“So what you’re now telling me is that you stupidly grabbed the Doyle woman without permission, then you allowed her to escape, you twice lost someone who was in her house and now you’re being visited by an FBI agent who may or may not be on to your activities.” There was no mistaking the sarcasm. “Does that about sum it up?”
Frank was unable to keep the uneasiness out of his voice. “You’re making it sound like a lot more than it is. There’s no way she could identify me. She was blindfolded. And as for Joe…well, we go back a ways. It’s not like some stranger from the FBI showing up at my office and interrogating me.”
“She had to pull off that blindfold when she got loose and made her escape. She could have seen you then.”
“No. I was inside paying for the gas.”
“If she’s gone to the FBI with this, then there’s no way you’ll be able to contain it and make it go away even with the agent being someone you know personally.”
Frank put as much confidence into his voice as he could muster. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Joe didn’t ask me any specific questions about anything. We talked for a few minutes and set a racquetball game for day after tomorrow at four o’clock. It was purely social, nothing more.”
“You’d better be right, Frank. If not, well…I don’t need to tell you what the consequences could be.”
Frank terminated the conversation as quickly as possible, then returned to the problem he had been working on for the last twenty-four hours—tracking down the owner of the SUV that his man had chased from Brandi’s house. It had been a frustrating search with lots of dead ends, but he knew he had to keep at it. The license plate was his only lead to the identity of the man helping Brandi.
Most likely the same man he had fought with the second night.
LYLE HANOVER’S INTERCOM buzzed. A moment later, Joe Hodges entered the assistant district attorney’s office. Lyle rose from behind his desk and extended his hand.
“Joe—this is a pleasant surprise. What brings you here?”
“Just a social call. I’m here on another matter and thought I’d stop by and say hello to you and Frank. I just left his office.”
“How’s Frank doing? We used to occasionally get in a game of racquetball, but not any more.”
“That’s too bad. I thought you and Frank were personal friends in addition to working together.”
“We are, but we’ve each been really busy lately and haven’t had an opportunity to get together socially. He’s in the building just next door, but it seems that the only time I see him anymore is when it’s a police matter and a case we’re involved with.”
“How’s Frank doing? Any personal problems that you’re aware of? I’ve been hearing rumblings about his performance lately, lack of attention to details, that type of thing. I’d hate to see something sidetrack such a promising career.”
A quick flash of trepidation crossed Lyle’s face that he quickly covered with a look of surprise. “Really? I haven’t heard anything of that type and I’m right next door. I can’t imagine who would be saying such things. Where would the FBI have been hearing such rumors?”
“It’s probably nothing, just idle gossip—some second-hand information that apparently became garbled in the telling.”
Lyle glanced at his watch. “It’s almost noon. Are you available for lunch?”
“As it happens, I am. I have a field interview to conduct, but that’s not until two o’clock. This will give us a chance to catch up. It’s been six months since I was at your house for dinner. How are Margie and your two boys? If memory serves, the oldest one should be graduating high school next month.”
“Yes, and he’s been accepted to Harvard. It’s going to cost a fortune, but it will be worth it when he gets that diploma.”
The conversation at lunch settled on past cases they had been involved in, family matters and the current depiction of law enforcement in the movies and on tele vision. They parted company at the entrance to the courthouse with Joe heading for his car and Lyle returning to his office.
An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of Lyle’s stomach. It had been a strange meeting. Despite Joe’s friendliness, there hadn’t been any apparent reason for Joe Hodges’s stopping by his office other than to try and solicit information about Frank James. He tried to dismiss it from his mind and returned his attention to the business of the day. He was prosecuting a case and needed to be in court first thing in the morning.
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN Frank grabbed the phone and hit the speed-dial button. A moment later the man he answered to was on the phone. “I finally broke through the impressive array of obstacles on that car license plate from night before last. You’re not going to like this. The car is registered to none other than Reece Covington.”
The shock surrounded his words. “Reece Covington? Damn! That spells big trouble. How the hell did Brandi Doyle ever hook up with Reece? Are you aware of any existing connection between them before he went to prison?”
“I can’t find anything that says she knew him even casually. I was finally able to take him down using Cindy Thatcher’s talents, but he’s much too shrewd for it to happen again. And this time he’ll want his revenge. He’ll be out for blood.” There was now no doubt in Frank’s mind that the man he had fought with inside Brandi’s house was Reece Covington, and the slight twinge in his arm told him Reece had already drawn the first blood of revenge.
“Do you think he knows that you’re involved?”
Frank took a steadying breath. He knew he had gotten himself into a bad spot. His boss was already unhappy with him. Did he dare admit to the personal encounter with Reece? He knew the answer to that one.
“I don’t know how he could. Brandi didn’t see me, so there’s no way for Reece to know.”
“Were you able to run down where he’s living? That might be where the Doyle woman is hiding.”
