Chapter 36
36
V iper hoped the program Leo boasted about would have the answers quickly but hadn’t expected them so quickly. Less than an hour after HICC received the pictures, a response came back with two names and a promise of complete dossiers by the end of the day.
“Holly Russell and Jack Williams,” Lina said, her eyes locked on the screen.
“There are over 300 million people in the US. How did you get this so fast?” Viper asked, still stunned.
Leo shrugged. “We started with anyone associated with Navios.”
“And these two are?” Viper asked, rereading the email. Had he missed something?
“That was the parameter I gave Collin,” Leo answered, mentioning another member of his team. “They are related. Or, at least, Holly is,” he said, shifting his computer so he and Lina could read it.
“Holly Russell, sister of Craig Sonnenberg,” he read.
There was no question Holly was Nest. The mug shot that accompanied the email from Collin showed the same skinny build, aged skin, and dry, wild hair.
“What was she arrested for?” Lina asked.
“Felony assault,” Leo answered. “Looks like a bar fight. She served two years after she sent another woman into a coma.”
“Nice,” Viper said. “What about Sam—Jack?”
“Her third husband. He was a prison guard. Presumably, that’s how they met,” Leo said.
“Was? What’s he do now?” Lina asked.
“Not much, judging by their financials. Odd work here and there for a logging company on the coast of Oregon. They live in a double-wide in a not-bad trailer park north of Astoria, so I’m guessing they both probably do a little work under the table.”
“Was he fired from the prison because of Holly?” Viper asked.
Leo shook his head. “Nope. Fired for cause is all this file says?—”
“It takes a lot to fire a prison guard for cause, doesn’t it?” Lina asked.
Leo inclined his head. “There are good guards, but as a group, they can struggle with ethical standards and are well protected. I’ll dig into it more. At least enough to find out if the reason for his termination is relevant to our situation.”
Lina sat back and drummed her fingers on the table. A beat later, she rose, grabbed a dry-erase pen, and gestured to the whiteboard in the far corner. “May I?” she asked. Viper nodded, and she began writing.
The names of the prime suspects went up first: all three Caine children and Craig Sonnenberg, followed by a question mark.
“We’re assuming those four make up the suspect pool, and we’re probably right, but I want a reminder to keep an open mind if we come across intel that doesn’t fit,” she said, explaining the question mark. Both he and Leo nodded in agreement.
Underneath that list, she wrote Holly’s and Jack’s names. On the other side of the board, the names of the deceased, along with her dad’s.
“Do we have any indication that Holly knows the Caine children?” she asked.
“Not so far, but phone records indicate that Craig is close to his sister. They don’t talk every day, but they do speak regularly. It’s possible she visited him in North Carolina and met the siblings at some point,” Leo said.
“We’ve placed Holly at the scene of my father’s murder, although not in the house,” she said.
“Hold up,” Leo said. They both fell silent as he rapidly keyed something into his computer. Four minutes ticked by before he sat back and grinned. “Forensics found dog hair at the scene,” he said.
“Didn’t the woman who called the police have a yellow Lab with her?” Viper asked, remembering the first article he read.
Leo nodded. “This wasn’t fur, but hair. They collected it thinking it could be the suspect’s since neither the color nor length matched your dad’s. The initial tests came back as canine. The hair of a cocker spaniel/poodle mix.”
Lina rounded the table, and they all looked at the frozen video of Holly on the street. And the dog she walked. “Any chance the hair was blondish-brown and wavy?” she asked.
“We have a winner,” Leo said.
“Can they DNA test the hair against the dog?” Viper asked.
“They can if they can collect a sample from the dog itself. I think for now, though, it’s sufficient to place Holly Russell and her dog not just near the scene, but at it,” Leo said.
Lina gave a sharp nod. “It’s enough for me.” She returned to the whiteboard and circled Holly’s and Jack’s names. “I doubt they’d have anything against my father, personally?—”
“But I will confirm,” Leo said.
Lina nodded again and wrote “Killers for hire?” by their names. “If they didn’t, it’s more than likely they were hired to do the job. If this is a complete pool of suspects”—she gestured to the names of the Caine siblings and Sonnenberg—“then which one paid to have my father murdered?”
“We’ll start looking today, but financial records can take longer than the facial recognition did,” Leo said.
“I doubt whoever paid Holly and Jack used anything as obvious as their checking account,” Lina conceded.
Leo chuckled. “You’d be surprised how stupid criminals can be, but you’re probably right. The question is whether whoever is paying them is really sneaky or just run-of-the-mill sneaky.”
“Can I vote for the latter?” Viper said.
“Me, too,” Lina added, making Leo smile.
“Why don’t you two go check on lunch? By the time you get back, I won’t have the answer, but I’ll have a better idea for when I can get it.”
“Deal,” Viper said, pushing back his chair and holding his hand out for Lina. Her gaze dropped to his upturned fingers. She stepped forward and set her palm in his.
