Chapter Twenty-Eight
“What do you want to do?” Frazer asked Mac.
Mac had left angry far behind and moved on to combustible, molten rage. He was reeling from the fact Tess had lied to him from the start. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply to quiet the fury, but it was like something volatile beneath his skin and once it ignited it wasn’t going out until it burned down to the bone.
He’d been on the verge of contemplating how they might make a relationship between them work after this whole debacle was over.
How had he allowed himself to trust her on the basis of who she’d been as a kid? What sort of idiot did that?
His sort, apparently.
Except his feelings for who’d she’d been as a kid had nothing to do with what had happened last night. That was strictly eighteen-plus.
“Do we call the task force and have them send a team to Cole Fallon’s house?” Frazer asked.
“No.” Mac was working on the assumption that the ghost skin might be inside the task force. “But we need to track him down and arrange warrants.”
“I’ll find him.” Parker pulled out his cell and made a call.
They needed to talk and Mac needed a clear head to figure this shit out. But regardless of what had happened over the last ten hours he was still an FBI agent and FBI agents did not discuss cases in front of uncleared witnesses, especially those linked to the case. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“What about DNA? Any results back?” asked Parker.
“We can’t talk in front of a civilian,” Mac said tersely.
“He’s not an FBI agent.” Tess pointed at Parker. Her face was pale but there were two bright spots of color on her cheeks. She was pissed. Excellent. That made them even.
“Parker’s a consultant,” Mac bit out. “He has security clearance.”
Tess’s eyes glistened and she reached for the door handle. “Stop the car and let me out.”
“Not gonna happen, sweetheart.”
“Are you saying I’m your prisoner?” Her voice vibrated with anger. “Or perhaps you haven’t finished using me to further your career yet? That’s what you’ve been doing every step of the way. At the prison, at the compound, every time you came to my house.”
Tension in the car ramped up until it felt like a garrote wrapped around his throat.
“I’m saying,” he tried to be rational, “that I don’t want you to warn your brother that we’re onto him.”
“Then I should remind you that I’m the one who brought you the information!”
“She has a point,” said Parker.
Mac’s eye twitched. “She’s a little late coming forward with this.”
“I would have come to you last night but you didn’t answer your phone.”
“I was a little busy getting arrested,” he snarled.
“And that wasn’t my fault!” she snapped. Then her anger seemed to crumple and she put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry about your wife.”
“Ex,” Mac said sharply and meaning it. “Ex-wife.” Despite what Tess probably thought when he’d left her lying naked on the kitchen floor, he hadn’t had feelings for Heather. His ex had killed their relationship with her betrayal and deception. He really wasn’t the forgiving type. It didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt to see her brutalized.
Where did that leave him and Tess? It left them exactly nowhere, where they’d always been. But he needed to be diplomatic. Unless he wanted to have to forcibly manhandle Tess and make her do what he wanted, he needed to convince her to come with them voluntarily. And she was right. He had used her. He had put her in danger. It didn’t mean he didn’t care about her. He just couldn’t trust her. Not anymore. Not ever again.
“The FBI will no doubt have more questions for you. It would be better if they knew where to find you rather than wasting their time running around the city looking for you. Plus, it will look better that you surrendered yourself.”
“Surrendered? I just gave you your goddamned alibi.” Her lips clamped down and she retreated into herself.
“The FBI planned to put a protection detail on you and now the news has broken about your identity the media will be all over your home. Where precisely are you planning on going?”
Her mouth tightened. “I don’t know.”
She stared fixedly out the window and looked so isolated something inside his chest snapped.
He didn’t believe she was involved in murder, but she’d concealed information. Now she’d have to pay the price. So would he.
Parker interrupted. “You can get some rest at my apartment while we try to figure this out, Tess. I have a spare room. No reporters. And no one would think to look for you there. You’ll be safe.”
Mac met Parker’s gaze, grateful but unable to voice it. Parker seemed to understand.
“I’m worried about Cole,” Tess said quietly.
“You’re not his mother, Tess.”
Her eyes flashed red hot. “I’m all he has. You saw to that.”
Ouch.
“I swore to protect him the day I curled over his body in that small cramped closet as bullets whizzed above our heads. Since the day we were taken into foster care and people wanted to separate us because I was damaged goods. He’s my little brother and I love him. Obviously, that’s an emotion you can’t comprehend.”
He flinched but kept his mouth shut. No one said another word but she didn’t try to defend Cole again.
