RELENTLESS (18 page)
And dragging some middle-aged woman from her
horse
farm
in the middle of Nowhere, California, into a case of this magnitude was not Conner’s idea of good situational management. Conner threw the ball to Seth.
“You know, there have been documented cases of nontraditional methods actually working.”
Conner dragged a hand through his black hair making it even more scruffy-looking than usual. “I don’t even want to hear it, Harrington. I’m pissed. I’m pissed that we’re wasting time going all the way out there.”
“As opposed to doing what?” Seth interjected. “Sitting around the office waiting for the perp to drop off another package?”
Conner leaned his head back and closed his eyes, sighing. Seth had a point. If this lady could help them break open the case in some way, Conner would take it. But he planned to be very careful about what info she was given. He wasn’t sure if she had tricked Chief Kelly and the other agents in some way before, but she damn well wouldn’t fool Conner.
“Fine,” Conner said. “But I would just like it stated, for the record, that I am going there under direct orders. I do not believe this to be the most effective use of our time.”
Seth nodded. “Duly noted, counselor.” He tossed the ball back to Conner.
Conner laid the ball on his desk and picked up Adrienne Jeffries’s ridiculously short and useless file. When he had tried to run her info in the Bureau’s computer system, the same thing happened. Somebody pretty high up in the FBI—maybe even higher than Chief Kelly—was protecting her or hiding something. There was no picture, no physical description of the woman, no mention of her ability and definitely no use of the word
bloodhound
.
By looking at her file, she could’ve been one of thousands of contractors who had worked as support staff for the FBI. Everything from janitorial to catering, clerking to photographing, were hired out each year. Every single one of those people had a file at the Bureau.
The fact that so much was blacked out in Adrienne Jeffries’s file was an immediate giveaway that she was no clerk or anything so benign. Basically her name and the years she’d worked for the Bureau were the only info the file provided.
It was what wasn’t provided that concerned Conner. If she was such a gifted profiler, why wasn’t Jeffries helping the FBI anymore? What type of person would turn their back on an ability like that, if it would save lives? A cold and uncaring one, to be sure.
And why the heck had she been under “not surveillance, exactly”? Contract workers quit the FBI all the time. Most were not being watched by the Bureau, as far as Conner knew. But this woman was, at least partially.
There was something not right about this situation and this woman. The one thing of which Conner was confident was that he did not have all the data. He loosened the top button of his shirt under his tie and grabbed the ball again, tossing it to Seth.
Conner did not like going into any situation blind. But it seemed like he didn’t have much choice in this case. They would bring the woman in, as he had been ordered, glean any useful info, if any, and then would get back to real work.
This was a waste of his time.
Copyright © 2014 by Janie Crouch
ISBN-13: 9781460329207
RELENTLESS
Copyright © 2014 by HelenKay Dimon
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