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“You should know that Deputy Director Cross kicked me off the case. He actually put me on leave. I didn’t have a choice. I can’t help you with anything officially, nor can I say anything to anyone else officially either.”
Dane knew immediately she was angry. He’d be pissed too. Being taken off the case made logical sense, but it hurt. Some asshole wants her dead. She didn’t want to be out of the fight. He knew exactly what that felt like.
Cain nodded to Jace. He moved the laptop over to Mac’s bed, and they all moved to surround Mac. Jace pulled up the satellite images.
“There’s Owens,” Jace said.
“Can you zoom in at all?” Cain asked.
Jace zoomed in as much as he could. “Owens is on his boat and alive at oh-one-forty-five.” He continued to click through the images.
“There.” Dane pointed at the screen. The bow of a boat could be seen. In the next shot, the second boat was beside Owens. “Jace—"
“I’m zooming.” The image of the second boat got bigger. “Two people,” Jace confirmed.
“I can’t make out any details. No way to recognize them.” Dane cursed under his breath. He had been hopeful this would have given them something to work with. They flicked through the pictures. The two men boarded Owens’s boat. The next image showed all three of them together. The shot after that had only one man on Owens's boat. Then there were two people and a lump. Dane said, “Must be Owens, already dead on the floor of his boat.”
“Yeah. Looks like it,” Jace agreed.
In the last shot, there was just one man on the boat again and nothing else. “There are no more. The satellite moved out of range.”
Koa grunted. “That was disappointing.”
Everyone moved back to their seats, Jace taking the laptop with him. “At least we know we were right. A second boat came, and we know there’s two people involved.”
Dane knew by the way Jace was moving that his knee was hurting him. Dane dug into his pocket and brought out what was fast becoming the community bottle of Advil. He tossed it over. Jace caught it and nodded his thanks.
“Two people,” Mac murmured. “It could be members of Owens’s team but, honestly, I don’t think they would have done it. According to Rutledge, they’re all afraid of being next.”
“Do you trust Rutledge?” Dane asked.
She paused. “I… I don’t know.” She sighed. “Regardless, what I was going to say was, they would’ve known better than to hang him on the anchor chain by the shipping lanes.”
“She’s right,” Cain said. “If it were us, what would we do?”
Dane stretched his legs straight out in front of him and crossed his ankles, trying to find a more comfortable position. The hard hospital chairs sucked balls. “I would meet him, kill him, take the boat much farther out, and then wrap him in chains with weights and drop him over the side, making sure that the currents weren’t heading toward land. Then I would scuttle the boat.”
“Exactly,” Mac said. “And remind me never to be alone on a boat with you,” she added with a tight grin. “That was pretty fast. Been thinking about that for a while, have you?”
He shrugged. “Let’s just say I might’ve imagined it a time or two.” He winked at her.
“What does the ME’s report say?” Cass asked.
Jace pulled it up. “Finn Walsh is super-sonic fast.”
Cain nodded. “He’s good people.”
“Uh…he was shot. Nine-millimeter. Dead before he was in the water. Throat was slit after death, so were his wrists, and there was a slash across the chest as well,” Jace read.
“So why the anchor chain?” Cass asked.
“The two on the boat can’t be trained killers or spec op either,” Koa stated. “My guess? They slashed him and hung him there thinking it would attract sharks and other predators, thinking he would get eaten.”
Dane nodded. “Only once the heart stops, no blood gets pumped. It would have pooled in his feet. Only a small bit would be released into the water. Plus, we found him way too soon. If he’d have been much farther out, it could’ve worked. Or, at least, he would have possibly decomposed before anyone found him.
“Owens wasn’t stupid. I think he knew his partners, or bosses, or whoever didn’t know about the shipping lanes and how busy they are. He probably thought there would be more traffic so when he met whoever, there would be more protection. If it did go sideways, he knew he had a better possibility of being found sooner rather than later.”
Mac frowned. “You think he planned for his death?”
