Cold Blooded

by Toni Anderson

  “Me, too.” She said it dryly.

  He smiled but his eyes looked the way Hunt’s had when they’d first met. Tainted by suspicion.

  Pip didn’t honestly feel like a reporter anymore. She’d lost the drive she’d once had, that the public had a right to know everything and make up its own mind. Maybe it was just the throbbing skull but something had shifted inside her over the last two weeks. Something fundamental. Guilt from the Booker case. Cindy’s death. Realization that sometimes the public’s best interest wasn’t served by transparency. Should the public know the name of every spy? That was a crazy idea.

  None of that mattered right now. “I wish I could tell you more about what happened or who hit me, but I don’t remember.” A sudden thought broke through the fog. “Is the professor okay?”

  Will Griffin pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’m afraid the professor was found dead at his cabin.”

  “What?” Her mouth dropped in horror. “How is that possible?” Another terrible thought entered her mind. “Oh, my God. You don’t think I did it, do you?” Was that why Hunt wasn’t here? He thought she was a killer? Again?

  “Honestly?” Will’s dark brown eyes held hers and she didn’t look away. “I don’t know exactly what happened.”

  “You think I killed the professor and hit myself with a rock.” She couldn’t hide the bitterness in her voice.

  “Did you?”

  She pulled a face and tentatively touched the tender area of her scalp. “I’d have faked it less realistically.” She didn’t care what the Fed believed. She tried to work out what might have happened. “So someone hit me and killed him. Or killed the professor and then I turned up before they’d left so they hit me over the head.” She frowned, trying to remember details but the harder she tried the more difficult it was to recall anything.

  “Don’t stress about this right now.”

  “Am I in danger?” Because this wasn’t the first time someone had tried to kill her lately and it was getting a bit old.

  He hesitated. “I don’t believe so.”

  She nodded slowly, trying but failing to make sense of it all. “Does this have something to do with Cindy’s death?”

  “Let’s just say you made us dig deeper into Ms. Resnick’s circumstances and see the possibility that maybe there was more to it than originally met the eye.”

  “I don’t understand.” He was speaking in riddles. Not telling her anything. “Are you saying you think Cindy was murdered now? What about Sally-Anne and the drug dealer?”

  Will climbed to his feet, obviously not about to confide. His lack of cooperation drove her crazy but she knew he had to be professional about his job. A bit like another federal agent she knew.

  “Hunt’s not coming, is he?” she asked quietly.

  Will hesitated. “If you care about him at all it would be better if you didn’t contact him again,” he said softly before leaving.

  The sharp sense of hurt was quickly squashed. It was nothing more than she’d expected.

  Ironic that the FBI were now doing what she’d asked them to from the start. And because of that Hunt would have to stay away.

  A wave of tears swept over her unexpectedly and she stared at the ceiling as they dripped down the sides of her face. She knew better than to let people get too close. God knew she’d been let down too many times to count.

  She couldn’t afford this sort of weakness.

  She clenched her fists into the blanket. Thank goodness she’d figured it out now, before she’d lost her heart to him. She swallowed and ignored the swell of fresh tears.

  Yeah, thank goodness.

  * * *

  Hunt paced outside the professor’s cabin. He wanted to go to Pip but he knew he couldn’t. Not yet. The cabin and grounds were crawling with Feds and men in spacesuits as if an alien invasion had begun.

  Jez Place had run the field testing equipment over the entire place and come up clean, but there were vials full of bone white powder in the refrigerator marked SAHCAM45-65. CDC had searched the professor’s laboratory at Blake and come out with both spores and something that looked like the vaccine.

  Again—nothing unexpected under the circumstances but only extensive tests would reveal whether or not they were the same as that being sold with the bioweapon.

  According to the lab notes CDC had found, Cindy had been testing her new super vaccine against the SAHCAM45-65 strain that Everson had presumably gotten from Grossman.

