Deadly Sins (12 page)

Shepherd’s handsome face looked puzzled. “What? God, no, I wasn’t talking about you. You look incredible, as usual. Don’t know how you manage it after the afternoon we’ve spent.”

Adam’s head never rose from the pages he was perusing. “Special Agent Marlowe is immune to flattery, Shepherd.”

Her ire transferred to the other man. “I don’t recall you ever trying any, so how would you know?”

One corner of his mouth pulled up even as he turned to a different sheet in the pile he was going through. Shepherd sent her a woeful look. “Eyedrops.” He showed her a small vial he must have taken from his pocket. “I’m too vain to wear reading glasses, so I suffer eye strain under conditions like this.”

Without another word, she reached in her purse and took out a compact and handed it to him. Then used the opportunity to watch him just for a moment away from their task. There was something disarming about his admission of vanity. The man wore charm as easily as he did the pin-striped suit. She recalled hearing about his long line of sexual exploits with women from when he was stationed here years ago, but nothing since his return. With his movie-idol jaw and blond good looks, his vanity wasn’t surprising, nor was his success with women.

But now, as then, his looks did nothing for her. It took more than charm to catch her eye.

Involuntarily, she looked at Adam. It had been his intellect as much as his ferocious dark looks that had first intrigued her. There was an intensity that radiated from him, a vibrant energy that had held its own allure. Once upon a time she had been well and truly ensnared. Enamored.

In love.

He wasn’t a man comfortable with emotion. She forced her eyes back to the folder in front of her. Stared at it blindly. She should have known that. Should have kept hers to herself. Because her declaration had started him backpedaling out of her life.

His near death at the hands of LeCroix had finished it.

Shepherd handed the compact back to her, and she fumbled with it a little as she dropped it into her purse. “I’ve cross-referenced the list the DCPD compiled of individuals who made direct threats toward Patterson in the last few years with those on Reinbeck’s threat-assessment list,” Shepherd said, sitting back down. “I didn’t find any intersections.”

“What about his clients?” Adam finally looked up. “I’m sure the DCPD took a hard look at anyone who lost huge sums.”

“That list goes back five years, and it reads like a who’s who of Washington’s power brokers. Foreign governments, diplomats, congressmen, religious leaders, as well as one individual the DC police linked to organized crime. If this was about the dive in stocks, there are plenty of people here who would have the means to arrange his death if they chose to.”

“If that were the case, the timing is off.” Jaid set her pen down and worked her shoulders tiredly. “Why not kill him back when the financial crash first happened? The economy has rebounded recently.”

“But few people have regained the former value of their investments.”

She’d have to trust Adam on that. The only investment she had was the federal retirement system that took a chunk out of her check every month. Juggling a house payment with raising a growing boy didn’t leave her a lot leftover for hedge funds.

“He could have made promises to someone that their portfolio would recover by now, and when it didn’t, he was killed.” She stopped, looked at Shepherd. “I assume that Justice Reinbeck isn’t on that list.”

“Neither he nor his wife.”

“There might not be any relationship between the two victims at all, other than symbolism.” Adam untwisted the cap of the water bottle she’d brought him from the deli. Drank. “The connection then lies in the eyes of the offender. He sets himself up as judge and jury, and determines who is guilty of a specific sin.”

“Where’s the motivation?” Jaid shifted in her chair to face him.

“If we knew that, we’d have a better idea of where he’ll strike next.”

Chilled, she could only stare at him for a moment. It would be naïve to assume there wouldn’t be another death. There were, after all, seven deadlies, as Benton had called them. The question was, how did a killer hope to turn off that compulsion once the seventh had been acted upon? What did he do with that murderous impulse after he struck seven times?

Adam was going on. “I’ve got a copy here of Patterson’s LUDs for the last two months. Now that we have reason to suspect that spyware was loaded on his phone, too, I’m interested in going through his and Reinbeck’s call logs to determine the sender of the infected message.”

