by Aimée Thurlo
Kyle was within fifteen feet when the badly wounded man looked directly at him, put the barrel under his chin and shot himself.
Chapter Three
Kyle lowered his weapon and looked away, shaking his head in disgust. A life wasted, just like that. Up to now, he’d only seen that kind of hardcore reaction overseas.
He moved toward the ambulance, put his hand on the door handle, then yelled, “Federal officer. Open up!”
The EMT inside did so quickly, throwing his hands up as the door opened. “Officer, we’re not armed, and our patient needs us right now. We’ve got to keep working, okay?”
Kyle nodded and realized, from the monitor’s tone, that Hank had flatlined. As both EMTs worked to revive Leland, one of them talking back and forth with an emergency room doctor through a headset, Erin rushed up. She stood silently beside him, watching.
Minutes passed, the medics working feverishly. After four attempts to restart Leland’s heart with the paddles, the one with the headset reported the results, tapped the other EMT on the shoulder, and shook his head. “Call it.”
The second medic noted the time and pulled a sheet over the patient’s head.
“What are you doing? Don’t give up!” Erin demanded.
“Ma’am, his blood pressure bottomed out even before the accident, probably from trauma-induced internal bleeding. Even if we hadn’t been stopped here on the street, I doubt he would have made it to the hospital.”
She bit down on her lip until it turned white, but when Kyle tried to get closer to comfort her, she stepped away. “I’m fine,” she said, though her voice was shaking.
“Everyone here, including us, did everything possible to save him,” Kyle said. “Hold to that.” His voice was quiet and calm, a tone he’d learned people responded to, and it broke through to her now.
“We might as well go back to the warehouse. There’s nothing else we can do here now.”
She nodded, and walked back to the SUV with him. Her movements were slow and ponderous as she continued to struggle with what she’d just seen. “I should notify his brother...make funeral arrangements, or at least help with that. I...”
“That’ll wait. Right now you need a little time to process what’s happened and so do I,” he said.
As they climbed into his SUV, he saw her staring ahead, a glassy look in her eyes. Shock. “Seat belt,” he said, and she absently complied.
“What I saw today is going to haunt my nightmares for as long as I live,” she said after a moment.
Her words touched him. He knew all about things one could never unsee, and memories that refused to die.
“You’re right, some things can’t be forgotten,” he said, his voice nothing more than a deep rumble, “but you’ll learn to deal and, in time, the images will come less often.”
Kyle started the engine and called his brother on the phone. After a few minutes he ended the connection and glanced at her. “We’ll head back to Secure Construction. My brother will wait for us there and he’ll want a detailed account of everything that went down.”
Ten minutes later, they parked outside the now closed access gates of Secure Construction’s fenced compound and waited in the SUV. After several moments a uniformed Hartley police officer came to unlock the gate.
“Have you given any more thought to what these men may have wanted, Erin? You already ruled out cash, but do you keep anything that’s dangerous or of high value here, like maybe explosives?”
The person who’d encountered Hank overseas was said to be a bomb maker with ties to extremists. Firearms were easy to get in the U.S., but finding high explosives was a lot more difficult.
“We use explosives to test the construction of newly designed safe rooms, but we hire out those tests and pick up what’s needed en route to the test site. We never really store anything here. There’s no need.”
Kyle drove into the yard, then pulled up by the main office building, stopping in front of the yellow crime-scene tape. “Don’t think—just answer me. What’s here that someone would want to steal?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Nothing that’s worth people’s lives.” She got out of the SUV and strode to where Preston was standing, waiting for them.
Kyle hung back and watched Erin for a moment longer. She was the picture of courage, but little telltale signs, like the stiff way she was walking and the expressionless look in her eyes told him a different story. Overwhelmed on every level, the human body often adapted and became ultracalm—almost numb—in order to survive.
If Erin was truly an innocent caught in circumstances she didn’t understand, she had his sympathy. This was just the beginning.
* * *
ERIN FELT SICK to her stomach. She wanted to curl up into a ball and hide where no one would see her fall apart. Yet the look on Detective Bowman’s face told her she had to hold it together for a little bit longer. “You have questions for me, so why don’t we go into my office and talk there?” she asked.
“My people are still processing the building so we’ll have to talk out here,” he said.
“It’s okay. I have another smaller office in the warehouse,” she said, desperately needing a place to sit down before her knees buckled. “How about we talk in there?”
“Lead the way,” Preston said.
She walked to her second office, a cubbyhole on the lower level of the warehouse, near the entrance doors. Detective Bowman and Kyle Goodluck were half a step behind her.
“Detective, Agent Goodluck, please sit down,” she said, dropping down into her seat unceremoniously. “Ask me whatever you want, and I’ll do my best to answer you, or track down the answers you need.”
“How did this whole thing start? Did the three men just burst into the office?” Preston asked.
