Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan) (22 page)

When she arrived at her desk, she found Sykes sitting on a corner of it, looking every bit the cool, calm Fed and not a frenzied, overworked, perpetually irritated city cop like everybody else in the building.

“Nice,” he said, eyeing her closely and nodding his approval. A gleam appeared in his blue eyes, and she warmed beneath it, in spite of herself.

“What’s nice?” asked Daniels, looking confused.

“Forget it,” she replied with a laugh, knowing her brothers would have been exactly the same way.

“Got the background check on Bailey,” he said.

Sykes appeared confused. “Guess that’s part of what we need to talk about?”

“Yeah, it is.” She cast a quick look at her partner, who shook his head, telling her he hadn’t yet revealed anything about what they’d learned the night before. Wanting to get out of the loud bull pen, so they could actually hear each other during their conversation, not to mention avoid being overheard when she talked about watching somebody else’s uber-personal “sex tape,” she said, “Let’s go grab some coffee.”

“Be right there,” said Daniels. “I want to read this over before our friend shows up.”

“Okay, come to the back when you’re done.”

She led Sykes to the break room, which was fortunately empty. To her surprise, the hardest part about filling him in on the latest twists in the investigation wasn’t admitting she’d sat with her partner and watched their victim having wild sex a few days before her death. It was telling him how she’d gotten Leanne Carr’s data dump.

She’d sort of hoped he would forget that part—and her promise not to do any work the night before. But not Jeremy Sykes. As soon as she finished telling him everything she’d learned—from Daniels’s discovery of the tunnel, to Leanne and Bailey’s graphic sexual encounters—they’d found two so far, and she wasn’t finished going through the downloads—he went right for the part she’d hoped he would forget about.

“How’d you get the files?”

Daniels had come into the room, but he remained quiet, watching her, waiting for her to answer.

“I had every right to access them,” she finally said. “You brought them for me, remember?”

“I know that. But how did you get them? I still have the micro-drive I brought up to Tate’s lab.”

She busied herself pouring another cup of stale coffee into a cracked mug and mumbled, “I burned a copy when you went to find Dr. Cavanaugh.”

To her surprise, Sykes merely barked a deep laugh. “You coulda just taken the original drive. I brought it for you, ya know.”

Maybe. But he’d only shown it to her; he hadn’t exactly handed it over.

“I figured you’d harass me for wanting to work last night.”

“You mean you seriously thought I believed that, ‘I’m much too weary to do any more work today,’ crap? Jeez, Veronica, how big an idiot do you take me for?”

Her jaw dropping, she snapped, “Well then why’d you make such a big deal about insisting I promise not to think about the case?”

“Because I figured that would at least get you to put it out of your mind for a couple of hours. I knew you’d
try
to keep your promise. But you’re too good a cop to spend a whole night ignoring a murder investigation.”

Her hand tightened around the mug; she was both glad he knew her well enough to understand how she worked, and annoyed that she’d gone to such lengths to get the data. Here she’d jumped through hoops, thinking she’d been so clever, and he’d been ahead of her every step of the way. And once again, he’d managed to surprise her. She had recently begun to wonder if her assessment of Sykes—made on the first day of training in Texas—was totally accurate. Had she put him in a round hole, when he was actually a square peg?

“So, anything
else
you want to tell me before we dive in?” he asked, raising a brow, as if he already knew she had something else to confess.

She caught her lip between her teeth, wondering what he’d figured out. She hadn’t yet revealed what she’d learned about those six dead O.E.P. test subjects, but there was no way he could know she’d acquired that data, too. Wanting to get them both caught up on everything before Bailey arrived, she told them what she’d learned. 

“Wait, you’re telling me you actually hacked into Tate Scientific’s files and stole a proprietary list of patients involved in a medical trial?” Surprisingly, that indignant question came from Daniels, not Sykes. “Shit, Ron, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” she explained, “that maybe there are more than two victims out there. That maybe those other six men somehow tie-in to our case.”

Sykes, who’d listened quietly during her explanation, reached into his pocket, pulled out a small, folded sheet of paper, and slowly unfolded it. He lowered it to the break-room table, pushing it toward her with the tips of his fingers. She glanced down and saw six names. Six familiar names.

“Damn.”

“What can I say? Smart minds.”

“How’d you get them?”

“I hacked into the Tate network when we first started working, before we watched the Carr files.”

Her eyes rounding into saucer shape, she exclaimed, “That’s so
non
-Sykes of you!”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

No, maybe she didn’t.
Square peg. Round hole.

“How long did it take you to get them?” she asked.

“Six minutes.” His brow rose in challenge. “You?”

She smirked. “Four.”

“I had to do it while you were still in the room,” he pointed out.

“I had to do it after I’d also had to copy your microdrive.”

“Okay, okay, you win this round,” he said with a helpless laugh.

“Amateurs,” Daniels said with a scowl. “You’re pretty proud of yourselves, regular little hackers, huh?”

“Oh yes,” Sykes replied.

“You’re as bad as she is.”

Sykes leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, studying Daniels. “Funny, you don’t strike me as somebody who always plays the rules.”

While Sykes usually did. Which made this conversation all the more surprising.

“I’m not,” Daniels replied. “But
she
usually does, and considering one of us needs to keep our nose clean, I kinda count on her to do it. We don’t both need to land on the D.C.P.D. shit list.”

Ronnie was barely listening to her partner’s complaint, still too stunned to realize that Sykes had also been stepping out of bounds, following interesting little twists and turns in the case. Here she thought she’d been the only one with that suspicious mind, the only one who’d heard about some other implantees dying of natural causes and leapt to some pretty startling conclusions.

