Deadly Little Secrets (17 page)

“Yeah, pretty cool,” Ana agreed. The difference in her relationship with Pearson, evidenced by the friendly words and familiar gesture of a pat on the back, was indicative of the change in her office status. Everyone, barring the pus-ball, Davis, had suddenly changed to treating her as one of the team.

When she met with Pretzky behind closed doors, she mentioned it.

“Sure, they warmed up some, but you changed too, Burton,” Pretzky reasoned. “They just met you halfway.” The older woman paced back behind her desk and sat. “Tell me about this case. Start at the beginning and don't leave anything out.”

“I ran through the listing of cold cases,” Ana began. “This one had an art connection, and some interesting angles, so I pulled it next.” Step by step, she went through her process, detailing everything from the calls with the former lead agents, to her calls with the victims.

“Any word from the other agent, the one you didn't talk to?” Pretzky said, as they broke for lunch.

“No, and I need to follow up there. His secretary said he was out of state yesterday, so I'd better try again. I have a different pattern to try, as well,” Ana admitted. “A different set of searches. I'm going to need your help, though.”

Pretzky gave her an odd look. “That's good to hear. Put it together, bring it in after you've had some lunch, and we'll discuss it.”

“Will do.”

At her desk, a stack of pink message notes lay propped on the keyboard. It amused her that with all the computer gadgetry and instant message capability, most people still preferred handwriting reminders.

Ignoring them for now, she turned on her laptop, and while it was booting, she called the number the secretary had given her for Hines.

“I'm sorry,”
a mechanical voice stated.
“This number is currently unavailable. The subscriber you are trying to reach may be out of the area or have the phone turned off. Please leave a message…”

She frowned. They were in the same time zone, so Hines would be up and about. “Probably in a meeting,” she muttered, then left another message for Hines to call her. Opening e-mail reminded her to send the one she'd cued up for TJ. She was really curious about what her old friend was stirring up. It was really peculiar.

She had an e-mail from McGuire.

“Paranoid agents live to retire,” she quoted one of her academy instructors. Obviously McGuire had retired, so his paranoia was bone deep. She e-mailed him back, answered the calls that were about the case, and spoke with the dealership about her car.

“Two days,” she told Pretzky when they reconvened so Ana could tell her about the proposed search and the warrants she needed. “What's so hard about replacing a window and the headrests?”

Pretzky shrugged. “No idea. I gave up on trying to figure out car dealers a long time ago. Let's hear this plan.” They ran over the policies, the warrants, and the issues that would be covered or come up based on the parameters Ana laid out. That took them right up till the end of the day. When she was packing up, Ana realized she had no idea if she needed to call a cab or if Gates was picking her up again.

Right on cue, her phone rang. “Hey,” he said, his deep voice making one word a caress. “I'm nearly to the building. You ready to head out, or do you need more time?”

“I'm ready. How did you know?”

“Magic,” he intoned, then laughed. “I'll see you downstairs.”

The evening was nearly a repeat of the previous night, in all the good ways and without the emotional upheavals.

“Hello, dear,” he said, when she slid into the car. He kissed her, long and deep, then handed her a glass of wine. “How was your day?”

Shaking her head, she laughed. “It was boring. Agent stuff. Databases, searches, calls—the usual.”

“Sounds exciting to me. Say
databases
again. You know how it turns me on,” he joked, chiming their glasses together in a brief salute.

Though they discussed the case, and more about their respective businesses, the meal was lighter, and briefer than the previous evening. Throughout it, however, Gates kept up the same torturous, drugging massage of her neck; drove the same tingling awareness throughout her body.

“Shall we go?” he finally asked, when they'd eaten dessert. She barely knew what she'd eaten, or how long they'd been sitting there. Every point on her body, every nerve, seemed to be rooted to the spot where his hands caressed her, warm and promising.

She knew this dance. It was leading to bed, to sex, to them being together. Ana knew it was crazy. It was nuts, in fact, but she was heedless to stop it. She didn't want to stop it.

