Too Far Gone

by Allison Brennan

  “I haven’t read it yet. I was wrapped up in another investigation—Kenzie and Emilio have been assisting cybercrimes on a child pornography case. We executed half a dozen warrants yesterday at city hall—all on staff members who downloaded child porn to their computers.”

  Lucy’s stomach flipped. “Did we arrest them?”

  “Five of the six. I think one was tipped off. The one I really wanted. The others were caught up in the sting—three of them had one child porn video, the same video, and all denied knowing about it. I suspect it was a virus they opened, but cybercrime is going through the devices as we speak. The other two we have are cooling their heels in jail. That’s why I love executing these warrants on Friday afternoon—very difficult to get arraigned and out on bail before Monday.”

  Lucy was surprised that her by-the-book boss would say that—but it was technically by the book.

  Rachel motioned for Lucy to step into her office and close the door. “I hesitate to ask you about this, because I know you and your husband are personal friends with Nate. Do you think he’s okay after the shooting on Wednesday?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said without reservation. “He was cleared in the psych eval—at least, that’s what he told me.”

  “He was,” she said.

  “He acted on orders, and McMahon was a clear threat.”

  “It was justified, there’s no doubt in my mind—or anyone’s—that there was no other option under the circumstances. You do know what happened last night?”

  “Yes, Kane is staying with us.” She didn’t know how much Rachel knew, though she’d gotten the “official” story from Kane.

  “The problem is not that Nate was helping your brother-in-law on a case in his spare time, but he’s not supposed to carry a firearm while on mandatory leave, and he had two in his possession. I would let it slide—but because there’s a police report, I can’t. Which made me think that Nate is on edge. He knows the rules.”

  Lucy had to choose her words carefully. “Yes, and I doubt he expected the kind of trouble he found. Nate doesn’t go anywhere unarmed. Maybe because of his decade in the army, or because he’s been a federal agent for three years, but it’s very natural for him.” She paused. “I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for from me.”

  “His state of mind.”

  “I’m not a psychiatrist, and I can’t evaluate Nate. I’m too close to him.”

  “Maybe that makes you the best one to evaluate him.”

  “Maybe. I think Nate is fine, he’s frustrated because he doesn’t like not working. He has friends—and I’ll always have his back.”

  “That’s good to know.” Rachel shuffled a couple of papers. “Did I see an email that you were in a car accident?”

  “Yes, I was run off the road last night. Jesse—Sean’s son—was with me. We were coming back from dinner and a Ford F-250 sideswiped us as we got off the freeway. There’s a police report on it—when I get a copy, I’ll send it to you.”

  “I don’t need it—unless it’s related to a case you’re working.”

  “I don’t think so.” Could it have been? She didn’t think so, but she hadn’t seriously thought that it was related the McMahon case. Why would anyone want to run her off the road? To scare her? They hadn’t figured out what had been going on with McMahon, and with the lost evidence, they may still never learn why he took a room of people hostage.

  “Was it intentional?” Rachel asked.

  Lucy didn’t want to admit to Rachel that it was, but she wasn’t going to lie—not again. Lying to Rachel at the beginning of their working relationship had created a plethora of problems between them that they’d only recently really begun to work through.

  “I believe it was, though I don’t know why. You’re aware that Jesse’s family was recently released from the witness protection program when the marshals determined there was no longer a threat against them.”

  “You think there still is?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly. Sean’s on top of it and talking to the marshals. I’m focused on the McMahon and Grey cases.”

  “Right—just recognize that for all intents and purposes, the cases are closed. We’re just gathering additional facts for the reports. But you and Leo can’t spend a lot of extra time on this.”

  “You really need to read Leo’s memo. Evidence is missing, it appears to have disappeared during transport. SAPD is tracking it through the courier, but it’s very odd that only one of three packages arrived.”

  Rachel was surprised, and it was clear she hadn’t read anything from Leo all day. “I’m sorry, I should have known. I’m working today to catch up on everything I’ve neglected since those warrants came through.”

  “We’re hoping to have at least some answers this weekend.”

  “I won’t keep you, then. Thanks.”

  Lucy left and breathed a sigh of relief. Rachel was preoccupied, and that was probably a good thing. Lucy had expected her boss to say it was an SAPD problem because technically, Lucy and Leo weren’t on the McMahon case.

  “There you are,” Leo said. “Ready—wait, what happened? How’d you get that bruise?”

  “Car accident last night. I’ll explain on the way to Cassidy’s house.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at Cassidy Roth’s house. Leo intentionally parked in the driveway—if Cassidy tried to flee, she would have to do it on foot.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Leo asked for the third time.

  “I’m fine. Just bruised. Are we on the same page here with Cassidy?”

  “Yes.”

  Lucy didn’t want Leo to worry about her when they needed to be cautious about McMahon’s assistant. While she might be harmless, she had been at the hostage situation, left, and took two boxes of possible evidence from McMahon’s apartment.

  Lucy wasn’t taking any chances. She’d faced young female criminals before, and in some ways they were more dangerous than their male counterparts because many cops didn’t consider them as threats.