“No. The vehicle is three years old. He bought it new before going to prison. He paid cash so there’s no financial institution involved. The registration was hidden behind a wall of dummy corporations. It took some digging before I even came up with his name in connection to any of it. The vehicle had to be stored somewhere while he was gone, so I suppose it could be in someone else’s possession now even though Reece is out of prison. It’s possible that it wasn’t even Reece behind the wheel.”
“But not too likely?”
Frank chose to ignore the insinuation. “The addresses don’t lead anywhere. I also did a check on utilities and property tax. Nothing shows up in his name or in the name of any of the corporations used on the vehicle. He’s done a masterful job of covering his trail.”
“Knowing Reece Covington, I would have been disappointed at anything less. One thing for sure, you’ll need to be extra cautious. It’s possible that he has already figured out that the pictures hold the key to what is causing the Doyle woman’s troubles, but if he stumbles onto why they are important he’ll dig in until he gets what he wants. He’s tenacious in that regard. So you’d better be right about having gotten all the negatives and prints.”
Frank sat at his desk, the phone receiver still in his hand and the loud dial tone telling him the person he had been talking to had hung up—a person whose final words carried full authority along with an implied threat. A nervous anxiety churned in the pit of his stomach. Just how much trouble could Reece stir up?
Officially, Reece Covington was a private investigator who had lost his license when he was convicted of a crime and sent to prison for two years. Would anyone seriously take the word of a convicted felon over that of a decorated police lieutenant? And without the pictures, Reece didn’t have any proof—even if he did have suspicions.
Frank drew in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. He replaced the phone receiver in the cradle. He felt a little better. But was he only fooling himself?
REECE WOKE WITH A START that morning. The strangest dream had been playing through his mind for what seemed like
hours, but he couldn’t recall any of the details other than he knew it had to do with Brandi and the danger surrounding them. He quickly glanced around as if needing to get his bearings so that he could center himself in the day’s reality. His bedroom door was closed. Brandi was most likely still asleep.
He grabbed a quick shower and dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. He headed for the kitchen and started the coffee before doing anything else.
As soon as the coffee was ready, he poured himself a mug and carried it out to the front porch. It had been nearly three o’clock that morning when they had finally called it a night and retired to their respective sleeping arrangements.
Sleep had not come easily for Reece. There had been too many things running through his mind, not the least of which was how much he would rather have been in his own bed with Brandi. That was a thought he knew he didn’t dare dwell on. There were far more important items on the day’s agenda…a day that was already off to a late start.
He had to discover exactly what it was that Frank James was after, and how Brandi had ended up on his bad side. And Reece needed to thwart Frank’s attempts to get at her. Reece also had to expose Frank James for what he was, along with identifying Frank’s colleagues and whomever it was that he reported to. It was a tall order.
Reece continued to turn the possibilities over in his mind as he sipped his coffee. Who were the most likely candidates to be the person Frank reported to? The big shot of his criminal operation?
“Good morning.” Brandi’s voice cut into his thoughts.
He turned as she stepped out onto the porch. “I see you found the coffee.”
“Yes.” She took a sip from her mug. “The aroma sent me straight to the kitchen.”
“I suppose we’d better get something to eat, then settle down to business.”
They compromised on brunch rather than breakfast or lunch. After they ate, he checked his e-mail. He got the information from Brandi so he could pull up her e-mail, too. He called to her.
“Take a look at these. Two of them have attachments.”
She leaned over his shoulder and read the information on the computer screen. She pointed to the second one. “That one is from my agent.”
He opened the e-mail, printed it off, then downloaded the attached zip file. It contained a dozen photographs. He put all twelve of them up on the screen as thumbnail images. He turned toward Brandi, who stood behind him.
“Are these your photographs? The ones you sent to your agent? She sent twelve pictures as a zip file attachment to her e-mail. Is that how many pictures you sent to her?”
“According to the file copy of the cover letter I sent along with the photos, I referenced twelve identification numbers from negatives. That should be all of them.” She squinted at the small images. “As I said, just beauty shots…pretty scenery. I tried to capture light and shadow contrast, interesting juxtaposition, striking weather patterns. I can’t imagine what could be there that would be some kind of a threat to anyone or warrant someone coming after me and stealing my pictures. They’re the same type of pictures that anyone else could have taken. The locations weren’t difficult to get to. It wasn’t like I had to hike through miles of wilderness to find that specific spot. I came across them while driving down various back roads, but nothing so rugged that an ordinary car couldn’t navigate it with ease.”
“I’m going to print out a hard copy of each picture, then we’ll check every one on screen by zooming in on each grid section of the image. If we see anything that seems out of the ordinary, we’ll crop that specific section and print it.”
He worked for the next several hours, first printing out each picture in the largest size possible for his printer and the best quality available, then slowly and meticulously going over each photograph on the computer monitor, inch by inch. It was the eleventh photograph before he spotted anything out of the ordinary.
