Fatal Fallout

by Lara Lacombe

  He led her down the hall to a small square room in the back corner of the house. At first glance, she thought it was windowless, but closer examination revealed a small opening, high up in the wall. It would let in light, but prevent people from seeing into the room.

  “It’s barred,” James said, following the direction of her gaze. “And armed with several sensors. You don’t need to worry about anyone trying to come through there.”

  He pulled open the top drawers of the oak dresser and showed her the collection of shirts and sweats. Then he guided her to the bathroom and retrieved a few towels from the upper cabinet. He placed them on the counter, turning to face her.

  “I’ll be in the living room if you need anything,” he said. “Natalie should be arriving soon, so don’t be alarmed if you hear another voice when you get out of the shower. We’ll be up all night, which means you shouldn’t be afraid to fall asleep, okay?”

  She nodded, blinking back tears at his kindness. “Thank you.”

  He turned to go, stopping in the doorway when she spoke again. “Your wife is very lucky, Agent Reynolds.”

  He smiled at her, the expression transforming his face from simply handsome to beautiful. “I tell her that every day,” he said, laughter lacing his voice.

  Claire shook her head in mock dismay. “What is it with you FBI agents? Have you no humility at all?”

  “I assume you’re referring to Thomas?” At her nod, he groaned. “Oh please, my ego is nothing compared to his. We keep having to move his desk farther and farther away from the group because his ego crowds out everyone else. Eventually, he’s going to have to sit in the lobby.”

  She giggled at that, then slapped a hand over her mouth, shocked at the sound. James sent her a gentle smile and reached for the door. “Try to get some rest,” he said, closing it with a soft click.

  She stood there for a moment, not wanting to face the mirror and confront her reflection. Her cheeks ached from their earlier abuse, and she briefly considered ducking back into the kitchen to make an ice pack. The desire for bed was stronger though, so she stripped off her clothes, forming a neat, folded pile on the counter. Then, taking a deep breath, she looked up.

  Oh, man. Her face was a livid mass of bruises, swirls of purple and red and blue painting her skin. Is that—? She leaned closer, turning her head to the side to get a better look at her cheek. Yes, just there—finger marks where Victor’s hand had slapped her. The sight made her blood run cold. Bastard.

  She turned her face to the other side and gently peeled off the bandage. She studied the red slash critically. It wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. It was smaller than she’d expected. Based on the amount of pain it had caused, she’d been steeling herself for something much bigger, much longer. She was relieved to see the nurse was right—it didn’t appear to be too deep. She wasn’t terribly vain, but the thought of walking around with Victor’s mark on her face for the rest of her life had made her throat tighten and her heart pound. Seeing now that there would not be a scar eased some of that anxiety.

  For the first time that night, she felt she had some degree of control. She wasn’t hurt as badly as she’d thought, which was something she could take back from Victor. It wasn’t much, she knew—after all, armed FBI agents were just a few feet away, so how much control did she really have?—but if she closed her eyes, she could pretend that this was just the end of another long day at work. She’d take a quick shower, throw on a ratty old T-shirt and climb into bed.

  A quick search of the bathroom drawers turned up sample bottles of shampoo and bath gel, and she stepped under the warm spray with a sigh. The water did wonders for her aching body, so she stood there for a few moments, letting the hot water sluice down her arms and legs. Then, not wanting to fall asleep in the shower, she quickly washed her hair and body, taking care not to get her glued-together cheek too wet.

  The bathroom was like a sauna when she stepped out, the mirror fogged with steam and the counter damp. The heat of the room made her feel drugged, made every movement and gesture a chore. She quickly finished up and stepped out into the hall, goose bumps popping up along her shoulders and legs as the cooler air hit the skin not covered by her towel.

  She heard the low murmur of voices before she shut the bedroom door. The other agent must have arrived, but something was a bit...off. The deeper voice was definitely James, but the other voice hadn’t sounded very feminine; it had been in the lower registers as well.

  Maybe she’s a smoker, she thought numbly, too tired to really care as she dropped the towel and pulled on a shirt. Not even bothering with the light, she tugged back the covers and slid into the bed, surrendering to the comforting embrace of sleep as a pair of deep blue eyes flickered across her mind.

  * * *

  They really needed to work on their security, Victor mused, pausing in his search to take a long pull from the beer bottle. They put so much information out in the public domain, he didn’t even have to hack into their system to find a list of FBI agents, complete with photographs and phone numbers. It was child’s play to scan the pictures, pick out the redhead who had refused to die. It was almost as if they wanted him to find the man.

  He studied the picture, memorizing the image, matching it against the man from last night. He was much younger here, the perfect Norman Rockwellian Boy Scout, full of idealism and hope. His smile was so eager it made his teeth hurt to look at it. Not so young now, are you, pretty boy?

  His eyes dropped to the bottom of the screen to read the name. Thomas Kincannon. A good Irish name, to go along with that horrible ginger hair. A few keystrokes and he was in the system, checking out Kincannon’s jacket. A solid, dedicated agent, according to his record. Good case-closure rate, worked well with others—by all accounts, an ideal Fed. He’d emerged relatively unscathed from the disaster that was Caleb’s operation a few months ago, no mean feat given the magnitude of that screwup. Even though he’d never met the man, the reverberations from that little operation had rippled through his circle of fellow operatives, made them all sit up and take notice.