  They waited until the officer who was watching the house came over to them. “I haven’t seen her,” he said.

  “When’d you come on duty?”

  “Six a.m., sir.”

  “We’ll go to the front, you watch the back. If she bolts, grab her. But she’s a person of interest, not a suspect at this time.”

  They approached Cassidy’s door and Leo knocked. “Cassidy Roth, this is SSA Leo Proctor with the FBI. We need to speak with you.”

  A prickly feeling on the back of Lucy’s neck had her turning sharply around, just in time to see a blind shift back into place in Emmaline Granger’s house.

  “Leo, I think she’s in Granger’s house.”

  “We don’t have enough people to cover all the doors.”

  “She’s going to run. We need to go.” Lucy made a move toward Granger’s house and Leo stopped her.

  “Do not pursue her alone.” Leo called for the uniform. He jogged back into view. “Stay here. Eyes open.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leo and Lucy walked briskly to the front of the property. Before they even got to the front porch, they saw a white Honda Civic—Cassidy’s make and model—speeding down the street.

  “That’s her,” Lucy said.

  Leo jumped into the FBI pool car. He turned the ignition, then tried to back out.

  The car didn’t budge.

  He jumped out. “Well, shit!”

  Lucy ran out and saw that there was a four-by-four wooden stake blocking the rear tires. She and Leo removed it, but by that time Cassidy was gone, and they had no way of knowing which direction she’d turned when she reached the four-way intersection at the end of the street.

  “Dammit,” Leo mumbled. He made a call and Lucy heard him putting an APB on Cassidy Roth, then he made another call. “I need a search warrant.” He gave Cassidy’s name and address. “Cause? Obstruction of justice, removing evidence from a crime scene, interfering with a fede
ral officer in the line of duty … yes, I believe the evidence is in her house.”

  Lucy doubted it. She didn’t know the research assistant, but she had been a step ahead of them on Wednesday when she cleaned out whatever was important in McMahon’s apartment; yesterday when they tried to interview her; and today. She’d expected them, and she had a plan to bolt.

  But she didn’t say anything.

  “Anything related to the McMahon hostage situation, Clarke-Harrison, or Paul Grey’s suicide,” Leo was saying on the phone. “Grey’s phone is missing and so is McMahon’s laptop. She was seen removing two boxes of evidence from McMahon’s apartment.”

  Lucy looked over at Emmaline’s house. The woman was looking at them through the closed screen, a worried expression on her face. She knew something.

  “Thanks, Abigail. We’ll wait here.” He hung up. “Abigail is going to talk to SAPD—she thinks we’ll get a warrant faster through the county DA than going through the AUSA’s office. She’ll call me back.”

  “Cassidy was in Mrs. Granger’s house.”

  “Let’s have a talk with Mrs. Granger.”

  They walked up the stairs. The old woman opened the door. “Come in, please.”

  “You’re in some trouble, ma’am,” Leo said.

  “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” she said. “Please don’t hurt Cassidy. She’s not thinking straight.”

  Mrs. Granger shuffled over to the dining table and sat down. “Please sit. My arthritis is bad this morning.”

  Leo sighed, and his angry face disappeared. “Mrs. Granger,” he said quietly but firmly, “we need to talk to Cassidy about Charlie McMahon and Paul Grey and what she knows about the hostage situation on Wednesday, and Grey’s suicide.”

  “Suicide?”

  “We know that she saw Paul Grey, whom she used to work with, only hours before he killed himself.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. Cassidy is a sweet girl. She would never hurt anyone. She takes care of everything here, takes my garbage out every week.”

  Lucy said, “When I was talking to you yesterday, was Cassidy in your house?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything else I said was the truth. She did leave late Monday night. She didn’t come back until Wednesday afternoon. She was so upset. She told me to please not tell anyone she was here because she had more work to do.”

  “What kind of work? She called in sick to her employer this week.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand what she did at work, and she really didn’t tell me anything. All she said was that if she didn’t figure it out, Charlie would have died for nothing.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did she tell you about the hostage situation?”

  “I saw it on the news. I’d met Charlie. I couldn’t believe what he had done, especially when Cassidy looked up to him so much. Cassidy said he didn’t do it, but of course he did. I saw it with my own eyes. I told her that because they were friends she might not see the truth. She said he was already dying and she was helping him figure out what happened.”

  “What happened? What did she mean?”

  “I don’t know. A lot of what Cassidy said didn’t make sense to me, but I never graduated from high school. I married the boy next door when I was sixteen and we had a wonderful life. All my kids went to college, except Timmy. He enlisted in the marines. Died for his country, but I don’t cry because he loved his country and loved being a marine.” Her eyes flitted over to a family photo on the wall. Five kids. One was in uniform. “That was Timmy’s graduation from basic training. We all went to see him. His dad and I, we were so proud.”

  Leo said, “Bless him for his service, and your loss, ma’am. I served in the marines for six years, right out of high school. What happened to your boy?”

  “They couldn’t tell me. He was part of a special forces team, I think they call it. He died during a rescue, saving a fellow soldier. His name is Danny. He still writes to me. He named his son Timmy, after my boy. Timmy would never have been born, if my Timmy hadn’t saved Danny. It was meant to be, but I miss him.”

