Necessary Force (3 page)

“Everyone has enemies.”

“The last enemy I knew about was Howie Berkowitz who claimed I stole his science project idea. That was eighth grade. I doubt Howie’s still thinking about me.”

Mr. FBI didn’t smile. “You work with politicians and other people who are very sensitive about how they are portrayed in the media.”

“How do you know what I do?” She had mentioned she was a photographer, not whom she photographed.

He smiled. “Googled you on the way over.”

“Nice. Did you get an enemy list, too? Maybe try antonyms for Georgiana Flynn.”

He smiled. “A sense of humor is good. Means you’re not that shook up.”

“Don’t believe it.”

“So, what could this person or persons have been looking for? Did you take compromising photos of some pol or a dignitary?”

“I’m not paparazzo. Think
New York Times
not tabloid.”

“All the same, you are in the unique position to have even accidentally snapped a picture that the subject might not want circulated.”

“If you know something I don’t then you’d better tell me because the only thing I’ve noticed is that whoever broke in didn’t take anything of value except to me personally. My cameras and computer equipment are expensive but replaceable.”

“What about your photographs? Where do you keep them?”

“In the Cloud, like everyone. Everything, including editing, is done digitally these days. I don’t have a room of deteriorating celluloid, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“If someone was looking for photos you took last week at the Russell Senate Office Building, where would this person need to look?”

“In hindsight. There are no pictures.” Special Agent Clinton looked skeptical. “My camera malfunctioned. I didn’t realize it until the event was over.”

“Don’t you carry several cameras, in case something like that happens?”

“Yes. But I didn’t notice a problem because my favorite camera seemed to be working just fine. It turns out the microchip was corrupted and didn’t record the shots I was taking. I didn’t know that until I got home and tried to download them.”

“What did you do with the corrupted chip?”

“I—wait a minute.” Georgie stood up. “There’s something going on you know about that I don’t, right? What’s this all about?”

“You’re doing fine, Ms. Flynn. Just keep answering my questions. When we’re done I’ll answer what I can of yours.”

“I don’t think so.” Georgie looked around her apartment, at the two agents who had begun sifting ever so gingerly through the mayhem of her living room. Clearly, something was going on that she didn’t understand. Agent Clinton had not given her a clue as to what it was. She didn’t like this one-sided conversation. She was the victim. “I want to know what’s going on. Or, do I need to call my attorney?”

“We’d rather you didn’t do that.”

“I bet you do.” She pulled her phone from the pocket of her jeans. “And since you’ve not given me any reason why I should continue to answer your questions, I’d rather you leave. So, do what you need to do while I do what I need to do.”

Mr. FBI man stared at her while she punched buttons on her phone. When she put it to her ear, he reached out and snatched it from her. “Ms. Flynn, we suspect that you are the focus of interest for a domestic terrorist.”

Georgie’s mouth dropped open. And then sharp laughter burst from her, startling the others in the room. “Oh, for god’s sake. You can’t really think that.”

Mr. FBI didn’t smile. He clicked her phone off and handed it back to her. “We’ve been watching you for a while. You took pictures last week at an event where an unexploded bomb was discovered. We have reason to believe that the photos you took that night are what your burglar was after.”

The feeling went out of Georgie’s legs, dropping her back onto the sofa arm. “You’re serious?”

“Why did you leave town the morning after the event? No one has known where to find you, not even your colleagues.”

“The FBI spoke with my colleagues about me?”
We’ve been watching you for a while.
This was bad.

“Where did you go on such short notice? And don’t say relatives, Ms. Flynn.”

Georgie tried to do some quick calculations in her head. They had spoken with her contacts at the news services she regularly sold to. Perhaps they even had contacted her family about her whereabouts.

“I went to the Ozarks. Eureka Springs to be exact.”

“We couldn’t find a record of you purchasing a plane ticket.”

“I drove. Borrowed a friend’s car.” It occurred to her she had at least one colleague who had sought to protect her privacy by not giving them that information. She owed Frank a good bottle of Scotch.

The same idea must have occurred to her interrogator. “Whose car did you borrow?”

“I’d rather not say at this time.” Frank had enough problems without an angry FBI agent hassling him.

Clinton stared at her. “Your trip wasn’t scheduled. In fact, you blew off two scheduled jobs and just disappeared the day after the event you claim you don’t have photos for. What made you run, Ms. Flynn?”

