Fear No Evil

ELEVEN

QUINN PETERSON RAN from the office, pulling out his cell phone to call his wife and let her know where he was going. Instead, he bumped into an assistant director from Quantico, Jeff Merritt. Quinn couldn’t keep the shock off his face. “What’s going on?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Can’t. We have a lead on Trask.”

“Now.”

Quinn swore under his breath, following Merritt into the office he’d just exited. Merritt glared at Joe Garcia until Garcia got the hint and left. Quinn wouldn’t have followed Merritt except for one small thing: Merritt was his boss’s boss.

“I told you,” Merritt said as soon as Garcia shut the door, “that anything regarding the whereabouts of Trask must go through me first.”

“I sent you my report.”

“You sent me shit.”

“Time is running out, Merritt. Can we have this pissing contest later? I have a helicopter waiting on the roof.”

“Where did you get the intel?”

“I don’t have time for this.”

Merritt slammed his fist on the table. “Dammit, you’re in touch with Donovan!”

Quinn knew the history between Merritt and Kate, and he wasn’t about to get in the middle.

Jeff Merritt had been Paige Henshaw’s lover.

He had been the one to push the Bureau into opening an investigation through the Office of Professional Responsibility. But Merritt didn’t want to slap Kate on the wrist. He wanted her behind bars.

It didn’t help that everything Kate had sent the feds had been dangerous dead ends. It wasn’t her fault-she was being a good agent and sending everything, no matter how remote. But last year, Merritt had jumped the gun and nearly ended up getting himself and his team killed. That had renewed Merritt’s vendetta against Kate.

“Put the past on hold, Merritt,” Quinn said. “Trask is holding an eighteen-year-old girl captive and the countdown is under thirty-three hours. I don’t have time for this.”

“I’ll bury you, Peterson.”

Superior or not, Quinn refused to be threatened. He took a step toward Merritt. “Don’t go there.”

“Kate Donovan is a lunatic. She’ll get you killed.”

“You’re just feeling guilty because you didn’t believe her about Paige after the ambush.”

Merritt reddened. “I have nothing to feel guilty about, except maybe leading my people into a trap with intel Kate Donovan submitted. This is a woman who led her partner into a dangerous, hostile situation. She’s a vigilante. How can you be sure she’s not working with Trask? How can you trust anything she says? She’s a fugitive and she set Paige up to die. She also got her boyfriend killed in the process.”

“Talk about rewriting history!” Quinn brushed past him. “Talk to me tomorrow.”

He was almost out the door when Merritt said, “We have someone deep inside.”

Furious was an understatement. “What?” Quinn slowly turned.

“Deep cover, complete silence. Last contact was two weeks ago.”

“And you’re telling me this now? You knew about the Kincaid girl twelve hours ago! Where is she?”

“We don’t know.”

“You have a guy on the inside and you don’t know where he is?”

“He’s supposed to check in every week, but Trask has intense security. He’s missed check-ins before. Last message was that another show was scheduled. He didn’t know where or when, just soon.”

“Did you know about Lucy Kincaid?”

Merritt shook his head, but Quinn wasn’t certain he believed him. “We suspected he was targeting a student at Georgetown.”

“Why hasn’t your guy taken him out?”

“Evidence, dammit! We have no proof.”

“No proof? You have a man on the inside. He’s an eyewitness. We have Trask’s recorded voice. And this girl is obviously an unwilling participant.”

“We have to find them first. I have to let my man run the op. He’s our best hope. Trust me. He’ll get her out if he can, then we can debrief him and get Trask.”

“Who is he?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Fuck that, Merritt.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“What about a microchip?” Quinn asked. More often than not undercover agents had GPS microchips implanted on their person. It wasn’t standard operating procedure, but for a deep-cover op like this Quinn would have insisted.

“Couldn’t do it. Trask has a vigorous system of clearing his crew. We set up an extensive background for my man, even sent him to prison for six months to make contact with one of Morton’s old buddies. We’ve invested a lot of time into finding Trask, instead of relying on a bitter, mentally unstable, renegade FBI agent who should be in prison.”

“You want me to trust an unknown undercover who hasn’t checked in for two weeks? Who just let a young woman be raped? Bullshit. You don’t even know if he’s still alive. My helicopter’s waiting.”

“Tell me where Kate Donovan is.”

“I don’t know.”

“I know you’ve been working with the Kincaids. I know the brothers went after her.”

“Then talk to them, because I don’t know where they went.”

“You arranged transportation to Hidalgo.”

“Did I?”

“You’re on thin ice, Peterson.”

Quinn stared at his superior. He had several choice words for him, but limited his verbal assault. “You’re after Kate because of what happened to Paige, and that’s it. Revenge. But nothing you can do to Kate is worse that what she’s been doing to herself.”

“I’m after Kate Donovan because she disobeyed orders and got Evan Standler and Paige Henshaw killed. Her intel is shit and you know it.”

“Her intel is all we have-better than what we’ve been able to uncover. Better than what your deep-cover agent has gotten us. Everyone went into that op eyes open, Merritt, and you know it. Paige was just as much to blame for the screwup as Kate. And maybe if your people out on the East Coast had taken them more seriously, they wouldn’t have gone in without proper backup.”

“Don’t you dare put this at my feet.”

“Put the shoe on, Merritt. It fits.”

Quinn left. Taking a deep breath, he called his wife, Miranda, as he ran up the stairs to the roof, where the helicopter waited. Just hearing her voice would calm him down.

Jeff Merritt sat down at the computer in the task force room, looking for Kate Donovan’s whereabouts.

He glanced at the computer screen where the Kincaid girl was restrained, naked. But instead of seeing the eighteen-year-old, he saw Paige.

She’d fought until the end, but she’d still died.

If only he had told her he loved her. Instead, they had fought.

“You have to give us backup! We’re so close!” she’d insisted.

“You’ve been ‘close’ a half-dozen times and come up empty,” he’d responded. “No more. Drop this case. You shouldn’t be working in Violent Crimes anymore. Let me get you a job at Quantico.”

Paige had glared at him. “I knew this was going to happen. I knew you’d do this. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“You would have lied to me? About something as important as this?”

“If I knew you’d get all Neanderthal on me just because I’m pregnant, yes. Please, Jeff. For me. One last time.”

“Last time?” He’d snorted, having heard that before. “Is Kate pushing you to do this?”

“Of course not! But we both believe we have him nailed. He’s going to show.”

“Trask doesn’t even exist.”

“Yes, he does.”

“Fine,” he’d said. “You’ll have your backup. But this is the last time, hear me? If nothing happens, you and Kate drop the investigation.”

“Promise.” Paige had smiled. “Eleven o’clock tonight. The warehouse on the corner of Sixth and Madison.”

She’d given him a quick kiss and left.

Jeff Merritt stared at the phone. He hadn’t believed Trask existed. He hadn’t believed April Klinger was dead. Kate and Paige had had a bee in their bonnet because they couldn’t stop the proliferation of pornography online. So they had created something that just wasn’t there. The time, man-hours, and money they’d wasted going after a phantom named Trask.

Then and there, he had decided to put a scare into Paige. After that, she’d quit, take a nice quiet desk job, be a good mom to their child. A good wife to him.

That was five years ago. Now Merritt slammed his fist on the desk, eyes moist. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the diamond ring he’d been carrying all these years. He kissed the cold gem.

Paige was dead and it was his fault. But he wasn’t alone in the blame. Kate Donovan was culpable, too.

And for that she would pay.