Cold as Ice

by Allison Brennan

  “Have you talked to Dillon?”

  “No. He’s testifying in a major trial Monday morning, otherwise I’m sure he would be here.”

  “I think you’re too close to this.”

  “What? Because Sean is missing?”

  “That, and because you have a long history with Senator Paxton,” Megan said. “Dillon might be able to look at the situation from a clinical distance.”

  Megan was right.

  “I should have called him earlier,” Lucy agreed.

  “We didn’t have all the information we have now.”

  Lucy glanced at her watch. It would be after midnight on the East Coast, but Dillon would take the call. “Okay, we’ll call him as soon as we get back.”

  Ten minutes later, they walking into the hotel suite. Both Patrick and Kate were there, and both were on the phone. As soon as Lucy walked in, they ended their calls.

  “We have news,” Patrick said.

  Lucy felt the blood drain from her face. “Sean?” Her voice was a squeak.

  “No word on Sean, but after you called me about Senator Paxton, I changed my focus. The dead guard, David Dobleman, and the other guard, Sheffield.”

  Kate said, “After I had Erica Anderson’s statement, I talked to Sheffield. He was groggy after surgery, but clearly said that Sean shot him and the other guard, that he’d worked with the other prisoner to escape. I then told him Erica had confessed to her part in setting Sean up, and that I had evidence that he’d been the one who changed the transport orders. He then shut up and asked for a lawyer.”

  Patrick said, “While I was skeptical about Paxton’s involvement initially, I now think you’re right, Lucy. At first, I had a hard time believing that a cop would lie to protect his partner’s killer. He could have said he didn’t see who shot Dobleman, but he specifically fingered Sean. The early forensics report shows that the gun was taped under a seat. But it wasn’t Sean’s prints that were found on the underside of the seat. They were Jimmy Hunt’s prints.”

  “We just got that information,” Kate said, “and Houston PD isn’t being very friendly with us because they think we’re trying to fuck with their case against Sean, but we have enough friends here who listen. Now, the prints are not foolproof that it was Hunt who knew the gun was there, or that he was the one who shot the guard, but it’s one small piece of a bigger puzzle.”

  “Kate and I were looking at Sheffield. The guy appears clean, and all we have is Erica Anderson’s statement. She’s the one with the hefty bank deposits, not Sheffield. And while Kate has video proof that he was at the terminal at the time of the transfer change, it’s still circumstantial.”

  “So,” Kate said, “we began to think about how Paxton operates and who he targets, and wondered about the dead guard, Dobleman,” Kate said. “Sheffield put him on the schedule for today. Told him that another guy had called in sick, and that it was his turn to come in. Which was a lie—no one called in sick.”

  “So Sheffield is corrupt,” Megan said. “Erica Anderson didn’t lie.”

  “Yeah, but not for the reasons we think.”

  It clicked. Lucy said, “Dobleman was a sex offender.”

  Patrick rolled his eyes. “Jeez, you stole my thunder!”

  “How was he in law enforcement if he’s an offender?”

  “First, you’re only partly right. He was an offender, but not a sex offender that we could find at any rate. He was suspected of domestic violence. His wife finally left him after eight visits to the emergency room in three years.”

  “How did he get to be a cop?”

  “She never filed charges. She never named him. He’d been a cop at the time, in Austin. He had friends, and they helped move him over to Beaumont and into corrections. His wife changed her name and is living in another state.”

  “And you think that Paxton knew about this?”

  “I don’t know how Paxton knows half the stuff he knows—even when he was running the vigilante group in D.C., I didn’t know how he got all his information.”

  “Key people in key positions,” Lucy said.

  “Or Sheffield found out.”

  “Sheffield sees the worst in people, but would expect the best in his colleagues,” Lucy said. “Or he was working with his girlfriend Erica and Hunt’s people said someone needed to die. So he found the corrupt cop to kill in the process, a win-win.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe Paxton has something on him. At any rate, I think Dobleman was a sacrifice, and stating that Sean killed him puts a target on Sean’s back,” Kate said.

