Melinda nodded slowly and even Kane looked a little less skeptical now.
“Maybe Neal’s partner is also trying to protect Leila,” Melinda suggested. “It makes sense that Neal would run the illegal side of the business with someone he trusts, someone he’s close to. It also makes sense that he’d want to keep his daughter out of it. But what about his brother? Or the guy he thought of like a son, but wasn’t really his son?”
“Yeah,” Davis agreed, even though he didn’t like this theory much better, because it still meant someone Leila cared about deeply was betraying her. “Both Joel and Eric would want to protect Leila. But would either of them really kill Neal? They’re both taking his death hard.”
“Or pretending to,” Kane interjected. “You’ve been FBI long enough to know that the most successful criminals are two-faced. They’ve all got families they probably love. They’re loved at the office. But deep down, it’s all about number one. Anyone who’s pulled this off for at least a decade—and honestly, I’ve got to believe it’s a lot longer—is a pretty successful criminal.”
“It makes Theresa less likely as a suspect,” Melinda said. “She and Leila don’t get along, right? She wouldn’t protect Leila, try to keep her name out of it?”
“Probably not.” Davis sighed. “But she was the one with the best access for swapping out the armor. Neither Joel nor Eric have a lot of contact with the raw materials.”
“But they all have general access. They could go in after hours,” Kane said. “Any luck with that?”
Davis shook his head, his mind still trying to unravel a scenario where Leila’s father wasn’t involved at all. But he’d founded the company; he was one of the few people who’d been there long enough to be behind the illegal gun sales. The only other probable scenario was if he hadn’t known and he’d recently found out. “What if someone killed Neal because he discovered what they were doing? What if that person was behind both the illegal gun sales and the defective armor? What if they never had a partner?”
Both Kane and Melinda looked skeptical, but Melinda gave his theory the benefit of the doubt by saying, “Maybe. But that still means it’s someone who wanted to protect Leila. To try and prevent what ended up happening when Kane inadvertently let them know she was responsible for the gun supply drying up.”
“No matter how you look at this,” Kane said, his gaze steady on Davis, broadcasting that he thought Davis was in way too deep, “someone Leila cares about is behind all of this. And they’re the reason her father is dead.”
* * *
“ARE WE GOING to talk about this?” Melinda demanded. She stood in the doorway of the conference room, one hand on each side of the frame, blocking Kane’s exit.
Davis had left an hour earlier, not wanting Leila to leave the office alone. Melinda and Kane had dug through backgrounds on Joel Petrov and Eric Ross after he’d left, trying to find any indication one of them was making millions of dollars off-book. Then, Kane had looked up at her, the exhaustion in his eyes not doing a thing to hide the anger, and announced he was calling it quits until tomorrow.
“I’m not finding anything in either of their backgrounds,” Kane said, and she knew he was purposely misunderstanding her question. “Our best chance to figure out who’s behind this is the guy who needs a crash course in undercover work.”
“Davis is in a tough spot.” Melinda couldn’t stop herself from arguing, even though she knew Kane had been egging her on, trying to get her to fight about something else. “He’s got real feelings for Leila.”
“It’s one of the biggest dangers in undercover work,” Kane told her, flicking away hair that had fallen down over his forehead. “If you’re any good, you have to inhabit the skin of someone else. That means it’s easy to become what you’re pretending to be. It’s easy to see the humans behind the criminals. No one is one hundred percent bad. But you cross those lines and it’s hard to step back, watch them all get arrested and walk away.”
“How do you keep doing it?” Melinda asked softly. It was something she’d always wondered about Kane. The profiler in her knew part of him craved the danger, craved the chance to disappear inside a persona and escape himself. Escape into the skin of others, over and over again, until maybe the things he was running from in his own life wouldn’t be there anymore.
Melinda didn’t know the details of what had happened with him and Pembrook’s daughter. But she did know he’d never be able to run away from the guilt he felt over her death.
“Simple,” Kane answered, taking her hand and pulling it away from the door frame. “I always go alone.”
He slipped past her, his gaze holding hers for a brief moment before it flicked away. The man was the very definition of tall, dark and handsome. He was dangerous and mysterious in a way she would have swooned over as a foolish teenager.
But she was an adult now, with way too much education in psychology not to recognize exactly what he was doing. She turned around in the doorway, holding her ground. “You think I blew your cover.”
He spun back toward her, the anger on his face so harsh she almost backed up. Almost.
“Yeah, I think you blew my cover. I also think you blew Dougie as my CI, as an FBI resource. I also think...” He sighed heavily, not finishing his sentence.
But he didn’t have to. He thought she’d almost gotten them killed.