  She smiled at them, but it was sad. “Cassidy is a good girl. If she’s done something against the law, she didn’t mean to. She must have a good reason.”

  “We’re getting a warrant to search her house,” Leo said. “Did she leave anything here?”

  “No, she stayed up all night at her place working. I know because her lights were on when I got up at five.”

  “How did she know we were coming?” Lucy asked.

  “She didn’t. She left early this morning.”

  “We had an officer watching the house.”

  “I think she knew that,” Mrs. Granger said. “She started parking down the street in university parking on Wednesday. She left before six in the morning. She came back right before you got here. She saw you drive up, and as soon as you walked back to her house, she left. Told me she had more work to do and she promised me she’d call you, Agent Kincaid, as soon as she had answers.”

  “Em,” Lucy said, “think hard. Where would she go? Was there someone she might reach out to? Someone who might take her in?”

  “Cassidy didn’t have a lot of friends. She talked about someone named Vince, but I don’t think she liked him much. He wasn’t returning her calls, that I know. And there was another boy, Adam—they went to school together, and I thought they might be dating, but when I asked she just blushed and said no. She likes him but probably never told him. She can be very shy.”

  “Do you know Adam’s last name?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t think he lives too far away, though. I remember a couple of times over the last year or so when she said she was going to have coffee with Adam.”

  Lucy made a note. It would be virtually impossible to track down Adam with no last name who graduated from the same school as Cassidy and lived in the Greater San Antonio area—but maybe they’d catch a break if they could get a warrant for her house and find his address or last name in her belongings.

  “If she comes back, you need to let us know, Em. She wasn’t in trouble before, but now she is. And if she knows anything about what was going on with Charlie McMahon, she needs to tell us.”

  “She doesn’t think the police can help,” Mrs. Granger said. “But I’ll call you, I promise. And I’m sorry I fibbed to you yesterday. Everything else I told you was the truth, I just didn’t tell you she was in my house. Am I in trouble?”

  Leo reached out and squeezed her hand. “No, Em, you’re not in trouble. Unless you do it again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sean had an awful night, and he didn’t expect the day to get any better.

  He woke up in Jesse’s room just before nine, his neck stiff and his back sore. He woke Jesse like the doctor had told him to. Jesse said, “I’m fine,” and closed his eyes again.

  Sean didn’t think he’d been asleep. Jesse just didn’t want to talk to him.

  Sean took a short shower and walked downstairs. He didn’t like coffee, but he poured himself a cup, sipped, and grimaced. He needed the jolt but he didn’t understand how Lucy could drink this stuff like water.

  Kane was on the phone, and by the conversation it was clear he was talking to Rick Stockton. When he hung up, he said, “Rick knows what happened. He’s talking to Dean now, and will be alerting the marshals.”

  “What does he think is going on?”

  “If this is a threat to Jesse, their threat assessment is shit.” Kane paused. “You need to be prepared that they may have to go back into WITSEC. The marshals are generally very good, but they could have missed something—especially if Spade wasn’t forthcoming.”

  Sean’s stomach twisted painfully. He’d been thinking about this exact situation all night. That now that he’d found Jesse, he would lose him again.

  “If Spade didn’t tell the truth, if he hid something about his activities or associat
es from the court, he won’t be allowed back into the program. That’s part of his agreement,” Sean said.

  “But they would put his wife and son back in.”

  “Stepson! Jesse is my son.”

  “Sean.”

  Kane didn’t have to say it. Sean couldn’t protect Jesse and Madison if someone wanted to get to Carson through them.

  “I don’t want to lose him, Kane,” Sean said quietly.

  Kane clapped a hand on Sean’s back. “We’re going to get through this, no matter what happens. He’s safe here for now, Jack’s on his way, and I’m going to do some recon on this Bart Vasquez. Did you learn anything about Jesse’s phone last night?”

  “I left a program running overnight.”

  They walked down the hall to Sean’s office and he slipped behind his desk. At least here he had complete control. Here, he knew what he was doing and how to find answers.

  He scanned the raw data of the app that told Jesse’s mother where he was. These apps were supposed to be hackproof, but Sean knew nothing was foolproof. Yet Sean had found no evidence that someone outside had accessed the app. Now he had just the raw code and data. Everything meant something, but what he wanted was a list of IP addresses that had logged into the program to look at the tracking. One came up almost daily—but Sean had already determined it was Madison.

  This was going to take time. Raw data was a bitch to pore through, even when you knew what to look for.

  Kane said, “Work on that, call if you learn anything. Jack will be here early afternoon. We’re going to find out exactly what’s going on.” He paused. “I told Rick Lucy’s theory.”

  “What?” Had Sean missed something?

  “That being run off the road was a threat, not a planned assassination.”

  “She doesn’t know that.”

  “She’s not only trained, but she has above-average instincts. It was a hit-and-run, on purpose, but they had time to finish the job if they wanted Lucy or Jesse dead.”

  Sean hated hearing those words.

  “Rick’s going to relay that information to the marshals and hope that they’ll delay any relocation until we get answers.”