Brock watched her, and she couldn’t tell whether he was buying any of this. “Walk me through it.”
“Okay, so last Saturday, Drew is getting on a plane to Florida for vacation,” she said. “So he hands off Ollie’s request to his clerk, who goes to the courthouse and fills out a request.”
“The trip wire,” Brock said. “Maybe some guy at the courthouse had a flag on the record?”
“Who?” Neil asked.
“I don’t know.” Kira shrugged. “But everyone’s got a ‘guy at the courthouse.’ Someone who does favors, tips you off to gossip, flags interesting filings that come through.”
Neil looked intrigued. “Who’s yours?”
She snorted. “I’m not telling. I don’t even know who Ollie’s guy was, but there was definitely someone.”
“Get back to your story,” Brock said.
“So when Shelly gets the trial transcript, she overnights it to Ollie’s office. He gets the package, then arrives at your house excited about this hot new lead he’s found.”
“He told me he had something big,” Brock said.
“He told me that, too.” Kira’s stomach clenched as she thought back on the conversation. She could still see the sparkle in Ollie’s eyes. “Minutes later, someone shows up and kills him. And a few days later, that same someone kills Shelly.”
Had the murderer been following Shelly when she went to meet Kira at the coffee shop? Kira didn’t know. The thought filled her with guilt. She liked to think that she or Jeremy would have spotted a tail, but she didn’t know for certain and probably never would.
If only Shelly had never been involved. If only Ollie hadn’t called Drew and he hadn’t passed the favor off to his clerk. If only, if only, if only . . .
“So Markov’s case is the trip wire,” Brock stated.
Kira nodded. “That’s my theory.”
“Why, though?” He picked up a thick file and dropped it onto the table. “I read the whole damn transcript, and I’m not seeing it. How is a two-year-old aggravated assault outside a bar connected to the murder of Ava Quinn?”
“I don’t know, but I know that it is.”
“But Ava and Gavin aren’t mentioned.” Brock turned to Neil. “Did you come up with anything?”
He shook his head. “Whole thing seems off.”
“I thought that, too,” Kira said. “I mean, why’s an aggravated assault going to trial in the first place? That’s the sort of thing that normally gets pleaded down, right? But the aggravated assault is the original charge.”
“You’re saying he should have copped a plea,” Brock said. “I thought that, too.”
“The prosecutor was playing hardball,” Neil said. “Maybe he was using the threat of a trial to pressure Markov to flip on someone else, a bigger fish. What are Markov’s connections?”
“We need to find out,” Brock said. “But whoever they are, it doesn’t sound like he cooperated. He rolled the dice and went to trial and ended up getting acquitted.”
“So Markov took a risk,” Kira said. “What does that tell us?”
Neil shrugged. “Could be he thought he’d get a friendly jury. Or he had the judge in his pocket. Though I’m not sure that’s a can of worms we want to open.”
Brock closed his eyes and tipped his head back. “I hate this case. I really hate it.”
Kira did, too.
“Okay, so assume Markov somehow got a lock on an acquittal,” Brock said. “We still don’t know what the trial has to do with Ava Quinn. How does any of this give Ollie a suspect to pin Ava’s murder on?”
“What about the obvious?” Kira asked. “Maybe Markov killed her.”
“I thought of that.” Brock’s voice was edged with frustration. “But where’s the evidence? And why was Ollie so excited to get his hands on this transcript? It doesn’t spell out Markov’s connection to my case, and yet Ollie was acting like it was a gold-plated Get Out of Jail Free card for Gavin Quinn. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Kira said. “But I plan to find out.”
Jeremy stuck his head into the room. “Kira. We need a word.”
“What is it?”
“Logistics.”
She looked at Brock, and the expression on his face put her on her guard. “What’s wrong now?”
“Another change of plan.” Brock nodded at Jeremy. “Go ahead and fill her in.”
Irritated, Kira followed Jeremy across the hall into the conference room where Liam and Erik were waiting. She took a chair at the end of the table, suddenly self-conscious about all the testosterone in her midst.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“New plan,” Jeremy stated.
“We’re increasing the number of agents staffed to you and your colleagues,” Liam said.
Colleagues. Like she had a law degree and a fat salary to go with it. She almost laughed, but the serious look on Liam’s face stopped her.
“What else?” she asked.
“We’re recommending that we consolidate operations at the Metropolitan Hotel,” he said. “That makes it easier for us to conduct round-the-clock surveillance and also facilitates communication between agents.”
“So . . . you’re saying you want us to work there?”
“Live there,” Liam said. “For at least the time being.”
Kira barked out a laugh. “Are you kidding? I couldn’t afford to buy an omelet at that place, much less live there.”
“The law firm is covering expenses.”
She glanced through the glass into the opposite conference room. Brock stood at the whiteboard now, debating something with Neil as he sketched out a timeline.
She looked at Liam. “How long are we talking about?”
“Until we get a handle on this threat or until police make an arrest.”
“Or both,” Erik added.
“But that could take weeks.”
“We know,” Jeremy said.
Kira stared at him. He looked so serious, with his sleeves rolled up and his arms folded across his chest, and she caught a glimmer of the expression he’d had on his face last night, when he’d been standing in her kitchen.
“Of course, it’s up to you,” Liam said. “We can’t make any one of you do anything.”
Jeremy shot a glance at him. “We can recommend.” He gave Kira a steely look. “And this is our recommended course of action, based on what we know about the current threat level.”
Threat level. It sounded unreal. She wasn’t a political figure or some celebrity. And yet they wanted her to move into what amounted to a luxury fortress and have round-the-clock protection. If it was hard to do her job now, she could only imagine what it was going to be like going forward.
She looked directly at Liam. “You’re the security experts, so I’ll defer to you.”
Liam nodded. “Good.” He pushed back his chair.
“On one condition.”
All three men looked at her.
“I have a job to do. Now more than ever. And I can’t be a hostage in some hotel room, so don’t try to get in my way when I tell you I need to leave.”
Liam’s gaze flicked to Jeremy. “Sounds reasonable. Jeremy?”
Based on his look, Jeremy didn’t think it was reasonable at all. Kira waited, and finally he gave a slight nod. “Fine. Agreed.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GAVIN QUINN’S house wasn’t what Charlotte had envisioned. She’d expected a mansion like Brock Logan’s, an imposing monument to the ego of the city’s top heart surgeon. But the doctor’s home was low and understated, hidden from view behind a tall hedge in an expensive neighborhood.