Exposed

by Suzanne Ferrell

He returned her nod.

  “It was more a mission to soothe ruffled feathers, rather than actually gain information,” Dave said, as he stepped around Castello. “No cop likes someone stepping into their case and taking over. Especially another agency entirely, and especially not on a cop killing. But Chambers seems to be on board with us. We assured him Abrams was collateral damage in a bigger case.”

  “And if my brother hadn’t been trying to blackmail someone, Detective Abrams wouldn’t have been working the arson case in my house explosion. He wouldn’t have been killed.” Sydney stood and left the room. She wandered into the front room, and stopped at the window to look out into the dark night.

  She felt Frank’s presence behind her, before his big hands settled on her shoulders.

  “It’s not your fault,” he quietly said.

  “It’s my brother’s, and since he’s family, it makes it my fault, too.”

  Castello’s hands tightened on her shoulders. Slowly, he pulled her back against his body. They stood that way for a while, watching the rain come down in a slow, steady beat.

  “My parents died when I was just five,” he said, breaking the silence. “I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I went to live with my grandfather. Granddad was an old-school kind of guy. Straight military from World War Two. Not a lot of hugging when you were hurt, but lots of discipline when you screwed up. He believed in rewarding good work and holding a person accountable for their actions.”

  She reached up to hold one of his hands. “Did he…did he beat you, if you didn’t obey?”

  God, she hoped not. No child deserved that.

  “Corporal punishment was only used once, when I nearly caused the death of another boy. We’d been watching daredevil motorcyclists, and I took it in my head that we could ride our bikes off a cliff overlooking a lake. Granddad didn’t want me taking life, mine or anyone else’s, for granted. Afterwards, I couldn’t sit for a week, but when I could, part of my punishment was helping my friend do his homework. He’d broken an arm and a leg.” Frank laced his fingers with hers. “Granddad’s discipline was more on the line of doing things right the first time. Respecting the things you have by taking care of them. Putting things away in the right spot—”

  “So you know where they are when you need them.” She couldn’t help the smile. Now she understood where his near-compulsive orderliness came from.

  “Yes. And being responsible for your own actions. My friends and I broke a neighbor’s window playing ball. I knew I’d be in more trouble if I ran away like the others. So, I told Granddad. He took me to the neighbor’s house so I could tell him, then they agreed that I would work off the cost of the window by doing yard work.”

  “I think I would’ve liked your grandfather.”

  “He would’ve liked you.”

  Humor laced his voice, and she’d bet the corners of his mouth had lifted in that half-smirk of his. His lips pressed against the side of her forehead.

  “But Granddad would be the first to tell you that you can’t be responsible for another’s actions. Only your own. Your brother chose to use those pictures for his own personal gain. The men who killed Annabeth chose to do so. And the person who sent this killer to silence you chose to kill Abrams. None of it is your fault, Syd.”

  A throat cleared behind them.

  They turned to find Dave standing in the doorway.

  “Hate to interrupt, but the boy genius is on the line with information for us,” he said, then left them alone again.

  “We should go,” Sydney said, moving to step around Frank.

  He stopped her. “I want you to say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That you know none of this is your fault.”

  “Frank, Luke and Abby are waiting.”

  “Say it, Syd.”

  The damn man wasn’t going to let it go. She might as well say it, even if she didn’t really believe it.

  “Okay. None of this is my fault.”

  “Say it enough times, and you’ll start to believe it,” he said, before dropping his mouth onto hers for a quick kiss.

  “Before I get to what you asked me for, my beautiful wife had a great idea,” Luke was saying as they entered the command center once more. “Since almost everyone these days has some sort of phone or notebook with a camera feature, she suggested we search social media sites for photos of the fire scene. So we’ve sent you what we found in a little file of videos and photos titled wedding. Might find someone interesting in them.”

  Doyle had his land line hooked up to be a speaker phone, so they could all listen.

  “I had to go into the dark web to hide my tracks, and bounced the signal around the globe through about twenty different satellites, but I managed to get the name of the driver issued that particular SUV,” Luke said.

  “Okay, kid, quite bragging on your hacking skills and tell us who drove that car,” Jake said.

  “You’re going to love this. It was…Joe Smith.”

  “Shit,” Dave muttered.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Matt said.

  “No. That’s who the car is registered to. Couldn’t get which detail it was on, either.”

  That elicited more cursing from the brothers.

  Jake signaled for the others to quiet down. “Luke, listen to me very carefully. You and Abby need to change hotels. Now. Right this minute.”

  “Don’t need to, Jake.”

  “Yes, you do. Joe Smith is the cover they give black ops crews. They’re some nasty people with equally nasty skills—skills like yours. You’re not safe in your little hideaway anymore.”

  “I figured that might be the case when you called to ask the favor. Abby and I chartered a helicopter to the big island, went incognito with big hats and sunglasses to avoid facial rec cameras, and scored a private couple’s sauna to do our hack.” He chuckled and the brothers shook their heads. “I even signed us in as…Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Already on our way back to the heliport.”

  “Dump the burner phone as soon as we’re done, and watch your back just the same,” Jake said.

