Bounty

by J. D. Cunegan

  "Freeman's intel was spot-on." Ramon's eyebrows raised in surprise. "You're looking at payments made to Dr. Roberts and former Secretary of Defense Jackson Ferdinand for the entire duration of Project Fusion." He grabbed a pen, pointing at an eight-digit number in the bottom right corner of the screen. "This number routes to an offshore account the feds are trying to link to the SuperPAC For Our Future."

  Jill frowned. "Gregor paid for Project Fusion with a SuperPAC?"

  Ramon shook his head. "Only it wasn't a SuperPAC back then. In 2002, he established an offshore account to avoid paying taxes. You know, typical rich guy accounting tricks. Gregor Enterprises reported record profits in 2003, thanks in part to dipping into the home security market, and by the time Dr. Roberts and the DoD first came calling to pitch Project Fusion in '04, he'd built up enough of a war chest to fund everything."

  Jill sat back, folding her arms. "Why didn't anyone ever trace the money?"

  "Because no one could ever prove Project Fusion existed. And even if they had, tracking wire transfers was so primitive back then that it would've been like finding a needle in a haystack full of haystacks."

  Jill pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh. "What happened to the money when Project Fusion dissolved?"

  "For the longest time, it went back to being your garden variety offshore account." The pen clicked on a button, and another chart with numbers popped up -- only this chart had the names of Joel Freeman and Nelson Blake all over it. "Only this time, the account made payments to these two men. Look familiar?"

  Jill leaned forward, her mouth agape. "Gregor was paying Blake?"

  Ramon nodded. "For services rendered. And the payments started with a lump sum of five million dollars roughly four years ago."

  Jill squinted at the monitor. “That lines up with the six dead soldiers in Russia.”

  Which meant David Gregor had spent five million dollars of his own money to intentionally tank Project Fusion -- a program into which he had already poured billions of dollars over the years. While Jill wondered why he would do something like that, that question paled in comparison to the fact that Blake had been doing wetwork on behalf of Gregor for nearly half a decade. That opened up its own cadre of questions, questions Jill wasn’t necessarily convinced would ever be answered.

  “I finally got a hold of Blake’s financials,” Ramon said, almost as if he had read her mind. “Work was hard to come by when he was discharged, and it got so bad that Blake had been homeless, applying for both Social Security disability and unemployment. His paperwork got lost in a federal backlog, and by the time Gregor approached Blake about the Russia job, he didn’t have a dime to his name.”

  “Right a perceived personal wrong and take care of your financial problems all at once,” Jill said mostly to herself. “Sweet deal.”

  Ramon pulled a manila folder from his lap, opening it and scanning over the top page. "Expanding our search to federal agencies paid off. I made a contact at NCIS in D.C., and they faxed these over to me." He gave Jill a knowing smile; he was particularly proud of this. "From 2008 through 2013, there were a series of unexplained murders in India, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan. Insurgents, priests, children -- all killed in the same manner as Dr. Roberts and the six soldiers in Russia."

  Jill shook her head. "What would NCIS have to do with that?"

  "Six months ago, a body turned up just north of Bagram Air Base." Ramon grabbed a sheet of paper and handed it to Jill. "Navy Lieutenant Dustin Ferdinand."

  Jill gasped. "The Defense Secretary's son?"

  Ramon nodded, returning the piece of paper to its rightful place in the file. "Dr. Roberts was in Afghanistan for a STEM conference at Kabul Polytechnic. He caught wind of Dustin's murder on the news..."

  "... and, knowing what he knew, he decided to come to Baltimore to confront Gregor." Blake’s accusation had been a lie; Dr. Roberts wasn’t looking to reinstate Project Fusion. He was privy to a series of murders that echoed his old procedures and reached out to someone to do something about it. Little did Trent realize that something would be his death.

  "Only Gregor saw him coming." Ramon clacked his pen against the keyboard again, bringing a calendar up on the monitor. "Dr. Roberts called Gregor Enterprises three weeks ago to schedule a meet."

  Jill nodded. "Gregor gets wind of Trent trying to reach him, so he contacts Blake for another job."

