Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The house belonging to Hartford's former mother-in-law sat on twenty acres overlooking Oyster Bay, a sprawling Tudor mansion that spoke of generations of wealth and privilege.
They parked at the end of the long driveway, using the landscaping to approach the house without being seen from the windows.
"There he is," Max said quietly, pointing toward a large window at the back of the house where they could see David Hartford stuffing papers into a leather briefcase.
"Back door," Kara whispered, spotting a service entrance partially hidden by ivy.
Max tested the handle. Locked, but it was an old lock that yielded quickly to the lock picks Kara pulled out of her bag. They slipped inside through what appeared to be a mudroom, then moved silently through the house toward the study.
As they reached the open door, Kara pulled her weapon, as did he. Then she moved into the room with purpose. "David Hartford, FBI. We need to talk."
David's head jerked up in surprise. "You?" he said. "You're FBI?"
"Yes."
David's shoulders sagged, and he looked suddenly older than his forty-five years, his expensive suit hanging loose on his frame, as if he'd lost weight along with everything else he'd lost. She glanced at the open briefcase. There were papers and also framed photographs.
"How did you find me?" he asked, sinking down in the chair behind the desk.
"That doesn't matter," she said. "You need to tell me what's going on, David. Why you hired people to blow up a café and a building."
He stared at her, then his gaze moved to the photograph in his briefcase. He picked it up, gave it a long look, then turned it around. "This is my wife, Tori, and our daughter, Ariel. It was taken at Christmas, six weeks before they died. This was the last photo taken of all three of us."
It was a heartbreaking picture of a once-happy family. David looked young and confident, on top of the world. Tori was a stunning redhead. Ariel had the sweet beauty of an innocent six-year-old.
"They're beautiful," she said, still keeping her weapon trained on him.
"They were my everything. They didn't deserve to die. They didn't deserve for their last minutes to be filled with smoke and fire and terror, trapped by a system that was supposed to protect them but prevented them from escaping."
"So you decided to punish the people responsible for their deaths. But Samantha Barkley wasn't responsible."
"She let them walk," he said, energy returning along with his hatred. "She made plea deals to keep her rich friends out of trouble. And Cooper signed off on the building construction after taking a bribe. They weren't innocent. They were criminals. Someone had to make them pay."
"Why now?" Max asked. "That was seven years ago."
"Because they were happy. I saw Samantha Barkley at a charity gala with Dominic.
She was laughing, flirting, and having the time of her life.
I realized she probably didn't even remember my wife and daughter.
Or any of the others. She'd moved on with her life.
They all had. Redstone changed its company name, but it kept making smart systems. Wexler Properties built more buildings, using the renamed systems, bribing the city to look the other way while they cut corners. "
"Who's next?" she asked. "Do you blame Dominic for what happened?"
David's gaze narrowed. "He's the one who funded Redstone in the beginning. If he hadn't given them money, maybe they wouldn't have been able to build the system that killed my family."
"Why not go after him directly?" Max challenged.
"I was building up to it. I wanted him to feel pain first: the loss of a loved one, the worry that danger was coming for him, the realization that he might not be as untouchable and invincible as he might think. But…" His voice trailed away. "He's going to get away."
"Why?" Max asked. "Because your plan is falling apart?"
"Because my plan has been taken over," he said, anger and fear burning in his eyes now. "And they don't want Dominic dead. He's too valuable to them. They don't care about my other targets. They took my money to fund their own plan, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it."
"Who took your money? How did this start?" she asked, eager to finally get some answers.
"After the civil case was over, I was venting to Elias about how no one paid for what happened to my wife and daughter, and he said he might be able to help me. He knew someone who could handle jobs like that."
"How did you know Elias?" she interrupted.
"I have a personal training session at Forge Fitness every week.
Sometimes, Elias stepped in when my trainer was unavailable.
And at times, I gave him some personal financial advice.
Anyway, he connected me to Alex Novik, who got me onto an encrypted site where I could post a job.
