Lily looked back and forth between Sam and Alec. The other woman certainly hadn’t asked Sam not to say anything about the mysterious errand she had to run, yet Sam still felt a little embarrassed, as if she’d betrayed a trust.
“I’m helping another CAT, trying to track a pedophile who operated at Satan’s Playground. He slipped through the cracks then; we think we have a line on him now.”
Alec crossed his arms and leaned against the small kitchen counter. “Why did you say you could cover Jackie’s assignment here, then? Wyatt could have called one of us back sooner.”
Seeing a slight flush in Lily’s cheeks, Sam suddenly rose. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she said, heading into the bedroom. The aura of secrecy surrounding Agent Fletcher was undeniable. The other woman’s color was high, her eyes bright. Excitement and nervousness had wafted off her from the minute she’d returned, and, though they were close to the elevator, she had been out of breath, as if her heart were racing after a run.
Oh, yes. The agent was hiding something.
Sam shut the door behind her and stayed in the bedroom, trying not to hear the voices. It wasn’t difficult; there was just a low, dull hum, indistinguishable as anything more than brief conversation.
Then Alec’s voice grew a lot louder. “You mean Wyatt doesn’t know? He didn’t approve this? Damn it, Lily!”
More mumbling. Sam winced, feeling sorry for Lily. Because as intimidating as Alec probably was right now at having been kept out of the loop, their boss, Wyatt Blackstone, would be much worse. Sam found his very presence intimidating. Strong and intense, serious and intuitive, he didn’t look like someone who even knew how to crack a joke. She suspected a mind like his was always going, always working. As if he could read the thoughts of everyone around him, anticipate their actions.
Well, one thing was sure: He hadn’t known what Lily Fletcher was thinking, and he apparently hadn’t anticipated her actions.
Which, she suspected, meant some very serious trouble was heading straight at the pretty young agent.
Though there were three state penitentiaries in Maryland, James T. Flynt was incarcerated in the closest, in a town just south of Baltimore. Since they didn’t have to leave too early for their one p.m. meeting, or allow much time for the drive, Alec spent much of the morning planning his interview with the convicted felon.
Well, that, thinking about Sam, worrying about how deep she was getting in this, angsting over how little they had discovered about their unsub, and wondering what the hell he was supposed to tell Wyatt Blackstone if he was asked about Lily’s unexpected departure from the hotel last night.
To say he had a lot on his mind this morning would be an understatement. Which would probably be pretty obvious to Sam. Not to mention to Lily, who opened the hotel room door to him, looking as tense and nervous as she had the previous night.
“Morning,” she said, her tone subdued.
“Good morning.” Alec didn’t pull any punches. “You’re still planning to talk to Wyatt while Sam and I are gone, right?”
That had been their deal last night. Alec wouldn’t make an issue of Lily leaving her post for so many hours as long as she brought their boss in on what she was doing.
Not that Wyatt should mind. Cooperation between CATs was a cornerstone of the division. Another group reaching out to Wyatt’s was a sign that maybe they were on the road to being accepted. At least, that was one way to interpret it.
Lily, however, was nervous as hell. Which meant she did not think Wyatt was going to approve of her extra duties.
Obviously there was more going on here than he knew; something was at work beneath the surface. Maybe even between Lily and their boss, though, from what he’d seen of Wyatt so far, the man would never allow anything personal to develop between him and one of his employees.
“I’ll talk to him; I swear.” She ran a weary hand over her eyes, drawing attention to the dark smudges beneath. Her face pale, her eyes bloodshot, she looked as if she hadn’t slept at all.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s this case. I’ve been working on it for so long, I just didn’t expect it to come together so quickly. Despite his responding on the message board yesterday, I half expected him not to show up in the chat room last night and still can’t quite believe he did. Boggles the mind that I actually talked to this bastard.”
Lily had told him a little about what she was doing last night, though nothing in depth. “And you really think this is the same guy you were after last summer, from the Reaper case?”
“I do. I’ve gone over all the transcripts from this site, checking it against everything we saw Lovesprettyboys say. And I believe we’re dealing with the same man who tried to hire Seth Covey to rape and murder a young boy for his own viewing pleasure.”
He shook his head in disgust. “So hopefully this will be over soon.”
She nodded. “God, I hope so. Once Wyatt finds out . . . Once I tell him I truly believe we’re getting close to that sick degenerate, I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Alec didn’t respond, knowing she was trying to talk herself into it.
“Why wouldn’t he?” she mumbled.
“I don’t know. Why wouldn’t he?”
She sucked her lip into her mouth and shook her head, hinting that there was a lot he didn’t know. Frankly, he didn’t want to. He had no time to deal with any other conflicts right now; he just wanted to stop the Professor before he hurt anyone else. As much as he wanted Lily to help in that effort, he knew her quest was just as important to her.
“Tell Wyatt,” he ordered, quickly turning away to watch as Sam emerged from the bedroom.
Since Jackie hadn’t stuck around all day yesterday, Kyle Mulrooney had grabbed clothes from Sam’s apartment. Dean had been busy taking off every AC vent and outlet cover, looking for hidden cameras. And Alec hadn’t trusted himself near her lingerie drawer.