  He toggled back over to the file he’d amassed on Dr. Fleming. She was another straight arrow, and there was no indication she’d been involved in any illegal activities. The only reason she was a target now was due to her relationship with Dr. Novikoff. He shook his head as he pulled up her picture. So pretty. She’d felt nice pressed up against him, but he knew there was no chance she’d sleep with him. Not willingly, anyway. He was used to paying for his pleasure and knew that if he had enough time he’d find her price, but things were moving too fast now for that.

  Had she been telling the truth about the file? He mentally replayed the events of last night, focusing on her panicked voice and wide eyes. She hadn’t looked like she’d been lying, and in his experience, most people couldn’t wait to give him information once he started hurting them. Not her. She’d stuck to her story, which made him think she was telling the truth. He felt a brief flash of regret at having marred her pretty face for nothing, but shrugged it off. She was going to die anyway, so in the end, it didn’t really matter.

  He leaned back in the chair and took another sip, considering. If she’d given the FBI the files, she would have passed them to Kincannon first. Which meant he knew where they were, how many copies were floating around, who had access to them now. It all seemed to come back to him...

  He clicked back to Kincannon’s page. He was the key to getting the file back. Dr. Fleming was still a target, of course. He couldn’t let her live, not when his employers were so keen to see her dead. But perhaps he could take his time with that. It was the file they really wanted, and if he delivered that, they might be willing to give him some time to track down the good doctor. Hell, they might even decide to let her live, if he could convince them of her innocence in all of this. Maybe she’d feel grateful to him for saving her life. He indulged in a
brief fantasy of tangled limbs and bare skin, breathless moans and slick mouths. Yes, that would be very nice...he and Dr. Fleming—Claire, he thought, deciding he’d earned the right to use her name—would get to know each other very well.

  After a moment, he focused back on the screen. What to do, what to do? He narrowed his eyes in thought as he considered his options. Special Agent Do-Good had probably whisked Dr. Fleming off to a safe house somewhere, which meant she was out of the picture for now. That was fine; he needed the file more than anything. But how to get it?

  He performed a quick search on Thomas Kincannon, which resulted in several hits. Most of the articles were clearly about other people, but there, toward the bottom of the page, was a link to an obituary. One Roger Kincannon had been killed in a car accident six months ago, and was survived by his wife, Jenny, his daughter, Emily, his mother, Diana, and his brother, Thomas Kincannon. How tragic. How depressing, that a man was cut down in the prime of his life, leaving behind such a young family.

  How perfect.

  Adrenaline had his fingers flying across the keyboard as he dug deeper, made the connections between Thomas and Jenny. She was listed as his emergency contact, worked as a nurse in the labor and delivery department at George Washington hospital.

  He clicked on Jenny’s social network profile, tutting with mock disappointment when he saw she had no privacy settings in place. “You make this too easy,” he murmured, scanning her page, opening her photo albums. A young girl sporting a blond ponytail grinned up at the camera with a gap-toothed smile, her brown eyes warm and sparkling. The next picture was a view of her riding piggyback, her lanky frame wrapped around the torso of a tall man as she clung to his shoulders. Although his face was turned away from the camera, that trademark flaming hair gave him away. Agent Kincannon.

  Victor leaned back, a satisfied smile curving his lips as he continued to click through the images. A plan began to form, crystallizing as he focused on picture after picture of the man’s weakness. It would be risky, he knew, but the payoff would be high. He’d come out on top, emerge with both the file and Claire. He’d win.

  And that was all that mattered.

  Chapter 6

  “What have you got for me?”

  Ignoring the look of shock on Agent Shannon Mitchell’s face, Thomas rounded the desk and pulled over a chair, leaning in close to get a better look at the computer screen.

  “Shouldn’t you be lying down or something?” the young woman asked, skepticism weighing her words. “Are you sure you’re cleared to come back to work?” Her eyes drifted over to his neck and the bandage he still wore, her doubt regarding his fitness for duty evident in her expression.

  “Just keep it clean,” the doctor had said this morning, typing madly on his tablet as he spoke. “Any abnormal redness, oozing or fever, come back. Otherwise, see your regular doctor next week to get the stitches out.”

  Thomas shuddered slightly at the word ooze, trying hard not to think about the implications of having a wound that did something so disgusting. It even sounded undignified, for crying out loud.

  Release papers in hand, Thomas had quickly dressed and headed to the office before Jenny’s shift ended and she figured out a way to have him admitted for another day. He hadn’t bothered to stop at his own desk before coming over to see what Agent Mitchell had found out about last night’s attack, and he still held the hospital forms in a death grip. Waving these at her now, he brushed away her concerns.

  “I’m fine, and yes, I have my doctor’s note. Now, if you’re done acting like my boss and my mother, I’d like a report on the information I gave you last night. Have you found anything?”

  Rolling her eyes, Shannon turned back to the computer with a muttered “Touchy,” her fingers flying across the keyboard as she pulled up several files.

