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It was both unsettling and worrisome to wonder what was happening to his holdings with Fiona at the helm, and he reached for his phone to check for messages. He had one, from Jack, and opened it immediately.
Wolf, the fed handling the murder investigation of the crash turns out to be my stepbrother, Special Agent Colin Ramsey. I’ve given him the details. He’s willing to hold off on an official notification of your death, but only until DNA results are in. But he needs to confirm for himself that you are still alive. This is his personal phone number. You need to make it a video call so he can see that it’s you. If you need me for anything else, you know what to do.
Wolf threw back the covers and went to get dressed, then headed for the kitchen, turning on lights as he went. First thing on the agenda was coffee, so he filled the well in the Keurig, popped in a coffee pod, slid a coffee mug beneath the spout, and hit the power button.
After that, he began making the rounds inside the house, looking out every window until he was satisfied that he hadn’t been followed. By the time he returned, the coffee was ready and so was he. He took it to the kitchen table, then pulled out his phone and made the call.
Colin Ramsey was just getting out of the shower when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the time and then realized it was a video call coming in as Out of Area.
“Outen,” he muttered, grabbed a T-shirt and pulled it over his head, wrapped the towel around his waist, andsat down on the side of his bed to answer. The moment he did, Outen’s face was before him. “Son of a bitch. Youarealive,” he said.
Wolf grimaced. “Only because someone set one of my Brazilian refineries on fire. I am assuming you’ve seen everything I asked Jack to send to you.”
“Yes, and I’ve spoken to my superior. But you only have until the DNA reports come back confirming the identification of those onboard the chopper. Do you really suspect your wife is capable of all this?”
“Yes. Discovering her infidelity was one thing. But she’s pulled a couple of stunts the past month that made me realize how little I truly know about her. I always do background checks on people I hire. Maybe I should have done that with the women I married.”
“But planting a bomb on a chopper? That doesn’t fit in with known scenarios of how women kill,” Colin said.
“Fiona is a biomedical engineer. She builds one-of-a-kind surgical instruments for surgeons all over the world. She has a master’s degree in engineering and a very successful business of her own, and she always insists on packing for me when I travel, so if there was a bomb, and if it was on that chopper, it’s because I carried it to the airport and Stu carried it onto the plane.”
“What do you mean?” Colin asked.
“Stu was waiting for me when I got to Sutton Airfield. I had a scheduled board meeting in Jubilee, Kentucky. I’m one of the investors in a big hotel there. Stu learned about the bombing and fire at the refinery when it wascalled in at the office and, for some reason, couldn’t reach me by phone, so he headed to the airfield to intercept. He was waiting for me when I arrived. After a brief discussion, he agreed to take my proxy and place at the board meeting in Jubilee, and had my pilot and private jet waiting for me at Miami International. Stu and I are…were…the same height and size. I gave him my bag packed for a couple of days’ stay at Jubilee, and he brought the bigger suitcase I keep packed at the office for emergency travel, along with my passport and a decent amount of cash. So, if the bomb was in the bag, then Stuart carried it onto the chopper, just as I would have done.”
“Okay then,” Colin said. “We’ll continue to follow all leads, but with emphasis on what we can find out about her. In the meantime, if you get any further info that would help with the investigation, you have this number. No need for further video. A text on this line will do.”
“Thank you, sir, and I understand Jack Fielding is your stepbrother. You should know that he’s also one of three people I trust implicitly in this world, and one of them just died on that chopper. I want someone brought to justice for that. Stuart Bien died because of me.”
“Understood,” Colin said. “And my sympathies for your loss.”
The call ended, but the day for both of them had just begun.
Colin dressed and headed for the office with this new information, while Wolf settled in for the day with his laptop, checking the stock market, reading hisnewspapers online, still putting off opening email. Even if he saw pressing business, he wouldn’t be able to answer it, because in the eyes of the world, he was dead.
The forensic report on Ellis Townley’s clothes and apartment was on Detective Muncy’s desk when he got to work. Miami Homicide now had their first lead on a suspect—a man named Vincent Romo. They went to his last known address with an arrest warrant, only to discover he was no longer in residence. Yet another snag in their case. Now they had to find out where he’d gone.
It was beginning to appear that both Townley and Romo had a part to play in the chopper exploding and Outen’s subsequent death, but that case belonged to the feds, and Miami Homicide needed to offload what they had that did not pertain to their case.
When they got back to the precinct, Muncy sat down at his desk and began calling until he got the name of the FBI special agent in charge, and then made another call and waited for the agent to pick up.
It was midmorning and Special Agent Colin Ramsey was at his computer running a background check on Fiona Rangely when his desk phone rang. He picked up the receiver while still focused on the screen.
“Special Agent Ramsey.”
“Agent Ramsey, I’m Detective Joe Muncy. I work in the Homicide division of the Miami PD. During our investigation of a murder here in Miami, we think we might have uncovered links to the crash that killed Wolfgang Outen in Jubilee, Kentucky. We were told you’re the lead investigator on the case. Is this so?”
“Yes, but what led you to this conclusion?” Colin asked.
“We caught a homicide case in an apartment building in a lower-income area of Miami. The dead man was Ellis Townley, a.k.a. Roadie. Forensics identified DNA at the murder scene belonging to a known criminal named Vincent Romo. We have an arrest warrant out for Romo, but at the moment he’s in the wind. Here’s where your crash feeds into our info. If the midair explosion happened because of a bomb, and if it had been detonated by a phone call, then we have reason to believe Ellis Townley made the call and Romo was the cleanup guy.”
The hair stood up on the back of Colin’s neck. “I’m listening.”
At that point, Muncy began to explain—from finding Ellis’s phone in his car and the receipt from Bullard’s Campgrounds in Jubilee, and confirming his DNA was in a cabin rented under this name—that Ellis Townley had been murdered the day after the crash and within an hour of his return to Miami.
Muncy continued. “During our forensic search at the crime scene, we discovered Ellis’s phone and a receiptfrom the campgrounds in his car. When we called the campgrounds for verification, we spoke to a clerk named Jordan, who had additional info that added to Townley’s suspicious behavior. Keep in mind it’s winter in Kentucky, and cold as blazes there, and yet the Friday morning of the crash, Jordan claims he saw Townley standing out in a clearing between the office and his cabin for quite a while, continually looking up at the sky with his binoculars and holding a phone. And within minutes of the crash, Townley was in the office checking out in a state of panic. Jordan, the clerk, said a chopper had crashed just outside an elementary school causing severe damage and injuries, and Townley was ashen and shaking.”
Colin frowned. “Right. Of course, we know about the school.”
