He stared at her still body on the screen and said under his breath, “Where’ve you been, Ivy? Who’s after you?”
Liam broke the placid state. “All I have from either scene – the coast and the alley – is a single ear. One clear picture.”
“An ear?” Wylie asked.
“I can run it through recognition. Biometrically, an ear is just as identifiable as say, a fingerprint. No two are alike. I just need to make a few modifications and…” Liam stopped typing when he felt all eyes on him. “You guys don’t care…just get it done. Got it.” He smiled. “This could take time, and it’ll only work if I have an ear in the database to match it to.”
“And I’m guessing there’s no such thing as an ear database since it sounds ridiculous?” Dace questioned.
“Bingo. This tech isn’t as well-known or used, so our resources will be more limited than if we had a solid fingerprint or even better DNA. However, a clue is a clue. But I’m already building a…” Pausing to look at the raised eyebrows surrounding him, Liam snickered once more. They’d been through it more times than he could count. Their team was less concerned about the hows and whys surrounding Liam’s expertise and more interested in the outcome, so he’d spare them the tech talk. “I’m on it. It’ll just take time. Anyone already in the database with any kind of record – criminal or professional – will be searched first. I’ll have to comb through mugshots and compare.”
“Professional?”
“Those black SUVs look pretty official to me, so I’m running them through the employee databases across all government mainframes to start. Maybe it’s a sting, and we’ll get a hit off the feds or something?” Liam added.
Wylie shook his head. “Looking for an ear…”
“Hey, sometimes, you have evidence and leads, and you just don’t know it. Let’s turn this into something we can work with.” Liam shrugged.
“Something to think about here…the cartel doesn’t leave loose ends.” Eva spun on her heel and perched her hands on her hips as she faced the group with new concerns framing her expression. “And the only time they leave a body alive is if they’re sending a warning. They don’t just offer up incriminating witnesses – especially a loner in the game. They’d never take a fall like that. If this thing with Ivy and the coast are connected, and we’re dealing with cartel? When they don’t see this in the media or find out she didn’t die…”
Dace turned to her and finished her thought, the same thought racing through his own mind. “They’ll come looking for her…to clean up the loose end. Unless they want her to talk? Hell, maybe she has a message for us?”
Eva nodded in agreement, further plotting the series of what-ifs they were brainstorming. “The fact he didn’t leave a final bullet in her head for good measure leaves me skeptical. They tend to send their messages in the form of a dead body. The guys from the alley…too messy. They don’t add up to cartel. If they wanted her to be the message, then why leave her in the alley instead of the doorstep of whoever they’re trying to get the attention of?”
“But they have the same unmarked SUV as our friends over on the coast – known cartel and whoever they’re meeting with,” Wylie reminded him.
“So we have three different factions to trace and identify. We don’t have much time to decide if we have more than one case here and whether they overlap, or if this is all purely an odd coincidence,” Dace said, tossing up his hands.
“And nothing to go on yet but a damn ear.” Wylie snorted. “Shit. We have our work cut out for us.”
Liam sat back in his chair, arms crossed. “I don’t know if this is something or not, but I can’t pick Ivy up anywhere else. It’s like she just appeared in that alley.”
“And the SUV?” Dace asked.
“Still backtracking. It drove all over town and didn’t really stop anywhere. Just…drove around.” Liam shrugged. “The million-dollar question is why? Were they looking for her?”
“Maybe,” Dace said. “We need to talk to her. This isn’t enough to build a case on. Until she’s out of surgery and awake, I’ll get you a list of names to start digging into from…the old days.”
“No need,” Liam said, waving off his brother. “Already have them.”
“Liam, that information is highly classified. The kind of classified we don’t even have access to here at Brother’s Keeper. The kind of classified that only those present at the time have info on. Not something you’ll find stored on a server in a basement somewhere in DC, brother.”
“When has classified ever stopped me? Missions, manifests, names, dates, casualties… It was there once.” With a quick shrug, Liam addressed the obvious elephant in the room. The one holding all the cards Liam was about to lay out, even if it was incriminating beyond federal law. “What? I always knew where all of you were. I had your back.”
“Because?”
Liam grinned. “Ma made me.”
Dace wasn’t surprised, nor did he doubt his mother was behind Liam tracking his brothers around the world while on active duty. He let out a snort-like laugh. “You do…you, bro. The rest of us should get down to that alley and see what the police didn’t find.”
“It should be a clean scene, man.” C.T. felt obligated to defend his team.
“It never hurts to take another look with fresh eyes.” Declan tried to offer support for his friend’s efforts, but he knew as well as the rest of them that local PD was understaffed, overworked, and underpaid, which meant they, like many professions, were easily bought.
“Hmmpft.” C.T. snorted. “Why does it feel like I’m about to find a hole in my team?”
“Consider it a favor.” Dace patted his friend’s back. “Better to find out now than not at all. The team we sent over to assist should already be turning every stone.”
“Let’s go get some answers.”
CHAPTER 4
Though only minutes away, the quick trip felt like a lifetime of travel. With Ivy still under the knife, time felt as if it stood still. Dace knew there had to be something that would clue them in as to how they needed to successfully tread this case. The initial report from C.T.’s crew was that they turned up nothing. Sure, there was blood, bullet casings, and a random lipstick that may or may not have been a casualty of Ivy’s purse spilling everywhere, but nothing big. Not the break they wanted. The break they needed.
The group of men was met by their advanced team of Brother’s Keeper agents, who had a good head start. They’d found a few things the PD hadn’t, but it still wasn’t much. A few extra casings, a shoe print in a semi-dried mud puddle, and a sales receipt that was slightly blurred from condensation but a clear barcode they hoped Liam could somehow trace.
“No cell phone?” Dace asked.
“Sorry, man,” one of the men said. “We pulled out that dumpster. Nothin’. Searched every inch of this alley, man. Either someone got to it first, or it landed in a nice hiding spot that we just can’t put a finger on.”