Lieutenant Taylor Jackson Collection, Volume 1

by J. T. Ellison

  “My God.” Taylor sat back in the chair. “Are all these videos labeled Taylor Jackson?”

  “Well, there’s the good news. They don’t have your real name. They call you Tawny from Nashville. So that’s where Gorman saw you, no question about that.”

  “Have you found the son of a bitch?”

  Marcus finally smiled. “Yep.”

  Taylor’s cell phone rang, making her jump. She glanced at the caller ID, saw it was Corinne Wolff’s therapist. She held up a wait a minute finger to Marcus and answered. A crisp British accent greeted her.

  “This is Ellen Ricard. I understand you’re looking for information on Corinne Wolff.”

  The no-nonsense greeting wrestled Taylor’s emotions back into place. “Yes, I am. Would you be willing to talk with me?”

  “Yes. I can’t until day after tomorrow. I can see you in my office at eight o’clock Friday morning.”

  Taylor glanced at her watch. “Are you sure we can’t do it tonight?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant, I’m sure. I have a speaking engagement this evening, then a late flight out of town. I’ll return too late tomorrow evening to meet. I will see you Friday morning. You know where to find me, I presume?”

  “I do. Thank you. I’ll try not to take too much of your time.”

  “Until then, Lieutenant,” and she was gone.

  Taylor hung up the phone. “Leads on the Wolff case. I need to bring you both up to speed.” She ran her palm against her forehead, making decisions. “Okay. First things first. Where is Tony Gorman?”

  “Antioch. He lives on Blue Hole Road. We can go pick him up, if you’d like.”

  “I think the sooner we get tapped into this underworld, the better we’re going to be. I appreciate you guys trying to insulate me. I don’t know if that’s going to work for long. We have to find out how these tapes were made, who uploaded them, everything. I don’t know if we can keep it quiet, it’s going to take man hours. I will cover you as long as I can without Price catching on.” The nausea returned with a vengeance. “Has Fitz seen this?”

  “No,” they both answered in unison.

  “Thank God for that. I don’t know if I could ever look him in the eye again. You two are bad enough.” She stood and turned her back on them. How in the world was she going to work this?

  “We didn’t watch them, Taylor. As soon as we realized it was you, we stopped, and started digging. I promise.” Lincoln was reaching for her now, his arms around her in a massive bear hug. The urge to weep was overwhelming, but she bit the emotions back again. Crying wasn’t going to accomplish anything. She hugged him back.

  “Well, it wasn’t much of a show, if I remember correctly. You guys are wonderful.” She broke away from Lincoln and squeezed Marcus on the shoulder. “Go get that fat fuck and let’s have a little discussion with him.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Taylor kept on her feet after the boys had left. She was overwhelmed with the urge to pace, then had to stop herself from calling Baldwin. Despite wanting the reassurance of his voice, that was a conversation she would rather not have. Hello dear, how was your day? By the way, there are some videos of me having sex with my old partner on the Internet. No, she didn’t think Baldwin would be too thrilled. She’d never gone into any detail about the David Martin shooting, much less disclosed that they’d slept together. Great. This was going to be a huge mess. Damn him! And wasn’t it just typical of David, fucking her from the grave. The bastard.

  Think, she commanded herself. She cued up the video again. How had David done this?

  David Martin had been an uncharacteristic series of mistakes. They worked together, that was mistake number one. He was a dirty cop and Taylor hadn’t known until she was deep into the affair. He oozed Southern charm, called her names that annoyed her like sugar britches and sassafras. He wasn’t formally educated, was ex-military like so many others on the force. He didn’t call his mother on Sundays, drank too much, and as she found out later, dabbled in recreational drugs. She wondered for the thousandth time why she’d ever slept with him in the first place. Even Sam had raised an eyebrow when Taylor admitted to the relationship.