  According to those notes the vaccine had worked, which was the only good news in this shit-fest of disasters.

  CDC had run some preliminary tests on cell cultures infected with the weaponized Bacillus anthracis. The vaccine they’d replicated from the BLACKCOUD source looked promising. They needed to compare the composition of it directly to that of Cindy’s vaccine to confirm they were one and the same.

  Current theory was Professor Everson had tried to sell the anthrax and vaccine to make some fast money and also to increase the value of his patent. If an enemy nation had access to this type of bioweapon and its antidote, then you could be damned sure the U.S. would want to mass produce the vaccine, too.

  Hence, a big profit for the holders of the patent.

  Another agent from the Atlanta Field Office—Kevin Christian—came out of the cabin carrying a plastic evidence bag. Inside was the camera Hunt had noticed on the table near the professor’s body.

  Kevin turned the display to Hunt and pressed play. There on the screen was the video that had been sent to the FBI late last night.

  It was damning evidence.

  “You find the voice modifier anywhere?” Hunt asked.

  “Not yet. Suicide note on his laptop said he was sorry. It was extensive. Said he’d done terrible things, and everything got out of control. He’d killed Cindy to stop her submitting her thesis after he’d discovered the bioweapons arms deal was intercepted by the FBI. Tried to make it look like an overdose,” Kevin told him.

  “Prof figured it was only a matter of time before the CDC matched the anthrax source to SAHCAM45-65 and he knew Cindy wouldn’t keep quiet about the fact that he had it in his lab, or that her vaccine had been successful at combatting the disease.”

  So Pip had been right the whole time he’d been blowing her off.

  “Said he’d panicked and when the FBI started investigating Cindy’s death he’d tried to make it look like part of a string of drug deaths. He’d slept with Sally-Anne in the past and knew where she bought her drugs. He said he’d put it in her drink so she’d OD then called the dealer to meet him in a place they’d met before. Guy never saw it coming.”

  Hunt remembered the scene at Sally-Anne’s apartment. He’d done more than just feed her drugs. “That’s quite the note.”

  “Full confession.” Kevin nodded. “After that he talks about the fact he’d sent the video and infected the co-pilot—he didn’t say how or where—and finally he’d realized it would never end. Said he couldn’t carry on anymore. He knew the FBI would catch up with him eventually. Decided to take the easy way out.”

  Hunt had never figured putting a bullet in your own skull would be easy but he’d never been that desperate.

  He handed the camera back to Kevin who put it in a sealed evidence canister in the trunk of an evidence technician’s car.

  “You believe it?” Hunt asked.

  The guy shrugged. “It rings true. There’s motive. Increasing desperation as every act snowballed…”

  Hunt had spoken to the professor twice this week. So much for his instincts. “I need to talk to Pip.”

  Kevin shook his head. “She has to be questioned first and last I heard she was sleeping after an MRI.”

  The guy pre-empted Hunt’s next question.

  “MRI came back normal. She’s got a sore head but no brain bleed or permanent damage that they can ascertain. There’s blood on the base of Everson’s weapon we can try to match to West. The Glock is registered to Cindy Resnick by the way.”
<
br />   Shit. All the times Hunt had blown Pip off with her theories about Cindy’s death and it looked like she’d been right all along.

  “Hey, if she’s serious about you she’ll understand you need to do your job.” Kevin eyed him with subtle amusement.

  “The same way we’re always so understanding of the press doing their jobs,” Hunt said wryly.

  “Hah,” the agent laughed. “But you have to let the process work, else this situation will always hang over your head. She’s in the hospital. Give us time to clear her. How much trouble can she get into in the hospital?”

  “Knowing Pip? Plenty.” But Kevin was right. He had to play this by the book if he didn’t want it to mess up his career. The HRT at the FBI was all he’d ever wanted. Hunt let some of the tension ease out of him. Pip had to know how the process worked. Once the FBI had gathered all the evidence from the scene and questioned everyone involved independently he could go to her.

