“He hired Eric back when the two of us were still dating. Eric is two years older than me, so when he graduated from high school, my dad brought him on. He went to school to get his bachelor’s degree at night. I was still in high school then. I didn’t join the company until I finished grad school. I’ve only been here full-time for five years—I started a couple of years before my dad took the company public. By the time I joined the company, Eric had already been working here for nine years. But yes, my dad and Eric stayed close. Eric was the son my dad never had.”
Davis squinted at her, trying to see through the mask she’d put over her features. Did she resent Eric’s place in her dad’s life? Did Eric resent the fact that Leila had come in only a few years ago and sailed into the CEO role, when Eric had been toiling away at the company for over a decade?
Leila let out a heavy, exaggerated sigh obviously meant for him to hear, and slapped her hands on her hips. “My dad was the father Eric never had, too, since his dad was out of the picture more often than he was in it. Believe me, Eric would never have betrayed my father. Never.”
“Would he have betrayed you?” Davis asked.
She scowled down at him. “You honestly believe Eric would send out a faulty shipment of armor to hurt me? What for? It’s been twelve years since he broke up with me. And I think the key words there are that he broke up with me, not the other way around. We’re friends now. He’s got one of the top positions in the company. If he wanted to bring me down by destroying the company, he’d be taking himself down with me. He’s not that stupid. Or that self-destructive.”
Davis nodded slowly. Her logic all made sense, and yet he couldn’t stop picturing the expression on Eric’s face when Leila had agreed to let Davis drive her home two days ago. No matter what Leila thought, that wasn’t a man who had no romantic feelings for her.
Since talking about Eric had already put her on the defensive, Davis figured he’d get the rest of his unpleasant questions out now. “What about your uncle?”
Her hands fell off her hips as she shook her head. “Are you kidding me? You want to talk about the only person besides me who’s more invested in this place than Eric? That’s Uncle Joel. He gave up another career to help Dad keep this business going. He’s been here ever since.”
“Maybe he resents it,” Davis suggested.
“I doubt it. He makes more money than he ever did before, and he sets his own hours. Dad gave him a lot of freedom, said it was only fair after everything he did for the company, for our family, after Mom died. I still do the same thing with his hours and the board doesn’t care, as long as he gets the job done. He’s less than ten years out from retirement—although, honestly, he could retire now if he felt like it. I think he’s still here for me.”
“Okay, but—”
“Davis, I get it. You don’t know these people. This is nothing but another case for you. But this is my life. This is my family you’re investigating.”
She took a visible breath as Davis wondered whether she considered Eric part of her family.
“You’re right that it looks like we’ve got someone rotten in our company, and I understand why you’re starting at the top. But the truth is that none of the people you’re asking about order the raw materials. None of them ship out the armor. We’ve got good security and good checks. You said it yourself. Obviously someone has found a way around them. But it’s not my uncle. And it’s not my ex. And honestly, even with the time stamps you found for Theresa’s security card, I don’t think it’s her, either.”
“Leila—”
“I understand that you have a job to do. Believe me, I want to figure out who’s doing this, so they can be prosecuted. But I need to keep the rest of the company intact in the meantime. When we figure out who did this, you’ll be leaving and the guilty person will be arrested—rightfully so. But the rest of us are going to have to band together and push forward. I’m not letting this destroy the company my dad spent his life building. I’m not letting you destroy it.”
“I’m not destroying anything,” Davis snapped. “I’m not the one running a company and not knowing fatally defective products were being sent out.”
Leila’s shoulders dropped, the anger on her face shifting to a mix of guilt and pain.
He sucked in a breath, as a ball of dread filled his gut. He believed that the head of a company was responsible for what was happening inside of it, even if they didn’t know anything about it and had no legal liability. But over the past three days, he’d found that Leila was a good, caring person. Seeing how his words had wounded her, he regretted them.
He regretted them even more when she said softly, steadily, “If you think I’m to blame for this, I’m not sure how you can trust me to work with you to find the truth. I’m not sure you should be here at all, Davis.”
* * *
DOUGIE HAD COME THROUGH.
Kane smiled at the text message on his FBI-issued phone. Dougie had gotten in touch with the lowlife who’d been telling him about guns and said a friend was interested in joining BECA. Apparently Dougie had sweetened the pot by also telling the guy that Kane might have a weapons connection of his own. That part was less ideal, but Kane could work with it.
“What are you smiling about?” There was suspicion in Melinda’s question.
Kane tucked his phone away as he looked up at Melinda. “I’ve got a date tonight.”
She blinked rapidly, telling him he’d surprised her, but her eyes narrowed just as fast. “Wasn’t that your work phone you were looking at?”
He shrugged carelessly, glad he had a reputation as a rule-breaker. “Yeah, well, it’s another agent.”
Melinda continued to stare at him with narrowed eyes.
