“A vigilante?”
She nodded. “I identified parolees online, set them up to meet—ostensibly—with a minor, and I assumed that the men were subsequently arrested. I trusted her when she told me they were. I prepared reports and transcripts that I thought were being used in their trials or hearings, even though I was never called on to testify. I didn’t think anything of it—because most of these guys were on probation, and there was no trial necessary to put them back in prison for violating parole. I later learned that I was setting them up to be assassinated. The system I believed in had failed by releasing these predators early, but I still believed in it. I thought we were putting them back in prison, where they belonged. Instead they were dead.”
“I wouldn’t lose sleep over it,” he said.
She paused. “She used me, Brad. And because of what this woman did, one of my closest friends was killed. He wasn’t a predator, but a cop who thought I was part of the conspiracy. He was investigating it to protect me and he ended up dead. What I’m saying is, I should have seen the truth earlier. I knew all the information, I just didn’t put it together fast enough. I saw what I wanted to see—a noble, self-sacrificing retired FBI agent who gave me a cause to believe in, something to work for. But when the layers were peeled away, I saw her for who she was: a ruthless businesswoman whose business was murder.” Lucy had to stop there. She was still disturbed about what had happened eighteen months ago. Maybe she didn’t lose sleep over the dead sex offenders, but the repercussions from that bout of vigilante justice still haunted her.
“And you think that sixteen-year-old prostitute knows something about Nicole?” Brad asked. “What about Mona Hill? The prostitute who was helping her?”
“She’s in the wind. Left everything in her apartment and vanished.” Lucy paused. “I suspect Tobias had her killed. There’s a lot of places to get rid of a body in the desert. She knew too much, he took care of her.”
“Then why not kill Elise?”
“I don’t know. Except—maybe he knows she won’t turn him in. I don’t think she’ll say a word against him—I’m going to have to twist her around to get her to talk at all, and then I’ll need you to help decipher what I know will be an attempt to hurt or deceive me.”
He was still skeptical, and Lucy wasn’t sure why, but he said, “Fine. I’ll talk to Sam and see if we can do it tomorrow morning.”
“We are doing it,” Lucy said. “I don’t need Sam Archer’s permission.”
CHAPTER NINE
Lucy and Brad had to jump through hoops before the US Marshals would give them access to Nicole’s house in the hills northwest of San Antonio, but after signing a dozen forms and getting the director’s approval, Brad received the lockbox code.
The upscale neighborhood was well established with mature trees and large lots on roads curving up into the hill country, far from the bustle of downtown. The house itself wasn’t opulent on the outside, though the location was prime: the end of a cul-de-sac with city views.
“Have you been here before?” Lucy asked Brad.
“A few times,” he said. He’d been very quiet on the drive, answering Lucy’s questions about Nicole, but not engaging in any further conversation.
Lucy entered in through the front door and stood in the entry, trying to put herself in Nicole’s shoes.
The floors were bleached oak. The furnishings ran to the contemporary side, light colors and tasteful modern art. Everything was well placed, as if designed to be right in that spot.
Lucy couldn’t picture Nicole living here. She was a single, childless, thirty-eight-year-old female federal agent. She was also a criminal. That she was able to maintain the act so brilliantly for years told Lucy she was an actress at heart, that she didn’t show her true colors, even in her own home.
The house was for show. An infinity pool in the back with views of rolling hills; the city spread away below the front porch. Remote. Beautiful. Peaceful.
Why did she live here? Nicole was single, why wouldn’t she live in a smaller place, closer to town—instead of a suburban, family area? Did she need the privacy? Was she seeking something she’d never had growing up?
Like Nicole, Lucy’s father had been in the military. Lucy had been a toddler when her dad took a permanent post in San Diego. She didn’t remember any of the moves, or the stress on her brothers and sisters—though they still talked about living in cities and places she didn’t remember. It connected them, made them closer—and sometimes Lucy had felt like an outsider because she didn’t have that same connection with her siblings. Yet she’d also heard about the downside of the constant moving, of changing schools, of not knowing where they were going to be living year-to-year.
The Kincaids had one another—a large, very close Irish Cuban family. It hadn’t always been easy, especially with seven kids and one government income. They had little extra. There were times, Lucy remembered, when they lived on soup and vegetables from their garden because the grocery money was needed for shoes or fixing a car. But not once had Lucy felt unloved, unwanted, or lonely.
Lonely. Nicole’s house was lonely. It was at the end of the road, the yard looking out into hills, nothing more. Her first thought had been peaceful, but under a different lens it was artificial. Airy, generic, empty.
She slowly walked through each room. There were no computers, but cords connected to plugs where computers and printers had once been. The master bedroom was a bit more cluttered, more lived in. Nicole had slept here, but she didn’t live here.
“She had another place,” Lucy suddenly said.
“Excuse me?”
“She lived here, but she didn’t keep anything important here. She had another place. An apartment, a house, I don’t know, but that’s where she would have kept anything incriminating.”
“We found no records of a rental or any other properties in the area,” Brad said.