  Ramon grinned. "Which we can prove thanks to this wire transfer for $50,000 two nights before Dr. Roberts was killed. Wired to the same account as all of the other murders."

  "How did NCIS never find a suspect?"

  Ramon shrugged. "They didn't have a superhero connected to a secretive military experiment financed with shadowy money from a billionaire?" He chuckled to himself and shook his head. “Without any physical evidence, and no knowledge of Project Fusion, their case went nowhere.”

  Jill stood and crossed to the other side of the table, giving Ramon's shoulder a squeeze and smiling at him. "You fucking rock, you know that? Great work, Ramon."

  Ramon smiled, but the expression wavered when he saw Jill frowning. "What is it?"

  She shook her head. "It seems..." Jill sighed. "It's almost too easy. Like, why would Gregor just leave a USB drive with all of this incriminating information on it? I have a hard time believing he's that careless. I can't help but wonder if this is a set-up of some sort."

  Ramon looked up at Jill, raising his right arm, placing his thumb against his fingers so his hand folded against itself. "Gift horse." He opened his hand again. "Mouth."

  Chapter 57

  Jill didn't share Ramon's nonchalance when it came to this case seemingly being so open-and-shut now that they had a paper trail connecting all of the major players. She wanted to believe that they had all the proof they needed to put Nelson Blake behind bars and maybe even rattle David Gregor's cage enough to show him that he wasn't nearly as untouchable as he thought. But Jill didn't live in that world; she lived in a world where, no matter what, there was always something else just around the corner.

  She tossed her keys onto the dresser with a sigh, reaching up to put her hair into a ponytail. She had to get out of her suit. Soaked to her core, Jill was shivering, even as the heating unit in her apartment cranked on full-blast. She sighed and peeled herself out of the damp leather, tossing the garment into her closet and shutting the door before pulling on a pair of jeans and a University of Maryland hoodie that had been lying on the floor. Chances were good that she'd wake up the next morning with a cold.

  Crossing into her kitchen, with much of the apartment bathed in darkness, Jill stopped when she heard a creak in the living room. She frowned but didn't think too much of it. This was an old building. Sometimes the floorboards creaked or a pipe released some built-up pressure. Noises in the dead of night were nothing new in this place. In fact, she’d had a neighbor move out three months ago -- after living there for just a week and a half -- because of the noises. Most of the tenants talked of the building being haunted as a joke, but that particular neighbor forgot the laughing part.

  When Jill got to the threshold between the kitchen and the living room, though, she heard the noise again -- almost like a footstep on the hardwood floor. She crouched to her knees, training her ears. The traffic outside was the only thing breaking the silence, but if Jill didn't know any better, she could swear she heard breathing. Her hands balled into fists. The katana was in her bedroom, far out of reach, and it was still soaked from the bay. Fortunately, her fists were weapons unto themselves, so it wasn’t as if she’d be caught completely without self-defense if there was an intruder.

  Uneven footsteps approached from the darkness, and Jill held her breath. Her intruder was probably under the impression they had the element of surprise, and she was content to let them think that. The moonlight spilling into her living room was minimal due to encroaching cloud cover, but with a press of her left temple, Jill got the lay of the land in infrared just in time to see a pair of boots in front of he
r.

  Acting on instinct, Jill lunged forward and wrapped her arms around the intruder's ankles, her momentum carrying them both onto the floor -- but not before the intruder slammed face-first into the back of the chair. The intruder -- who was male -- grunted in pain, and Jill scrambled to straddle him and pin him down by his shoulders. The left side of his head was bleeding.

  Jill gritted her teeth and yanked the snow cap off of the intruder's head. He shielded himself from the light emanating from her eyeplate, but Jill saw enough of his face to know who this was. She growled and pressed her hands down on his shoulders, her fingers digging into his skin.

  "Blake."

  He snarled in return, trying to free his shoulders from her grasp, writhing under Jill's body in a futile hope to gain leverage and an upper hand. Keeping her hands on his shoulders, Jill lowered herself even more, the weight of her thighs pressing down against his. He struggled some more, squinting and gnashing his teeth. "Patient Zero."

