Agent-in-Charge. Leigh Riker
didn’t trouble Casey. Please, don’t let that stubborn, mind-sticking encounter be significant. Because if it was, she had looked into the face of the man who might kill her.
“Casey, there must be more.”
She briefly shut her eyes, as if to conjure the image again on the blank screen of her lids. Even now, the only picture she could summon of the man remained shadowy. Unlike Graham.
“If he was coming from Hearthline, he could be anyone,” she said. “A senator, a journalist, an employee with a job like yours.”
“But then, I might recognize him.”
Or not, Casey thought. “He could be nobody at all.”
“Which is exactly what he may have wanted you to think,” Graham murmured in a taut tone.
“You mean, he might hope I would forget him?”
“Right.” She heard him rap his knuckles against a tabletop, clearly agitated by her story. “Keep trying to remember where you may have seen him in the past. He could be involved. He could be our man.”
Casey worried her lip.
“No, he couldn’t be. The time between seeing him at the elevator and my being hit by that car in the garage couldn’t have been more than ten minutes.”
“Time enough for him to reach the car—and lie in wait for you. Or maybe he called someone else to do the job.”
“But why?” They kept coming back to that. “Why would someone want to harm me? It doesn’t make sense, Graham.”
His tone darkened. “Sure it does. If he didn’t want you to identify him. He couldn’t take the chance on your forgetting him.”
“And that reason would be…?”
“I don’t know.” He crossed the room again and Casey felt him hunker down in front of her. He caught her still-raw hands before she could pull back, and another zing of awareness shot along her veins and nerve endings. “But we’ll find out.”
We? Casey definitely wouldn’t think about that.
She freed her hands. Yet she couldn’t hide behind her blindness from reality. Leaning to avoid touching Graham, Casey trailed her hand over Willy’s warm, silken fur. He was resting against her leg as if Casey would hold him up. Thanks to Graham, she had the dog now to protect her. Yet he wasn’t all she would need to find a killer, no matter what the reason for the attacks might be.
Whether or not she liked the fact, Casey also needed Graham. Willy would be her guide. But Graham would have to be her eyes.
AN HOUR LATER, from his car in the same parking garage where Casey had been hit, Graham punched in numbers on his cell phone, then waited for his contact at the D.C. police department to answer. The job was relatively new for Holt Kincade, but he had a lot of other experience.
Not long ago, he’d been deep-cover like Graham.
“Hey, Holt. How’s life back in the world?”
A soft Southern drawl came over the line. “Not bad. You still building that government pension?”
Graham didn’t need to answer. From Holt, the question would be rhetorical. Quickly, he explained about Casey’s initial accident. “I need to get my hands on the police report.”
After supplying the necessary details that would access Casey’s file, he waited, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. He didn’t like what Casey had told him, but he wasn’t getting anywhere. He’d already looked around the parking garage himself without finding any clues.
“She mentioned three men in the elevator, possibly coming from the seventeenth floor at Hearthline,” he said to Holt. “One of whom may have recognized her. But from where, when? And why were those men there at all?” Graham felt in his gut that they didn’t belong.
“Something’s not right,” Holt agreed.
“I’ll have to check the visitors’ log.” Because of the need for tight security at the agency, it was kept religiously. Would three names show up on that log after normal business hours? Graham couldn’t shake the feeling that Casey’s first accident and at least one of those men were connected.
“Here we go,” Holt said. “I’ve pulled it up on my computer screen. The report is pretty cut and dried. No eye witnesses at the scene except your ex, and she was either out cold on the floor of that garage or she was drifting in and out of consciousness until the next day,” Holt said. “There’s not even a good description here of the car that hit her.”
“It would help if we had a license plate number or at least the make and model of the car, its color.”
“A few paint chips wouldn’t hurt,” Holt agreed. “From the impact of the accident, we might be able to link them to a fiber from the clothes she was wearing at the time, or maybe a strand of her hair caught in the paint. All she could tell the cops who interviewed her was that the car was a sedan—she thought—and dark.”
Graham sighed. “That covers a lot of territory. Probably half the cars in D.C.” The nation’s capital had no shortage of plain dark sedans, not to mention town cars and limos.
Knowing, too, that they were a dime a dozen, Holt made a sound of frustration that matched Graham’s mood. “Well, the car did come at her from behind.” Another computer key clicked, probably to scroll down on his screen. “She apparently didn’t see the driver, male or female. Neither did anyone else, as far as I know.”
“All of that jibes with the scant details Casey gave me.” Graham asked about the missing box she had carried. He couldn’t discount any possibility. Had her attacker really been after Graham?
“Nope. Nothing here on any box. You might double-check with the hospital. They’d have any belongings left behind except for the clothes she was wearing at the time of the accident. We kept those for evidence.”
“The ambulance guys might know something.” The box might prove nothing, but Casey had been run down near his office building, and Graham didn’t believe in coincidences. Either the box was part of the problem, or Casey had indeed seen something—or someone—she shouldn’t have seen.
“Want me to fax you a copy of the report?”
“Yeah. At home. Thanks, Holt. I owe you one.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ll never be able to repay my debt to you.” Graham winced. On one dark-as-hell night in Beirut, he had saved Holt’s life, but Graham shrugged that off. He knew Holt would do the same for him. “Wish I could be more help,” he added.
“Wait. Maybe you can.” Graham straightened in his seat. He told Holt about Casey’s second mishap in the revolving door the day before. He tapped the steering wheel again while Holt scrambled through the most recent police write-ups—and found nothing.
Graham cursed himself. “I should have gotten the name of the guy who was almost hit when Casey’s assailant tore out of that parking space. His SUV did get bumped pretty hard. Maybe he didn’t file a report to keep his insurance rate from rising. I guess I was too concerned about Casey to think straight at the time.”
“No wonder.” Holt paused. His voice deepened and his Tennessee accent intensified, a sure sign he was troubled. “By the way, I was real sorry to hear about Casey’s eyes. That’s a tough one, Graham. How’s she dealin’ with it?”
“Better than could be expected.”
Holt hesitated again. “You two getting back together?”
“Not as far as I know,” Graham repeated Holt’s earlier phrase. Graham had a job to do. That was all.
At least that’s what he kept trying to tell himself. For her own safety, Casey had to keep thinking, like almost everyone else at Hearthline, that he was some dull