Fatal Secrets (44 page)
Authors: Allison Brennan
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Thrillers
She laughed and kissed him, savoring his taste. “I can hardly wait until tonight, and you’d better be Mr. Incredible.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Tonight? What’s tonight?” He smiled and kissed her. “I have one more surprise.”
“I don’t think I can handle any more excitement.”
“Just this one.”
“All right. One more.” She grinned as she followed him out the side door. They walked down the street. It was the most beautiful Fourth of July—hot, blue, and free. She was free, and she would never forget anything—the good and the bad—that had brought her to this place, these people, this peace.
“Where are we going?” she asked when they turned the corner.
He didn’t answer her, but pulled her along. He was grinning and practically bouncing on the balls of his feet—very unlike the serious Dean Hooper she knew.
“Dean, what’s going on?”
“Be patient.”
“I’m not a patient person.”
“Fifty feet.”
“What?”
He stopped in front of a two-story Mission-style house with a wide porch and flowers everywhere. It
fronted the quiet side of South Land Park, two blocks from her parents’ house.
There was a real estate sign in the front yard. Underneath it was a sign that said sold.
Her heart thudded. “What’s this?”
“Our home.”
Read on for an excerpt from
CUTTING EDGE
by
Allison Brennan
Published by Ballantine Books
The arson had been hot, fast, and lethal.
The cloying, acrid scent of the extinguished fire had FBI agent Nora English breathing through her mouth as she walked carefully through the extinguished remains of the research wing of Butcher-Payne Biotech, her boots sloshing through the water left behind by the firefighters. Tens of thousands of gallons of water had flowed into this wing to put out the blaze, and the crew was surveying the building, axing the remaining interior walls that had been charred to ensure there were no hot spots.
They’d been damn lucky. The summer had been particularly dry, and the trees surrounding BPB in a canyon off the two-lane highway could easily have caught fire, spreading through the crisp timber and underbrush faster than they could respond. Fortunately, there’d been no wind to push the fire, and the first firefighters to respond had done a magnificent job saturating the roof and surrounding grounds. In addition, the solid exterior and internal firewalls of the five-year-old building had contained the fire wholly within the research wing.
“And the fire sprinklers didn’t go on as they were supposed to,” the Placer County fire chief, Ansel Nobel, said as he escorted Nora to where the body had been found. He sat on the standing Multi-Jurisdictional Domestic
Terrorism Joint Task Force—DOMFOR—that the FBI had implemented shortly after 9/11. “The most recent inspection was three months ago. They were functioning properly. I don’t understand.”
“Have you checked the water pump station? Is this area on a city pump or well water?”
“There’s a water storage tank uphill for—damn, that’s it.”
“Excuse me?”
“The water storage tank is for the hydrants. The sprinklers are on another system maintained by the county. When we hooked up to the hydrants without any problems, I assumed it was faulty sprinklers.”
“I’ll ask my partner to check it out.” She called Harry Antonovich, a senior long-time agent with the FBI who led Sacramento FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Squad and pioneered many of the Evidence Response Team protocols related to domestic terrorism. Harry had trained her when she was a new agent right out of Quantico, and Nora didn’t want to think about his retirement at the end of the year.
“Harry, it’s Nora. Chief Nobel said the sprinklers didn’t go on. The pump may have been sabotaged—can you talk to the sheriff’s department and get a team over there to check it out?”
“Absolutely. What’s it like inside?”
“Wet.”
His voice had a modicum of restrained humor. “I meant damages.”
“Same apparent burn pattern. Started in the lab and was contained ninety percent in the lab and adjoining offices. The lobby walls have some damage. Hot enough
to melt some of the equipment, but that’s beyond my expertise.”
“When’s Quin going to get here?”
Nora hesitated a moment. Her sister had a reputation, and she hated to fuel it. But this was Harry. “She had a date.”
“It’s five in the morning.”
“In San Francisco. She promised she’d leave immediately. She wasn’t on call tonight,” Nora defended.
“I’m not being critical, but we need her. I don’t need to tell you they’re escalating.”
The arson gang they’d been investigating for eighteen months had never killed before. The three previous arsons had targeted the same industry—biotechnology—but the first two were in warehouses, and the third fire was in a small genetic research building at the zoo. BPB was a multimillion-dollar company that employed more than fifty people.
Other than the dead body, the MO was the same. Why BPB? Why now? Why kill? Accident or premeditated murder?
“Something else is going on. This just doesn’t feel right to me.” Nora caught herself twisting her short hair between her thumb and forefinger. She tucked the curls behind her ear and dropped her hand.
“Have you seen the vic?”
“I’m heading that way now.”
“I did a field test on the graffiti. The paint matches the other arson fires.”
“Dammit, Harry, they haven’t killed anyone before.”
“It was just a matter of time, kid. You know that. I’ll go check the pumps and get back to you.” He hung up.
Chief Nobel said, “It’s happened before.”
“Excuse me?”
“Arsonists. Set the fire not knowing someone is inside.”
“It still makes them murderers, whether they intended to kill him or not.”
Nobel stood in front of the opening into Jonah Payne’s office. “Brace yourself, it’s not pretty.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
Nora buried her emotions deep. It didn’t matter how many times she saw a dead body, or in what condition, the anger and deep sadness at a life taken too soon could overwhelm her if she didn’t close off her feelings. She couldn’t afford to impair her critical judgment. Cops learned to compartmentalize to do the job or they ended up dead or drunk. There was a reason cops had nearly twice the suicide rate as the population at large.
Her ability to fully detach herself had earned her the reputation as level-headed by those who liked her, and a cold bitch by those who didn’t.