  Thomas shifted, feeling slightly guilty at having snapped at her. She was only trying to be nice. He opened his mouth to reply, but the information on the screen snagged his attention, and the apology died on his lips.

  “Based on your description,” Shannon said, clicking on one page to bring it to the forefront, “I narrowed down the search parameters. Is this by any chance the man who attacked you?” She pulled up a grainy photograph, the image imperfect but the face clear enough. It was him.

  Thomas nodded. “You got him,” he said, letting his amazement come through in his voice. He hadn’t given her much to go on, but Shannon was excellent at what she did, as evidenced by her finding this needle in a haystack.

  She smiled a little smugly and turned back to the computer, tapping away to bring up another file. “His name is Victor Banner. Arrested ten years ago for aggravated robbery.” A dated mug shot came up, confirming Thomas’s identification. This was definitely the guy.

  Shannon clicked again. “Did his time, got out. Seemed to be keeping his nose clean, but then he turned up on a surveillance tape and was a suspect in a murder five years ago. The cops were sure they had their guy, but he walked on a technicality.” She clicked back to the photo she’d first showed him. “Since then, he’s dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “I doubt that,” Thomas said.

  “So did I,” Shannon replied. “So I did a search, looking for unsolved murders in the last five years.”

  Thomas raised a brow. “I bet that got some hits.”

  She nodded, the corner of her mouth quirking up. “A few. I narrowed the parameters, looking for cases where the murder weapon was a knife. And I found this.” She pulled up a new file and scanned through a series of crime-scene photos, black-and-white images of blood-soaked death frozen in time.

  “He does like to use a knife,” Thomas murmured, reaching up to finger the gauze taped to his neck as he recalled the feel of the blade, a sudden, cold pressure that had morphed into a burning pain with one quick slice.

  “True,” Shannon agreed, studying the photos with a clinical eye. “Even his early work is skilled. See the marks here and here?” She pointed to the screen as she spoke, moving from one body to the next. “Not the usual hesitation strokes we see with young killers. This guy is a professional, has been for a long time. Either we missed his early hits, or he got his practice in somewhere else.”

  “Could be a bit of both,” Thomas said, leaning back in the chair. “What do we know about the victims? How do we know they’re his?”

  Shannon clicked through to another file. “The vics are all over the map. Geographically, racially, economically—no commonalities jump out. That’s why I think he’s a hired gun. Take these three, for example.” She pulled up a few pictures as she spoke. “What we know is that they got involved in a drug-smuggling operation, and things went south when one of them was arrested. He made bail, but the next day, he and his two friends were dead.”

  “Retribution.”

  She nodded. “Probably. We don’t know who hired him, but the message was pretty obvious. The locals didn’t find any leads, and they weren’t too keen on wasting resources on a case that was going nowhere. Besides, nobody missed three low-life dealers who’d gotten in with the wrong crowd.”

  Thomas frowned. “That’s pretty thin. Got anything else to implicate him in these deaths?”

  Shannon grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.” She returned to the case file from the original five-year-old murder. “See this?” She zoomed in on a photo taken during the autopsy. It was a close-up of the victim’s leg, showing a crude heart carved into the skin of the thigh.

  “This mark is a big reason why the cops suspected Banner in the first place. See how it forms his initials? V and B.” She traced the screen as she spoke, outlining the letters that made up the heart.

  Thomas nodded, feeling a tingle of excitement dance across the back of his neck. “Tell me the dealers have the same mark.”

  “They do, indeed.” She brought up the
pictures, arranged them side by side. The marks were identical.

  “Do the other bodies have connections like that?”

  Shannon shrugged. “Don’t know yet. I just started digging.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s assume that he is an assassin. How did he wind up in Russia?” Victor was only part of the problem, the tip of a very large iceberg. Even if he was able to take care of this particular threat, until Thomas knew who wanted Claire dead, she’d never be safe.

  “Can I get back to you on that?” Shannon asked, turning to face him with a wince. “Like I said, I’m still digging.”

  He placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently as he stood. “You’ve done a great job so far. Keep it up.”

  “Can I take a nap first?” she asked hopefully. “I’ve been working on this since you called last night.” She yawned for emphasis, releasing an exaggerated sigh to complete the picture.

  “Naps are for winners,” Thomas replied, giving her a wink while pulling the chair he’d used away from her desk. “When you find my Russian connection, then you can sleep.”

  “Whatever,” she said, shooting him a mock glare before turning back to the computer.

  “I believe in you,” he said teasingly as he headed over to Harper’s office.

  Shannon’s mumbled reply was lost when he rapped on Harper’s door.

  “Enter,” came the soft reply.

  Steeling himself for another argument about his fitness for duty, Thomas let out a silent sigh before pushing open the door. Harper glanced up from his desk, his eyes widening before his usual professional mask dropped back into place. “Kincannon. Good to see you.” His gaze fixed on Thomas’s neck, and Thomas resisted the urge to touch the bandage, vowing to throw it away at the first opportunity. The stitches underneath would make him look like Frankenstein’s monster, but that had to be better than wearing this white flag that advertised just how close he’d come to getting his throat cut.