When her uncle followed her gaze, Davis’s expression shifted into something more neutral. “I found those numbers you wanted.”
Her uncle looked back at her, and Leila tried not to let her smile falter. “Never mind, Uncle Joel. It’s nothing.”
His hand didn’t leave her arm. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” She turned and followed Davis back toward her office, fully aware that her uncle didn’t believe her.
Even worse, Davis had clearly realized what she had been about to do. If he’d been lying to her before, what were the chances he’d give her any real information ever again?
* * *
LEILA PETROV HAD almost blown his entire investigation.
Davis tried to hold back his fury as Leila followed him into her office and shut the door behind her. As soon as it was closed, he whirled around to face her, ready to lecture her about all the reasons she should want to keep his secret. Not the least of which was keeping her out of jail.
Right before he blurted that out, he got control of his anger. Admonishing Leila wasn’t going to help. He’d already lost his cool with her earlier, blaming her for what had happened. That was probably what had made her seek out her uncle in the first place. If he compounded it now, he was the one who was going to blow the investigation. Along with it, he’d blow his chance to prove himself at TCD, and his chance to get justice for Jessica.
He took a few deep, measured breaths the way he used to do right before leaving on a ranger mission. His body recognized the cue and his heart rate slowed immediately.
“So, you found something in the ledger?” Leila asked.
Her chin was tipped up, her jaw tight, her gaze defying him to call her on what he’d overheard. On what he knew she’d been about to do.
“No. I said that to get you out of there. This is a secret investigation, Leila. The FBI could have sent anyone undercover here. Maybe they should have sent someone you wouldn’t have recognized, someone who could dig into the company without sharing a thing with you.”
Standing so close to her, he actually heard her nervous swallow, saw her blink rapidly a few times.
Good. She should be nervous.
“We didn’t try to hide what we were doing from you. TCD chose to bring me in because we believed you were innocent. We believed you’d help us find the truth for those soldiers who were killed.”
“You believed—” she started.
He cut her off before she could scoff at his statement about her innocence. He didn’t want to get into the technicalities with her. He did believe she’d had nothing to do with the faulty armor and the illegal guns. But he also believed that was no excuse not to know what was happening in the company she ran.
“I understand that you trust your uncle, but then maybe he tells someone he trusts and that person does the same. Faster than you think, our chance to catch this person—and potentially save your company—is gone.”
Leila blew out a loud breath. The proud, angry tilt to her chin was gone. So was the defiant look in her eyes, replaced by wariness and something else.
It took him longer than it should have to realize the other thing he saw was guilt.
He’d put that there. The thought made him hate himself and his job just a little. It was easy to believe that someone who ran a company should know everything that happened in it, take responsibility for all of it. It was another to see someone as honest and diligent as Leila suffer because she hadn’t caught a criminal inside her organization.
Should she have really been able to do that? Or was that his job?
The unexpected thought deflated the last of his anger.
“Look, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I was out of line.” Davis wasn’t entirely sure what he believed right now, but one thing he knew: Leila would never intentionally let anyone get hurt. “I knew one of the soldiers.”
Leila’s lips formed a small O and she blinked again, this time as moisture filled her eyes.
“She was a friend of mine,” Davis continued, not sure why he was sharing this with Leila, but suddenly wanting her to know. “Jessica Carpenter. She was the one running that video footage, probably for training purposes. She was a single mom of three. Those little kids are all alone in the world now. Jessica was a great person. Strong, smart, willing to put up with all the crap that comes along with being a woman in a powerful role where too many men think it should only be for them.”
He paused, realizing Leila fit that description, too.
Shaking the thought away, he continued. “I’m here right now for Jessica. Whatever it takes, I need to get the truth. No matter who you think you can trust with inside information about our investigation, if I think you’re going to tell someone who I really am, that’s it. I’m out and the FBI is coming in with warrants to take this place apart.”
Leila stared back at him with a mixture of horror, sadness and anger, and he realized that just as he’d gotten her trust back, he’d ruined it again with a threat. Why couldn’t he find the right balance with her? Why couldn’t he be like Kane Bradshaw, step into whatever persona would get the job done, and to hell with real honesty? To hell with anyone’s feelings?
“I don’t—”
He wasn’t sure what she was about to say, but he didn’t let her finish the thought. There was only one way to remedy the mess he’d made of his connection with Leila. That was to be more honest with her, so she’d think she could trust him. So she wouldn’t feel like she needed to go to someone else for advice.
“Your dad...” He’d planned to tell her that someone connected to the defective armor had killed her father, but what if he was wrong? What if it was just a botched mugging and he gave her extra grief over nothing?
“What?” Leila asked, anxiety in her voice that told him she’d recognized he was about to say something serious.
“What I was going to say is that the defective armor isn’t the only problem right now. Even when your dad was CEO, there was something illegal happening.”
“What?” Leila’s voice dropped to a whisper. She shifted her feet, widening her stance like she was preparing for a physical blow.