He was a great liar. He had to be, with all the undercover work he’d done, or he would have been killed on the job a long time ago. But apparently Melinda was an even better profiler, because she always seemed to know when he wasn’t being straight with her.
Instead of trying to outstare her, he changed the subject. “I did also hear back from my CI. He’s got a friend who knows someone at BECA. That person might be able to get us some more details about BECA and their connection to Petrov Armor. I want to look a little closer at BECA, see if we can find anything in our files about a possible link.”
“I’ve already been doing that,” Melinda said, her attention returning to her laptop. “The reason we’ve never been able to make anything stick with BECA is because it’s such a loose network. We refer to them as a group, but the reality is they’re not that formally organized. On purpose, I’m sure, to give each member plausible deniability if any single one gets caught.”
“Which has happened plenty,” Kane agreed. The group was most known for having connections to individuals who had set bombs in minority-owned businesses and even places of worship. Maybe because it was such a loosely knit group, the specific biases were different from place to place. Still, more than once, a perpetrator had mentioned that they’d learned how to make bombs from a connection at BECA. A few times, the FBI had tracked down the connection and made an arrest. But then any other local members of the network seemed to scatter.
As far as the FBI had ever found, BECA didn’t keep any official books or lists of membership. Instead of connecting online like a lot of criminal organizations, they’d gone old-school and networked through word of mouth. In theory, that should have made the organization easier to penetrate. But besides being fanatics, BECA members also tended to be extremely paranoid of outsiders.
“You’re thinking about trying to set up a meet with your CI’s contact, the one who knows someone at BECA, aren’t you?” Melinda asked.
When he refocused, he realized she was staring at him again.
“I don’t think so. But if someone at Petrov Armor really is selling to BECA members, that might be how we get them.”
�
�I don’t believe you that you’re not trying to set up a meet.”
Melinda’s words were straightforward, with no anger or frustration in her tone. Strangely, the lack of emotion made Kane feel even more guilty about lying to her. But in the end, he was doing her a favor.
“Well, believe what you want,” he answered, glancing at his phone as it beeped with the notification of a new text. “Be right back.”
He didn’t give her a chance to argue, just slipped into the hallway where she couldn’t try to read over his shoulder.
The text was from Dougie again. You’re on, man. My connection says he can get you a meeting with someone from BECA. Told them exactly what you said I should. That I know you from my time in Vegas. Said you left because you were getting heat after some fires you set at businesses run by Asians and Middle Easterners. Also told them you want to buy some guns, but you’ve got a record. Claimed I didn’t know why, but that your connection here had fallen through.
Kane smiled to himself. The bit about the fires in Vegas was something he’d given Dougie. It had really happened; it just hadn’t been him. The person who’d really done it was six feet under, a casualty of a revenge plot gone wrong. Kane had come in too late to save the idiot—and put him in jail. Instead of releasing the truth about the fires, Kane had kept it under wraps, knowing one day he’d be able to use it. It had turned out to be perfect for this case. BECA was known for fostering that kind of random hate.
The bit about the weapons connection was Dougie’s own improvisation, but Kane had worked with worse.
Great job, he texted back. When’s the meet?
Tomorrow.
Friday. Kane nodded to himself. A weekend meet would have been better, would have made it harder for Melinda to try to track him there. But he wasn’t about to complain. Getting a meet with BECA wasn’t easy.
Perfect. Thanks, man.
Sliding his phone back in his pocket, Kane spun around to return to the conference room and nearly slammed into Melinda. “What the hell?”
“You setting up another date?” There was mocking in her tone.
“What if I am?”
“When’s the meet?”
“There’s no meet, Melinda.” He tried to walk around her, but she shifted, blocking his way.
He raised an eyebrow. Yeah, she’d gone through the FBI Academy just like him, but he had seven inches and probably a good fifty pounds on her. Did she really think she could stop him from going somewhere?
Holding in his annoyance, he turned and walked off in the other direction. A meet with a dangerous group of zealots could far too easily go sideways. One thing Melinda needed to learn about him was that when it came to undercover work, he liked to go alone. No backup. No net. It was better for everyone that way.
“We’re supposed to be partners,” she called after him, frustration in her tone, but less than he’d expected.
Kane gritted his teeth, keeping his response inside. Images of Pembrook’s daughter’s broken body when he’d finally reached her during that mission gone wrong filled his head, the way they did every night in his sleep.
He was never going to have a partner again, least of all Melinda Larsen.
Chapter Nine
Davis blamed her for everything that had happened. Blamed her for the deaths of all those soldiers.
The knowledge made her chest hurt, made each breath laborious. Because the truth was, she blamed herself, too.
How had she not seen that someone was willing to betray the company, and missed all the signs that bad armor was being produced? And for what? More profit? They were doing fine. Sales were increasing. They were looking at expanding their markets. Why would someone go to such lengths for higher numbers on their bottom line? No, someone had to be pocketing that extra cash for their own benefit, using her company to enhance their personal finances.
