Sean said, “Noah has been quietly investigating Senator Paxton since January, ever since the vigilante ring was shut down and Paxton walked away. Noah learned that Paxton hired Colton, and he and Rick asked me to go undercover to find out what they were doing. I agreed.” He didn’t feel the need to explain why—if he told Duke about what happened with Martin Holdings, Duke would disregard everything else Sean said and focus on his mistakes.
“Why you? Why not a real agent?”
“Because Colton has been trying to bring me back for years. You know that.”
“And that’s why you hacked into the pharmaceutical company? Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because Colton had to believe that I really quit and the only way he would was if you and I had a major falling-out. It had to be real.”
“There were other ways.”
“We didn’t have a lot of time to put this together.”
“Why would you do this? This isn’t like you, working for the FBI.”
“You’re right,” Sean said, his anger exploding. “I did it for me. I committed a crime nearly ten years ago. The statute of limitations is up in six months. I have full immunity for helping Rick. Does that make you feel better? Knowing that I’m the scum you always thought I was?”
Duke stared at him. Sean had let his temper win and hated himself for it. Sean said, “Paxton hired Colton to steal a file and tape out of Joyce Bonner’s office. I helped him.”
“Of course you did.”
“You don’t listen to me, do you? I did it with the full backing of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“So you wouldn’t go to prison.”
Sean didn’t want to talk anymore. Not about his reasons for going undercover or what he’d done ten years ago. Nothing he said was going to change Duke’s opinion of him.
“Evan and Skye took something from the bio-lab at PBM. I don’t know what it is; I don’t know what they have planned, or why they kidnapped you, or why they didn’t kill me when they shot Colton.”
“Colton’s dead?”
Sean blinked back sudden tears over the brutal murder of his friend. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
Duke sounded sincere, so Sean accepted the apology.
“I overhead something that didn’t make sense, but maybe it will to you,” Duke said. “They’re planning to break into a place with RCK security.”
“There can’t be many,” Sean said.
“Maybe two dozen in New York City. Two museums, a chain of banks—probably twenty total banks with the same system within the five boroughs. Several private homes. A college. There’s more, but I can’t remember all of them.”
“They couldn’t have known you were here, so how were they planning on getting me to cooperate without leverage?”
The barn door opened, bringing in a rush of colder air. Skye stood there. “Sean, I have my ways. But I’ll admit, having your brother as part of the ‘leverage,’ as you say, seems particularly apropos. Time to meet the boss.”
The way she said boss Sean had the feeling she wasn’t sincere. He watched her direct two thugs to uncuff him. She thought she was in charge. Maybe she was.
“Be good, Sean, or I’ll kill your brother. Understand?”
Sean wanted to slap that smirk off Skye’s face. How could she have gone from a fun, carefree college student to a killer? To Colton’s murderer? That Sean had underestimated her aggravated him. He’d let the past cloud his judgment.
Never again.
He nodded without breaking eye contact. “Yes, ma’am, I understand perfectly.”
* * *
Noah watched Senator Jonathan Paxton sweating in the interview room as Paxton watched the tape Sean had stolen. Noah didn’t need to see it again; he’d already viewed it twice.
Senator Paxton’s career was over. His freedom was gone. And as he watched the tape, he knew it, too.
It was just Noah and the senator. Rick Stockton and the SAC of the New York City field office were on the other side of the glass. The FBI director had already been briefed in D.C. But Rick let Noah interrogate Paxton. It was Noah’s operation that had yielded the prize. This was what he had been working toward for the past ten months.
But it didn’t feel like a victory when he had a dead agent, a dead hacker, and Sean and Duke missing.
Noah had to give the senator credit for maintaining a poker face.
“Rogan,” Paxton said with both disgust and a hint of admiration.
“You attempted to get Rogan off of Colton’s team because you thought he would look at the tape.”
