She knew better than to speak.
“Your trip to Texas…” He snapped the cap on the pen with enough force to break the thing. “How was it?”
“Just as you thought, cases weren’t related. Probably a big waste of time.”
He eyed his calendar, then dropped the pen back into the container, before turning his gaze on her, and then her scraped hands, his expression unreadable. “Let’s hope it wasn’t. I’d hate to think you went to all that trouble for nothing.”
28
Scotty cornered Sydney the moment she cleared Dixon’s office, then dragged her into a vacant one. “I want to know what the hell happened down there,” he said.
“Your bosses breathing down your neck?”
“You mean the neck I just stuck out for you so you could remain on the street and run off to Baja, with little regard for your safety and everyone else’s in this operation?”
“Maybe if you’d told me what was going on from the moment you came spying around my house, trying to steal my mail, I might not have had to resort to such measures.”
“It was for your own safety.”
“No it wasn’t. Someone’s trying to cover some ass. What is it? CYA for the CIA or whatever other government agency has convinced you that whatever the hell this is, it happens to be a matter of national security?”
“That’s precisely what it is. Once McKnight left that note, we had to be sure it didn’t get out, because it made reference to a matter that we believe is still in operation today. That means government secrets, intelligence and nuclear technology are still being traded and sold. So you can see why it’s imperative to find out who and where and not let them know we know.”
“It’s my father’s life. He was involved in this, he was killed because of it, and I have the right to know what happened.”
“First of all,” he said, closing the distance between them, “your father was not killed because of this.”
“You don’t know that. You only know what they’ve told you.”
“Two years ago I sat down with you and read your father’s murder investigation, because you were worried then, when there were rumblings that some attorney was looking into Wheeler’s case to see if he could get out. Back then you wanted him kept in. Now, because some suicidal drunken idiot sends you an old photo that has nothing to do with anything, you suddenly think this guy is innocent?”
“No, what I think is that this drunken suicidal idiot has a lot of very important people running around, scared that they’re going to be implicated in a twenty-year-old scandal that they barely escaped from the first time.”
“Look, I don’t know how to make this any clearer. Some of these matters are of national security. They might look bad on the surface, but could undermine years of work involving antiterrorist matters.”
“Like the BICTT banking scandal?”
He froze.
“So that is what this is all about?” When Scotty didn’t answer, she said, “Then why else send someone down to Baja to find the missing records Orozco absconded with on the BICTT matter, then try to kill me because I happened to be the sucker who ended up carrying them out of there?”
“You did what?” he asked, his face turning ashen. “You didn’t say you were carrying anything back.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Jesus Christ, Syd. Do you realize how dangerous that was?”
“Gee. You’d think I would’ve thought of that while they were trying to blow my goddamned brains out. Of course I thought of it. But what was I supposed to do, Scotty? Toss it into the water? If someone’s going to the trouble to kill an FBI agent for that stuff, then I have to guess it’s got someone worried. The question is which OGA would go to the trouble of sending some black ops guys after little old me?”
“What was it you brought back?”
“I have no idea, a sheet full of numbers I didn’t understand, some code maybe. It’s in a bank pouch. Robert said it had to do with the BICTT records, that part of the original faction is still in operation, something called a Black Network, and that’s all I know.”
Scotty ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “Jesus. Where is it?”
“My desk.”
He stormed from the room.
“This is a secure facility. Who’s going to take it in here?” she called out.
He didn’t answer, and she hurried after him, wondering if Carillo had returned it yet. When she got there, there was nothing on her desktop, and Scotty was pulling open the drawers. No pouch. “It’s not here,” he said, looking panicked, not an emotion she usually associated with him.
Her backpack was slung over her chair, and she looked inside. The pouch was there, and she handed it over to him. “Here.”
He unzipped it, eyed the contents, then zipped it back up. “Who knows about this?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“You and me…” And Carillo. And possibly Schermer, since Carillo told him about everything.
“This is classified. Do not discuss this with anyone.”
“Does any of this have anything to do with Senator Gnoble?”
Scotty looked around the room to make sure they couldn’t be overheard, little chance, since it was now deserted, everyone having moved on to the briefing room for Operation Barfly. “Look. The guys sent down to Baja? If they were black ops, this Black Network, or any other government agency forces, then I don’t think Gnoble was behind it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because we know someone from his office hired someone to kill you. And if whoever that someone is did have access to any black ops, chances are you would’ve been dead before we found out.”
She wasn’t sure if that was good news or not. “But won’t these guys come after me, because they think I still have that bank bag?”
“First thing I intend to do is make sure they know you don’t have it. From that point on, the objective changes, and it’s all about damage control.”
He walked off toward the briefing room, leaving her wondering two things. One, how the hell did he know so much about it, and two, exactly what was the “objective” before they’d realized they’d lost the bank bag.
Come to think of it, the whole “damage control” bit was disconcerting when she really stopped to think about it. She did not, however, get much time to ponder matters, as Carillo poked his head down the hall. “You want to grab those sketches and meet us? We’re getting ready to start.”
The briefing for Operation Barfly took place in the SAC’s conference room just off the front lobby. Dixon called everyone to order to give a brief outline of the discovery and connections between the crimes-just to make sure everyone was on the same page.
Sydney was standing at the back when Carillo walked up, handed her a copy of the op plan. “Just got done talking with your former sweetheart,” he said, nodding toward the front of the room, where Scotty stood just behind Doc Schermer, no doubt to keep his eye on her. “Not sure how you pulled this off, but you’re back in the game. At least tonight you’re stuck with me for a while.”
“Disappointed?”
He gave her a once-over, then shrugged. “Schermer doesn’t look near as cute in all black. You should wear it more often. And the stuff I copied? I have no friggin’ idea what it means, but the way I see it, if they were trying to kill you over it, it’s gotta be priceless.”
She glanced at Carillo, but his gaze was fixed on the front of the room, where Dixon started the briefing on their initial call out in the Reno case, Sydney’s sketch, the suspect phone call after her Jane Doe sketch appeared in the paper, recounting what the suspect told Sydney about his next victim, along with the remark about biting her.
Dixon continued with “We have a profiler assigned to the case, and so far we believe that our UnSub is what we term an organized murderer.” He then gave a partial laundry list of the organized killer, higher than average IQ, but maybe working below his intelligence level, socially competent, usually living with a partner, mobility, decent car. “This individual probably has a continued fantasy,” Dixon said. “The fact he contacted our office and Fitzpatrick after the sketch appeared tells us he’s following his crimes in the newspaper. Craves the attention.”