He leafed through the file on his lap, trying to get his breathing under control. It contained details on all of the victims and several other potential targets. They needed to warn these people, which meant he was going to have to contact HQ soon. But he needed to figure out who the ghost skin was before he gave away the fact he was on to them. They couldn’t risk this person going to ground.
So—who to trust?
ASC Gerald? The color of his skin made him the safest bet. And if that was racial profiling people could go fuck themselves. Antigovernment types weren’t always racists, and racists weren’t always antigovernment. However, Gerald was unlikely to have connections with the Pioneers.
Hopefully the thumb drive contained details of their other planned attacks and they’d be stopped before being carried out. It wasn’t looking good for young Cole.
Mac glanced at Tess. From the angle of her chin as she gazed fixedly out the window she was pissed, but she was also upset.
He’d hurt her. Again. This time, it was her own damn fault.
“Make sure we don’t have anyone following us,” Mac told Frazer. He didn’t want the ghost skin finding out where they were or whom he was talking to. The wheels of justice were renowned for turning slowly, but in this instance, they needed to act fast.
“Give me your phone.” He addressed Tess.
She handed it over reluctantly and he popped the SIM card.
No one asked questions.
They got to an apartment near the Watergate Building and Frazer parked in the underground garage. They took the elevator up to Parker’s pad. Mac knew he and Rooney were buying a house nearer Quantico, but this place was pretty swish, too.
Parker showed Tess into a spare bedroom. “Grab a shower. Get some rest. You’re safe here.” Mac didn’t like the quiver of guilt that wriggled inside him. He was the one who should be reassuring her, but he couldn’t bring himself to risk it. Tess was his weakness and she’d brought this on herself by lying to him.
Except…given the circumstances he couldn’t blame her for being reluctant to trust anyone.
Hell, she hadn’t known he was still alive until he’d turned up on her doorstep Tuesday night. If someone stepped out of his past after a twenty-year absence would he tell them his deep, dark secrets? The answer was hell no, but he didn’t have time to forgive Tess right now.
Lives were at stake. And he was still so furious she’d conned him he didn’t trust himself to behave judiciously.
Chances were his career had been blown to smithereens. Maybe if he helped expose the ghost skin, and proved someone was trying to set him up for murder he’d be forgiven, but this wouldn’t look good no matter what color he painted it.
He followed Frazer into the fancy kitchen with its wide, marble countertops and shaker cabinets.
Mac peered out the window. The place had a great view of the Watergate complex. “As ironic as it sounds given the view, I need to know that what I’m about to say cannot be overheard.”
Parker eyed him solemnly and pulled out a keychain. “I swept for bugs yesterday.” He pressed a button on the fob and a small red light appeared on his keychain. “This will stop electronic ears in the immediate area and I have some other anti-listening devices installed.” Parker looked pointedly at the windows.
Mac blinked at the guy. He’d briefly forgotten Parker was in the security business.
“We’re as safe from eavesdroppers as any human can be, although I can’t guarantee flapping ears.” Parker inclined his head in the direction of the bedroom where he’d left Tess. He then pulled out his laptop and inserted the thumb drive.
Mac kept his voice low. “I think the killer is one of us.”
“Us?” Parker cocked his brow.
“You mean FBI?” Frazer said.
Panting sounds started coming from Parker’s computer. Mac went around the island to look. Two men and a girl were being creative in a car wash.
Mac blew out a frustrated breath. “Is Tess right? Is this her brother’s porn collection?”
Parker frowned. “Maybe…but,” he pointed at the screen, “Looky here.”
Mac saw a list in a directory with faded file names.
“Hidden files.” Parker clicked on one. “Encrypted.”
“You think it’s related to the murders?”
Parker shrugged. “I have no idea. Could be gardening tips.” He cracked his knuckles. “But I intend to find out.”
“What makes you think they have a mole inside of the FBI?” Frazer asked while Parker did his thing.
Mac helped himself to a glass of water from the tap. He could still taste the sour scent of jail on his tongue.
“I should have thought of it from the beginning. David Hines was a smart fucker and always had his eye on the long game. He—along with other white supremacist groups—urged some of their followers to keep quiet about their racist or antigovernment beliefs and sign up for law enforcement. Told ’em to rise through the ranks and find other like-minded souls and secretly influence policy from within. Act as early warning systems for groups like the Pioneers and be ready to rise up when called upon. It’s the latter part that worries me now.”
