Allison Brennan - Silenced

He put the out-of-town visitors at the bottom of his list. It wasn’t that they couldn’t be guilty, but the chances were minimal. He wrote a quick program to run basic background checks on those people, as well as Paxton’s staff, and forced it to work on another server, to keep his at peak performance. When it was done, the program would e-mail him a report.

There was a national law enforcement group, a national victims’ rights group, multiple congressmen and staff, and several lobbyists representing a variety of clients.

If he were going to steal something, he would prefer to be alone in the room. He made a list of all meetings where there were only one or two other people. That eliminated half the meetings. Two people would work-either a conspiracy, or one of them stepped out.

Paxton wouldn’t have been in the room.

What made Paxton think that someone hadn’t accessed his office after hours? Capitol security was extensive, and Sean bet the first thing Paxton had done was look at the security feeds outside his office for any intruders. But there were no security cameras in the individual legislative offices. So he’d deduced that someone who had access to his inner office had taken the note. Paxton had dismissed his staff as viable suspects, and Sean supposed a man as wily as Paxton would be able to assess his employees accurately.

Then there was his pet PI, Sergio Russo.

Sean knew very little about the PI. How had Paxton found him? Was he from DC or the New York district that Paxton represented?

Running a background on Russo would be a little more difficult. A good PI would have alerts when certain databases were accessed. Sean would have to go into each database through a back door. It wasn’t legal, but at this point, if Russo was not who he appeared to be, Sean didn’t want him knowing that he was digging.

Paxton said that the note and locket had been kept in a box in his bottom right-hand drawer. Close to him, where he could look at it anytime he wanted, but hidden from public view.

There had to be something more than the theft of the locket and note. There was no evidence at all that Paxton had killed Roger Morton. Someone else confessed, the gun had been recovered, no one was even looking at Paxton as a coconspirator, let alone the man who pulled the trigger.

Why not call their bluff?

Because Paxton’s lying to you.

He wasn’t lying about killing Roger Morton-why would he confess that to Sean when someone else was in prison for the crime? But he was lying about something else.

Mick Mallory had pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and gave a detailed rundown on every predator he’d killed.

What’s one more in the big picture?

But if Paxton killed Morton, Mallory knew. Which meant Mallory might know why the locket was so important to Paxton.

Why would someone take the fall for Paxton’s crimes?

Someone like Mick Mallory, the bastard, was so broken he’d take the truth to his grave. But there were others. Lucy’s former boss, Fran Buckley, had made a plea agreement. Did she know about Paxton’s involvement? Sean couldn’t see how she didn’t. She took his money, he had headlined a fundraiser for her, they had been friends.

Except … that didn’t fit the rest of the scenario. It didn’t fit why two call girls were dead, a congressional mistress, or a social worker and her husband who were helping them. There was a big gaping hole of information, and in that missing information was motive.

His phone vibrated. It was a text message from Lucy.

I’m finally home. Clean bill of health.

Sean wanted to see Lucy, but he needed to talk to Paxton again. Fill in some of these blanks.

He called to arrange a meeting, and Paxton tried to postpone until tomorrow. Sean wouldn’t let him, and Paxton agreed to meet him at nine, at Paxton’s residence in Alexandria.

He never wanted Lucy to know what had happened in Massachusetts. He would destroy Paxton if it got out.

Sean might take the senator down anyway, just for threatening him.

He responded to Lucy’s message.

Up for a visitor? I have chocolate ice cream for you.

He had enough time to check on Lucy and get to Alexandria early. He planned to do a little investigation on the senator himself.

He grabbed his laptop and bag of tools, locked up, and tossed everything in his trunk.

Noah watched His Grace Church for thirty minutes.

Reverend Marti North knew exactly who Ivy Harris was. He had already called to get a warrant, but it was late and he had not one teeny piece of evidence that Marti had lied to him, that Hannah/Ivy was there, or that she would return. And whenever they were dealing with registered churches, legitimate or not, they had to be extremely careful in how they approached the situation. No one in the Bureau would forget Waco.

Still, Rick Stockton thought Noah was on to something, and was working with his people and the U.S. Attorney to see what they could do. It might mean simply sending in another agent. Or authorizing a stakeout. Or digging deep into Marti North’s past and finding something they could leverage. Not Noah’s favorite approach, but when a fourteen-year-old girl was missing and the people she had been with were all dead, he would do whatever it took.

Cyber crimes had called him with the information obtained from the virtual phone company. The number was registered to a pay-as-you-go phone and the account purchased with a prepaid credit card.

Noah didn’t find it humorous that Sean Rogan had predicted that method to hide the identity of the phone number holder.

The credit card yielded nothing-it was in the dollar amount for the yearlong subscription to several virtual numbers, all of which went to the same disposable phone number. The account had been opened three months ago, and changed disposable numbers four times. The current disposable phone, however, had been reloaded at a nearby location three weeks ago.

When he got the call that the surveillance team had finally arrived to relieve him from the impromptu stakeout, he left to check out the business.

Noah drove to a small convenience store only six blocks from the church, on the corner. Like other businesses in the area, bars covered the windows. When he pulled up, several loiterers left the area.

He walked in and the tall, young black kid behind the counter gave him the once-over. “You a fibbie?”

“Special Agent Noah Armstrong.” He showed his ID. “I’m looking for the owner.”

“That’s my dad. He’s not here.”

“I’m looking for this girl. She lives not far from here, and may have come in to refill a disposable phone.” He showed Ivy’s picture.

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Noah wasn’t certain the number belonged to Ivy, but since it was only a mile from her house, he was taking a chance thinking it was her. With the multiple virtual numbers all going to the same phone, it suggested she was giving different numbers to different people. According to the company, the caller ID was set up to show which virtual number was being used. That would help Ivy keep track of who was calling her.

Noah had also asked about tracing the numbers calling in to the virtual numbers, but the company didn’t keep that data.

This was his closest lead. “The last time the phone was filled was three weeks ago, two hundred dollars cash.”

The kid lit up. “She-et, why didn’t you say so? Two bills, crisp and clean.”

“Was it her?”

“Naw, it was some older dude. Forties.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?”

The kid shrugged. “White. Maybe Mexican, Italian, something like that-but not a spic, if you know what I mean.”