He raised the window and put the SUV into gear, the flash drive safely hidden in his palm. Sure, lying to the FBI and stealing evidence made Ian guilty of more than a dozen federal crimes. But what did he care about a little jail time when it meant sending Nikolai Mateev where he belonged—straight to hell?
* * *
Petra slowly regained consciousness, opening her eyes to find herself leaning against a wall, her hand resting on a gray plastic box. Her head throbbed with each beat.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The last thing she remembered was a phone call from one of her clients, Joe Owens. He’d wanted to see her, but then what? The beeping grew, climbing in intensity, rising in volume before ending in a crescendo of a full-blown alarm. Petra could almost see the sound waves radiating out from the small gray box. She had tripped an alarm. But why? Nothing made sense.
She took in the rest of the room, which was tiled in cream-colored marble and framed with blond wood. Nearby was a set of double doors, and a staircase on the left led up to a balcony that ran the length of the room.
Like seeing the corner of a photograph, the fragment of a memory came to her. It was Christmastime and she stood in this room—Joe Owens’s foyer. She’d spilled red wine on her silk blouse and had been directed to the kitchen where she could get some seltzer water for the stain.
An arched doorway on her right led to the same kitchen. The room beyond was dark. The lights were off and the curtains had been drawn.
Petra caught a glimpse of her dress, her hands. She was covered in splatters of red. Not wine this time. Blood? Icy tendrils of panic reached for her throat and squeezed. Was she bleeding? She scanned her body. Scrapes, bruises, a single cut to her arm. Beyond that, she had the expected residual headache that came after a migraine, and nothing else. So what had happened after she lost consciousness? Why was she covered in blood?
Her handbag lay in the middle of the foyer, the contents were scattered about. Lipstick. Sunglasses. Keys. Wallet. No phone. She dove for her purse and dug into the interior. It was empty.
“Joe?” Her throat was dry, her voice hoarse.
Petra took a step. Her legs trembled, and her vision wavered. She breathed deeply, trying to stay calm. She had to call someone. The kitchen... There’d been a landline in the kitchen. She peered around the corner and found nothing but darkness. Dark floor. Dark walls. Dark forms blending in with the gloom.
“Joe?”
Petra took another step, then another. The floor underfoot was sticky. The odor of copper and meat was thick in the air. The shadow of the island loomed before her. Her foot connected with something solid but not hard. Petra’s heartbeat raced.
Scrambling, she reached for the wall. Her hand danced along the surface until she found an electrical switch. She turned it on. The room blazed with light. A pool of black spread out around her feet. Joe lay sprawled at the base of the island with a knife protruding from his side.
Petra sank to her knees next to him. His shirt was soaked and crimson, his breath nothing more than a gasp. She dared not touch the knife, lest she hurt him more.
“Joe? Joe? Can you hear me?” The alarm continued to scream. Petra couldn’t even hear her own voice.
He didn’t respond.
A loud knocking was heard and above the din a voice called, “Police. Open up.”
The police. She scrambled to her feet, lightheaded with gratitude that someone had arrived who could help Joe—help her.
A large man in a suit stood on the stoop. He held up a small leather portfolio. His badge and photo ID were visible. “I’m Detective Sergeant Luis Martinez with the Denver PD. I’m responding to a home alarm.” He looked her over from head to toe. “Are you injured, ma’am?”
Petra’s legs went weak with relief. She held tight to the doorjamb. “I’m fine,” she managed to say, “but you need to help him.”
“Help who?” the detective asked.
“He’s in the k-kitchen,” she stammered, “and hurt.”
The detective swept past her as three more black-and-white police cruisers rushed up the drive. Half a dozen officers exited the vehicles and ran to the house.
“That way,” she said, pointing to the kitchen as they approached. One of the police officers disabled the alarm. The silence was more terrifying than the noise. In the quiet, Petra could hear a single question echoing in her mind: What have I done?
She leaned on the wall for support. Her throat burned. She wanted to pass out. But she needed to know what had happened to her client.
She stepped toward the kitchen, but Martinez blocked her path. He had removed his suit coat and splatters of blood stained his wrinkled shirt and tie. Over his shoulder, she saw the uniformed police officers administering first aid to Joe. In the distance, she heard another siren, and through the open front door she caught a glimpse of an ambulance racing up the drive.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” Martinez said, steering her to a dining room that was situated on the other side of the foyer. Two EMTs bearing a stretcher entered the house and immediately went to the kitchen, disappearing from Petra’s view.
It didn’t mean that she couldn’t hear what they said. “Starting IV fluids,” said a female.
“Starting IV fluids,” repeated her partner, a male.
“I see seven stab wounds,” said the female.
Seven wounds? She tried to picture herself in a frenzy of what—rage? Fear? In her mind’s eye, she saw nothing.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?” the detective sergeant asked. “Can you answer a few questions?”
She nodded.
“Let’s start with your name and why you’re here.”
