Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mac made his phone call and hoped Frazer remembered to contact a lawyer on top of the other things he’d asked him to do.
The interview room door opened. Walsh stepped in. “What the hell is going on?”
Mac sat at the bolted down table. In front of him was a notepad and pen they’d left so he could make a statement. He’d written everything out in excruciating detail, excluding the hot and heavy encounter with Tess. It wasn’t just because it might not look good to his bosses. It was none of their goddamned business and he didn’t want that negative attention focused on Tess. She didn’t deserve it.
Mac raised his brow. “I’d ask how the investigation’s going, but apparently I’m a murder suspect so I won’t bother.”
They hadn’t booked or charged him yet. Fuck. He’d been arrested on suspicion. He was hoping evidence would be enough to clear him before things went any further but the detectives were getting off on the fingerprint bullshit—as if he’d got his gold shield in a Cracker Jack box. To say he was pissed was a massive understatement but he knew how the system worked so he kept his mouth shut.
“What the hell happened after I left you in Bethesda?” Walsh’s shaved scalp shone under the hot lights. “I mean Bethesda for Christ’s sake, how much trouble can you get into in that neighborhood?”
Mac winced. A lot, apparently.
He’d spent the last hour or so mulling things over and the more he deliberated, the blacker it looked. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to set him up.
“Cops here are suggesting I tried to stage Heather’s murder to look like another one of the string of murders happening in DC.” Grasping at straws to make their square peg of evidence squeeze into the round-shaped hole. “The detective also intimated Heather was sexually assaulted before she was shot.”
Mac’s stomach hurt to think about it. Heather had been immature and demanding and annoying but she had not deserved this.
“They think you’re a sexual predator who is this inept at staging a murder?” Walsh leaned against the wall and crossed his arms and legs in a relaxed pose.
Mac met Walsh’s gaze. “They claim to have my fingerprints on the shell casings. Sounds like a slam-dunk to me.”
“Obviously, they have a low appreciation of your brain capacity.” Walsh’s mouth twisted.
Mac contemplated his former second-in-command. Did the guy think he’d done it? Walsh hadn’t asked him outright.
“Could your ex have any of your ammunition from when you were married?”
“No.” Heather hadn’t liked guns. He rubbed his hands across the scruff on his jaw. There was only one place those casings could have realistically come from—an FBI gun range. Either Quantico, or headquarters.
And that meant David Hines’s crazy dream of getting a ghost skin working for the Feds might have been realized. And the traitor had gone after Mac for several reasons.
Revenge. They were punishing him for his role in the Pioneers’ downfall. Maybe they’d just discovered the truth about Kenny Travers, in which case, retribution had been swift and brutal. Or maybe it was payback for Jessop’s trip into eternal hellfire and they wanted Mac to join him there.
Or, Mac and his team were getting close enough to this SOB to have him worried.
So why did Mac feel like he’d never been further from solving this thing? Not a lot he could do sitting in an interview room—which was probably the goddamned point.
They’d gotten rid of him by discrediting him and ruining his reputation. So much for making SAC by forty. He’d be lucky to be drawing a pension.
Was there only one of them? Or more?
The measures the FBI had in place to combat this sort of bigoted bullshit were rigorous. He found it hard to believe more than one of these bastards had slipped past all the safeguards.
What was the next step in their plan?
David Hines’s manifesto had involved a series of murders followed by a bombing, which would be a call-to-arms for all the boneheads who felt the same way Hines did. It was to have been a declaration of war on the government.
Mac wasn’t about to let them get away with it. As much as each individual murder caused him pain, he was not about to forget about the big picture here, and that big picture involved a lot of fear, a lot of noise, a lot of media attention.
Fear. Instability. War.
“You need to increase security at all federal buildings,” Mac told Walsh.
“What? Why?” Walsh looked confused.
“I think,” Mac said deliberately, “that whoever is behind these murders is ready to move on to the next phase of the plot. They got rid of me as I know what David Hines’s dream was. You read my notes yet?”
Walsh scowled. “I started but I’ve been busy.”
With this bullshit. Mac wanted to ask about DNA from Trettorri’s fingernails and how the congressman was doing. Whether the guy had woken up yet. He couldn’t. Walsh couldn’t keep him informed of the investigation now he was on the outside. Not just on the outside, but on the wrong side.
Walsh narrowed his gaze. “Why’d you stay at Tess Fallon’s so long last night after we left?”
Mac eyed him. “We were talking.”
“Give me a break, Mac,” Walsh shot back impatiently. “I wasn’t born yesterday. I saw the way you were looking at her.”
