“What is it?”
“They were all high-ranking—and I mean, high—Russian KGB.”
He blinked. “What? How did you find that out?”
“I have friends in high places. Namely the CIA.”
“You’re FBI. Why would you have CIA friends?”
“Ha ha. Cute. And it’s only one friend, but just be glad I do and that she’s willing to share—albeit off the record. Anyway, that’s the connection to all of the families, I think.”
“They weren’t officers, they were assets,” he murmured.
“Exactly. High-ranking Russian officials selling their country’s secrets to the United States.”
And Ava’s father had no doubt recruited them. But . . . “How did they all come to be in the United States?”
Ava’s phone rang and she leaned against the wall to take the call.
“From what I can gather,” Daria said, “the CIA officer who recruited them—and whose name was not divulged even by my friend but could very possibly be Ava’s father—managed to get them out one by one starting in the late eighties and into the early nineties.”
“So that would have been a bit before the KGB was disbanded—officially—and shortly after. Why, after all these years, would someone be unhappy about that and come looking for them? Why kill their families, but not them?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll let you work on that angle, but I have one more bit of news for you. ViCAP sent me a notification of a murder that might not be related, but there were enough markers that it caught my attention.”
“What is it?”
“A couple living in New Mexico were found dead six weeks ago. The wife was shot point-blank in the foyer of the home, but evidence shows she was moved postmortem to the sofa. The husband committed suicide as evidenced by the spatter on the window behind him.”
Caden frowned. “Why would that have anything to do with our case?” Although the fact that the woman was moved to the sofa was interesting.
“I’m getting there. Even though he shot himself in his office, he, too, was moved to the sofa next to his wife.”
“Well, that’s definitely a flag.”
“Indeed. Anyway, the couple, Max and Yvonne Kirkland, were supposed to have been on a plane to the Turks and Caicos to meet some friends at an all-inclusive resort. When they didn’t show and weren’t answering their phones, the friends asked someone to go by and check on them.”
“And found them.”
“Right. Turns out they don’t have any children together, but Yvonne had a son from a teenage relationship. In the office where Max killed himself, this son, named Gregory, found a box that he remembered his mother telling him contained pictures from her husband’s ‘former life.’”
“Former life, huh?”
“Yeah. I don’t have all the details there, either, but it looks like Max and Yvonne are really Maksim and Yelena Kuznetsov.”
Caden froze. “Let me guess. From Russia.”
“Yes. Well, he was Russian. She was American. Her birth name was Yvonne. When they lived in Russia, she went by Yelena. And here’s another piece of interesting trivia for you.”
“He was high-ranking KGB?”
“You win the prize—and it looks like he was the first one in this particular group to defect.”
“The first of many?”
“Definitely quite a few.”’
“So how did he wind up with an American woman?” Caden shot a glance at Ava, who was still on her phone, her forehead creased.
“Yvonne came from a wealthy family,” Daria said. “Old money on her mother’s side. Her father was an FBI agent working with defectors—questioning them, guarding them, et cetera. When she finished college, she was offered a job at a prestigious girls’ school in Moscow teaching English as a second language. At some point, she met Maksim and they hit it off. Reading between the lines, it looks like this was all set up by her father to get Maksim to defect. It worked. Long story short, he followed her to the US in 1990 and changed his name to Max Kirkland—and gave Yvonne’s father names of other high-ranking KGB officials who could be turned. For the right price.”
“I see.”
“All of that information is on file here, of course. I didn’t have to dig too deep to find it.”
“So why did ViCAP flag it? The positioning on the sofa?”
“That and the missing pictures. Other flags were home invasion and gunshot to the head, a single intruder who knew the family’s routine, and a couple of others. But mostly the missing pictures and bodies on the sofa.”
“Okay, thanks, Daria. This is a huge help.” But a bigger help would be questioning Jesse Fields yet again and presenting him with the information he now had. If questioning Mickey had to wait, he could grab Mr. Fields and see what he had to say about the information Daria had just shared. His phone dinged and his lips turned upward. Finally.
Two attachments—a still shot and a video from hospital security. He stared at the picture grabbed from the footage, then played the video to see how the picture had come about. The man slipped out of the stairwell, keeping his head turned from the camera, but he stumbled and fell, then wrapped his hand around his knee.
A worker dressed in scrubs rushed over to place a hand on his shoulder—probably to ask if he was okay—and the man looked up for a split second to shove the hand away.
That split second was all that was necessary to get a clear shot of his face.
“Perfect,” he breathed. “Now to run you through the facial software system and nail your hide to the wall.” Then throw it in prison. He sent the picture to Daria with the text.
I need to know who this is ASAP.
On it.
Oh, I need a vehicle. Mine is full of bullet holes.
Insurance would probably total it. He grimaced. He’d really liked that truck.
The multimillion-dollar luxury yacht had been Nicolai’s home for the past four months when he wasn’t at the house with his aunt. It boasted three levels of indoor and outdoor living, with a swimming pool and bar area on the top deck. The five staterooms were spread out over the second level. And the bottom deck . . . well, that was his special place.
Nicolai maneuvered the speedboat into the garage of the yacht. The hydraulic-operated bay served his purposes and he hadn’t minded spending the money for it. He’d moored the floating mansion to the dock of a private island he’d . . . procured.
Once he was finished with his mission, he planned to have the yacht towed from the lake to the ocean so he could sail away and never look back. For now, though, while he hated to use this slice of paradise as his hideaway, it was the only place he felt confident in keeping his prisoner secured. It was a place where his aunt wouldn’t hear things she was better off not hearing.
Like his prisoner screaming for mercy.
It had taken him this long to find the man. Having him escape now would mean the end of everything.
And while his mission was nearly finished—and getting nearer with each family he killed—it would not end because something went wrong, like that unexpected change in routine in Oregon, or the Fields boy escaping, but because his plan succeeded. He’d worked around the routine issue and he’d take care of the kid soon. Mickey was running scared and would make a mistake before too long.