“Neal Petrov holstered his gun at the small of his back.” Davis skimmed the report once more to be sure he hadn’t missed something, then swore under his breath. He was right. “According to this report, his right arm was positioned under his back, like he was reaching for the gun when he fell.”
“All consistent with a mugging gone wrong,” Kane said, but he was leaning forward now, his tone suggesting he was waiting for something inconsistent.
“Neal Petrov had no damage to that arm. No broken fingers from landing on them. No scraped-up arms when he hit the pavement. It’s as if—”
“His arm was positioned that way after he fell,” Melinda finished, looking pensive.
“Exactly.”
“Well, this case just took an interesting turn,” Kane said, settling back into his chair.
It was interesting. Because if it wasn’t a random mugging and the scene had been staged, that suggested someone Neal knew. It seemed likely the murderer was connected to the faulty armor coming out of Petrov Armor. That potentially put a completely different spin on what was happening at Petrov Armor and who was involved.
But all Davis could think about was the sadness in Leila’s voice when she’d talked about losing her mom, the grief in her eyes when her employees had talked about missing her dad. He didn’t want her to face more hurt. He definitely didn’t want to have to tell her that someone she knew might have murdered her dad.
“So, who might have wanted Neal Petrov dead?” Melinda asked.
Davis forced himself to focus, but he couldn’t quite get Leila’s sad eyes out of his head as he replied, “Potentially a lot of people if he was involved in illegal gun sales and defective body armor sales.”
“Or even if he wasn’t, and he found out what was happening at his company,” Kane added. “Though I’m betting he was part of this, probably the instigator. My guess is that he was making a lot of money off the illegal gun sales, letting him retire at sixty. With a partner inside, that person still had the necessary access. So did Neal, since he was still at the office all the time as a consultant and member of the board. This way, Neal could focus on the illegal side of the business. I bet he put his daughter in charge because she’d never suspect him of this. Right?” Kane stared questioningly at Davis.
He nodded reluctantly. “Leila loved her dad. She’d never suspect him of anything illegal or immoral. But honestly, she still doesn’t think it’s anyone at the company. She’s convinced a switch happened after the shipment left Petrov Armor.”
“Well, that might have been plausible—if unlikely—when we were talking about one defective armor shipment. But she doesn’t know how big this case has gotten, including all the illegal arms sales,” Kane replied. “So, he helps get his daughter put in charge, thinking she’ll be clueless. Then, she shuts down the gun business, so Neal switches to defective armor. As the biggest shareholder, he’s still getting plenty of the company’s profits. So, he’s swapping out the materials for cheaper stuff and pocketing the balance. That would suggest he was working with Theresa.”
“And then she had him killed?” Melinda interrupted. “Why?”
“Maybe she wanted more of the profits for herself,” Davis suggested, able to imagine the determined head of R and D paying someone to kill Neal. Or even pulling the trigger herself. “She resented Leila being put in charge. Maybe she blamed Neil for putting her there and giving her a chance to shut down the gun side of the business.”
“Or it wasn’t Theresa who killed him at all,” Melinda suggested. “Maybe it was someone who learned what he was doing and took their own revenge.”
“But the faulty armor only caused deaths after Neal was already murdered,” Davis said.
“At least as far as we know,” Melinda contradicted. “But what if it was someone internal? Someone who learned about the gun sales and wanted them stopped? Maybe they sent the faulty armor to get him investigated and when that took too long, they had him killed instead.”
“There are easier ways of dealing with that, though. Anonymous tip to police, for one. Sending out bad armor to trigger an investigation seems pretty drastic and complicated. Too many variables the perp can’t control,” Davis argued.
“Yeah, but what revenge murder do you know of that’s not drastic?”
“Point taken. If it’s revenge. But I don’t think it is. It seems more likely he was killed by his partner in the illegal gun sales, doesn’t it?” Davis glanced at Kane, wondering about his take. Melinda might be the profiler, but Kane had spent most of his career undercover. He’d worked with the CIA repeatedly. He understood the underhanded dealings of criminals better than most, because he’d seen them up close. Rumor had it that sometimes he’d even participated to keep his cover intact.
“Maybe,” Kane said, but there was uncertainty in his tone. “It’s the timing I’m interested in. What happened three weeks ago that got Neal Petrov killed? It’s interesting that it’s close to the timing of that faulty shipment. Then, there’s the fact that the gun side of the business shut down last year. My gut says all those things are somehow connected.”
“Leila has agreed to give me access to the security camera footage and logs from the time the latest batch of armor was made,” Davis told them. “Hopefully that will give us some insight.”
“In the meantime, you need to continue to act like you’re just there about one shipment of defective armor,” Melinda said. “Leila can’t suspect her father was murdered or she might just blow open this whole investigation.”
“I know,” Davis answered, not quite meeting her gaze. He had no intention of telling Leila the truth, at least not until they had someone in custody. But lying to her even a little bit made him feel terrible. How was he going to keep something this huge from her?