“Actually, most spyware is downloaded directly onto the victim’s phones from software bought off the Internet.” Shepherd finished dabbing at his eyes with his handkerchief and then put it away in his suit pocket. “But it can be effectively loaded if a text message to the victim included a link to click on. That link downloads the spyware as a Trojan horse that then takes over the phone.”

“Paulie said something about that. He also mentioned that there was no way to discover the content of the messages sent to a phone by going through the providers’ records.”

“Most people know enough not to click on a link sent to them unless they trust the sender,” Jaid pointed out. “And we can guess these two victims were more security-conscious than most.” Her eyes felt as though they were filled with sand. But dividing up the folders among the three of them and each giving a verbal summary had saved them hours of time.

“Spoofing?” Shepherd suggested. “It’s fairly simple to make it look like the message is coming from someone else. Again, that capability is found easily on the Internet, too. But the e-wizards should be able to track that, as well, given enough time.”

“Shepherd’s right. Every contact leaves a trace.” Adam’s voice was confident. “We need a place to start. I imagine the cyber guys are looking more closely for other similarities in the two phones. Tomorrow we start by getting a copy of Reinbeck’s phone logs and comparing it to Patterson’s.” He stopped as if remembering he wasn’t talking to his own operatives. “Unless the two of you have other plans, of course.”

Amused, Jaid slanted a glance at him. “Bet that hurt.” As the head of Raiker Forensics, Adam had years of experience giving the orders. Truth be told, he’d given plenty in his days at the bureau. His placement on the task force put him in an unfamiliar position of being equals with Shepherd and her. His attempt at diplomacy aside, she doubted he could ever truly be just another member of the investigative team. Some men were born to lead. He was one of them.

Her cell phone buzzed then. When she took it from her pocket and saw that it was her mother, she nearly sighed. Although it was tempting, she didn’t dare to ignore it. She’d almost completely broken the woman of calling to see if she’d be home for dinner. That left the off chance that this call was important.

Excusing herself, she got up and walked to the corner of the room for a bit of privacy. “Hello, Mother. I’ll probably be . . .” Patricia’s strident tones cut off the rest of her sentence. Her words had ice splintering through Jaid’s veins. “An accident? How bad is it?”

She wasn’t aware of the sudden silence in the room behind her. Wasn’t aware of anything but her mother’s halfhysterical explanation. Her own bone-chilling fear. After a few more moments, she disconnected the call. Took one deep, shuddering breath before whirling toward the two men who were watching her with concerned expressions.

“I have to go.” A strange numbness had washed over her. She strode to her purse. Busied herself putting away the phone. Finding her keys.
There’s been an accident . . .

She couldn’t concentrate on that now. Determinedly, she picked up the papers she’d been looking through for the last few hours. Had surprising difficulty fitting them back into the folder.

“Is everything all right?” Shepherd asked concernedly. “Is there anything we can do?”

“I have to go,” Jaid repeated. The numbness was sliding away. It was too much to hope that it was going to last. Fear was doing a fast sprint up her spine. She needed to get to the hospital. Dread pooled nastily in her stomach. Patricia was no good in a crisis. She’d barely been coherent. She tended toward melodrama at the best of times. Jaid found herself hoping that was the case today. “I’ll call. Later.”

“Jaid.”

The sound of Adam’s quiet voice halted her. “I’ll contact my driver. We’ll take you wherever you need to go.” He was up and rounding the conference table with a swiftness that would have surprised her in any other circumstance.

“That’s not necessary.” She looked around for her purse. Found it hanging from the back of her chair, where she’d left it. Hauling in a breath, she grabbed the file folder. Her purse. Turned for the door. Found Adam in her path.

“It is necessary.” He nodded to the hand she held her keys in. “You’re upset. You shouldn’t be driving.”

Annoyed, she followed the direction of his gaze and then stopped, surprised. Her hands were shaking like she’d been struck with palsy. She could feel the trembling then. It shook her whole body. “I’ll be fine.” She moved to skirt him, but he already had his phone out and was texting a command.

“Of course you will.” Finished with his cell, he slipped it back into his pocket and moved back to the table to slip his folder into his leather briefcase, with much more finesse than she had managed earlier. “I’ll come with you. We’ll take care of your car later.”