  “Aye-aye Captain! See you all in a week.” A pause happened, and mumbling could be heard. “Oh, and Abby says to tell Marshal Dillon to take care of our friend.”

  The phone went silent.

  “Will they really be safe?” Sydney asked, warmed by the message from Abby.

  “Yeah, Luke isn’t going to let anything happen to Abby,” Dave said. “She’s the most important person in the world to him.”

  “More importantly,” Matt said, focusing on the encrypted file the newlyweds had sent, “Abby won’t let anything happen to Luke. She’ll keep him focused, now that they know there’s a threat.”

  “Do you really think whoever is after me has the reach to get to Luke and Abby so far away?”

  “Yes,” Frank said, with such complete conviction that shivers ran over Sydney’s skin.

  She studied the solemn faces of the other four men. They were worried. Her heart sank. Ian hadn’t just put his life at risk, nor hers. His corrupt narcissism had put this whole family, including Castello and Doyle, in danger. How could he be such a bastard? If she could get her hands on him right now, she’d choke the living daylights out of him.

  “What can I do to help?” she said, determined to make this right somehow.

  “Do you have the pictures you took the day after the fire at your place?” Frank asked.

  “Yes,” she said, going to her camera case laying on the floor next to the comfy chair she’d vacated earlier. “Why?”

  “Maybe we could put them on the monitors with the images Luke got from the night of the fire,” Frank said.

  “And see if anyone looks familiar from both.” She couldn’t help the excitement. Finally, they’d be doing something other than guessing and running.

  “You get started with Matt. I’ll drop our bags off upstairs.” Frank said.

  “Wait, our bags?” she asked.

  “For the time
being, we’re staying here. It’s safer.”

  As he left the room, she realized he was right. Doyle’s place had enough cameras to warn of an invasion, and more security than Fort Knox. Not to mention, all the men currently in the house with them were armed like old-fashioned gunfighters expecting trouble. Heck, all she needed was a schoolmarm outfit and horses outside, and they’d be reenacting a fight scene from one of her favorite Western romance novels.

  Something occurred to her as she took her seat next to Matt and slipped her photo stick into the USB port of the hard drive.

  “If you are all here to protect Castello and me, who’s with your families?” she asked him.

  “Sami, Katie, and Judy are taking a surprise vacation. They’ve moved all our family, including Mom and Dad, to a family farm in Eastern, Ohio that’s been in the family for nearly a century,” Matt said, as he pulled up another screen with a black-and-white video feed, showing four camera views. Two seemed to be outside a farmhouse, front and back. The other two were inside. One in a living room, the other in a kitchen, where the four women were milling about. “The farm isn’t listed as belonging to any close family members, so hopefully no one will be looking for any connection between Frank and the owner, our cousin, Zoe.”

  “But who will protect them?”

  Matt grinned. “Trust me, my wife and sister aren’t unarmed, and neither is my dad. Besides, no one gets fiercer than mama lions protecting their young.”

  * * * * *

  “Someone’s been accessing files.”

  This was not what he wanted to hear. With Geist failing to take out the blackmailer twice now, the last thing he needed was to discover someone had gotten the scent of his plans.

  “Which files?”

  “Vehicle assignments,” the voice on the other end of the line said shakily.

  Fuck. That meant someone was looking for a certain car, and he was pretty damn sure it was the one he’d used to move the Kelly girl’s body.

  “Have you determined who it was?” He picked up a pen and began clicking the tip in and out.

  “I’m working on it, sir. This guy’s good. He’s got the signal bouncing through black sites, all over the world, and satellites no one is supposed to know even exist.”

  “I don’t give a damn how good he is. I pay you to be better. Find him.”

  He hit the disconnect button and fought the urge to hurl the piece of electronics against the river-stone-covered fireplace. Instead, he strode over to the wet bar in his den, pulled out the bottle of nearly fifty-year-old whisky, and poured two fingers’ worth into a cut-crystal tumbler. He’d worked hard and with diligent care to get where he was. He’d be damned if some blackmailer was going to destroy it all.

  Things were spiraling out of control. And if there was one thing he detested, it was not being in control.

  Standing by the fireplace, he stared into the flames licking at the cedar logs and sipped his drink. The key was to take care of all the loose ends before any of the threads led back to him. To ensure it was done to his own satisfaction, he’d have to handle the job himself.

  Someone was looking for the vehicle.

  That was worrisome. It meant that whoever was blackmailing the Congressman had not simply stumbled upon the girl’s body. They’d seen the SUV they’d transported her in.

  A sinking feeling settled in the middle of his stomach.

  Had they taken pictures of the car? Of Kelvin and Stokes carrying her body into it? Of the shooting itself? Of him?

  This time he gave into the rage and smashed the crystal into the fire, glass and flames flying high.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The images on the screen were too disturbing to view as a video. Sydney couldn’t get past the fire tearing through her home and the subsequent explosion to focus on the crowd images flickering in and out, as the latest cameraperson scanned their phone rapidly from the fire to the firetruck and across the crowd. It was a herky-jerky type of movie—the kind that always gave her headaches.