“I was right, wasn’t I?” Paxton shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Noah didn’t know if Paxton was playing the defeatist senator in an attempt to gain sympathy, to delay, or to plot out an escape plan. He had the money and contacts to flee, but he was well known. It would be hard for him to leave the country and set up somewhere undetected.
In the back of Noah’s mind he realized that Paxton would never go to prison. He’d been a prosecutor, an attorney general, and now a U.S. senator. He’d never be housed with a violent prison population. There were some facilities where he might be safe, but Paxton must have an out plan. A plan that kept him free, even if he was forced to resign.
But Noah couldn’t think about how Paxton was going to maneuver out of this mess. Noah needed answers.
“We have plenty to talk about, but right now I need to know what happened at PBM. You hired Colton Thayer to retrieve this tape. We also know that you told Thayer that you had proof that PBM falsified their drug testing related to the experimental drugs that Thayer believes killed his brother.”
Paxton started to laugh. Noah stared at him, his jaw tight, not for the first time thinking about taking a fist to Paxton’s jaw. Noah wasn’t a violent man. He was methodical. Disciplined. Paxton brought out the worst in Noah, and now he finally understood how Sean felt last summer when Paxton manipulated him.
Noah waited Paxton out. He wasn’t going to take the bait.
“You have all the answers.”
“I’m asking you.”
“What’s truly funny is that you and Rogan were working together. You don’t even like each other. You’re both in love with Lucy. Rogan plays in the dirt and gets very dirty, yet you are the shining knight, the former decorated Air Force lieutenant who believes in the system. I missed it. You’re not susceptible to Sean Rogan’s manipulative charm. That means—this was all you.”
Noah wasn’t certain what Paxton was trying to do.
Paxton said, “When did you open an investigation on me?”
Noah didn’t trust Paxton, but he hadn’t asked for a lawyer and he had been read his rights. When he got an attorney, the information would be available.
“I became suspicious in January after interviewing Buckley and the others involved in the WFC vigilante group. They didn’t say anything to give you away. But Buckley wasn’t smart enough to pull off the widespread vigilante project, and your protegé, Mick Mallory, was too ruthless to be so disciplined. You’re both smart and disciplined. But you also had a vendetta. There was one gun not recovered in Mallory’s house. I think you were the one to put a bullet in the head of the last man still alive who’d hurt your daughter. The last man who hurt Lucy.”
Paxton stared at Noah. There was no more humor in his icy expression. “What you think and what you can prove are far different.”
“Agent Gannon has already given a statement. He doesn’t know Kurt LeGrand. Do you? Did you set Sean up?”
“I wish I had,” Paxton said. “He’s been a problem. But I don’t know Kurt LeGrand, and I don’t know why he’d want Sean, unless Sean pissed him off like he seems to anger everyone he meets. He’s an arrogant, condescending smart-ass.”
Noah gave Paxton a half smile. “I don’t disagree with you there. He’s also intelligent, loyal, and courageous. He knew he was walking into a dangerous situation, but he did it anyway.”
>
“He did it to get the goods on me. Don’t label him as noble. He cares about himself, and that’s it. I had evidence of a crime he committed, and I bet you pushed him to help so he gets a clean slate.” Paxton smiled. “You have a good poker face, but I see that I’m right.”
Paxton gestured to the video that was now paused. “If Sean Rogan had walked into that room and saw a woman he cared about being attacked, he would have done the same thing I did. He and I are no different. Never forget that.”
“What happened between you and Joyce Bonner that you felt you had to steal this tape?”
Paxton leaned forward. “It’s personal.”
“What do you know about the bio-toxin that PBM was developing?”
“I’m done here, Agent Armstrong,” Paxton said. “I will have my attorney now.”
“We believe that Kurt LeGrand was working with two people in Colton Thayer’s group and that they stole a bio-toxin from the lab. Joyce Bonner is being picked up by two agents at her house. I will find out what is going on.”
“I believe I asked for my attorney, and I still have constitutional rights, Agent Armstrong.”
