Chapter 3

When they got to the coroner’s office, even though Amarylis was out of the vehicle first, before she had a chance to head off, Mountain was already out of the car and beside her. The others followed suit.

Mountain grinned at her. “See? Not a problem.”

She shook her head. “Your mother must have had a heyday with you.”

“Let’s just say that disciplining a twelve-year-old already well over six foot tall wasn’t an easy thing, but then I didn’t do well with discipline at all.”

“I can imagine,” she muttered. She led the way to the building, quickly unlocked the front door, and led them inside.

“Now,” Mountain said, facing her, “I’ll need that USB key.”

She groaned but headed upstairs to the forensics lab. The door was locked. She frowned as she pointed at it. “I didn’t think about that. Who do you want to bring in?” she asked, turning to look at Tristan.

Tristan pulled out his phone and called Dr. Cox. After multiple phone calls back and forth, it took about fifteen minutes before Dr. Cox wandered in, looking tousled and sleepy. He stared at them, as he pulled out his keys. “Do you guys ever go to bed?”

“I keep trying,” Amarylis muttered, “but they’re not exactly doing anything to promote my beauty sleep.”

Tristan laughed. “Good thing you don’t need any. You’re stunning without it.” She rolled her eyes at that, and he rolled his eyes right back. “Honest.”

“ Sure ,” she muttered, as she looked over to see Mountain grinning at her. She frowned at him. “Glad you think this is funny.”

“Not funny at all,” he replied, still with humor in his tone. “I might like to get a little bit of sleep in for myself.”

“Oh,” she muttered. “I guess you all have lives too, don’t you?”

“We like to think so,” he replied, “but we always seem to have these messes to deal with.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” She snorted and followed Dr. Cox inside. With him leading the way, they quickly accessed the evidence locker and found the USB key.

Mountain signed for it, and Dr. Cox completed the appropriate documentation to follow military procedures. Then they went to the computers, just as Mountain’s phone rang to say that the two men sent to deal with the electronic files had arrived.

By the time they were brought up, Amarylis was fading quickly again, but she knew she wouldn’t leave until this circus was over. Whatever was on that USB key was apparently far too important to leave for anyone to access.

By the time the unidentified men were all done with the lab’s computers, one turned and addressed Amarylis. “I need access to your emails.”

She didn’t say a word, just sat down, and logged in. Then she gave up her seat for one of the two men.

Immediately the men went through and deleted the emails she had just been sent from the lab, and, with that done, the two men did the same thing with Jasper’s and Tristan’s related emails. When finished, she turned to the two men. “I gather what was on that USB key was something we weren’t allowed to see,” she murmured.

Those two men didn’t respond, but Tristan nodded. “Yes, but it’ll be dealt with.” She nodded but didn’t say anything. He smiled and added, “I promise.”

She frowned at Mountain. “It would be a whole lot easier to believe you if it wasn’t for all this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

Mountain watched the men finish up with the computer files, then Mountain turned to her. “Cloak-and-dagger is what we do so well.” Then he led everybody out of the lab, where they were quickly signed out under the watchful gaze of Dr. Cox, then returned to their vehicles outside.

Mountain walked over to Jasper and pointed. “I will head out right now with these two guys, but I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” With that, he was gone.

Jasper and Tristan shared a look. “Come on. Amarylis. Time to get you back home again.”

“About time,” she muttered.

“We’re certainly not leaving you here,” Tristan said, looking around the dark parking lot. “It surely wouldn’t do to leave precious cargo lying around like that.”

“That’s a good thing.” She yawned, too tired to come up with any retort. “I about fell asleep in the lab.”

“I doubt it,” Tristan countered, with a chuckle. “You were keeping an eye on everything the whole time.”

“You bet I was,” she grumbled. “Worst case scenario, I get my ass kicked for letting that information go.”

“No, a whole lot of people with a much higher rank than you have right now are totally involved with the USB key,” Jasper shared, with a smile in her direction. “So, in this case, you are free and clear.”

“Maybe,” she muttered, uncertain. “Still doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people have died, quite possibly for that USB information. I want to make sure that nobody else does.” As she was dropped off at her place, she looked up and groaned.