  “I need to call Dillon,” Lucy said. “Thompson wouldn’t talk, but it was clear from how he responded that he’s working for Paxton.”

  “Do you have anything solid?” Kate asked.

  “No,” Megan said, “but I agree with Lucy. She affected him. He barely spoke, but there was something about his demeanor, and he knew Lucy’s name when we introduced ourselves. What we can’t figure out is why Paxton would work with a scumbag like Hunt, and why he would target Sean. Unless there’s a bigger play here. Maybe he needs Sean’s hacking skills.”

  There were other hackers out there, more willing to break the law and work for someone like Paxton.

  Kate pulled out her cell phone and dialed. “Hey, babe, it’s me. I know it’s late … nothing solid, but we’re making progress. Lucy wants to talk things through, can we Skype? Just want to make sure you’re decent.… Okay, great. Love you.” To Lucy she said, “He’s going to his computer. He’ll call when he’s logged in.”

  A few minutes later, her computer beeped, and she opened her Skype. “It’s so good to see your face, Dillon,” she said.

  Kate, Megan, and Patrick stood behind her. Lucy was getting a bit claustrophobic with everyone closed in on her, but she tried to contain it. Focus on Dillon.

  “I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”

  “I have no idea why. I need to tell you everything we’ve learned, and I need your help to figure out what Senator Paxton wants.”

  “Paxton? Jonathan Paxton?”

  Lucy brought her brother, a brilliant forensic psychiatrist, up to speed as quickly as she could. Everything they’d learned, focusing on how they determined that Paxton was involved, Thompson’s silence, and the new information about Dobleman.

  “Paxton worked with criminals,” Lucy said, “but he never worked with sex offenders. He would never work with someone like Jimmy Hunt. And for all of Paxton’s flaws, I couldn’t see him condoning killing a prison guard. It’s not in his nature—even though he’s a vigilante, he has a code he lives by. Kate and Patrick ran with that information and learned that the dead prison guard was suspected of domestic violence. We know the other guard, who said Sean killed him, and a guard at juvenile hall when Elise Hunt was there, were lovers. They were clearly working for the Hunt family, though the reasons are a bit sketchy.”

  Kate said, “I spoke to Erica Anderson this afternoon. Anderson was dissatisfied with her job, upset that she didn’t have custody of her kids, had just started dating Sheffield, whom she met through an online dating app. She mostly did odd jobs for the Hunts, but she’s the one who planted the gun in Sean’s plane, and she’s already made that statement.”

  “So you’re saying Anderson and Sheffield worked together for the Hunts,” Dillon said.

  “Yes. Erica alluded to a crime Sheffield may have committed, that the Hunts had something over his head, but refused to give specifics. Houston FBI will continue to work on her.”

  Lucy said, “But why frame Sean for murder? When it was Elise Hunt, yes, I believe it. She’s vindictive and unpredictable and Sean was responsible for stealing their drug money and giving it to the FBI. And knowing that she had been in contact with her father, I could see him pushing her to get retribution by targeting Brad and Kane. But they didn’t have the resources. Not to hire all those people and put this all together. They had the vision—revenge—but Paxton paid for this. Which means it was his plan—Paxton wanted Se
an. Why?”

  Dillon didn’t say anything for a long time—but Lucy knew him well enough to know that he had a theory and was trying to find the best way to share it.

  He said, “You cut off all ties from Paxton after you learned he was behind the vigilante group in D.C.”

  “You know I did. I knew why he did it, but I couldn’t prove it—so I gave him back Monique’s locket. It’s all he wanted.”

  “Paxton has always felt like you were his chance at redemption,” Dillon said. “You look like his daughter, but more than that, you were strong. You killed the man who killed his daughter.”

  “I killed him because he raped me and planned to kill me,” Lucy said, her voice cracking at the end.

