“It’s critical, Detective.”
“You can keep that file. There’s a police sketch of the girl. She’d told Peter she was a year older than him, but I have my doubts. She could have been anywhere between twenty and thirty. I only saw her that one time, and it was briefly, but she had a distinctly different appearance from the last time he’d seen her-she may have had some work done. Nothing major, but enough that the sketch might be a bit off. When Peter knew her, she had long, dark blond hair. She had medium-length streaked hair when I saw her.
“I tried to run her, but there was no record. No record at all. No Cami Jones. She sat in on classes at SU, but was never registered. She used an elderly woman’s house for her drop spot, but told Peter her family issues were complicated. Turns out the woman didn’t know her. Peter, even after all he’s been through, was very trusting. He’d been on his own since he was sixteen.”
Sean looked at the drawing of a young, pretty girl. Not exceptional, but sweet. Girl next door.
He also knew that the FBI could get a warrant for Peter’s new identity and location, and he suspected Mead knew that as well, but Sean didn’t want to threaten the cop. He suspected he’d get the information faster if Mead volunteered it.
Mead leaned forward. “Peter is my brother now. I will do anything for him. He’s not a killer; I stake my life and reputation on that. Which means, if your theory is right, he’s in trouble only if his identity is exposed. I’m not putting him in the line of fire. Understand?”
Sean tapped his card. “See the small print? Rogan-Caruso-Kincaid Protective Services. If you tell me where he is, I can guarantee his safely.”
Mead didn’t look like he believed him. He said, “Turn the page.”
Sean went back to the file. The last page was a photocopy of a typed note. A threat.
I’LL FIND YOU AGAIN.
“Have you talked to Peter recently?”
Mead shook his head. “I don’t know exactly where Peter is. I don’t want to.”
“How do you contact him?”
“He has a P.O. box, and I’m not going to tell you where. Give me twenty-four hours.”
If he only needed a day, he had another way to get ahold of Peter.
“Why do you think he was targeted by this woman?” Sean looked at the sketch again.
“That’s the million-dollar question. He has no idea, but it started his freshman year of high school. I looked through every yearbook from his high school and there was no one named Cami Jones, Cami, or anyone who looked like her. I tracked down several of the blond, Caucasian girls and they didn’t even come close. After he ran away, the harassment stopped, until his third year at SU, after he met Cami.”
“He didn’t put two and two together?”
Mead shook his head. “The harassment didn’t start until nearly a year after he met her.”
Peter had been targeted since he was fourteen. Weber’s book came out when he was fourteen. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Did he show animosity toward Rosemary Weber?”
“The bitch who wrote that book about his family? He didn’t like her. He only mentioned her once; he wasn’t obsessed.”
“I need to talk to him. If all this is true, he may be in danger.”
“He is in danger; that’s why he has a new identity. Anonymity is the only thing that protects him. He’s not a fighter-he runs away. And maybe that’s what keeps him safe and sane.”
“Maybe, but he’s still in danger.”
Mead didn’t want to share. But he said, “I’ll contact him, ask him if he wants to talk to you.”
“The mail takes too long.”
Mead grinned humorlessly. “I didn’t say his P.O. box was the only way I could communicate with him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
FBI Academy
After her afternoon classes, Lucy went back to Tony’s office. Noah wasn’t there, but she used the key he’d given her to enter.
She wanted to get through this as quickly as possible. Margo had already asked her if something was wrong, and Lucy dismissed her anxiety as concern for Hans. That was in part true, because there was still no change in his condition.
Because it was so easy to slip in and out of the buildings without using a passkey, Lucy couldn’t assume that just because someone had clocked into the building at any one time they didn’t leave and return using another passkey.
She had twelve new agents left to clear, who had all been in their rooms after midnight on Saturday, according to the passkey access report.
She’d looked at Reva’s personnel files earlier and sent Noah points to reverify-such as her legal name, her hometown, her parents and sibling information. She was so chatty Lucy knew a lot about her, and nothing in her file contradicted anything that she’d said.
Margo was from New York City, which gave her a connection with the location. She was quiet, smart, wasn’t friendly with most of the new agents. It didn’t surprise Lucy that she and Margo had become friends, but that Margo and Reva had seemingly bonded was odd.
Jason Aragon was older and mature, a lawyer, and according to his personnel file he took on cases and causes that most would shy away from. He’d never been married, but according to his file he had been engaged once, right out of law school. His fiancee was killed in front of him during a gang-related shooting in Los Angeles-wrong place, wrong time. He’d become an anti-gang crusader, and his personal statement indicated he wanted to work the anti-gang task force as a special agent. He had extensive knowledge of gang activity and warfare, plus an acute understanding of the law. He’d made a name for himself as a prosecutor going after the most violent offenders, at great personal risk.
Lucy had known him four weeks and he’d never talked about his past. He wasn’t chatty like Reva, but why hadn’t any of this come up?
What was she thinking? She knew why-because he didn’t want to talk about it. Just like she didn’t want to talk about her past. Some things were better left unsaid.
Jason had no connection to the East Coast in any way, but an event like what had happened to his fiancee would change him.
She switched databases and using Noah’s log-in checked to see if there was a case file on the nine-year-old shooting. Nothing federal.
She made a note to look into that case deeper, then went on to Alexis Sanchez.
She’d been recruited out of the Denver FBI office after she applied for a special agent position. She was highly desirable because of her accounting background.
Marital status: Divorced, Carl Sanchez.
Lucy frowned and made a note. She thought Alexis was still married. Didn’t she mention a husband? Or did she say “ex-husband”? Lucy couldn’t remember the specific verbiage, but she definitely believed from their conversations that Alexis was married.
She had a four-year-old daughter, Melissa Camille Sanchez, born in Denver.
Lucy relaxed a bit. Husband or ex-husband, Alexis still had family issues to deal with, and it couldn’t be easy being two thousand miles away from her daughter. She’d mentioned that her mother-in-law was watching the child and that she didn’t like Alexis, which would make it doubly difficult.
But it was one small discrepancy between what Alexis had said and the truth.
Noah came in. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said. “Have you found anything?”
“Nothing major, but I’m looking. I’m halfway done.”
“Good.” He sat down, not behind the desk but on the couch. “I talked to Stockton about Rich Laughlin.”
“I wish you hadn’t. I didn’t intend to use our friendship.”
“You’re not. Your instincts were dead-on. Last year, in the middle of Laughlin’s joint undercover operation with DEA to take down a major international drug operation centered in Detroit, he lost his partner. She was DEA, but what Laughlin didn’t know at the time was that she had a personal vendetta. She’d grown up on the streets of Detroit, lost friends and family to the drug war. She came back to fight it. From what Stockton said, she was extremely good at her job, extremely bold. In undercover work bold is good-but it can also make you reckless.