Exposed (27 page)

Someone was looking for the vehicle.

That was worrisome. It meant that whoever was blackmailing the Congressman had not simply stumbled upon the girl’s body. They’d seen the SUV they’d transported her in.

A sinking feeling settled in the middle of his stomach.

Had they taken pictures of the car? Of Kelvin and Stokes carrying her body into it? Of the shooting itself? Of him?

This time he gave into the rage and smashed the crystal into the fire, glass and flames flying high.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The images on the screen were too disturbing to view as a video. Sydney couldn’t get past the fire tearing through her home and the subsequent explosion to focus on the crowd images flickering in and out, as the latest cameraperson scanned their phone rapidly from the fire to the firetruck and across the crowd. It was a herky-jerky type of movie—the kind that always gave her headaches.

“This isn’t working,” she said, pushing the stop button. She opened up the editing screen. “Let’s make it one picture at a time. We’ll eliminate the fire pictures.”

“And just focus on the crowd?” Doyle said, doing the same to the video he’d been looking at.

Despite the heartache that the fire video had renewed in her chest, she softened her gaze at the older man. “Yes. We’ll be able to enlarge the images and compare each to the ones I took outside the next morning.” She paused and swallowed the lump in her throat, “We might get lucky and find someone who was hanging around both times.”

Doyle laid his weathered hand over hers on top of the keyboard. “You sure you want to do this, little lady? It’s gotta be hard visually dissecting what happened to your home. I don’t mind doing this kind of grunt work.”

She shook her head, moving her hand to the mouse. “No, that’s okay. Besides, I’m used to looking through a camera lens for all the nuances, even images that are in the background of a shot or on the periphery.”

The older man chuckled and went back to work on his own keyboard. “So what you’re saying is your experienced eye will probably work faster and more accurately than my old ones.”

“I didn’t mean—” she started to explain.

“No, you’re right. My eye doctor told me I’ll probably need cataract surgery next year,” he said, no censure in his voice.

“Aren’t you a little young for that?” she asked, switching screens to open up the flash drive files of the pictures she’d taken.

“I’m a little young at sixty, but the doc told me it’s not that unusual, especially since both of my parents had cataracts. I’m even thinking of getting one long-distance lens in one eye, and one near-distance one in the other. Might not need reading glasses anymore if I do that.”

“They can do that?” Frank said, as he pulled up the straight-backed chair once more.

“Doc says she can, and I figure she’d know more than me.” Doyle hit a few more keys. “You get your things squared away?”

“Dave’s already getting some shut-eye in the basement. Matt’s camping out in the living room for now. They’re planning to take shifts on night watch. Matt’s got the first half of the night. Jake’s taking the front upstairs bedroom closest to the stairs. Sydney and I are in the back one.”

Great.
Now all of the men would know she was sleeping with Castello.

Sydney focused on the screens in front of her, hoping no one would see the blush that heated her face. It wasn’t that she was a prude. And she’d slept with several semi-serious boyfriends over the years. Usually, she didn’t announce the status of her relationships so publically, or so early on. Especially to her lover’s family and friends.

Besides, this thing with Frank felt different from any she’d experienced before. It was probably the adrenaline from the fire, explosion, hit-and-run. Once the danger stopped, it would end. They’d go back to their own lives, only seeing each other on rare occasions.

She shook off the embarrassment and odd feeling of loss that trailed her thoughts. She had a job to do. One that might save her life, Frank’s, and even her bastard brother, Ian.

“I thought you were going to watch the films first?” Frank asked, leaning to her side.

“Most of the videos were too fast and schizophrenic in movement. Doyle and I put them into frame-by-frame still shots. That will make it easier for me to compare them to the photos I took.”

“You can do that?” he asked, curiosity in his deep voice.

She smiled. For someone who’d only days ago professed to dislike photographers, he seemed quite fascinated with the different techniques and skills she used in her profession.