“We’ll be back in thirty minutes,” he said before leading Lina out. Instead of heading to the kitchen, he walked past it and toward the room he kept at the clubhouse. She followed without a word, and after locking the door behind them, he took a seat and pulled her onto his lap. She sat stiff and awkward, then slowly, she relaxed and leaned into him.
“We’re close now,” he said. She nodded, her cheek brushing his shoulder. “Do you want to hand everything over to the FBI, or do you want to be involved in bringing this to closure?”
“I’m not handing it over,” she said, as he expected. Which meant they’d have to manage the FBI. Callie had agreed to work with them on Stone and Juliana’s situation rather than taking over, but this situation was different.
“You have any strings you could pull to make sure that happens?” he asked.
He felt, more than saw, the face she made. “It was a tactical error on our part to give Agent Parks all the information we did, but it’s too late now. Yes, I have strings to pull. The biggest being my grandfather.”
He rubbed his hand up and down her spine. “You’ve been keeping him apprised?” He hadn’t overheard her talking with him, but she had a phone and a texting app. And from what little he knew about the spymaster, Viper doubted he’d stay out of the death of his one and only child.
“Messages here and there,” she said. “He trusts that we’re handling it.”
“We? You told him about me?”
She pulled back and looked him in the eye. “Yes. Of course.”
He wanted to ask what the British aristocrat/spy legend thought of his granddaughter dating a Black man who happened to be the son of two abusive, alcoholic layabouts. But he didn’t. The only opinion that mattered was Lina’s. Although, admittedly, he was a little worried—if Grandpa Kato didn’t approve, he didn’t want to cause a rift between the two.
As if sensing his thoughts, she slid her fingers over his jaw and cupped his face. “Not that his opinion matters, but you’ve impressed him. I didn’t tell him anything other than your name and the fact that you’re helping me, but it’s in his nature to dig.”
“Especially when it comes to you,” he said.
She nodded. “He’s not one for effusive praise—ever—but he advised me that you’d be worth keeping around if that was what I wanted.”
He tried to stay calm, but his fingers twitched at her waist. “And is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
The certainty and swiftness of her answer sucked the breath from his lungs. His hold on her tightened. “I live here. You live in Seattle,” he managed to say.
“I can do tax work anywhere. I’ll have to look into licensing requirements in California, but I’ve figured it out before; I can again,” she said with a casual shrug. As if she wasn’t considering changing her entire life to be with him. “It might take me a while to build a business here?—”
“Not an issue,” he cut her off. If she was willing to uproot her life and move to California, the least he could do was support her while she built her business.
She smiled. “I’ll keep a few of my bigger clients in Seattle, and I may have to travel a bit, but it’s an easy flight.” She hesitated. “I, um, well, I also have a trust fund. Money won’t ever be an issue for us.”
“I’m not taking your money,” he said.
She arched a brow. “But I can take yours while I set my business up?” She had a point. One he didn’t have an answer for. If they were going to make a life together, they’d need to learn to share the bounties as well as the burdens. It didn’t sit well with him, but he also didn’t have any practice in being anything other than a protector, a provider. A shard of panic lanced through him at that thought. Lina didn’t need him to be either. His two biggest assets, and she didn’t need either.
The tips of her fingers brushed down his neck, pulling his attention back to her. “We’ve both built lives we can be proud of,” she said. “We don’t need each other in that way. To me, as a woman, that’s something to celebrate. It’s a responsibility, to be sure, but every day, we get to decide that we’re together because we want to be. Not because we have to be. Not because money or education or codependence or physical security requires it. It’s a choice we’ll make, Jackson. Every day. It’s scary as hell, but it’s also…a gift. A powerful gift. To ourselves and each other.”
His heart stuttered at her words. So many people in his life had chosen not to be a part of his. What if she woke up one day and decided the same?
Her amber-red eyes held his, steady and sure.
He took a deep breath. He loved her. If she ever decided not to choose him, he’d fight like hell to convince her she should. And if she still didn’t, he’d let her go. He didn’t see that happening. What they shared was very real and just as solid. But if it did, he’d let her go because he loved her too much to play any part in forcing her to stay in a life she didn’t want. He’d been there, done that, and while his childhood was different, he never wanted her to feel even an ounce of what he experienced growing up. He never wanted her to feel trapped.
Reaching up, he cupped her cheek, tilted his head, and brought his lips to hers, a gentle brush, a taste, a promise. Lina had other ideas, though, and shifted to straddle him. She angled her head, deepening their connection. He opened his mouth, sinking into the moment as his phone rang, startling them apart.
She eased back as he pulled the device from his pocket. Glancing at Leo’s name on the screen, he frowned and flashed it at Lina before hitting the Connect button.
“Yeah?” he asked, the call on speaker.
“You need to get back here,” Leo said. “I know who’s behind Alastair Kato’s murder.”