“Understandable.”
“Any luck with Kendrick’s hard drive?”
I know Janey didn’t walk out of that FBI office without the information contained on that computer. Exactly how she manages to do that without anyone noticing requires an impressive level of expertise, quick hands, and nerves of steel, none of which I possess.
Now, ask me to hit a grape on a tree trunk at a distance of seventy-five feet and I’m your woman.
That’s why we are stronger as a team. We each have our talents to bring to the table.
“A few possibilities. A couple of pieces of information I was able to hand off to Jacob, who is working on confirming their validity.”
Because we’re a small team, Jacob likes to follow a lead as far as he can take it himself, before handing it to one of us to pursue on the ground.
“Can you give me a hint?”
I’m hungry for information. Anything to set this investigation on the fast track because I have this sinking feeling our time is running out.
“Our congressman has his fingers deep in the pie Kendrick has been serving.”
“We already knew that,” I point out.
“Right, but it looks like he doesn’t just partake, he’s part of the operation.”
“How do you figure that?”
“The direction of the money flow,” she explains. “I found financial files for the center masked as a listing of donations from a slew of big players, including, but not limited to, Krebs and Germain. Some of the names would make your hair stand on end. Nominal amounts, mostly. A couple of thousand each, a cluster of them paid on or around the same dates.” She cocks a hip and gets comfortable leaning against the car’s fender. “I figured that wasn’t the whole story so I dug a little deeper and found an encrypted file named Pure. I was able to get in to find a matching spreadsheet of names but with amounts almost ten times higher. It looks like only ten percent of the actual donated amount ended up with the center, while the other ninety percent was funneled to the Cayman Islands. The account there belongs to a company by the name of Pure Caribbean. Jacob is trying to find out who it belongs to.”
“And Melnyk?” I prompt her.
“Oh, yes. Our congressman. Here’s the kicker; Melnyk is listed as a minor donor to the center, but his name is not on the other list. I had a peek at Melnyk’s financials and found the small donations to the center, but no other withdrawals. Curiously, every time a donation was made from Melnyk’s personal account to the center, a large sum of money was deposited into his campaign account on the very same day. Fifty thousand buckaroos each time a cluster of those donations are listed. Guess where that money came from?”
Holy Jesus.
While Kendrick was grooming kids for exploitation, Melnyk was out there recruiting customers.
Sick fuckers. All of them.
This kind of information would’ve stayed hidden, perhaps forever, if we had to work within legal limitations. At the very least we would’ve lost time we already don’t have enough of.
I’m about to prompt Janey on the source of the deposits when I’m distracted by a dark sedan coming down the street. Something about the vehicle’s cautious approach puts me on edge. My alarm is only heightened when I spot the lights mounted on the car’s grill.
“I thought Crown Vics were phased out years ago?” Janey mumbles behind me as I automatically start reaching for the door handle.
“They were.”
As I respond, I open the driver’s side door, keeping a close eye on the approaching car. All I can see is a single person inside. Judging by the way he fits behind the wheel, it’s a large man.
I sidestep so the bulk of my body is covered by the open door. Janey does the same behind me.
When the car is level with the neighbor’s driveway, I see the passenger side window sliding down.
“Cover!” I yell when I see the light reflect off a barrel in the open window.
I dive into the rental, grabbing for the first gun I encounter, when I hear the first muted pops of a fully automatic weapon.
Fuck.
My Glock 19 fits smoothly in my hand, it almost feels like a physical extension. As I back out of the car and duck low, Janey is already returning fire from the far side of the door. Thank God she was carrying.
“Vehicle stopped at eleven o’clock from our position,” she yells over the ongoing gunfire. “He’s firing at the house.”
Shit. I hope Lee and Melissa are safe in there.
“Cover me,” I tell Janey, who immediately starts firing rapid shots at the vehicle while I slip the barrel of my Glock in the opening between the door and the rental.
The angle is sharp and the shooter is ducking low behind the wheel, but I think I have a shot through the windshield. I wish I’d grabbed my rifle instead, it’s more accurate, but the Glock will have to do.
I smoothly rack the slide to load a bullet in the chamber and take aim, slowly but steadily depressing the trigger.
Unfortunately, just as I fire off my shot the shadow in the vehicle shifts. The windshield shatters, but the sedan is already taking off with tires squealing. I get off one more shot which catches the vehicle’s rear fender.
Janey darts out from behind the door and hustles down the driveway, firing a few more shots at the disappearing vehicle.
“Janey! House!”
Tucking my gun in the back of my jeans, I run toward the house.
Every single front window is shattered and the door has been destroyed under the barrage of bullets.
“Lee! Melissa!”
I climb in through the front window, avoiding the shards of glass as best I can, while yelling their names. I can feel Janey right behind me.
“We’re okay. We’re down here.”
Lee comes up the basement stairs and looks around at the devastation of his living room.
“Fucking hell.”
“Anyone hurt?” I ask, looking beyond him to see Melissa peeking out. “Watch out for the glass.”
“We’re not,” Lee answers, his eyes slide over my shoulder. “But she was hit.”
I swing around to find my friend with blood dripping down the side of her face.
“By a piece of glass,” Janey returns crisply. “It’s a scratch. Now let’s get the hell out of here before they come back, or worse; the cops show up.”
She’s right. We need to get out of here ASAP.
What felt like hours probably just lasted minutes, but the gunfire would not have gone unnoticed. Someone is bound to have called 911. If we’re still here when the cops show up, we’ll only lose more valuable time.
Besides, at this point I’m not sure who we can trust.
“I need a few files, my laptop,” Lee says, moving toward the bedrooms.
“No time,” Janey barks, just as we hear sirens in the distance. “Now!”
Her urgent tone doesn’t stop the man from darting into one of the doors off the narrow hallway.
Leaving Janey to deal with the reporter, I grab Melissa by the hand and help her over the worst of the debris and outside. There I notice one of the tires is flat on the rental, which has not gone unscathed. It appears to have caught a couple of stray bullets.
Shit. We’ll have to pile into the SUV.
I can’t risk leaving behind my weapons, so I dive into the passenger side to retrieve my guns.