“I’m Petra Sloane, Joe’s agent.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
A thousand images flooded her mind at once. Nothing seemed real. “I have no idea. I can’t remember a thing.”
“You might be in shock,” said the detective. “Take a moment...”
Martinez’s words trailed off as the EMTs came from the kitchen. Joe was strapped to the stretcher. His eyes were closed; an oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. An IV was attached to his arm. Petra watched in silence as they placed her client in the back of the waiting ambulance and sped away.
“I should call someone,” she said, as the final scream of the ambulance’s siren faded into the quiet morning. “His estranged wife, Larissa, maybe. Or...he has a sister in California.” Petra could not recall her name.
“That’ll hold for a few minutes,” Martinez said. “Let’s get back to why you were here. What can you recall?”
Why had she come? Petra closed her eyes and brought back as many details as she could muster. The blinding sunlight. The heat wafting off the pavement. Joe’s voice in her ear, quick and clipped, his tone low and almost a whisper.
“Joe called me earlier and asked me to come over right away. He needed to tell me something. I figured there was another scandal.”
Martinez removed a notepad and pen from his shirt pocket. He flipped past a few pages before scribbling on a sheet. “Another scandal?” he echoed.
“He’d done some pretty stupid things lately. The stories were all over the press. It’s my job to portray Joe in the best light possible in the media. So if he’d had any more missteps, I should be the first to know.”
“And did he say what kind of misstep he’d made?”
Petra tried to recall exactly what Joe had said. In reality, he hadn’t told her much beyond that he had something important to tell her and heads were going to roll. “I guess he didn’t say anything in so many words. Only that something bad had happened.”
Martinez wrote in his pad and Petra was forced to wait, grappling with memories that she couldn’t quite make clear.
“What time did you arrive?”
Finally, a question she coul
d answer. “About nine thirty.”
Martinez looked at a fitness tracker he wore around his wrist. “And what transpired between then and now?”
Petra went cold. She began to tremble. “What?” The word caught in her throat. “What time is it now?”
Martinez pinned her with his dark stare. “Quarter after ten.”
The detective thought she had stabbed Joe. She could tell, from the hard set of his jaw and his unwavering gaze. She looked away, because the worst part of it all was that Petra feared he was right.
* * *
Ian had gathered his team at an RMJ safe house, a dump of a place in the heart of downtown Denver. The small house had a tiny living room and kitchen on the first floor and two bedrooms upstairs.
He remembered each and every person they’d hidden away in this little house. A presidential candidate after an assassination attempt. A cleric wanted by a terrorist group. Yet he’d never pictured that he’d be here personally, along with his team, in desperate need of a place to lie low.
Was this raid, the one that should’ve been their crowning glory, really going to be their downfall?
They’d gathered in the kitchen, crammed around the small Formica table—Roman, Cody, Julia and Katarina, along with the rest of the team. The air was filled with the electricity of tension and too many unanswered questions.
Roman was the first to speak. “What the hell happened back there? One minute I’m talking to Comrade Three and the next some FBI agent is telling me to leave the witness alone.”
Roman’s statement was followed by a chorus of grumbles. Everyone had been just as brusquely routed from the bust.
Ian asked a question of his own. “How many lives do you think Nikolai Mateev has ruined? Nobody knows his name, and yet his actions—his drugs—have affected almost every single person in this city. Have you ever thought about that?”
“What are you getting at, brother?” Roman asked.
Ian shook his head. There was no avoiding the truth. “Jones fired us from the case,” he said.
Jaws dropped and eyes widened.
“You’re kidding, right?” Roman almost choked on the words.
“There was a computer found at the scene,” Ian began. “I took it to my car and tried to hack into the system.”
“Aw, hell no,” said Roman. “Why would you do a thing like that?”
“I don’t have time to wait for subpoenas and warrants and technicians in Quantico to analyze data.”
“What did you discover?” This question was asked by Cody.
“That Jones isn’t willing to break any rules in order to catch Mateev.”
“There are laws, Ian,” said Roman. “And if we’re breaking laws then we aren’t any better than Mateev. It’s laws that make us civilized. They make us the good guys.”
“I guess that’s just it,” said Ian. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be one of the good guys if it means that I’ll never see justice served.”
Julia McCloud was the only female operative at RMJ. From her seat next to Cody, she lifted her hand. “Can you cut the crap, sir? What are you telling us?”
“Aside from the fact that we’ve been sacked from the biggest case in RMJ history, I’m through. There’s no more we can do here. The agency is done.” The words burned Ian’s throat like acid.
Was he really going to close RMJ? It was almost as bad as when Petra left. Ian knew that then, like now, sacrifices sometimes had to be made.
“Mateev has gotten away too many times. Even if he’s caught, he won’t go to jail. He’s too powerful. He’ll slither away somehow like he always has.” Ian shook his head and gave a mirthless laugh. “I’ve become cynical, I guess.”
“A cynic?” Roman snorted. “Sounds more like you’re a quitter.”
