Deadly Sins (45 page)

More people meant more possibilities for leaks. But Adam didn’t look worried. If anything, he appeared in his element. In command.

“We need to concentrate on how the crimes relate to me, since someone is making damn sure that I’m at the center of this,” he said.

Certain of the unpopularity of her next comments, Jaid nonetheless said, “Agreed. And whoever is attempting to frame you is someone who knows you well. Someone is familiar with your history and is using it against you. Agent Shepherd told me again this morning that he is pursuing an avenue regarding your friend. Father Benton.”

Adam’s glare was lethal. Everyone else in the room seemed to be holding their collective breath. “Jerry’s biggest fault is caring too deeply about causes others don’t even think about. I hope you’re not suggesting that a man of God would put aside all vows and enact not one but four murders?”

Her voice was even. “I’m just telling you one line of investigation going on. They are looking for Benton for another round of questioning. He’s nowhere to be found.” Taking in the stillness of his expression, she felt a stab of remorse for adding that worry atop his other more urgent ones.

“Risa, see if you and Nate can track his whereabouts.”

The slender woman with eyes nearly as gold as her hair nodded. “It’ll give me a chance to break the newbie in.”

“Eight years in Philadelphia homicide,” Nate murmured. Jaid figured that Risa’s sudden start meant she’d been the recipient of surreptitious pinch. “I think I’m up to it.”

“Paulie and I are questioning whether the assistant director is involved.” Adam’s next words commanded everyone’s immediate attention. And the statement gave voice to a terrible suspicion she’d never dared contemplate. But one that made a horrible sort of sense.

“He . . . resents you,” she said slowly. She’d told Adam as much before. “It’s connected to the LeCroix case you worked together.” The outcome of that case might have elevated Adam to cult hero status, but Hedgelin has ridden it to his current position in the agency. “I know he was unhappy about Bolton’s proposed book on you.”

Adam nodded. “He admitted to me that he had spoken to the man; I assume to get his side of the LeCroix case on record.”

Jaid’s gaze traveled around the table. “So yesterday’s murder eliminated one of the assistant director’s concerns.”

“I believe he was upset a few years back when a case of mine intersected with one of the bureau’s. Shepherd was working it at the time.” Several at the table were scribbling notes as Adam spoke. “I solved their kidnapping case when I broke up a child-swap ring. Shepherd was banished to North Dakota; probably for embarrassing the agency.”

“Or Hedgelin,” Jaid murmured.

Risa spoke then, her gaze steely. “It was an FBI screw-up that led to Jennings shooting Adam. According to their agents, they had the shooter contained in a residence, surrounded. It turned out they’d been duped by a lookalike.”

“And the icing on the cake?” There was an uncharacteristic hardness in Paulie’s usually ebullient expression. “It was also the bureau who handed us a nice and neat little motivation for Jennings, which I never bought. That he was revenging an ex-girlfriend’s father’s arrest?” He made a scoffing sound. “There’s not much I’d do for ex-girlfriends, and murder doesn’t even make the list.”

“So we focus on Hedgelin. Look for links, however remote, to Jennings, Ferrell, Lambert, Tweed. He had to have come into contact with them somewhere.”

“It’s possible he heard the same rumors we did last January.” This from an unsmiling Macy. “That the LeCroix boy was alive. And now he’s appeared as Scott Lambert. Is there any chance he was more deeply involved in this than he says?”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t think so. Abbie and Ryne Robel are checking out his story about his childhood, though. Maybe they can discover someone else who was digging around in the Lamberts’ pasts. The profile I developed of the DC killer suggests he’s selecting targets for personal reasons. I still think this holds true if Hedgelin turns out to be the offender. I don’t have a connection to Patterson, and I barely knew Cote. Look for links from Hedgelin to each of the victims. Their selection will be about him, not me.”

He stopped then as his phone rang. “It’s the Robels,” he said in an aside to Paulie, and the two men got up and left the room.

Jaid rose, closed the door after them, and surveyed the remaining occupants. “I think we need to look hard at Hedgelin, and I’m willing to admit he fits. But it would be a mistake not to look at the obvious, and that is the offender could be anyone close to Adam.” She watched the quick glances they shot each other and smiled grimly. “Yes, by all means, count me in that group. And I say that because I want to remind you that no one is above suspicion. Not me. Not Pastor Benton.”

“And not Paulie Samuels.”

“Mace, what the hell?” It was Kell who responded to his fiancée’s words, but from the shocked expressions on everyone else’s faces, they were similarly taken aback.

The petite woman ran a nervous hand through her dark hair, but her voice was mutinous. “I just learned recently that my stepfather, the man who raised me, the man I would have trusted with my life, was responsible for my kidnapping when I was eight.”

Jaid blinked in shock at the news, but it was apparent from the sympathy in the others’ expressions that they knew about it already. Macy looked at them all grimly. “Betrayal is hardest to see from those closest to you. That’s all I’m saying. Jaid is right. We can’t afford to overlook anyone. Not with Adam’s life at stake.”

“I saw Paulie with Adam in Philly,” Risa said slowly. “But not on the night he was shot.”

“He ran the wireless ransom pickup in Colorado last winter when we worked that Mulder kidnapping.” Kell shook his head. “I hate this.”

“He’s been with Adam since the beginning, right?” Cait’s green eyes were troubled. “They were in the agency together even at the time of the LeCroix case.”

Jaid felt a little queasy about where her warning had led. She’d known Samuels for over a decade. Would never have doubted his devotion to Adam. Hated hearing it questioned now.

But she hated even more the thought of him vulnerable to someone he trusted and would never suspect. “Paulie inherits the business in the event of Adam’s death,” she told them. “And the money goes to Father Benton.”

