by Lexi Blake
It was probably just an oversight. Files got lost sometimes. Though not typically in the computer age.
Kristen winced a little as she moved to one of Adam’s three computers. “May I?”
Adam nodded, not looking up from his keyboard. “Sure. I’m going to hack into the fed’s system. It could take me a minute or two. I’m going to route this system through another fifty so they’ll have a hell of a time working the knot out. I don’t want the feds on my doorstep.”
“Don’t you mean you don’t want them on your doorstep again?” Sean asked as he placed a perfectly golden sandwich in front of her.
Damn. She was hungry. Despite the way her every instinct was telling her something was wrong, her stomach rumbled. “I thought Adam didn’t get caught anymore.”
Adam shrugged. “There’s always a way. No matter what a hacker does, if the investigator is tenacious enough, he’ll find you. I just have to make it not worth their while.”
“Shit.” Kristen groaned as she looked down at the computer. “That will teach me to do all my research from government files. I pulled up the press on the last bombing. There she is. Carmen Garcia. Twenty-two years old. Pretty girl. She was a law student at Georgetown.”
“That’s right. I always thought it was odd that she was in that clinic. Her parents had money. She wasn’t a scholarship student. She was from a fairly prominent family in San Antonio,” Eve said. She hadn’t fit the typical profile. Most of the victims were doctors or nurses or indigent women, women who had no other means of health care. “She would have to drive a long way to get to that particular clinic.”
“She had a history of volunteer work,” Kristen mused. “Maybe she was helping out.”
“Her volunteer work all had to do with legal work and politics. The survivors didn’t remember ever seeing her there before, and all the paperwork was lost in the fire. She had to be identified by dental records.”
“I’m in.” Adam got that focused look he had when he was working on a problem. This was Adam’s world. Oh, he could shoot and wield a knife with the rest of them, but when Adam was at a computer, his magnificent brain processing, that was when he was at his deadliest.
Sean put a second plate in front of Adam, proving that most of their animosity was for show. Or that Sean couldn’t resist showing off because that was an amazing grilled cheese. Eve bit into hers and couldn’t help but sigh. The man could cook. “As Kris would say, I didn’t even poison it. Do you want fries with yours? You have a couple of potatoes I could fry up.”
His eyes were hooded, a little wary, as he looked at Kristen, who shook her head slightly. “Nope. Just the sandwich, but brown bag it for me, please. Lugging Jersey Carl’s corpse around made me a little queasy. Maybe after I find a place to dump his body I’ll be ready for a snack. I was thinking of weighing him down a little and dumping him in the ocean. It’s a nice night for it. There should be a current around here, right?”
“I’ll check,” Sean said, obviously resigned to being her accomplice. “Do you have a boat?”
“I do not have a boat, but I do have two good hands with which to borrow one without the owner knowing, so the glass is truly half full. I’ll go clean up a little before we go. I know a little harbor down the road where the night guard is usually asleep by this point in time.”
Sean started to clean up the kitchen as Kristen walked off.
“Are you all right with this?” Eve asked. Sean was a dad now. He might not want to become an accomplice to probably justifiable murder.
Adam shook his head. “Has she done this before? Why would she know about when the night guard at a harbor sleeps? Is she Dexter?”
Eve snorted a little. “She’s not a serial killer.”
Sean shook his head. “I don’t think she is either, but she does seem to pay very close attention to her surroundings.”
“If she grew up in an abusive household, she very likely had to,” Eve mused. “But really, are you all right? I could wake up Alex and we could go with her.”
“Nah. I’d rather keep an eye on her. And I buy her story about Carl. I’ve only worked with the asshole for a week and I saw him harassing most of the waitresses. They’re afraid of him. The kitchen staff, too. I think he’s blackmailing some of the illegals, telling them he’ll call in immigration if they don’t turn over a cut to him. He was also carrying, so one less asshole we have to worry about. Maybe Chazz will lean more heavily on Alex now.” Sean glanced back toward the hall where Kristen had disappeared. “She knows more than she’s saying. One of us needs to get closer. She seems to like me.”
