Tainted Evidence (Evidence Series Book 10)

by Rachel Grant

  “So you had my computer stolen.” She turned to her brother. “And you didn’t even need to dox me to do it, because my dear brother gave you my address.”

  “But doxing made everyone a suspect,” Tisdale replied.

  Maddie looked like she was going to be sick, and Ava wasn’t feeling much better.

  “Your plan is insane, you know.”

  “The only reason Malheur didn’t work was because they were rash,” Tisdale said. “They didn’t have lawyers or politicians on the team. They didn’t have money.” He nodded toward Nielsen.

  “They didn’t have the right,” Maddie said.

  Ava thought Malheur was the place where the white supremacists had taken over the wildlife refuge a few years ago, but wasn’t certain. It sounded right, given what everyone was saying.

  “We’re playing a long game here,” Nielsen said, “with nothing less than an Aryan homeland at stake. We will create a whites-only country, in the hills touched by God.”

  “Surrounded by fossils that are millions of years old. Which you don’t believe in.”

  “Don’t confuse me with my great-grandparents, Maddie. I believe in science. I mine ore, after all. And I’m going to use science to fulfill my great-grandparents’ dream. DNA testing saves the day.”

  “The evidence is fake. I reported it to the museum and police.”

  “It’s nothing you can’t retract after reexamining the bones.”

  She turned to her brother. “Do your new friends know you’re only doing this to get elected? That once you’re in the Senate, you’ll turn your back on them faster than you did on me?”

  Tisdale faced Maddie and Ava—the others in the room couldn’t see his face. Again, Ava saw regret shadow his features. But then he cocked his head and said, “I have always known I am among the chosen ones, as are you, Maddie. It’s a shame you don’t see and embrace it.”

  “I know you, Alan. You don’t believe that at all. You just want power.” She glanced at Nielsen. “And you’ll do anything for campaign donations and votes.”

  Tisdale stiffened. He cocked his head toward Ava. “She’s not one of us.”

  Maddie’s entire body went rigid. “The things you’ll say and do for power are disgusting. I’m ashamed to be related to you.” She rose to her feet and turned her back to her brother, facing Nielsen. “What comes next?”

  “One of our guys has already grabbed your laptop from your hotel room and will bring it here. You’re going to submit a report that states you submitted the bone for DNA testing after verifying it was a skeleton found by Otto and Sally Kocher in the Painted Hills region on land owned by Clifford and Gladys Nielsen. We will go to the mansion, and you’ll log in to all your accounts. The IP address will prove you reviewed the remains again after reading the news report and you discovered you were mistaken in your belief the bones had been stolen from Norway. When that’s done, you’re going to take off for a few days. Grief over Josh Warner’s passing, or some other excuse. You’ll write a letter telling Ava you didn’t sign on to be a stepmom without Josh in the picture.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Well, that’s a shame, then, because if you don’t, Troy here is going to use the Taser on sweet little Ava. And if you still don’t, he’s going to pull out his knife and start carving her skin.”

  40

  Josh paused the video and bolted to his feet. He’d been fast-forwarding through the footage since he and Chase had taken over the security room—pausing only to truss up a one-eyed Peyton Hoffman and lock him in the interview room along with his brother.

  The Portland Police Bureau had been notified of the meeting on the top floor of the tower and had access to the recorded files and live feed. The only reason they hadn’t surrounded the building was to prevent a full hostage standoff if Nielsen and Tisdale knew they were surrounded. The Bureau had, of course, told Josh and Chase to stand down and wait for them to handle the situation, but given that Josh had control of the tower and was here now, he’d declined to follow their order.

  The camera in Nielsen’s outer meeting room was supposed to be off along with all the other top floor cameras, but Karl Hoffman had turned it on and had been watching the show when Josh and Chase took control of the security room.

  The former security guard had probably turned on the camera because he wanted leverage should the steel magnate and politician turn on the brothers.

  Once they secured the room, Josh had wanted to race to the thirtieth floor, but he forced himself to watch the feed to assess the situation. Now, with the threat to start carving on Ava, he was done.

