Cody Walker's Woman (15 page)

“McKinnon,” said a voice in his ear.

“It’s Walker,” he said crisply. “Where’s Callahan?”

“Shift change. He’s briefing the deputy going on duty.”

“Tell him to call me immediately. It’s urgent.”

McKinnon asked guardedly, “Keira found something?”

“Yeah.” Cody wasn’t surprised at how McKinnon had worded the question. Keira’s partner had been right about her. She’d managed in less than two weeks to pull together assorted bits and pieces and assemble them into a complete—and deadly—picture.
Even D’Arcy couldn’t have done a better job,
he thought. “Would you believe a tie-in between the militia and the Russian mob? And not just now—back then, too.”

McKinnon cursed softly and fluently. Then he said, “Tell her— No, I’ll tell her myself. I’m a lucky man to have her as my partner. I’ll have Callahan call you as soon as he’s free.”

A click in his ear told him McKinnon had hung up. He disconnected, too, hearing McKinnon’s words again.
I’m a lucky man to have her as my partner.

Cody gazed at Keira sitting across the desk from him, her red-gold curls tousled as if she’d been running her fingers through them as she worked, and realized the truth of those words far beyond what McKinnon had intended. Any man who had her in his life in any way was a lucky man.

And he wanted to be that man. Not as a working partner—no. What he wanted was so much more. He wanted to be
the
man in her life, the only man who counted. And he wanted her as his woman, so much it took his breath away.

The cell phone shrilled in Cody’s hand, and he almost answered it automatically with his last name until he remembered this wasn’t his official cell phone. “Yes?”

Ryan Callahan’s voice growled in his ear, “McKinnon said to call you. Said you’ve got something I need to know.”

“Yeah. Keira found it.” He quickly relayed the facts she’d uncovered, as well as the conclusions she’d drawn from them. “It all fits,” Cody said. “The money, the way the militia was revived so quickly, the political tie-ins, everything.”

“A nice, neat little package,” Callahan agreed. “You realize what this means?”

“Yeah. It’s not going to be as easy as it was last time.”

“You got that right. Damn!” said the man on the other end. “If I’d known...”

Cody knew, as if he could read Callahan’s mind, that the other man was thinking about Mandy...and their three children. Callahan had walked away from Mandy once to protect her. Now she wasn’t the only one at risk. Now he had three children he loved as much as he loved Mandy, all of them equally in danger because of him.

“Does D’Arcy know?” Callahan asked.

“I’ve got an appointment to see him in—” Cody checked his watch “—nine minutes.”

“Whatever it is, I want in,” Callahan said grimly.

“It’s not your responsibility, not anymore,” Cody said. “You’ve done your duty.”

“This isn’t about duty, and you damn well know it,” Callahan responded in that implacable voice Cody remembered all too well. “This is my
family
at stake.”

“I’ll see what D’Arcy says.” But even as he said the words, Cody knew Callahan wouldn’t abide by D’Arcy’s ruling...unless it was the outcome Callahan wanted. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Keira and I don’t want to be late.”

“Keep me in the loop.”

“You know I will.”

Cody hung up, glanced at his watch and locked his computer. Then he picked up the thick file from his desk and stood up. “Let’s do it,” he told Keira.

As they rode up in the elevator, Keira asked, “What did Callahan say?”

“He wants in.”

“You didn’t have to tell me that,” she said drily.

“I understand where he’s coming from—I’d feel the same—but...”

“But he’s a civilian,” Keira finished for him.

“Yeah.” Cody glanced her way. “I don’t know how we’d manage to keep him out, though. If we didn’t include him, he’d just go his own way. I know him.”

“Then we’d better find a way to include him. Better to have him on the team than taking the law into his own hands and maybe getting in our way.”

Cody chuckled ruefully. “Practical Keira,” he said, smiling down at her.

She smiled back. “I try to be.”

Their eyes met, and suddenly Cody wasn’t thinking about the case. It was still there in the background, looming over them, but in that instant he was focused on Keira, and the way her brown eyes and her mobile mouth softened when she smiled.