“Someone at Petrov Armor has been selling guns to criminals for a long time.”
Chapter Ten
The old construction site where Dougie’s BECA connection had wanted to meet was the kind of place where you shot someone and left their body to be found weeks or months later.
Adding to the ominous vibe was the sun setting, casting eerie shadows everywhere. Kane leaned casually against a half-standing wall, not putting any real weight on it in case only gravity was keeping it upright. Dougie’s connection was picking his way through the abandoned pieces of building, thinking he was being stealthy. Playing along as if he hadn’t spotted the guy—or his armed backup—Kane made a show of checking his watch and frowning.
It was almost twenty minutes past the scheduled meet time. Kane had been watched from the moment he’d parked his car off the side of the road and picked his way by foot down to the construction site. It was a smart spot for a meet, deserted and easy to watch all possible access points. It was the kind of place a smart agent wouldn’t come alone.
As his contact finally showed himself, Kane offered a cocky grin. He’d been in worse spots dozens of times. If he had to rely on his own ability to spin a good story or someone else to keep him safe and stay out of trouble themselves, he’d choose to go in alone every time. It was probably why he was still alive.
“Guess you’re Kane Bullet, huh?” the guy asked, looking him over. “What kind of name is that?”
Kane kept his irreverent grin in place, didn’t step forward to greet the guy. “The kind I gave myself.”
The man laughed. He was blond and blue-eyed, wearing tattered jeans and a T-shirt that read Armed and Dangerous on the front. With his overmuscular build, the guy’s lo
ose clothes still didn’t hide that at least the first part of that statement was true. The bulge of a holster was clearly visible at his hip.
“So, Dougie says you had some trouble in Vegas, wanted to start over in Tennessee?”
“Yeah.” Kane shrugged, stepped slightly away from the half-standing wall. He kept his hands loose at his sides, not wanting to give the guy—or his backup—any reason to get twitchy.
“I looked up those fires. Nasty business.”
Kane spewed the kind of offhand hate he knew the BECA member would eat up. “If they didn’t want to get burned out, they should have left on their own.”
The guy laughed again, a grating sound that would have made Kane grit his teeth hard if he weren’t in character. Right now, he wasn’t Kane Bradshaw. That person was buried deep, beneath a layer of filth he called Kane Bullet.
So, instead he let his grin shift into something nastier, filled with determination and fury. “There was more I wanted to do in Vegas, but you know, I can’t be useful if I’m locked up. So, I skipped town before they got too close.”
The guy’s humor dried up. “Your friend said it was a close call.” His eyes narrowed, as if he was trying to read from Kane’s expression whether the cops were tracking him down as they spoke.
Kane rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. The way those pigs like to brag, don’t you think it would have been all over the papers if they had a real lead? Instead, nothing but ‘we’re still investigating’ and ‘we won’t stop looking’ BS. I knew it was time to get out, but I did it before they could get a lead on me. Don’t worry, man. I wouldn’t bring my heat on you. I’m looking to make friends, not enemies.”
The man visibly relaxed. “Well, that’s good, because we deal with betrayal real quick.”
“Not a problem. What do I have to betray, anyway? All I’m looking for is a hookup. Maybe Dougie told you, but I’d gotten a gun connection out here and it dried up.” He scowled again, then took a risk. “Had myself a potential in with Petrov Armor, but ever since that idiot CEO shut down the legal side of their gun business, apparently things have been a little dry on the not-so-legal side of it, too.”
The guy stiffened fast, then seemed to forcibly pull his shoulders away from his ears. He cracked his neck in both directions, then gave a tight smile. “Really?”
The hairs on the back of Kane’s neck popped up, telling him he’d made a mistake. But what? Had they been wrong and Leila was actually involved? Even though Davis’s judgment was clearly trashed when it came to her, Kane didn’t think he was wrong about this. Had the intel about the BECA connection been bad? If so, this was a waste of time. Maybe not for the FBI, for future information, but for him with this case.
The guy reached into his pocket and Kane tensed, but when he pulled his hand out, he was holding a phone. He typed something, then tucked it away again. “Who was that contact?”
Kane tried to backtrack without raising suspicion. “Look, maybe my contact was screwing with me from the start. But I’m no rat. I can’t give up his name, you know? But it sounds like he was more talk than action. I just don’t know people in Tennessee the way I did in Vegas. That’s why I looked up Dougie.”
The guy nodded, but his eyes were still narrowed, his tone slightly off. “Hard to trust people you don’t know, right?”
Kane pretended not to catch the double meaning. “Guess not. But I’ve heard enough about BECA to know I can trust you. Hopefully, you’ve seen enough of my work to know we’re on the same side.”
Finally the guy seemed to relax again. “So what new work are you planning? Guns are a long way from fire-setting.”
Kane made his tone hard and serious. “Same goal, different method. Plus cops got too good at connecting my fires in Vegas. I figured it was time to switch things up.”
“I hear you. Gotta keep ’em on their toes, right?” The guy stared for a minute, and when Kane didn’t break eye contact, he finally smiled. “I think we can help you out.”