  Just for that, she punched him in the face, taking a sick satisfaction in hearing his nose snap. Blake growled in pain, but Jill pinned him down by his shoulders again so he couldn't bring his hands up to cover his face. She wanted to see the blood trickling from his nostrils, and though it was a satisfying sight, Jill wanted more.

  "Did Gregor send you?" Of course he did. I'm a loose end. “You sent me that heart, didn’t you? Was that a message?”

  Blake didn't answer, but the darkness in his eyes told Jill all she needed to know. She leaned forward, resting her left forearm across his neck and pressing it against his Adam's apple. Blake choked and bucked against the floor, and for the briefest of moments, Jill considered pressing down even further. But she relented, instead cracking the back of her fist against his jaw. She heard bone cracking again before lifting onto her feet and dragging Blake into her bedroom -- if for no other reason than to put herself in the same room as her weapon.

  She released her grip on Blake, watching as his momentum caused him to stumble face-first into the door to her closet, leaving a blood smear on the white door. She shook her head with a smirk. "I have half a mind to slap the cuffs on you right now and take you in." She watched Blake stumble back to his feet, made more difficult with his prosthetic, his hands curling into fists. He blinked hard, trying to right his vision even as his legs wobbled.

  "Not only do we have evidence that you killed Dr. Roberts," Jill explained, ducking out of the way when Blake swung at her before sweeping his legs out from underneath him, "but now you've broken into a home of, and assaulted, a cop."

  "Gregor only paid me for Trent." Blake sneered into a bloody grin, lifting himself off the floor with his good leg. "You? I'm doin' it for free."

  "A gift and a free killing? I'm flattered."

  Jill lunged for Blake again, angling for his prosthetic leg before they both tumbled to the floor, his blood staining the carpeting. Blake whacked Jill in the chin with the palm of his hand, pushing her onto her back before straddling her and wrapping both of his hands around her neck. She gritted her teeth and angled her gaze so the infrared light blinded Blake, and when he shielded his eyes with his arms, she pushed him off of her, grabbed him by the collar, and slammed the back of his head against the doorway.

  "You would've killed Trent for free, too. Lord knows Gregor’s given you enough money over the years." Jill punched Blake in the nose before jolting him awake with another violent tug of his collar. "You blame Trent for everything, don't you?"

  "He ruined my life." Blake spat blood in Jill's face. "And so did you!"

  Jill rolled her eyes, flinging Blake over her shoulder as if he were a stuffed animal, his back slamming against the floor. Reaching into the corner, Jill unsheathed her katana and pointed the point of the weapon at his throat. "You got beef with Dr. Roberts? Fine. But I don't know you from Adam, Blake. Just cause we served together, that doesn’t mean I know you! And yet you come to my city to take out your vendetta!"

  "It was the only way to draw you out." Blake grinned, blood staining his teeth. "And it worked."

  "I'm the last person you want as an enemy, Nelson."

  "Funny." Blake spat blood onto Jill's carpet. "Could say the same thing about Gregor."

  She'd had enough of this. For one thing, she was never going to see her security deposit again with all the blood he was leaving on her carpet. Secondly, the fact that he killed Dr. Roberts and sent Jill his heart as a message -- she had been right all along. This was personal. And it was all about her. Sheathing her blade, Jill reached into the jacket hanging off the chair near the door, producing a pair of handcuffs before pushing Blake onto his stomach, ignoring the grunts of pain as she pinned his arms behind his back, latching the cuffs around his wrists.

  "Nelson Blake, you are under arrest for the murder of Trent Roberts, as well as breaking and entering, and assaulting a police officer."

  Chapter 58

  Joel Freeman smirked as a shot of vodka slithered down his throat, slamming the empty glass onto the hardwood of the bar when he spotted Ramon Gutierrez striding into Mick O’Shea’s. The bar was its usual empty self in the middle of the day, downtown’s lunch crowd preferring more vibrant venues. Aside from the bartender wiping off glasses and mugs, and another press conference from the mayor playing on the flatscreen, Freeman and Ramon were the only ones in the bar.

