Fear No Evil

“Do I need to pull you off this case?”

Quinn stared at Merritt. “Take a step back, Merritt. You’re doing yourself a disservice.”

“Don’t talk to me.”

For the first time, Quinn saw how pained Jeff Merritt was. His hair was out of place, his eyes had bags under them, and his clothes had been worn for well over twenty-four hours. Merritt lost the woman he loved to a sadistic killer. Quinn had almost been in those shoes. To think he nearly lost Miranda twice to a killer…but the fact that she survived didn’t mean he couldn’t understand what Merritt was going through.

“Jeff,” Quinn said quietly, “I’ve been where you are.”

“You know nothing.”

“Guilt that you couldn’t stop Paige from disobeying orders. Anger that she put her life on the line. Remorse that you didn’t tell her you loved her the last time she walked out your door.”

Quinn saw that he had hit the nail on the head with the last point.

“Dr. Kincaid is a consultant for the San Diego Police Department. This is what he does for a living. He figured out Roger’s connection to Trask.”

“And the Bureau is filled with incompetent fools? I’ll tell that to your pal Vigo.”

“The Bureau is overworked and understaffed, and you know as well as I do that as soon as Trask’s trail dried up, we worked other cases. You know how it is.”

“I’ve never stopped working Paige’s murder.”

“I know. And that’s why you’re too close. What were you thinking sending Mick Mallory in?”

“Mallory is the best damn undercover agent in the Bureau.”

“Was,” Quinn corrected. “Until his wife was murdered. He’s mentally unstable and you know it. And how could he have let Lucy be raped?”

Merritt frowned. “He must have been in a position where he couldn’t have helped her without blowing his cover. Last time he checked in there were six people, including him and Trask. Five men, one woman. He was waiting for the right time-”

“Right time for what?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“You sent Mallory to assassinate Trask.” Quinn shook his head. It all made sense now.

“It’s not supposed to be a suicide mission.”

“Since when do you have the authority to send in an assassin? Not to mention a man who isn’t trained for it?”

“What makes you think I don’t have the authority?”

He might, though if the operation blew up around them Merritt would be the scapegoat. Quinn had seen it happen before. But this time? Quinn highly doubted Merritt had any sanction for Mallory’s assignment.

“I’m going to play it straight with you, Merritt, and I want you to be straight with me. Okay?”

“What?”

“Kincaid believes Roger is working closely with someone he went to school with. Trask Enterprises began five years after he graduated from high school, but Roger Morton had no job, no college, no friends. Kincaid got the list of every student at Stonebridge Academy who had been at the school with Roger. His father identified three who had been Morton’s closest friends. One is dead. One is a stockbroker in New York. The other was expelled. I learned he’s on the board of directors of six legitimate companies, but can’t get a recent picture of him. My contact says that he owns stock in all the companies, sends his proxy to the meetings, and no one claims to have seen him. I have one old picture of him when he was sixteen, right before he was expelled.”

Quinn slid over the picture of a blond teenager with icy blue eyes. “Kate is the only person who has seen him and is still alive. I’m going to get this to her.”

“You’re working with her.” But Merritt couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph.

“I want you to drop all charges against her.”

“No.”

“Give her immunity, Merritt, and don’t tell me you can’t.”

“Paige died because of her.”

“Paige died because of him.” Quinn slapped his hand on the photograph of Adam Scott.

They were in a holding area of a small military facility. If it could be called a military facility. It looked more like a makeshift training camp in the middle of the desert. Red Rock, Jack had said, but Kate told Dillon they were at least twenty miles from Red Rock and she wasn’t one hundred percent sure where they were without looking at her maps. Dillon didn’t buy into conspiracy theories, but right now he would have believed virtually anything anyone told him about this place. Off the grid, Dillon thought. The men were not in standard military gear, and everyone knew Jack Kincaid.

Kate paced anxiously, like a caged tigress. “What’s taking so long?”

Dillon couldn’t say, so he didn’t answer. Instead he asked, “What kind of place is this?”

Kate shrugged. “Looks like a private mercenary training camp, except that their equipment isn’t surplus. State of the art. Did you catch a glimpse of the radar system at the airport?”

“No.” Didn’t look like an airport, either. One runway and a solitary building in the middle of nowhere. They were being held underground. “So is this run by the military or not?”

“Depends who you ask and when you ask it.”

“You’re as helpful as Jack.”

“You really don’t know what your brother does?”

“I haven’t seen him in eleven years.”

That surprised Kate. “Really?”

“Why are you surprised?”

“Because…I don’t know. You seem close.”

“We were, at one time.” And seeing Jack again conflicted Dillon. They were different people today, with no way to regain what they’d had growing up. They’d grown apart, leading different lives, going down dramatically different paths. Dillon hadn’t been faced with the choices Jack had, but deep down Dillon knew he couldn’t walk away from his family forever, to only show up at funerals. His parents, his brothers and sisters, they were as much part of Dillon’s life as his work.

“Jack joined the army right out of high school. He was going to put in the minimum years required to qualify for the free college education. Something happened his first tour. He’s never spoken of it, but he became career military and chose to keep his family at arm’s length.” Dillon rubbed his face. “Before that, we were close. If you’d asked me twenty years ago if Jack would stop speaking to his family without an explanation, I’d have laughed. But it happened and we’ve learned to live with it.”

“That doesn’t explain why he’s helping you now, when he doesn’t even know his sister.”

“Loyalty,” Dillon said. “A sense of duty.” He stared at Kate. “Very much the same reasons you’ve been hiding out and breaking the law-your loyalty and duty to your partner.”

Kate stopped pacing for a minute and looked at him. He was standing by the door, looking out the lone window into a hallway that was gray and empty. Though the room was underground and air-conditioned, it was still blazing hot. June in the Nevada desert.

She wanted to argue with him, explain that it was more than simply loyalty that had her dedicated to stopping Trask. But he wasn’t thinking about her. His eyes were far off. Thinking about the missing years with his brother? Or what future Lucy might-or might not-have?

“We’re going to get her in time,” Kate said quietly.

Dillon turned to face her. She was complex, and he couldn’t say that he knew her. He couldn’t even say that he would have made the choices she’d made in life. But something deep down in her core, which shone through in her vibrant blue eyes, told him she was all there. Not a renegade FBI agent, not a narrow-minded revenge nut, but a disciplined and trained federal cop.

It was the action that did it, he realized. She’d been pent up for two years at the observatory, on the run for three years before that. Yet six hours on the move and she had developed a calm-pacing notwithstanding.

“Lucy’s a smart kid,” he said, not knowing what to say about his sister. Dillon had been twenty when she was