  Not until.

  If she cared about him at all she’d forgive him. If she didn’t…better to find out now before either of them got more involved. It had been a rough few days. They were crazy for getting involved at all.

  Kevin disappeared back inside and Hunt decided to head back to the city. He walked up to Cindy Resnick’s old SUV and climbed in. Pip’s purse was in the front seat.

  Hunt started driving and after a minute or so found himself in range of a cell tower. His phone started pinging with messages so he pulled over to check them.

  He called Hernandez back first, hooked up Bluetooth and carried on driving.

  “Although Everson said he was at a conference when the Resnick woman died,” the analyst told him, “he could have driven there and back to Nashville without anyone noticing.”

  “Any witnesses to say he was there?”

  “We’re questioning people but no one we talked to so far was with him that evening.”

  Hunt expelled a deep breath. Was it over? It seemed like it was over. The professor had tried to cover up his attempted illegal sale of a biological weapon by murdering the one person who’d be able to definitively link him to the strain. The connection to Cindy’s work would have come out as soon as her thesis was submitted and her papers published.

  He’d never have been caught if the FBI hadn’t intercepted the weapons sale.

  “Who kills three people to cover up committing a crime?”

  “Four if he did the widow. And what sort of person tries to sell a biological agent that could kill thousands of innocents to an enemy of the United States?” Hernandez swore colorfully, then sighed. “We’ll compare the ballistics of the bullets from the professor’s gun to those that killed the dealer.”

  He voiced what was bothering him. “Everything seems neatly packaged, except for a few loose ends…”

  He didn’t know but the adrenaline surge had come and gone and right now he was exhausted. Time to head back to Atlanta and write up his report. He needed to hold onto his patience until he was cleared to visit Pip. He had a feeling he owed her a very large apology.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Hunt jogged up the stairs to Bourne’s office, grateful not to get waylaid by other agents wanting to know what had happened at the professor’s house. What he really wanted was to go see Pip in the hospital, but instead his SAC wanted to see him. And, right now, he couldn’t reach out to her no matter how much he wanted to. Not yet. Not until they’d figured out exactly what had gone down there and how her friend might be involved in their investigation.

  He knocked on the door.

  “Come in.” Bourne looked up from a report he was reading. “Care to explain what the hell is going on.”

  Hunt told him exactly what had gone down at the professor’s house. The fact Hunt could talk about it without throwing up proved he was a professional, because the thought of how close Pip had come to death was gut churning. “All appearances suggest the professor could be the bioweapons supplier. It looks like he hit West on the head and then shot himself.”

  “So this journalist turns up at the moment the professor decides to end it all,” Bourne said, frowning. “And he gets pissed because she interrupts him and bumps her on the head? Why not shoot her, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Hunt said.

  “Maybe she’s involved. Maybe she’s the one selling anthrax.”

  Hunt widened his stance and crossed his arms. “She was seriously injured.”

  “She could have faked it. Killed the professor, knocked herself on the head with a rock.”

  The SAC hadn’t seen the amount of blood she’d lost, Hunt reminded himself, holding on to his anger. “There was nothing near the body with blood on it. I don’t see how she could have knocked herself out and got rid of the weapon.”

  Bourne stood and paced. “She could have hit herself just hard enough to split the skin and tossed the rock.”

  “Evidence techs think she was hit with the butt of the Glock the professor used to kill himself,” said Hunt patiently.

  “Did they find her blood inside the professor’s cabin?”

  Hunt shook his head. “They haven’t had time to analyze the blood stains yet, sir.”

  “So it is possible?” Bourne pushed.

  “And what? She offs the professor, hits herself on the head hard enough to bleed, copiously by the way, and then just went and laid down on the ground outside in the hopes we’d turn up? She had no way of knowing anyone would find her anytime soon.” He hadn’t told Pip where he was going or what he was doing today. Last time he’d seen her, before finding her injured, had been when he’d followed her back to the hotel that morning.