It shouldn’t have been possible to get faulty armor out the door. Not with the security and checks in place. Her father had managed the company for twenty-nine years without a single incident. She’d been doing it without him for three weeks and there’d been a huge tragedy.
She hadn’t changed anything, but had her lack of focus during her time of grief allowed this to happen? The armor wasn’t made overnight. Someone had come up with this plan, introduced the cheaper materials, gotten them past testing and shipped the defective armor. At least some of that must have happened while her father was still here. But probably not all of it. Had she missed something she should have caught? Been so preoccupied trying to prove that she was worthy of being CEO even after her father’s death that she’d missed what really mattered?
Leila stared at the loading area at the back of their facility where they packed boxes of armor into trucks that delivered them to military installations. It was empty now, with no new deliveries scheduled until next week.
Even those were unlikely to go out. Her employees didn’t know it yet, but unless they found out who was responsible fast, she doubted the military would want this shipment—or any other. The fact was, even if they did resolve it, the incident could be the end of her company. The end of everything her dad had worked for.
Focus, Leila reminded herself, looking around. The loading area was hidden from the road, but visible from some of the windows at the back of the building, where they kept supplies. It was a quiet area. Not many people were there on any given day, but it didn’t mean someone couldn’t be. If someone had loaded defective products after hours to avoid detection, how would that work? Drivers wouldn’t have a way to order cheaper materials to replace the good armor, and the people who loaded the trucks didn’t have access to secure areas.
Theresa’s research and development rooms were back here, too. There were no windows in Theresa’s dedicated development space, but she was always wandering around; she claimed that pacing made her more creative. She often worked late. So, planning to have a truck come after hours on a certain day was dicey, too. Unless Theresa was involved.
Normally someone in a management position signed off on shipments. So, someone must have signed off on either the defective armor or good armor that had later been swapped. But if it had been swapped out, why? Was someone after the good armor rather than the money?
She pondered that for a few minutes. It didn’t seem likely, but she couldn’t rule it out. Maybe whoever had signed off on the defective armor was working with someone in shipping.
The potential lead gave her energy, lifted some of the anxiety pressing on her chest. She swiped her security card to go back inside and slipped into the empty testing room. Then she pulled up the shipment log from the computer there. The date was the first thing that surprised her. The armor hadn’t gone out after her dad had died, when she was lost in her grief and had possibly made unforgiveable errors. It had happened before.
But it was the name in the log that made her sink back into the chair Theresa usually used.
Her father’s name was beside the shipment.
Technically, as their primary consultant, he could still do that. But he rarely did, usually preferring to leave it to one of their management team.
Had he done a sloppy job of inspecting the armor? Or had the fakes been good enough to pass inspection? They’d certainly looked right in the photo Davis had shown her. Leila knew her company’s products well enough to spot even small imperfections. Someone had done a good job of making them look legit.
Leila leaned close to the screen, scrutinizing the electronic copy of the signature. Could it have been faked? Her dad’s signature was sloppy, probably easy to duplicate. It was impossible to know for sure.
“What’s going on, honey?”
Leila spun in her chair at her uncle’s voice. He was frowning at her with concern.
“You look upset. And we don’t have any shipments going out for a week.” He glanced around, then added, “I know you’re no
t back here to shoot the breeze with Theresa. So what’s going on?”
Had Theresa really betrayed them? The idea left a sour taste in the back of her mouth, but it just felt wrong. Theresa was protective of the company, proud to the point of braggadocio of the armor she helped develop, rightfully so. The latest incarnation had been tested by army rangers in real battle conditions before the military had begun ordering them in bulk. They’d stood up to everything the Special Operations soldiers encountered, which was no small feat.
Theresa was unmarried, had no kids. She spoke occasionally of an older sister and a nephew, and every so often of a man she was seeing, something that had been on-again, off-again for years. But the latter always seemed more casual than a real relationship. Her life was the company. Even if Theresa was in the most likely position to betray it, Leila just couldn’t imagine her doing so.
But if she had, why now? If it was anger over Leila being given the CEO position, Theresa had had a full year to take action. Or she could have quit and used her talents elsewhere. That would have been the easiest path if she was unhappy. Instead, she’d stayed, continued to innovate for Petrov Armor. Leila had continued to give her well-deserved raises.
“Leila?” her uncle Joel asked, stepping closer and putting his hand on her arm.
She blinked his face into focus and felt a bittersweet smile form. He looked so much like her dad.
She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what was really going on. It was part of her agreement with Davis. But it wasn’t as if he was holding up his end of the bargain and keeping her in the loop. And her uncle was the last person who’d ever betray her father’s legacy.
“Uncle Joel, there’s something—”
“Leila.”
Davis’s voice, firm and laced with anger, startled her. She glanced toward the long hallway that led from the main part of the office and there he was, arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 9