“I wasn’t there when they arrived, I was in here checking out our newest model safe room. We display them with simple furnishings, emergency gear, and supplies to show prospective clients,” she said. “After I finished, I went back and saw three men talking to Hank in his office. It all looked like business as usual, so it never occurred to me to ask Joe to stick around a while longer.”
“Joe?” Preston asked. “The same guy at the work site? The one I sent a deputy to cover?”
“Yes, Joe Pacheco is our senior construction foreman. You may know him. He’s a former police officer.”
Preston nodded. “I know Joe. When, exactly, did he and the crew leave?”
“Joe was behind the wheel of one of our big pickups, and pulled out onto the street a few minutes after I sat down at my desk in the main office.”
“Who else was on site here at the time?” Preston asked. “Anyone in the warehouse or working in the yard?”
“No, after Joe and the crew left, it was just Hank and me.”
“When did you first realize there was trouble?” Kyle asked her.
“After a few minutes, I heard Hank yell at one of the men. I’m better with difficult prospective clients, which is what I figured they were, so I went in to see if I could help calm the situation. That’s when I realized all three men were armed.”
She took a breath and tried to hold it together. Both men were watching her, but it was Kyle’s intense, hooded gaze that got to her. There was something hard and dangerous there. Yet he’d saved her life.... Maybe he was only dangerous to the wrong people.
“What were they arguing about?” Kyle asked.
“They claimed that Hank had double-crossed them. Then one of them pointed his gun at Hank and told him to keep his end of the deal or get ready to die.” She shuddered. “I heard that last part just as I walked into the room.”
“Describe the men you saw,” Preston said.
“The tallest one standing next to Hank was tanned and had a beard. I’d say he stood about six fo
ot one, and was rail thin. The other faces were a blur. I was so scared all I could see were their guns.”
“The man who shot himself in the street, was he one of them?” Kyle asked.
“No, I’m pretty sure of that,” she answered. “His face was distinctive, even before the...bullet.”
“Okay, so there are—were at least four of them. Getting back to earlier now. What happened next?” Preston asked.
“They told us to leave our cell phones, and ordered us outside. They held on to us with one hand, their pistols jammed against our backs,” Erin said. “I was sure they intended to kill us, so when I saw you drive into the yard, I elbowed the one behind me in the gut and yelled for help, but he pulled me back again before I could get away. Once we went around the corner of the building, he shoved me out into the open. You know the rest.”
She studied their expressions, trying to read them, but their faces were flat, impenetrable.
Preston glanced out the window. “Let’s go back to the main office. It looks like my team’s finished their preliminary sweep.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. “I’d like you to avoid touching anything, Erin, but wear these in case you forget.”
* * *
AS THEY RETURNED to the main building, Erin could feel her heart hammering. When Preston went to speak to one of the officers standing outside, she focused on Kyle. “This is their case, yet you’re taking an active role in the investigation. Is that because he’s your brother?”
“No, it’s because I’m a federal agent with an interest in what happens here,” he answered.
She stared at the floor for a moment, trying not to fall apart. “Hank had been so tense lately. I should have paid more attention.”
“Had anything unusual happened lately?”
“Hank never confided in me, but I believe something had been bothering him. It started about a week before he left for Spain. He was tense and short-tempered with everyone, but when he came back, that still hadn’t changed.”
“Did you ever ask him about it?”
She nodded. “I tried, but he told me that it was family business. That was his way of telling me it was personal and I needed to back off, so I did.”
“Family? He wasn’t married, right?” Kyle asked.
“I think he meant his brother, Bruce, who works on and off for him.”
“Were they close?”
“No. They had nothing in common and could barely stand being around each other. Hank is all about working hard, but Bruce has never been able to hold on to a job for long.”
Preston joined them and tossed Kyle a pair of latex gloves. “Okay, we’re ready. Let’s go inside the main office. I want you to look around carefully, Erin, and tell me if there’s anything missing,” he said, putting on a set of gloves, too.
“Look for anything that’s new, too,” Kyle added.
“New, how?” she said. “Are you talking about something he brought back from his trip, like souvenirs, or what’s in today’s mail?”
“Both,” they answered in unison.
Hearing another investigator call his name, Preston said something in a low voice to Kyle.
“Go. I’ll handle things here,” Kyle said.
As Erin walked inside with Kyle, the first thing that caught her eye was the small plant that lay on the carpeted floor, soil spilling out of its container.
Temporarily forgetting what they’d told her about not touching anything, she picked it up carefully, and scooped the soil back into the pot with a gloved hand.
A second later, she froze. “Oh—I’m so sorry. I didn’t think....”
“It’s okay. That’s why you’re wearing gloves. We can’t get prints from soil anyway,” Kyle said with a gentle smile.
“When the man pushed me out, I bumped into the corner of my desk and knocked over the plant. Considering everything that’s happened, it’s stupid to worry about this, but if I leave it here, it’ll die...too.”
