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“Meeting someone?” Dane ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Put yourself in his shoes. You’ve done your exchange and dropped off the motherboards so, realistically, you want to go home. It’s the middle of the night, and you just made a lot of money. Why would you go out to the shipping lanes? Hehadto be meeting someone.”
“You think he had to take the money to someone? If he was just the middleman, that would make sense,” Tac suggested.
“What would a middleman’s take be?’ Koa asked. “If you’re risking your career and your life, not to mention jail time, what number would make it worth it to be the that guy?”
Dane stared at Koa. “What if that’s the whole point? What if Owens felt he wasn’t making enough for the risk he was taking? What if he wanted more, and that’s why someone killed him?”
“Doesn’t help us find the motherboards,” Cain pointed out.
Dane took a sip of coffee. “I still think he was out there to meet someone. Whether he had to hand off the money or not. And I think that person killed him.” He paused. “Can we get a copy of the autopsy report and any forensic evidence from the boat?”
“I’ll ask Finn. He’ll get us a copy.” Cain leaned against one of the desks.
“Who’s Finn?” Jace asked.
“Finn Walsh. He’s one of Bertrand’s aids. I used to be on a team with him. He’s a good guy. He’ll get us what we need.”
Cass blew on her coffee. “Then ask him for satellite images from last night, too. Maybe an eye in the sky caught something. Worth a shot.”
Cain gave a thumbs up. “Will do. What else?”
Tac spoke up. “I’m wondering if we can trace the drone. Jace has pictures of it. Maybe we can find a way to see who has one on the island.”
“I’ve got the pictures up on my screen now,” Jace said. “You want to run through them?”
“Yeah, but don’t project it up on the smart board. That senator is supposed to come by. I don’t want anything on the big screen if he drops in unexpectedly.”
Every member of the team gathered around Jace’s screen. Jace started running through the pictures from the meet one by one, starting with when the pickup driver arrived and running through to when the drone left. Dane tried to look for anything that stood out. Any little thing that might shed some light on who Owens was working with but there were no markings on the drone or the box.
“Wait.” Something snagged Dane’s attention. “Go back one.”
Jace did as he was asked. It was a picture of Owens on the boat.
“Can you blow that up at all?”
“Sure,” Jace said. “What part?”
“Owens.”
Jace blew up the picture until it started to become grainy. “What am I looking at?”
Dane leaned in and pointed to a blotch on Owens’s head. “See that? I think that’s where he hit his head.”
“The blood,” Cass supplied.
“Looking at this, I’d say he fell on his own and whacked his head. Head wounds bleed profusely. He probably left those drugs behind because he didn’t want his DNA attached to them in any way. That’s what the argument was about at the exchange. It’s why the pickup driver took out some money. At least, that’s my guess.” Dane leaned away from the screen.
“Makes sense,” Koa said. He stood with his arms folded across his chest. “But if that happened before the exchange, then we have no idea what happened on the boat after and how Owens ended up hanging from the anchor chain.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter.” Tac walked over and poured another cup of coffee. “Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. The goal is to find the motherboards. If we find out who killed Owens, that’s a bonus, but not really our job, is it? I think we are getting distracted by his murder. It could be linked to the motherboards, but it could just as well be linked to the drugs.”
“Look, I think Tac is right,” Dane said. “As much as it kills me to say it. I worked with that fucker, and he caused my injury. I want every shitty thing Owens has ever done to come to light. I want him to go down as the worst piece of shit ever associated with the Coast Guard. But that’s irrelevant. We need to find those motherboards before the Russians, or the Chinese, or whoever uses them to blow up innocent civilians. I gotta be honest. I hate the idea of that tech even existing, but it’s better if we at least control it. If it’s up for sale, any terrorist group on earth could grab it, and then all bets are off.”
Cain put his hands on his hips. “Okay then. The drone. Jace, you have the pictures. See if you can track down anyone on the island who has one that’s similar. It’s quite big. There can’t be that many of them here. I will get the information we need from Finn. Anyone else had any ideas?”
“We should check out Owens’s place,” Koa stated.
“CGIS will have gone through it,” Cass pointed out.
