Deadly Little Secrets (29 page)

Gates bared his teeth, looking for all the world like a wounded lion, but he complied, sinking into the chair he'd been holding. The three chairs separating them along the side of the table could have been an inch apart or a mile. Gates wasn't giving anything away.

Dav muttered under his breath, something about fools and small children. She remembered her Greek nanny saying the same thing when she'd done something particularly dangerous or foolhardy.

“Gates.” She brought his full attention her way, though he was still shooting irritated looks at Dav. “You said you knew who instigated the deep search. Who did it?”

“I don't know who, precisely, but I dug out the origin. Your building, then bounced to Oregon as a final destination.”

“Perkins,” she said, immediately. “And Hines. That bastard.”

“Agency?” Dav said, reading her fury right. It was bad enough to have to fight the bad guys, but to have to fight your own was torture.

“Yeah. I have to call this in, let my Special Agent know.”

“Pretzky? Isn't she a little low-rank for that kind of intel?” Gates sniped.

Ana didn't go for the bait. He was taunting her, trying to piss her off so she'd treat him like dirt. It would be his way of keeping her away from him.

Some time in the night, or on her trip from DC to New York, she'd figured it out. He'd sent her away. He'd decided it was too dangerous to have her with him.

Two could play that game.

“She ranks me,” Ana said, her phone already in hand. “Which is where I have to start. I overstepped my wingman once, and two people died for it. I won't do it again.”

That shut him up. He and Dav exchanged troubled looks, but she ignored them both.

“Burton? What's the sit-rep?” Pretzky asked.

“I'm with Mr. G and Gates Bromley. Did you get my text?”

“Got it. You need to check your e-mail. You've had incomings popping up every minute for the last twenty.”

Why had Pretzky been in her cubicle, or monitoring her e-mail?

“No time for that,” she said, yanking her yellow pad out of her briefcase, fumbling for a pen. Dav leaned across the table and handed her a gold fountain pen.
“Efharisto,”
she said.
Thank you.

He nodded in answer, then braced his elbows on the table to try to follow her conversation.

She took notes as she talked, following her own steps on paper as she spoke. “Hines is a mole.”

“Hines?” Pretzky repeated.

“One of the original agents on the case. You got the copy of my notes? Yeah. First page. The two original agents were McGuire and Hines, out of DC. You can call McGuire in New Orleans; he's retired. He's the righteously pissed member of the team, and he's already had an attempted hit.” Ana waited out the storm of protest that came from Pretzky, noted the grim look Gates and Dav exchanged.

“Yes,” she continued. “Hines is the mole. McGuire'll fill you in. Yes. I talked to him last night. That's when he told me some bully-boys showed up to go for him.” She waited out Pretzky's exclamation and complaint that Ana hadn't put that in her e-mail. “The guy's a tough nut. Took one out with a head shot. The other's in the hospital, but not talking. McGuire wouldn't rat his former partner, but when I told him I couldn't get a hold of Hines, he indicated that I'd better find him. So, Hines is Oregon. Mr. Bromley tells me the data search origin is from our building with a bounce to Oregon. We're running with the theory that Hines is the one who yanked my data chain, possibly using that dead guy from IT, Perkins.”

It was starting to come together.

Pretzky asked several questions, but the one Ana answered was about whether she'd begun hunting Hines's sorry ass to prep it for a good whipping. “I figured I'd start that this morning, with gusto, but when I got to my meeting with Mr. G and Bromley, their data added fuel to the fire.”

“Wait, wait,” Pretzky said, and Ana heard her flipping notes. “Did you report that, the deep search?”

Crap. Had she? “I believe it's in my notes, Special Agent, but I'm not sure how extensive my profile was. At the time, I never considered that it might be one of ours. Or how it might tie into the case. I considered it peripheral.”

Gates chuckled, and she glared at him. Dav was smiling as well. They knew she'd suspected Gates had done the search.

“Hell, I don't think there are any coincidences at this point, Agent. We've got news on this end too.”

Ana waited for the other shoe to drop, and it did.

“Davis is compromised.”

“The files. My notes,” Ana snapped, now understanding the extent of the problem, why she'd been unable to get ahead of things.

“Exactly,” Pretzky replied, and her voice told Ana how pissed she was.

 

TJ typed as fast as he could, sending e-mail after e-mail. He wasn't sure how much time he had left before D'Onofrio found him. He knew now that the man was hiding his identity in the families TJ had been watching. He'd been watching Ana on the West Coast, stalking her.