Erin turned her face away as tears ran down her cheeks. “Now you’re going to think I’m crazy for sure,” she managed in a shaky voice. “I held it together through everything—being kidnapped, forced to shoot at someone just to stay alive and seeing three people die. Then I fall apart over this....” Despite all the care she’d lavished on the small desert rose, the plant was still nothing more than a thorny stem with a couple of leaves.
“It’s okay,” Kyle said, lifting her back to her feet with incredible gentleness. “So how come this little plant means so much to you?” He smiled. “If you don’t mind my saying so, it sure doesn’t look like much.”
She chuckled through her tears. “Hank got it years ago from a client. The original plant had been her great-grandmother’s, and the family had a tradition of giving a cutting to people who performed a special service for them. In this case, the woman’s husband had passed and she was having a hard time financially so Hank charged her half price for the safe room.” She looked at the plant. “There’s a legend attached to the desert rose that says it’ll only bloom for an owner whose heart has learned to sing.”
“And your heart?”
“I guess mine doesn’t sing loud enough.” She gave him a hesitant smile, then placed the plant in the windowsill next to her desk. “Hank almost killed it, but I took it from him before he could toss it in the trash. Since then, I’ve done everything I could to make it grow and bloom, but so far nothing.”
“I’ll speak to my brother, but I’m sure it’ll be okay if you want to take it with you.”
“Thanks,” she said, wiping away her tears with a now muddy, gloved hand. “I can’t seem to stop crying, but I’m okay.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her face. “You’re a strong woman, Erin, but you reached your limit. It happens.”
“To you?”
“It did—once,” he said.
She tried to force herself to swallow so she could stop crying, but her eyes continued to fill with tears. She didn’t dare blink.
He placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze, but she moved back. “Let’s get back to work. Tell me what you need.”
“How about a list of company employees, starting with the ones who live here in town?”
“I can access payroll, but I’d have to use my computer. Is that okay? They never touched it.”
“Keep your gloves on, but go ahead,” he said. As she sat down, he added, “Do you always issue checks to your employees, or do some get paid in cash?”
Her eyes were brimming with tears and it made the numbers on the screen swim but somehow she pulled herself together. “No cash. Most of the money is deposited directly into the employees’ bank accounts, but for a few, we still cut checks. Payday is every two weeks—next Friday is the next one,” she said, pushing the cell phone she’d left on her desk out of her way as she reached for paper. After loading it into the printer, she looked up at him. “Should I put my cell phone back in my purse?”
“No, that has to stay,” he said. “We’re still looking for Hank’s cell phone, too. You sure it was at his house?”
She stared at her desk, lost in thought. “That’s what he told them, but if it’s there, it could be anywhere. Last time he lost it, he ended up finding it in his laundry hamper.” She paused. “But maybe he didn’t go straight home last night after his flight arrived... He has a girlfriend.”
“What’s her name?” Kyle asked, just as Preston came in.
“Frieda Martinez. He met her about two weeks before he left for Rota, Spain. She was good for him. Though he’d been irritable at work, his whole attitude would change whenever she called. I think he was falling in love with her, not that he would have ever admitted it.”
She printed out the complete list of company employees, then handed it to Kyle
. “Should I look around inside Hank’s office now to see if anything there catches my eye?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Those are the newest things in here,” she said, pointing. On top of Hank’s desk were two opened cardboard boxes he’d addressed to himself and mailed here from Spain.
As Kyle came up and took a closer look, he recalled following Hank to a municipal post office in Rota. At the time that had struck him as odd because the base had excellent postal facilities. “Do you know what was inside these?”
She shook her head. “They arrived yesterday, but they were addressed to Hank, so I just set them aside. When I came in this morning they were open, but we never had a chance to talk about it.”
Kyle took a pen from his pocket, pulled back the flaps, then stirred up the foam peanuts inside.
She looked over his shoulder. “That’s strange. Those are volt meters, but...”
“Looks like they’ve been gutted, but what did he do with the electronics that were inside them?” Kyle continued to sort through the box. “They’re not here. All I see are the outside shells and a few of the metal screws used to hold them together.”
“I can’t answer that. I don’t know,” she said.
“Did any of the men who came for him show any interest in these boxes?” Kyle asked.
“No. Their attention was on Hank and me.”
In addition to the dismantled volt meters Kyle saw other disassembled plastic and metal electronic devices, including stud finders and other sensors. “Lots of packing material in here just to protect what looks like junk.”
“What about that padded envelope?” Preston said, coming in and pointing to the top of the file cabinet.
“That arrived this morning.” Out of the corner of her eye, Erin saw Kyle remove a small, familiar-looking cylinder from the shipping box and slip it into his jacket pocket.
Before she could comment, Detective Bowman tore open the envelope and dumped its contents on the desk. Stacks of one hundred dollars bills held together with rubber bands came tumbling out. “Apparently he also mailed this to himself from Spain.”