“Problem?” Tristan asked, as he got out beside her.

She shook her head. “Just hoping for more hours to be left in the night.”

“Right, and you’ve got a full day coming up.”

“Yes, and no way I can call in sick,” she noted, with an irritable expression, “so thanks for that.”

He gave her a gentle smile. “Hey, welcome to my world.”

She nodded, as she looked over at him. “It can’t be that easy.”

“Some days it’s easy, and some days it’s not,” he replied, with a nod. “We come up against wonderful new cases all the time. This is just another one.”

“Good enough.” She sighed, as she walked to her apartment. He followed her. “What? You’re not walking me back up again, are you?”

“I wasn’t at first, but then I decided I would.” He quickly raced up the stairs with her. As they got to her apartment, he walked in, walked through the place, checked it out, looked under the bed, into her closets, then came back to the front door.

She stood there, with her arms crossed over her chest. “Was that necessary?”

“Maybe not, but it’ll make me feel better.” With that, he leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on her cheek. “Now you can get some sleep.” And then he was gone.

She stared at his back as he left, her fingers on her cheek, as she wondered what the hell had just happened to her nice orderly world, because somehow someone had just blown it all apart, and she had no idea how the pieces would ever fit back together again.

*

Tristan woke the next morning, stretched, and rolled over, wishing he could grab another six hours, but something prodded at him. He opened his eyes and heard his phone buzzing. He snatched it up and saw the ID as Jasper . “Problems?” he barked into the phone.

Jasper snorted. “Isn’t there always?”

“Sure, but do you have something specific?”

“No, everything’s holding at the moment.”

“I’m glad to hear it. So what’s this call about?”

“Yeah, we have a meeting first thing at nine.”

“Great, and will we get raked over the coals?”

“Doesn’t matter if we are or not,” Jasper stated. “We’re just giving our names and the names of those who put us in this position.”

“ Great , because, according to all these upper-level brass, we are nobodies.”

Jasper chuckled. “Just never let them hear you say that.”

“Got it.”

As Tristan headed for the shower, he wondered just what the day would bring. He was pretty sure that, once they were cleared from their midnight activities—assuming they got cleared—it would be right back onto the trail as to what was happening with Mason’s case.

The fact that they hadn’t connected this blackmail scheme to the mastermind trying to take out Mason was a bigger concern. Yet there had to be a connection—although, so far, it just led to the hired help, now all dead. The USB key was found at the crime scene for the real Drew’s death, Drew the sniper. Plus the woman who had posed as Drew’s sister and who had knocked out Tristan, sending him to the hospital, she was now dead. That woman may have been the girlfriend to the squatter watching Drew’s house from Pearl’s house, killed by Gideon in self-defense. They also had a dead cleaner, the fixer, whom Tristan had killed in self-defense in the hospital, recognizing the hitman as the professional cleaner hired to scrub away the blood in Pearl’s house. Tristan figured that the fixer had killed the others so far.

None of this made Tristan feel any better about their progress. They were getting deeper into this hole, not clearer, and that’s exactly what they were told as soon as they got to the meeting. Their boss was not impressed about the midnight activities either.

“You know perfectly well you should have come to me,” he snarled.

Jasper didn’t say anything; he just waited.

“How the hell would that old bat of a commander have anything to do with this? And why should he?”

“Commander Magellan?” Tristan murmured, and Jasper nodded.

Their immediate boss rambled on. “He phoned me early this morning, waking me up to tell me what happened, stating that you guys are to be completely cleared of all wrongdoing. That’s not for him to tell me.”

Tristan waited while their boss ranted and raved about people with power trips who should have retired ages ago. Tristan understood the sentiment, and he understood perfectly well not being happy when somebody stepped on your toes. However, Tristan and Jasper had no choice, at least not much, not once Mountain had been brought into the matter. Sure enough, once Mountain had been brought in, things had moved very, very quickly, just not necessarily the way their immediate bosses would have wanted.

When they were finally dismissed, walking to the investigation department, Tristan looked over to see Jasper smiling. “What’s so funny? You may have enjoyed having him chew us up and spit us out, but, damn, I sure didn’t.”

