Irrefutable Evidence

by Melissa F. Miller

  Hank squeezed his eyes shut for a three-count and then opened them and spoke with deadly calm. “Is that what the tracking device was for—to monitor Ms. McCandless?”

  “Right. We figured she’d run when she heard about what happened to Ms. Yim. So we attached the tracker to the underside of her husband’s SUV and I gave Nino the login access so he could keep tabs on her.”

  Charlotte had to ask. “Why her husband’s car and not hers?”

  “We only had one tracker,” Jamie said with a shrug. “Had to pick one.”

  Hank turned to Charlotte. “Bring him in. Now.”

  The understanding that she’d been trying to ignore hit her with its full force. “Bring in Agent Carlucci?”

  “Yes, counselor. I suggest you snap to it before he kills a second witness. And make no mistake if Sasha McCandless or her husband is harmed in anyway, I won’t just have your job—I’ll ruin your life.” Hank’s nostrils flared.

  Cooney made some half-hearted sounds of protest, but Charlotte couldn’t focus on what he was saying.

  Her ears were ringing, her vision swam. Nino Carlucci couldn’t have killed Laura Yim. He couldn’t have. She looked at Jamie Brenner. His mouth was slack and all color had drained from his face. He was shaking his head no.

  “No,” he managed. “No way.”

  “Oh yes,” Hank said. “You two better hope we can stop him. You’ll both be accessories to murder if we don’t.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  As the miles rolled by in the darkness, each minute putting more distance between them and Laura Yim’s corpse, more space between them and the twisted people who killed the woman to prevent her from testifying, Leo began to relax. Not completely, but enough. Incrementally. As each green sign with its luminescent white letter flashed by on the side of the road, the knot in his shoulders loosened and the stiffness in his jaw lessened. He glanced across the front seat at Sasha.

  At some point after they crossed the border out of Maryland into West Virginia but before he’d merged onto Route 81 South, she’d fallen asleep. It was unlike her to sleep soundly under ideal conditions, so he expected her to have a short, fitful nap at best. But she’d slept through all of West Virginia and most of Virginia’s rolling horse country.

  He was happy to let her get some rest—she’d had a trying day, to put it mildly—but sometime soon he was going to need to stop and eat. As if to signal its agreement, his stomach rumbled. Richmond, he told himself. Hang in there until Richmond.

  The interstate was eerily empty. He hadn’t expected tons of traffic, but he’d thought there might be some families, rooftop carriers secured to the tops of their minivans, wrapped and beribboned boxes and colorful gift bags piled high in the back, trying to get a jump on the Christmas visits to their relatives. But no. Except for a handful of big rigs hauling their loads south and the occasional pair of snowbirds chugging along in a motorhome, it was just Leo and Sasha and the ribbon of highway stretching out ahead of them.

  As if she felt his eyes on her, Sasha stirred in her sleep. She turned in the passenger seat and made a little mewing noise. A moment later, she sat up, stretched, and turned to look at him. “How long did I sleep?” she asked in a thick, tired voice.

  “I don’t know? Maybe a couple hours. You clearly needed some rest,” he said.

  “I guess. You want me to drive for a while?”

  “I’m okay for now. Why don’t we stop when we get closer to Richmond and grab a bite? I think we have another thirty miles or so before we’ll hit any restaurants. You can take over when we get back on the road.”

  She stretched forward and blinked at the clock dashboard. “How far is Richmond from Kitty Hawk?”

  “About three hours, give or take. We should make good time, though. There’s hardly anyone out here.”

  “So we’ll get into Kitty Hawk a little after one in the morning?”

  “Something like that. We can watch the Christmas Eve sunrise from the beach.”

  She gave him a bright smile, as if that simple pleasure would make the whole miserable experience somehow better, and his heart squeezed in his chest. “This isn’t how I’d planned to spend our first Christmas as a married couple. Or our first anniversary, for that matter. I’m sorry, Connelly.”

  “I know. No one planned for this. Stop blaming yourself. I’m glad I married the kind of woman who’s willing to put everything on the line for the right cause.”