  They were one minute behind real time.

  Without a word, he and Chase bolted for separate elevators. Chase went for the service lift while Josh headed for the main bank. He tapped the buttons on his phone to make sure the elevators were ready and waiting with express service to the twenty-ninth floor.

  Meanwhile, at the Raptor compound in Virginia, Mothman, Keith, and Nate were watching and listening to the feed from Nielsen Tower, including all the top-floor cameras, which Josh had turned on.

  “Shit, Nielsen just tried to radio the Hoffmans for an update,” Keith said.

  Considering both men were bound, gagged, and handcuffed to a bolted-down table in the interview room, that wasn’t going to go well.

  “Tisdale wants to take Maddie and Ava to the Kocher Mansion now. Nielsen wants Maddie to write her letter to Ava first, while Kocher is there to threaten Ava.”

  Josh still couldn’t wrap his brain around Tisdale’s utter betrayal of Maddie. It was clear the guy intended to have his sister disappear and either blame it on the doxing and her association with Josh, or, if Josh ended up not being dead, framing him for her disappearance, probably because, someone would claim, she supported her White Patriot brother’s campaign.

  Either way, Tisdale got to run as the grieving brother of a missing sister. He’d paint himself as a victim who’d been endangered by the bridge bombing. And given the current politics of the state and the nation, this gambit could actually work.

  Even the crazypants plan to create an Aryan Nation wasn’t far-fetched in the current political climate. Oregon state government had been held hostage by racists off and on for the last few years as legislators staged walkouts and extremists held marches in front of the capitol to force or stop legislation. They were getting away with it thanks to the hate rallies that emboldened more to join the ranks.

  And Maddie and Ava were in the center of it all.

  His elevator reached the twenty-ninth floor, and he exited and headed to the staircase. Chase would be on his way to the other staircase, ready to climb the last flight of stairs, just like Josh.

  Josh tripped the fire alarms on the first floor. He’d disabled the alarms and sprinklers on the other floors. The alert wouldn’t reach Nielsen’s office, but all the stairwell locks released. He entered the stairwell and climbed.

  “Kocher is holding a knife to Ava’s neck. Maddie is signing some report that Tisdale put in front of her,” Nate said. “And your brother is slipping out the side door while everyone is focused on the women.”

  Josh paused next to the door to the thirtieth floor. “Side door? The floor plan shows the entrance to Nielsen’s office and to the lobby. No side door.” Josh tried to remember a side door from his meeting, but they’d met in Nielsen’s office, not the outer room.

  “Floor plan you were given is out of date. There’s another door. It’s a kitchenette with a pass-through.”

  Josh closed his eyes and considered the schematic he’d been given last week. “The closet was converted?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “That’s the way in, then. Chase, you good with being the decoy?”

  “No problem. I’ll go to the main lobby. You go in via the kitchenette.”

  “What about Ari?” Keith asked.

  “Is he going to the stairs or elevator?”

  “Elevator.”

  Josh watched t
he schematic for the penthouse lobby and waited for the green dot to indicate the elevator was there, then pressed a button to open the doors in front of his brother.

  “Tell me when he’s inside.”

  “He’s in.”

  Josh sent the elevator down, then counted to three and stopped and locked the box. “He’s trapped until Portland Police show up to nab him.”

  “Damn, Josh, you’ve been honing your hacking skills,” Mothman said.

  “I got bored living in the compound.” This was true, but he was also taking advantage of a system in place. The elevators were designed to maximize efficiency, with floors being assigned to users based on destination, but the system got overloaded during peak hours, and the fix was to have a human seize control of the system, or no elevators would run. Josh had merely set up his own backdoor into the master control panel.

  He pushed down on the handle and entered the thirtieth floor. He knew all the camera dead spots, but he also controlled all the cameras. There was no record of any occupants in the tower other than the penthouse. The building had been locked tight by the Hoffman brothers early this morning—they couldn’t show their faces at the rally, so apparently, Nielsen had put them to work—only the parking levels were open to a very limited public.