Chief Nobel stepped aside. Bright crime-scene tape crisscrossed the charred opening leading into Dr. Jonah Payne’s office off the main research laboratory. The office itself wasn’t large, approximately fourteen feet square. Paper fueled the flames in here, soggy remnants of pulp everywhere, higher piles of ash and partially burned paper on the credenza behind the large desk. No windows, no natural light—Nora couldn’t fathom how anyone could work in such conditions.
The victim, presumed to be Jonah Payne, was flat on his back on the floor in front of his desk, which instantly seemed odd to Nora. She’d only investigated one domestic terrorism case that had resulted in fire deaths: in that case, the fourteen victims had been trapped in a burning
building and all had died of smoke inhalation. The bodies had either been in fetal positions or prone.
Payne had third-degree burns over all exposed areas of his body. His hair had disintegrated—which would help the M.E. determine how long he was exposed to flames—and the metal from his glasses had melted into his charred skin. His shirt was completely gone but he’d been wearing jeans, she noted, and while they were black with soot they appeared intact. Denim could withstand fire longer than some other materials. All details they’d need to figure out exactly what happened.
Fire fatalities were some of the most difficult crimes to investigate. Much of the damage came from necessary fire-suppression activities, but when the firefighters discovered a body, they did everything they could to preserve evidence while putting out the flames.
“Chief,” the man inspecting the body said with a brief glance up.
“Kevin, this is Special Agent Nora English with the FBI’s domestic terrorism unit.”
“Don’t come in,” he said.
“We’re not. Nora, have you met our M.E., Kevin Coffey?”
“No,” she said. “Dr. Coffey, does it seem odd to you that the victim is on his back?”
He stopped his inspection and looked up at her. “Yes, it is odd. But I don’t want to jump to conclusions before the fire inspector gets here.”
“She’s on her way,” Nora said. “She was out of town and—”
A raspy voice behind her bellowed, “She? Last I checked, I’m still a man, sugar.”
Nora bristled and turned. The smoker’s voice belonged
to a man who looked old enough to be her father—or grandfather. He wore black pants and a red plaid shirt on which was clipped a fire marshall’s badge.
The man grinned at her and winked. “Yep, still a man.”
“Ulysses, this is Special Agent Nora English with the FBI. I told you about the task force—“
Ulysses waved his hand in the air. “Task force,” he said with derision. “All talk, no action.”
“We should discuss this, Mr—” Nora began.
“Ulysses.”
“I’ve brought in a consultant from the state fire marshall’s office who’s been on the task force since the first fire eighteen months ago—”
“This is my jurisdiction, or are you going to flex your federal muscles and screw everything up?”
Nora didn’t want friction with the locals, but she would flex her federal muscles if she had to. Domestic terrorism fell squarely on the FBI’s shoulders. She was about to say that when her sister Quin bounced into the room, the polar opposite of the craggy old fire marshall.
“Ulysses!” Quin exclaimed, a petite blonde ball of energy bounding over to the graying man. She gave him a hug that was longer than it needed to be and Nora watched, bemused, as Ulysses turned to putty.
“If I’d known you were coming, sweetheart, I’d have put out the red carpet.”
Quin laughed. “Nora is my sister. Cut her cute federal ass some slack, okay?”
“Anything for you, sugar.”
Quin caught Nora’s eye with a happy smugness that had Nora twisting her mouth to avoid smirking back. At least the victim was in good hands. Quin didn’t take
anything but her job seriously, which had been a bone of contention between the sisters, but there was no one Nora trusted more than Quin with this case. And Quin would catch Ulysses up on the previous arsons, freeing Nora to focus on interviewing Payne’s partner and staff. While there was little doubt that this arson was connected to the others, she needed all documentation of threats either in person or written, any trespassers over the last few weeks, and information on what BPB was working on.
Ulysses turned to Nora. “To answer your question, Agent English, I’ve never seen a case where the victim was on his back except if he’d been dead or unconscious when the fire started.”
Quin crossed over to where Nora stood by the entry and said under her breath, “Sheriff Sanger is here, and he’s on a rampage about the Professor. That slimy reporter Buttface is here—“
“Belham—“
“Right, Buttface. He’s hanging around Sanger, who’s giving this hot, dark, and sexy hunk an earful. Don’t know if he’s Payne’s partner, but—” she gave Nora the
I think he’s stirring up shit
sideways glance.
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
“I’ll take care of Ulysses. He’s ornery, but he’s one of the smartest in the business.”
Nora excused herself with one final look at Jonah Payne’s remains.
Unconscious or dead before the fire. That would mean his death wasn’t an accident—he’d been intentionally murdered. Had he caught the arsonists red-handed? Why not hit the panic button? What happened to the alarm system? Why not call the police? Had he confronted
them and been killed? Had he known them? Was it an inside job? Was his murder premeditated, and the arson a way to cover up the crime and destroy evidence? That would make this crime far more personal.
Quin took command of the crime scene like she commanded everything in her life—quickly and completely, with a sugar coating so no one knew what hit them. Jonah Payne was in good hands.
Now Nora had to control whatever damage Sheriff Sanger had done by talking publicly about Professor Leif Cole. This investigation was already sliding down the slippery slope of legal posturing and games, the press circling like vultures because biotech was controversial, and high-ranking politicians were calling Washington wanting to know what was being done in Sacramento and why they didn’t have an arrest—and shit runs downhill fast.
Sanger was going to jeopardize the entire case if he didn’t keep his big mouth shut.
Fatal Secrets
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2009 by Allison Brennan
Excerpt from
Cutting Edge
copyright © 2009 by Allison Brennan
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
Cutting Edge
by Allison Brennan. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51512-4
v3.0
