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“Why can’t you just haul Fran Buckley into an interview room and ask her?” Sean said, growing impatient with speculation and incomplete information. “We know she’s involved. I just can’t believe seven sex offenders—eight, including Morton—could be killed without her knowing exactly what’s going on.”
“I agree,” Hans said, “but we don’t know the extent of the vigilante group, and we don’t know if she’s the ringleader or one of the underlings. We bring her in too early without solid proof, we tip our hand and her partners disappear. We need something more—”
“Like what?” Sean interrupted.
“A connection.”
Well, that was vague. Sean frowned and looked over Dillon’s shoulder. “Where’s her FBI service record?”
“I haven’t gotten that far.”
“She’s retired. I’ll bet she still has a lot of contacts. What squad did she work on?”
“How do you know so much about the FBI?” Kate asked, taking the folder from Dillon.
“Duke married a Fed. Domestic Terrorism. Jack’s married to one as well. We have several former Feds—FBI, ICE, DEA, pick your acronym—working with RCK. I pick up on things.”
Dillon said, “She retired ten years ago—five years early.”
“But she had twenty years. That’s not uncommon,” Hans said.
“Kate, did you know Fran when she was still in the Bureau?”
Kate shook her head. “We weren’t in the same office—I was in the Washington Field Office my entire six years before I went underground.”
Kate flipped through Fran’s service record. “She spent her first three years in Philly, ten years in Richmond, then her last seven in Boston as an SSA.”
She continued to flip through pages, then exclaimed, “Oh shit.”
Sean watched the blood drain from Kate’s face. He’d never seen the unflappable Fed look scared. She handed Dillon the file with shaky hands.
“Look at her stint in Richmond. Right before she left. Dillon—it’s the connection.”
Sean looked over Dillon’s shoulder, but nothing obvious jumped out at him. “What is it?”
Kate stared at Hans. “I didn’t know Mick Mallory was in Richmond.”
“Who’s Mick Mallory?” Sean demanded.
“I don’t know where to start,” Kate said.
Dillon explained. “Mallory went undercover in Trask Enterprises working for a rogue FBI agent. Deep cover. He became one of them.”
The blood in Sean’s veins froze. “You don’t mean—”
“He went too far by not turning Trask in when he could have, but his boss wanted very specific information, and Mallory was under extreme stress. When he was still an active agent, he’d been in deep cover in a joint FBI-DEA op. His cover was blown and the target killed his wife and young son.” At first, Sean detected a hint of sympathy and understanding in Dillon’s tone, but that disappeared as he continued explaining what happened to the disturbed agent.
“Mallory lost everything he cared about, and was put on administrative leave, but he couldn’t let it go,” Dillon said. “He went after the target and the situation ended in bloodshed. Two agents were seriously injured in the process, and every suspect was killed. The information the FBI and DEA needed about their operation died with them. Mallory lost his job, laid low for a while before he was recruited to infiltrate Trask. He justified his actions because the reward—putting Trask and others in prison or the grave—was all he could see. And that bastard Merritt used him!” He hit the table with his fist.
Sean had never seen Dillon Kincaid so angry. He nearly stepped back in surprise. Kate put her hand on Dillon’s arm. His hand covered hers. “Don’t,” she said quietly.
Hans said, “Merritt’s dead. Either a car accident or suicide, six months after the whole thing went down. He left a detailed journal of everything he’d done and ordered Mallory to do. Mallory was deemed suicidally depressed and put in a mental health ward for eighteen months.”
“Great. First Morton gets an easy six years in federal prison, then this prick Mallory gets the psych ward? Big fucking deal when people are dying.” Sean would never understand the criminal justice system. It wasn’t usually those whose lives were on the line who screwed everything up—lawyers and politicians were the problem. Cops did their job, but in the end, whether someone went to prison or not was as much deal brokering as anything else.
“Mallory was shot and left for dead when Trask figured out that he’d sent me information about Lucy’s location,” Kate said.
“You mean this guy sat by while Lucy was attacked?” Sean had never seen red before, not like this.