“I didn’t run. Well, not exactly. It’s personal.”

“Something not go as you planned?”

She ignored the taunt. “I’d had one of those weeks where nothing goes right. The camera malfunction was just part of it. And then I got this e-mail rant from a guy. I just decided I needed to go somewhere entirely different and take pictures of legs.”

“Do what?”

Georgie could have bitten her tongue. Why had she said something so personal to a stranger? She shrugged. “When I want to clear my head I go somewhere I’ve never been and where I know no one, and I take pictures.”

He made a note. It probably said
psycho artistic type
. “What’s his name? The ranter on your blog?”

Georgia took a deep breath. “Secret Admirer.”

Clinton paused, his stylus hovering over his phone. “What?”

“That’s the name he goes by online. He’s a fanboy of my photos. He reads my photography blog and is my most ardent responder.”

Mr. FBI didn’t even blink. “What did you say his name is?”

“Secret Admirer. Seriously, that’s how he signs his account.” Georgie felt the irrational need to defend her cyber fan. “I know it’s weird. But he’s been a fan a long time. Probably four years now. Sometimes I think he knows more about my professional life than I do.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He’s much more detail oriented about my work than I am. He knows every time a photo of mine is printed or shows up online. He even keeps up with where they are reused online, or in print. There’s so much cyber theft that my photos show up in China and India without attribution all the time. But he’ll track it down and send me proof. He really gets worked up about my stolen or unattributed work.”

“That seems extreme.”

“I know.” Georgie nodded, and pocketed her phone. “It was starting to creep me out. Especially these last couple of months. He was furious that I didn’t win a Pulitzer this year. One of my photos of the bomb—” A hard shiver rocked Georgie. “Oh god.”

“Was that the bombing at George Washington University last year?”

Georgie nodded, feeling a little sicker with every moment.

“How did you happen to be in the right place at the right time to get those photos?”

“This apartment is only a couple of blocks away from the university. I heard the explosion, grabbed my camera, and ran.”

“Toward a bomb blast? And those pictures just happened to put you in the running for a Pulitzer. Lucky you, huh?”

One of the other agents moved in close to whisper to their leader.

Georgie barely noticed. New shocks were quaking through her. The FBI wasn’t just looking at her for information. They were including her in their suspect list.

She reached again for her phone. “I really think I need to make a call to my attorney now.”

“If you insist, I’ll have to ask you to have him meet you downtown.”

She looked up. “You’re arresting me?”

“Let’s say you’re a person of interest in an ongoing investigation.” He let that thought sink in before he went on. “There’s just one other thing I’d like your permission to do before we take this to a more formal setting. I’d like your permission to call in a K-9 explosives detection team.”

“What?” Georgie looked around her apartment with eyes wide. “Did one of your people find something? A bomb?”

“It’s just a precaution. We have your permission?”

“This is insane.” She shook her head. “Okay. Sure. But I’m calling my attorney.”

While Special Agent Clinton made his own call, Georgie got her D.C. bureau chief on the phone to ask her to please send a staff attorney over who could represent her. She only said she had been burglarized and the police suspected it wasn’t random. She was afraid if she said FBI they might not be able to find anyone willing to take her case, no questions asked.

As Georgie finished her call she heard sounds of footsteps outside her door. One of Clinton’s partners went to answer the knock. The first thing she saw was the golden head of a yellow Labrador retriever nose through the door. By the time her gaze rose to the man holding its leash, she was ten feet down the rabbit hole and dropping fast.

“Philip?”

As he made his way through D.C. traffic to his target site, FBI Special Agent and K-9 Bomb Technician Brad Lawson wrestled with his conscience.

Seconds ago details of his dispatch had appeared on the laptop screen inside his vehicle. Above the address was the name
Georgiana Flynn
.

“Shit!”

With a yip of concern, Zander pushed his big satiny yellow Labrador retriever head through the opening that separated the K-9’s backseat crate from the front seat of the FBI vehicle.

“Easy, boy.” Brad reached up and gave his partner a pat under the chin. He knew Zander was reading the pheromones streaming off him from his agitation. That wasn’t good. They needed to be mentally calm and absolutely focused.

