Noah tapped his phone. "This is the most valuable information we"ve gotten so far. Lucy works best under pressure." But he conceded that she would only put herself in danger if she came to New York. "If LeGrand is really out for revenge, targeting Lucy would hurt Sean more than anything else."
"Exactly. She needs to stay put."
Noah found Suzanne in the hall outside the interview room where Carol Hattori waited for them. Noah needed to get as much information out of her before she called her attorney.
Suzanne was pale and guzzling a bottle of water. She handed one to Noah.
"I"m sorry about Torres," Noah said. "Rick will smooth things over, but OPR may get involved."
She waved her hand in dismissal. "I"ve faced OPR before. I"m a big girl, I didn"t have to follow your lead. I"m more worried about my boss than I am about Torres. Maybe the NYPD is hiring-they seem to like me a lot this week."
Noah hoped the situation didn"t deteriorate to the point where Suzanne would feel like she had to leave the FBI.
"If the situation gets bad here, you can always transfer to headquarters."
"I"ll be fine, Armstrong. Don"t worry." She nodded to the door. "Did we let her sweat long enough?"
"Let"s do it."
Noah and Suzanne stepped into the interview room. Carol Hattori looked up expectantly, her eyes bloodshot, her tan face unnaturally pale. She was all cried out.
"Is he out of surgery? No one will tell me anything."
"I spoke with the hospital ten minutes ago," Suzanne said. "Colton is still in surgery. But he"s holding on."
Fresh tears slipped out. Noah said, "Ms. Hattori, we need you to focus."
"I-I"ll try."
Suzanne glanced at Noah and frowned. She sat down and said, "Carol, if you can please hold it together, for Colton. We want to find out who did this."
"I told you. Skye shot him. I don"t know why."
"Yes, but you know more than you think you do. We want you to walk through what you heard, okay?"
"Colton said never talk to any cops without a lawyer."
"Do you want a lawyer?" Suzanne said.
Noah wanted to toss her from the interview room.
Suzanne continued, "Because we can do that for you. But it will take time, and Skye may get out of the country. We have two other people in danger."
"I thought they shot Sean, too. You"re going to get her, right?"
"If you cooperate, we"ll do everything to find and stop the woman who shot your boyfriend."
Carol nodded and glanced at Noah, skittish.
"Agent Armstrong," Suzanne said, motioning with her eyes for him to sit.
He took a deep breath. Suzanne was right. He was wound too tight. "Carol, would you please explain what happened tonight?"
She bit her lip, but it was obvious she wanted to tell someone. It helped that she was emotionally wrung out.
"After Hunter was killed, Colton moved up the plan by twenty-four hours. He was worried that someone in PBM had found out and had Hunter killed. Hunter had the security plans, so Colton changed the time, day, and even how they entered the facility."
"Who was responsible for what?"
"Skye and Evan were supposed to go to the research director"s office and copy a specific file that was on hard copy only. Colton and Sean learned they were experimenting in bio-weapons and he wanted proof. Originally, all he wanted was proof that they had killed his brother-his brother, Travis, was in leukemia trials, and he died suddenly after using an experimental drug. The company swore the drug had nothing to do with it, but Colton didn"t believe them, and thought they knew that the drug had an adverse effect. But when he hacked in and found information on a bio-weapon, he said there was a bigger cause to fight for."
"Where did Sean Rogan fit?"
"He"s Colton"s best friend. I mean, I don"t know why, Sean just left years ago and that hurt C. But when Sean moved to New York, Colton was so happy."
"What did Sean do for the team?"
"I didn"t believe he was as smart as Colton made him out to be, but he is. They needed him to hack the external security feeds. He came up with this brilliant plan to loop the security cameras, you know, like they did in the movie Speed about the bus-"
"We"re familiar with the movie," Noah cut her off.
"Oh. Yeah. Well, I thought that was just something that they did in the movies, but Sean not only knew how to do it, but said he could cover their tracks and no one would know they were there. And they needed him to crack the electronic safe. Colton is good with computers, but the safe is above him. Sean is an expert safecracker."
Great, Noah thought. One more list of crimes in Sean"s portfolio.
"And did they get what they wanted? The guards said no one breached security."
"They got in, got everything, and got out. Sean was really angry with Evan. He asked several times what was in the backpack, why he was in the research lab when he was only supposed to go to the director"s office. They were fighting wh-wh-when Skye shot C."
"Do you know what was in the backpack? Did Colton tell Evan to take something?"
"No. Colton just wanted proof that they were working with bio-weapons. He thought that more people would care about that than a long-ago drug trial that killed his brother. Colton just wanted to expose them for the corrupt pharmaceutical b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that they are."
"What did Colton want in the safe?"
"I-I don"t know if I should say." She looked down at her hands, her forehead crinkled in doubt.
Noah leaned forward. "Senator Jonathan Paxton is being arrested as we speak. So it would help us if you know what they took so we can find it."
Her almond-shaped eyes widened. "You know about him?"
"We know he hired Colton to break into PBM and take something from the safe. What?"
"He wanted a file that was in there, plus if there was a tape. From what I heard, Sean kept the files and Colton took the tape."
That meant everything was in the evidence room.
"Did you hear anything else after Colton was shot?"
"I started crying and they shut down communications. The last thing I heard was Skye telling Sean that she was in charge."
"Do you know this man?" Noah slid a photo of Kurt LeGrand in front of her.