She remembered the last time Sean got close to a female involved in an operation. They had a baby together. “Sean, you can’t.”
He rolled his eyes. “God, Eve, I’m not going to seduce her. I might top her a little, though. You can do that without ever touching a woman. She’s hiding a lot behind her sarcasm. Maybe I can get her to open up a little, figure out what she’s really doing here. What’s wrong with you? I’m not the one who tries to screw around with women who don’t belong to him.”
Adam groaned. “I swear I would kill him if he wasn’t such a good cook. He has the memory of an elephant.” Adam’s eyes went wide. “Got it. I pulled the files straight from the feds. Sixteen. No Carmen Garcia. Could they have classified it? Why would they do that?”
Eve had absolutely no idea.
“Why are you up?” Alex asked, walking out of their bedroom wearing nothing but a pair of sweats. Adam could keep his perfectly cut suits. She loved Alex just the way he was. He didn’t need a suit to make her drool.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Nor could she help the little sigh that came out of her mouth. Such a lovely Master with his sleepy eyes and broad shoulders.
“Then I didn’t do my job. Come back to bed, angel.” He held his hand out. “I can’t sleep without you.”
And she just left everything. It would still be there in the morning. The fact that a file was missing was very likely a mistake on the government’s part.
“Did I miss anything?” Alex asked.
Eve filled Alex in. “Adam thinks he’s found Evans in New York. Kristen got a look at Chazz’s day planner and thinks Evans is going to be here the day after tomorrow. Oh, and Kristen killed a bouncer.”
“Was it Carl?” Alex asked, seeming perfectly fine with every single piece of news she’d given him.
“Yes.” She really should have paid more attention to Carl.
“Good for Kris. Who’s on corpse duty? Tell me she has the body.”
Kristen stepped out of the hallway. She’d changed her clothes and was now wearing all black. “Of course. I’m not a tourist. It’s in the back of my Navigator. Dude was heavy.”
“I’ll handle it, Alex,” Sean said.
“And I’m on Evans.” Adam was back to focusing on his computer. “I’m running some programs to see if I can figure out what name he’s using. Kristen had found about four of them. Hopefully he’s using one of those. We’ll get him. You and Eve get some rest.”
“So he’s really coming here?” Alex asked, his hand tightening on hers.
Kristen nodded. “I told you I would give him to you on a silver platter.”
“All right.” He turned and started leading Eve back to the bedroom.
“Alex?” She’d expected him to go into full-on commando mode, but he was walking away.
He pulled her into his arms. “No, Eve. No more talk about this. We’ll figure it out in the morning. We’ll sit down and talk it out. All right? I won’t leave you out of the decision-making process, but you have to know I’ll let his ass go if it’s a choice between hauling him in or you getting hurt again.”
He would choose her. Tears threatened again and she laid her head against his chest. She would always choose him. “Yes, Master.”
“Kiss me.”
She tilted her head up. The Master wasn’t done with her yet.
Chapter Fourteen
In the low light ju
st before dawn, Jesse checked the safety on his SIG. He’d decided to make it quick. Clean and easy. No fuss, no muss. The boss had called again, in an agitated state.
And Jesse hadn’t told him everything. He hadn’t told him what he’d witnessed.
Kristen. He’d watched as Kristen led that fucker Carl to one of the back rooms. He’d been surprised at just how much he’d hated that. It wasn’t that he liked Kris. Fuck. It was impossible not to like Kris. She was one of those glowy people, the kind who could get the shit knocked out of them and get back up and still have a smile to show the world.
His heart had taken a little dive when he’d seen her with Carl. Carl was an ass. He treated all women like they were nothing but holes to stick his dick in. What the hell did she see in him? And wasn’t she supposed to be all girl-on-girl action? Carl, with his copious body hair, was as far from feminine as it was possible to be.
