Deadly Intent

by Kylie Brant

  “A marriage cynic? What a surprise. Does the woman you were talking on the phone with this morning know your opinion on the subject?”

  He didn’t bother to turn around at her question. “The topic hasn’t come up. And I’ll be long gone before it gets to that point.”

  Figured. Burke was the type who breezed through females without getting entangled in any of the stickier emotions. Hardly surprising, given what she knew of his ease with women. That only made her decision about not getting involved with him months ago seem wiser.

  And the next time she was tempted to lower her guard, his words should serve as a warning. As if in defense, she reached up and pulled the hat he detested so much more snugly over her ears. Her stepfather often teased her about her cautious nature.

  It was a nature that would serve her well when it came to Kellan Burke.

  “I know a lot of guys that think like you,” Travis was saying. The Denver city limits were coming into view. And traffic on the interstate was brisk, regardless of the patches of black ice that liberally dotted the lanes. “But I liked being married. Liked the stability. Liked having someone to go home to.”

  “You could get a dog,” Kell suggested, not looking up from the sheets in his lap.

  Because the agent seemed to expect it, Macy asked, “What happened to your marriage?”

  “My wife died four years ago. Aneurism.” He looked up to catch her gaze in the mirror. “It was a tough time. But I’m ready to move on. Wouldn’t rule out getting married again sometime, that’s for sure.”

  This time Kell did turn around and the smirk on his face did nothing to ease the discomfort she was feeling. She’d have to be dead to miss the look in Travis’s expression, and for the first time in her memory, she was grateful for Kell’s presence. “I hope you find someone,” she said inanely and then seized the opportunity to change the subject. “How do you want to organize the interviews today?”

  “Makes most sense to start with numbers most frequently called.”

  “I think we should do it geographically.” Travis objected to Kell’s suggestion. “Saves us time and we can cover more ground if we’re not constantly backtracking.”

  “Okay, we’ll give Macy the tie-breaking vote,” Kell said easily. And she would have dearly loved to smack that wicked grin off his face. “Which will it be, Duchess?”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped. Feeling Travis’s gaze on her in the mirror again, she mentally searched for a way out and failed to find one. “As much as it pains me to agree with Burke, I think he may be right this time. There’s no way we’re going to get to everyone on that list today. With the timeline hanging over our head, we need to contact the people who knew him best. Those are probably the ones he had the most phone contact with.”

  “Okay, your call.” The agent’s tone was entirely too cheerful. She knew it wasn’t her imagination that his easy capitulation was a result of a newfound interest in her. Looking out the window at the cars whizzing by them, it suited her to blame that on Kellan Burke.

  With a feeling of déjà vu, Adam Raiker approached the interview room. He’d deliberately left Castillo for last and didn’t expect much to come of the conversation. As the mastermind in the child-swap ring, the man had had the most to lose in the trial. He’d gotten the longest sentence and was unlikely to ever see parole.

  And he still hadn’t gotten half what he deserved.

  “I’ll stay here. Signal me when you’re done.”

  Adam gave a curt nod at the guard’s words and walked through the door the man opened for him.

  As soon as he stepped into the room, he heard the door close and lock behind him.

  He crossed the worn beige institutional tile floor to sit at a battered folding table with government-issued metal chairs. He’d visited identical rooms in a dozen prisons dotting the map in the last few days. The only thing that changed was the location. Same security. Similar drab interiors. Same sort of men facing him across the tables.

  But Enrique Castillo was different in one respect. He’d been the brains behind the child auction where Ellie Mulder had surfaced after her first disappearance.

  A door at the side of the room opened, and Castillo entered, doing the prison shuffle. He wore leg and wrist shackles, a telling reminder that the man’s time inside so far had not been spent as a model prisoner. Adam waited for him to sit down in the chair opposite before nodding at the guard, who then withdrew, turned the lock.

