Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The Crimson Club was closed until five, and Elias Costa at Forge Fitness was taking a sick day on Wednesday, which had made Kara's two stops on her way to work completely pointless.
After a morning debrief with the team, she dug into Jonas Cray's life, which was completely unimpressive.
A high school dropout, Jonas had joined the Army at eighteen but received a bad conduct discharge before his twenty-second birthday.
His employment after leaving the service had been spotty.
He'd worked as a bartender, a bouncer, a parking valet, and a handyman.
But there was no evidentiary connection between Jonas and Elias Costa or Jonas and Alex or Sergei Novik.
No transfers into his bank account, no emails, nothing…
Jonas had been caught on camera entering and exiting the Crimson Club several times a day and also going into Forge Fitness, which certainly made Elias Costa's claim that he'd never seen him before a flat-out lie. But that wasn't proof of anything. They needed more.
Her team, especially Alina and Zane, who had embedded themselves in the dark web over the past year had been haunting online forums for chatter about the bomb or the victims, but so far nothing had come up.
By four o'clock in the afternoon, she was tired and hungry, so she headed into the break room for coffee and a snack. She grabbed a banana first, then moved to the coffeemaker to pour herself a cup.
Alina Volkov came in a moment later, giving her a smile. "I need one of those, too."
She slid the mug across the counter to Alina. "Take this one. I'll get another."
"Thanks." Alina took a sip and let out a sigh. "I needed this."
She smiled and took her mug to the kitchen table. "Me, too. How's it going?"
"Not great. I feel like I need a shower after reading the posts in the last forum of sickos. What about you?"
"Nothing yet. Jonas Cray seems like the perfect guy to hire to do a dirty job, but I can't link him specifically to someone targeting Samantha. By the way, did you get an update on Samantha's condition?"
"Just a few minutes ago," Alina replied. "She's stable but critical. Samantha's sister has been there all day. Dominic Ashford also spent about thirty minutes with her. No sign of trouble at the hospital. Ashford has security outside her room."
"I'm glad Samantha is hanging in there." She peeled her banana and took a bite.
"The hospital released the other two victims today," Alina added. "That there have been no fatalities is very fortunate."
"So far, anyway. Samantha still needs to survive."
Alina sipped her coffee as she nodded in agreement. "Hopefully, she will. So, what's the story with the ex-CIA agent who keeps showing up in this middle of this case." Alina asked curiously. "Tyler doesn't seem to be a fan."
"Apparently, they met overseas when Tyler was in Delta and Max was in the CIA, but no one will talk about that. They're just very distrustful of each other. But Max is helpful to me, because he's tied into Ashford and Samantha Barkley. He has access to their world which we don't have."
"That makes sense. Do you know why he left the CIA?"
"He said he needed a change," she said dryly. "He's not big on answering questions. And, honestly, he could still be CIA; I have no idea."
Alina smiled. "That sounds about right. I've never found anyone in the agency to be helpful."
"Well, he's the least of my concerns." She took a bite of her banana, chased it down with coffee, and then said, "I keep asking myself why anyone would choose to blow up a café just to kill one person? I know murder doesn't always make sense, but my logical brain wants to find an answer."
"We'll find the answer," Alina said confidently. "We won't stop until we do."
"We won't," she agreed. "I don't give up."
"Neither do I. A quality instilled in me when I was a child," Alina added. "You don't quit, and when you lose, you learn."
"That's a good philosophy."
"I'll tell my father you said that. He likes to believe that even though I didn't follow his dream, I got something out of it."
"What was his dream?" she asked curiously.
"My parents brought me here from Russia when I was four and my younger sister was two.
They decided we were going to be professional tennis players.
They sacrificed a lot to get us into the top camps, and I was pretty good, better than my sister, who didn't like the heat and didn't like to run and just hated to compete. But I loved the fight."
"How long did you compete? Did you play professionally?"
"You don't want to hear this."
"I really do. Tell me." She was more than a little curious to know more about her new team.
"I won the US Nationals when I was seventeen and got to play at the US Open.
I made it through the qualifying and into the second round before I lost. I was on my way.
I had a full ride to Stanford University.
