Pete Dexter might have a second car that just happened to be a black SUV.”
“He doesn’t have one registered to him.”
“You checked that, too?” Pip didn’t know why she was so surprised.
He nodded. “I checked that, too.”
He hadn’t dismissed her. He had followed up.
They sat in silence, that knowledge seeping into her brain as the quiet rush of traffic provided a gentle whoosh-whoosh of background noise.
He stared through the windshield. “Atlanta PD found the dealer who goes by the street name of ‘Hanzo’.”
Oh. My. God. “Did he admit to supplying Cindy or Sally-Anne?”
Kincaid shook his head. “APD found coke with him and put a rush on the analysis. We’ll check it against that found at Cindy’s and Sally-Anne Wilton’s apartment.”
“I’m impressed you found him so fast.” Pip stared him. That was good work.
“Yeah, well, he was easy to spot with a bullet hole in the back of his skull.” Kincaid ran a hand over his short hair as if feeling for an exit wound.
Her mouth went dry. “Dead?”
“Found in his car in a remote area of the city.”
Pip shivered despite the heat. “Who killed him? Or did he kill himself?”
Kincaid shook his head. “It’s not my case. Same guy who is running Sally-Anne Wilton’s case is in charge. He’s a damn good detective. I expect he’ll be calling you at some point.”
“I’ll contact him.”
Kincaid’s lips canted sideways like he disapproved but he didn’t say anything.
Good. She didn’t need Kincaid’s permission to do anything. She had questions. Lots of questions. “I got a call about the second autopsy earlier.”
Kincaid lifted his chin, seeming to lock onto the emotion she was trying to hide.
“ME believes Cindy hadn’t taken the coke that long before she died. She didn’t find any benzoylecgonine in her urine.”
“Meaning what?” Kincaid asked.
“Meaning I don’t know,” Pip cried out in frustration. Why did scientists have to spout geek rather than plain English? “The ME didn’t find much cocaine in her bloodstream suggesting she drowned not long after inhaling it.”
He shrugged. “The alcohol and the fentanyl—”
“Don’t,” she said sharply.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t tell me all the things Cindy did wrong. Please, just don’t.”
He was silent for a few seconds. “ME confirm she drowned?”
Pip nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
She took her sunglasses off and tossed them on the dash. “She’s going to run more tox screens.”
He turned toward her. “For anything in particular?”
“I asked her to look for any sedative-type drugs.”
He frowned and looked irritated. “You think she was roofied?”
She shrugged, staring fixedly out the window. “She had sex with someone Sunday night before she died, but she told me she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe someone heard she’d finished and went over to help her celebrate. Maybe he wanted sex but she wasn’t in the mood. So, he gave her something to loosen her up and then broke out the coke.”
“So why isn’t he dead?”
“I don’t know.” She was exasperated. “Maybe he’s taken it before and built up a tolerance. Perhaps Cindy took too much. None of this makes sense but neither does the idea that Cindy willingly took drugs. It could have been an accident. He passed out and she woke up and wandered off. Ended up in the lake. He sees her the next morning and boots it just before I arrive. Or it could have been deliberate, and he murdered her.”
“You should write novels.”
Pip gritted her teeth and pressed her nails into the hard plastic of the steering wheel. “These are all viable scenarios.”
“So is your friend getting high and drowning—alone. How do you explain Sally-Anne?”
“How do you? Pretty convenient the dealer also turned up dead.”
“Except if word got out his coke was killing people maybe another dealer decided to take him out of the game—or someone who knew both women? Overdoses are bad for business.”
“My scenario is just as plausible as yours,” she argued.
One of his brows lifted, but she couldn’t read his eyes. “You’re suggesting a triple homicide to cover up a rape.”
When he put it like that it did seem a little farfetched.
She shrugged. She didn’t care. “It’s Cindy’s money. I want to do everything I can to make sure I know exactly what happened on the night she died. I don’t always want to wonder if I missed something.”
He looked away then and his nostrils flared as he blew out a breath. “I get that.”
“Liar. You think I’m nuts.”
He put a finger on her chin to make her look at him and then let go. “No. I do get it. The need for answers.” He drew in a deep breath and sadness touched his features. “My step-sister died in Afghanistan. I spent a lot of time tracking down Marines in her unit so I could learn what happened. It gave me the chance to say thank you to the people who comforted her when she was dying.” He looked away, but she caught his hand.