  Following his encounter two nights ago with Jill, and giving her all of the intel in that folder, Freeman knew it was only a matter of time before a pair of Baltimore-issued handcuffs came his way, but he was disappointed to learn Jill wouldn’t be the one to do the honors. Somehow, it felt wrong for anyone else to arrest him. He had been an integral part in making Jill what she was, and he was almost the one who destroyed it all. It only felt right that Jill be the one to bring his career to a halt.

  “You old enough to drink, kid?” Freeman quipped when Ramon approached his booth, badge clear as day on his hip. “We could celebrate Nelson’s arrest.”

  “I’m on duty” was Ramon’s dry, humorless reply.

  “Shame,” Freeman shrugged before pouring himself another shot and slamming it back. “Where’s your partner?”

  “Taking some much-needed time off,” Ramon answered, grabbing the cuffs in his pockets and tossing them onto the hardwood surface.

  Freeman stared at them before letting his gaze lift again, sucking in his cheeks and shaking his head. “Let me guess,” he seethed, “you wanna arrest me for assaulting a police officer, but you have to settle for just assault.”

  Ramon’s eyes narrowed, his hands balling into fists. “Try attempted murder.”

  Well, that made sense. He did fling her out of a high-rise window. The fact that she survived obviously didn’t absolve Freeman of responsibility; neither, apparently, did the fact that he handed over information that helped them solve the case.

  “Do I get credit for telling her about the USB drive?”

  Ramon’s nostrils flared as he parked himself in a seat across from Freeman, anger in his eyes the likes of which the disgraced commander didn’t think he was capable. Ramon’s hands unfurled only to ball yet again, and his upper lip curled into a sneer. “You tried to kill my partner,” he snarled. “The only thing saving you right now is the fact that she survived.”

  Freeman scoffed. “And what would you have done?”

  “Keep underestimating me, sir.” Ramon smirked and shook his head. “I’m not the war vet. I don’t have metal in my bones and I don’t keep a badass sword in my closet. But I am one thing you’re not.”

  Freeman arched a brow, pouring himself one more shot. “What’s that?”

  “Loyal.” Ramon leaned forward. “I thought you military types were big on loyalty. And yet, when Jill needed someone, who was there for her?”

  Freeman had nothing to say, because Ramon was right. When Dr. Roberts’ body first emerged from the Chesapeake Bay, Jill had turned to him. She had confided in him, even as Freeman chided her for her secret identity. But as the mystery unravel
ed, as things grew more complicated, Freeman and Jill wound up on opposite sides, and the end result was nearly his best soldier’s death. But as Project Fusion had been Dr. Roberts’ demise, it was what saved Jill’s life. It was, in part, why Freeman’s career was about to be over.

  “Alright, enough with the lectures,” Freeman groused after downing his shot. “Just slap the cuffs on me and get this over with.”

  Grabbing the cuffs, Ramon lifted himself from his seat as Freeman did the same. Ramon grabbed the lieutenant colonel’s right wrist, tugging it behind his back and slapping one of the cuffs over it before doing the same with Freeman’s left arm, tugging a little harder and trying to hide the smile on his face once the second cuff latched.

  “Joel Freeman,” he announced, “you are under arrest for attempted murder…”

  Chapter 59

  Jill hadn't slept the previous night after arresting Nelson Blake, and she was thankful to Ramon for offering to arrest Freeman and process the charges with the DA's office -- both because of her on-going personal issues with her brother and the fact that her partner's offer allowed her a nap and a much-needed shower. She was also thankful for Blake’s bravado; the fact that he broke into her apartment made the arrest, and the resulting charges, easier for the DA to stomach. They still had to be careful what evidence they used to build their case, but with just the jump drive alone, Jill was confident Blake would spend the rest of his life behind bars. The fact that she found a small box full of surgical tools in the pockets of Blake’s cargo pants, tools that Juanita matched to Dr. Roberts’ wounds, made the case against him even easier for the city to handle.

  David Gregor was another matter entirely.