Protecting Justice (The Justice Series Book 4) Read online

  “I remember it now. The Chief Justice griped about it one day.”

  “Everyone was griping.” Fallyn twisted in her seat, poked a finger. “She got death threats from that cluster. I mean think about all the struggling veterans in this country. And, my cute sister in her cushy townhouse and sixty-thousand dollar car rejects a bill that’ll help military families. Eventually, the roar faded, and the sane people who did listen to her trumped the rest, but who knows? There are lunatics out there.” She dug in her purse, pulled out her notepad. “We need to check her emails and ask Jordan if there’ve been any other death threats.”

  “It’s worth checking out.”

  “Bet your butt it is.” She twirled her pen. “Let’s get Grey on this. And David Teeg. See what they come up with.”

  Was she impeding an investigation? Since nothing formal had been declared yet, she was running with her gut. Metro assured her that they and Capitol Police were only “looking into” the preponderance of the drug in Heather’s system and that bought Fallyn time. Time to find out what was on that tablet and what role it played in all of this. Was the person who’d broken into the townhouse looking for the tablet or something like the Perisoladol? Had they planted it there and came back to retrieve it? If so, they’d have had plenty of time to take it after Fallyn had been knocked out.

  Which meant there might not be any evidence in the bottles she had in a giant Ziplock in the backseat, but she didn’t care. She’d even swiped the protein powder and breakfast nutrition bars from the cabinet. She was sending them all to Grey’s lab right after she ‘complied’ with Det. Hollister’s wishes.

  When they arrived to talk to Hollister, Metro PD was the epitome of chaos. There had been a major accident on the 395 and a gunman with a hostage at some convenience store clear across town still hadn’t given up. Phones were ringing, people were yelling, perps and witnesses were piling up everywhere Fallyn looked.

  And I thought Pasche & Associates got crazy sometimes.

  With a flash of his Supreme Court badge, Tony guided her through the main reception area, thick with fluorescent lighting and grimy floors. They passed through the metal detector, went down a hallway, and took an elevator to the third floor where Tony navigated her toward a sign that read Homicide.

  He seemed to know his way around the precinct well, deftly maneuvering her around a drunk shouting about his right to a phone call.

  The whole place smelled like body odor and pepperoni pizza, which was not a charming scent when her stomach was so empty and churning.

  At the detective unit, Tony knew the man behind the desk. He asked for Det. Hollister but Hollister had been called out on a homicide.

  Homicide. Fallyn wondered if Heather’s death would soon be labeled with the same cold term.

  Tony noticed her swaying slightly—did anything escape his eagle eyes?—and took the bag with the prescription bottles from her hand. “Hollister needs this,” he told the desk sergeant. “We can’t wait for him to get back.”

  The man gave Tony some papers to fill out, then said to her, “Hey, ain’t you the senator’s twin? The one who died? I seen you on TV. Real sorry about your sister.”

  “Thank you,” Fallyn said, pasting on a fake smile. Even after all the condolences, she still didn’t know what to say.

  The fake smile lasted until she and Tony were back in his Explorer, heading for parts unknown.

  “You need to eat,” he said, and she was too tired, too wrung out to argue.

  A few minutes later, she was surprised to find her stomach actually appreciated the double cheeseburger and fries that Tony placed in her lap from a drive-thru. He didn’t talk as they sped out of the city and she stuffed her face with greasy, but delicious food. During her meal on the run, a detective from the Capitol Police finally caught up with her, asking the same questions and spewing the same rhetoric as Detective Hollister.

  Eventually, the CP ran out of blanket statements and Fallyn came up for air. “What an extreme waste of time and resources,” she said to Tony, putting her phone on silent. She didn’t want to rehash her sister’s health or her sudden death with anyone else for today. “The duplication is unreal.”

  “Our government at work,” he said.

  They were on a back road with a sign that declared they were entering an old army base that looked deserted.