“Honey!”
The too-high-pitched, feminine voice made Kane’s gut clench, filling him with fear he hadn’t felt in a long time. When he turned around, already knowing who it was, his eyes felt like they were going to bug right out of his head.
Melinda was picking her way through the demolition mess in a pair of heels that were dangerously high, wearing a tiny dress so skintight that no one would ever consider she could be hiding a weapon.
A million swear words lodged in his brain as she reached his side and looped an arm through his.
“I got so worried about you,” she whined, her expression more vapid than he would have ever imagined too-smart Melinda could have pulled off. Maybe it was the makeup she’d plastered all over her face, disguising her natural beauty.
She was playing a role the FBI had given its female agents for decades, that of clingy, jealous girlfriend. It worked especially well in Mob cases, where the targets didn’t let females into their ranks, but commonly offered prostitutes to new recruits. Saying no meant losing trust. Unless you had a girlfriend by your side. The added bonus was that particular jealous woman would be an undercover federal agent trained in close-quarters combat.
But in this case, it was the exact wrong move.
Even before he turned back to face his contact, he knew the guy had pulled his gun.
Melinda let out a giggle. “Hey, chill. I’m just checking on my man. I track his phone.” She stroked his arm, making his muscles jump with anxiety.
The contact gave Melinda a quick once-over, then settled his hard gaze on Kane. “You hate Asians so much, you burn them out of their businesses, but then you date one?”
He felt Melinda’s fingers spasm on his arm as she realized what she’d done.
He’d purposely misled her, focused on how Dougie’s connection only knew someone at BECA, not that he could get Kane a meeting with an actual member. She probably thought she was busting in on a meet that was solely about weapons, not truly connected to the racist hate spewed by BECA.
The guy lifted his gun and aimed it at Kane’s forehead. “You know what? You try to fool me?” He smiled and shifted the weapon to point at Melinda. “You can watch her die before I kill you.”
* * *
“SOMEONE AT PETROV ARMOR has been selling guns to criminals for a long time.”
Davis’s words haunted Leila as she strode away from the office as fast as she could. Her low heels made a satisfying click with every step, giving her something to focus on, to keep her from screaming in denial or frustration.
Who had they inadvertently let into their company who’d used it for their own gain? Who’d gone against the very reason her dad had formed the company in the first place? To protect soldiers. Not to aid killing.
The feeling of anger and betrayal built up until it felt like a ball of lead in her chest and she kept walking, trying to get control of her emotions. She veered away from the route that would take her toward town, toward people who might see her or even worse, try to talk to her.
It was already dusk, the time when Old City started shifting from window-shopping tourists to evening bar-hoppers. But the other direction was quiet, peaceful. Filled with old trees and a beautiful, fast-moving river. A good place to think about all the things she’d done wrong. All the things she could never undo.
She’d left Davis with a barely coherent excuse about needing to use the ladies’ room. He probably thought she was still in there, trying to get herself together. But what she’d really needed was to get out. To get away from everyone and everything.
In the past three weeks, the only times she’d been alone was at night, at home after work. Time she spent hoping to sleep, but instead all she could do was try not to weep in grief or anger over her father’s death. During the day, she’d surrounded herself with the business, with reassuring the people who worked for her, with trying to keep it all going
, make everyone believe she was still capable.
And what for? The whole time, someone had been betraying her. It was far worse than a single batch of defective armor, a single tragedy. For all she knew, guns made at Petrov Armor and purposely put in the hands of criminals had caused hundreds or thousands of tragedies over the years.
She was responsible. Her father, too. Neither of them had seen it. Neither of them had even suspected something that terrible had been happening.
How had it happened?
Her pace slowed until she was standing still on the center of a walking bridge. She stared out over the murky water, stepping close to the edge. There was only a low railing that looked like it should have been replaced years ago. It would be easy to just step off and let that fast-moving water take away all her troubles.
Except she wasn’t that person anymore. It was still her company, still her responsibility. She wasn’t going to walk away from it, even if it destroyed her. Even if it destroyed her father’s legacy.
She was going to help Davis find the person responsible. She was going to make sure they paid for it.
Davis hadn’t told her how long the illegal gun sales had been going on exactly, but it was more than five years, if it had been happening during her dad’s time as CEO, too. Gun manufacturing had always been a separate part of the business from body armor. Yes, there was a certain overlap, but very few lower-level employees would have had access to both sides of the business. And the number of employees who’d been there long enough would dwindle, too.
Leila sighed, realizing that what was terrible for her company—and her conscience—was probably good for the investigation. It narrowed the suspect pool a lot.
It was probably someone she trusted. Someone she’d known for a long time. Someone who’d been to her father’s house over the years. Maybe even someone she’d cried with at her father’s funeral.
The thought made her hands ball into fists. How could someone do this to her father? To her? To all the soldiers who’d been killed and whoever else had been hurt that Leila didn’t even know about yet?
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 10