“No!” She hauled in a breath and headed for the door. With a flash of mental clarity, she recognized that the only thing worse than heading into that hospital alone would be to enter it with Adam Raiker at her side. “I can manage this on my own.”

Half running down the carpeted hallway, she stabbed impatiently at the button for the elevator. Adam had caught up to her by the time the doors had slid open. He joined her in the empty car. They were silent until it began to move downward.

“You’re shaken up. And whatever news you face about your mother when you get to the hospital, you shouldn’t have to face alone.”

Tears threatened. She beat them back by sheer force of will. “It’s not my mother.” Ineffectually, she pressed the button for the main floor again, as if that would make the elevator move faster.

The words left her on a whisper. A prayer. “It’s my son.”

God, but he hated hospitals.

He was entitled, Adam figured, given the amount of time he’d spent confined to them. Because the mass-produced chairs in the waiting room seemed designed to cause chronic back problems, he leaned against the wall in the corner of the room and did what came least naturally to him.

Waited.

After rushing up to the front desk and speaking to the clerk there, Jaid had been whisked through some double doors and disappeared from sight. That had been nearly three hours ago. More than enough time to recall every torturous moment he’d spent in institutions just like this one over the last several years.

Hell. In the last several months.

His mouth quirked wryly. To be fair, he had it on good authority that the hospitals housing him had been no fonder of the experience than had he. He hadn’t achieved modelpatient status. Not even close.

People had wandered in and out of the waiting area the first couple hours, mostly silent. Victims of the same interminable vigil as he. But one by one they’d been called away or collected by a family member. He had no idea if Jaid would even know where the elderly lady in the pink jacket had finally stashed him. She’d been quite insistent that he stay put here after she’d collected him from the ER lounge once Jaid had been shown to her family.

To her son.

Somehow his mind always returned to that word despite the effort he’d been expending to skirt it. Eight years ago she’d finally seen reason and cut off all contact with him as he’d demanded. It wasn’t as though he’d expected her life to remain in suspended animation in the time since. He knew she was unmarried. Paulie, damn him, had managed to drop that fact into conversation a few times over the years, although Adam had made it clear enough that the subject of Jaid was off-limits.

But Paulie had never mentioned a son.

Adam narrowed his gaze at the muted tones of the blue wallpaper. He wasn’t one to wallow in regrets, but he’d spent more than his share of time in hospital beds over the years. Being bound to a bed gave a man time to think. And more frequently than he wanted to admit, his thoughts had gone to the woman he’d once spent weeks trying to convince that they had no future together.

And he’d spent too much time since berating himself for being successful.

A son meant that she’d found someone in the time since they’d parted. Jaid wasn’t a woman who trusted easily. He wondered what had happened to the relationship. If the boy’s father were still in the picture. Or if—the thought was like taking a fast right jab to the solar plexus—the man was still in Jaid’s life.

He had no right to care. He’d given up that right the last time he’d sent her away. The time she’d finally had the good sense to stay gone.

Knowing that, accepting it, didn’t make the thought easier to contemplate.

“I didn’t know if you’d still be here.”

He looked up then, and she was there, looking drawn but not nearly as worried as she had in the car on the way over. Pushing away from the wall, he approached her. “I wasn’t sure you had another ride home. I know your mother must have brought your son in, but . . . is he all right?”

“He’s fine.” Her expression was half-relieved, halfexasperated. “Other than harboring the delusion that he’s Tony Hawk, he’s going to be okay. His arm is broken in two places, courtesy of his attempt to do a 5-0 grind on a ledge.”

He blinked. “I understood the word ledge. The rest was lost on me.”

She gave a small smile. “A skateboard trick and one that is far beyond his skill level at this point. A conversation that will be delayed at least until he’s off pain medication.” She hesitated then. “I feel bad that you’ve been waiting out here all this time. But if your offer of a ride home is still good, apparently I’m stranded here. My mother called an ambulance rather than drive Royce to the doctor.”