“I didn't make the connection, damn it,” he cursed, wondering why. Someone on the inside, someone in the Agency had blocked information. He was afraid he'd missed something and knew now how Ana had felt in Rome. He realized how badly he'd fucked everything up. If he got out of this alive, he'd do time, but that was a small matter now.

“Doesn't matter now,” he muttered, typing as fast as he could. If he could get everything out, everything on paper, so to speak, maybe Ana could sort it out. Using linked computers, he sent both Wi-Fi and hardwire in case anyone was smart enough to jam the wireless. He sent copies to every e-mail he had, every one he'd registered with the Agency, every one of Ana's that he knew, both Agency and private. He hard-saved everything on the computer to a thumb drive with every stroke of the keys.

He heard them coming and hit S
END
, jerking the small portable drive out of the machine as the door to the low-rent hotel burst inward. His laptop exploded in the hail of bullets, and his heart did too.

Dropping the miniscule USB device into his pants as he went down, he felt the cold hand of death sweep over him.

His last thought was of Ana.

“Pretzky's on her way,” Ana said as she hung up. “They're sending two additional agents up from DC as well.”

“What, none in the Big Apple, twiddling their collective thumbs just waiting to help out?” Gates's comment was snarky and mean. He seemed to regret it, adding, “Then again, nothing in this whole affair has been easy. Why would there be extra manpower here in the city where it's needed?”

As peace offerings went, it sucked, but she'd take it. “Tell me about it,” she muttered and saw Gates smile. “NYC detail has their hands full with a bunch of other operations.” She waited a heartbeat for any further comments. When none came, she decided she should be asking some questions. “So what is all this?” She waved toward the walls.

“You mean my brainstorming?” Gates said with self-deprecating humor.

“Yeah,” Ana said, pivoting in her chair to look around the walls. “There's a lot of it.”

“Start at the beginning, Gates,” Dav said, and it sounded more like an order than a request. A flush darkened Gates's face, but he complied.

“The map was Dav's idea. A graphic representation of all the pieces we knew about, as well as the two extras.”

“You're missing the five from Florida,” she said, moving around the table to put markers on Miami, using the bright pink Post-it markers to point northward to New York. “They all came here, to Moroni.”

“Where'd they go from there?” Gates asked, hands poised over the keyboard in front of his chair.

“Berlin.”

“Pratch.” Gates and Dav said the name together. Gates entered the data in the first computer and scooted the chair down to add the list to the running program on the computer next to her. She was dying to know what that one was doing.

“Exactly,” Ana said, watching closely to see if she could decipher his program by his entry vectors. “Here's the other bit of data you probably don't have. They found Pratch's remains.”

Dav made a low sound, and she saw his lips move, perhaps in prayer. She knew he was Greek Orthodox, when he practiced. “Rest his soul. I didn't like him,” Dav added. “But the woman I mentioned—”

“Fraulein Messer.” Ana supplied the name of the woman he'd told her about early on, the one he'd returned one painting to.

“Liza,” Dav agreed. “She knew Pratch well. He was related by marriage, which was why she did business with him. Does she know?”

“I'm not sure, but in this case, I'd ask that you don't contact her just yet. Obviously someone's still monitoring a lot of the pieces of this puzzle, or people wouldn't be shooting at us,” she said smiling, actually feeling the humor of the whole crazy situation. “One of the things Pretzky said,” she held up her phone, indicating her boss. “Was that an agent in the cold case office is compromised as well.”

“Wonder when you'll find
his
body,” Gates muttered. He saw her quick frown, and realized how that might have sounded. “Sorry,” he apologized. “But this is getting ugly. There are already what, four bodies on this deal?”

“Officially, five. However, I think it's at least seven.”

“Seven?” Gates paused, then tapped the keys on the third computer. “Let's have it,” he said, his mouth set in a grim line.

“Put them up on the map,” Dav suggested. “Here—” He handed over more Post-its in a different color.

Using Dav's elegant pen she wrote down the names. “There were two victims in New York. One was associated with the Moroni Gallery. A clerk, for all anyone could figure out. No one that important, in the scheme of things.” She wrote down the woman's name, Colleen St. John, and posted it by the city. “She was tortured.”