  Bourne stared at him hard. “You know we have to look at all possibilities, no matter how improbable, right Kincaid?”

  Hunt grudgingly nodded. Of course, they did. “West has been hounding me from day one to look more closely into her friend’s death and even ordered a second autopsy. She was staking out her friend’s ex-boyfriends trying to figure out where Cindy got the cocaine when all the time we were insisting it was accidental drowning complicated by an overdose and trying to get her to let it go.” Hunt forced himself to keep his voice calm.

  Bourne sat back down in his chair. “I agree, the fact that she’s the one who demanded the second autopsy works in her favor, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have a different motive we haven’t explored. And I think the fact that you can’t see that means your objectivity where West is concerned is compromised.”

  Hunt gritted his teeth over what he wanted to say.

  “She and the professor could have been working together and she might have worried they were close to getting caught. Maybe he’s the one who shot at you yesterday? Maybe she tried to wheedle her way into the investigation by coming on to you.”

  Shit. Even though Hunt didn’t believe Pip had deliberately tried to get close to him—and it was virtually impossible to get physically closer than they’d been last night—bad guys often insinuated themselves into investigations.

  SAC Bourne’s face set into stern lines. “What about this?”

  His boss turned his computer monitor towards Hunt. The online headline screamed “FBI and CDC probe suspicious deaths of bioweapon experts.”

  “Even if West isn’t involved in the BLACKCLOUD investigation this headline probably persuaded the professor that it was all over. His threatening video hadn’t worked and it was only a matter of time until he was exposed.”

  “I don’t believe Pip leaked any information to the press.”

  Bourne scratched his head and Hunt knew he was totally doubting Hunt’s objectivity.

  “Where’d the professor film the video he sent last night?” Hunt pushed.

  “We don’t know.” Bourne admitted.

  “How’d he infect the co-pilot?” asked Hunt.

  “Still under investigation.” Bourne leaned back in his chair and Hunt spotted the exhaustion marking the man’s features. “We might never know now. The prime architect of this s
cheme appears to be dead. We don’t know if he had stockpiles of anthrax or successfully sold off any other batches. Maybe he’s sent packages in the mail. Maybe he’s got some unknown accomplice who will release it from the top of a tall building in some major metropolitan area. But we won’t know until it’s too late now because he shot himself after someone leaked the story to the press and the heat was too much to bear. But hey,” the SAC smiled without it touching his eyes, “at least the press has a great headline.”

  Shit. “Am I off the case?” Hunt asked, keeping his spine ramrod straight.

  “Should you be?”

  Hunt swallowed tightly. “I am involved with Pip West. I should probably remove myself from the BLACKCLOUD investigation.” The loud explosion was his career imploding—all for a woman who might never want to see him again.

  “Did you lie to me or just deliberately disobey orders, Agent Kincaid?”

  “I never lied to you, sir. I do not believe Pip is guilty of anything except trying to discover the truth about her friend.” Talking back to his SAC was probably going to get him in more trouble but damned if he wasn’t going to defend himself after working his balls off.

  Bourne crossed his arms and looked down at his large desk. “You’re probably right, but we are playing this by the book. You’re back on the white-collar squad. I will probably need to talk to the Office of Professional Responsibility about this.”

  Hunt’s gut squeezed but fuck it, he hadn’t done anything wrong and he didn’t believe Pip had either. He refused to plead his case.

  The worst thing about this whole scenario was all the hard work they’d put in and they were still unsure as to the extent of this bioweapon threat and clueless as to whether or not the danger was over. But Hunt was off the investigation so he couldn’t even help figure it out. Not his business. Not anymore. It was over.

  * * *

  Pip woke to darkness, but there was enough ambient light from the muted TV to see Hunt sprawled asleep in the uncomfortable looking chair beside her bed. Her heart clenched at the sight of his ruffled hair and scruff covered jaw.