Allison Brennan - Stalked

“Who are you calling?” Sean asked.

“I’m sending Hans an e-mail. I don’t want to talk to him right now, but when I found Tony on Thursday there was a bottle of Scotch on his desk. They should have it tested. Just in case.”

Sean waited while she sent the e-mail. “Lucy, who told you that Hans pulled strings?”

“Laughlin.”

Sean wanted to deck the guy. “You don’t think there’s something suspicious about that?”

“Yes, I do. It tells me that Kate knew and didn’t want me to find out. It’s what they had to have been arguing about when I walked in. And it would explain why Kate wouldn’t tell me the truth when I confronted her about it.”

She glanced back down at her phone and said, “Well, I guess I’m not the only one with a suspicious mind. Hans had a forensic team come in from the FBI lab last night. They took the Scotch bottle and glass and collected trace evidence. They’re testing everything at the lab, and running an expanded tox screen on Tony’s blood work.”

“If someone poisoned his bottle, that means-”

Lucy finished his sentence. “There’s a killer at Quantico.”

New York City

Patrick met them at the small private airport in northern Virginia where Sean kept his Cessna. “I have a meeting with Stokes’s partner, and with the coroner’s office, but we need to get going-it’s Saturday, and I convinced the coroner to come in on his day off. I don’t want to keep him waiting.”

Lucy psyched herself up for the flight. She’d flown since the crash landing three months ago when she and Noah Armstrong, who’d been an Air Force pilot, had been shot down in the Adirondack Mountains. But each time she boarded a plane, her heart raced and she had to force herself to remain calm.

While Sean ran through the pre-flight check, Patrick came over to her. “You okay, Sis?”

She nodded. To change the subject she asked, “What happened with Brandy?”

“What did Sean tell you?”

“Nothing-just that you said it wasn’t going to last.”

Patrick shrugged. “Sean has a big mouth.”

“He wanted to know what I knew, which is less than he does. I thought you liked her.”

Patrick sighed. “She’s beautiful and smart, but I just don’t feel it, you know? I’m going through the motions and it shouldn’t be like that. She called me on it last night, and I let her walk away.”

“Is Mom getting on your case because you’re next up to get married?”

Patrick paled. “Don’t even say it. I’m not ready.”

“You’re going to be thirty-six next month.”

“I’m young at heart.”

Lucy laughed and hugged him. “It is Mom. Don’t let her push you.”

“She has a long arm, even three thousand miles away.” In a low voice he said, “She’s planning on setting me up with Gabrielle Santana when I go home for Christmas.”

Lucy stared wide-eyed. “What? You can’t.”

Lucy knew Gabrielle, even though the woman was three years older than her. Like the Kincaids, the Santana family was large and Catholic. In high school, Lucy had dated Gabrielle’s brother for two weeks, and even in two weeks the stories she’d heard from him about all five of his sisters, and in particular Gabrielle, had Lucy both envious and terrified. Gabrielle had a wild reputation.

“Apparently, Gabrielle is the first Santana ever to get divorced. Mom and Mrs. Santana think I would be good for her. Why do I feel like I’m being set up to tame a shrew?”

“So this means we have four months to find you a girlfriend.”

Patrick stared at her as if she’d suggested he become a monk. “No. This means we have four months to find me a job that will keep me out of San Diego at Christmas.”

Sean approached. “Christmas?”

“Nothing,” Patrick said.

Lucy smiled and whispered, “I’ll tell you later.”

“You mean this is about the girl your mom is trying to set Patrick up with.”

“Shut up, Rogan,” Patrick mumbled.

Sean grinned. “Plane’s ready; let’s go.”

At least the conversation with Patrick went a long way in alleviating Lucy’s apprehension about the plane ride, and the hour passed quickly while Sean ran through a list of women he could set Patrick up with just for the three days he would be in San Diego. Patrick mostly pretended to sleep and ignored him.

Sean landed them in Newark just after three that afternoon. Both he and Patrick rented cars, because they were on a tight schedule if Sean was truly going to get Lucy back by 6:00 p.m. tomorrow. He didn’t believe for a minute that she would follow through on her threat to quit, and he wasn’t going to make her late.

Sean turned onto the Jersey Turnpike heading toward Manhattan. “So that’s what this whole dating kick he’s been on has been about. Finding a girl to bring home to your mom?”

“I guess so. But honestly, I’m glad that’s all it is, because I was worried about him. He’s not usually like this. Anyway, what’s our plan for tonight?”

“Suzanne is meeting us at a bar near the Bureau along with the NYPD detective working the case.”

“Vic Panetta?”

“Some guy named DeLucca, out of Queens. Weber was stabbed in the parking lot of Citi Field in the middle of a baseball game. Money and jewelry stolen.”

“She was wearing expensive jewelry at a baseball game?”

“According to her insurance records, she always wore her mother’s wedding ring on her right ring finger. It was valued at over fifteen thousand dollars. Her friends said she never took it off.”

“So her attacker may have asked her to hand it over and she refused?”

“Could be. We’ll know more when we read the reports. Suzanne didn’t tell me much of anything over the phone. Except she wasn’t there for the game-didn’t have a ticket-but apparently planned to meet someone.”

“No witnesses?”

“None came forward. No security cameras in the area-only on the entrances and exits.”

“And Weber herself?”

“I know what you know.”

“I thought we were retracing Tony’s steps.”

“We are. Suzanne will give us the rundown, but he made at least one stop after he left her and that’s what we’re going to follow up on.”

“And Suzanne is fine with us helping?”

“Hans called her already. He wanted this off-the-books because he didn’t know what Tony was up to and he didn’t want anything in the press.” Sean glanced at Lucy. “And I want to know what’s in her files.”

“Why did we have to come here? Couldn’t we have gotten the files e-mailed or faxed? Talked to Suzanne on the phone?”

“We could have, but I wanted to get you away. Last time we were in New York you said you wanted to come back, and this is our chance to have a night off, just you and me.” He glanced at her. “You’re okay with that, right?”

“Of course I’m okay with it.”

“Good. Because I missed you and I only have twenty-four hours having you all to myself. In between this investigation.”

“Tonight, Sean, will be ours.”

She smiled, and Sean was relieved. While he knew Lucy loved him, he was the more romantic one. He relished these moments when they could get away. And every vacation they’d had to date had ended in disaster. So he wasn’t calling this a vacation, but he was going to treat tonight as such.

The time away would help Lucy regroup and think clearly before she decided what to do about Hans, as well as how to deal with the possibility that Tony’s death might not have been of natural causes. Sean wasn’t convinced it was murder-could a killer get away with two murders, in different states, at different times, staged as heart attacks? That would be pushing it. However, if it worked once, why not again? They needed to find out if there was any connection between Stokes and Presidio other than the McMahon case.