His judgment stung, even though she thought the same things herself. She’d had no idea that the very fact that she was Asian would be enough to bring his cover crashing down. But how could she? He’d hidden it all from her, hidden that there even was a meet. She’d had to follow him, sneak glances at his phone, to figure out the when and where, because she’d known from the minute he’d walked out of the room to take the call from his CI what he was doing.
“Don’t you think that if you’d just been honest with me, we could have come up with a plan for the meet together? Then you would have had backup and I would have known not to go in that way.”
“We didn’t need to come up with a plan together,” Kane snapped. “I came up with a plan myself. I work alone. I always have.”
“Not always.”
Melinda knew it was a risk referring to Pembrook’s daughter, but she didn’t expect the level of fury that lit in Kane’s eyes. She had to brace her hands in the doorway again to keep herself from backing away.
“You have no idea what it’s like to watch someone you care about die like that. So, don’t give me your profiling BS about how I’m not a team player when you’re the one who blew that meet.”
Melinda saw the instant Kane realized he’d gone too far, the moment the raw fury in his gaze turned to regret. She also knew why.
He’d seen it on her face that she did know. “You’re right that I’ve never lost a partner,” Melinda agreed, stepping away from the doorway. Her hand twitched toward the ring she always wore on a necklace hidden beneath her shirts, but she resisted the urge to touch it. Her personal life was no one’s business, least of all Kane Bradshaw’s.
In Tennessee, only Pembrook knew she’d once had a husband, had a son, had a life outside of work. The chance to escape the pitying looks of colleagues who knew about her loss was why she’d accepted the job here in the first place.
An ironic smile spread across her lips as she realized in some ways, she and Kane were more alike than she’d ever expected. Both of them were running from their grief. The difference was, she’d buried herself in the intellectual puzzle of the job, whereas he’d run straight to the danger.
“Melinda, I’m—”
“You’re right about something else, too, Kane. You and me? We’re not partners. But right now, there’s a zealot group buying up illegal guns. They think it’s okay to put out a hit on the woman who dared to infringe on their ability to get those guns, intentionally or not. We’re going to see this through and shut this source down. Then we c
an go back to the way things were before.”
The muscle in his jaw pulsed, his eyes narrowed assessingly. But in the end, he just nodded. “Deal.”
In the instant before he turned and walked away, she regretted all of it. She regretted giving him any hint of the loss she’d experienced when both her husband and son had been killed at the same time. She regretted showing him the way to piss her off and push her away. Maybe most of all, she regretted agreeing to keep working with him.
Chapter Fourteen
When the doorbell rang at close to midnight Sunday night, Davis frowned and tucked his gun into the waistband of his jeans before he checked the peephole. Then he swore and opened the door wide for Leila.
She stepped inside without waiting for an invitation and he peered past her, onto the street, looking for the patrol car he’d requested to be stationed outside her house until they solved this case. Until they knew for sure no other BECA members would come after her.
A black and white was idling in front of his house. Leila’s protection.
“I told the cops I was coming here. They insisted on following me over,” Leila said.
He closed and locked the front door as she glanced past his entryway into the living room, curiosity on her face.
When was the last time he’d had a woman he was dating in his home? It had been too long. Not that he didn’t date. But his relationships never lasted long enough to get to the “why don’t you come over?” stage. A few dates in and he’d know whether it was going anywhere. Rather than hurt the woman later, he broke it off sooner. It had happened for so many years, he’d figured that long-term just wasn’t for him. It was disappointing—he’d always imagined settling down some day—but he’d prefer to be alone than pretend a relationship was going somewhere permanent when it wasn’t.
But Leila looked good in his house. As she strode past him and settled onto his big, comfortable couch without an invitation, he hid a smile.
He hadn’t called her. He’d kissed her like he needed her as much as he needed air yesterday morning, and then he’d left for the TCD office. When he’d returned, he’d avoided being alone with her, avoided an awkward conversation or another kiss. Because when it came to Leila, his willpower was shot. But he needed to solve this case first. Needed to figure out who was behind the illegal arms sales and the defective armor before he could even begin to think about whether a relationship with Leila Petrov was possible.
Leave it to her to force the issue. He should have known she wasn’t going to wait for him to decide he was ready.
He followed her into the living room, settling on the edge of the chair across from her, not trusting himself to sit beside her and not reach for her.
Her eyes narrowed slightly at his seating choice, but then she leaned forward. “Tell me about the illegal gun sales.”
“What?”
She smiled slightly, but then the expression was gone, replaced by her serious, CEO face. “You thought I was going to demand answers about that kiss in my office?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t worry. We’ll get to that.”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed.
Kane was right that he’d lost all focus when it came to Leila, but was it any wonder he couldn’t resist this woman? If he’d met her under other circumstances, he would have long since invited her into his house.