This could damage the FBI’s reputation irreparably, particularly coming close on the heels of ASAC Guy Clarkson being uncovered as a Russian spy who’d framed one of his best friends to take the fall. Richard Stone had almost died in ADX Florence, reviled as one of the most hated men in FBI history. Frazer and Parker had been involved in overturning that miscarriage of justice, too. They were good people. People he could trust. Unlike Tess.
“It’s not that easy to fool all the background checks,” said Frazer.
Parker cocked his head thoughtfully as he worked. “Not impossible either, as we both know. Also, they don’t need to be an agent to gain access. They might be tech support.”
“So what do we know for sure?” Frazer grabbed a stack of post-it notes and a pen from beside Parker’s phone. He made a list of the victims. Seeing Heather’s name gave Mac a kick in the gut. It still didn’t seem real that she’d been murdered.
“How’s Trettorri doing?” he asked.
“Hanging in there. Docs think he’ll recover but it’ll take time.”
Which this investigation didn’t have.
“They run the DNA from his fingernails yet?” Mac asked.
“I’ll call and check. Let’s get our priorities straight first.” Frazer wrote a note and stuck it on one side of the butcher’s block.
DNA.
Mac thought about all the evidence they’d collected and were sifting through. The evidence would eventually nail the bad guys, but by then it might be too late.
“Someone got hold of my bullet casings from the gun range.” Mac ran his fingers through his hair. “Could only have been Quantico or HQ.”
“They’ve been planning this for a long time, but information about your undercover work at Kodiak Compound only surfaced this week and the task force was only formed on Tuesday.” Frazer frowned. “I’m thinking the casings had to come from HQ.”
Mac felt a lump in his throat. “What makes you guys so sure I didn’t kill my ex?”
“Only a moron would use his own gun to shoot his ex-wife, leave the bullet casings with his prints on them, and then call the cops,” Parker muttered. “Twice.”
Mac’s lips twitched. “So not for my sterling character traits and moral fortitude? Good to know.” He put his hands on his hips. “Pisses me off cops think I’m an idiot.”
Frazer smiled sadly. “The fact someone targeted you should piss you off. A lot of innocent people have died this week, including your ex-wife.”
Frazer wrote “Bullet Casings” on another post-it and slapped it on the counter. “You’ve more than likely seen this UNSUB’s face,” he said quietly.
Mac nodded. “But I’ve seen a lot of faces this week. Jessop was involved and knew who it was.” He added the name to Frazer’s list. “Once he found out I was a Fed, he burned his house to the ground rather than reveal any clues that might give them away.”
Parker nodded. “I’ve run into a bit of a brick wall when it comes to Jessop.”
“I thought you could find anything online,” Frazer mocked.
Parker raised his hands in a what-can-you-do motion. “Not when it’s been completely scrubbed from the records. The FBI might need to go check out original paper files in Idaho.”
“That’s another indication it’s someone on the inside. They’ve backtracked and removed the links to Jessop. They didn’t even have to lie about him when they joined the FBI. Just erase the connection after the fact.”
“So we can assume they have computer skills.” Frazer wrote more notes.
Mac added the fact the murder weapon was likely from Kodiak Compound and the date of the first murder coincided with David Hines’s birthday.
“I think it’s a woman,” Mac said quietly, staring at the brightly colored squares of paper. “I was thinking it over while I was sitting in that interview room. I think this ghost skin is Jessop’s daughter. She joined the Bureau and has been silently planning this for years. Targeted me after Tess and I helped get her daddy killed.”
“You think she’s at HQ now?”
Mac nodded.
Frazer nodded thoughtfully. “That knocks out a lot of suspects. It’s still a lot of people but we’ll have a ball park age of what, thirty?”
“Jessop was seventy. His daughter could be anything from mid-fifties to mid-twenties.” Mac shrugged.
“Why would she have sacrificed her whole life for David Hines’s cause? A man she’d never met? Especially now her father is dead?”
“Who said she’d never met David Hines?” Mac vocalized more of his thoughts. Suddenly Tess’s idea that her father had had a girlfriend coalesced into that lightbulb moment he usually got on the gun range. “Hines was a good-looking guy—charismatic, charming. Tess mentioned she thought he had a girlfriend. Hines died twenty years ago this August so we’ll assume any girlfriend was at least sixteen back then. Makes her mid to late thirties at the youngest.”
Frazer’s phone rang.