* * *
IT WAS SEVENTY degrees and the sun was shining, but Kane Bradshaw was tucked into a dark corner beneath an underpass. Fifty feet away, a low-level drug deal was taking place. A hundred feet beyond that, a cluster of cardboard boxes and blankets housed more people than should have been able to fit in the tight space.
Kane ignored all of it. He kept his back to a pillar and swept the area with his gaze until he spotted his confidential informant. Dougie Zimmerman sauntered over with his typical cocky attitude, hiking up pants that never seemed to stay above his bony hips. With what little hair he had on his head shaved close and a goatee hiding some of his pockmarked face, Dougie looked like he was more arrogance than real threat.
The truth was somewhere in between.
Dougie had dropped out of high school and started driving trucks full of illegal goods when he was seventeen. By the time he was nineteen, he’d done two short stints in jail, but hadn’t turned on anyone. It had earned him trust among the criminal element and more illegal jobs. A year after that, he’d been caught again, this time with enough drugs to send him away for a long time.
Instead of going to jail, Kane’s then-partner at the FBI had made the arrest disappear and turned Dougie into a confidential informant. That had been eight years ago. Since then, Dougie had become one of Kane’s best CIs. Kane had helped disappear multiple drug possession charges, an illegal gun charge and even an armed robbery charge to keep Dougie on the streets. Because he always delivered more than the damage he caused.
Still, Dougie had become a CI to stay out of jail and for the way the thrill of double-crossing boosted his ego. At the end of the day, Dougie was still a criminal. And Kane was still FBI.
Although he kept his hands loose at his sides, Kane was ready to react if Dougie showed any sign of a double-cross. Kane had one of the quickest draws at TCD. He’d never had a meeting with a CI go sideways, but he’d had plenty of undercover operations turn bad, so he was always prepared. Usually with multiple weapons hidden on his body.
Only once had his preparedness not been enough. Back then, his partner had paid the ultimate
price. Which was why Kane was standing beneath the underpass alone and hadn’t even let Melinda know where he was going. If Pembrook was going to force him to work with Melinda, she could handle the parts of the investigation that involved reading case files in an air-conditioned office. He’d manage the rest.
“What have you got for me?” he asked Dougie, giving him a quick scan. But Dougie’s ill-fitting clothes didn’t leave a lot of good places to hide a weapon. Kane doubted he had backup of his own. Although the man had made contacts with a ton of Tennessee’s criminal elements, he rarely liked to work with anyone long-term. As far as Kane could tell, their relationship was the longest one Dougie had ever had.
Dougie’s head swiveled slowly left and right, looking more like a slow-motion dance move than a scan of his surroundings. Then he gave Kane a quick nod. “Word is that if you want guns on the down low, you can get some Petrov Armor pistols around here. I asked as much as I could without making people suspicious, but no one seemed to know exactly who the contact was. Least not anyone I know.”
Kane frowned. Dougie knew everyone. Then again, if someone had been illegally selling Petrov Armor guns to criminals for more than a decade, they were good at hiding both the activity itself and their identity.
“What about recent sales?” Officially, the gun side of the business was shut down, but that didn’t mean Petrov Armor didn’t have excess weapons or that someone wasn’t still secretly making them and selling them at a huge markup to criminals.
“I don’t know how recent these sales are, but...” Dougie glanced around once more, then leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Supposedly BECA has been buying up a lot of guns lately. Word is they’ve got a whole room full of Petrov Armor pistols.”
Dougie’s words sent an electric current along Kane’s skin, the rush of a new lead that his gut said was real. The Brotherhood of an Ethnically Clean America—BECA for short—was a nasty zealot group that specialized in equal-opportunity hate. The FBI had been watching them ever since they’d popped onto the radar four years earlier, but so far, none of the attacks by members had been connected strongly enough back to the group to make a large-scale arrest.
“How do you feel about making an introduction?” Kane asked.
Dougie shook his head. “No way, man. Those guys are all crazy. I don’t want to work with them.”
“You don’t have to. Just tell them I want to.”
Dougie’s lips twisted upward, making him look even more unattractive. “I don’t have connections there, but I know a guy who does. He’s the one who told me about the guns. I can get you in with him, but I’m gonna need some cash.”
Usually Kane played up the fact that Dougie wasn’t in jail to keep the man from asking for too much cash for information. It helped keep Dougie honest, prevented him from making things up for money. But today, he just nodded. “How fast can you do it?”
“Maybe tomorrow?” Dougie glanced around once more, then started walking away. “I’ll call you.”
Kane waited another few minutes before he left in the opposite direction. Protocol said he was supposed to let his partner—for this case, Melinda—know about the information. But Melinda would fight him on his plan to get close to BECA. She’d argue that it was too dangerous. She’d want to do more legwork first. Or worse yet, she’d want to go with him.
Kane shuddered at the very idea of Melinda Larsen in the field. The idea of working beside her undercover sent deeper fear through him.