Mac pressed his lips closed over the words he wanted to say. Leaned back in his chair. “How exactly was I looking at her?”
Walsh threw his hands up. “Like she’s an attractive woman. Shit, a blind man would get a hard-on looking at her, especially when everyone in the neighborhood could see the outline of her tits through her flimsy nightshirt.” The man’s eyes blazed in line with Mac’s temper. “Ever occur to you she might have been wearing that get-up on purpose?”
“You mean her pajamas?” Mac ground his teeth together, knowing his former buddy was trying to rile him for some reason. “Most people who have an intruder don’t worry about what they’re wearing when they call the cops.” Tess hadn’t put herself on display on purpose. She’d been frightened. “What’s your point? The fact Tess Fallon is an attractive woman means nothing—”
“Did it ever occur to you that she might be in league with whoever is committing these murders?” Walsh got in his face. “That maybe she’s in league with whoever killed your ex-wife and deliberately kept you at her house to set you up?” Walsh’s voice grew louder. “If you hadn’t been ‘talking’ to her you’d have been back at HQ and your alibi would have been rock solid. Now, even if evidence shows you didn’t kill Heather, your career is still in the toilet because you were ‘talking’ which I think means ‘screwing’ Tess Fallon, David Hines’s daughter. At a time when David Hines’s Pioneers are the prime suspects in a major crime spree in the nations’ capitol.”
Mac forced down his rage. Losing his temper would make him look like an asshole who couldn’t control himself. Ironic, considering Walsh was the one who was yelling.
Mac looked away. He had considered the fact Tess might have been using him, tricking him, manipulating him with sex. It made him hate himself because they had a connection and he didn’t just mean sex. She meant something to him. Hell, she meant a lot.
“What did Tess say?”
Walsh gave him a look.
“She tell you we were fucking?” Mac never took his eyes off the other guy’s expression.
Walsh finally blew out a sigh. “No. She said you were ‘talking’, too. Like I believe that shit.”
What Walsh believed was irrelevant unless he was the ghost skin undermining the task force’s operation. And that was the real dilemma. Sure, Tess could have been involved, but if she had been she would have fed him to the wolves when the cops questioned her about his alibi.
The fact he’d been suspicious of her made him feel like a douche—again. But someone knew he’d been alone with Tess last night, rather than being at HQ or with another agent. They’d no doubt spied on him and Tess before they killed Heather. The idea made him sick.
It could have been Walsh. It could have been anyone.
“Agents in Coeur d’Alene track down Brandy Jordan yet?” Mac asked.
Walsh’s lips tightened. He gave a slight shake of his head.
Mac’s fingers clenched. Who else would remember whether or not David Hines had a girlfriend?
“Tess Fallon says she went to see her brother, Cole, after you left last night. I’m about to go talk to his roommates and verify she was there when she says she was. The brother wasn’t home.”
Mac filed that information away with all the other facts spinning in his brain. “You should bring Cole in for questioning.”
Walsh nodded. It was no longer Mac’s business so he shut up.
“As soon as the ME estimates time of death and corroborates my truck’s GPS, my cell, and every traffic cam between Bethesda and Georgetown, cops can establish that I couldn’t have gotten to Heather’s house in time to assault and murder her.” Poor Heather, even in death she was causing him grief. “They should lose their boner for me and I’ll be released.” To desk duty. “You get back to work and solve the murders before anyone else dies. And send out those security alerts. Whoever’s doing this is dead serious about their cause. They’re trying to start a goddamn revolution and we need to be prepared.”
He sounded like a freaking paranoid delusional maniac, but stats said people in the US were seven times more likely to die from a domestic terrorist event than a Muslim one. He took all threats seriously, but knew which threat worried cops most—and it wasn’t the Islamists.
Hate crimes had started popping up all over the US. As if the murders in DC were the signal these lunatics had been waiting for. The FBI needed to quash this killer’s agenda and make sure others understood they’d be caught, tried and convicted if they supported it.
Adios, freedom. Hello, penitentiary.
Walsh rubbed his eye sockets. “Like we don’t have enough to worry about.”
“No kidding,” Mac agreed.
“Want me to call your lawyer?” Walsh asked.
“It’s being taken care of.” He hoped. “You can do me one favor though.”
Walsh lifted his chin in question.
“Put a protective detail outside Tess Fallon’s house. Eddie is still on the loose and Heather’s murder is pretty much what he threatened to do to Tess.” Mac’s throat closed. Eddie could have killed Heather. He had no doubt the guy would have enjoyed it.