  It was destined for failure from moment one, and that, she decided, was why she’d entered into the affair. She didn’t want a husband. At the time, she just wanted to have some fun. David was attractive, there was no doubt about that. There was a base chemistry between them from the beginning. The affair had begun after an intense night where they’d been shot at, narrowly escaping being hit. The two of them had been holed up in an improvised bunker, completely pinned down in a weak defensive position behind a series of metal trashcans, taking fire from some stupid gangbanger they’d been pursuing. They’d barely made it out alive.

  That first encounter was a pure adrenaline rush. The result of coming close to death, the urge to reach out and feel something, anything. Common enough among law enforcement.

  Then David had seduced her. Cheesy attempts at romanticism—flowers, candy, dates at nice restaurants—the whole shebang. And she’d let it happen because she was bored. When she realized he was starting to have feelings for her, she broke it off immediately. Soon after, she was promoted to Sergeant, then just as quickly, Lieutenant. David remained a detective. The resentment began there and continued to grow.

  When Taylor uncovered David’s role in an operation that was highly illegal, found out he was working with a couple of vice detectives who were running methamphetamines through the city, she’d been ready to take him down. David knew it, came to her house and confronted her. Taylor had been forced to shoot him to save her own life.

  Now he was finding yet another way to screw with her, this time in the most literal of senses. He’d been dead for more than a year. How had he managed to upload videos of them having sex to this Web site?

  She hit play. This time, she turned up the sound fractionally. Nothing came through the speakers. Clicking the stop button, she thought for a moment. She needed to hear the tapes as well as see them. Offsite was the only safe way to do it, but she couldn’t leave at the moment. But she did have her iPod. She opened her top drawer, disconnected the earplugs from her Nano, and plugged them into the jack on the side of Lincoln’s laptop. Then she stood and did something she’d never done before. She locked the door to her office.

  Relatively comfortable that she was safe, she returned to her chair, put the earbuds into place, and hit play.

  An hour later, she was exhausted, embarrassed and furious. She’d watched all nine tapes of herself shagging David Martin. She was disgusted at the mere thought of other people watching these intimate moments. It was horrifying to contemplate. Why anyone would purposely allow themselves to be taped having sex was lost on her.

  She closed the laptop. One thing she’d learned from the tapes, there were two cameras in the cabin. One was solely focused on her bed. The other pointed from her bedroom into the loft where she used to house the pool table. That camera hadn’t been used much, only to show them playing pool, then transitioning into the bedroom. By the angles, she could only assume that the cameras were hidden in the air vents.

  That son of a bitch. She scoured her mind for a time when he would have had the opportunity to install the cameras. She never left him alone in her house, rarely let him stay over. Having sex with him was one thing, actually sleeping with him was another matter entirely.

  As she fumed and seethed, racked her mind, Taylor never entertained the thought that David wasn’t solely responsible for the tapes. That was a grave mistake.

  *

  “I haven’t done a damn thing. I don’t know where you get off having me arrested. Stupid bitch!” Tony Gorman was locked in an interrogation room, spitting mad. He was alone, but yelling at the camera mounted on the wall. Taylor, Marcus and Lincoln were in the printer room, watching him on the monitor while the boys brought her up to speed. Gorman continued to scream, but Taylor simply clicked off the mike. Silence crowded into the small space.


  “How do you want to handle it, LT? Want us to talk to him first? He’s been pretty feisty since we brought him in.” Lincoln was spoiling for a fight. The weeks working on the Terrence Norton case hadn’t entirely worn off. His normally urbane exterior had shifted, allowing the strong emotions he usually kept in check to surface.

  “I want to talk to him alone.”

  “Is that such a good idea, Taylor?” Marcus tapped the television screen. “You don’t know what he might do.”

  Taylor stared at the stranger. “I want to talk to him alone.” The tone in her voice stopped them both. She felt them shift away from her, trying to respect her space. She turned and looked at them.

  “Don’t take it like that. While I’m talking, I want you to listen. See what he isn’t telling me. Because a jerk like this isn’t going to start spewing gospel just because I ask him nicely. Can you do that for me?”