They were silent in the car, riding back to her place. He held her hand, his thumb making restless circles on her palm. Her imagination was in overdrive, thinking of having his hands on her body.

“Ana, you are going to invite me in, aren't you?” he asked, his voice sure.

Part of her, the part that was so afraid of screwing up again, wanted to say no. That part wanted to scoot away to the other side of the seat; deny, deny, deny.

The rest of her, the part that was more truly Ana, agreed. “Yes,” she said, forcing herself to meet his dark gaze. “I am. I'm not sure it's smart, but I'm going to do it anyway.”

Gates watched her for a moment, assessing her decision. He felt the smile blossoming on his face, saw the answer on hers. “Smart?” Gates asked, knowing it was a rhetorical question. “Hmmm. I'm not sure I'd call it that, either. Ana—” He started to tell her that this wasn't something he did on a whim. He didn't get to finish.

The window next to her crackled, and there was a sharp snapping sound as the bulletproof glass buckled, but held.

“Get down!” he shouted. “Damon, get us out of here!”

They both ducked below window level, and the driver, caught off guard, swerved out of the parking place he'd been aiming for and peeled out of the parking lot. Gates and Ana were both already both on their respective phones.

“Yes,” Gates answered the dispatcher, rattling off Ana's address, all thoughts of passion dismissed, transmuted into adrenaline. “Shots fired, that address. No, we're not there. No, we'd be sitting ducks. Contact Detective Baxter, with the county, he'll know what to do. Yes, I know.” He answered the woman's question about making a statement, being available. “You can send someone here.” He rattled off the address of the estate.

Meanwhile, Ana had Pretzky on the phone. “We've got another incident. Shots fired, my address.”

“What's the situation? Report, Agent.”

Ana laid it out. Pretzky snapped orders for her to come in, but Ana cut her off. “Bromley's driver is taking us to Mr. Gianikopolis's estate. Locals are meeting us there, since there was an incident at the estate last night as well.”

“Incident? What incident?” When Ana laid it out, Pretzky demanded the address and said she would meet them there. She hung up before Ana could deter her.

“My boss is meeting us at the estate,” Ana said, rising from her crouch as they got farther away from the city. They wound into the hills and pulled up to the hyper-lit front of the estate. There was a police cruiser under the portico when they pulled up.

“Good, Bax is here. We'll talk it through.”

Alexia, Gates's ultra-perky assistant, led them to a cozy living room. A fire burned in the fireplace where Dav and a detective waited for them.

“Hey Baxter,” Gates called, his tone weary. “We've got another one for you.”

The detective gave him a sharp look, then took in Ana's appearance. His eyes narrowed, and she wondered if she had some kind of I'
M A LAW ENFORCEMENT GEEK
sign over her head.

“This is Agent Burton with the CIA.” Gates seemed to relish the look of shock on the detective's face, but Detective Baxter masked it quickly and shook Ana's extended hand. “We've been working together on another matter, and she was with me tonight when we were fired on. I was just getting ready to drop her off.” He gave the address. “We called City dispatch, but I gave them your name. If they send CSI over there, they'll find at least one casing since the shot impacted on the bulletproof glass.”

“You think it's related?” The detective was writing things down, and didn't even look up as he asked the question.

“Don't know,” Gates said, without leaving Ana's side. “Agent Burton was targeted yesterday on her own. Could be separate. Her SA's coming up to the house.”

“We're going to need to step up our patrols here, while Dav's in town this time,” Bax said, still writing. “Someone's going to get hurt with this going on, even if it's not Dav.”

“I agree.”

“Ana,” Dav finally spoke. “It's good to see you again. I'm sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

“And you, Dav,” Ana replied. “I'm sorry you had trouble as well.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “It comes and goes. However, I'm thinking that you aren't usually one to be fired upon. This is not good. Either you are being targeted for being here, or something in your case is the reason,” he said, tucking his hands behind his back and rocking from his heels to his toes, and back.