  “He saw it as an act of vengeance … of love … of redemption. You were strong and you fought back. It was the catalyst for everything he did. He has always used you to justify his actions.”

  She was horrified. On the one hand she knew it was true … Paxton had never regretted killing anyone. She wanted nothing of his plans. Nothing to do with the murder of anyone, guilty or not. She believed in the system, flaws and all. If she didn’t … she didn’t want to go there. She could have gone down that same path, but she hadn’t. She had found a way to overcome what happened to her, to be stronger. To survive. And now, she felt like Paxton was stripping away every layer of protection she’d painstakingly built over the last ten years.

  “Lucy,” Dillon said, softening his voice, “do not even go there.”

  “I created a monster.”

  “If anything, I did.”

  “What the hell, Dillon? You did not have anything to do with this.”

  “I told the FBI ten years ago that it would be okay to tell Paxton what happened to Monique.”

  “You had to. She was his daughter; he deserved to know.”

  “But I should have been there; I should have done it myself. Who told him and how was he told? We know that it was after learning what happened to Monique—and after you killed Adam Scott—that he built his network, that he began to plot to kill predators who slipped through the system. He recruited men like Sergio Russo and Michael Thompson and others because he saw a kindred spirit—no guilt. He never recruited you—you were on a pedestal. You were untouchable. If he thought you would join his crusade, he would have roped you in, if only to keep you by his side, in his debt, as his daughter. Because that is ultimately what he sees you as—his daughter. And what does a father do for his daughter?”

  She didn’t know if the question was rhetorical or not. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “A father, above all, wants to protect his daughter. Don’t give me that look, Kate,” Dillon said. “I know what you’re thinking. But you have to think like Paxton. Who he is, how he was raised, what he lost. His wife died of cancer when Monique was young, Monique was all he had. But he was a workaholic, a low-level politician and prosecutor who wasn’t around because he was fighting other people’s battles. Then his daughter disappeared. He had no idea if she was dead or alive. He searched for her until the day he found out that she was dead. Because he didn’t know. Not knowing is almost as bad as knowing your child is dead. The hope and fear never goes away until you know the truth. By that point, the hope and fear had created a senator … a powerful orator with a natural charisma and a cause that people naturally gravitated toward. Because he spoke for them—their loss, their fears, their hopes. When he found out Monique was dead … and how she died … the grief and anger twisted until a vigilante was born. In fact, I don’t think he’s ever truly grieved.

  “Paxton is not just any vigilante,” Dillon continued. “Because he’s smart and powerful and wealthy and has a strong sense of preservation, he’s not going to pull the trigger—though he is capable of it.”

  “He killed Roger Morton,” Kate reminded him. “We just couldn’t prove it.”

  “That was personal for him. He is capable of murder, but he much prefers to build a network of like-minded people.”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” Lucy said.

  “I’m not. You have.”

  “I have not. I know exactly who he is and what he is capable of.”

  “You’ve underestimated his obsession with you.”

  She frowned.

  “He thinks of you as his daughter, Lucy. How many times did he call you Monique? He used to brush it off when you worked for him, but more than once after that he talked about you to other people as his daughter. Jack told me, when he was interrogating him in New York three years ago, that Paxton said he had to protect his daughter. That was you, Lucy, not a slipup. He was thinking about you, not Monique.”

  She hadn’t known that.

  “This plan—he somehow thinks he’s protecting you.”

  “By framing my husband for murder?”

  “He’s never liked Sean.”

  “This is extreme, even for Paxton.”

  “Not if you think like he does. That’s why I said you’re too close to this. You’re not in his head, Lucy, and the only way you’re going to stop him is to think like him. So, a father protects his daughter. A father might think that no man is good enough for his daughter. Sean and Paxton have butted heads from the beginning. Paxton has never thought that Sean was good enough for you.”

  “But he’s not my father!” she exclaimed.

  Dillon didn’t say a word. No one did.