Walsh didn’t comment, but hopefully he’d tail Tess if only because he thought she was guilty of something more insidious than being an attractive woman.
“Talk to the marshals and see what the latest is. Eddie Hines would love to be seen as a driving force behind these attacks, but he isn’t. He has the brain capacity of a sugared almond.”
One way or another Mac knew he was the reason Heather had been targeted and he’d carry that guilt with him for the rest of his life. He thought of her parents, weak-willed and doting. They were going to be crushed.
Shit.
At least putting a detail on Tess’s home should keep her safe. The coincidence of her disturbing an intruder and then his ex-wife being murdered was too big to be put down to random chance.
Maybe Tess had been the initial target but had scared them off with her Ruger.
Thank Christ.
“Keep your pecker up. You’ll be out of here soon,” Walsh told him, grabbing the handle and opening the door to leave. Something Mac was well aware he wasn’t allowed to do.
Mac’s lip curled. “Go nail this bastard.” He was gonna have to sit here with his thumb up his ass until the Toy Town cops figured out he was being set up.
* * *
Tess walked out of the squat, brown building that housed the Washington DC Police Department, feeling as if she’d gone walking in Pamplona the day they let loose the bulls.
She’d given a statement, but the look on the detectives’ faces suggested they didn’t believe a word she said. Great. If her career as an accountant tanked—and at this rate it might—she could always start writing fiction. She heard her name called and looked up. A camera flash blinded her. Her vision danced with black spots.
The media.
She shielded her face, put her head down and kept walking, but was suddenly surrounded by a crowd of people, invading her space, sticking oversized lenses and sound booms next to her face.
“What’s your relationship with ASAC Steve McKenzie?”
“Is it true you’re living under a false identity and you’re actually the only surviving daughter of David Hines?”
She flinched and tried to keep moving but several people blocked her path and prevented her from heading to where she’d parked her car on, aptly enough, Idaho Avenue.
Someone from the police or FBI must have leaked her name to the press. Her stomach clenched. Had they tracked down Cole yet? She hadn’t told the detectives what she’d found in his house last night, what she carried in her purse. She desperately needed to talk to Mac but the cops refused to tell her where he was.
“Did you help McKenzie murder his ex-wife last night?”
She gaped, shocked beyond measure someone would suggest that. She whirled, looking for an escape through the crowd but finding none. Someone took her by the arm and herded her toward a big, black Lexus waiting at the curb.
She opened her mouth to ask who the man was and where he was taking her but she was already inside the vehicle, the stranger climbing in behind her and making her slide across the butter leather of the back seat. Then the door yanked shut and the car pulled away.
“Who are you? Where are you taking me?” Fear entered her voice when she realized she’d effectively been kidnapped.
The man who’d hustled her through the crowd smiled. “Sorry for the lack of introduction. You appeared to need help.” The man had silver eyes and the sort of self-deprecating smile that turned women into fools.
“Who are you?” she repeated. She looked around. They’d passed her Mini. “I need my car.”
The driver turned around the block and immediately pulled up on the side of the road, out of sight of the reporters.
“Which one is it? Give me the keys and I’ll pick it up,” the man with the silver eyes offered.
She dipped her hands into her pocket before she realized what she was doing. “I don’t even know you. Why would I give you my car keys?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Why would you climb into a car with me?”
“Alex, don’t scare the woman,” the driver admonished. “I’m ASAC Lincoln Frazer, ma’am.”
Ma’am? She didn’t know whether to be insulted or turned on.
“I’m a friend of Mac’s.”
The ASAC in the driver’s seat was classically handsome with blond hair, a chiseled jaw and a piercing blue gaze that examined her thoroughly in the rearview. She eyed him warily and then turned to the man at her side. “Why did you help me back there? FBI agents are not generally big fans of mine.”
Alex grinned. “I’m not FBI.”
She frowned in confusion.
“He’s just a consultant,” the man called Lincoln Frazer said dryly. “Like I said, Steve McKenzie is a friend of mine. He didn’t kill his ex-wife and I don’t believe in guilt by association so I’m not going to torture you just because of who your parents were.”
An unexpected surge of emotion welled up inside her, revealing just how vulnerable she was today. They were probably playing her and she was lapping it up. “The detectives I spoke with think I had motive for setting Mac up.”
“Did you?” the man next to her asked.
“Revenge for the police killing my hateful family? I was there, remember? They committed suicide by cop and tried to take me with them. Why would I think they were worth avenging?”