“Actually, anyone can stop-frame digital videos with the computer program I installed on Doyle’s computer. Now all I have to do is bring them up one at a time.” Which she proceeded to do, examining each image from the day after the arson fire.

“Why are you starting with the pictures you took?”

“Because I have more of an idea what’s in them. You asked me to shoot the surrounding homes, pedestrians, onlookers watching the firemen work the debris, the cars parked along the street.”

“Ah. I get it. You’re more likely to have caught the image of anyone intentionally watching, but trying not to be conspicuous.” The corner of his lip had lifted in his ghost-smile of approval.

“See those guys?” She pointed at the teens standing in a group across the street in one of her pictures. “We can pretty much eliminate them. They’re neighborhood kids I’ve seen hanging around one of the houses a few doors down.”

“Curious onlookers.”

She agreed. Moving the mouse she enlarged the picture and moved it so that the buildings behind the teens came into view. An older couple stood on the front porch of one. Up in the window of the neighboring townhome was a young mother holding a child.

“I think we can rule them out as our arsonist,” Frank said.

“My thoughts, too.” She closed that picture and opened up one showing a house farther down the street to the left. No one appeared in those windows, so she moved to the next picture. This one was of cars lining the street to the left of where her home had been. Most of the vehicles appeared to be empty.

“Can you enlarge it? Maybe focus on that one?” Frank asked, reaching in front of her to point at a black, older sedan parked several cars back.

“I can try,” she said, already doing what he’d asked. “I don’t know how much we’ll see. The resolution that far off will probably be grainy.”

As she enlarged the image and moved the car into the center, they could see someone inside.

“Son of a bitch!” Frank slammed his hand down on the desktop. “That’s him.”

“How do you know?” she asked, trying to zoom in. As she feared, she couldn’t get too much detail from a shot this far away.

“Because I saw a black sedan similar to this down the street from the townhouse before Abrams arrived. The trees blocked me seeing if anyone was in it at the time.”

“You’re sure?”

“He’s sure,” Jake said, coming over to look over their shoulders at the screen. “It’s our duty to notice anything and everything. Like the color of his skin. Definitely Caucasian. Any chance there’s another picture of him?”

“Of course. I was using one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth-of-a-second shutter speed. He should be in the next ten frames, at least.” She opened all the frames with that car in them, enlarging them and focusing on the driver. No real definition of his face in any of them. “Sorry guys, between the distance from my camera, the shade from the house behind him, and the sunglasses he has on, it’s hard to get a good image of him.”

Jake reached up and tapped the third from last image. “Let’s take a closer look at that one.”

Doubtful anyone could really get a detail, she enlarged the picture again just the same.

Either the man in the car had moved, or the sun had flashed momentarily inside the car.

“Does he have blond hair?” Matt asked, having come to join them.

“Very blond or white,” Jake said.

“He’s tall,” Frank added.

“How can you tell?” Sydney asked, marveling at how much information the men were gleaning from the grainy image.

Frank pointed to the top of the windshield. “His head almost touches the top of the roof over it.”

“So we’re looking for a tall, blond, Caucasian man who might’ve been in the crowd the night before?” she asked, pulling up another window on the computer in front of Doyle. He’d shown her earlier how one mouse could control browsers on both monitors.

Working carefully, she brought up scene after scene from the night of the fire.

“This film was taken by a woman,” she said as image after image of the firemen working to try to put out the fire flashed on the scene.

“How do you know that?” Frank asked.

Sydney gave him a little smile. “She has a thing for firemen.”

The men all chuckled.

Nothing useful was in those pictures, so she pulled up the next one. It had lots of images of the fire itself.

“Can you send this video to my phone? And do we know who did this one?” Jake asked.

“Luke archived all the accounts that he hacked the videos from. I can get the username and IP address for you,” Doyle said, pulling up the notebook he’d jotted down the information in. “Any particular reason?”

The FBI agent added the information to his phone. “Whoever it is, they have a fire fetish. Might want to alert the arson investigator about him.”