  In short, Josh had little to fear, but still, he stayed off camera and knew Chase was doing the same, just in case Nielsen had access to a bank of monitors Josh didn’t know about. He hadn’t been allowed to inspect the top floor last week.

  He found the service door to the kitchenette and slipped inside. From there, he positioned himself behind the opposite door and waited for Chase to make it easy.

  A minute later, he heard a shout from the front, and caught Chase’s whole act on the headset.

  “Mr. Nielsen!” he shouted as he banged on the outer glass door. “I got an alert that the building was on lockdown. Some sort of emergency signal sent by the security crew. Since I was just at the park, I thought I’d check it out.”

  When there was no answer, he pounded again and said, “But there’s no one at the security desk. I know we don’t have the contract yet, but I figured I should check on you.”

  Another pause, and he pounded a third time. “Mr. Nielsen! Do you need help? My phone is pinging like crazy, and there’s no one in security.”

  “Warner, go shut him up,” Nielsen said on the other side of the door. There was a pause, then he said, “Where’s Warner?”

  “He left, moron,” Ava said, her voice full of teenage sass. Josh couldn’t be more proud. Or relieved.

  “Kocher, get rid of him. The last thing we need is a Raptor operative in the building. How did he get in anyway?”

  “Probably has something to do with you giving him and Josh Warner full access to your system last week.” That had to be Maddie’s brother.

  “I had a plan to use him that would have been perfect if the dumbfuck you freed from jail didn’t screw it up.”

  “We’ve all made mistakes, but at this point, you’re screwed without me, Nielsen.”

  “Kocher is coming my way,” Chase said.

  The kitchenette door was on a two-way swinging hinge, and Josh pushed forward, making a beeline for the biggest power player in the room.

  Nielsen jerked with surprise as Josh tackled him and pinned him to the floor, then pulled his gun and pointed it at the big man’s forehead. “Tisdale, move away from the women, or I will shoot your boss.”

  “He’s not my boss.”

  “You really think you can win a spot in the US Senate without Nielsen’s backing? You’re even dumber than Maddie said you were.”

  Ava let out a sharp laugh as Josh heard a struggle in the other room. Kocher must’ve kept the knife he was holding on Ava handy and thought he could play with Chase.

  Kocher had no idea whom he was dealing with, and Josh hoped the fight was on camera. He wanted to watch later in slow motion.

  “Don’t toy with him, Chase. He’s not very bright. Show some compassion.”

  “Hey, I don’t want him to be embarrassed.”

  Josh laughed, but the gun pointed at Nielsen’s head didn’t waver.

  “You can’t do anything to me,” Nielsen said. “You’re nothing. Nobody. My family built this city.”

  “So did Kocher’s, but he’s a cheap fraud with a worthless museum he admitted to planning on burning down on camera.”

  “On camera?” Tisdale said.

  “Yeah. On camera.” Josh flipped the wealthiest man in the city—possibly state—over and slapped handcuffs on his wrists.

  “But the cameras were turned off,” Tisdale said.

  “And you trusted the Hoffmans on that?”

  A sound behind him tipped him off, and he swung out even as he sprang to his feet, catching Tisdale on the side of his head. The man stumbled toward Ava, and she kicked out, sweeping the congressman’s legs out from under him. He went down, and Josh tossed Maddie another pair of handcuffs.

  She plucked them from the air and handcuffed her brother before the man even realized what was happening.

  Ava launched herself at Josh as soon as both men were bound. “I thought you were dead!”

  Josh wrapped his arms around her, still crouched on the floor. Still barely able to open one eye, his hearing still muted as if cotton were filtering all sounds. None of that mattered as he wrapped his arms around Ava. “I’m right here and not going anywhere, Ladybug.”

  “I love you, Uncle Dad.”

  His eyes burned.

  Ava loosened her grip and turned toward Maddie. She let go of Josh with one arm and beckoned Maddie over. Maddie dropped to her knees and joined their hug, the three of them forming a triangle on the floor.