“It wouldn’t be under her name. It might be under a partner’s name, or a business name, and I suspect it would be closer to the DEA office—might even be a business front, not a house.”
“How on earth do you know that?”
“Because the DEA search didn’t find anything here. She had to keep her information and files somewhere safe.” Lucy hesitated. “But it’s probably been cleaned out.”
“By who?”
“Tobias? Elise Hansen? I have no idea. Someone she was working with. She had six people, at a minimum, helping her escape today.”
Brad shook his head. “You’re contradicting yourself. First you say that there was something in the evidence locker Nicole didn’t want us to see, then you say she kept nothing here, it’s all at this fictional location that no longer exists. Do you make this stuff up as you go along?”
Lucy bristled. She stepped away from Brad. “Give me a minute.”
He threw his hands in the air and walked out. Fine by her, she needed more than a minute to calm her temper and focus on the house and what was here—and not here.
Her initial impression—expensive, minimalist, sterile—had given her the gut feeling that this house wasn’t important to Nicole. She revisited each room. All the food had been emptied from the refrigerator. The cabinets were sparsely filled—place settings for eight, a standard number for most stores’ pre-packaged boxes. The plates and glasses were generic as well, bought at a department store but without any personality. The house looked like a model home, everything just so. The DEA search had left things jostled and moved, but there wasn’t much to jostle and move.
The den where the computer and electronics had been seized was similarly unused. The bookshelves had a collection of books, but none looked to have been read. Most were history, biographies—that they’d been gone through was evident from the uneven placement, but they seemed to be just for show. Knickknacks were sparse. Pictures looked expensive, but again, generic, for decoration and nothing more.
Nicole had used the bedroom more than any other room. There were numerous books
stacked on the nightstand—unlike those in the den, these were mostly fiction and true crime. In fact, Lucy had read several of them. She flipped through them, looking for marks or flags; there were none. There was a desk, but it had been cleared out, the papers and anything else now ashes in the DEA evidence locker. Nicole’s large walk-in closet was half filled, her drawers filled with jeans and T-shirts and workout clothes. Nicole lived here … she just didn’t live here. It was part of her act. The same act that enabled her to be a DEA agent while simultaneously working with the drug cartels.
Lucy stood in the middle of the bedroom.
Who are you?
Nicole had no remorse for her crimes. She’d shown no remorse during her initial arrest. She’d taunted Brad when he met with her two weeks ago regarding the murders of several drug dealers with ties to Tobias. She faked remorse in court to help get her plea deal—but it was the information she could provide, not the remorse for her actions, that tipped the scales.
Nicole was patient. Was the plan as she’d told Sam Archer, that when she had enough money she was going to skip the country? Or was there something else? And why stay so long? Did she enjoy the double life? Was the double life—access to a constant stream of information—her job?
The money was part of it, but there was more. That her people had killed the DEA agents but not the marshals told Lucy that Nicole had a deep animosity for the DEA. Why? Had something happened in her past that made her hate the DEA? Or were the murders practical, because the regional office was small, and killing DEA agents would limit their resources? Were those agents specifically targeted, or random?
Slowly, Lucy opened the drawers again. One by one, looking for anything out of place. Underwear. Socks. Lingerie. Sexy lingerie, and a lot of it. Nicole had been unmarried, and according to the files hadn’t had a regular boyfriend when she was arrested. But what about past boyfriends? A secret boyfriend?
In the bottom right drawer of the dresser were male clothes. T-shirts, running shorts, boxers, socks. Old boyfriend? Current boyfriend? Where was he? Who was he? He didn’t live here, but he’d been here.
Lucy walked into the bathroom and went through all the drawers. She found one filled with men’s items—deodorant, shampoo, an electric razor, condoms.
Did these items belong to Tobias? Was Nicole sexually involved with the drug lord? That would give more weight to the idea that he would spring her from prison rather than kill her.
Maybe. Maybe.
Lucy walked around again and then it hit her. While the master bedroom was the most lived in, there was still little personal here. According to the records, Nicole had bought this house three years ago, when she first transferred to San Antonio. But there were no photos, no mementos, no personalization of any kind. It was one thing to be a neat, meticulous person; it was quite another to have no human footprint.
Had the DEA taken these things? If so, Lucy could see why Nicole wouldn’t want the DEA or the FBI rifling through anything personal. That would give the police an edge, and Nicole didn’t want them to have any clues as to where she was or who she was with. Perhaps a photo of her with the owner of the boxers and condoms?
If they had a photo of Tobias, it might change everything.
* * *
DEA Agent Adam Dover III had sold his soul to the devil twenty-three years ago and never looked back.
It was impossible to look back when regret would put a bullet in your head.
He looked over at the redhead tied to the straight-backed chair. Her face had swollen from when he’d slammed it into the wall. But the bitch had tried to escape. Feisty little thing. His cock stirred, but he calmed himself down. He had a job to do, and he wouldn’t be caught with his pants down.
After he captured Kane Rogan, before he killed the redhead, he might indulge. If it was safe and he had the time.
Safety above all else.