  “Of course,” Marcus said. Lincoln nodded his acquiescence as well.

  “Good. Let’s do this.” Taylor left them, went to the interrogation room. Shit, she needed to get this resolved, and fast. The media would catch wind of Todd Wolff’s arrest any time. The last thing she needed was this bozo taking her away from a murder investigation. But she had to know the truth.

  When she opened the door, Gorman practically roared at her. “What took you so God damn long?”

  Ignoring him, she got settled in the chair across from Gorman, the small desk separating them.

  “I said, what took you so fucking long? And take these handcuffs off of me. I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t know why I’m even here. I want my lawyer now!”

  “Give me a break. Listen, pal. You’re here to answer some questions for me. If you quit your blustering and shut up, you’ll be out of here in no time. Assuming you haven’t done anything illegal, that is.”

  Gorman’s round face was leaking sweat. His close-set eyes flashed with disdain, and something darker. He had the common look of a bully—little eyes, pug nose, reddish skin and thin lips. Put him in a wife-beater and he’d look like every other piece of trailer trash, a baseball cap and he’d look like a million other ex-fraternity boys gone to seed. She often wondered about the genes that produced this same look over and over. If a defective chromosome could produce mongoloid features in children with Down’s Syndrome, perhaps that same kind of genetic anomaly could produce the generic bully facial features. Taylor could see the cruelty in his face. She watched him have an internal debate, then nodded when he settled for giving her a belligerent glare.

  “Good. We can be friends now.” She lowered her voice, playing up the huskiness, and leaned forward in the chair. “Tell me, Mr. Gorman. Do you like watching strangers have sex?”

  He didn’t answer, but his eyes gleamed. He licked his skimpy lips and Taylor felt the gorge rise in the back of her throat. Ugh. This guy was even less appealing than she’d first thought. No wonder he needed to watch.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. I’d appreciate you giving me some information about this Internet club you belong to. Selectnet.com, I believe it’s called?”

  Tony Gorman was an excellent liar. He was a champion liar. He looked Taylor straight in the eye and told her all about Selectnet.com. He never looked away, never flinched. The skin around his eyes didn’t tighten, he didn’t move his hands or shift his eyes. His body language alone could have won him an Oscar. He talked and talked. What he didn’t realize was the entire time he spoke, his pupils dilated and contracted as he thought up his falsehoods. All in all, she had to give him props. He was a very creative fake.

  Taylor was better. She’d known men like this her whole life. Men who felt the woman’s place was in the kitchen, cooking gourmet meals, shaking up a martini and making sure their man was serviced properly.

  So she let him talk. She didn’t listen so much to what he was saying. She wondered, though, why he felt he needed to create such an elaborate fabrication to cover his true intent. After fifteen minutes of his bullshit, she yawned and stretched.

  “Well, that is absolutely fascinating stuff, Mr. Gorman.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “And it was all crap. If you’d like to get out of these handcuffs, get out of this room, I suggest you start telling me the truth about Selectnet.com.”

  He sputtered, and she let him go through his denials. Taylor stared at her nails, and nodded. Then she tried again. She only hesitated a moment. Desperate times called for desperate measures. She sat back in the chair, casually draping her arm over the back.

  “Tell me the truth now, Mr. Gorman. You’ll notice that you haven’t been booked. You’ve just been brought in for questioning in a very informal environment. No one knows you’re here. I haven’t turned on the cameras. I can do whatever I want to you, and no one will ever be the wiser.” As she spoke, she used her right hand to slip her Glock out of its holster and set it on the table between them. Gorman’s eyes popped open.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No. I’m giving you options. You can talk to me now. Or you and I can slip out the back door, without a single person knowing where you are.” She ran her fingers playfully along the slide of the weapon. “I’d sure hate to have any accidents with you, you know. We’d have to go on the news and explain your role in today’s little charade, explain how we picked you up for…hmmm…child pornography sounds good.” She raised an eyebrow at him, smiled.