  Tears glistened in her green eyes. “Was it the right cause? The heroic prevention of insurance fraud?” Her voice was bitter.

  “Hey. Don’t. You testified because you didn’t want to leave an undercover agent twisting in the wind. That’s heroism. And you’re going to help take down the Manettos. If you didn’t think that was worthwhile before, you should now. They killed Laura Yim. They have to be stopped.”

  He meant every word. But he’d being lying if he didn’t admit, at least to himself, that he wished, for once, someone other than Sasha McCandless and Leo Connelly could do the heavy lifting.

  She sniffled and gave him another, more wobbly smile. “I love you, Agent Connelly.”

  “You’d better, Attorney McCandless.”

  It wasn’t the funniest of comebacks. In fact, it was pretty weak by either of their standards. But she started to giggle. The next thing he knew, he was smiling like an idiot.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Nino advanced steadily through Virginia. He maintained a constant speed and split his attention between the highway and the red dot that blinked rhythmically in the darkness. He stopped approximately every ninety minutes to get a fresh coffee and another candy bar. Just before the entrance to Route 81, he stopped to refuel and toss out a handful of foil candy wrappers that he’d let fall to the floor of the car as he traveled. If he had time, he’d get the interior detailed before he returned the vehicle to Peaches. The old man was a neat freak about his car.

  Nino had been nervous about Peaches’ fastidiousness when he’d decided to use the car to grab up Yim. He figured it would be okay because he hadn’t expected her to struggle, and she hadn’t. Not inside the car, at least. And once he’d parked it inside the refinery, he’d ordered her out of the car so as to avoid getting any bloodstains or brain matter on the upholstery.

  His mouth went all metallic-tasting. Stop thinking about what happened next, he told himself. But he couldn’t stop the images from coming.

  He’d known he was going to kill Yim when he picked her up. But he hadn’t planned it out in any detail. He didn’t want to think of himself as a hardened killer following a playbook. He’d surprised himself, though, when he told her to go ahead and run.

  She’d stared at him with her dark eyes full of hope. Against all common sense she wanted to believe he was letting her go. And he let her. She turned and ran full speed, sprinting toward the river. He waited until she was about ten yards away and then raised his gun and took aim just between her shoulder blades. Either she stumbled or his arm jerked because he nailed her in the back of the head, higher than he’d intended. Either way, it had been the right call to put her out of her misery with a second shot as she half-crawled, half-dragged herself forward.

  It was the dismemberment that made him worry about his humanity.

  She was already dead, he reminded himself. But that rationale rang hollow, even to him, and it didn’t stop the nightmares.

  This time, he decided, he’d kill the lawyer and her husband in the most impersonal way possible. From a distance. He’d loaded his scope and rifle into the trunk. It had been a while since he’d passed his sniper proficiency test, but he had faith in his skill. He’d kill them from as far away as he could because didn’t want to see anyone else’s pleading eyes or hear their last gurgling breaths. In fact, he thought, as he eased up on the gas, he didn’t even need to track their car quite as closely as he was.

  Distance. Detachment. Dispassion.

  That’s what he’d need to finish this job. He tore open the packa
ge to another chocolate bar with his teeth and hoped the sweetness of the candy would cover the sour tang in his throat. He chewed deliberately, not even tasting the candy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Nino pulled off the highway and was idling on the shoulder with his emergency flashers on. He squinted at the map on his phone. His red dot had stopped moving. It was just sitting there, right outside Richmond. Either the targets had pulled off the road or the map had locked up.

  As he reached for the phone to check to see whether the software had frozen, it rang. Startled, he nearly dropped it. The name flashing on the display read Charlotte Cashion. He hesitated.

  The prudent course would be to ignore call, press forward, and cover as much ground as possible. But curiosity won out. He wanted to know how much the Task Force has pieced together. So, despite his misgivings, he depressed the button to answer her call.

  “Carlucci.”