He’d had to take a walk, grab a smoke. It felt like things were coming to a head. Chazz had informed him that the man who ran everything was coming in for a visit.
He’d overheard Chazz talking about the “farm” again. He mentioned it from time to time, but if Chazz was growing carrots and potatoes, Jesse wasn’t aware of it.
“You’ll get to meet the big boss,” he’d said.
Like I didn’t already know that, dumbass. You have no idea who I am.
Jesse had just lit up, trying to think his way out of what he had to do.
That was when he’d seen Carl the Douchenozzle taking a header out the window. He’d wondered why Carl was leaving via window when there was a perfectly good front door. He’d giggled a little and then realized the dude was dead. He didn’t move at all. Jesse knew what a dead body looked like. He knew it all too well.
Kris was awfully cool under pressure. He’d watched as she maneuvered Carl’s body into the back of her SUV, all the while keeping track of who was coming and going. She’d even moved off to talk to one of the cocktail waitresses, probably to ensure that she didn’t step into the scene of Kristen’s crime.
So why hadn’t he mentioned it to his boss?
For the same damn reason he was about to do what he was about to do.
Because he’d just found out that there were lines he couldn’t step over.
He stared out at the gorgeous condo where his prey was staying. Another lie he’d been told. According to the lovely Kristen, everyone should be at her rundown little house in St. Augustine proper. But he’d followed her out to Palm Coast, driving along a lonely highway with his lights off so she wouldn’t think she was being tailed. He’d followed her past the beach houses and Marine World. Well, he’d followed as far as he could. Once he’d crossed through the toll bridge, he’d come to a gate with a security guard.
He’d had to park his car and make his way around the security. It hadn’t been easy, but they hadn’t given him the call sign “Wraith” in his old unit for nothing. He hunkered down inside one of the gated lanais on the first floor. He wouldn’t have known what building she was in if he hadn’t been able to find her car.
He felt safe here. The windows were all dark and there were no little tables on this side, the inland side. As far as he could tell, the lanai went all the way around the back to the ocean side. These were seriously wealthy people.
What the fuck was she doing tending bar when she could afford this place?
About an hour after he’d found her, she’d left again with the big blond cook who looked like he could butcher more than a cow.
After they had driven away, Jesse had found Master A’s vehicle, broken in, placed his equipment inside and then walked back to his hidey-hole. Jesse waited patiently. He was sure he was in the right place, watching the right door.
Just him and his gun.
The sun had come up an hour or so ago, roughly twenty minutes after Kristen and the cook had completed whatever their errand had been. From where he was sitting, he had a view of the door Kristen and the cook had disappeared into earlier. He would have taken a closer look, tried to peek inside, but there was a security camera on the door. It was the only one. Once the target was a few feet past the entryway, Jesse could act without the problem of prying eyes.
He had two roads to go down. Three, really. If Master A came out first or with the cook, he would pop them both and be done. If his target came out with one of the women, he would have a choice to make, but if the sub came out alone, he had a plan.
It was all about waiting now.
Waiting and figuring out how to salvage his career.
Or just accepting that he was a fuck up now and he always had been.
What would his hero father think of him now? There was no way he would be proud, right? He would be like the rest. He would wonder why Jesse Murdoch’s head was on his body when the rest of his team had met such a grisly fate.
Jesse closed his eyes because sometimes he could stop the visions if he thought of something else. Anything but that dank Iraqi prison, smelling of death and blood and piss. Anything but the way poor Alannah had looked at him right before the sword had severed her head from her body.
He’d cared for her and she’d hated him in that moment. She’d hated the fact that she was dying and he wasn’t. She’d believed that he’d turned.
So did everyone else.
Losing this job would be the nail in his coffin, but by god, he would go out being true to himself.
The sun kept rising, but Jesse felt no warmth.