  “I bet we could make that stick, too. You look like the type that might just get curious every once in a while. Am I starting to make myself clear, Mr. Gorman? I hold the reins here. You start telling me the truth about this little club you belong to, or things can go very badly for you this afternoon. Got it?”

  He got it. In typical bully fashion, the moment Gorman was presented with real strength from the opposition, he caved. The story he told Taylor made the fury rise in her stomach all over again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The conference room was warming under the midafternoon sun despite the dark curtains that covered the windows. Baldwin sat at the rectangular table, Garrett Woods by his side. Atlantic’s round moon face was superimposed on the wall, the plasma screen that they used for secure video feeds connected to Berlin, his home base for that day.

  Baldwin was bleary-eyed. He needed sleep. Soon. He ran his hand through his hair and yawned, then rubbed his eyes for a second before he continued.

  “Sorry about that. Just a little tired. Didn’t get the whole story put together until breakfast.”

  “Not a problem, Baldwin,” Atlantic assured him.

  “Okay, let me continue. The first name I flagged was Ali Fatima, traveling from Lisbon to Paris three weeks ago. He stayed there for a week, we’ve got hotel records for him under the alias Andre Guigernon. He flew under the Guigernon name from Paris to Montreal, where he also stayed for a week. It’s going to take more extensive searching to determine what he was up to, but we can revisit that. You may want to notify the French and Canadian authorities, see if they have any unsolved murders from those two weeks that our boy might be responsible for.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Garrett said.

  “Okay. In Montreal, he became Alexandre Cadoc, flew to Seattle. We had a bit of luck there, SeaTac has a convenience corridor for international passengers which allows people to move more quickly through customs. The cameras in the corridor got a beautiful shot of him. He exited to baggage claim, left the building, and returned two hours later, checked in as Arthur Bleheris, flew to Denver. We have him renting a car there, and that’s it. BOLOs are out on the rental, but there’s been no trace of him since he started out from Denver. The rental agency has GPS in their cars standard, he specifically requested one without the device. The clerk remembers him saying he preferred to get lost, that was the only way to truly see the country.

  “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. I don’t know where he is, what he plans to do. There’s still no word on who’s contracted a hit in the
States.” He slumped in his chair, stared Atlantic dead in his cold eyes. “Where was his tracker? How could Aiden have engineered all of this so quickly without our knowledge?”

  “The tracker is dead.”

  Baldwin narrowed his eyes. “When?”

  “Florence, four weeks ago.”

  Florence? Baldwin and Taylor had been in Florence four weeks ago. He’d bought her a new ring, they’d giggled like teenagers. And then it hit him. Aiden. Taylor. Both in the same city, with Baldwin as the common denominator. He exploded out of his chair.

  “You knew. Damn it, you knew. Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “We don’t know his intentions.” That was all Atlantic would say.

  “We don’t know them,” Baldwin said. “Right. He may be on a job, a hit that no one has a record of? Come on. A few weeks ago, he just so happens to be in the same town where my fiancée and I are on vacation. His tracker is found dead, and he comes to the States. What the hell do you think his intentions are? He’s after me. He vowed to take me down after the debacle with his family. And here I am, in Quantico, insulated as hell, when I should be back in Nashville making sure he doesn’t blow up my life like I blew up his.”

  Atlantic merely tipped his chin down and said, “We need you to find him, Baldwin.”

  Baldwin was too tired to fight. Arguing with Atlantic was fruitless, he’d learned that long ago. He turned to Garrett. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this. You know that I need every ounce of information to find this fool. You held back the most important piece of the puzzle. Jesus, Garrett. I thought I could trust you.”

  Atlantic cleared his throat. “He was acting on my instructions. We didn’t want your judgment clouded. If you thought he was targeting you, you wouldn’t have been of any use to us.”

  “Of course. Because that’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? That I give you what you need. Screw you.”

  Baldwin stormed out of the room, went back to his makeshift office. Damn them all. They were going to get people killed, and for what? To preserve their gravy train of illicit activities? It hardly seemed worth it.