A Dangerous Game

by Heather Graham

  “Don’t go getting into trouble,” Declan warned as she turned to hurry out.

  She paused to look back and smile at him reassuringly. “Trouble? I’m headed to a convent. Just how much trouble can I get into?”

  “I went to Catholic school, too, remember. You? Tons of it.”

  She made a face at him.

  “Craig should be here soon. Tell him I’ll be right back!”

  She didn’t let him say more. He was already looking at her suspiciously.

  She was headed to a convent, for God’s sake!

  And yet, the minute she was on the street again, she remembered her fear when she’d left the alley.

  She remembered just how quickly a man on the street had slammed a knife into the woman’s back.

  * * *

  The FBI agents weren’t magicians, but there were times when Richard Egan had the power to do things that otherwise might seem impossible.

  Craig had wanted the surveillance video from the bank and the contact information for the teller who had been fired.

  Her name was Kathy Miller. Craig was pretty sure that the fact that Richard Egan had tracked her down in an hour on a Sunday was proof that the man was as close to a law-enforcing magician as anyone was going to get.

  He’d managed to get the footage in question, as well.

  Marty Kim had arrived at the NYC offices of the FBI by the time Craig and Mike made it back from Brooklyn. He was already setting up in the one of the conference rooms.

  Egan introduced them to the twentysomething former bank teller.

  “We think that you might well have been right—and that, I’m afraid, a corporation’s eagerness to maintain assets probably hurt you. We’re truly sorry—one way or the other. You were certainly trying to do your job,” Craig told her.

  A large screen was set up and Marty was hooking up the computer. Egan just sat, patiently watching and waiting.

  “It turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Kathy said. She was a pretty brunette, tiny as could be, with huge brown eyes. “I was a gymnast once upon a time. And thanks to being fired, I was desperate. I applied for work as an instructor, and now I get to work with wonderful children who might be our future Olympians.”

  “That’s great to hear!” Mike said.

  “Yes, absolutely,” Craig agreed.

  “Okay, guys,” Marty informed them. “Here’s the last known picture of Jim Smith—his driver’s license renewal, about nine years ago.”

  The image went up on the screen. Smith had a slender face, pale blue eyes and white hair. His cheekbones allowed for a fair amount of sunken flesh.

  “Ghoul,” Mike muttered. They all looked at him. “Well, I mean, honestly, he looks like he could find great work at a Halloween horror park!”

  Craig tried to hide a smile.

  Egan didn’t bother, but he said, “Please. We don’t know the real fate of this man. Let’s have some dignity here,” he protested. “We have a guest,” he reminded them.

  “He does—he did or he does—look like a ghoul,” Kathy said. “That’s the thing. He signed up for all his accounts with Benjamin Osterly. Ben retired about four years ago and sadly—he was a great guy—succumbed to cancer just last March. I don’t think that anyone else at the bank really remembered Jim Smith, even though he kept a lot of money in the bank and has a box in the vault. I met him because I was Benjamin’s assistant at the time. And, yes, it had been years since I had seen him, but, still...he was just different!”

  Marty shifted the license picture to the left side of the screen. Then, on the right, he played the surveillance video. They watched the man come in, stop at the desk, and enter the vault with a clerk. Next, he was seen leaving. He paused by the door, next to a poster that advertised the way to save for a growing child.

  It was difficult to get a real view of the man’s face.

  He wore a sweater and a cap, and he kept his head lowered.

  He was, however, tall—and gaunt. Yes, someone else who resembled a ghoul.

  “You really can’t tell,” Mike murmured.

  “If there was just a full-on face shot, it would help,” Marty said. “I’ve played with it, worked with it—I’m giving it the best I can.”

  “You see, that’s it,” Kathy said quietly. “I did see his face. And it just wasn’t him. But I wasn’t in any position of power and the man who could have helped was...well, he’s passed away.”

  “Run it again, please,” Craig said.

  The men could have been the same.

  But there was just something...

  And when Craig saw it; the difference was so staggering that Craig was amazed that they all missed it. Or that anyone had missed it. But then, looking at an ID was far too often a casual formality, done very quickly. Rather than studying IDs, most people just gave them a glance.

  “How tall does Jim Smith’s license say he was?” Craig asked.

  Marty shifted the picture on the screen. “Five-eight,” he said. “Oh, yeah, wow...”

  The man claiming to have been Jim Smith was much taller. At least six foot one.

  “I always thought a man shrank as he grew older,” Egan said. “I do believe that our fellow gained over four inches.”

  “How can you tell?” Kathy asked.

  “Marty, if you will?” Craig asked.

  He hit the proper buttons and the security footage played again.

  “Stop!” Craig said. And he rose and pointed to the screen. “There—Savings that grow as your children grow!”

  A smiling, benign father was patting the head of a little boy in the poster on the wall. Behind the two was a measuring rod—clearly delineating feet and inches, all the way from one inch up to six foot six.

  The little boy was about four foot ten.

  The father was about six foot one.