In Alec’s opinion, Mulrooney had done a damn fine job. The black skirt Sam wore wasn’t exactly an obscene length, but it definitely didn’t do much to hide those long, silk-covered legs, emphasized by spiked black heels. It was also tight, hugging her round hips, emphasizing every curve. For his own sanity, if it clung just as nicely to her backside as it did her front, she was going to have to walk by his side, definitely not ahead.
Of course, looking at the front of her wasn’t much easier. Her blouse was every bit as dangerous. Silky and slinky, it was cut low, revealing enough cleavage to make him breathe hard, though not quite enough to stop his heart.
Then he thought about who else was going to see it. “Go change.”
She gawked. “Well, good morning to you, too.”
“You’re not walking into a prison looking like that.”
Sam frowned, stalked over, and stuck her index finger into his chest. “Well, you should have thought of that before you grabbed a bunch of one-size-too-small dress clothes and a pair of do-me shoes from the back corner of my closet, rather than just pulling some jeans and sweaters out of my drawer. This is about the best thing I’ve got. Do you not know the difference between a pair of cords and a little black cocktail dress, for God’s sake?”
Beside her, Lily grinned. “She’s got a point. She showed me what you brought, Alec, and this is the best of the bunch.”
“I didn’t pack your stuff,” he admitted, deciding then and there to strangle Mulrooney the next time he saw the man. “Kyle did. Damn it.”
“I think he’s been watching too much late-night Cin emax,” Sam said as she shifted and plucked the black fabric away from her hips. “Women don’t consider this professional day wear unless they’re starring in soft-porn movies as secretaries about to get ravaged by the boss.”
He ignored the ravaged-by-the-boss part. “But jeans and a sweater would be?”
“For me? Are you kidding? That’s dressing up.” She grumbled, again tugging at the skirt. “And despite what you might see on the average Barbie doll, most women don’t like
wearing their clothes this tight.”
He didn’t ask her why she had the tight clothes in her closet. It was a chick thing, the need to have entire wardrobes in various sizes. His sisters were the same way. Who knew why?
All he knew was that if Jimmy Flynt had a thing for Sam, he was going to love watching her walk into that jail today. Which already filled Alec with enough anger to make him want to yank a coat over the woman and keep it there.
“What about the clothes you had on yesterday?”
“You mean the pizza-stained ones?”
Crap.
“Look, let’s just go, okay?” She slipped into her coat, murmuring her thanks to Lily for the overnight babysitting.
Alec did the same, adding, “Call Wyatt,” before stepping out into the hall. He checked both directions, then beckoned Sam out. As they walked to the elevator, he murmured, “Maybe we could swing by a mall or something. . . .”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I don’t look like a hooker.” She almost sounded amused by his he-man protectiveness.
Since Alec had never reacted that way toward another woman, he didn’t find it particularly funny. “You’re not going to lay yourself out like some kind of appetizer for a felon who’s already got a thing for you.”
“Not even if it makes him more talkative?”
“Especially not then. I don’t want him thinking you did this for his benefit.”
They reached the elevator and he punched the call button, wondering why the sight of her, so beautiful and feminine in the formfitting clothes, with her thick hair pulled back and a hint of makeup on her face, made him want to shove her back into her room and lock the door. To protect her. Since nobody knew where she was, he couldn’t say whom from.
Maybe himself?
Damn.
Alec’s annoyance and his worry, combined with Sam’s defensiveness, made the bulk of their car ride out of the city a silent one. Beyond asking if the hotel room had been okay overnight, he kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself.
Finally, though, as he began seeing signs for the exit, he bit out, “Try not to interact with him, if you can help it. In fact, the best thing that could happen is for you to come in with me, let him know you’re around, then step out while I talk to him.”
“Yeah, right. You’re going to think somebody put a muzzle on him the second I walk out the door.”
“What is it with you and this guy?” he asked, frustrated and, even more, confused by Sam’s relationship with the man.
Sam glanced at him from the passenger seat, her mouth opening, then closing quickly. He let her be, knowing she had to work up to whatever it was she wanted to say.
It took a full minute; then, finally, she admitted, “He thinks he did me a big favor.”
“By helping you with the book?”
“Not exactly. The reason I stopped reading his letters a few months ago was because one of them really bothered me. He wrote that he’d run into an old friend of mine.”
“A friend. In prison?” He made no effort to hide his skepticism.
“He said he had learned one of the men who helped ruin my grandmother was doing time in the same facility.”
He thought about the ruined my grandmother part, remembering what she had revealed yesterday about her passwords. Obviously there was a lot more to the story. But they were within a few miles of their destination and time was running out for storytelling, so he didn’t ask for more details.
“Jimmy told me he’d ‘put a hurting’ on the guy. I took it to mean prison-yard justice. Anyway, I didn’t really believe him, but I guess he thinks I did. So in his mind, I could be feeling appreciative and maybe I’m coming to ‘thank’ him in person.”