  “I hear you haven’t been playing nice inside, Enrique. That saddens me. Makes me wonder about your commitment to rehabilitation.”

  The man grinned, revealing a gold-backed front tooth. “I have wondered about you, too, my friend. Wondered if my prayers had been answered and an unfortunate accident befell you. Or perhaps if someone had the good judgment to gouge out your remaining eye and shove it up your ass.” His chains clanked as he clasped his hands on the table in front of him.

  “Your concern is touching,” Adam drawled. Studying the man intently, he decided that he was weathering prison much better than Cooper and some of the others he’d visited in the last few days. But then, Castillo was an adaptive son of a bitch. Which was how he’d managed to evade authorities in at least three countries for more than two decades. “Prison seems to agree with you.”

  There was a flash of something in the other man’s eyes. “I have you to thank for my stay here. I have not forgotten.”

  Adam leaned back in the seat nonchalantly. “If I were you, I’d be mad as hell. It must really suck to be in here, knowing you have friends on the outside who deserve to be serving time along beside you.” He paused for a moment before going on. “Maybe someone who’s just as guilty as you. More so. Still walking around outside. Eating in restaurants. Taking vacations. Spending time with family. All the things you’ll never do again.”

  Castillo scratched one pockmarked cheek. “That is assuming that I am guilty in the first place, my friend. If you will recall, I pled innocent to those phony charges.”

  Deliberately baiting the man, Adam grinned humorlessly. “And look where that got you. Locked up for the rest of your life while others continue the very activities that landed you here. That must be very hard to contemplate. And you do have a lot of time in here to contemplate.”

  The inmate’s hands clenched for a moment before he deliberately relaxed them. “It is as you say. Much time. Especially in solitary.”

  “Maybe you could win some concessions. You provide me with what I want, and I speak to the warden on your behalf.”

  The gold tooth glinted again as the man grinned. “You would do that for me? Grant my wishes? Because you know there is one thing I wish very much.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “The lovely Macy Reid. You could send her here to see me, could you not? I would like very much to talk to her once again.”

  An alarm bell triggered in Adam’s mind. Deliberately, he silenced it. “It depends on what you have to trade in return.”

  “Ah.” Castillo shook a finger at him playfully. “You are a wily man, Adam Raiker. You do not pretend that you cannot arrange such a thing. That is wise of you. I have followed Senorita Reid on the Internet. I know she works for you now. That is a—what is the word—irony, is it not? You could say I brought the two of you together.”

  “You could say that.” Certainly Macy’s testimony in Castillo’s case had brought her to Adam’s attention. And had effectively shattered any hopes Castillo had had of an acquittal. “But let’s talk about who deserves to be in a place like this even more than you. Maybe we were shortsighted when we rounded people up at the auction. Your lawyer suggested someone else was at the helm of the child slavery ring. Let’s talk about who that was.”

  But the other man merely smiled at him. “Ah, lawyers. They say what they are paid to, es verdad?”

  Adam pressed on. “I hear the ring is up and running again. New person in charge but using all your contacts. Even using the same hunting grou
nds you used to: Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Southern California, and Arizona.” He was outright lying now. As far as he knew, that particular pipeline of kidnapped children for the sex trade had been cut off with the arrest of this man. “That makes you look like a chump, doesn’t it, Enrique?” The other man abruptly sat back, the smile leaving his face. “All your hard work and someone just waits for the law to grab you and steps in and reaps all the profit.”

  “I think you are doing the fishing game. If it is true what you say, then that is your problem. If you know this, then you must do your police work and bring those bad people to justice.”

  “See, I knew we had something in common.” Adam shifted to stretch out his leg when a cramp seized it. The pain was too familiar to register with him. “Justice. I’m interested in that, too. I’m willing to bet our definitions of the term differ somewhat. Who do you want to bring to justice?” Before coming he’d had Paulie Samuels, his right arm at headquarters, comb through Castillo’s background again. He’d come up with nothing they hadn’t found before the trial. And what Paulie couldn’t find usually didn’t exist.

