He and Melinda had read and eliminated more than a dozen cases like that. Small numbers of guns, purchases traced back to someone with no criminal record, even if they ultimately handed it off to a criminal. But no indication that Petrov Armor had facilitated an illegal sale.
But every so often, a case would pop up with more guns—boxes of them rather than a single piece. They’d be sitting in the attic of a known gang member’s house. Or on the scene of a large, coordinated armed robbery. Although the guns were Petrov Armor’s, the serial numbers had been filed off, so investigators hadn’t been able to trace any back to a sale. It was why Petrov Armor had been investigated, but never charged.
It was legal for them to sell guns to civilians; they just couldn’t sell to convicted felons. Since that was a crime the ATF investigated, most of the cases Hendrick had tagged for them were joint FBI-ATF files. Which meant there could be more.
“What have you got?” Kane asked, leaning closer.
Like she did every time he got too close to her, Melinda twitched slightly, then stilled. She probably didn’t want to work with him, either. Although the director never talked about it, the role Kane had played in the death of Pembrook’s daughter was common knowledge.
Kane gritted his teeth and tried not to let Melinda’s reaction bother him. It was part of the reason he liked to work alone. But Pembrook had insisted she wanted both Melinda’s ability to read people’s intentions—even from a case file—and Kane’s extensive experience in the field, undercover with criminals, on this case review. So far, he had to admit, they made a good team. When she wasn’t flinching at his nearness, anyway.
“Convicted murderer, released on early parole. About a month after he got out, he strapped on some Petrov Armor body armor, took out a Petrov Armor pistol and killed five people in his old workplace, including the guy who turned him in. He bought the armor directly from Petrov Armor, which isn’t illegal. But the gun is a different matter. ATF could never figure out where he got the pistol, but his friend, who was also a convicted felon, told FBI agents that buying the gun was even easier than buying the armor. Then he shut up and wouldn’t give us anything else. But it sure seems like he could have gotten them at the same time, one on the books and one off.”
Kane leaned back in his chair, letting it tilt so he was staring up at the ceiling as he stacked his hands behind his head. “Maybe he just means it’s easy to get a friend to buy a firearm for you legally and then lend it. Happens all the time.”
Even though he could see her only from his peripheral vision, the way her lips twisted in disbelief wasn’t hard to picture. “Come on. Why does the average person need body armor and a gun? If this was your friend and you knew he was a violent criminal who’d just bought body armor, would you lend him a gun?”
Kane shrugged. Melinda could see through people better than anyone he’d ever met. But she’d never spent time undercover. Kane had spent so much of his career pretending to be someone else that his own identity sometimes felt nebulous. Which wasn’t such a bad thing, as far as he was concerned.
It had taught him just how much people wanted to believe those they loved, even when all the evidence warned them they were making a big mistake. Lending a criminal a gun and lying to yourself that they were just afraid—maybe of a system you’d also convinced yourself had railroaded that person—didn’t seem like much of a stretch.
“Well, maybe this one is less convincing than some of the other cases where we’ve got big boxes of guns. But add all these cases up and there’s something here.”
“I don’t know,” Kane argued. “There’s a huge black market for guns. It doesn’t mean Petrov Armor is involved in the sales.”
Melinda sat up straighter, folding her hands in front of her on the table, in a move Kane recognized. She was ready to make an argument.
He hid his smile as he gave her all his attention.
“Selling guns off the books means a huge markup. Criminals will pay more because they need to go through back channels. But a year ago, Leila Petrov shut down that part of the business.”
Kane let his chair tip him forward again as he wished he’d realized the connection sooner. “So, now whoever was making those backdoor deals—if that was happening—could be sending out inferior armor at the same prices as the good armor, pocketing the money left over from using cheaper materials.”
“Yes,” Melinda agreed, finally smiling at him.
It was probably the first real smile she’d given him since they’d been working together at TCD, or even in all the years before when he’d cross paths briefly with her. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he noticed how much it changed her face. Not that she wasn’t always pretty, but academic and too insightful had never been his type. But a smiling, proud Melinda was someone he needed to avoid even more.
“We need to find a way to get a look at Petrov Armor’s finances,” Melinda said.
“They’ve probably got double books,” Kane argued, putting his brief, ridiculous burst of attraction aside. “But maybe we need to try and set up a sale. Pretend to be a criminal and buy from them. An undercover op like this is a piece of cake. I’ve done a million of them.”
If he was trying to buy guns from someone at Petrov Armor, he wouldn’t be stuck in a tiny office with Melinda Larsen, pretending not to care that she could read anyone with a single glance. Pretending