“It’s Harm.” Frazer told them as he answered. “The Washington Police Department sent him the casings and your service weapon last night to try and tie you to the DC murders.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “My alibi for most of the murders is being inside FBI HQ when they occurred.”
Frazer answered and listened to his cell for a moment and then grinned. “That’s official then? I owe you.”
Frazer hung up. “You’re off the hook. Harm worked through the night. Conclusively matched the casings found at your ex-wife’s murder scene to your service weapon.”
“That’s not good news.” Parker was still typing and didn’t bother to look up.
Mac crossed his arms over his chest.
Frazer continued. “Harm ran the residue from inside the casing through a gas chromatograph. The casings from the crime scene originally contained frangible bullets.”
Which might sting if they hit someone but probably wouldn’t kill anyone. They disintegrated upon impact.
Mac grinned. “I owe him a beer.”
“You owe him a case of beer,” Parker corrected.
“So now we can confirm the casings came from HQ as the instructors there were using up frangible ammo before everyone gets switched over to the new nine-millimeters. Am I back on the task force?” Mac asked, putting his cell back together and looking for messages.
Nothing.
Officially Mac was still on desk duty. Shit.
Frazer shrugged. “Harm didn’t know. Just said that he’d told MPD you were being set up as those bullets might have blinded someone but they wouldn’t have caused the wounds seen on your ex-wife.”
Mac closed his eyes as he allowed himself to think about poor Heather. All she’d really wanted was to be someone’s center of attention. He thought about Tess in the other room. She’d never wanted to be the center of attention. The two women couldn’t be more different.
Parker swore. “This is gonna take more computing power than I have here,” he admitted, closing his laptop. “Can I email it to one of my guys? My team can devote more resources to it, hopefully figure out who compiled it.”
“I’m more concerned about preventing a terrorist attack than prosecuting a court case at this point,” Mac said. Although DOJ wouldn’t see it that way.
Frazer must have decided the same thing. “As long as it’s secure.”
Parker gave him a look.
The evidence had been removed from Cole’s house by Tess and was tainted when it came to being used in court to convict Cole Fallon. The only person it could really be used against was Tess herself. Maybe she knew that. Maybe that was why she’d taken it. Protecting someone who didn’t deserve it.
After a few moments Parker ejected the drive and tossed it to Frazer who stuck it in his pocket.
“Your wunderkind have any luck on the users of the One-Drop-2-Many site?”
“Nope, but he’s working on it. He’s got a real knack for this stuff. We’ll track the IDs down, but it won’t happen overnight.”
The site had been shut down. Someone had realized Jessop was compromised.
“From the screen captures we obtained before they took it down I think it’s the main networking tool of this group. It’ll be a goldmine of information when we untangle the details.”
“We already have a shit-load of evidence being processed. It’s only a matter of time before we narrow it down to the right person.” Mac rubbed the back of his neck. He couldn’t stop that feeling of impending doom hovering over his shoulder.
“They got rid of the team leader in an effort to slow law enforcement down and throw the investigation into chaos.” Frazer frowned.
Mac checked the time and stared out the window at the concrete edifice of one of Washington’s biggest scandals. “It’s nearly the weekend. If you want to make a statement against the government you do it before four o’clock on a Friday.”
“Otherwise nobody’s there,” agreed Parker.
It was nearly eleven a.m. Mac slid Tess’s file across the marble surface. “You need to call ASC Gerald and ask him to warn anyone listed here that they might be a target. Don’t tell him where you got the information. Not yet.”
Frazer leafed through the names.
“Do you want to bring Cole Fallon in for questioning?” Parker asked, checking his gun in a way that made Mac have no doubt he knew how to use it.
Mac shook his head. “If the inside man or woman finds out I’ve been released and we’re onto them, he-or-she might bolt. I want to figure out their identity first. Let’s stake out Fallon. Where’s Cole now?”
Parker opened a piece of software, then eyed him warily. “Does the FBI have a warrant for this information or is this our little secret?”
Mac held his hands up and turned away. “I didn’t see anything.”
He had to go speak to Tess before he left. Because last night they’d made a massive mistake and as much as he’d enjoyed it there was no future for them. Not after the lies she’d told him. The rusted, corroded feeling around his heart was regret for crossing that line and making that mistake.
Sure.
But it was still possible she was in cahoots with these people and had seduced him on purpose. He needed to talk to her but he needed to think of her not as a woman he had feelings for, but as a suspect. He couldn’t afford any more stupid mistakes when it came to Tess Fallon.