But in my first year at school, I went on a ski trip, and I fell down the mountain and broke my leg in two places.
I also injured my wrist and a couple of ribs. It was a nasty accident."
"That sounds awful."
"I had to have multiple surgeries, and my tennis career was put on a long hold.
When I tried to come back two years later, I wasn't the same, not physically or mentally.
Having that time away, to not think about being my parents' hope for a better life, I started to have fun.
I made new friends. I got a boyfriend. I realized how narrow my life had been. And I didn't want that life anymore."
"Were your parents crushed?"
"They were sad. But our relationship actually improved when I wasn't just thinking of my dad as my coach, when he wasn't telling me how to hit a backhand or what to do against a wide serve.
It was like we started to just be a normal family, and eventually, after a brutal string of lessons, my father took my racquets away one day and said he was going to keep them until I said I wanted them back.
And if I never said that, it would be okay. "
"And you never said that?"
She shook her head. "I didn't. It wasn't what I wanted anymore. I wanted to be an FBI agent, and that's what I did." She laughed. "I don't know why I told you all that."
"I'm glad you did. I enjoy having tough competitors on my team, people who like to win, because I definitely want to win."
"You'll have to tell me your story sometime, Kara."
"I will, but now I'd better get back to work."
As she reentered the bullpen, she was surprised to see Jason and Tyler standing by her desk, deep in conversation.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"The police have a witness who claims he saw someone go into Jonas Cray's apartment," Jason replied. "He's a food delivery guy who dropped off an order to the apartment down the hall from Cray's."
"Where is he now?"
"Currently doing food deliveries, but he said he will meet you between drops. I've asked Kate to send you his number," Jason said, referring to his admin. "His name is Omar Radishka, and he's working the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood today. He says he delivers food to that building all the time."
"That's great." She looked at Tyler. "Are you coming?"
"Not if you don't need me. I've found a link on Sergei Novik to Dominic Ashford that I'd like to explore."
"What's the link?"
"In addition to the Crimson Club, Sergei owns an international construction and engineering firm. That firm has gone up against Dominic Ashford twice in the past year, including a project in Tajikistan that Dominic won. That links Novik to Dominic Ashford, Samantha Barkley, and Jonas Cray."
"It certainly does," she said with excitement. "Keep going. I'll check in with you later."
She grabbed her bag and headed down to the garage to get her car, feeling more optimistic than she had been.
They had a possible witness to Cray's killer and a link between Dominic and Novik, a person who would certainly have the money and power to hire someone to make a bomb and blow up a café with the girlfriend of one of his competitors in it.
Thirty minutes later, she'd made her way to a parking lot in Hell's Kitchen where the delivery driver was waiting in his car for his next pickup. She parked a few spots down and then texted him.
He got out of his car, a young twenty-something Indian male wearing a sweatshirt with an NYU logo and baggy jeans. His hair was long, and a somewhat scraggly beard covered his cheeks.
She walked over to him, giving him a nod. "Omar Radishka?"
"Yes."
"I'm Agent Reid. Can you tell me what you saw last night in the building on the corner of Eighth and Monroe?"
"I had just delivered food next door, and I saw a guy go into 3C. He was tall, like professional basketball player tall. He had black hair and was dressed all in black. He looked creepy."
"Did he knock on the door?"
"Yeah. And someone answered. The man went inside.
I heard someone ask what the hell he was doing there.
But I didn't hear the reply. I was halfway down the stairs when I thought I heard someone yell.
I waited for a second, but I didn't hear anything else, so I left the building.
" Omar paused. "I heard the dude inside got killed.
I can't believe I saw who did it. Do you think I'm in danger?
He saw me, too. My dad said I shouldn't have said anything to the police, but when I was delivering lunch to the building next door today, a cop stopped me and asked me if I'd been working last night. "
"You did the right thing. I don't believe you're in danger.
But I would take a few extra precautions.
If you can avoid delivering to that block, I would do that.
If you can take a few days off or stay with a friend, that might be helpful as well.
Just be alert and don't talk to anyone else about this.
Don't tell your friends, your family, no one.
We'll keep your name out of our reports as well. "