“Fuck,” Alec muttered, tempted to turn around. “The last thing you need is somebody like James Flynt deciding you’re in his debt.”
“No kidding. But you can see why I was pretty sure he’d talk to you if I came along.”
Of course he did. Good old slimeball Jimmy was thinking he could make something happen with this beautiful woman.
Fat chance, pal. You’re not getting one second alone with her.
“You really believe he was lying?” he asked.
“Yes, I do. It’s the kind of manipulative person he is. I don’t know if the con men who ruined my grandmother and caused her death were ever even caught, much less imprisoned. Jimmy said he—”
“Caused her death?”
She swallowed, nodding once. “She was taken in gradually, over several months. First with standard pyramid schemes, fake stock purchases.” Her tone growing bitter, she added, “I tried to get help after they wiped out her checking account. Went to the FBI. Cyber Division, in fact. They did nothing.”
It was a wonder she hadn’t slammed the door in his face the other day when he had identified himself.
“I thought she had learned her lesson the first time, so it didn’t even occur to me that she would get sucked in again. This time it was a charity. Feed starving children in Africa.”
God, there were some sick people in the world to prey on the helpless and elderly. “I’m sorry. Sorrier than I can say.”
“Me, too. When she realized she’d given the thieves enough information to wipe her out completely, down to emptying every penny from her retirement account, she just couldn’t take the strain. They say it was natural causes, but I’m pretty sure the stress contributed to, if not outright caused, her heart attack.”
Something made him reach across and take her hand. Their fingers twined together. “I can’t imagine how tough that must have been.”
Sounding bitter, she said, “I gave her the damn computer to begin with, saying, ‘Come on, Grandma, join the cyber age!’ Oh, yeah, I’d call it tough.”
The whole story of Samantha Dalton suddenly came together. The picture of her life, why she’d made the choices she had, why she lived the way she did—all of it became clear. The pieces of the puzzle had started coming together the other night when she’d told him about her marriage. Now the rest filled in, explaining why she had started her Web site, why she had written her book. Why she took Internet fraud so personally.
Only one question remained in regard to Sam—was she ready to let go of the past, climb out of her self-imposed isolation, and start living again?
“This was how long ago?”
“It started right after I got married. But she died about three years ago.”
Of course, right around the time her site had gone up. Hard to believe how difficult it must have been, going from that nightmare into the pain of a cheating husband and a bitter divorce.
He could only repeat what he’d already said. “So sorry.”
She nodded her thanks, then hurried on, as if afraid to let herself dwell further on the past. “The bastards who robbed her were never caught.”
“How did this Flynt even know about your grandmother?”
She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I certainly didn’t tell him anything personal about myself when I interviewed him.”
“Smart.”
“He claimed he has connections on the inside, found out who one of them was and ‘took care of him,’ whatever that means.”
“That’s a stretch. If it’s like most other Internet crimes, the men who did it were probably from far away, likely even in another country.”
“Actually, we know at least one of them was local. My grandmother apparently met with him a day or two before she died, and he somehow convinced her to give him access to her accounts. He cashed one out in person at a bank in western Maryland.”
Surprised, Alec couldn’t help thinking how much harder that must have made things for Sam. Not just knowing her grandmother had been ripped off online, but knowing she had actually been face-to-face with someone who wanted only to steal from her.
The possibilities of what could have happened at such a meeting must have kept her up for many nights afterward. And that somehow made it worse.
But it also made it at least possible the two inmates could end up doing time at the same facility. “It’s still a long shot. A very long shot.”
“Don’t I know it.” She shivered lightly. “But Jimmy doesn’t know I think he’s full of shit.”
Which could, indeed, work to their advantage. As long as Flynt kept a respectful tongue in his mouth. He’d better not make one single suggestion to Sam that was out of line.
If he did . . . well, honestly, Alec wasn’t sure it would matter how much the man could help them. No way would he allow Sam to be any more abused than she’d already been. No way in hell.
Chapter 13
This was going to be okay. Alec was right beside her. She kept telling herself that.
It’ll be okay.
When Sam had come to interview James Flynt for her book nearly two years ago, she’d been alone. Not inside, of course, and certainly not with the inmates. She’d received thorough safety instructions from the warden, and a guard had escorted her at all times. But she had pulled into the facility by herself, and had sat in her car, wondering why she had ever decided to arrange a meeting with a scumbag cyber thief.
Fortunately,she had come after the original maximum-security facility—more than a century old and renowned for its violence—had been shut down. The buildings still in operation were modern, nondescript, looking as if they could have housed any other government agency.
If not for the razor wire. And the guard towers.
As she’d learned the last time, the medium-security site where Flynt was incarcerated was only one of several lockups in the complex, which sprawled for many acres. It was perfectly safe and not too intimidating. Not as nonthreatening as the women’s building, the minimum-security one, or especially the boot camp, but it still beat having to walk into the maximum-security facility.
“You okay?” Alec asked, as if sensing her trepidation once they parked in a guest lot.
“Yeah. It’s just not my favorite place.”
Pitch Black Page 24