Once Sydney determined there were no crowd shots in the photos from the fire fetish guy, she moved to the next one. It took three more sets of video photos—some of which had captured her reaction to the fire and explosion, and Castello’s rescue of her from the scene—before they found someone matching their culprit’s description in the crowd.

“That’s him,” Jake said, once again moving in close. “Same jaw line. Pale skin.”

“Good height. Probably six-four,” Frank said.

“And that’s very-light-colored hair sticking out of the edge of that ball cap he has on,” Matt added, tapping the area he was talking about on the screen.

“Too bad he has a camera up in front of his face,” Doyle said. “Facial recognition isn’t going to have much luck with him.”

“It’s okay, old man,” Jake said stepping away from the computer and tapping away on his phone again. “Your program isn’t going to be able to identify him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s Geist,” Frank said.

“Geist?” Sydney asked, seeing Frank and Jake staring intently at each other. “You know this guy?”

“We know
of
him,” Frank answered. “He’s an international hit man that’s been on Interpol’s most-wanted list for years.”

A sinking feeling settled in her stomach.

“He’s wanted in half a dozen assassinations around the world, both political and corporate targets,” Jake said, his thumb moving over the keys of his phone as he read the information. “And no one’s ever gotten a clear picture of him.”

“Then how do you know it’s him?” she asked, even though she could see the resignation on both men’s faces.

“Description fits. Tall. White-blond hair. Pale skin,” Frank said. “And in German,
geist
means the ghost.”

“And this is the man trying to kill me?” Sydney asked.

“That’s the bastard we’re going to keep from hurting you,” Frank said, hating the man for putting the tremor in her voice.

“Really? He’s never been caught. No one’s ever gotten a good picture of him. He’s called the ghost.” Sydney swiveled around in her chair to look at each of them, one by one, as she spoke, finally stopping to stare unflinchingly at him. “You think you can stop him? My brother’s the gambler in my family, remember? Right now the odds are definitely not in my favor.”

He took both her hands in his. “We know who we’re looking for, so that gives us an advantage.”

“He’s already missed twice,” Matt said. “That gives us another advantage.”

“How?” she asked. “Won’t that make him more determined to succeed?”

“His ability to deliver results is what keeps his business in demand. The pressure to complete his assignment will make him take risks. Maybe even get sloppy,” Jake said.

“Like trying to run me over with the detective’s car?”

“Like that,” Frank said, his thigh still aching from the incident. Anger at someone trying to injure her surged through him once more.

“So, as I see it, we have two issues,” Jake said. “We have a known hit man for hire to find and stop.”

“What’s the other issue?” Sydney asked, pulling her hands from Frank’s, the fear gone from her voice once more.

“We have to find out who sent him. Because if we don’t, but we manage to stop Geist—”

“They’ll just send someone else to do the job,” Frank finished for him.

“Oh, great. This is not reassuring me, guys,” Sydney leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I may have a lead on who sent him,” Doyle said.

The others all focused their attention on Jake’s former police partner.

“What have you got, old man?” Jake asked.

“Well, Rookie, I managed to find the email account Sydney’s brother used to send the photo—”

“Wait,” Frank interrupted. “I thought he used Sydney’s computer to send the email? That’s how we found the picture on her cloud.”

Doyle gave him a nod, like some patient teacher with all the answers. “He did. But he didn’t use her email account to send the photo. He sent the image through a few routers, before sending it to a bogus account. Then he sent the email from the bogus account back through more dark sites to its final destination. I followed the trail, and finally came up with a name.”

“Well, don’t keep us guessing.” Matt said.

“Congressman Blanton.”

“The one Annabeth Kelly was interning for?” Sydney said, more a question than a statement.

“The one and only,” Doyle confirmed.

“Didn’t the FBI clear him in the case?” Frank asked Jake.

Jake shrugged. “He had an alibi for the night, and passed a polygraph test.”

“If they asked if he killed her, he could say no,” Frank said. “Which would be the truth if he hired someone to do it.”

“Why would he have her killed?” Sydney asked.