“Zander.
Platz.
” Zander instantly obeyed the German command that was also a signal that they were on duty. He pulled his head back and lay down in back.

Brad took a deep breath. He couldn’t allow his feelings to cloud his judgment where his job was concerned. But he was up to his butt in alligators, and he knew it.

The last person he’d expected to have professional contact with again had just turned up a second time as a person of interest in an ongoing FBI investigation, this time that of a would-be bomber.

This was going to be a first-class shit show. And there was very little he could do about it.

He was an experienced twelve-year veteran of the FBI, recruited right out of college. By consistently giving 100 percent, he had quickly gained a reputation as tough, honest, and nearly impossible to deceive. His ability to compartmentalize and bring a laser focus to every task made him tops in his present line of work: K-9 bomb detection and assessment, plus special FBI assignment work that could take his team anywhere at a moment’s notice. With that job priority, he didn’t think it right to promise a woman anything more than
right now
. Most women accepted that arrangement. That meant he’d had no long-term relationship in years. He was fine with that.

That is, until the game of hide-and-seek with a shadowy figure had brought Georgiana Flynn to the FBI’s attention two months earlier.

The guy was one of dozens of head cases they tracked routinely nationwide. Most suspects never got beyond the howling mad-dog rage stage. But then a few months ago, a new guy, code-named “Kodak” because of his obsession with photography, began making specific threats. Peppering various D.C.-area media outlets with untraceable e-mails, he railed against the Pulitzer Prize committee for their choices of winners for the Breaking News Photography and Feature Photography categories when, he’d written, better choices were available among their finalist lists. He promised to provide the committee with “explosive and unequivocal proof” of that photographer’s genius for next year’s awards.

That threat shifted Kodak’s file into priority status. It didn’t take long to gather names and do background checks on those photographers who had been listed as finalists for this year’s Pulitzers. The FBI concluded that Kodak’s concentration on D.C. media meant he lived and possibly worked in the nation’s capital. Only one finalist lived in Kodak’s apparent home base of D.C.: Georgiana Flynn.

There were a lot of different departments that worked on a case like this one. The preliminary workup on Georgiana by FBI Intelligence gave her a squeaky-clean record. Who the hell gets to be thirty years of age without even one moving violation? The FBI Criminal Investigation team assigned to Kodak agreed. On paper she seemed too good to be true. She needed to be checked out. That’s when Brad was drawn into the case.

The “Alpha Male K-9” calendar shoot at Harmonie Kennels provided the FBI with a perfect excuse to insert an agent into her life for a limited time to check her out without her getting suspicious. They had not officially agreed to send a man to be photographed half-undressed for public record, not even for Yardley Summers. However, as a K-9 handler as well as special agent, Brad Lawson uniquely filled the slot as hunk with a canine.

Brad shook his head in memory of his relentless hazing at the task force meetings leading up to the insertion. “Hot body” was not a job asset on the FBI intake form. Still, he got onto the roster for the photo shoot under the false name Philip Dexter, and right into the crosshairs of Georgiana Flynn’s camera.

His mission: get next to the FBI’s person of interest.

Next to.
Brad flinched. He’d gotten more than next to Georgiana Flynn. He’d made skin-to-skin contact in the most intimate of ways. The encounter had been a revelation. She’d gotten under his guard and caused him to forget, for the hours he spent in her bed, that he was on the job.

Before going in to make contact with her, he had read every article and watched every minute of footage of her on file, most of it taken after she’d been announced as a Pulitzer finalist. She was a natural on camera, if a bit shy. She seemed genuinely amazed by the hoopla surrounding her sudden notoriety. She repeated over and over in various interviews that she preferred to be on the other end of the cameras recording her image. It was a nice image. Her natural red hair had a mind of its own, curling in riotous freedom in a world where TV hair was usually straight, smooth, and rarely moved. Her eyes were the color of aquamarines, clear and bright, and watchful. Her freckles were refreshingly on display, not covered by concealer as many women did. She seemed completely open. And yet, he had picked up on a few of her “tells.” When she felt cornered by an interviewer, she dipped her head a bit and her lids dropped. But that was not shyness. Her little smile gave it away. She was shielding her thoughts from the idiot who’d asked an inappropriate question, such as, “You ever take sexy selfies for Instagram and Twitter?” Or, “You got a boyfriend?”