by Blake Dixon
“Interesting.” There went the theory that Rubin had tapped into Vault’s shadier resources. And it did make sense that the D.A. had hired them. He remembered Dottie Noakes mentioning that her husband had been in the military, so he probably did have old Army buddies working for Vault. Hell, maybe he’d gotten a discount.
Of course, there was no way Lucas Arnell had been Noakes’ buddy. Not with the way he’d reacted to Noakes kicking it back in the country club sauna the other day.
“Gotta run.” Natalie looked at her watch again. “I don’t know if there’s anywhere left for you two to look … but let me know if you find anything.”
Jude nodded. “Will do.”
When she left the conference room, Kane sent a disgusted look at the closed door. “So they’re just going to roll over and pony up the ransom,” he said. “That shit never works. Do you know how many kidnapping victims make it out alive after the ransom gets paid?”
“No clue.”
“Five percent. That kid’s going to die.”
“Unless we find her first.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Kane scrubbed a hand down his face. “Where’s your laptop? I want to watch those videos again.”
He pointed to the side table near the windows where he’d stacked all the materials for the case. “Knock yourself out.” At least this time, Kane wasn’t trying to remember why he wasn’t going to kill him.
He hoped.
Chapter Forty-Three
They’d been spinning their wheels for hours when Jude decided on a change of scenery, and some lunch. He’d brought Kane to the Luna Café hoping that a return to the scene of the first attack might jog something loose in his mind. Some detail that would help him figure this whole thing out.
Back to the beginning of it all.
In a back corner booth, after ordering two cheeseburger plates and a pitcher of beer, Jude set up his laptop on the table and added a stack of file folders beside it. “I came here after I talked to Noakes the first time, at his office,” he said. “Picked up a tail on the way.”
“You were tailed from the public defender building?”
He nodded. “I thought it was Rubin being anal, keeping tabs on me, so I didn’t pay much attention at first. I should have.”
“Guess even boy scouts make mistakes,” Kane said. “So this guy comes here, tries to kill you…”
“Not at first. He tried to warn me off the case. Threatened a waitress with a gun, managed to keep me from … seeing his face.” Even as he spoke, he wanted to kick himself. He’d never shown the profile sketch to Kane — if it was a merc, he might know the guy. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered, flipping through file folders for the printout.
Kane raised an eyebrow. “Problem?”
“Yeah. I forgot to show you something.” Damn it, where was the sketch? “Didn’t think of it, because all this crap at the restaurant happened before I brought you in. Here it is.” He slid the printout free of the bottom folder and set it on top of the pile. “You know this guy?”
“He’s the assailant?”
“Same son of a bitch who shot up my car. I got a look at him that time.”
Kane leaned in closer to the sketch, stared for a minute. Finally, he shook his head. “Doesn’t look familiar,” he said.
“Well. Shit.”
“Look on the bright side,” Kane said. “I don’t know every single merc who works for Vecchio, so me not recognizing him doesn’t mean shit.”
Jude snorted. “How is that a bright side?”
“I don’t know. Give me a minute and I’ll figure it out.”
Just then, a waitress approached the table bearing a tray with a pitcher of beer and two mugs. Not the same waitress who’d been threatened a few days ago. Emma had probably either taken a few days off, or decided that having guns waved around and people chasing each other through the streets at work was not the job for her. “Here you go,” the waitress whose nametag identified her as Josephine said, setting out the drinks. “Your food should be ready in a few minutes. Can I get you anything else right now?”
“Wouldn’t mind those virgins I asked for, before they shove me back in the hole,” Kane muttered under his breath.
The waitress blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” Jude said. “We’re fine, thanks.”
She gave Kane a wary look as she left the table.
“Have a drink.” Jude hefted the pitcher and started pouring one of the mugs. “Listen, man, I’m not going to let them—”
“Robertson?”
Jude looked up as a shadow fell over the table.
The shadow belonged to Lucas Arnell.
“Arnell. Hey.” He didn’t look over at Kane, trusting the man would go along with the fake name even if he didn’t know why. “What brings you to this dive?”
“Lunch break. What the hell happened to your face, man? You find some action at the country club?”
He pulled a sheepish smile. “Hiking and alcohol. Not a great combination, especially when there’s more alcohol than hiking.”
“Ah. I hear you.” Arnell grinned, and his gaze shifted to Kane. “You must be the airport buddy. Robertson said he was picking someone up.”
Kane extended a hand without missing a beat. “John Harding,” he said.
“Lucas Arnell.” The security guard shook. “Must’ve been out of the Corps for a while now, huh? The hair,” he said. “That’s a long way from a high-and-tight.”
“Well, there’s a buzz cut buried in there somewhere.” Kane’s smile was polite, with just a hint of cold. “You know how it goes. Once a Marine…”
“Hooah, brother.”
“Hooah.”
“I was an Army man, myself,” Arnell said. “Six in Afghanistan. You two tour together?”
“Arnell here works for Vault Securities,” Jude said before Kane could reply with something sarcastic. “Where’s your man Noakes?”
