By the time he’d lifted his head a second time, the men, having found the cottage empty, were climbing back in their car. He’d released her then.
She’d been gasping for air again, much like when he’d hoisted her off the rocks.
He’d told her to be more careful in the future, and to go home. Then he’d walked away, up the beach, to where he’d parked his car behind a cluster of trees. From there, he’d watched her hurry up the trail that led away from the beach, the opposite way of the cottage, and onto the road that curved around the hill and led to several houses.
Another woman had met her on the road. He’d driven away then, to report his findings and set up the capture of the counterfeit ring, which hadn’t happened that night. Someone had tipped them off. The crooks were eventually caught a week later.
In Oregon.
Tasting those lips again brought everything back like it all had happened yesterday.
Coincidences didn’t happen in the intelligence world. He should have paid more attention to the fact she’d been at the beach next to that cottage.
She could be one of the missing pieces he was searching for.
Perhaps the piece.
The sounds behind him, although muffled by the walls, still entered his ears. The laughter, the music. He weighed his options, and the chance of Lane recognizing him was too great. The outcome of this case was too great. There was a mole in the agency. An agent who was tipping off criminals, gangsters, about busts that were imminent and leaking other aspects of vital information that only few knew.
That was why he was undercover right now, pretending to be Rex Gaynor, a train robber who had been offed while in prison. Someone had snuck bootlegged whiskey into the prison. That wasn’t unusual. Things, all sorts of items and contraband, were smuggled into and out of prisons on a daily basis. But Gaynor had been given widow-maker juice. The first cup of shine out of a still was a deadly concoction of pure methanol.
A dead inmate who’d been tried and convicted usually wouldn’t raise awareness, but this case was different. It had been seven years since Gaynor had robbed that train, and though Gaynor had always claimed there had been someone else involved, someone he didn’t know, there hadn’t been any proof of that.
Back when he’d been working that case, Henry had suspected there was either a piece of information left uncovered, or, what he truly thought, was that it had been covered up. He suspected that train robbery had been the mole’s first crack at leaking information, and because it had worked, the mole had continued doing so.
Henry had been assigned to investigating Gaynor’s death because he’d worked on the case seven years ago. He’d had no reason to suspect another agent back then of covering up information, but because that feeling had stuck with him, he hadn’t stopped looking. He’d found what he’d been looking for. A manifesto of passengers on the train, one that had supposedly been thoroughly examined seven years ago to attest that all passengers had been accounted for, and whoever had examined it back then had also covered up the truth. Henry had suspicions about who had covered that up.
All the passengers hadn’t been accounted for. Another man had been on that train. Vincent Burrows, a two-bit member of a crime family from New Jersey who had bounced back and forth across the county but had never been involved in anything big enough to have the Bureau looking into him.
Until now.
Gaynor hadn’t known who Burrows was seven years ago, so why would Burrows have him offed now? Someone had put Burrows up to it, and Henry was certain it had been the mole. He just wasn’t sure why.
The prison had kept Gaynor’s death a secret. Other than the warden and the guard who’d found Gaynor, only intelligence agents knew Gaynor was dead. Burrows might have ordered Gaynor’s death, but the only way he’d know for sure if his order had been followed out, was if an intelligence agent had told him. The ploy Henry and his supervisor had established was to let the public, and others, believe that Rex Gaynor had escaped, and for Henry to pretend to be Gaynor, in order for Burrows to seek him out, whereas in reality, the true mission was to draw out and nail the mole. It was one of the three other agents working on the case, and Henry had his suspicions on which one.
Convinced tonight had not been a coincidence, he locked the door behind him.
He had more reason to believe the woman he’d danced with tonight and seen on the beach in Seattle three years ago was connected to the mole. The prison warden said a young blonde woman had visited the prison, hours before Gaynor had died.
People, the general public and those in all levels of law enforcement, often refused to believe that women were capable of doing dirty deeds. In his mind, women weren’t any more righteous or just than men. Society just wished they were. He’d discovered that during one of his first major cases.
His insides grew dark at the memory.
Scarlet O’Malley had duped him. Seduced him. She’d almost gotten away with it. Almost. He’d eventually seen through her. When he’d arrested her there had been an uproar of anger toward the Bureau. Scarlet had been loved by many, because she’d read nighttime stories to children over the radio every night. Those stories had been codes for bootleggers and rumrunners to know where the blockades had been set up to thwart the efforts of law enforcement.
He still hated himself for the fact that she’d obtained, seduced, information out of him. That was a lesson learned he’d never forget. Scarlet was a lesson he’d never forget. She’d been attractive and fun, and he’d been young and stupid. Had thought he’d known everything there