Sykes had not only thought it, he’d beat her to the punch in starting to investigate.

Somehow, though, despite always being in competition with the man, she found herself exhilarated by that realization, rather than annoyed by it. She was actually smiling by the time Daniels finished chewing her out for being reckless.

“All right, all right, I can see you’re happy with yourself,” he muttered, throwing himself into a chair. “But next time you decide to go all bad cop, do me a favor and make sure
this
guy,”—he jerked a thumb toward Sykes—“hasn’t already done it for you.”

“Okay, you’re right,” she said, suitably chastened. Because Daniels had a point. If she and Sykes weren’t always so busy competing, and trying to one-up each other, they could have doubled their efforts and halved their risks.

Appearing glad she’d at least acknowledged his annoyance, Daniels barked, “Well? What’d you find out? ‘Cause we all know you did something with this list.”

Glad he’d finished scolding, she told him what she’d learned from Philip Tate, and went on to admit her plan to call every coroner or hospital associated with the six deaths if she had to.

“Let me do it for Chrissake,” snapped Daniels, snagging the sheet of paper off the table. “You two aren’t any good at this sneaky shit. You probably left all kinds of electronic evidence on their network.”

She doubted that, but was so grateful that her partner was taking over this one part of the investigation, she couldn’t argue the point,

“Daniels? Sloan? Your witness is here,” said a uniformed patrolman who’d stuck his head into the room. “I put him in interview room three. He looked a little nervous.”

“I’ll bet,” she said, knowing Bailey had to have been waiting for them to find out about his relationship with Leanne. The fact that he hadn’t volunteered the information didn’t say much for his intelligence, especially if he knew Leanne was involved with the O.E.P.

He didn’t.

The three of them started toward the door, then all paused. They hadn’t worked out who would be doing the questioning, or which of them would be in the room. Technically, Sykes was a guest here. But he was also a key part of this investigation. She honestly wasn’t sure whether he should be in there or not.

“I’ll wait in the observation room,” he said, making the decision.

“Okay, that might be best. Bailey doesn’t know you,” said Ronnie. “He might be less likely to talk in front of somebody he hasn’t met.”

Daniels frowned, as if he wasn’t sure he agreed with the strategy. “He also might be less likely to talk about the sexual aspects of the relationship in front of you, Ronnie.”

She bristled. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I know it is,” her partner said, holding his hands up defensively. “But the thing is, Bailey was skittish and embarrassed around you from the start. When you finally threw him a bone, he acted like a kid with a crush. I don’t think I ever told you that a few minutes before I found you in the basement the other night, Bailey specifically asked me to ‘thank you’ and said you’d understand why.”

She had no freaking idea why, but nodded for Daniels to go ahead.

“If he’s aware of the existence of the O.E.P. device, and realizes you actually saw him doing the victim, he’s gonna be a mess.”

“I’m not entirely sure he is aware of it,” she admitted.

Sykes eyed her in surprise. “But the killer had to know. Not only was it pretty damned obvious because of the way he disguised himself, with the clothes, the hood and that crazy miner’s light, but the Philadelphia murder cinches it.”

“I know. Honestly, I hope I’m wrong, and that Special Agent Bailey was aware of Leanne’s participation in the program, because it would make him a much more viable suspect. The truth is, though, I haven’t seen any indication that he was. He doesn’t seem like a good enough actor to have faked his confusion at the first briefing, when the O.E.P. issue came up.”

“I guess that explains his I’m-gonna-puke expression when we first showed up, too,” Daniels said, speaking slowly as he thought back to the other morning, which seemed like it had taken place ages ago. “I figured it was just the gruesomeness of the scene, but apparently he was reacting to something a lot more personal.”

“Maybe he kept the relationship secret because he knew that if anybody found out, he might be looked at for the murder,” she said.

She assumed that’s why he had kept quiet, though how he could have stood there with those body parts and not gone slightly mad, she didn’t know. He must have one heck of a strong self-preservation instinct.

Daniels lifted a hand to his face and rubbed at his eyes, which didn’t even look the tiniest bit bloodshot this morning. He might not have stopped at a bar to tie one on after leaving her place last night, which made for a nice change. “You know what else, he was there when somebody mentioned Leanne’s backups being taken in for you to examine, Ron. He’d had sex with her twice in the last week…”

“At least twice,” she interjected.

“Right. Meaning, if he were aware of the scope of the program, he had to know what you’d see.”

Sykes nodded, obviously understanding where they were going. “He’s in law enforcement, he would understand that things would go a lot better for him if he came clean about their sexual relationship before you found out about it.”

“Exactly,” she said. “He could have put his own spin on it, made himself appear he was being totally up-front and honest, and come off looking a lot less suspicious.”

They all fell silent for a long moment, considering. Then Daniels muttered, “Shit. You might be right. That punk-ass kid might not even have a clue we saw him doing the nasty with our murder victim a few days before her death.”

“Meaning he’s probably not the murderer,” Sykes said.

She knew neither of them were ready to rule Bailey out completely, and neither was she, but the basic facts definitely took the wind out of their sails. Still, just because they had doubts about his guilt regarding Leanne’s murder, SA Bailey still had a lot to answer for. He’d lied to them, led them in the wrong direction. He could have admitted his relationship with her, perhaps helped them with the investigation, but he’d wasted their time instead.

That pissed her off, to be honest. She probably ought to get a cold drink and take a few seconds to calm down before she confronted the guy.

Daniels cleared his throat. “Don’t kill me, partner, but even if the kid doesn’t know about the program, it still might not be a great idea for you to be in the interview room.”