Arnell snorted. “I’m off the rotation today,” he said. “Supposedly Noakes had some meeting with a sensitive witness for one of his cases, and they put a senior guard with him. I think they booted me because I bitched to the higher-ups about him living it up while his daughter’s missing.” He shrugged. “If I’m off this assignment, good riddance. Never really liked the son of a bitch.”
“You mean Noakes?”
“Exactly. He’s…” Arnell trailed off as his gaze fell to the table. “Why do you have that?”
Jude looked down. He was talking about the profile sketch. “You know this guy?” he said.
“That’s Chaz Morrigan. But everybody calls him Beast.”
“Everybody?”
“Yeah. He works for Vault,” Arnell said slowly. “Matter of fact, he’s the senior guard assigned to Noakes today.”
“Oh, Christ.”
Arnell took a half-step back. “What’s going on?” he said. “What are you doing with a police sketch of Beast?”
“A few days ago, this guy tried to kill me.” Jude tapped the printout. “But right now I think he might be planning to kill Gary Noakes.”
Jude had to tell Arnell the truth, or at least most of it, in order to get him to cooperate. The younger man wasn’t angry — mostly because the Marine thing hadn’t been a lie. But he was curious about the CIA.
A few carefully chosen words from Kane crushed most of that curiosity.
Unfortunately, the extent of Arnell’s knowledge about Chaz Morrigan, also known as Beast, was not much. Arnell had been with Vault for just around a year, while Morrigan was a founding partner. He said the partners didn’t really take on clients too often. In fact, Morrigan had been on vacation for the past week, so he’d thought it a little strange that the man showed up this morning for Noakes. But he’d had no reason to question it.
Arnell had called the Vault office and asked them to check on Noakes, saying the CIA had contacted him because they were trying to get a message to the district attorney. Whoever he’d spoken to, they called back ten mi
nutes later and said both Noakes and Morrigan were fine, but Noakes was in that sensitive witness meeting they’d mentioned and couldn’t be disturbed.
Soon after, Arnell had gone back to work. Jude filled Natalie in on the development, suggested she work up a background check on Morrigan and get the local cops looking for him. His suspicions hadn’t exactly been allayed. After all, what was Morrigan going to say? Tell the CIA that Noakes can’t call them back, on account of being dead.
Of course he’d said the D.A. was in a meeting. Whether it was true or not.
He and Kane were still at the Luna, the beer long gone and Jude’s lunch polished off. Kane had gotten half a cheeseburger down, a big improvement for him.
Jude worked to unclench his jaw. The sheer frustration was making him stiff. “If they kill Noakes, they’ll definitely kill the girl,” he said. “They won’t need her anymore.”
“Yeah, but who the hell is ‘they’?” Kane’s own frustration came through in his tone, loud and clear. “Seems like ‘they’ must be working with the bad side of Vault, unless it is Vault for some reason. But that leaves out Rubin and the mercs. The one thing that bastard was actually telling the truth about.”
Jude heaved a breath, tapped his laptop awake. “Maybe there’s another connection to Vault,” he said. “Some kind of history between them and Noakes. He was military before he went to law school. So maybe it’s about revenge.”
“Hell, at this point anything’s worth a shot,” Kane said.
Jude opened Google in a browser and searched for “Vault Securities + Gary Noakes”. The first result was an article on someone’s personal blog titled Vault to Protect Noakes Family While Police Continue Search for Missing Daughter. A few entries down were the image results. One professional head shot of the district attorney. A still image from a television interview — Gary and Dottie Noakes, united to stand against crime in Virginia Beach County.
That heartbreaking photo of Valerie in her lacy baby-doll pinafore with a beaming, innocent smile and wide, sparkling green eyes.
Green eyes that were almost the exact same shade as Senator Sam Bromwell.
Jude’s heart stopped as the image of the man silently crying in the interrogation room flashed across his mind. Those confused, wet green eyes, dull with shock. He remembered sitting with Dottie in her sunroom, looking at this exact photo of Valerie and wondering which relative she’d inherited those eyes from — not her brown-eyed father, or her hazel-eyed mother. He remembered Dottie’s strange insistence that Sam Bromwell would never hurt her daughter.
He remembered an unopened envelope in the Noakes’ vestibule from a place called Pathway Labs.
“Holy shit,” he said hoarsely. He cleared the search bar and typed in Pathway Labs.
Virginia Beach address. Specializing in drug and alcohol screening, DNA research — and paternity testing.
Kane was staring at him. “You’ve got something?”
“Maybe. Probably. It’s … definitely something.” He was already programming the address into his phone. “I’ll explain on the way.”
“Where are we going?”
Jude snapped the laptop shut. “Pathway Labs.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Jude filled Kane in on everything on the way to the lab. The college friendship gone sour. The shared green eyes, the unopened envelope. The way Dottie Noakes practically begged him not to investigate Sam Bromwell.
“So Noakes finds out the kid is Bromwell’s, not his, and then — what? Kidnaps her himself?” Kane said. “Pretty thin, Wyland.”
“More likely, he has someone from Vault Securities kidnap her. One of the shady mercenary types.” Jude’s jaw twitched. “Like the guy everybody calls Beast.”