  Josh looked toward the dome in the corner that housed the camera and knew they were centered in the screen for everyone watching this display. In a way, this was their first family portrait.

  41

  Maddie sat on a bench in the first-floor lobby, staring at the copper rose waterworks sculpture. Ava was being interviewed by no less than the chief of police, with her guardian at her side at the same time a medic was finishing cleaning Josh’s head wound. Meanwhile, on the other side of the sculpture, Chase was being interviewed by two other detectives.

  Everything was being done in the open lobby because Ava wanted a line of sight on everyone, and the police chief had agreed.

  Maddie had already been interviewed by the detectives who were questioning Chase, and was waiting for her round with the police chief. They would likely be here all night, and she honestly didn’t care so long as she could see Josh, battered but walking and breathing, Ava, wound-free on the outside, and Chase, standing tall and whole as he quietly shared his role in the takedown.

  Maddie needed the line-of-sight thing as much as Ava.

  Her brother and Clifford Nielsen the fourth had been taken into custody and would face both state and federal terrorism charges. The Hoffmans would be charged with her abduction. Ari was going back to jail and would face new terrorism charges that would be a slam dunk once the bomb fragments were recovered. Maddie had already told the police about the video she and Ava had gotten of Ari going under the bridge with his bulky coat on and emerging after an interval without it.

  His willingness to testify against her brother and Nielsen for a reduced sentence might be mitigated by the fact that he was going back into a system where his only friends were white supremacists, and testifying against the local leaders of their movement might not make him popular.

  Thankfully, they had the video, or charges against both men might not stick without Ari’s testimony.

  Troy Kocher was also facing charges, but Maddie suspected he’d face the least punishment. He’d threatened Ava with the knife and had admitted on camera to the plan to burn down the mansion, but it would take some doing to determine if he’d played a role in the bridge bombing. A search warrant for Oliver Shields’s home and museum was in the works, and when the skeleton was recovered, they’
d have both men on antiquities theft and trafficking in human remains, but it wasn’t the same as the terrorism charges everyone else faced.

  At least for now, Troy was in custody and couldn’t return to the mansion to destroy his family’s papers, and Maddie still had copies in the cloud even if her laptop wasn’t recovered. She had yet to learn if one of Nielsen’s men had broken into her hotel room as claimed.

  It was such a crazy plan, and yet she could see how it could have worked, especially in the current political climate in Oregon. The federal government was always looking for ways to renege on tribal treaty rights. There were plenty of people in power who would have seized on the DNA test and run with it.

  She studied the posh lobby of the high-rise. The architecture was lovely—modern brushed steel and marble. It was light and airy, with massive windows that went all the way up to the high ceiling.

  Nielsen owned this building and had real estate holdings across the state and mines all over the world. He had a mansion, a jet, and, she would imagine, a fleet of vehicles. Probably a mega yacht. And it wasn’t enough for him.

  He’d coveted more land and wanted to exclude others. As if a white colony would be some sort of utopia.

  It would have been a bastion of hate that would have collapsed in short order because white supremacist systems only worked when there were people to suppress.

  What would happen to Nielsen Steel now?

  Wounds cleaned, Josh rose from his seat and said something to the police chief and Ava, then crossed the lobby and dropped onto the bench by her side.

  “Ava’s okay by herself?” Maddie asked.

  “Yeah. The chief is being gentle, and Ava gave the okay.”

  “How are you?”

  “I don’t even know, really.” He threaded his fingers through hers. “Keith told me about how you made the decision to go after Ava. Thank you.”

  “Of course.” Maddie stared at the tall, lanky girl with long dark hair and dark eyes so like Josh’s. “She’s important to you, but also, she’s important to me. She has been all along.” She raised their joined hands to her mouth and kissed the back of his hand. “I’m all in with you, and all in with Ava. No one can or should replace her mother, but if she’ll accept me in some sort of maternal or aunt role, I’m up for it, and I won’t back out, even if things between you and me don’t work out.”