  Yep, straight out of a horror flick. “Where exactly are we?” she asked around her last French fry.

  “Top secret. Close your eyes and pretend I blindfolded you ’cuz this place is strictly off the map. If you ever say you were here, you might end up ‘disappeared’, as one of my fellow Justice Team squad members likes to call it.”

  Blindfolded. With Tony calling the shots. Oh, the images that conjured. “I’m closing my eyes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my job as a fixer, there are some things you don’t want to ever see or hear.”

  “So you can deny you knew about them?”

  “So I can sleep at night.”

  “Why do you do the job if it bothers you so much?”

  That was always the question people wanted to know. “Everyone screws up. Every, single one of us. I did when I was a teen. We deserve a second chance sometimes, or we need to air a secret, and my team is there to help. That’s how I sleep. Yes, there are things I don’t need to know, but overall, what I do for people helps them deal with shit and survive. We don’t take on killers or rapists or abusers. But there are a lot of others out there walking a fine line and paying an awful price for mistakes no one would pay attention to if they weren’t already in the limelight.”

  The Explorer bounced to a stop. Tony lowered his window and she heard the sound of a buzzer. A gate opening.

  “Can I open my eyes yet?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Just remember, if Grey asks, you were blindfolded. It was the only way to get him to agree to let you come here.”

  She made the ‘OK’ sign with her fingers.

  She had to let Tony touch her as he helped her from the SUV, across some pavement, and in through a door. “You can open your eyes now,” he whispered, his hand staying protectively on the base of her spine as she stepped into a large, open room.

  Fluorescent lights, concrete floors, a random desk or two. The smell of strong coffee teased her nostrils and overrode the scent of abandonment just under the surface. Total opposite of the police station, and yet, Fallyn had the sneaking suspicion more got accomplished in this room on a daily basis than the cops down at the precinct accomplished in months.

  David Teeg occupied one corner of the room with a large desk and multiple screens that resembled the cockpit of the Starship Enterprise. Even his chair was a high-tech looking thing with an integrated keyboard and ergonomic design. Dani would be jealous.

  From behind a cheap room divider, Justice Greystone emerged. “Ms. Pasche. Welcome to team headquarters.”

  “Don’t you think you should call me Fallyn?” She crossed the room to take his outstretched hand and shake it. “You are showing me your war room, after all.”

  “It’s not much,” he said with the politest of smiles. “Nothing, I’m sure, like Pasche & Associates.”

  Boy, he had that right. Because of their clientele, P&A had to project a certain air of upscale everything: competence, power, prestige. The office space Fallyn rented cost a fortune, but looked like a spread in Interior Design Magazine. At least the reception room and private consultation rooms did. The back room where the group did their nitty-gritty brainstorming lacked the same finesse and polish. It was, however, soundproofed and had top-notch security features, just in case someone might be listening in.

  It appeared Grey took privacy and security seriously, too, even though the Justice Team’s “clients” were from the other end of the spectrum. She noted Mr. Teeg’s screens showed a variety of security footage from cameras no doubt mounted around the premises. If she were a betting woman—and she was—she’d lay odds on infrared wires and an electrified fence
to round out the system.

  Fallyn returned Grey’s smile. “I don’t let strangers into my war room, so I imagine this goes against everything in your nature.”

  The corner of Grey’s lips twitched, a movement Fallyn was beginning to realize was his version of a real smile.

  “We dropped the prescription bottles off at the precinct,” Tony told him. “Fallyn kept a pill from each of the bottles to do our own analysis, and we brought all the nonprescription vitamins and supplements.”

  Fallyn produced the bag of vitamins she’d kept from Hollister from her briefcase and Grey took them. “I’ll get these off to the private lab we use ASAP.”

  He must have seen her slight hesitation, because he followed up with a reassurance. “They run a lot of classified, off-the-books stuff for us. Privacy is paramount with them. You don’t have to worry about leaks.”