“But why? I mean, the demand is for Noakes to drop out of the race,” he said. “Why the hell would Noakes kidnap his own daughter — well, maybe Bromwell’s daughter — and then force himself to withdraw?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
The address was just ahead. Jude pulled into the front parking lot of a trim, white professional building with PATHWAY stenciled in gold on the front glass doors. He was opening the car door almost before he’d put the vehicle in park.
Kane caught up to him as he strode to the building. “Take a breath, Boy Scout,” he said. “You’re going to scare the civilians.”
“I don’t give a damn,” he growled.
“Okay, man. You’re the boss.”
When he burst through the doors, into the beige-and-tan lobby with white accents, a smartly dressed woman behind a desk at the far end looked up with a pleasant expression that faltered when she caught sight of his face. “How can I help you?” she said uncertainly.
“I need to see some of your test results.” He stopped in front of the desk. “Check to see if your lab performed a paternity test for Valerie Noakes.”
The woman blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry, but our testing is confidential, Mr. …?”
“Agent Wyland.” He yanked the damned billfold from his pocket and flashed the badge at her. “CIA.”
“Uh, Agent Wyland,” she said. “We would need a court order—”
“Just look for the goddamned test!”
“I can’t do that. We have rules.”
Jude slapped both palms on the desk, leaned toward her. “And I have a gun.”
“I’d do what he wants,” Kane said from somewhere behind him. “He’s crazy.”
“Well. Er. Just a moment.” The woman turned stiffly toward the computer on her left and started typing. “What name were you looking for?”
“Valerie. Noakes.”
“Oh, no. Isn’t that the name of the little girl who…” She trailed off to a breathless little gasp and typed some more. After a moment, frown lines wrinkled her brow. “I’m not seeing any test results under that name,” she said.
“Look again.”
“I … all right.” Exhaling sharply, she tapped at the keyboard again. “No results,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you sure?”
The woman gave a slow, wide-eyed nod.
“Fine,” he snarled, whirling away from the desk. “I’ll find another way to get them.”
He’d gotten three steps when the woman spoke in a timid voice. “Wait. Agent Wyland?”
“What?”
“Um,” she said. “Some of our clients pay an additional fee to submit confidential, unidentified genetic material for testing. Those results are stored in a separate database. The genetic subjects wouldn’t be identified by name in the reports, but I can search the tests by the client’s mailing address.” She hesitated. “If you want.”
Jude turned back and tried to gentle his tone. It wasn’t easy. “Yes. I want,” he said, getting his phone out. He found the Noakes’ home address in his GPS history and read it out to the woman.
She typed something, waited, typed again. Looked at the computer screen. “Here it is,” she said, turning the monitor sideways so Jude and Kane could see the displayed report. There were four columns. The first was headed with a case number, followed by columns labeled Child, Alleged Father (A), and Alleged Father (B). Each column showed lists of letters and numbers with headings like locus, PI, and allele sizes.
None of which made any sense to Jude.
“So what does it mean?” he said.
The woman cleared her throat. “These are genetic markers,” she said, running a finger down the column labeled ‘locus.’ “The test covers twenty loci, and looks for alleles to mark numbers that match either the mother or the alleged father. For a genetic match, the alleles will be the same as one parent or the other.” She scrolled down the page to a box marked Interpretation. “In this case, the alleles marked a zero percent match for alleged father A, and a 99.9999 percent match for alleged father B. So the child is a clear genetic match with alleged father B.”
“Great,” Kane said. “There aren’t any names on the report. Which alleged father is which, here?�
�
“Well, er,” the woman said, giving them both a nervous glance. “Usually we wouldn’t be able to tell. But in this case, we have a note from the lab technician.” She pointed to a row along the bottom of the report. “The client had his own genetic material sampled here at the lab when he ordered the test. A blood draw. We have to keep blood samples properly catalogued, so the tech remarked that the client’s results are alleged father A. To keep track of the blood sample.”
Jude looked at the meaningless numbers again. “So the client, Noakes, is the one with a zero percent chance of being the girl’s father.”
“Correct. But we have no record of identity for the second alleged father, the genetic match to the child.”
“That’s fine,” Jude said. “I already know who he is.”
When they got back in the car, Jude pulled his phone out.
“Hold it.” Kane fixed him with a warning stare. “I don’t know who you’re calling, but we need to talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Really? How about Amy?”
“Don’t you dare make this about her!”
Kane didn’t even flinch at his shout. “I’m not,” he said. “You are.”
“Bullshit.”
“Come on, Wyland. We were partners for over three years,” he said. “You told me about your sister. I knew the minute you gave me the details of this case, it was going to be Amy for you. That you’d have to save this kid because of her.”
He shook his head. “It’s not—”
“Of course it is. And there isn’t a damned thing wrong with that. Because if … when you save Valerie, it’ll be because you were never going to give up. You know what it’s like to lose someone that way, and you won’t let it happen again.” He looked out the windshield, gestured at the lab building. “The thing is, you’re letting Amy become the only reason. You’re angry now. And angry people make mistakes.”