" David paused. "I wanted people to feel what Tori and Ariel felt.
It couldn't be a bullet or a blade. It had to be an explosion.
And I found someone who could do that." He took another breath.
"I thought about it for a long time. Didn't really decide to do it until I saw Samantha with Dominic, and her smile made me crazy. It was so unfair, so wrong."
"Who took the job? Caleb Azrani?" Max asked.
"I know that's his name now, but at the time, it was someone named Cal475. He said he could make bombs. And he had people to place them. But he would need me to double my offer. I didn't care what the cost was."
"He must have loved that," Max said dryly.
"I became a mark," David agreed. "I thought I was in charge, but I wasn't. I realized that too late.
Other people were getting hurt. The explosions weren't as targeted as I wanted them to be.
And I was worried that once the FBI started looking around, they could trace everything back to me.
Cal assured me that wouldn't happen. I paid him more money to make sure he tied up any loose ends. "
"Was Jonas Cray one of those loose ends?" she asked. "Was he the one who placed the bomb?"
"I found out later that he was, but that was after I heard he was dead, and I realized that Cal had hired Jonas. I had left it up to Cal to do whatever he needed to do and use whoever he needed to use to get the job done. I didn't want names or details."
"Cal also tried to kill a woman named Whitney Holden," Kara said. "She works in the Building Department. She got James to reschedule his inspection and check out the closet where the electrical boxes were placed."
"I don't know about that. Look, I wanted to be done after the last bomb went off.
Nothing was going the way I thought, and I wanted it to end, but Cal said he wasn't done.
I would have to keep paying him, or he'd turn me in.
He had everything on me. He could send me to prison.
Or he could kill me. I'm not sure which he had in mind.
But he told me there would be more explosions, that everyone on my target list would eventually die or suffer terribly, but other people would, too, because this was bigger than both of us now. "
"Was he talking about the summit on Tuesday?" Max asked. "Where Dominic is the headliner, where the city officials will be, and some of the other investors and builders tied to Wexler and Redstone and all the others?"
"I think so, but I'm not sure. Cal said something about not being obvious."
"When did you last communicate with Cal?" she asked. "And did he mention who else he was working with?"
"Yesterday. He requested another payment, even bigger than the last. He said the people in charge now needed cash, and the only way he could stop them from killing me was to pay up.
I paid him last night, and then I got a motel room.
I was afraid to go home. I drove out here a few hours ago.
I had decided to leave the country, but I needed to get some photos to take with me and I couldn't go back to my house.
I knew Amelia, Tori's mother, had some here. "
She couldn't believe he'd halted his escape plan to get a few family photos. But clearly, David Hartford had been obsessed with his wife and his child and their tragic deaths.
"I don't like it," Max said suddenly.
Her gaze swung to his. "What do you mean?"
"He wasn't that hard to find. And it's too quiet." Max shook his head. "We need to get out of here. Get up," he ordered Hartford. "If you don't want to die, you better come with us, because we're the only ones who can protect you."
Hartford stood up, grabbing the photo and holding it close to his chest as they ran through the house to the back door.
They had just cleared the house and gotten into the middle of the driveway when David stopped abruptly, his face panicked.
"Wait. The letters Tori wrote to Ariel when she was a baby.
They're in my briefcase. I have to get them. "
"Stop," she yelled, but he was already running back to the house. "We have to get him."
Max grabbed her arm as another heart-stopping, ear-ringing blast knocked them off their feet and onto the paved drive.
The pain in her ears was even worse than before.
And she could barely breathe with dust and debris falling around her.
When the smoke finally cleared a little, she looked for Max, terror entering her heart once more.
"Max," she yelled as she struggled to get to her feet.
She didn't see him anywhere, but he had been right beside her. He had stopped her from going after David. God, David!
She pressed her hands to her ears in a desperate attempt to stop the painful ringing and moved forward, but it was hard to see more than a foot in front of her. And then she heard him call her name.
"Kara!"