  “We know.” For a crazy moment, Nino thought that’s what the voice said—We know.

  Blood pounded in his ears, and his heart banged in his chest. He almost blurted out some justification, but at the last second some higher, calmer part of his brain stopped him as he realized that the voice, which belonged not to Charlotte, but to Jamie, had said Nino. He exhaled shakily.

  “Brenner.” He tried to keep his tone casual and unconcerned, but he was alert and listening hard for some tell that Jamie did, in fact, know. “Why are you calling me? Is everything okay?”

  “I just wondered whether there’s been any movement at the lawyer’s house.” Jamie’s voice was equally laid-back.

  “Oh. No. She must be hunkering down, at least for tonight. But, bro, you can’t be calling me like this. It’s not safe.” He edged his voice with a hint of steel, which proved to be surprisingly easy.

  “I know. Sorry.”

  You’re okay. He doesn’t know.

  “Well, since you called—are there any updates on your end? Making any progress on the forensics on Yim? The criminologists finding anything useful?” Having scared the crap out of him, he figured Jamie owed him some information.

  “No, you know how it goes. The science geeks are hunched over their laptops working up reports. Management’s too busy playing point-the-finger to focus on anything actually useful.”

  “What’s Cashion up to? Off to a charity Christmas ball?”

  Jamie let out a loud whoosh of air, like somebody had punched him in the gut. “Man, she wasn’t doing so good the last time I saw her. Yim’s parents flew in from New Jersey to identify and claim her body—or what’s left of it. Double C’s been handling them personally, but she looks a little green.”

  “Oh.” Nino didn’t want to be reminded of Yim’s remains. “Listen, I don’t mean to give you the bum’s rush, but I gotta get off the phone. It’s too risky to talk to you. And Santa Peaches has me out running last-minute errands like I’m some kind of oversized elf. If he calls in and I miss it, he’ll be chapped.”

  “Yeah, sure. I understand. You’re right, I shouldn’t have called. I was just dying to know what happened with McCandless. Listen, Merry Christmas, buddy.”

  “You too. Give your folks my best. And remind your sister that the offer stands—anytime she wants to leave her sorry excuse for a boyfriend and try dating a real man, she should call me up.”

  Jamie clicked his tongue and made a disgusted noise. “Dude.” Then his voice grew serious. “You be careful, Nino. Watch your step out there.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Brenner. You know I’m blessed with the luck of the Irish despite my Mediterranean good looks.”

  Nino ended the call to the sound of his old partner guffawing. He checked the map again. The red dot hadn’t moved. He pinched the screen to enlarge the portion of the map where the SUV had stopped and toggled the display to a satellite view of the terrain. It appeared that the happy couple had decided to have a late dinner. The black Lexus was parked directly in front of the entrance to an old-fashioned roadside diner. It was one of those tubular, aluminum places where the pie was probably worth the wait, but everyone knew there would be a wait.

  “Take your time, lovebirds,” he said to the miniature vehicle on his screen. “Take your time.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Jamie Brenner ended the call and looked up at Hank with tired, dead eyes. Hank didn’t know what one said to comfort a man whose partner had turned. So he didn’t waste time trying to make him feel better.

  “Well?”

  “He claims that the attorney and her husband haven’t gone anywhere all night and that he’s out running Riggo’s Christmas errands.”

  “Is that true, Agent Javon?” Hank twisted around and caught the eye of the technician clacking away on the keys of her ultrabook.

  She shook her head and twisted her rhinestone-studded earbuds out of her ears—first the left, then the right. “No. He’s lying. Agent Brenner kept him talking long enough for me to triangulate his cell phone signal. He’s in Virginia, about a half an hour north of Richmond.”

  Hank turned back to Jamie in time to see the last gasp of hope peter out and die on the man’s face. His jaw went slack and his entire face seemed to sag.

  “I’m sorry, agent,” he said, clasping a big hand on the seated man’s shoulder.

  Jamie closed his eyes and moved his head from side to side in a slow, tight pendulum motion. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then he met Hank’s gaze head on.