* * * *
“So what’s the problem?” Alex asked, looking down at the computer screen. It was a mass of 1s and 0s and a bunch of shit that made no sense to him.
Adam yawned, stretching in the early morning light. Apparently he’d been up all night dealing with the horror of 1s and 0s. “It’s weird. If this particular file had been classified, there would be something here I could find, but it’s just gone. Someone deleted this file.”
“Why the hell would they delete a file?” Alex couldn’t understand it. “Do you think Evans did it?”
It was the only thing that made sense. The feds needed every single bit of information they could get. It was precious and to be hoarded like gold. How had they not seen it? Had they let this case go cold? No. He wouldn’t believe it.
There was no way Warren allowed it to happen.
Adam shrugged. “I don’t know, but someone did and they did it from inside the Bureau. If someone had done it from the outside, there would be footprints. I can’t exactly figure out where the deletion comes from. This computer used to be registered to a Tommy Guinn, but now the system is deemed inactive.”
Tommy. God. Tommy had died in the attack on Eve. “Can you tell what the date is?”
Adam pressed a few keys.
“March 15th. Does that date mean anything?” Adam asked.
It was ten days after he’d quit the Bureau. “Not really. I wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know. I need to call some of my contacts. I’ll figure it out.”
Adam stood. “Don’t. Don’t call them. Let’s take a look at this on our own.”
Alex sighed, closing his eyes. “You think this is an inside job.”
“And you’re too close to it.”
Adam was right. “Okay. Let’s go over all the reasons someone on the inside would delete that file. Get Sean out here. Eve is in the shower. She shouldn’t be too long. We have a couple of hours before we have to be at the club. I want to think this through. Text Ian.”
Ian was his damn sounding board. He needed Ian. Damn it. How the hell had Nelson picked the perfect time to separate him from Ian?
“Already did. He’s going to Skype in soon. I’ll put it through the big TV. He can yell at us in HD.” Adam seemed relieved to have something to do. He started gathering wires and cords.
Alex looked down at the files. Was Carmen Garcia a rabbit hole he shouldn’t go down? “What did you find out about her?”
Adam was attaching cords to the big TV in the living room. “Favorite daughter of
a high-profile San Antonio family. Her father has been in the Texas state senate. Her brother played college ball for the Longhorns. She had damn near perfect LSATs. Picked Georgetown over Harvard. Not sure that was a great decision, but she wanted to be close to Washington according to the articles I read on her.”
Why was she important? In all the years he’d spent with the Bureau, he’d never had a problem with someone deleting files. No. This was deliberate. It might be a rabbit hole when it came to Evans, but something about it was making his every instinct light up.
Sean walked out, yawning but already dressed for the day. He had his knives rolled up and in his left hand. “Jersey Carl is swimming with the fishes and hopefully catching a nice current toward the North Atlantic. I have to head in early. I’m going to talk to some of the dishwashers and see if I can get anything out of them about the upcoming meet spot. Chazz talks a lot, and he doesn’t understand that most of these guys have picked up some English. He talks in front of them like they’re not there. Call me if you need anything.”
“Like breakfast?” Adam asked.
“Ain’t happening today.” Sean shut the door behind him.
Eve walked out of the back of the condo wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt that couldn’t hide the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her hair was up in a haphazard bun and she had little fuzzy pink flip-flops on her feet. She wore no makeup, and he’d never seen her more beautiful. Even after all the sex from the night before, his cock was at full attention the minute she entered a room. “Where did Sean go?”
“To get some information from his staff. He thinks they might know more than they’re saying. What’s your take on Carmen Garcia?” Alex asked, walking to the coffee maker to get it started.
“I don’t know. There are only so many reasons a girl with her money and ties to the community would go to a free clinic if she wasn’t volunteering. My bet is she didn’t want her people to know she needed the services of an ob-gyn. She was pregnant. Whether she was looking for confirmation of the pregnancy or she was seeking to terminate it, we may never know.”