by Dee Davis
Wind whistled through the open windows, and for once Elliot felt on top of the world. Things would be better now. First off he’d pay his debts. Get his bookie’s bruisers off his back. And then he’d figure out a way to start over.
Maybe he’d head for Vegas. Somewhere where the cards were hot and the women hotter. Truth was, he’d never really mastered either one. But he was willing to give it a go.
Sam’s face flashed through his mind, but he pushed it away. He hadn’t had a choice. Besides, she’d moved on to bigger and better things. He had the same right, didn’t he? And really, he hadn’t given the reporter a damn thing. The file was worthless, just a bunch of mumbo jumbo he’d copied randomly from who knows what file.
The only interesting bit was the Chinese symbol. But that could mean anything. Or nothing. Hell, there was no predicting the way a bomber’s mind worked. It was easy money, pure and simple. And no one was going to get hurt.
With a smile, he floored the pedal, feeling the surge of power through the car. It shimmied slightly, and then as the needle crept higher, the steering wheel visibly shook.
Piece of shit rental car.
The needle hit seventy and the car exploded, the force ripping Elliot from the seat and tossing him around like a bean bag. The sedan hit the embankment, breaking through the guardrail and rolling in a fireball into the thick woods that cloistered the road. Elliot Drummond’s body flew through the window to land at the foot of a live oak, his charred remains staring sightlessly at the wide Texas sky.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“WELL, I’VE RULED OUT Brownsville.” Harrison stood in the doorway to the lab, holding a stack of photos in his hand. “I’ve been over all the photographs and there isn’t any sign of a Tai anywhere on the fragments. In addition, I’ve got clear tool marks on several fragments, as well as apparent welding on both end caps.”
Payton looked up from the report he was reading. “There’s nothing in the bomb squad’s report that contradicts that. No mention of any kind of symbol, and the report confirms the presence of tool marks. In addition, there’s some question as to whether the security system was actually the trigger. The responding police officers are the ones who tagged the system as the point of origin, but the bomb folks never found anything to tangibly support the fact.”
“So it’s not the same guy. He might not use the symbol if it’s honestly linked to the senators. But there’s no way the rest of his M.O. would have changed that much. Once a perfectionist, always a perfectionist.” Sam blew out a breath, pushing her hair behind her ears. She looked as tired as Payton felt. “Maybe we’re not going to find any priors. At least not with the Tai symbol.”
“Which means we’ll have trouble establishing a direct link.”
“There’s still four more to investigate,” Harrison said. “I should have most of the paperwork in the morning. Except Refugio. They can’t seem to locate the file.”
The phone rang, and Harrison reached for it, moving away so that his conversation wouldn’t disturb.
“Gabe was right,” Sam said. “There’s no way to figure out where this guy is going next. Whatever his agenda is, it’s not making any sense at all from this end. Even with the addition of Walker to the mix, I still have trouble believing this guy’s only agenda is some agricultural wheeling and dealing. I mean if it was something really insane like nuclear testing or embryo experimentation I could see the logic. But not this.”
“So you’re still thinking the senators were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Payton tried to keep the skepticism from his voice. She was the expert after all.
“No. I don’t see how that tracks either. Not with Walter’s death. That was definitely intentional. And the only connection I can see to San Antonio is through the investigation. Walter was a career bureaucrat. And while I’d say he played the political game well, he wasn’t at a level where he’d have been hobnobbing with men like Ruckland. Amanda didn’t think he’d ever even met the man.”
“What about Dawson or Keith?”
“Same answer. Neither had anything to do with defense committees or law enforcement legislation, and as far as I know Walter was never asked to testify before Congress. There’s always the possibility that he had met them socially. Washington’s a small city. But it can’t have been anything lasting or Amanda would have known about it.”
“Which leaves us with one of two possibilities. Either this is in fact related to the senators and their pork barreling scheme…”
“Or?” She leaned back against the table, waiting.
“Or there’s something else going on and everything we’re seeing is just a spurious connection. Forest for the trees kind of thing.”
“Holy shit,” Harrison said, clicking off the phone, his expression grim. “That was Gabe. He just got a call from Cullen. Elliot Drummond is dead.”
“What?” Sam said, pushing off of the table, her stomach tightening in revolt. “He was just here. What happened?”
“Apparently his car crashed. They found it on old Spice-wood Springs Road. Looks like he must have lost control and plowed into the woods. The car flipped and then caught fire. Elliot was thrown clear, but not before he was pretty badly burned.”
“They say anything about an explosion?” Sam was standing in the center of the room, her focus turned inward, tension radiating off the line of her shoulders.
“Gabe didn’t mention it.” Harrison shook his head, frowning.
“Take me to the accident site.” She was already heading out the door, Harrison and Payton following in her wake.
“You think it was the bomber?” Harrison asked, his brows raised in surprise.
Payton already knew the answer. If there’d been a fire, then they had to expect the worst. Elliot Drummond worked for ERT. Hell, he’d worked for Atherton. And he’d worked with Sam.