She printed the second name. “The second body was Nathan Rikes, small-time thief, bag man, and general petty criminal. There was nothing to tie him to the crimes, nothing to tie him to Colleen, but he was found with her, dead the same way. Also tortured.”

She stuck the second name up and moved to the left side of the map. “The two here, in San Francisco, were killed execution style. Clean and simple. No torture.”

Posting the names of Keith Griffin and Rod Atwell, she continued near the Bay Area. Next, she wrote down both Kelly Dodd and Luke Gideon's names, but didn't put them up. She looked at Dav, trying to decide how to phrase her request.

“What?” Dav said, noticing her obvious pause.

“I need to ask you not to say anything about one of the next names I'm putting up. I have no proof that this is connected. Just a…hunch, a feeling.”

“Data's data,” Gates said, looking puzzled. “Put it up, we'll sort out whether it belongs.”

“Why do you hesitate, Ana-aki?” Dav asked. His tone was all business, but she saw that his hands were clenched on the arms of the chair.

“It's Luke Gideon,” Ana said, slowly. Watching Dav. “Carrie McCray's husband.”

“You think he was involved?” Gates stopped keyboarding and looked over.

“I don't know, but there were only two fraudulent deliveries from Prometheus after his death. Six prior to that, two of which were to you,” she reminded Dav.

“Poor Carrie,” Dav said, showing where his allegiance lay. “Do you think she knew?”

Ana wanted to say no, but at this point, no avenue was closed and she said so. “I hope not, but,” she shrugged. “It's not off the table.”

“It is, for me.” Dav was firm on that point, but he looked her way, managed a less belligerent demeanor. “I understand why you need to keep it in mind, however.”

Gates said nothing, but he looked thoughtful. When he wasn't snarking, or asking questions, he was watching her with an intensity that was beginning to make her twitchy.

“The seventh?” Dav asked, obviously wanting to move on.

“Pratch, of course,” Ana said, sticking up another Post-it. “When he went missing, and was presumed dead, his connection to most of the paintings was thrust into the forefront. While he's a prime suspect in the whole thing, I think someone went to a lot of trouble to make Pratch look more guilty, more involved than he was. I'll know more when we can get the report from our German counterparts, find out if they can tell how he died, when, and more importantly where he was found and how.”

“What about the Moroni people?” Gates asked.

“I don't know, Gates,” she admitted. “Part of me thinks I should add Nils Lundgren, one of the Moroni buyers, to the list of possible bodies; part of me wonders if he's the mastermind.

“Add him for now to the body count,” Gates said, decisively. “Let's see what falls out. He's missing, so that's a data point.”

“True. He didn't go missing till weeks later, though,” she pointed out, sticking Lundgren's name on the wall. “Neither did Shelby Waters, his gallery manager.”

“Did they disappear at the same time?”

Ana didn't remember and said so. “Hang on, I'll look it up.” She unpacked her laptop, booted it up. When the data came up, she read off the info. “Nils was reported missing by his landlord six weeks after the gallery closed, which was two weeks after the investigation turned up their involvement. He hadn't paid his rent.”

“Date?” Gates demanded.

She rattled it off and continued. “Shelby Waters was reported missing sooner, only three weeks after the investigation, one week after the gallery closed.”

“Six confirmed, two more suspected,” Gates said. “Whoever this is, they're not afraid to get their hands dirty. Hang on a sec,” he said, and his fingers flew over the keys. “There's a gap in the pattern on the dates,” he declared. Gates plugged the laptop he was using into a projector, displaying the data on the cream-colored wall. “See? The dates for the two torture murders in New York are the first, then the Moroni people disappear. If Luke Gideon's a factor, he's next, see?” He pointed toward the screen, where the dates now appeared on a calendar page, the graphic lending credence to his theory. “The other California killings don't take place for at least a month after the New York murders, and there isn't any torture.”

“Different killer? Different hire?” she offered. “I've been wondering that for a while. Such different styles.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they got the information they needed from the tortures. They just needed to get rid of the other people who knew about the con.”

An idea occurred to her, and she rounded the table to her laptop to do some key-punching of her own. Icons at the bottom of her screen flashed a fast green. She had incoming e-mail on four different addresses. Probably Jen, she decided, setting it aside for a minute as she brought up more info. She needed to look at those. If what she suspected about D'Onofrio was correct, he might be involved in all this mess. She hated to burst Jen's bubble about Millionaire Jack, but she was afraid he wasn't really named Jack, or a magazine mogul.