  Exactly what could be leaked that would hurt her sister, she wasn’t sure, but at this point, she had to cover all her bases. Make sure this stayed quiet until she figured what the hell was going on. “Thank you,” she told Grey. “I thought of something else earlier.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My sister took a lot of heat a few months back over a bill she voted against concerning raising military pay.”

  That got Grey’s attention. “What kind of heat?”

  “The kind none of us want. Hate mail, death threats, the whole gamut. Can you help me look into that? See if the FBI got involved at all? She never told me, but…”

  Well, she didn’t need to go into details about her lack of communication with her twin. Apparently Grey got the message as he was already in motion, jotting himself a note.

  “I’ll see what pops up. If there were death threats, the FBI will have a file.”

  It was hard giving control of a potential landmine over to these people, but on the flip side, they handled matters like this on a daily basis, just like Tony had told her that first night. They were experts. For once, it was a relief not to be the only one trying to defuse a bomb, especially since she didn’t have her own team there working with her.

  If that’s what this was…a bomb.

  Grey set the bag on the nearby desk and motioned her and Tony over to Teeg’s “office.” He pointed at a screen on the far right. “Teeg managed to break the code on one section of the file you found on your sister’s tablet. It appears to be a list of names. Last, first, middle initial.”

  Teeg grunted. “It was a simple code, like a spy cipher wheel kids make at summer camp with a couple of paper plates. Totally bogus.”

  Interesting. David Teeg didn’t seem the type to do summer camp. “We went to Camp Sawpepper together every summer for two weeks. Heather loved those stupid spy codes and message games.”

  “Took Teeg hours to figure it out,” Tony pseudo-whispered, his dig garnering a glare from the computer whiz.

  “So sue me.” Teeg tossed a paperclip he’d been twiddling onto the desk. “I thought it would be legit, you know, a coded top-secret file on a senator’s tablet. Something complicated, modern, probably military. A code like that, you’d need my high-tech decoding software for.” He started rambling about codes from WWII all the way up to “that China thing” which Fallyn ignored.

  Finally, Grey held up a hand and Tony whistled at the same time, stopping the computer whiz in mid-sentence. Teeg got up from his futuristic looking chair, gave them all a dirty look, and walked away. “I need a break.”

  Grey and Tony exchanged a look that included an eye roll from Tony and a temple rub from Grey. Fallyn understood completely. She’d had plenty of eye-roll moments with Dani.

  “Anyway, as I was saying.” Grey indicated a column in the middle. “We’re not sure about this. It doesn’t seem to be a code, per se, but more like a designation.”

  For each entry, there was a letter and one or two numbers. For a long minute, they all stared at the screen.

  13A, 7C, 9E — Fallyn mentally went down the list. Apartment numbers? Parking garage slots?

  Grey pointed to the next column. “Over here are country abbreviations. GB equals Great Britain. CH, China. CA, Canada, etc.”

  People from around the world. There had to be a hundred or more.

  Fallyn unbuttoned her coat but left it on. The building was chilly even if it was in the fifties outside.

  “So what do you think those are?” Tony pointed at the middle column of letters and numbers again. The puzzle seemed to be bugging him as much as her. “They look like seat numbers. You know, like for a basketball game or a concert.”

  “That’s it!” Teeg burst back into the room, running toward them, the door he’d come through banging against the wall.

  “What is?” Tony said.

  The computer whiz bombed around them, dropped into his chair, and started typing. “Seat numbers! We need to cross reference databases with those names and seat numbers.”

  They all watched as the middle screen went blank, then Teeg’s typing appeared in lines and lines of computer code Fallyn had no way of understanding.

  While the computer scrolled and Teeg typed, a new screen came to life with an internet search. Tony, who was standing entirely too close to her, touched her back again.

  He could feel it too. The electricity. The adrenaline.

  His touch was light, easy, no hidden message, although if his touch had suggested he wanted to kiss her, she wouldn’t have minded.