“That probably meant a lot to them.”
He shrugged a shoulder, staring out the window.
“I’m sorry about your sister.”
His chin raised and mouth tightened. “Yeah. I am, too. But it doesn’t change anything. Eventually you have to deal with the grief. You can only run away from it for so long.”
She shied away from his words. “I’ll deal with it once I’ve given my friend a proper burial. And once I have explored every avenue as to who might have been involved in her death. If it’s this drug dealer then fine. I’ll accept it. But I want to know who the sexual partners were. I want to know who was with her that night and who left her to die.”
And she wanted to know if Cindy had forgiven her, she realized. Something she might never find out.
He stared at her, weighing her up in a way she wasn’t sure she liked. “If you want me to take a look around her Atlanta home. See if I can find anything that gives me some insight into who her lovers might be, I can do that.”
She blinked at the unexpected offer. “Thank you. Yes.” He had resources she couldn’t come close to. She’d take anything she could get. “I’d appreciate that.”
A black SUV appeared suddenly at the security gate of Universal Biotech. It must have been parked around the other side of the building, out of sight of the main highway. Or inside the loading bay.
Pip turned the key and started the engine. “You better get out.”
“You can’t just follow people around, Pip,” Kincaid warned.
“Sure I can.”
“Ever heard of stalking?”
She snorted. “I think stalking involves more than trying to figure out who the owner of a vehicle is. In or out?” she insisted. “I’m leaving in three, two, one.”
Kincaid stayed put and she floored it, getting to the main highway a couple of seconds after the other car.
Pip tucked herself two cars back and tried to see who the driver was, but the glass was tinted.
“I’ll run the tags but do not get too close.” Kincaid called the license plate in. The car came back registered to Angela Naysmith.
“Cindy didn’t like her much,” Pip told him.
“Your friend ever tell you who Dexter cheated with?”
“Cindy didn’t know. She just found panties in his jacket pocket and threw him out.”
“Panties?”
“Not her panties.” Pip’s lip curled but she couldn’t help it.
“Dexter told me he confessed about his indiscretions because he wanted to propose.”
“He confessed after Cindy found size four, black silk underwear in his jacket pocket. You think it might be Naysmith?” she said sharply.
“
No idea.” Kincaid shrugged, but looked thoughtful.
Pip tried to keep a discreet distance behind the SUV to avoid being noticed.
“You have a name now. You don’t need to follow her home,” Kincaid told her.
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” she asked.
“Battling with memories of illegal and unauthorized surveillance laws.”
“Nonsense. I kidnapped you.”
He laughed and her heartstrings gave a little twang.
No. Nope. Not happening. She was not falling for this FBI agent who just a few days ago had threatened to charge her with manslaughter.
She concentrated on not losing the SUV as it turned into one of the more expensive neighborhoods, a new, gated community east of the city.
The car reached a guarded barrier and Pip swore and slowed right down. The barrier went up and the car sailed through. The barrier closed again.
“Head to the gate.”
Pip glanced at him and he shrugged.
“We’ve come this far.”
She took the turn and the guard stepped out of his air-conditioned box.
Kincaid flashed creds as the guard leaned in. “Can you tell me who was inside that black SUV that just went through?”
The guard made a face. “Dr. Naysmith. She lives here.”
“Was she alone in the vehicle?” Kincaid asked.
The guy shrugged. “As far as I could tell, but I didn’t look inside. You want me to call her—”
A weird sound made Pip look around.
“Gun!” Kincaid threw himself over her back, his heavy weight pressing her face down into the center console, crushing her. Glass shattered and rained down into her hair.
Bullets. The sound had been bullets.
The gunfire went on forever. Pip braced herself in anticipation of being hit. She couldn’t move. Kincaid drew his weapon and returned fire. The noise was deafening. Pip couldn’t think. She shook in terror. Someone cried out.
Tires squealed and the shots stopped. The smell of gunpowder filled the air, choking her. Finally, it was over.
It had felt like forever but had probably only lasted a few seconds. Kincaid lifted himself off her.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
“No. Are you?” she asked.
He shook his head but was already moving, getting out of the car. The guard was down on the ground, bleeding.
Cold Blooded Page 18