The thought made any amusement fade fast. He was going to do everything he could to shelter her from any fallout from whoever had been using her company as a source for illegal activity. But when it was all over, he had to walk away. Had to go back to his job and let her try to pick up the pieces. Because no matter how much he wanted everything to be okay for her, it was unlikely her company would come out of this unscathed. It was unlikely she would come out of this unscathed.
No matter how much he wanted to separate his growing feelings for Leila from the investigation, he couldn’t really do it. When this was all over, she was sure to resent him. Regardless of how he felt about her, would he ever be able to separate that from what had happened to Jessica? Could he ever truly forgive her for running the company that had caused his friend’s death?
“Don’t get all closed up on me now,” Leila said, misunderstanding whatever emotions she’d seen on his face. “I know it’s an active investigation. But we agreed that we’re in this together. You told me there have been illegal gun sales coming from my company for more than a decade. So, let me help you figure this out. How much longer has it been? How many guns?”
Davis studied her, her expression intense despite the skinny jeans and long, loose T-shirt she wore. Her hair was down again, her makeup nonexistent, and he realized how much he liked her non-CEO look. The real Leila, the one people in her office didn’t get to see. But she’d let him in, let him see her vulnerable, trusted him with information about the business she’d worked so hard to help build and shape. Trusted him to help her find out who was sabotaging it, without destroying it in the process.
He swallowed hard, knowing he hadn’t truly earned that trust. Then he tried to channel Kane and meet her gaze with what he hoped looked like honesty. He could tell her the truth about the details: the timeline and the volume of guns. But there would always be too much he’d have to hide.
“We’re on the same side,” she told him softly, making him realize that he’d never be able to truly hide from her.
Nodding, he pushed his conflicted feelings to the back of his mind and focused on business. “How much longer have the illegal gun sales been happening? We’re not sure. It’s been at least eleven years. Possibly as many as twenty.”
“Twenty? Almost no one has been with the company that long,” Leila said, looking shocked as she sank back against the pillows on his couch.
Just her uncle and Theresa, Davis knew. But even if they could definitively say the guns had been sold illegally for twenty years, that didn’t necessarily narrow the suspect pool. Because there was a strong chance her father had started the illegal side of the business as well as the legal side. He might have only brought someone else in later. Someone like Eric.
He hadn’t told Leila that the FBI had narrowed the suspect pool. Now, it wasn’t just those employees with high-level access who’d worked there for a while, but also those who cared about Leila enough to protect her from the BECA scum even when it was costing them huge amounts of money. But she was no fool. She’d figured out that his prime suspects were people she knew well, even people she loved.
Yet, she was still helping him. Some emotion he couldn’t quite identify swelled in his chest. Pride? Attachment?
“How many guns were sold illegally?” she asked, more tension in her voice.
“A lot,” he told her. “Over a decade or more, at marked up prices of course, we’re talking about millions of dollars’ worth.”
“Millions?” She stared up at his ceiling for a long moment, before meeting his gaze again, clearly trying to absorb the information. “Petrov Armor is never going to recover from this, is it?”
His whole body tensed, wanting to jump up and sit beside her, comfort her. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that if it was one criminal hiding in the company, taking advantage of it, that once that person was gone, Petrov Armor could regain its reputation. But would he be lying? She’d already shut down the weapons side of the business. Now, with the investigation clearly showing the defective armor was Petrov Armor’s fault, no matter why it had happened, would the military ever work with them again? He knew they were the company’s main client.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. Then, he told her the one thing that wasn’t a lie. “But if anyone can make it happen, I believe it’s you.”
She gave him a shaky smile, then stood and closed the distance between them.
Just as he was ready to stand, maybe to back away, she knelt in front of his chair and put her hands on his knees. The muscles in his legs
jumped in response and her smile returned, this time a little more steady. She lifted her hands from his legs to his cheeks, her fingers scraping over the stubble he’d ignored shaving this morning, making his face tingle.
His breath came faster in anticipation, and he had to grip the edges of his chair to keep himself from leaning down and fusing his lips to hers. When he didn’t, the small smile on her lips shifted, making the skin around her eyes crinkle as she pushed herself upward.
Her lips were inches from his when panic made him say the thing he’d been keeping from her for too long, the other thing that he couldn’t continue to hide from her if he ever wanted to be with her. “Your dad’s death was no accident, Leila.”
* * *
HER DAD’S DEATH wasn’t a mugging gone wrong. It was intentional. A murder by not just someone her dad knew, but someone he trusted. Someone who had also been using his company to sell guns to criminals and inferior armor to soldiers. All for money. Someone had murdered her father for money.
Leila tried to blink back the tears, but they were coming too fast, rushing down her face in a waterfall she couldn’t stop. More than just the horror of learning it was someone she knew—someone she worked with every day—who had probably killed her father, but also the pure grief of his death. Something she’d been pushing to the back of her mind as much as possible, focusing on work, on this investigation, so she could avoid facing it.
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 13