“Sort of a big-fucking motive on both counts.” Kell’s gaze was hard. “Risa and Nate pursue the Benton line. Jaid, you know more about Hedgelin than anyone but Paulie and Adam, so you help Cait on that end.” She nodded. “Macy has the Harandi sample to run, then she’ll help me see if Paulie ties in to this in anyway.”

“He was with the agency, too,” Cait put in. “Maybe he has links to Jennings and the others.”

“He was in the cyber unit,” Jaid reminded her. “But, yes, that’s definitely something to be checked into.”

Zach Sharper looked at the group. “I don’t work for this outfit, but you might as well put me to work. I’ve tackled a few things along the way since getting tied up with this one.” He jerked a thumb at Cait, who gave him a feline smile.

“Always a sweet talker. Stick with me. I’ll find something to keep you busy.”

Chairs scraped as they all rose. Jaid noted that no one had mentioned checking on her. But she didn’t fool herself into thinking that her relationship with Adam would be overlooked. The thought didn’t bother her. She wanted thorough. Adam deserved no less. And if his own operatives couldn’t be relied on to keep the man safe, she didn’t know who could.

No one would anticipate a strike again so soon. Events had spiraled a bit quicker than he’d planned, but adaptability was always key.

He hadn’t expected Cody Tweed to be taken out yesterday, but maybe Raiker had done him a favor there. The assassin was quickly becoming a loose end. And he could take it from here.

A slow smile formed at the thought. As a matter of fact, his plan called for a more personal touch.

Put on the vinyl gloves. That was important, wasn’t it? Reach across the table for the white note card and a red marker. Prepare for the next victim.

Next to Raiker, this one was the most deserving of all.

The e-lab looked like something out of Hollywood. Or at the very least an upgrade to what she’d seen at Quantico.

Jaid’s eyes widened when she saw what was, she had to remind herself, merely a secondary site for Adam. Each of the operatives had uploaded the data they’d compiled. Paulie had explained, in a lengthy, detailed discussion that had been lost on her, how he and Gavin ensured their backup server was secure. She’d have to take his word on it. But it had occurred to her, with a quick glance at Kell, that if the man wanted to advertise their location electronically, he was in position to do just that and none of them would be the wiser.

There were half-a-dozen desktop computers in the lab, with screens the size of the one at Adam’s loft. But it was the touch screen on the wall that held her attention. It was enormous. Easily eight feet by six feet. And portions of their reports were projected up on it, with Adam moving the data around with the brush of a finger.

“Here’s what everyone has come up with on Hedgelin so far.” He pulled a data report over, enlarged it with a flick of his fingers. “He was the special agent in charge who was responsible for putting away Jennings fifteen years ago.”

“The man who did his damnedest to kill you last winter and spring,” Risa murmured.

Inclining his head, Adam continued, using his index finger to pull another data report across the screen so the two sat side by side. “He had five years in the cyber unit for the bureau before switching to field agent. So he’s got the skills to be the one sniffing around the agency’s financials for the last several months.”

Jaid intercepted the surprised looks from his operatives. Apparently, this was news to them as well as to her.

“Someone needed a great deal of electronics know-how to set up that wireless ransom payment for the Mulder girl’s kidnapping last winter,” he went on. “Paulie managed to circumvent seven million of it, but he still got three. There’s also evidence that some of that ransom money ended up in a wireless account for the assassin sent after me in May.”

“And it takes a cyber background to come up with the spyware on the first two victims’ cell phones,” Jaid put in, fascinated as Adam manipulated each piece of data into a linear sequence. “Not to mention the self-destructing e-mails sent to Lambert’s computer.”

“Any sign of that money in Hedgelin’s financials?”

Paulie shook his head woefully at Kell’s question. “I’ve spent months trying to trace the money from the ransom last winter, and there are three overseas accounts I’ve got flagged. But whoever is the owner has done a good job keeping his identity secret. Of course, it helps that he chose countries that don’t follow international banking regulations.”

A chill worked down Jaid’s skin. The cyber wizardry described could just as easily be attributed to Paulie himself.

“If the DC killer is the same one who’s behind the Mulder kidnapping, at least we know how he financed the assassins. Jennings. Ferrell. Yes,” Macy nodded to Adam when he would have interrupted, “we have to include him. Tweed. And Vincent Dodge, the man who actually snatched the girl in Colorado. That’s a lot of money. Sure, he had the three million from the ransom, but he’s expended some serious cash in this effort. How does he hope to recoup it?”

“That’s a question we’ll have to ask him.”

Jaid propped her hips against one of the desks behind her and stared at Adam. Wondered what he wasn’t telling them. It was slightly frightening to realize how well she knew the man. But he’d shut her out enough in the past to make her certain that there was something he wasn’t disclosing right now.

“If I can go on.” His voice was silky. A sign of his flagging patience. “Connections to the victims. I know we never saw his name on Patterson’s client list, but as we discovered by talking to the other investment manager at Dennison International, Heath Carroll, all these companies are interrelated to some extent. Hedgelin does have an investment account with another large corporation, Stanley International.”

“How could you possibly have learned that?”

The room went silent at Jaid’s question. “Seriously, this is private information. It wouldn’t be accessible . . .” Comprehension struck her.

“Every database we access at headquarters at Raiker Forensics is strictly legit,” Paulie assured her.

“And here?”

“Not.”

Adam, damn him, looked amused. “Hacking is a serious crime, Special Agent Marlowe. Feel free to make an arrest.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she muttered.

“As I was saying,” he went on with an exaggerated inflection, “it’s nebulous. Requires speculation. But that’s a tenuous tie to Patterson, if Hedgelin blamed that firm’s actions when his investments went south.”