Noah stepped out before his temper finally exploded. Rick Stockton was in the adjoining room on the phone. His face was red, and a vein throbbed in his neck. Noah had never seen Rick so agitated.
“Find out what happened. Now!”
Rick hung up but got back on the phone without saying anything to Noah.
Suzanne stepped into the room with a dark-haired, tan-skinned, forty-something man who immediately drew attention to himself simply by his foreboding presence. He had on a visitor badge and an expression that told Noah he’d seen everything, and worse.
Rick hung up his phone in the middle of his conversation. “Jack.”
“Where’s Lucy?”
Noah looked from Jack to Rick. He was definitely caught off-guard.
“We have every D.C. cop, every federal agent in D.C. and New York tracking her. We found the van they used abandoned, and evidence that they picked up another vehicle.”
Rick turned to Noah and seemed to gather his confidence and command back. “Noah, while you were interrogating the senator, I got word from D.C. that Lucy was abducted from Sean’s house. I don’t have a full report, but it appears there were four men who broke in, two in front, two in back. There’s a lot of video footage on the attack because of the security system. As soon as she pressed the panic button, all cameras in the house were activated. She locked herself in the bathroom, shot two attackers, was tranquilized and disarmed. She was carried out of the house less than two minutes before the police arrived.
“We IDed the man killed in the bathroom. He’s Billy Potts, from Queens, a hired gun associated with the man Corbett you found dead in the warehouse. Lucy shot him twice in the chest, but his partner killed him because he was in no condition to run. We have blood from another victim—she shot one of the other men in the arm. If he’s in the system, we’ll have a DNA match in hours. I called in everyone at the lab to process the scene.”
Jack said, “LeGrand. Where does he live?”
“We’ve been to his apartment; he hasn’t been there in a long time,” Suzanne said.
“Other property?”
“We’re working on it,” Rick said.
Jack looked at Paxton through the one-way mirror. He brushed past Noah and went into the room. Noah followed immediately. “Jack—”
Jack Kincaid didn’t acknowledge Noah. He walked around to where Paxton sat and slammed his palm on the table. “Did you order Lucy’s abduction?”
The shock and confusion on Paxton’s face told Noah that he didn’t know anything about it.
“What happened to Lucy?”
“I’m Jack Kincaid. Lucy is my sister. And you’re involved in this.”
“I love Lucy like she’s my own daughter. I’ve always protected her.”
Jack looked as if he would deck Paxton. Paxton must have sensed the same thing, because he flinched and leaned away from Jack.
“What do you know about Kurt LeGrand?”
“Nothing.”
“How did you find out about Martin Holdings?”
Paxton blinked. “I—”
“Don’t lie to me. If those bastards touch her, if they hurt her, I will hurt you ten times worse.”
“After I hired Colton Thayer to retrieve electronic files for me last spring, his partner Skye Jansen delivered the chip. She told me that Thayer wanted to bring Sean into the plan, but Sean wasn’t doing it. She gave me the information, implying that they would leverage the information to gain Sean’s cooperation. I still didn’t want him involved, but she seemed to think he was some sort of security god, the only one who could do what we needed. Once he was in New York I had second thoughts. That’s it. I swear, I don’t know Kurt LeGrand, never heard of him until Agent Armstrong mentioned his name. Jack, believe me, I’ll do anything to protect my daughter!”
Jack leaned forward and, only inches from Paxton’s face, whispered, “Lucy. Is not. Your daughter.”
He turned and walked out. Noah followed.
“LeGrand needs a remote or private place to keep Duke and Lucy,” Noah said. “There’s no property under his name or Skye Jansen’s or Evan Weller’s.”
“We’re running Obsidian Trust right now,” Rick said. “Lucy and Dorothy uncovered the connection between Obsidian, Martin, and LeGrand.”
Jack said, “Show me the message Lucy sent last night.”
Rick handed him his phone. “We think they need Sean to break into an FBI warehouse in Brooklyn. RCK upgraded the security on all storage facilities last year.”