But even barring that connection, there was the fact that something had been off with the man. It had been there in his eyes. A haunted look Payton had seen before. Desperation. And desperate men did desperate things.
Payton shook his head, focusing on the facts. First thing they had to determine was if the messenger had indeed been sacrificed. Maybe the man had simply pushed his luck a step too far.
THE CAR, or what remained of it, sat about fifteen yards off the road. It had flipped over, the roof caved in so that the body of the sedan sat almost flat to the ground. The paint had bubbled off in the heat, and a trail of parts was strewn along the road for something like twenty feet.
There was no question in Sam’s mind that the car had exploded well before it left the side of the road. In fact, in examining the pathway from road to car, she saw very little to indicate that the sedan had actually traveled the route. More likely, the momentum had actually lifted the car and flipped it into its current position.
Elliot had been dead well before he’d been thrown from the vehicle. Even if the coroner hadn’t confirmed it, Sam would have been certain of the fact. There was a pattern to the damage a bomb left on a body. She could see it in the burn pattern, as well as the fact that he was missing an arm and part of a leg.
The car was too hot to examine. Thanks to some freak act of physics, her friend’s wallet had been thrown clear. If not for that, the police wouldn’t even have been able to tell who he was for a couple of weeks. Not without DNA and dental analysis.
They’d still have to check for certain of course, but there was no doubt in Sam’s mind that she was looking at Elliot’s remains. It was hard to believe he’d been standing in her lab just a few hours earlier. For the second time in two days she was looking at the body of someone she’d cared about.
She shivered, then forced herself to focus. The real question here, beyond why someone would target him, had to do with why Elliot was here at all. He’d obviously driven north from their headquarters—away from the airport. He’d said his plane was leaving in an hour, which meant that his choice of a decidedly rural and therefore deserted area in the mi
ddle of thriving urban sprawl was more than a bit odd.
“Where does this road lead?” Payton asked, evidently following the same line of thinking.
Harrison looked up from the rubble. “To a housing addition, and eventually to the highway. But it’s hardly a throughway. In fact if you’re not from Austin, I doubt you’d even know this was here.”
“Well somebody told him about it.” Payton bent down to pick up a fragment in the grass. He studied it for a moment, and then flicked it away.
“So you think he was meeting someone?” Sam asked, her stomach churning with the smell of burned rubber and human flesh. No matter how many scenes like this she worked, the olfactory onslaught always caught her off guard.
“Makes sense,” Payton said. “We passed a park on the way. Public space, out of the way access. Maybe he was trading information about our investigation.”
“No way,” Sam said, anger rocketing through her. “Elliot wouldn’t do something like that.”
“He could have been in trouble, Sam. You saw his face.”
She blew out a breath and nodded. Something had definitely been off. “I still don’t believe he’d sell me out.”
“Desperate times…” Payton shrugged. “Look, I’m just calling it the way I see it.”
Sam shook her head, her heart still rejecting the idea. “But in order for that to work, someone had to know he was coming.”
“He flew commercial,” Harrison said. “It was the fastest way to get here with the frag. It would be easy enough for someone to find out who he was. Especially if they were looking for a way to access our findings. And if he did have problems, it would make him an easy mark. All the killer had to do was identify him, and then make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
Payton moved closer to the car, nudging the smoldering remains of a canvas bag with his foot. The duffel had obviously been thrown from the car, its side splitting in the process, charred stacks of bill-sized paper flapping in the breeze. “Looks like whoever it was took him for a ride. This stuff is bogus.”
“You think that’s the payoff?” Sam bent down to examine the bag, using a stick to lift the side. A piece of paper fluttered up with the motion, and she reached up to catch it. “At least some of it was money.” She held out the burned bill, the number one hundred still visible on the corner. The evidence certainly supported the idea that Elliot had sold information. Her heart twisted at the thought, but she couldn’t ignore the facts.
“So someone contacts Elliot and offers money for information.” Harrison squatted down to examine the bag.
“We don’t have proof of that, but it follows with what we’re finding here,” Payton said.
“But we still don’t have a motive,” Sam insisted, some small part of her still hanging onto her faith in her friend.
“We’ll find it.” Payton’s gaze held hers for a moment, and then he turned back to Harrison. “So following your scenario, Elliot gets the information, contacts his source and is told to meet him somewhere along this road. Maybe at the park. And the guy takes the information, gives Elliot the bogus money and drives away.”
“Finding time somewhere in there to booby-trap the car? That doesn’t seem likely.” Harrison’s expression was skeptical.
“You’d be surprised how easy it is,” Sam said on a sigh. “All he’d have to do is drop something, pretend it rolled under the car, crawl under to retrieve it, attach the bomb and voila.”
“Sam’s right,” Payton agreed. “It’s an easy way to get rid of someone. And if this guy is as smart as we think he is, he wouldn’t want to leave anything to chance. Including a witness.”