  But it was probable that Castillo was harboring a huge grudge against him, and possibly against Stephen Mulder. The man’s high profile had brought increased scrutiny in the trial.

  “What am I interested in? I have shared my hopes regarding your future, my friend.” The smile the man flashed was anything but friendly. “You know about suffering perhaps.” He gestured toward the scars on Adam’s hands. “I can only wish more for you. Far more.”

  “Of course,” Adam agreed politely. “Anyone else?”

  Castillo leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest with a faint jangle of chains. “I am not a vindictive man. I seek only to right old wrongs. But you are correct about one thing. I have something to say that would interest you very much. Something I’m sure you do not know.” His smile grew sly. “But I will tell it only to Macy Reid.”

  The man was lying. Adam settled into the back of the rental after giving the driver instructions and considered the scene with Castillo. He hadn’t expected to get much from him, so in that vein he hadn’t been disappointed. Castillo was far wilier than most they had scooped up when they’d broken up the kiddie sex ring. If he knew anything about Ellie Mulder’s recent disappearance, he hadn’t let on. And try as he might, Adam hadn’t been able to discover any way to connect the man to it.

  Castillo had been running a pipeline of kidnapped girls from Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico into the United States and selling them at auction to pedophiles. Allowing scum like Art Cooper to swap the children who had grown too old for their taste, he plucked the ones that caught his eye and reversed the supply line, selling them to wealthy buyers in Latin America. He didn’t run the risk of kidnapping U.S. children that way. Which was quite possibly how he managed to stay free as long as he had.

  His cell beeped, and he drew it out of the pocket of his cashmere overcoat to check the caller ID. It was Paulie. Knowing the man detested talking on phones as much as he did himself, Adam withdrew his laptop from his zippered briefcase and logged on to his video conferencing software. He typed in the necessary commands to reach Samuels while mentally replaying the scene with Castillo.

  He decided it was doubtful the man had anything of importance about this case to share. But he’d use Adam’s interest as leverage to get something he desired—a face-to-face meeting with Macy.

  Adam was going to make damn sure the man didn’t get what he wanted.

  He leaned forward to punch the button that would close the privacy window between him and the driver as Samuels’s face came on the screen. “Paulie. What do you have for me?”

  The man’s round face wore its usual smile. It was rare to see it otherwise. “I’ve got a sure thing on a sweet little filly in Louisville. An intriguing offer to join a high-stakes and extremely illegal poker club in Old Alexandria. And a pocketful of winnings due to my uncanny trifecta pick at the dog track yesterday.” His pudgy hand reached up to smooth his tie, which bore aces of every suit. “As usual, should you be interested, I’d be happy to supply you with tips.”

  “As usual, I’ll pass,” Adam said dryly. The man’s interest in gambling was nearly as legendary as his prowess with finances. When they’d been in the bureau together, Paulie had been the agency’s top forensic accountant. Since coming to work for Adam, his talents were mostly put to use as chief financial officer and information broker. He was the one person in the world Adam trusted with his life. For very good reason. “Do you happen to have anything for me that has to do with the case?”

  Paulie’s smile dimmed. “Not on Castillo. Didn’t hit any walls there. I just don’t think there’s more to find.”

  Adam pondered the news. It was no more than he’d expected. Which meant the convict had been blowing smoke about having information he’d share with only Macy.

  Again, as expected.

  “You found no threads that connect Castillo with Mulder at all?”

  The other man shook his head vehemently, then reached up to smooth the thinning hair his gesture had dislodged. “I don’t see where Castillo has the network in place in this country to pull off anything like the abduction, even if he wanted to. In Mexico or Latin America, sure. But not here. Those he dealt with in this country would have been pedophiles. High-roller child lovers with deep pockets. I also managed to take a peek at his financials—online bank security in Latin America is a joke—and he doesn’t have a handy reserve of cash at his disposal. His business was lucrative, but he lived pretty high. He wasn’t much for saving.”

