“Someplace I’d rather be right now.”
“Yeah, but what else?”
Bowman frowned. “I’m not sure. I don’t see anything but a large painting I can’t afford.”
Jane smiled, having sensed the source of her unease. “Ah ha. There. See it?”
“See what?” Bowman moved closer, studying it.
“It’s been moved.”
“It has?”
Jane pointed to a smudge, where the painting had been shifted against the wall. A faint scratch.
“How the heck did you see that?”
Jane pulled the picture off the wall but didn’t find a safe behind it, as she’d been expecting. Nothing to indicate the painting meant anything more than to be appreciated as a pretty piece of art. Except as she studied the back, she saw a slit in the dust cover tucked against the frame.
Still gloved up, she carefully reached in and pulled out a small, thin notebook.
Detective Bowman grinned from ear to ear. “Hot damn. I think you just found what we in the business call a clue, Agent Cannon.”
Eager, Jane opened it up. A lot of dates and codes and names she didn’t recognize.
The next page provided another list of names.
And all three dead families were on it.
Chapter 5
Coordinatingwith the other LEOs who’d been on the scenes of the previous crimes as well as forensic accountant Lisa Chen and the SSA of the cybercrimes squad had taken most of Jane’s day.
She didn’t get home to her apartment in Capitol Hill until after eight. She needed to eat and relax, but her brain wouldn’t stop buzzing.
They had a real clue. A notebook with information they needed to decipher.
And a word that had been mentioned several times through the pages she’d studied.
The Collective.
Jane had no idea what it meant or might be. But the same senses that had told her to study that painting told her it was the key tying her cases together.
The buzz of a conspiracy involving wealth and power had all her senses hyped, so that the ringing of her phone didn’t register until whoever had called hung up then phoned her again.
“Hello?” she answered without looking at the caller ID.
“Well, well. Ms. Too Important For Family finally answers the phone.”
Jane scoffed. “Raine. Nice to hear you’re still alive and kicking.” Months ago, her cousin had transitioned from fulltime work as an intelligence specialist in the United States Marine Corps to civilian life, working at a boring HR job in Silverdale. “What’s it been, an eternity that you’ve been avoiding me?”
“Please. I wasn’t avoiding you. I was avoiding Malcolm, who is finally up on his feet again.”
Malcolm, a lethal hand-to-hand expert and important member of Team Ten. Like Jane, Malcolm didn’t do well sitting around. He and another of her uncles had been super helpful with a serial killer case she’d been working. They’d ended the Red Ribbon Killer’s reign of terror a month ago. She still had the bruised ribs to prove it.
“I wish he would have let me know he was leaving.” Jane hadn’t seen Uncle Mal in a few weeks, busy at work, so she’d made plans to see him this Saturday.
“That’s why I’m calling. He’s leaving on Sunday.”