She must have read something in his expression because her smile faded as she gazed up at him. Cody saw a flash of some emotion in her eyes in response before she shut it down, but he was better able to read her now. Just as he’d known earlier she’d uncovered something crucial to the case, he knew she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she pretended.

He took a step closer to her just as the elevator doors opened.
Damn!
he thought.
Now’s not the time.
But he resolved he wasn’t going to put it off any longer.
Tonight,
he told himself.
I’ll talk to her tonight.

He just wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to say.

D’Arcy was standing in the outer office talking to his executive assistant when they walked in. “Walker, Jones,” he greeted them. “You’re right on time. Come on in.” He led them into the inner office and closed the door behind them. “Before we start on this, you’ll both be happy to know we had a positive resolution on Walker’s earlier case.”

Cody shot a sharp glance at D’Arcy, then at Keira to see how she would react. “Thank you, sir,” he said, noting the expression of relief on Keira’s face. It had obviously been bothering her she’d inadvertently caused the failure of that original sting operation. “My partner did happen to mention it the other day.”
Hell, I probably should have told Keira,
Cody thought, even though he knew she didn’t have an official “need to know.” But he should have known it had been eating at her—she was that kind of agent.

“Good,” D’Arcy said. “So, what have you got on this case?”

Cody waited for him to sit behind his desk. “It’s Keira’s story,” he said, handing the file to D’Arcy before sitting down himself. “She’ll tell it better than I can.”

Keira flashed him a questioning look, and Cody wondered if she thought he’d try to take credit for her work. That had never been his style, but maybe she didn’t know it, so he smiled encouragingly at her. “Tell him what you told me,” he said.

She did, but Cody noticed the animation she’d had in her face and her voice when she’d recounted what she’d found to him was missing. This time she was the consummate dispassionate professional agent, reporting to a superior officer.

When she was done, D’Arcy sat back, holding the FBI report from nine years ago in his hand, perusing it. He read it through twice before putting it back in the folder. “Suspicious circumstances?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Keira responded promptly. “The author of the report was killed as he walked home from the subway. It looked like a simple mugging, but there was one thing that stood out to investigators at the time. His wallet was taken, but he was wearing an expensive gold watch and a wedding ring, neither of which was touched. The case was never solved, even though the FBI supposedly threw the resources of their office behind the investigation.”

“Supposedly?” D’Arcy asked, unerringly focusing on the most crucial element of her statement.

Keira nodded. “I can’t find a record of anyone in the FBI’s New York office being assigned to the investigation, but...the SAC reported to
his
superiors that the investigation was ongoing.”

“In other words,” he said, voicing what they were all thinking, “the SAC—who is now the junior senator from New York—buried the report connecting the New World Militia to the Russian mob, arranged for the author of the report to be killed, and hindered the subsequent investigation into the murder.”

“Yes, sir,” Keira confirmed.

“Great. Just great.” D’Arcy swiveled his chair away from Cody and Keira, staring at the far wall. “No wonder,” he said softly to himself.

“Sir?” she asked.

“That was the last unanswered question I had from six years ago,” he said, turning a cold face to her. “Brooks betrayed Callahan’s partner, Josh Thurman, to the militia, but he never would say how he knew—that information was compartmentalized, and he shouldn’t have known anything about Thurman. Now it all makes sense.”

He added softly, “And here’s something you might know, but maybe not. Brooks was killed in prison less than a year after he and Walsh began serving their sentences. Shanked by a fellow inmate in the prison yard. And Walsh died—ostensibly from a heart attack—four months later.”

“So, someone got to them...on the inside,” Cody said. “Sounds more like the Russian mob than the militia.”

D’Arcy frowned. “Doesn’t matter either way. They’re both dead, so neither one can add anything to the official record.” He looked at Keira, then back at Cody. “So, what’s your plan now?”

Keira glanced at Cody, shaking her head slightly, and he knew she was telling him she wasn’t prepared with an answer. She’d uncovered the critical links, but...

“The Praetor Corporation is the key,” Cody said, an idea coming to him. “Pennington’s son—although he goes by the name Michael Vishenko, he’s still Pennington’s son—owns the company through a series of shell corporations. Keira already found the link between it and NOANC. But there’s got to be a paper trail between the Praetor Corporation and the Russian mob, as well as between the Russian mob and the New World Militia. We just have to find it.”