Jasper just laughed. “It’s always about power, you know? Who’s got the power to step on the toes of someone else. In this case, our boss didn’t have the power to even be informed about it, and that’s what he’s upset about.”

“He has every right to be upset. I sure would be,” Tristan said.

“I get it,” Jasper replied, “yet it’s well past our authority.”

“That was made pretty clear last night.” Tristan smirked. “Mountain can sure make things happen. Not only is he a mountain in sheer size but he moves mountains. You’ve got to love and trust and appreciate having him in our corner.”

“He had one hell of a time a while back, when his brother went missing up north. That was a convoluted mess, but he kept at it, and finally they found him and eventually brought him home safe. The best thing, after finding his brother, was that Mountain showed up to lead the search and rescue, and now he’s hooked up with a female doctor and researcher. Amelia Morrison is her name. He deserves to be happy, but he sure got us into the soup last night, though he’s probably laughing about the whole thing. It seems like we spend a good share of our time in hot water these days.”

“Maybe, but it still sucks.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tristan. You aren’t in trouble. I’m not in trouble, and honestly, neither is our boss, by doing it the way we did it. It was taken completely away from him too, so he’s not in trouble either, something he’ll realize fairly quickly.”

“If you say so,” Tristan muttered, “but it won’t be today.”

“No, it won’t be today and probably won’t be tomorrow. It may not even be the day after that.” Jasper grinned. “Still, he’ll come to understand fairly quickly.”

“Now we need to track everything surrounding the movements of the people in the morgue,” Tristan suggested, “to confirm that we know exactly where each of our dead foot soldiers were in the last what? Four days? Or maybe even before Mason got shot. We’ve got the bodies, so all we need to do is track them and connect them to each other.”

“Whoever hired the sniper, Drew, may or may not have had anything to do with that information on the USB key, but somebody in that group of the recently dead must be connected to the blackmailer or one of the blackmailees, as a lot of names were on the USB. We have the names of the dead too, but we probably need pseudonyms for them as well, to see if they connect to any of our names on the blackmail list.”

Tristan nodded. “I agree.”

Jasper continued. “I think somebody from that blackmail group must be connected to Mason, and somebody from Mason’s life is connected to this blackmail group. At some point they decided that Mason was responsible for their secrets getting out, so they hired the sniper. Then they went in and cleaned up all the threads linking the mastermind with the hired guns.”

“Interesting theory, and it makes sense.”

“It absolutely does,” Jasper confirmed. “The trouble is, we’re not allowed to know about those blackmail names, and nobody else is allowed to know either. I did glance at the email when it was sent to me, but I didn’t get very far into it. Considering the fact that we already do know several higher-ups who were on that list, we will give each of them a number, not a name but a number, and we will work up a chart. Do you remember very much of what was on those USB files?”

Tristan smiled. “Photographic memory, or at least close to it.”

“Awesome.” Jasper rubbed his hands together in excitement. “We just need to assign each person ID’d on that USB with a number and their corresponding blackmail activity—affairs, theft, treason, whatever it is.” Jasper opened the door to their offices and headed inside. Tristan followed.

“I can do that,” Tristan replied, as he grabbed a chart board. “I suggest we use the first letter of their first names, and correlate that to their assigned numbers, and then we will add more names if need be right after that. You just sort it out, and tell me what it is you want.” And, with that, Tristan set up the big chart board with the first five names from the USB, using a numerical system, and then he wrote down a simple letter to start the word of whatever their blackmail activity was. Only one he wasn’t sure about.

When he turned and looked at Jasper, he pointed to the chart. “Take a look at this. It’s the activity of the last one that I’m not sure about.”

“You’ve got the gay affair, the selling arms, and… right, the trafficking. I’m not sure what that other two are all about.”

“I’m not exactly sure either, but I think this one was pay-to-play, giving promotions and demotions for money,” he suggested, with a snort.

“Wow, that’s pretty shitty, and what’s this last one?”

“That’s the one I’m not sure about.”

Jasper looked over at him, his tone grim when Tristan confirmed this as buried in the USB files. “ That ’s the one?”

“Yeah, at the end of the key.”

“I remember it clear as a day. That’s treason.”