  “I don’t believe it. I thought I knew him.”

  Behind Hank, Charlotte cleared her throat. “You did know him, agent. But you don’t anymore. None of us do. The Nino Carlucci we worked shoulder to shoulder with isn’t the same man out there stalking a second witness after having killed the first. He’s broken. Something snapped inside him when he got close to Riggo. It happens. I wish it didn’t, but it does sometimes.”

  Hank thought her delivery struck a delicate balance between compassion and acceptance. It must have resonated with Jamie Brenner as well, because he straightened his shoulders and lifted his head. He nodded once, a brisk movement that said ‘moving on.’

  “So what are our next steps? Where in Richmond would Ms. McCandless or her husband be headed? Do they have any relatives or friends in the area?” he asked Hank.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Hank responded, spreading his palms wide. Despite the threat that Carlucci posed, Hank took comfort in the knowledge that not only did he not know where Sasha and Leo were going, there wasn’t a soul alive who did—except for Sasha and Leo, and Nino Carlucci and his tracking device. It was unfortunate that he couldn’t call and warn them that the rogue agent was trailing them, but, on balance, he liked their odds a good deal better if the Bureau couldn’t interfere.

  The Bureau, of course, had different ideas.

  Agent Javon smiled, showing off a small silver stud in her tongue. “I’ll tell you in a second,” she said in a clear, confident voice. “Their cell phones don’t seem to be broadcasting, so I can’t pinpoint their current location, but let me just pull up their known associates.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard. Lines of text scrolled down the screen. She scanned the data then frowned. “Or not. No known connections to anyone in the Richmond area. Let me try Norfolk.” More typing. “Agent Connelly knows several people in and around Norfolk. Also in Hampton, Virginia. Military folks, mainly. Nobody he’s been in contact with recently. Ms. McCandless’s college roommate her junior year lives in Williamsburg, which is about halfway between the Richmond and Norfolk. But she didn’t make the cut for the guest list for their wedding last year, so I think it’s unlikely that’s their destination.”

  “Maybe they’re interested in celebrating a colonial Christmas,” Hank remarked in an effort to hide his discomfort with the intrusion into Sasha and Leo’s personal lives. He knew how the machinery worked, of course—he was, after all, a cog in it. It nonetheless chilled him to see the ease with which a twenty-three-year old with a laptop and a government login could pull back the
curtain and peek at a private citizen’s life. The saving grace was that Leo was himself a cog, or at least a gear. He’d know to avoid places that would pop on a search of known associates. And he’d know to turn off his cell phone.

  “While Agent Javon runs down their contacts, we need to devise a response,” Charlotte announced with renewed optimism. “Regardless of where they’re going, we need to intercept Carlucci before he catches up to them.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Hank asked.

  “Glad you asked. As Agent Javon aptly noted, Hampton is crawling with military, thanks mainly to Joint Base Langley-Eustis. We should alert Virginia law enforcement to Agent Carlucci’s presence and someone who has a chit should call in a favor. We need to borrow a small plane or helicopter and land at Langley Field.” Charlotte drilled her eyes into Hank’s while she made her pitch.

  He imagined she was an effective prosecutor. He could see a juror going along with her requested sentences because she sounded so reasonable. But he was going to have to disappoint her. “That sounds like a fine plan. Deputy Director Cooney or one of his silent pals should be able to make that happen for you.”

  “But not you?”

  “This is where I step back. My position is … interagency and somewhat fluid. Taking a visible role in what will undoubtedly be a high-profile, public investigation could undermine ongoing missions and endanger live assets throughout the country and in some foreign territories. I can’t be the face of this project, Ms. Cashion, as much as I wish I could.”

  He left unsaid his belief that Sasha and Leo were better off without their government’s help. He couldn’t prevent the Department of Justice from acting. But he didn’t need to help them. Not to mention, he had six kids waiting at home. Six kids who deserved a stress-free Christmas, not one spent wondering why their guardian and the most trusted adult in their life had pulled a vanishing act.