“Why now?” Suzanne asked.
Rick said, “Now that the plea agreement with the Averys is final the evidence will be sent to a remote storage facility.”
Jack glared at first Noah, then Rick. “You should have brought RCK into this operation before putting Sean undercover.”
Rick straightened his spine. “That was my call, Jack. RCK has a lot of latitude, latitude I helped put in place, but Sean’s defection needed to be real. I stand by my decision.”
In a low voice Jack said, “Then I will hold you personally responsible if anything happens to my sister.” He walked out.
Noah let out a breath. “Shit.”
“He’s right. I didn’t see this coming.”
“Sir,” Noah said, “no one did. They set Sean up. They had this planned for a long time. If Lucy is right, Kurt LeGrand has been plotting revenge for nearly a decade.”
“I—um, better make sure Kincaid doesn’t go AWOL,” Suzanne mumbled, and left.
“So that’s Lucy’s other brother,” Noah said. “He’s nothing like Patrick or Dillon.”
“No, he’s certainly not.”
“He’s a lot more like Sean.” Without the charm.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sean remained silent on the short walk from the barn to the house. He surveyed the land but saw no familiar landmarks and no other houses. He had no idea how long they’d flown—they’d left PBM after 11:30 last night, and it was about 6:30 a.m. now. As they were in the country, with no sound of traffic, they would be at least thirty minutes from the city. Or they could be three hours away. More.
Sean was brought into the house through the front door, uncuffed. It took all his control not to fight Skye, but that would do Duke no good and Sean thought he might have a concussion from when Evan hit him with the gun. Or his queasiness was the tranquilizer working through his system. He wasn’t 100 percent; that was certain. Not being at his prime in addition to not knowing the layout of the property or the type of security he faced meant any escape attempt would be foolhardy.
As soon as he stepped into the well-appointed house, he heard the tick of a grandfather clock. He glanced over and saw it was nearly seven thirty in the morning. He’d been an hour off on the time. He glanced out the door to gauge the sun, so he could keep track.
Evan stood inside the door and s
cowled. He slammed the door shut, and Skye smiled widely at Sean. “Welcome,” she said.
Sean returned her grin. “Bitch.”
Evan punched him in the small of his back. Sean ground his teeth to fight the pain.
Kurt LeGrand entered the foyer holding a bottle of champagne. “Evan, please.” LeGrand spoke as if addressing a child.
Sean sized LeGrand up. He wasn’t a large man, trim and five eight, nine tops. Fair coloring, well dressed in pressed khakis and white polo shirt. His cold blue eyes were calculating, and Sean knew immediately that LeGrand should not be underestimated.
LeGrand extended his hand to Sean. Sean didn’t take it. His captor didn’t seem to care and smiled. “I would say thank you for coming, but you didn’t have a choice. Sit.”
LeGrand motioned through double doors that led to a dining room that was set for four. That’s when Sean recognized the smells coming from the kitchen—sausage, bacon, maple syrup. “Sit,” LeGrand repeated.
“I’m not hungry.”
His captor nodded to Evan and the other male in the room, who grabbed Sean and sat him at one end of the table. LeGrand sat at the opposite end and said “Eric, please bring in breakfast.”
Skye and Evan sat at the table and LeGrand said to Sean, “I understand you want to be difficult in an attempt to show you’re in charge, or not yield to my authority, so let me explain. Don’t piss me off. Don’t be an asshole. I will have your brother killed; then I will go through the other people you care about. Your former partner Patrick Kincaid and your girlfriend, Lucy Kincaid. That’s pretty much it, right? You’re not all that close to many people. Well, now that your best friend is dead.”
It was all Sean could do not to leap across the table and put his hands around Kurt LeGrand’s neck.
He simply stared, his jaw clenched shut.
LeGrand smiled. “You understand.”
LeGrand poured champagne in four classes, then added what looked like fresh-squeezed orange juice. “It’s early,” he said, “but we have much to celebrate.”
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