  And so was the man walking by the poster—the man claiming to be Jim Smith, multimillionaire.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was stretching probability to assume that whoever had killed Alexandra Callas also had the foresight to hang around Finnegan’s pub on Broadway to wait for Kieran to leave so that she could be attacked on the street.

  And still... Kieran found herself turning around and heading back into the pub.

  Luckily, Declan was engaged in conversation with someone else at the bar. Mary Kathleen had moved on and wasn’t to be seen. Danny was walking through the dining room, and Kieran immediately grabbed his arm.

  “Danny!”

  “Kieran!”

  “I need your help,” she told him. She looked at him earnestly, searching his eyes, wondering how much she could explain and how quickly. Danny had always been the most mischievous of their foursome of siblings. He would never hurt anyone, but he had done many foolish things over time in the defense of others.

  Kieran had actually met Craig because Danny had tried to help out their very good friend Julie when she’d been at the worst end of a sad divorce—a situation that had led them into the realm of diamond heists and murder.

  If anyone should understand now, it was Danny.

  “Come with me—I need you. And I need you to be really careful,” she said.

  “Kieran, I know that poor woman was murdered on the street, but—”

  “There’s much more to it now. I’ll try to explain. Come with me.”

  “Wait—you want me to get stabbed in the back?”

  “No, of course not. But if there are two of us, we can keep a better watch of the people around. Come on. We’re not going far. Just a few blocks to the convent.”

  “You need Craig for this.”

  “He’s not here right now. I’ll fill him in just as soon as I see him.”

  She really had to at this point. She was becoming ridiculously paranoid.
/>
  “Why are we going to a convent?” Danny asked.

  “To see a nun.”

  “Surely, you haven’t done anything that bad!”

  “A nun, Danny, not a priest. I’m not going to confession. I’ll explain while we walk.” She hesitated. “Oh, and, um, just kind of keep your eyes open, okay?”

  * * *

  There was one interesting thing about the US and money: when it was time to freeze assets, it could be done quickly.

  Everything was set in motion to freeze Jim Smith’s assets at the bank, and to allow federal agents access to his safe-deposit box.

  The box, however, had been emptied. Whatever treasures it had held were gone.

  As it happened, the number of men named James Smith in NYC was staggering; the FBI tech crews would work on figuring out which might have been the Jim Smith they were searching for, or where else the imposter might have struck.

  For the moment, Craig was done. Wiped out, tired and done.

  Mike made a point of reporting all that they had learned to their counterparts with the NYPD.

  Craig drove and found street parking not far from Finnegan’s, and they headed into the pub to be greeted by Mary Kathleen.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Craig—aye, and you, too, Mike!” she added, seeing Mike enter the pub behind him. “Kieran was just starving, so she said, and she’s eaten, but we’ve roast put aside for you. Have a seat, lads—you look quite plumb tuckered!”

  “Long day,” Mike told her.

  “Dinner will be wonderful,” Craig said. “But where is Kieran?”

  “Why, she just headed to the convent. Had to get something back from Sister Teresa. Amazing woman—she’s ninety-plus and moves like a bat out of hell!”

  “We just missed her?”

  “A minute or so ago,” Mary Kathleen assured him. Declan had come up behind her. She turned to look at him, “Right, luv?”

  “Yep. Someone told me that she came back in—Danny is with her,” Declan said.

  Kieran wasn’t alone. Craig wasn’t sure why he was so glad of that fact—especially since Danny Finnegan had a penchant for trouble like no one else he knew. Great guy, Danny—though sometimes his view on helping others was a little off. Especially when it came to the law.

  “Seriously, just left? Maybe I can catch her,” Craig said.

  “Just minutes,” Mary Kathleen assured her.

  “Where does one go to find this nun?” Craig asked.

  “Two turns!” Mary Kathleen said, rattling off the address. He knew it.

  “Thanks,” he told her, and turned to Mike. “Take a seat—have your food. I’ll be right back.”

  “And if you’re not, at least one of us will have eaten,” Mike said, sighing.

  “Aye, Mike, have a seat. I’ll get your plate,” Mary Kathleen said.

  Craig hurried from the pub and out to the street. It was about a five-or six-block walk to the convent where Sister Teresa lived—three long and a few short. He didn’t see Kieran and Danny ahead of him, but at least he’d walk back with them.

  He was anxious to see Kieran after the day. So much had happened in a very few hours, and he knew the first forty-eight hours after a homicide were crucial to any investigation.

  And now they knew that it was likely they were looking at more than one homicide. It was more than possible that the man responsible for stabbing their Jane Doe was the same man—or under the employ of the same man—who had caused the death of the young woman years before, the case that was still haunting Detectives Beard and Holmes. The operation had been going on for many years; he was certain that the real James Smith was dead and that his identity had been stolen. Most likely, this group was using the identities of other deceased persons. Whether they died of natural causes or were helped into their graves was yet to be seen.

  He reached the convent without catching up to Kieran and Danny. Inside, he was met at a front desk by a nun who seemed to be holding the fort much like the desk sergeant at a police station. She was friendly and smiling, a giant penguin with bright green eyes and a quick smile.