  She liked the closeness. The touch didn’t freak her out. In fact, she almost grabbed his hand and anchored it to her hip. Go figure.

  But then the large screen showing the internet search results came to a standstill. “Got it,” Teeg said. “The letter-number combos are for seats. Tony, you’re a genius.”

  He did some finger action again on his keyboard and a copy of the tablet spreadsheet merged onto the large screen in front of them, nestling side-by-side with the search page results.

  “What is that?” Fallyn pointed at the search engine screen. “It looks like a newspaper article.”

  “It is,” Grey said.

  Tony slid forward to eyeball both items, releasing her and putting his hands on the desk as he read. “Holy shit.”

  “Holy shit, what?” Fallyn said. Her skin crawled but she didn’t know why.

  He looked over his shoulder at her, his face grim. “The list on your sister’s tablet corresponds exactly to the names of the people who disappeared on CanAir 702 two months ago.”

  The CanAir disappearance had rocked the news. One hundred and twenty-eight people had disappeared over the Gulf of Mexico. No plane had been found, no bodies, no wreckage washed up on shore. Some speculated aliens had stolen the plane and its passengers. Some said it was the Bermuda Triangle effect, even though the plane’s last known coordinates were nowhere near that area. Others claimed the plane went off track and ended up on a deserted island. The fact was, no one knew, but experts speculated the plane had crashed into the ocean.

  On top of that, the CIA had verified that a known terrorist leader had been on board under a bogus identity. While there was no evidence Abdul-Nasser Nazari was responsible, most people believed he’d taken the plane down as an act of terrorism.

  “Those names are hardly a secret,” Fallyn said. “I don’t know why Heather would have had a coded file of them, but…”

  A flicker of doubt crossed her mind. She took a step back. There was something here. Something about her sister, the information on the tablet, and a missing plane full of innocent people. Had Heather been suspicious of the plane’s disappearance and been investigating it?

  Had that investigation gotten her killed?

  Jesus.

  Why? Who? Fallyn’s brain spun with questions.

  “We need to decode the rest of the file,” Grey said, a few questions showing in his own eyes. “Heather used a different code for each file in the folder. Any chance she learned more than one code at camp?”

  Fallyn sighed. “Can you believe sixteen?”


  All three men looked at her like she was nuts.

  Her sister had hated bugs and weeds, but she loved geeky games. “She was head of arts and crafts time every year and one of her favorite things to do with the younger campers was play spy games.”

  “Sixteen. Wow. Okay,” Grey said. He handed her a paper and pencil. “Write them down and Teeg will work on it.”

  Tony touched her cheek. “Then we better head to the hotel so you can get some rest. It’s been a rough day.”

  Rough was an understatement. She nodded and wrote down the codes she could remember—it had been such a long time—and then buttoned her coat. Thinking about camp, good memories and some not-so-good flashed through her mind.

  Not now. There was no going back in time and fixing the past. All she could do was concentrate on the here and now.

  Seeing she was ready to go, Tony left the desk he’d been waiting at and held out a hand to her.

  She hesitated for half a second, then gave in and reached for him. He drew her to the door and stopped. “Close your eyes, sweetheart, remember?”

  “What, no blindfold?” she teased, but did as instructed, trusting him to lead her safely back to his Explorer.

  He smacked her playfully on her backside as they crossed into the parking lot, then leaned down close to her ear. “Maybe later,” he said soft and low and Fallyn’s pulse went into overdrive.

  Chapter Seven

  The next day, Fallyn felt like it was her own funeral.

  Organ music rose in the air. Seeing Heather in the casket was too much. Her sister—the other half of her—was…was…

  Dead.

  The hollowness ate at her. She’d never been without her sister, even when they were kinda, sorta, estranged.

  That connection, that undeniable blood bond, was now broken. Seeing her twin in the casket, with too much makeup and the awful pallor underneath that no amount of foundation or blush could compensate for, made Fallyn’s already churning stomach and pounding head intensify their one-two punch.