Breaking Point (32 page)

That’s no way to win a man’s heart, girl. Are you that desperate?

Quashing the thought, she gathered her things, took the elevator down, and walked out to her car, only to find a dozen or more persistent reporters staking out the front entrance. She thought for a moment about taking the back entrance, but slinking down the alley while gunshots still echoed in her memory held no appeal. So she lifted her chin and walked out the door.

“Thank you, but no comment,” she said again and again, finally making it to her car. She unlocked the door, got inside, and quickly locked it again. Then slowly, she nudged the car forward.

And then out of the corner of her eye she saw him—Sr. Scar Face.

She gasped, jerked her head around, looking for him. But he was gone.

Or maybe he’d never been there. Writing the article had left her jumpy, reviving the terror for her. Perhaps she was just seeing things. Besides, how could he have gotten here so quickly?

The same way you did.

A chill shivered up her spine. She picked up her cell phone and called Julian.

CHAPTER 23

“I’M SORRY. WE’VE moved on. We’re going to focus on letting our daughter heal, and we’re not interested in talking to the press.”

Natalie stared at the phone as the line went dead. “That’s strange.”

“What’s strange?” Sophie looked up from a report she was reading, purple highlighter poised above the page.

“Before I went to Mexico, I had five families who’d agreed to be interviewed about what had happened to their daughters at the Whitcomb Academy. They were outraged and after blood. Now none of them want to speak with me at all.”

“That is strange. Did they say why?”

“They said they’d talked about it and had decided that lots of press was not what their daughters needed. They want to move on and let their daughters heal.”

“I suppose I can understand them feeling that way.”

Natalie turned in her chair. “I can, too. But how do you go from begging to be interviewed to refusing to speak in a week?”

But Sophie was already buried in her report again.

Natalie ran through the facts of this investigation, trying to figure out whether she had enough for an article. She had already reported the basics. A soccer coach at Whitcomb Academy, a small private school for gifted and talented girls, had been using a picklock kit to get into girls’ dorm rooms at night, where he had allegedly raped them. After one of the victims attempted suicide, the truth came out, and the parents went to the county sheriff.

The sheriff had moved quickly, arresting the coach on a host of felonies, and promising a full investigation. And then . . . nothing.

After two weeks of investigating the case, the sheriff let it go, and the DA dropped the charges against the coach for lack of evidence. Given that the evidence included semen samples on one of the girls’ sheets, a picklock kit, and fifteen victims telling almost exactly the same story, this came as a surprise to everyone. But it had been good news for the coach, who’d promptly disappeared, leaving no forwarding address.

Understandably, the girls’ parents had been outraged, some insinuating that the sheriff and the DA had been bought off or intimidated by the school’s administration. Feeling that they had nowhere left to turn, the parents had come to the newspaper. Natalie had done some preliminary poking around, gathering police reports and tax documents for all the players. She had arranged to interview the families, but she’d gone to Mexico before she’d gotten the chance.

And now no one wanted to talk.

It looked like she would end up dropping the story.

She stretched, unable to stifle a yawn, wishing she could run out for another café au lait. Even though Julian and Marc had cleared her house and the Denver police had parked a surveillance team on her street, she hadn’t slept well last night, every sound she’d heard making her jump. The ice maker. The AC kicking on. The creaking of her wooden floors. In her mind all of them became Sr. Scar Face. Then she’d imagined Zach was there, holding her, sleeping beside her, and she’d finally fallen asleep.

She’d been tempted more times than she could count to call him today just to make sure he was okay. She was so afraid her deposition had gotten him into trouble. If only his superiors in the Justice Department understood that he’d done what he’d done to keep her safe . . .

Oh, who was she fooling? She wanted to talk to him, wanted to hear his voice, wanted to know that he was okay. But if she called, she’d only make it harder on herself. He’d made it clear that he didn’t feel capable of having a relationship, and she had too much self-respect to throw herself at any man.

Outside her window, gray clouds rose over the mountains, promising a late afternoon thunderstorm. Already the wind was picking up, branches swaying.

Don’t we have to get skin to skin for this to work?

Are you saying you want to get naked with me, angel?

That’s not what I meant.

No? Too bad.

Memories of another thunderstorm came back to her. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d taken shelter with Zach in that alcove and made love underneath the little waterfall. But in fact, it was just the day before yesterday.

Too much, too fast. Two worlds apart.

She grabbed her file and stood, then walked the short distance to Tom’s office. He had a way of resurrecting investigations she thought were dead in the water. And if he thought she was wasting her time on this one, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell her.

He glanced up, a shock of gray curls slipping over his forehead, reading glasses low on his nose. “Benoit.”

She stepped into the mess that was Tom’s office—newspapers piled everywhere, manila file folders with coffee stains, books stacked wherever there was space, and on the wall above his head, a poster with his favorite quote, from George Orwell:
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

“I think this Whitcomb Academy investigation is at a dead end, but I wanted to run through it with you first.”

“Let’s hear it.”

She refreshed his memory about the facts of the case, then told him what had happened with the girls’ families today. “I feel like there’s something there, but I can’t find a way to crack the nut. I’m not even sure where the nut is.”

He frowned, clearly thinking it through. “So the alleged victims and their families won’t talk. The school won’t talk. And the sheriff and DA won’t talk.”

“Yes, that’s about the size of it.”

“What about the perp?”

“He skipped town the day after they let him out of jail. His neighbors said a moving van showed up and cleared out his apartment. No forwarding address.”

“I assume you’ve already gotten everyone’s tax records.”

Natalie nodded. “The sheriff’s, the DA’s, the administrator’s, the alleged perpetrator’s, as well as all of the school’s public records for the past five years. There was nothing that seemed suspicious to me, but then I admit I’m not a tax genius.”