“So that’s a no?” Frazer questioned.
“No! What is wrong with you people?”
“Too many things to mention.” The man next to her held out his hand. “I’m Alex Parker. I consult with the FBI on matters of cybersecurity and other things. Pleasure to meet you, Tess.”
Tess took his hand, his grip firm and warm. This whole week had been bizarre. “So you examined Henry Jessop’s hard drive?”
He gave her a nod.
“Did you identify the person doing this?”
He waited a moment, then gave a slight shake of his head. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to tell her.
She hugged her bag close to her chest. Should she trust these people with the file? She had no idea if they were telling the truth or just trying to gain her trust and set her up.
“I believe in you, Tess,” Alex said in a low voice.
He must have seen her hesitancy. “Why?”
Alex grinned and she was struck by how handsome he was. Not as hot and built as Mac, but handsome and lean with a mysterious edge that suggested he was just as capable of being tough as he was of being a gentleman.
Mac looked like exactly what he was—a dedicated officer of the law who wasn’t afraid to take on the bad guys. Despite his undercover work, Mac had no real artifice, no Machiavellian streak—but he had used her. She looked down at her hands. Wished she could figure out exactly who she should trust.
“Alex believes in you because he’s scrutinized every facet of your life and background, including email, internet, financial and phone records, and found no red flags,” Frazer said from the front seat.
A scar dissected one of Alex Parker’s pale brows. “She also has kind eyes.”
She gave a sharp laugh and hugged her purse tighter to her breast. “You’re crazy. I have my mother’s eyes and she made serial killers look warm and fuzzy.”
“You’re probably right on the former.” Alex put his warm hand on top of hers and she realized how tense she was. Tense and terrified and paranoid. He squeezed gently. “But just because you have the same eye shape, doesn’t mean they look the same. Eyes are the window to the soul, remember?”
“And she didn’t have one,” inserted Frazer.
Tess blinked rapidly at a sudden onslaught of emotion slaying her ability to speak. Why would these strangers’ words nearly bring her to tears? Her adoptive mother had always said kindness was one of the most underrated human acts and, after the last few days, Tess was poorly in need of some compassion.
“Can we save the rest of the touchy-feely crap for later?” Frazer suggested smoothly. “Or do we need a group hug?”
Tess burst out laughing and Alex grinned. His pocket buzzed and he checked his cell. “He’s out. Do you want your car or not, Ms. Fallon?”
Who was out? Mac? She opened and closed her mouth.
“It should be safe enough where it is for now. Pick it up later, when the press has gone home.” Parker answered his own question, correctly assuming she was incapable of making a decision. She wanted to see Mac. Make sure he was okay.
Frazer circled the block and they pulled up next to the curb outside the police station again and she watched as Mac strode through the throng of reporters and opened the front door and climbed in.
He looked frustrated and angry as he slammed the door. “Let’s make like shepherds and get the flock out of here.”
Tess laughed, but was grateful for the tinted windows as cameras flashed against the glass.
Frazer screeched away and she was pushed back against the seat. Mac turned around and his gaze hooked her like a fish. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t look pleased to see her.
She shriveled a little on the inside.
“Rescued her from paparazzi hell after she left the police department,” Parker told him.
“Vultures,” said Mac without heat.
“I had to make a statement about last night.” How did she tell him that she hadn’t told the police they’d slept together without revealing the truth to Frazer and Parker, or making it look like they both had something to hide?
“Sorry I dragged you into this mess.” The blue-green of his eyes was vivid against the tan of his skin. His full lips were pressed into a stern, uncompromising line.
She smiled wryly. “I think that’s my line. They let you go?”
She’d been so worried about what would happen to him, but he was out. That had to be a positive sign, right?
“For now. They haven’t charged me. Yet. They checked my cell data and found me on several traffic cams heading across town before I called nine-one-one. Twice. But they kept my badge and gun and are basically hoping to rush DNA so they can finish the job of nailing my ass to a cross.”
“Except you’re innocent.”
His smile was a thin slice of mean. “Exactly.”
He pulled out his cell and popped his SIM card.
“What are you doing?” she asked in surprise.
“Where should we drop you?” Mac didn’t answer her question.
She froze and felt the two men do the same.
“I, ah…” She hadn’t thought that far ahead. Her home would likely be engulfed by reporters. She couldn’t go there.
And suddenly she knew she couldn’t keep quiet any longer about what she’d found at her brother’s house even if it meant telling Frazer and Parker as well as Mac. She couldn’t believe Cole was involved, but she couldn’t keep quiet if people might be in danger. If he was guilty she was already complicit—the thought was horrifying.
