Robin Burcell - Face of a Killer

“Which means you can’t tell me?”

“Correct.”

She crossed her arms, having no trouble acting angry over that statement. It still galled her. “But of course you’re going to go out and arrest this person? Take care of it?”

Scotty’s gaze flicked to the ASAC’s, then back to her. “We could. But our case isn’t… where we’d like it.”

She thought of the pouch in her backpack, wondered if that had anything to do with any of this. “I don’t understand.”

And the ASAC said, “Apparently this is a joint investigation, the details of which I can’t go into right now. But they’re asking for your help.”

“ My help?”

“They’re worried that if we suddenly pull you from your duties, it might tip off someone to their investigation. I, however, don’t care what they’re investigating. My concern is for your safety.”

She looked at Scotty, his face still unreadable. So he’d done it after all. Kept his promise to keep her on the street. Now it was her turn to make sure she didn’t blow her chance. “What kind of help?”

And Scotty said, “Nothing more than you going about your day-to-day job as though nothing were amiss.”

She looked out the window long enough to appear as though she were thinking about this, before she turned her attention to the ASAC. “I’ll do it. If someone’s trying to kill me, I want to make damned sure there’s enough evidence to put whoever’s behind this away.”

“You’re sure?” the ASAC said.

“Damned sure.”

He turned to Scotty. “And you and your team can provide the security necessary to ensure she’s not in danger?”

“We’re equipped to provide all necessary security, assuming she can follow orders, understand that I’ll be her handling agent, and that if necessary, if we determine it’s too dangerous,” he said, his gaze holding hers, “we call off the whole thing.”

Okay, so he got in his last dig. At least she was assured of some freedom. But was it enough to do what she needed?

Dixon, however, looked unconvinced about the entire affair, his gaze moving from her to Scotty and back again. But it was the ASAC who said, “If anything happens to her, Special Agent Ryan, I’ll have your job.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a knock at the door. Dixon got up, answered it. Carillo stood there, handed him the op plan to approve. “We’re, uh, ready to start the briefing,” he said, then looked at Sydney. “We definitely need copies of that report, and uh, your sketch.”

Sydney said, “Any chance you can burn them for me?”

Carillo nodded, left, and Dixon looked over the plans. “You’re partnered with Carillo on this,” he said. “You can bow out tonight if you like. I’ll get Ren Pham-Peck to take your place.”

“No,” she said, standing. “I think it’s best to keep things normal. Don’t you, Special Agent Ryan?” she asked, looking right at Scotty. “Make sure no one else knows what’s going on?”

Scotty’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

The ASAC said, “Well, looks like we have everything taken care of.” He looked right at Sydney. “I’m glad you’re taking this so well. You’re an asset to the Bureau.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, and almost felt guilty.

He gave Dixon a pat on his shoulder, his public show of confidence. “I’ll leave you to handle this, Dave.”

After he left, Dixon told Scotty, “Before I get started on the task force meeting, I’d like to speak to Fitzpatrick. Alone.”

Scotty pulled a cell phone from his pocket, handed it to her. “You left your phone behind. For safety reasons, we need you to keep it with you.”

“Well, this would’ve come in handy.” She smiled at him, took the phone, and, if truth be told, was amused at his ire as he strode from the office.

Dixon, however, wasn’t amused at anything. He picked up a felt-tip pen from a container on his desk, then stood. “Normally,” he said, making a show of marking off a day on his retirement calendar, “I wait until I’m leaving for the day to do this. The way things are going around here, I’m not sure I’ll get the opportunity.”

She knew better than to speak.

“Your trip to Texas…” He snapped the cap on the pen with enough force to break the thing. “How was it?”

“Just as you thought, cases weren’t related. Probably a big waste of time.”

He eyed his calendar, then dropped the pen back into the container, before turning his gaze on her, and then her scraped hands, his expression unreadable. “Let’s hope it wasn’t. I’d hate to think you went to all that trouble for nothing.”

Scotty cornered Sydney the moment she cleared Dixon’s office, then dragged her into a vacant one. “I want to know what the hell happened down there,” he said.

“Your bosses breathing down your neck?”

“You mean the neck I just stuck out for you so you could remain on the street and run off to Baja, with little regard for your safety and everyone else’s in this operation?”

“Maybe if you’d told me what was going on from the moment you came spying around my house, trying to steal my mail, I might not have had to resort to such measures.”

“It was for your own safety.”

“No it wasn’t. Someone’s trying to cover some ass. What is it? CYA for the CIA or whatever other government agency has convinced you that whatever the hell this is, it happens to be a matter of national security?”

“That’s precisely what it is. Once McKnight left that note, we had to be sure it didn’t get out, because it made reference to a matter that we believe is still in operation today. That means government secrets, intelligence and nuclear technology are still being traded and sold. So you can see why it’s imperative to find out who and where and not let them know we know.”

“It’s my father’s life. He was involved in this, he was killed because of it, and I have the right to know what happened.”

“First of all,” he said, closing the distance between them, “your father was not killed because of this.”

“You don’t know that. You only know what they’ve told you.”

“Two years ago I sat down with you and read your father’s murder investigation, because you were worried then, when there were rumblings that some attorney was looking into Wheeler’s case to see if he could get out. Back then you wanted him kept in. Now, because some suicidal drunken idiot sends you an old photo that has nothing to do with anything, you suddenly think this guy is innocent?”

“No, what I think is that this drunken suicidal idiot has a lot of very important people running around, scared that they’re going to be implicated in a twenty-year-old scandal that they barely escaped from the first time.”

“Look, I don’t know how to make this any clearer. Some of these matters are of national security. They might look bad on the surface, but could undermine years of work involving antiterrorist matters.”

“Like the BICTT banking scandal?”

He froze.

“So that is what this is all about?” When Scotty didn’t answer, she said, “Then why else send someone down to Baja to find the missing records Orozco absconded with on the BICTT matter, then try to kill me because I happened to be the sucker who ended up carrying them out of there?”

“You did what?” he asked, his face turning ashen. “You didn’t say you were carrying anything back.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Jesus Christ, Syd. Do you realize how dangerous that was?”

“Gee. You’d think I would’ve thought of that while they were trying to blow my goddamned brains out. Of course I thought of it. But what was I supposed to do, Scotty? Toss it into the water? If someone’s going to the trouble to kill an FBI agent for that stuff, then I have to guess it’s got someone worried. The question is which OGA would go to the trouble of sending some black ops guys after little old me?”