“Special Agent Pretzky, my superior, is on the way,” Ana offered. “She tends to agree and would like us to work together on this if you have no objections. If checking these old leads gets this kind of response, it's likely that there's a whole heck of a lot more to this case than meets the eye.”

“We thought that at the time,” Dav replied, shooting Gates a glance. “It was prior to Gates coming to work for me, as you know, but he reviewed everything. It was agreed that something about the entire affair was skewed. We were not sure if, at the heart of it, it was about the art or not.”

“Really?” Ana was surprised. Neither of the agents she'd talked to had commented on that; they had obviously still considered it to be mainly an art-fraud case, even with the violence of the deaths. Then again, McGuire and Hines were not in total accord on that, a point that was becoming more obvious each time she talked with McGuire. “Why would you think that?”

“It was too random,” Gates interjected, pouring himself a cup of coffee from what she now presumed to be ever-ready carafes. “The way two of the dealer's employees were killed was way over the top.” Ana watched him closely. He'd made the statement with calm detachment, but there was something in his posture, his demeanor that clued her in to his anger. He was offended by those deaths; incensed. Then again, she reflected, so was she. The details were messy, the torture overkill if they were simple revenge or cover-your-tracks killings.

“The money was never recovered.” Ana offered another point. “Nor were there any other art thefts of this nature, or none connected to subsequent fraud.”

“That we know of,” Dav smiled grimly.

“True, but it would have been dangerous to do any other similar crimes with the investigation under way.”

“Ah, but variations on the theme,” Dav offered, with a wink at Gates for some reason, “slip under the radar. This is how we recovered the piece I mentioned. We won't discuss that with your Special Agent, I think, but it is, nevertheless, true.”

So they wanted to play it that way? It was odd that they'd been open with her so far, despite her deception at the gallery, and yet they didn't want to deal openly with Pretzky.

Baxter stepped out to take a call as they moved to the office they'd met in the previous morning. It seemed like a hundred years ago. The conference table they'd used had been expanded, with several leaves added, and additional chairs were now posted around its expanse. “We will meet here, utilizing the knowledge of your SA and Detective Baxter, who has been our liaison with the local police. He is quite good, but as with all departments these days, especially in California, his options are limited.”

“I understand that.” Ana felt she had to make some kind of response. “We've all felt the pinch of budget cuts.”

Obviously Dav's organization hadn't, since both men made noncommittal noises. When you've got billions, what's a drop of a few million on the market? Or on a painting or five, for that matter?

“Got a team over at your place, Agent,” Baxter said to Ana, as he came back in. “Found the bullet, where it bounced off the car. Your man's taken the car back to your garage, now that we have pictures.”

He sat down on a heavy sigh. “So, what the hell's this all about? And you got shot at too, Agent, yesterday I hear?”

“Yes,” Ana confirmed. “Missed me, but it was a near thing.”

“You think it's connected?”

“No idea,” she replied instantly. “I have to consider, though.” She shrugged. “It doesn't make any immediate sense. You have anything on all this that might tie into a nine-year-old art fraud case? 'Cause that's my only connection to Mr. Gianikopolis and Mr. Bromley.”

“So the shot at you might be something else?”

“Maybe, but then the shot at Mr. Bromley might be something else too,” she said.

“Doubtful.” Another voice joined the conversation as Pretzky came in. The men stood, and she nodded to each of them, shook hands, and sat down, pulling out a file as she did. It was a neat maneuver, and Ana admired the smoothness of it. “Agent Burton hasn't been on this case long, but we've had two incidents since she began making her calls and nothing prior to that on other cases she worked on. I'm thinking it's related to this case.” She turned to the detective. “If your people could send me the data on the bullet you found, that would be helpful.”

“Done,” he stated, with seemingly no rancor. “I already cleared it with the city police. You have any leads on this, Agent Burton?”