  “Probably because he figured there was always more where that had come from,” Adam muttered. “Well, Castillo was the last of them. I’ll probably head to West Virginia from here to see what Abbie and Ryne turned up and then back to Denver.”

  “There is one other thing you should know.”

  Paulie’s sober tone had Adam’s interest sharpening. “We’ve got someone poking around in your history, especially your financials.”

  “How deep did they get?”

  “Second level. Before he could try for the third, I threw up another firewall and sent a dandy little virus back his way. Should’ve fried the bastard’s computer if it did its job.” The thought brought a note of merriment to Paulie’s voice. “And I’m sure it did.”

  “Did you trace the probe?”

  Samuels shook his head woefully. Adam knew him well enough to realize the man would consider it a personal failure. “Used unregistered machines and accessed various Internet cafés across the country.” He looked down as if consulting notes. “Houston, Minneapolis, Tampa. Or more likely, the son of a bitch is good enough to make it look that way. He covered his cyber tracks, bounced me around. You want me to bring Gavin in on this, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything?”

  Gavin Pounds, their resident cyber genius, was brilliant with computers. But Paulie was brilliant, too. “No. Not yet.” The other man nodded, as if Adam’s answer was no more than he’d expected. “Keep your eye on it and let me know if there’s another attempt.”

  Paulie’s high forehead glistened with perspiration beneath its receding hairline. “No one’s getting through the security layers I constructed, Adam.” For once his expression was completely sober. “You can trust me on that.”

  “I always have.” He looked at the man who was closer to him than any brother could be. Their bond was forged in blood, if not the biological kind. “Give your wallet a rest and stay away from the casinos tonight.”

  “Sure.” The smile was back, and with it, Paulie’s usual irreverence. “Stay away from guys who want to hold a knife to your eye.”

  Dark humor flickered. “Too late for that.”

  “Back atcha.”

  With a chuckle, Adam disconnected and the screen went blank. The day Samuels gave up gambling would be the day he stopped breathing. The gamble he’d taken seven and a half years ago had bound them together for life. Ad
am had long since stopped wondering if that was a good thing.

  He used his mobile Internet to access his e-mail and settled in to catch up on his messages. But first he reread the one Burke had sent him last night. The stab of annoyance it had elicited was still sharp.

  So Whitman was playing territorial turf games. It couldn’t be said that he hadn’t given the man a chance. They could ill-afford this kind of pissing contest now that the ante had been raised with the ransom note. It was time to push back. He sent a quick e-mail to Caitlin Fleming, his main forensic operative in the new western satellite office, instructing her to send a mobile lab to the Mulder estate. His next message was to Ty Corbett, his lab manager, telling him to get an available scientist on the first plane to Denver. Then he picked up his phone and called a number he’d placed in his contacts directory in case a situation like this one arose.

  One hand dropped to his thigh, rubbing at the constant pain there in an unconscious gesture. When the call was answered, he cut through the secretary’s automatic greeting brusquely. “I’d like to talk to Senator Barnes. Tell him it’s Adam Raiker.”

  Kell stopped Agent Travis when his hand went to the car door. “Wait. I think it’s time to change our strategy.”

  Travis sent him a look from beneath his low brows. “Remember, you were the one who called this strategy. You said to start with the people who Hubbard communicated with the most. I was the one who wanted to . . .”

  “Actually the tie-breaking vote went to Macy, but why quibble.”

  “Chivalrous to the end,” Macy murmured from the backseat. But she was more than willing to switch approaches. The seven men they’d interviewed so far had been increasingly uncooperative. All had professed friendship with Hubbard and none had been overly forthcoming when it came to answering questions about him.

  “I think Macy should take this one by herself.”

  A quick flare of annoyance surged at Kell’s words. If he recommended the low-cut distraction ploy again, she really would smack him. “And why is that?”