The thought that it might be TJ, finally answering her e-mails, also crossed her mind, but Gates was asking a question and it distracted her.

“Got another idea?” he asked. “What are we factoring in?”

“Yeah, I do,” she said. “Let's factor in when Hines, the bad-apple member of the original investigatory team, transferred to Oregon.” She added the dates to the mix, posted Hines's name, and put arrow markers to what she thought of as the wilds of the Oregon territory.

“Dates aren't too long after the last murder. Anybody check his financials?”

“Nothing to see,” Ana said. “We have full financial disclosure every year. We have to account for every penny that comes in.”

Both men gave her disappointed looks. “Hey, I know he'd hide it. I'm just saying the average search wouldn't pull it and nothing chimed for the auditors, okay?”

“Right, so Hines hares off to Oregon,” Gates said, summing things up. “The Moronis disappear, Pratch disappears, Luke Gideon dies, and four other people associated with the situation get dead. What brought you to New York?”

“New information from Pretzky.” Ana stopped, suppressing the urge to curse. “I'm not sure if it plays in. This guy, Davis, worked with me the last few days calling other victims. By the way,” she smiled at Dav. “Thanks for paving the way there.” The pressure Dav had applied had definitely greased the wheels.

“Another side benefit of Gates getting shot, I'm afraid,” Dav said. “Thank him.” Gates threw a wadded-up piece of paper at him, but Dav only laughed.

“However it happened, it uncovered the fact that both Moroni and the Miami gallery, Artful Walls, shipped to Pratch in Berlin through this warehousing and shipping company in White Plains.”

Cocking her head to one side, she asked a question that had been niggling at her. “What happened with the shooter? Did Detective Baxter turn anything up?”

Dav's frown went dark, and Gates scowled as well. It was he who answered. “Turns out the woman who was hired to kill my family is free.”

“Free?” Outraged, Ana half-rose. “How did that happen?”

Gates grimaced, shifting in his seat as if uncomfortable with her ire, and his own situation. “Routine transfer from prison to a prison-run farm. According to their guards, one minute she was there, the next, two guards were dead and she was gone. That was two years ago.”

“They didn't see fit to tell you?”

“We were in India, I believe,” Dav said, sounding apologetic. “Overseeing some holdings. Apparently the word never reached us.”

She was about to delve into that when Alexia knocked and made her perky way into the room.

“Excuse me,” Alexia said. “But you ordered lunch, sir? It's here.”

The server and serving cart with lunch, followed by Callahan, one of Gates's team, came into the room. Ana caught Dav's inquiring look and Callahan's nod. Apparently the food had been checked out. Callahan was followed by a nurse who bustled over to take a blood pressure reading on Gates. Behind his back, she shook her head in answer to Dav's questioning look.

“We'll eat, then take an hour's break,” Dav stated, glaring at Gates when he protested. “Don't give me that look, and don't torment the nurses, they're just doing their job.”

Gates muttered all through lunch, but acquiesced when Ana said she was going to go lie down as well. “I've not gotten much sleep the last few days.”

“How did the Inquiry go?” Dav asked.

Gates stopped at the door, obviously listening, but he didn't turn around.

“I'm cleared,” she said.

“Congratulations, my dear.” Dav beamed at the news. “Does that mean you'll be leaving the United States again?”

Gates waited, his back stiff with tension.

“I don't know,” she said, unsure what his tension meant, or where Dav's questions were going. “I won't know until this case is wrapped. I won't leave without seeing it through.”

“Exotic locales,” Gates said sardonically. “Isn't that what the recruiters always tell you?” He never turned to look at her. Something was bothering him; it was obvious from the set of his shoulders, the tense line of his back. “You'll enjoy getting back to that, I guess.” He moved carefully away, through the doors to the bedrooms without another word.

“Don't let him get to you, Ana-aki,” Dav soothed, as he stepped to her side. “He's angry at himself for pushing you away, and angry that he does not want to keep doing that. And furious that he doesn't know how to bring you back.”

It took Ana a moment to find words to meet that unlikely statement. “It's probably not smart anyway, Dav,” she said, looking anywhere but at this unlikely Cupid. “He's got his life, working with you. I've got my work, which takes me”—she swallowed her tears—“as he said, to such exotic locales.”

Dav just watched her for a moment. It was unnerving. “We'll see,” he said finally. “Get some rest.”