She shook her head. "No."
"Does the name Kurt LeGrand mean anything to you?"
She stopped fidgeting. "Yes."
"What?"
"Skye"s fiance is named Kurt. I don"t know his last name, but she talked about him once."
"So she wasn"t involved with Evan."
"They had a thing, but it was over. They both lived in the carriage house. Separate bedrooms." Tears started running down her face again. "Why would they try to kill Colton? After everything he did for them? Let them live in the house for free? Gave them jobs, legitimate jobs, he didn"t have time for? Why would they do that to someone who loved them like he did?"
When the computer beeped, Lucy jerked awake, a sharp pain in her neck. She rubbed the pinched nerve and groaned. She"d fallen asleep at Sean"s desk and would be paying for it all day.
It was a message from Rick: Your information is solid. We"re working on it.
She let out a long, heavy breath and stretched. There was nothing else she could do now but wait.
Lucy hated being stuck here, hated not being in the middle of the investigation. She needed to know what was going on, but she didn"t want to stop Noah or Suzanne or Rick from doing everything in their power to find Duke. She didn"t want to become one of their problems. She just wished that Sean would have called her and let her know he was okay. Just one word. But Noah would have told her if something was wrong.
She frowned. Maybe not. They hadn"t told her about Duke. What if Sean was in trouble and they didn"t want her to know? Did they not trust her with the information? Did they think she would do something stupid?
She stood and stretched. It was four in the morning. She"d slept for an hour at Sean"s desk, but there was no going back to sleep now.
She went downstairs to make a fresh pot of coffee. The alarm panel was beeping on the front door. Had she set it right? Yes-she"d been here enough to know how Sean"s security worked. Hyper-alert, she tiptoed to the front door, not turning on any lights. She looked through the security hole. Two men in ski masks stood there, both focused on the lock.
She pressed the panic b.u.t.ton on the alarm as they popped the first lock and was about to run out the back when she saw two more men at the back door.
Heart racing, she ran up the stairs to Sean"s office. She opened Sean"s bottom desk drawer, but his gun wasn"t there. She ran to the bedroom and shut the door. No locks. She pushed a chair against the k.n.o.b and grabbed her cell phone. There was no signal. Could they have jammed it? What about the alarm? Could they have jammed that, too?
There was a fail-safe in the alarm system; if the power was cut, the police were notified. If the system went down, the police were notified. The panic b.u.t.ton was on a dedicated phone line.
She heard people walking downstairs. Someone was on the staircase.
She searched Sean"s room for another gun. His favorite Beretta was missing from under his bed, but she found a fully loaded 9mm in his closet.
She tried to calm down, but the fear of being kidnapped by four men was real. She would die before she let them touch her. She couldn"t live through another rape. A scream caught in her throat as she stared at the door, frozen, her hands shaking.
They don"t want to rape you; they want to take you to leverage Sean. Like Duke. That"s why they took Duke. Oh, G.o.d, did that mean he was dead? Did that mean they had Sean?
The men were outside the door. She held the gun out, ready to shoot. The police would be here soon. She just had to hold off the men for five minutes. Ten at most.
What if they were all armed? She couldn"t kill four of them while being so exposed. Think, dammit!
Bathroom. There was a lock on the door.
She ran into the bathroom and slammed the door, barely having time to lock it before they burst into the bedroom. The door wouldn"t hold against their strength. She stood in the corner, between the toilet and the shower, gun aimed at the door.
"She"s in here!" one of them called.
It took them two tries to break the door open. She aimed and fired. Two bullets at the first masked man. Two at the second. The first attacker screamed and went down, but the second had enough time to back out of the doorway. She was on autopilot, focusing on movement and sound. It was her or them. She did not want to die.
The second man stepped in again and she fired at him at the same time he shot her in the shoulder.
The pain was immediate, a burning pain, and she slid against the tile. A yellow plastic feather stuck out of her chest, blood dripping down her white tank top. She tried to shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d again, but she had no control over her limbs. He easily disarmed her.
No, no, no.
"b.i.t.c.h shot me!" The man with the tranq gun backhanded her.
There was more commotion and Lucy was fading. "Don"t kill her!" another man said while the fourth shouted, "Out the back, now! Cops have been dispatched. I thought you took care of it."
"No," Lucy muttered.
"The b.a.s.t.a.r.d has multiple layers of security."
"You can"t leave me!" the first man she shot cried out as another man picked her up. Her mind willed her body to fight, but she couldn"t even open her eyes, let alone move her arms.
"You"re right," someone said. She heard three gunshots, then nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.
Sean woke up shivering.
His eyelids felt like they"d been glued shut, and when he attempted to move, bile rose in the back of his throat. He swallowed and grunted as waves of pain coursed through his body. As his stomach settled, he moved his hands. They were handcuffed. That"s when he realized he wore two pairs of bracelets, one for each wrist, and his arms were splayed wide. He was slumped over and tried to straighten himself. The movement brought more pain.
"Sean."
He heard a voice far in the distance. It sounded like his brother. Great, just what he needed, the Good Angel Duke sitting on his shoulder telling him he"d been an idiot.
Wherever he was, he was freezing. It smelled like hay. Moldy hay. A barn? Maybe-there may have been animals here once, but no longer. It was drafty enough to be a barn. No insulation. It was still dark-at least he thought it was. He squinted his eyes open enough to know there was no light in here.
"Sean, wake up."