Ian’s internal temperature spiked. Sweat collected at the nape of his neck, snaking down his back. “I’m not quitting. I just know when I’m beat. I’m—”
“Quitting,” Roman interrupted.
Ian wanted nothing more than to set him straight, to share his real plans with his operatives. But to what end? Just so they, too, would be compromised—maybe even criminally so? No. He was their leader. It was his job to protect them. This was the best way he knew how to do that.
“As far as the operatives are concerned, RMJ is closed. Katarina, I’ll need you to stay on for the next couple of weeks and help me shut down all the cases.”
Roman slapped the table, a sharp crack that rent the air. “I’ve dedicated my life to this outfit. We all have. Remember when you found me in the hospital, broken both emotionally and physically?”
“What’s your point?”
“You promised a world where justice was pursued and light was shone into the darkest corners of the human heart, or some such crap. And now you’re quitting?”
“I’m not quitting, brother.”
“From where I sit, it looks like you are.” Roman shoved his chair back and stood. “And you aren’t my brother.”
Ian stared at the kitchen table. He slid his hand into his pocket. There, he wrapped his fingers around the flash drive. He hoped that he now held the key that could unlock the last door to Mateev.
If not, Ian had just ruined his life’s work for nothing.
* * *
The interrogation room was a ten-foot-square space with barely enough room for a faux wood table and two plastic chairs. The walls were covered in cheap paneling and the air stank of stale body odor.
Before leaving Joe’s house, Petra volunteered to have her fingerprints taken. Her clothes and purse had been bagged as evidence and she was allowed to wash up. She now wore an extra large white men’s T-shirt and large gray sweatpants, along with a pair of flip-flops meant for a giant—all compliments of the Denver PD. She had also been examined by EMTs, who determined that none of her injuries were life-threatening. Then she had been invited to the police station.
The door opened and she looked up. Martinez entered the room, his bulk making the already small space seem even smaller. He squeezed into the second chair and threw a manila file on the table. Even from her seat, Petra could see the indexed title. It was her name.
Her stomach churned. She hadn’t been arrested or read her Miranda rights, so she hadn’t asked for an attorney of her own. Petra only wanted to be helpful and find out what happened to Joe—no matter the truth. Yet now she couldn’t help but wonder if her decision had been prudent.
“Sorry to keep you so long,” Martinez said. “Do you need anything? Water? Coffee? Something to eat?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“I have some more items to discuss that might help clear up what happened with Joe. First, do you recall anything more than what you already told us?”
“There are a few things that I remember, but I don’t know how much use they’ll be,” she said.
He flipped open the file and took out a pen. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of what matters and what doesn’t.”
“It’s not a memory exactly, but Joe had several video cameras around his property and even a few in the house...” Petra drew in a breath, fearful of what might have been recorded.
Martinez set his pen aside. “The surveillance system was disconnected. Nothing’s been recorded since last night.”
That was odd. Still, Petra continued, “The front gate was open. It’s controlled by an intercom and Joe always keeps it locked.”
“Did you call up to the house when you arrived?”
Petra shook her head. “We had spoken earlier. He said it was urgent and was expecting me, so I didn’t bother. That brings up something else. Someone had stopped by when we were on the phone.”
“Did he say who?”
Petra shook her head again.
“And then?”
“He didn’t answer the
front door when I rang the bell.” The disorientation she had felt upon waking was gone, although not all her memories had returned. “I even called his cell phone. When that didn’t work, I went around by the pool and let myself in through the back. I can’t really remember anything after that.”
“Your fingerprints were found on the home alarm,” said Martinez.
Petra had gotten used to his statements that were really questions. “I think I set it off. The first thing I remember clearly is my hand on the alarm and a lot of beeping.”
Martinez nodded and made a note in the file. “How many times did you call Joe?”
“Twice,” she said.
“Do you recall throwing your phone into the pool?”
“Is that where it was found?” she asked.
“It was.”
“Can I have it back?”
“It’s in evidence now. And you haven’t answered my question. Do you recall throwing, or dropping, your phone in the pool?”
A blast of cold air shot from a vent in the ceiling. Petra crossed her arms over her chest and tried not to shiver. “I remember walking by the pool.” She’d been sick with a migraine and frustrated with Joe. Had she done something stupid, something she didn’t remember, then? “I think my phone was in my purse.”
“Is that a no?”
“No,” Petra snapped. “I didn’t put my phone in Joe Owens’s pool.” She wanted to be helpful, but she had almost reached her limit. “Is this going to take much longer? I did come here voluntarily,” she reminded the cop.
“Do you want a lawyer?”
“Do I need one?” she fired back.
“I just have a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”
Petra blew out a breath. “Sure. Go ahead.”
Martinez scribbled a note. “You were on a radio show this morning. Steve Chan’s, Hot Seat.”
Petra wasn’t sure if it was a question or statement. She answered him anyway. “I was.”
“And what was the nature of your visit to the show?”
“Joe Owens.”
“Anything in particular about Joe?”
Rocky Mountain Valor Page 3