“But why would the bomber want to know what we know?”
“To see if we’re getting his message.” Sam shivered, her gaze taking in the carnage of his most recent handiwork. No matter what he’d done, Elliot had still been her friend. And no one deserved to die like this.
“But we’re not,” Harrison said, frustration cresting in his eyes.
“Oh we’re getting it, all right,” Payton said, his scar highlighted in the faint light. “We just don’t know what the hell it means.”
“He’s here though. Or he was. Still running two steps ahead of us.” Sam scanned the woods as if perhaps he’d be standing there, waiting for her to find him. This was starting to feel personal. As if he were goading her. And she didn’t like the idea one little bit.
The tech team moved in silence around her, measuring and photographing. Sam shifted out of the way, stepping back into the relative solitude of the woods. There’d be more answers in a day or so. Confirmation of what she already knew. Elliot had been used and destroyed with the callousness of a soldier. Whoever this guy was, he was good, but he was also arrogant.
To kill Elliot right under their noses indicated the man was getting cocky. And his need to know how the investigation was progressing marked him as paranoid. And that combination ultimately would lead to mistakes.
“He’s long gone.” Payton slipped up behind her, his hands on her waist, his breath warm against her neck.
“I know,” she sighed. “I just keep thinking that if I stare into the darkness long enough I’ll find answers. Figure out what this bastard is all about.”
“We’ll get him, Sam. It’s just going to take time.”
She nodded, resisting the urge to lean back into his arms. She was so damned tired. And the circus showed no sign of ending.
“Let’s go home.”
The words were simple but their meaning was oh so complex. And suddenly Sam didn’t want to analyze anymore, she just wanted to find solace away from all the death and destruction. Tomorrow would be another day, and she’d rise to the challenges just as she always did.
But for tonight, she simply wanted to take what Payton was offering. No questions asked. No strings attached.
She turned to face him, reaching up to trace the line of his scar. “I’m ready if you are.”
THE ALBUQUERQUE AIRPORT wasn’t all that different from Austin’s. Maybe a little larger, but basically similar in design. The flow was more organized than older airports, and J.T. appreciated the fact, the orderly arrangement of things flowing together into what was actually a pleasing design.
He wondered for a moment what his life would have been like if he’d been an architect, then dismissed the thought before it had time to grow. A person must live with the choices he made, for those decisions came together to equal the sum of the man.
He smiled, realizing that for the first time in several days he was actually happy. He regretted having to kill Elliot Drummond. Not because he felt anything for the man, but because it had been a deviation from plan. And because it had been messy.
Last minute things always were.
But if he was going to accomplish his goal, he had to be willing to improvise. Everything he’d worked for had altered the minute the senators had died. And if he was going to get things back on track, he had to know how much Samantha had managed to put together. Elliot had been a means to an end, nothing more.
J.T. stopped at the sliding doors leading to passenger pickup, trying to decide between a rental car and a taxi. A taxi was less likely to be traced, but it limited his mobility, something he really couldn’t afford considering all that had to be accomplished here.
With a sigh, he turned toward the line of rental car companies, choosing the busiest, the bustle of business travelers hopefully diluting any memory of him. Not that they were looking for him.
Eventually it would come to that, but for the moment he was still anonymous. Which meant that as long as he didn’t do anything memorable, he’d most likely be all right. A calculated risk. But then what in life wasn’t?
He stood in line, keeping his head at a neutral level, his body purposely relaxed. Any deviation from the norm would be remembered. Too nice, too mean, too anything. All he had to do was keep his actions to the point, and nondescript.
He hoisted his bag onto his shoulder, and moved fo
rward in the line. He’d had to check the duffel. Which wasn’t something he’d been comfortable with, but he’d had to bring some of his components with him, and taking them through security would have been too much of a hassle. There’d been an X-ray of course to prescreen checked luggage, but his components separately weren’t something that would cause concern.
Everything else he needed, he could to buy here in New Mexico without threat of being traced. They were all common items that could be purchased anywhere. It would have been easier to drive. Then he could have brought everything with him preassembled, his preferred methodology. But time was of the essence and concessions had to be made.
He reached the front of the line and with a half smile at the agent, plopped down his money. Five minutes later, he was walking toward the parking lot, a set of keys jangling in his hand.
So far so good. Everything was going according to plan. A sense of confidence mixed with elation filtered through him. After tomorrow night, Samantha would finally be on the right track. She still wouldn’t understand. That would take a little more connecting. But he knew she was more than up to the task.
He glanced up at the stars. Everything seemed bigger out here, especially the night sky. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but the stars glittered brightly, their whirling patterns a signal that everything was pulling together, the circle almost completed.
He had only to do his part and all things would be as one.
Soon Samantha would understand the order of things. She’d know what was written on the stars. For every man there was a woman. A yin to a yang. And when the halves were joined, the world was in balance. Harmony reigning. Destiny at hand.