“Any ideas?” D’Arcy asked. “And how do those last words of Callahan’s neighbor tie in? What about that key he gave Callahan?”

“No ideas yet,” Cody told him. “We haven’t figured out what Tressler’s words mean, either, or what the key is for. But there’s something you should know. Callahan wants in on the investigation.”

D’Arcy picked up the FBI report again and looked from it to Cody. “We owe him,” he said grimly. “The FBI recruited him to go undercover with the militia in the first place. He sacrificed his career and risked his life to put Pennington behind bars. He trusted us—
me
—to protect him when he went into the witness security program. We failed him.” His voice was filled with savage self-recrimination. “
I
failed him.”

He paused to gain control of his emotions. “The militia—or the Russian mob—had men inside the FBI, inside the U.S. Marshals Service. Because of that, Pennington had Thurman, his wife and his baby son murdered trying to get to Callahan.”

His face was colder than Cody had ever seen it. “Anything Callahan wants, he’s entitled to. Keep that in mind. Just remember...”

“Yes, sir,” Cody said, knowing what D’Arcy was going to say. “This is
my
case. I won’t forget.”

* * *

It was after six when Cody and Keira wrapped up for the day. Cody called Callahan, and although she only heard Cody’s side of the conversation, she could imagine what the other man was saying.

“You’re in, but remember the agency is running the show. You can’t let your emotions get in the way,” Cody warned. “We have to be professional about this.” He laughed at something Callahan said before he hung up.

Amateur,
Keira thought,
I’ll bet that’s what Callahan said that made him laugh.

Before she could think about it, she asked, “So, are you ever going to tell me what ‘amateur’ means when you and Callahan say it to each other?”

“How’d you kn—” he began, looking from the cell phone to her.

“The way you laughed,” she said simply. “It’s the same way you laughed before when he said it to you, and the way he laughed when you said it to him.”

Cody drew in a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “It’s not something I’m proud of, but I guess you have a right to know.”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“Not here,” he said. “Not in the office.”

“Where?”

He gave her a steady, considering look. “My place?”

She thought about it for a second, then shook her head. “My condo?”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. Want to pick up some dinner on the way?”

“If you want to eat a decent meal, you’re going to have to,” she said with a wry smile. “I can open cans and heat up frozen dinners in the microwave, but my mom despaired of teaching me to cook.”

Cody smiled back. “Let me guess. None of your brothers can cook either. Right?”

“How’d you know?”

“Ahhh, that would be telling,” he teased her.

Keira’s eyes narrowed, but playfully. “Trace has a big mouth.”

Cody held up his hands in mock protest. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

“You asked him about me?” Keira was curious. “When?”

Cody’s playful smile turned rueful. “In the truck on the way up to Wyoming.”

“Oh.” Keira’s heart skipped a beat as she realized what this meant, what it
had
to mean.
Even before he kissed me,
she thought, a frisson of excitement running through her veins.
He was interested even before that.

Cody raised a hand as if to touch her cheek, but stopped himself. “I wanted to know about you. Who knows you better than your partner?”

“You could have asked me.”

Cody shook his head. “I doubt it. I’ve been trying to ask you for almost two weeks, but...you never tell me anything about yourself. You always change the subject.” His eyes held hers and wouldn’t let her look away.

“Is that what...?” she asked, her heartbeat picking up the pace. “I knew you—” She stopped herself just in time before she said,
I knew you wanted me.
“I didn’t realize...”

He nodded, totally serious now. “Before we go any further, we need to talk about the agency’s rule on fraternization.”

“You’re not my supervisor,” she said quickly.

“I know that. But I
am
the agent in charge.” He hesitated. “Up ’til now I’ve told myself the time we’ve spent together is related to the case. Maybe I was stretching things a bit, telling myself what I wanted to believe, but...”

“You’re not my supervisor,” she reiterated, raising her chin and giving him a fierce look. “That’s the only hard-and-fast rule against fraternization—and we’re not breaking it.”