mirror. Shit. Whoever had been here had likely seen everything. Tim opening the door. The rush inside. The blaze of bullets. They’d be able to ID the gunmen, if not by face, by colors, clothing, tattoos, headgear, weapons. It would all help him identify who’d done this. The question was, who had been behind this bar, and where were they now?
“Vince?”
“Come here, Jeff.”
His partner walked over to the side of the bar. “Whoa, what have we here?”
“A witness.”
“Excellent. I’ll go to the manager and ask who was working.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I think you’d better call Emerson,” Jeff said. “The second he hears about Baker’s lawsuit, he’s gonna blow a gasket.”
Vince stood, his knee cracking with the effort. “I don’t give a shit about Baker.”
“You assaulted the man. He can have you arrested.”
“No, he won’t. He’ll get more mileage from a lawsuit.”
“Yeah, the Captain’s gonna love that.”
“I’ll tell Emerson what happened. But first I need to find this witness.”
Jeff, who’d been his partner for almost three years, shrugged. That’s what was so good about him. He wasn’t just a fine cop, he knew how to roll with the punches. And he put up with all Vince’s bullshit. “I’ll wait for the coroner. Come back up here when you’re done.”
Vince picked up his notebook on his way out, his bruised knuckles making him wince.
KATE PARKED HER beat-up Toyota in the parking lot of her apartment building. The prospect of moving again so soon after she’d found this dive made her sick. There was no choice, of course. The police could already know that she’d been in the suite during the murder. They’d be after her, and she wouldn’t let herself be found.
Truthfully, it wasn’t the moving that had her so edgy. It was the smell of death that was still on her, the coppery odor of blood in her hair, on her uniform. She wanted to shower, but there wouldn’t be time.
She’d learned how to live in the smallest possible way. A few changes of clothes, toiletries in one tote, her computer and paperwork all in one box. She had nothing extraneous, nothing that couldn’t be abandoned if she had to leave quickly. She kept the contents of her computer on a portable flash drive that was on her key ring, and she backed it up every single time she logged off. The clothes were from Goodwill, the toiletries from the dollar store. However, since last month she had one box that was more important than any of that.
A friend who’d worked with her in the forensic accounting department of the U.N. had risked his life to get photocopies of certain ledgers. Ledgers Kate had worked on in Kosovo that had given her the first inkling that all was not as it should have been.
She and Branislav had been part of the U.N.’s international war crimes tribunal, investigating ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the ethnic war that had raged in the Balkans since 1986. Their specific task was to examine the hand-written ledgers from the offices of the Kosovo Liberation Army who had been accused of stealing NATO funds to pay for black market weapons.
Those ledgers had started it all. She’d found payments from the KLA to a U.S. bank. She’d assumed the KLA had found an American arms dealer, but then she’d discovered that the money had shown up in some suspicious accounts. She’d been told to leave it alone. That it wasn’t important. But she’d continued to dig. The money led her to a slush fund, which made a roundabout circuit right back to the Balkans. To a laboratory run by what she now knew was a corrupt organization somehow connected to the CIA. They called themselves Omicron, and to the outside world, they were military consultants, meeting with presidents and generals from every allied nation. In reality, they were dealers of death, willing to kill countless civilians for the right price. Justifying their actions by using the tainted money to fund missions and objectives that weren’t exactly kosher. Approved by someone high up in the government. Someone who needed to be exposed if Omicron was to be stopped.
She’d had to leave the ledgers when she’d escaped from the country. It had been Nate’s team who’d gotten them out. His Delta unit, the best of the best, had been hand-picked to go to Kosovo. They’d had one mission—to destroy a lab in Serbia where terrorists were making a chemical weapon. They would have done it, too, if she and Harper and Tam hadn’t told them the truth. God, she’d never forget Nate’s face when he realized his country had betrayed him. They’d gone to the lab on recon, and confirmed that it wasn’t terrorists making the gas, it was scientists, mostly young, bright graduate students, all working separately on their own unique task, none aware that when all the pieces were put together, they would have created the deadliest chemical agent known to man. They also didn’t know that once the project was complete, none of them would live to spend the money they’d earned, or to write up their findings in the scientific journals. They’d been duped, just like Nate’s unit had been duped. All by the men behind Omicron. Almost six months later, she’d gotten in touch with Branislav. It had taken another six months till he’d agreed to get the copies.
Unfortunately, they were a mess. It was going to take Kate weeks to put them in order, then to create the paper trail that could be used in court. If the papers were all there. If Omicron, the CIA covert operation that was out to kill her, kill them all, didn’t find her first.
The reminder got her moving. She stepped out of the car, then decided not to make any phone calls from the street. Even though her cell couldn’t be traced, she knew enough about microphones that she didn’t dare talk in public. Hell, after what had happened to Christie, she knew talking in private wasn’t safe, either.
She thought about Christie, and how Omicron had tormented her. One of the agents had dated her, then stalked her for months. She’d lost her job, her money, almost her sanity. All because she was Nate Pratchett’s sister. Nate, who’d been Kate’s go-to guy in Kosovo, had been in hiding. Everyone, including his sister, including Kate, had thought he was dead. But he’d been spending his time finding out who was involved in the Kosovo killings.
She wished Nate were here now. Nate, Seth, Boone and Cade, her Delta Force soldiers, all were in hiding. Nate and Seth were in Los Angeles, Boone was in Wyoming with Christie, and Cade was in Colorado, living in a safe house where they could all hide if they had to and listening in on the operations of a small Omicron office outside of Colorado Springs.
Kate headed inside to the ugly efficiency apartment she’d rented under yet another assumed name. The smell of unwashed bodies and weed filled the dim hall, and for once, she didn’t mind.
VINCE WAITED IN the manager’s office, shifting on the too-small chair, willing himself to chill. The guy, name of Tyson, was prissy and nervous and Vince needed his help. It turned out he wasn’t sure who had been assigned to stock Tim’s bar, and he had to go find the paperwork.
The office gave him no easy distractions—it was as prim as the man who occupied it. The chairs were like something out of a Victorian sitting room, too delicate for a man Vince’s size. The art was all landscapes, the lamps had little beads on the shades and the whole office smelled like his grandmother’s bedroom.
He tried to regret smashing Baker in the face but couldn’t. Then he tried to figure out which gang was most likely to have wanted Tim dead, but that just made him fidget more.
