“Hyde said to stay away, but here you are,” Luke pointed out. “Guess you couldn’t stay away from the case, could you?”
She glanced over and found his eyes on her, weighing her. “You called me.” And she’d jumped at his call.
“Monica wants me to use you on this case.”
Sam couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d punched her. Monica and Hyde usually agreed on everything.
“She says you need the case.”
Her chin lifted. “I do.” She could work this case.
“But tell me, Sam, what will you do when the danger is right in front of you?”
Her tongue swiped across her lips. Are you ready to die? Beg… go on, beg… That bastard’s voice always seemed to be in her head.
“Hyde thinks you’ll crack,” Luke said bluntly. “He let you out on a test run before, but he doesn’t believe you’re ready.”
Luke had led her away from the other investigators. Maybe he was trying to save her pride by talking to her in private. Like she had a lot of pride left.
“I’m ready.” She injected steel in her voice.
“Maybe.”
Sam held his stare and refused to back down.
He exhaled on a sigh. “I like you, Sam. You got one messed-up deal on the Watchman case.”
Don’t flinch. Don’t.
“But I can’t have you screwing up my case.” Soft but brutal.
And not unexpected. For the SSD, the case came first.
Luke waited a beat and then said, “I have to be able to trust that you can do your job.”
In their division, trust was key. You trusted your teammates. You knew that they had your back.
His lips tightened, and then Luke said, “I know about the panic attack in Virginia.”
She flinched. What? No, no, she’d retreated to an abandoned office. No one had—
“Two uniforms saw you. They reported to Hyde and that’s why he yanked you off field work as soon as you returned to D.C.”
Her breath came too fast, too hard. “I haven’t had another attack in weeks. The department shrink gave me the all clear.” Didn’t that fact matter to anyone?
“And I’m giving you a chance.” His head cocked to the right. “Prove Hyde wrong. Show him the steel inside, the steel that kept you alive when the Watchman wanted you to break.”
I did break. I broke, and I begged.
“But if there are signs you’re starting to falter, if I don’t think you’re strong enough to handle the work…”
He didn’t have to finish. She knew. “You’ll pull me off the case.” Then it would be two failures for her, and she could kiss her career at the SSD good-bye.
Luke’s head inclined in a grim nod.
Well, at least she knew where she stood with him. And she knew that she owed Monica a hell of a lot.
“Now go and take over the scanning of all the computer equipment the techs confiscated,” he ordered. “As of now, you are officially on the case. Hell, no one can hack into a system like you can. The guys Hyde had running the systems can’t even hope to compete with you.”
No, they couldn’t, but when the big boss gave an order, people listened. He’d wanted her to back off and only provide support to the new tech guys, so she had. But now…
“I want to find out every detail there is to know about Jeremy Briar’s life and his family,” Luke said, “Every damn detail.”
Once she got back to the office, she’d dig deep into their financials and make sure that there wasn’t anyone in the family who would benefit from that ransom money. Maybe there was a relative desperate for cash. Maybe a cousin had hit rock bottom. When money was involved, family members often turned on each other—and they could be vicious.
Sometimes, these crimes could hit too close to home.
Getting access to the bank records was easy. Impersonal. Going into the family’s private e-mails and wading through their Internet sites would be much more intimate.
“The media will go crazy with this one,” Luke warned. “The Briars are always big news in this part of the country, but with both the son and the husband dead, it’s going to be a circus.”
So far, the media hadn’t made the full connection between the kidnappings. The two men who’d been returned alive had been ushered out of the country by their parents. And then any suspicions from the press—well, they had been hushed up by the power of old money.
As for the other man, Peter Hollings, the one who’d been sent back to his parents in pieces after they used marked bills to pay his ransom…
His family had all but erased their son’s life. The rest of the world believed Peter had died in a car accident. Money had a way of re-writing history.
“What will the kidnappers do when they make the news?” Sam asked. Some killers craved attention. The pyro that the SSD had tracked in Virginia had been desperate for his fifteen minutes of fame.
Luke’s gaze met hers. “At first, it sure looked like they wanted their kidnappings kept quiet.” They—Hyde was convinced they were looking for a team of abductors. “But the way Jeremy Briar’s body was spread out, I think these perps want some attention now.”
So the press would soon be fueling the flames for them.
“They were sending a message,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck.
“To the next family.” Luke agreed grimly. “Telling them that this is what happens when you don’t pay.”
• • •
Max wasn’t asleep when the knock sounded at his door. It was close to three a.m., but he wasn’t asleep.
He was thinking about her. Still feeling Samantha against his skin, and when the knock reached his ears, he immediately headed for the door.
I’ll find you.
Max pulled open the door without bothering to look out the peephole.
Samantha.
She stood in the well-lit hallway, but she wasn’t the femme fatale of hours before. No sexy dress. No flash of cle**age.
Instead she wore simple black pants and a black shirt. The color just made her skin look paler. And she looked lost.
“You should really have better security in a place like this,” she said, in that smooth voice he loved. No accent, just softness and sex. “It was too easy to get inside.”
“I left orders that the doorman was to let you up.” He’d spent ten minutes giving Charlie a description of her.
When her eyes widened a bit, Max knew that he’d caught her by surprise. Good. She’d sure surprised him that first night.