But something had to be done. They couldn’t wait for Davis to find the perpetrator. Not when he was getting more attached to Leila Petrov with every minute he spent undercover. The fact that his connection to her was more than just physical had been apparent last night at the office when he’d talked about her with admiration and empathy and an unwillingness to put her on the suspect list.
Davis was a nice guy. He was formidable in close-quarters battle or a firefight, and Kane would choose to have the guy next to him in most dangerous situations. But undercover? It wasn’t his forte. He was too straitlaced military, too honest and straightforward. He didn’t know how to inhabit a persona like a second skin.
And that was a mistake that could be fatal.
Chapter Seven
For what felt like the hundredth time today, Leila glanced at the closed door to her office. She’d barely spoken to Davis since he’d come in to work this morning. He’d offered to pick her up, but she’d risen early and taken a cab so she’d have an excuse to avoid him.
She couldn’t believe she’d tried to kiss him yesterday. He hadn’t said a word about it, but considering how fast he’d backed away, there was no need. Apparently, even though he’d been using flirtation and attraction to get information for his investigation, she’d crossed the line with him by acting on those feelings.
She should be glad he hadn’t let it get that far. She’d been overemotional, looking for comfort in the wrong way. If he had let her kiss him, she probably would have been even more embarrassed today. Yet, a part of her wished she’d still been able to press herself against that broad chest and lose herself in his kisses. For even half an hour, to take a break from the reality that her dad was gone and her company—the biggest part of her dad she had left—was in serious trouble.
Closing her eyes against the rush of tears threatening, Leila focused on taking deep breaths in and out until she got control of her grief. When she opened them again, Davis was standing in the doorway, quietly closing the door behind him.
Just her luck that he’d seen her break down. She forced a smile, hoping to mask her sadness. “How did you do with the security card log and the videos?”
That morning, she’d given him access to the computer program that tracked who had been in and out of which areas at which times. She’d also handed over all their internal and external security video footage. The internal footage was automatically erased every week unless it was tagged for saving, but they held on to their external video for months. Letting Davis access all of it had been her attempt at getting their mutual goal back on track.
He frowned at her, the expression on his face telling her he was going to ask if she was okay.
“Well?” She was finished getting personal with him. From this point forward, she needed to remember that they were unwilling partners in an investigation to uncover the truth about what had happened to those soldiers. That was it.
Even if they were working together, even if she respected his intelligence and investigative experience, ultimately, they were going to end up on opposite sides. Yes, right now, they wanted the same thing. But once they found the perpetrator, he was unlikely to care whether Petrov Armor went down with the culprits. She couldn’t let that happen. Not only because of her dad, but also because of all the employees who counted on the company for their paychecks.
“I found something.”
Her heart seemed to plummet to her stomach. Leila clamped her hands on her desk for stability as she got to her feet. “What did you find?” Or rather, who? Who had been betraying her father, the company and their country? Who at Petrov Armor didn’t care if soldiers died thinking they were protected by body armor?
“Nothing on the external video. Not really, anyway.”
Davis stepped around to the back of her desk. She could smell his morning-fresh scent and feel the brush of his arm as he shifted her laptop toward him.
He leaned past her, typing away as he said, “I don’t know exactly when to look, so it’s a little tough to sort through all that raw footage. But you do have some gaps. I don’t know if it’s a system error or someone erased footage. What I didn’t find was anything obviously suspicious, like a truck being loaded with crates at night.”
“Well, I still think someone could have swapped out that armor after it left our facility,” Leila said, peering around him to see what he was doing on the laptop.
Hi
s fingers stalled and his whole body went unnaturally still. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before he was straightening and shrugging, but Leila’s mouth went dry. There was something he wasn’t telling her.
Before she could figure out what, he spun the laptop toward her. “This is a bit more interesting.”
Leila peered closer, recognizing their security card access logs. Every time someone used their security card to key into the building or any of the secure areas, the system logged it.
“Theresa Quinn was here late at night during the time you said that shipment of armor was being made.”
Leila sighed. “That’s not really a smoking gun, Davis. Theresa lives for the work. She’s here on weekends sometimes.”
“But these super-late-night visits don’t seem to happen except during this time period.”
Leaning in again, Leila scrolled through the dates in question, realizing he was right. “It still might not mean anything.”
She and Theresa had never gotten along. Maybe it was because the head of Research and Development had been part of Petrov Armor since Leila was a kid. Although her father had never told her about it, Leila had overheard Theresa arguing with him about recommending the board put Leila in charge. Theresa hadn’t seemed to want the CEO spot for herself, just thought Leila hadn’t earned it and wasn’t capable of running the company.
But Theresa was a professional. Once Leila had been given the job anyway, Leila had never heard a word about it from her head of R and D. They might not like each other personally, but it had never gotten in the way of work. Leila couldn’t imagine Theresa betraying the company she’d spent the last twenty years helping to build. Not even if that company was handed over to someone she’d called “the person who’s going to destroy Petrov Armor.”
“You and Theresa don’t get along,” Davis said.
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 7