  She closed her eyes. He was right. From the beginning, Paxton had always treated her with affection—not sexual, but fatherly. They’d been friends, but she’d always kept him at arm’s length. Partly because she didn’t bring anyone into her inner circle as she still battled the trauma of being kidnapped and raped; partly because he was too nice to her. She enjoyed working for the justice committee in the Senate, but she didn’t want any special favors. And she knew from the beginning that she looked like his dead daughter. She knew from the beginning that the man who’d hurt her had killed Monique.

  You should have run far away from him long ago. How can you not be partly responsible for these events?

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “Think like Jonathan Paxton. He sees me as a surrogate daughter.”

  “Yes. And he thinks he would be a better father to you than your own. More, he thinks you made an unwise choice in marriage, but he wasn’t around to guide you. It’s a combination of guilt and regret. He blames Sean for taking you from him—and while what happened in D.C. wasn’t Sean’s doing, you were with Sean when you cut all ties with Paxton. He could easily convince himself that Sean told you to do it. He kept tabs on you, and you walked back into his life—in his mind—when you and Noah investigated the string of prostitution murders in D.C. before you joined the academy. He blackmailed Sean into retrieving the computer chip that had been stolen from him. And then what happened? Sean kept the chip. Not only that, but Sean went undercover to take him down.”

  “Many FBI agents were involved in that investigation. Noah, Rick, Suzanne—”

  “But they were doing their job, right? Remember, he sees law enforcement as literal enforcers. He’s not going to fault them for investigating him. But Sean? A reformed hacker who took his daughter from him? Sean—in Paxton’s mind—is no better than any other criminal walking the streets. And yet Sean took him down. If Sean had never taken that chip, Paxton’s plan to kill all those prisoners may have worked. And then after? Sean moved to San Antonio with you. You married him.”

  Dillon paused and was about to say something else when Patrick asked, “I don’t see it, Dillon. He hasn’t reached out to Lucy in all these years, he could have done a dozen other things to screw with Sean.”

  “We know that he kept tabs on Lucy when she was in D.C. I think we can assume he kept tabs on her when she moved to San Antonio.”

  She felt physically ill.

  “Assume, Lucy, that Paxton knows what has gone on in your life—especially the high-profile situations. The situations where you were in danger.”

  �
�I’m a federal agent. My life is sometimes going to be in danger.”

  “It wasn’t because of your job that Liam kidnapped you and took you to Mexico.”

  “For shit’s sake, Dillon! Sean had nothing to do with that.”

  “He was Sean’s brother. And you were in danger when Sean learned that he had a son. In fact, that would anger Paxton—that Sean betrayed you.”

  “Dillon, that’s ridiculous. I didn’t even know Sean when he dated Jesse’s mother.”

  “Again, I repeat, you’re not in his head, and if you’re not in his head, you’re not going to find Sean.”

  “But why did he take him? Why did he set him up?”

  “It’s obvious, Lucy. He set Sean up so you would see Sean as he sees Sean. A criminal unworthy of your love. I think Paxton sought Jimmy Hunt out. He might not have known everything about him, but he knew that the Hunts and the Rogans were in a war. He heard about what Sean did—from Hunt’s perspective. That Sean had hacked in and ‘stolen’ his money. That Kane killed his son. Paxton would use that anger and vendetta to get Hunt to go along with this plan. Find a way to frame Sean for murder to put him somehow under Paxton’s thumb. But mostly, so you would doubt him. And what better way to doubt him than to have Sean accused of killing a prostitute. A prostitute who was an informant for Sean, one who had a history with Sean, one who Hunt hated because she betrayed him. A win-win for Hunt.”

  “Why would Paxton think I would believe that Sean had killed her?”

  “Evidence. The gun in his plane. The fact that he was the last person to see her alive. Even being in Houston helped him because you don’t have friends and family there, people who might listen to you. Michael Thompson was incarcerated a year ago for killing the council member. That’s when Paxton came up with this idea. He’s always been about the long game. His hatred of Sean has festered for years. He misses you and blames Sean.”