She cleared her throat as Frazer negotiated traffic. “I have something to tell you. You aren’t going to like it.” Guilt oozed from every pore, so thick she was sure they could smell it. “On Monday, when the judge and his wife were murdered?”
Mac stared at her over his shoulder like a law enforcement officer rather than a lover. Surely he’d understand why she hadn’t mentioned this before?
“I went to Cole’s house that morning. He was supposed to meet me to go over his tax forms but I assumed he forgot. So I went through some of his drawers to get the information I needed.” The whole car held its breath.
Her mouth turned into sand. She rubbed her left arm. “I found a piece of paper with a picture of the dead judge on it.”
The silence in the car sounded like a sonic boom.
“I didn’t mention it because I know my brother. He would never be involved in this sort of thing—”
“We don’t always know people the way we think we do,” Parker said quietly.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Mac stared at her like he’d discovered she was an alien.
“I went back the next day. With Cole. I figured I could confront him with the file and see whether or not he was lying to me, but the file was gone.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a thumb drive.
“What’s that?” Mac asked.
“This was in the same file folder in my brother’s file cabinet. It was lying on the bottom of the filing cabinet when I went back for a second look. I took it. I don’t know why I took it.” Mac raised his brows in a “really” motion. She tried to ease the dryness in her throat but no amount of swallowing helped. “There’s nothing on it except porn movies.”
Alex plucked it from her fingers and examined it closely. “Let’s head to my apartment where we can check it out—not the porn.” His grin was pure mischief.
Frazer nodded.
“You didn’t think this was worth mentioning?” Mac’s voice was deceptively soft. She knew him well enough to realize he was furious.
Tess shrank back against the seat. “You don’t understand. Cole isn’t like that. He’s not a violent person. He’s a pacifist.”
“Where is he now?” Mac demanded.
“I have no idea,” she snapped back.
“You know his schedule?”
She nodded. “He has a lecture on a Friday morning at nine-fifteen. He’s free after that.” Those eyes of his darkened to a turbulent green. She’d screwed up.
“Did it ever occur to you,” he said very slowly, like she was slow-witted, and maybe she was, she certainly felt stupid. “That data stick might be what your intruder was looking for last night?”
“It’s just porn—”
“You’re a computer expert now? Like your brother is?” Mac’s lips curled. And she shut up.
“If you’d told investigators we could have combed Cole’s house and maybe saved a life. Maybe saved Heather’s life. Did you think of that?”
Her chest split wide open. No. She hadn’t. “Cole isn’t a violent person.”
“And if you’d truly believed that you would have told me about the file when I turned up at your house.” Mac turned away from her and despair tried to swallow her whole.
Protecting her brother had been something she’d done since she was a little girl, since the raid that had left them orphans against the world.
“I didn’t even know Kenny Travers survived the gunfight until Tuesday, but I was supposed to blindly trust you when you show up with a different identity twenty years later?”
As angry as she was she still needed to finish this. “There’s something else.”
“What?” The impatience and anger in Mac’s tone made her flinch.
“I went to Cole’s house after you left last night.”
His eyes flashed to hers and she glared back. She’d kept their dirty secret. She was beginning to think she’d been the biggest fool imaginable for sleeping with him and that she was a complete failure when it came to judging people.
“I decided to confront him about what I’d seen on Monday. But he wasn’t there, so I searched his bedroom. The paper file was hidden under his mattress.” She took a deep breath and pulled the plastic bag from her purse and handed it to Mac, careful not to touch him. “I called you several times but you didn’t answer.” She twisted her hands together. “I took it. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know who else to trust.”
Mac’s eyes were wide. Then he took the latex gloves Frazer offered him and turned his attention to the printed pages. He started swearing and looked up. “We need to obtain protection for everyone on this list.”
She turned to stare out the window as the streets of DC rushed past. Her lack of trust might have gotten people killed and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to live with herself if that was true.
Frazer took an incoming call. After he hung up he told them, “Eddie Hines was just arrested in a remote cabin belonging to a female prison guard. In northern Idaho.”
So who had been her intruder last night? Cole? Had her brother shot at her? Had Cole murdered Mac’s ex-wife and tried to frame him?
Ice formed in her veins, jagged shards that ripped through her flesh. Her teeth chattered so much she huddled deeper into her jacket. How could she have been so foolish? How could she have made such a stupid mistake? Mac met her gaze and she knew he was thinking the exact same thing.