  “Ah, Sister Teresa is popular today—and always. Moves like a speeding bullet—and she’s well over the age of ninety! So much for the good dying young. Anyway, I just sent that young couple over there by our beautiful Pieta to wait. Sister Nan has gone for Teresa.”

  He looked over at the young couple.

  Yes, Kieran and Danny.

  He headed over to them, smiling.

  Kieran looked at him with pleasure—and a little wariness, he thought. A small tremor shook through him. He knew that look.

  Just what exactly were they doing here, looking for a nun?

  “You had a productive day?” she asked him anxiously.

  “Yes, and you?”

  Danny groaned, shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  “Very productive,” Kieran murmured, trying to discreetly step on her brother’s toe. “I’m not even sure where to start, except that I don’t know how much of Sister Teresa’s time we can take, so as soon as we’ve seen her—”

  She didn’t get to finish; she was interrupted when someone let out a blood-curdling scream.

  Craig pushed ahead as they all raced down a hallway toward the sound of the scream, his hand on his Glock. The sister who had been sitting at the desk followed, as well.

  He burst into one of the small rooms. It held nothing but a single bed, a wardrobe and a desk with a chair up against one wall.

  There was a sister sitting in the chair. Her hands were folded on the desk in front of her. She leaned against the wall.

  Her eyes were closed.

  Her face was white.

  Her lips held an equal pallor.

  Dead.

  He touched her throat, to be certain, checking for a pulse, for any sign of life.

  She was cold as ice.

  “No!”

  He turned. Kieran stood in the doorway of the little room, gripping the doorframe. She cried with a wail of agony, rushing forward. “No!”

  Craig caught her before she could reach the sister, pulling her tightly into his arms and crushing her face to his chest. He spoke over her head, feeling the tease of her hair against his chin. “No, Kieran, please, you can see, she’s gone, and you can’t touch her. The medical examiner will have to come out here, Kieran. She’s—gone. I’m sorry.”

  She struggled in his arms. “They got to her! The King—the King and his men—they got to her!”

  “Oh, dear Lord, dear Lord,” the sister who had greeted them at the desk said over and over, her fingers moving over her chest in the sign of the cross. “Dear Lord, dear Lord...”

  “Go fetch the mother superior,” said Sister Nan—the nun who had gone to fetch Sister Teresa and found her as she was. She bustled the other sister out of the room. “Oh! Teresa was...so wonderful. We did think that she’d live forever.” She turned to look at Kieran, as if she’d realized what she had said. “My dear, no one did this. Teresa was blessed with an amazing long life. But she was in her nineties. And look how sweetly she died, just sitting here!”

  Craig had to agree with the nun—the dead woman looked entirely peaceful and at rest.

  “Kieran, why would someone come in and kill an old nun?” he whispered.

  One way or the other, though, Sister Teresa had died alone. That could mean an autopsy, even if her regular doctor arrived to say she had suffered from a bad heart or some other ailment that could have taken her life. He doubted foul play.

  Craig pulled his phone out, though.

  He called Egan. Since they were already working with Dr. Andrews, Craig asked if there was any way they could get the medical examiner to come out for this.

  Kieran was watching him. Her eyes seemed truly enormous, and she nodded. At the very least, he was pleasing h
er. At the worst, he was doing a good job of ruining the evening for Dr. Andrews. Then again, the weekend had already sucked, so...

  “I have a medical examiner coming,” he told Sister Nan, who remained in the room.

  Another nun arrived at the doorway; she appeared to be sixtysomething—and her look was stern, that of a formidable battle-ax.

  “Ah, so the time has come. Our dear sister has gone on to join our Heavenly Father,” she said. “I’m sure you people were friends. But, please, if you could just leave now and let us handle the doctor and the details and arrangements, we’d be so appreciative.”

  “I’m so sorry—Sister Teresa was alone. The medical examiner is on his way,” Craig said.

  “What?” the battle-ax demanded. “I am Sister Margaret, Mother Superior here, and I won’t have you making a mountain out of this. Who are you, anyway?”

  Craig produced his credentials.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her again.

  “Mother Superior,” Danny said, stepping up and smiling gently. “This is such a beautiful place. Sister Teresa must have led a wonderful life here with you all. But, please, understand—I know that you do—” He paused to cross himself. “There are God’s laws, and man’s laws, and Jesus did tell us that we must always deliver to Caesar what is Caesar’s—obey the laws of man.”

  She studied Danny and seemed somewhat mollified. “And who are you?” she demanded.

  “Um, a friend. A friend of a friend,” he said.

  Kieran jumped in quickly. “I did not know Sister Teresa long, but long enough to know that she was a wonderful and giving woman who tried to help us—perhaps help others to the extent that she put herself in danger.”

  “So it’s your fault they want to chop our dear sister to pieces,” Sister Nan said.

  Kieran could be quite a power herself when she chose.

  She spun on Nan.

  “It’s my fault that I will see justice done—that if anyone harmed her in any way, they will face man’s laws, no matter what forgiveness they might find elsewhere!” she announced.

  The mother superior turned on her heel and walked away.