  “This isn’t working,” she said, pushing the stop button. She opened up the editing screen. “Let’s make it one picture at a time. We’ll eliminate the fire pictures.”

  “And just focus on the crowd?” Doyle said, doing the same to the video he’d been looking at.

  Despite the heartache that the fire video had renewed in her chest, she softened her gaze at the older man. “Yes. We’ll be able to enlarge the images and compare each to the ones I took outside the next morning.” She paused and swallowed the lump in her throat, “We might get lucky and find someone who was hanging around both times.”

  Doyle laid his weathered hand over hers on top of the keyboard. “You sure you want to do this, little lady? It’s gotta be hard visually dissecting what happened to your home. I don’t mind doing this kind of grunt work.”

  She shook her head, moving her hand to the mouse. “No, that’s okay. Besides, I’m used to looking through a camera lens for all the nuances, even images that are in the background of a shot or on the periphery.”

  The older man chuckled and went back to work on his own keyboard. “So what you’re saying is your experienced eye will probably work faster and more accurately than my old ones.”

  “I didn’t mean—” she started to explain.

  “No, you’re right. My eye doctor told me I’ll probably need cataract surgery next year,” he said, no censure in his voice.

  “Aren’t you a little young for that?” she asked, switching screens to open up the flash drive files of the pictures she’d taken.

  “I’m a little young at sixty, but the doc told me it’s not that unusual, especially since both of my parents had cataracts. I’m even thinking of getting one long-distance lens in one eye, and one near-distance one in the other. Might not need reading glasses anymore if I do that.”

  “They can do that?” Frank said, as he pulled up the straight-backed chair once more.

  “Doc says she can, and I figure she’d know more than me.” Doyle hit a few more keys. “You get your things squared away?”

  “Dave’s already getting some shut-eye in the basement. Matt’s camping out in the living room for now. They’re planning to take shifts on night watch. Matt’s got the first half of the night. Jake’s taking the front upstairs bedroom closest to the stairs. Sydney and I are in the back one.”

  Great. Now all of the men would know she was sleeping with Castello.

  Sydney focused on the screens in front of her, hoping no one would see the blush that heated her face. It wasn’t that she was a prude. And she’d slept with several semi-serious boyfriends over the years. Usually, she didn’t announce the status of her relationships so publically, or so early on. Especially to her lover’s family and friends.

  Besides, this thing with Frank felt different from any she’d experienced before. It was probably the adrenaline from the fire, explosion, hit-and-run. Once the danger stopped, it would end. They’d go back to their own lives, only seeing each other on rare occasions.

  She shook off the embarrassment and odd feeling of loss that trailed her thoughts. She had a job to do. One that might save her life, Frank’s, and even her bastard brother, Ian.

  “I thought you were going to watch the films first?” Frank asked, leaning to her side.

  “Most of the videos were too fast and schizophrenic in movement. Doyle and I put them into frame-by-frame still shots. That will make it easier for me to compare them to the photos I took.”

  “You can do that?” he asked, curiosity in his deep voice.

  She smiled. For someone who’d only days ago professed to dislike photographers, he seemed quite fascinated with the different techniques and skills she used in her profession.

  “Actually, anyone can stop-frame digital videos with the computer program I installed on Doyle’s computer. Now all I have to do is bring them up one at a time.” Which she proceeded to do, examining each image from the day after the arson fire.

  “Why are
you starting with the pictures you took?”

  “Because I have more of an idea what’s in them. You asked me to shoot the surrounding homes, pedestrians, onlookers watching the firemen work the debris, the cars parked along the street.”

  “Ah. I get it. You’re more likely to have caught the image of anyone intentionally watching, but trying not to be conspicuous.” The corner of his lip had lifted in his ghost-smile of approval.

  “See those guys?” She pointed at the teens standing in a group across the street in one of her pictures. “We can pretty much eliminate them. They’re neighborhood kids I’ve seen hanging around one of the houses a few doors down.”

  “Curious onlookers.”

  She agreed. Moving the mouse she enlarged the picture and moved it so that the buildings behind the teens came into view. An older couple stood on the front porch of one. Up in the window of the neighboring townhome was a young mother holding a child.

  “I think we can rule them out as our arsonist,” Frank said.

  “My thoughts, too.” She closed that picture and opened up one showing a house farther down the street to the left. No one appeared in those windows, so she moved to the next picture. This one was of cars lining the street to the left of where her home had been. Most of the vehicles appeared to be empty.

  “Can you enlarge it? Maybe focus on that one?” Frank asked, reaching in front of her to point at a black, older sedan parked several cars back.

  “I can try,” she said, already doing what he’d asked. “I don’t know how much we’ll see. The resolution that far off will probably be grainy.”

  As she enlarged the image and moved the car into the center, they could see someone inside.

  “Son of a bitch!” Frank slammed his hand down on the desktop. “That’s him.”

  “How do you know?” she asked, trying to zoom in. As she feared, she couldn’t get too much detail from a shot this far away.

  “Because I saw a black sedan similar to this down the street from the townhouse before Abrams arrived. The trees blocked me seeing if anyone was in it at the time.”

  “You’re sure?”