He nodded reluctantly. “Leila loved her dad. She’d never suspect him of anything illegal or immoral. But honestly, she still doesn’t think it’s anyone at the company. She’s convinced a switch happened after the shipment left Petrov Armor.”
“Well, that might have been plausible—if unlikely—when we were talking about one defective armor shipment. But she doesn’t know how big this case has gotten, including all the illegal arms sales,” Kane replied. “So, he helps get his daughter put in charge, thinking she’ll be clueless. Then, she shuts down the gun business, so Neal switches to defective armor. As the biggest shareholder, he’s still getting plenty of the company’s profits. So, he’s swapping out the materials for cheaper stuff and pocketing the balance. That would suggest he was working with Theresa.”
“And then she had him killed?” Melinda interrupted. “Why?”
“Maybe she wanted more of the profits for herself,” Davis suggested, able to imagine the determined head of R and D paying someone to kill Neal. Or even pulling the trigger herself. “She resented Leila being put in charge. Maybe she blamed Neil for putting her there and giving her a chance to shut down the gun side of the business.”
“Or it wasn’t Theresa who killed him at all,” Melinda suggested. “Maybe it was someone who learned what he was doing and took their own revenge.”
“But the faulty armor only caused deaths after Neal was already murdered,” Davis said.
“At least as far as we know,” Melinda contradicted. “But what if it was someone internal? Someone who learned about the gun sales and wanted them stopped? Maybe they sent the faulty armor to get him investigated and when that took too long, they had him killed instead.”
“There are easier ways of dealing with that, though. Anonymous tip to police, for one. Sending out bad armor to trigger an investigation seems pretty drastic and complicated. Too many variables the perp can’t control,” Davis argued.
“Yeah, but what revenge murder do you know of that’s not drastic?”
“Point taken. If it’s revenge. But I don’t think it is. It seems more likely he was killed by his partner in the illegal gun sales, doesn’t it?” Davis glanced at Kane, wondering about his take. Melinda might be the profiler, but Kane had spent most of his career undercover. He’d worked with the CIA repeatedly. He understood the underhanded dealings of criminals better than most, because he’d seen them up close. Rumor had it that sometimes he’d even participated to keep his cover intact.
“Maybe,” Kane said, but there was uncertainty in his tone. “It’s the timing I’m interested in. What happened three weeks ago that got Neal Petrov killed? It’s interesting that it’s close to the timing of that faulty shipment. Then, there’s the fact that the gun side of the business shut down last year. My gut says all those things are somehow connected.”
“Leila has agreed to give me access to the security camera footage and logs from the time the latest batch of armor was made,” Davis told them. “Hopefully that will give us some insight.”
“In the meantime, you need to continue to act like you’re just there about one shipment of defective armor,” Melinda said. “Leila can’t suspect her father was murdered or she might just blow open this whole investigation.”
“I know,” Davis answered, not quite meeting her gaze. He had no intention of telling Leila the truth, at least not until they had someone in custody. But lying to her even a little bit made him feel terrible. How was he going to keep something this huge from her?
IT WAS SEVENTY degrees and the sun was shining, but Kane Bradshaw was tucked into a dark corner beneath an underpass. Fifty feet away, a low-level drug deal was taking place. A hundred feet beyond that, a cluster of cardboard boxes and blankets housed more people than should have been able to fit in the tight space.
Kane ignored all of it. He kept his back to a pillar and swept the area with his gaze until he spotted his confidential informant. Dougie Zimmerman sauntered over with his typical cocky attitude, hiking up pants that never seemed to stay above his bony hips. With what little hair he had on his head shaved close and a goatee hiding some of his pockmarked face, Dougie looked like he was more arrogance than real threat.
The truth was somewhere in between.
Dougie had dropped out of high school and started driving trucks full of illegal goods when he was seventeen. By the time he was nineteen, he’d done two short stints in jail, but hadn’t turned on anyone. It had earned him trust among the criminal element and more illegal jobs. A year after that, he’d been caught again, this time with enough drugs to send him away for a long time.
Instead of going to jail, Kane’s then-partner at the FBI had made the arrest disappear and turned Dougie into a confidential informant. That had been eight years ago. Since then, Dougie had become one of Kane’s best CIs. Kane had helped disappear multiple drug possession charges, an illegal gun charge and even an armed robbery charge to keep Dougie on the streets. Because he always delivered more than the damage he caused.
Still, Dougie had become a CI to stay out of jail and for the way the thrill of double-crossing boosted his ego. At the end of the day, Dougie was still a criminal. And Kane was still FBI.
Although he kept his hands loose at his sides, Kane was ready to react if Dougie showed any sign of a double-cross. Kane had one of the quickest draws at TCD. He’d never had a meeting with a CI go sideways, but he’d had plenty of undercover operations turn bad, so he was always prepared. Usually with multiple weapons hidden on his body.
Only once had his preparedness not been enough. Back then, his partner had paid the ultimate price.