“What’s this? It looks like some people in the background of the shot.” He turned to face her. “Are you aware that you took a picture with people in the background?”
“Yes, but they were so far away that they weren’t recognizable. I thought they brought some interesting definition to the scene, an added dynamic. There’s this beautiful water setting, serene and peaceful and seemingly out in the middle of nowhere, with four unidentified people enjoying the afternoon at the lake and the wonders of nature. A moment of man and nature coming together in harmony.”
He cocked his head and shot her a quizzical look. “Four people? There are only three people in this photograph.” He quickly clicked on the next picture, the last one of the twelve and the same locale, and zoomed in on the same area of the background. “There are only three people in the background of this picture, too.” He turned to her. “Are you sure there were four people present?”
“Yes, I’m sure. My first thought was two couples, possibly on a picnic. Then I realized that it was three men and one woman. I wasn’t close enough to really see what they looked like, and since I wasn’t using a telephoto lens I knew they wouldn’t be recognizable in the photograph, either.”
She wrinkled her brow in a moment of confusion. “Are you sure you don’t see four people? There wasn’t a car, at least not that I could see, so I don’t know where the fourth person could have gone.”
“Let me give this a closer look. Maybe one of the trees is obscuring the view of the fourth person. Right now I’ve zoomed in as far as I can on that section and still have a viable image,” Reece explained. “I’ll try to enhance and fix the pictures so that the faces of the people are recognizable, but I don’t know how much I’ll be able to manipulate them on this computer with this software. We might need to have your agent rescan them using a much higher resolution, so we can blow them up larger and still retain the sharp definition we need in order to see an identifiable face.”
“Do you want me to call her now?”
He turned the thought over in his mind. “Yes. I think only these two pictures with the people in the background need to be rescanned immediately. I’d like for her to do all of them, but if she can do these two right now and send them immediately it will be very helpful. If possible, it would be great if she could do the rest of them tonight and send them in the morning. Here—” he jotted some numbers and letters on a piece of paper “—these are her file names on the two pictures I want rescanned.”
Brandi made the phone call while Reece continued to work with the images. He worked with the two photographs for almost an hour before shoving back from his desk. He shook his head in frustration.
“We need those rescanned images. There just isn’t enough detail here to work with. I can’t bring the people in clear enough to be recognizable.”
Brandi glanced at her watch. “My agent said she could rescan the two photographs and send them by seven o’clock tonight. They should be here pretty soon.”
The ringing sound interrupted their conversation. He grabbed the cell phone from the desk, checked the caller I.D., but didn’t recognize the number. It was finally the fourth ring before he decided to answer it.
“Yes?”
“Reece? It’s Joe. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No…not at all. Did you come up with anything on Frank?”
“Sorry. I’ve checked our files and made a couple of discreet inquiries of friends in other federal agencies and there just isn’t anything. I kept getting the same answer. No one ever heard of Frank James. He’s an unknown person in federal circles except for a couple of people assigned to the local Seattle office.”
“Are you sure? Nothing at all? Not even a whisper?”
“As I mentioned when we had lunch, I’ve only met him once in passing so I don’t have any firsthand knowledge about him. I could ask a few more questions if you’d like, but I don’t think I’m going to come up with anything different. He’s apparently just another local cop with nothing special to set him apart from any other. Sorry I couldn’t find anything speci
fic for you. What does this do to your friend’s problem?”
“I’m not sure.” Reece quickly finished the call, not wanting to stay connected any longer than absolutely necessary.
He pulled Brandi into his arms. “That was Joe Hodges. He claims no one in federal circles even knows Frank, let alone having any information about him floating around.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m glad I decided not to mention your name or give him any specifics about what’s been happening.” He tried to shake away the sense of foreboding that jittered through his body. Had he made a big miscalculation in contacting Joe? Had he been away from the game long enough that he had lost his edge? One thing he did know for sure, he couldn’t afford any more slipups. Brandi’s life was at stake.
“Why didn’t you tell him about the bullet and the shell casing? Weren’t you planning to send them to him to check against unsolved crimes using that type of gun?”
“Yes, that was my intention. But I think I’d like to give it a little more thought before I do anything. I’ve got an uneasy twinge gnawing at me and I’m not sure what it means.”
He checked Brandi’s e-mail. A feeling of relief washed over him when he saw that the rescanned pictures were there. He downloaded them. This time he knew exactly what he was looking for. He zoomed in on the section of the first picture that contained the people. He cropped that area, then printed just the grouping of the people as a full-page print. Then he did the same thing to the second picture. He picked up the large print of the cropped section of the first photograph. He grabbed a magnifying glass and studied the enlarged image of the people under the direct light from his desk lamp.
His breath froze in his lungs and his voice died in his throat. He dropped the photograph on the desk and set the magnifying glass next to it. It was a moment before he could force out the words. “I don’t believe it.”
“What did you see?”
He handed the photograph and magnifying glass to Brandi. “Take a look. See anyone you recognize?”
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