“You could fax those documents to that forensic accountant we keep on retainer and see what she finds. She knows all the tricks. If anyone is playing games, she’ll be able to spot it.”

Natalie stood. “Thanks. That’s what I’ll do.”

He turned back to his work. “When in doubt, Benoit, follow the money.”

 

“DID YOU KILL Agent Gisella Sanchez?”

“No.” Zach sat with a blood pressure cuff on his right arm, two pneumographs strapped around his chest, and galvanometers on the first and third fingers of his left hand.

He had agreed to take a polygraph test in hopes that it would speed the investigation along. He knew he was telling the truth. He needed to convince them of that fact so that he could get back to work.

So far the experience had been tedious rather than intimidating, perhaps because he knew he was innocent. They’d brought in the FBI’s top polygraph expert, a small bald man whose thick glasses gave him the appearance of a mad scientist—or Mr. Magoo.

“Whom did you pay to kill her?”

“No one. I had nothing to do with her death.”

“How was she killed?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did you and Agent Sanchez work together to steal cocaine from the Zetas?”

“No.”

“Was it your idea to steal the drugs?”

“I didn’t steal the coke.”

“Did you have sexual relations with journalist Natalie Benoit?”

“Yes.” Zach felt his pulse spike. “Are you going to ask me if it was good?”

So, somehow Pearce knew about him and Natalie. Chiago’s report must have been very thorough. They would use questions like this—questions to which they already knew the answer—to monitor his responses. It gave them a better idea of how his body responded when he told the truth and when he lied.

But, of course, he was telling only the truth.

“Did you have sexual relations with Agent Sanchez?”

“Good God, no.”

On it went for two long hours. They asked him variations on the same questions again and again, Pearce no doubt watching from the other side of the one-way mirror. Zach was about ready to tell them that he was finished with this bullshit, when the examiner finally turned off the machines and removed the blood pressure cuff.

“How long till we have the analysis?” Zach pulled off the galvanometers himself.

“Just a few days.” Thin fingers unfastened the pnueumographs. “Be careful. That’s delicate equipment.”

Done being probed for the day, Zach left the building, headed to his small apartment, and dressed for a run, hoping to burn off the tension, frustration, and anger that had been building inside him since he arrived in D.C. First, the investigation. Then the old man’s surprise visit.

You sure know how to have a good time, McBride.

It was early evening, but still warm and humid. Tucking his cell phone into his shorts pocket, Zach set out for the National Mall, running down Independence Avenue past the U.S. Botanic Garden to Third Street and left on Madison Drive. He set a fast pace, focused on his breathing, threading his way through pedestrians, bicycles, people without noticing them, his mind filled with random images.

Gisella smiling and handing him a Coke. Endless darkness and pain. Natalie looking pleadingly up at him while that Zeta bastard groped her. Carlos and his gold chains. His father’s angry face and flying fist.

Then his thoughts began to change.

Natalie removing his blindfold, setting him free. Natalie asleep beside him in the shade, her face flushed from the heat. Natalie naked and beautiful beneath him. Natalie reading a statement on national television, looking into his eyes.

You are my hero.

Ribs aching, he slowed to a walk. There was no point in running himself to death. He wasn’t going to get her out of his mind any time soon.

He’d read her first-person account of her ordeal this morning, catching it online just before he’d left home. He couldn’t imagine that it had been easy to write, her compassion for the Mexican journalists and the terror she’d felt evident in every word. He’d gotten a chuckle out of her alias for him, as, no doubt, she’d intended. But what had struck him as he’d read the article was her writing. She wasn’t just a good reporter. She was a talented writer, her words describing her experience in a way that put the reader there beside her.

Of course, Zach
had
been beside her for most of it, and reading the article had brought him to the rather amazing realization that their trek through the desert had been the most fun he’d had in a very long time.

You are sick in the head, frogman.

He was about a block from his apartment when his cell buzzed. He drew it out and saw that the number was restricted. “McBride.”

“It’s Farrell calling from EPIC.”

Farrell was a DUSM who spent his time tracking down fugitives from the United States who’d crossed into Mexico. What would make him call?

“Go ahead.”

“Word on the street is that men working for Cárdenas have crossed the line and are on their way to Denver to take out that pretty reporter of yours. I thought you’d want to know.”

Cárdenas had never sent his men more than a few miles across the border, and he’d never killed anyone who wasn’t involved with the narco trade. For him to kill a U.S. national deep inside the United States . . .

“Are you sure about this?”

“Heard it myself from a Juarense cop today. Watch your back.”

The line went dead.

“Son of a bitch!” Zach didn’t have Natalie’s cell phone number programmed into his phone or tucked away in his jock. He dialed information. “I need the cell number for Natalie Benoit in Denver, Colorado. It’s an emergency.”

He headed back toward his apartment at a jog.

 

NATALIE ORGANIZED THE stacks of paper she’d printed out, put them in paper clips, and tucked them into a file folder. Inspired, she’d decided to download everything she could about the Whitcomb Academy that had to do with money—its major donors, its major corporate sponsors, its board of directors, its board of trustees. Then she’d printed a list of everyone who’d contributed to the sheriff’s and DA’s last reelection campaigns.

She would spend tonight reading through what she had. If she found nothing suspicious and if the forensic accountant found nothing amiss, she would drop the story tomorrow and pick up something else.

Natalie made her way down to the front entrance. Gil Cormack, the paper’s security guard, had gone for the day. She’d thought about asking him to walk her to her car, but she’d stayed a bit too late. She stopped and scanned the parking lot, but didn’t see anyone. Then she opened the door and stepped outside.

The wind nearly blew the files she was carrying out of her grasp. Overhead the sky was gray, thunder coming from the west. From the looks of it, they were about to get a downpour.