He had no family. He’d been the youngest of four kids, and only son, born and raised in Kern County, California, outside Bakersfield, in a rickety old farmhouse that had once dominated five hundred acres. He’d heard the stories from the time he was a toddler, how his grandfather Adam Dover I had been a successful farmer of alfalfa and cotton. A few bad years had him selling half his land, and then oil. Not on the Dover property—but on the property his grandfather sold. For thirty years, his grandfather and father fought in court as well as paid every cent they had—and money they didn’t—to survey their own land for oil.
But it was dry. They were no longer interested in farming when their neighbors had won the oil lottery and they wanted some of the wealth, too.
By the time Adam III was born, they owned the five acres surrounding the farmhouse. His grandfather was long dead, his grandmother a bitchy little woman who complained about everything, his father a drunk who blamed everyone for his problems except his own lazy ass. His mother—God bless her—had run off when Adam was five and never returned.
That was the story, though Adam had always wondered if his father had killed her and buried her under the rosebushes alongside the crumbling barn.
Adam knew the only way out was to go to college. His sisters all married out—two to men just like their father, and both of them had babies before they were out of their teens. One sister was like him—saw college as the answer—and she was now a chemist with some biotech company in Virginia. She never looked back, so Adam did the same. He studied hard, got a scholarship to California State University in Long Beach, and had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. Landing in the DEA had been partly luck of the draw—his roommate dragged him to a career seminar, and the guy putting it on made some great points. Steady income, rewarding work, early retirement, pension—everything that Adam wanted because his father never had it.
The fact that his father hated the government, from the president on down to street cops, was icing on the cake.
Five years later he killed a man for money—a lot of money—and had been working for the Hunt family ever since.
In two years he’d be able to retire. He didn’t look his age—he looked damn good for turning fifty-one last month. But he wanted that pension. He wanted the luxury of a steady check as well as the million-plus dollars he’d saved up doing jobs for the Hunts. He could do what he wanted when he wanted and that was all he cared about. He had no wife, no kids that he knew about, but he didn’t particularly like people. He didn’t need a wife to get fucked. He was an attractive guy, girls came to him. He took what he could get but didn’t much worry about it. He’d seen what happened to men—like Tobias—who let their sick fetishes interfere with their self-preservation.
Adam had more control.
He looked at the redhead again. She glared at him, her pretty blue eyes both scared and defiant. He hoped he had the opportunity to indulge.
Two of his men clomped down into the rectory basement. “He’s at the hotel,” one said.
“How many?”
“Three—four including Rogan.”
Four would be difficult. He knew everything there was to know about Kane Rogan, and Rogan worked in small teams. For a simple missing person Adam hadn’t expected Rogan to come down with more than a partner … did he suspect a trap?
Dover had four men, but he wasn’t alive today because he underestimated his enemy. And Kane Rogan was certainly the enemy. “Call for reinforcements,” Dover said. “And don’t engage yet. Let’s see how fast he traces her steps.” He glanced at the redhead and smiled. She continued to glare at him. He just smiled wider.
He was not easily baited.
“And bring me the priest.” Dover glanced over at the altar boy he’d taken to ensure the priest would comply. He was tied to a pipe, head down. Defeated. Good. “I need to make sure he understands exactly what he’s supposed to do to save his little lamb.”
CHAPTER TEN
Nicole fell back onto the sheets, naked, wonderfully sweaty and comfortably sore. She reached over Joseph’s naked chest for the water on the nights
tand and drank greedily, then stretched and looked down at her lover. “I love you, Joseph.”
“I missed you.” He kissed her ear, then her neck, caressing her breasts until she considered staying in bed.
“You’ve done so well without me, I thought you might not need me anymore,” she teased.
“Everything is for you, Niki. Everything I do is to make you happy.”
“You have made me happy.” She brought his hand to her lips and kissed it. “Tobias will be here soon; we should get dressed.”
“He can wait,” Joseph said. He rolled her over and held her wrists loosely above her head. He kissed her passionately. She’d truly missed his affection while she sat in prison.
“Yes, he can,” she said. She returned his kiss, then pulled back. “But he’s been reckless and I need to pull him back in line.”
Joseph’s dark eyes narrowed as he stared at her, his face only inches away. “He had too much freedom. He became arrogant and we lost so much of the ground we gained over the last three years. Longer—all the sacrifices we were forced to make ever since you joined the DEA.”
“It’s … delicate.” She moved her body against him, hoping to divert Joseph from this conversation. It was complicated, and while Joseph claimed to understand, he truly didn’t. He didn’t have family.
“I would have killed him for you,” Joseph said.
“He’s blood, Joseph.” If Tobias didn’t yield to her authority, if he continued to make mistakes, she would have to kill him. She’d do it herself, because he was blood. She’d never allow anyone else to take him down, not even Joseph. “He knows that he screwed up. Now that I’m out, I will control him. I promise, Joseph.”
Joseph didn’t say anything. He rolled over to his back. She put her head on his chest, needing him to understand her decision, needing to understand why he was so moody—moodier than usual. “Tell me what’s troubling you, baby.”
“He’s the reason you were found out.”
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