Until It's You (23 page)

Her eyes went to Landon briefly before returning to Carter. “Orders for the most sensitive shipments are handled by Mr. Tatum personally.”

“And you never handle it on behalf of Mr. Tatum? Maybe he allows you to sign things for him, sometimes. When he’s busy.”

The attorney leaned toward Bruman again and said something in her ear that seemed to annoy her. Landon could imagine what he was saying: you don't have to comment on that.

Landon bit his lip and tried to hold his face very still. He became intently aware of every micro movement of Bruman’s face. The white walls of the interview room closed in.

Bruman sat up straight and put her arm out to hold her attorney back when he did the same. She looked Carter right in the eye.

“No,” she said crisply. "I do no such thing. If Mr. Tatum engages in that practice with other employees, I am not aware of it."

Landon held very still as his heart pounded in his chest. Bruman had just lied to a federal agent, even when she hadn't needed to.

If there had been no crime before, there was now. Why had she done it? Had it been for him, or herself?

“Very well,” Carter said. She reached over and touched Landon’s wrist. He half-jumped before he caught himself. “Mr. Tatum and I will be just a moment.”

She stood up, and Landon did the same, pushing the chair back on the floor with a loud scrape.

“My client has a right to know what this is about,” the lawyer barked. He rose to his feet as well. "We have been more than cooperative to this point."

Carter turned. “I have twenty-four hours and you know it."

She opened the door and walked out into the hallway. Landon followed, a storm swirling in his head. She'd lied about the protocols his company used for shipping sensitive pharms. This was, at most, a trivial manner. Unless you lied to the government about it.

Why? Why would she do that?

It took about forty minutes for Kristina to get a name for someone she could feel confident had something to do with the ownership of Moonlight Auto Sales. Her latte was long-gone, along with the buttery croissant, but she had no mind of getting anything more. She was in the zone.

The difficulty of a project like this spurred her on. If someone was really going to take the time to use shell corporations to own a used car dealership, then there had to be something deeper at play.

So when she found an actual name, she wasn’t sure if this was the breakthrough or just another step. Mark Davidson. Unremarkable name. Was he a scapegoat in case things went south? Or was he actually in on the whole deal?

She got to work developing a profile on him. Ran into problems pretty quickly. With such a common name, there were a lot of other Mark Davidson’s to run through, and she had no identifying information on him outside of his ownership of Moonlight Auto by way of DB Corp—which had done some construction for the city—by way of Escalate, a company that did the legal version of Agent Smith parties she'd read a story about after Tom told her she had it in her system.

In other words, they need a man’s name on there at some point, but they were only following the law as long as they had to. That wasn’t much to go on.

Still, though, she diligently went through the process of making a list of all the vitals she could gather on every Mark Davidson she could find in the Chicago area. From there, she cross-referenced as many professions as she could reasonably lock down so as to do a preliminary elimination from her list.

This left her with only three she couldn’t immediately place. She flicked through each one, absorbing the picture and hoping for a flash of inspiration.
Do you look like a used car dealer? How about you?

As she analyzed the third Mark—she had marked them one, two, and three—something tugged at the corner of her mind like rolling back the sheets on a made bed. A sense that she had seen those eyes before, though on a much younger man. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind of everything but those eyes. A swirl of thoughts and impressions muddied her thinking. She just couldn't concentrate hard enough.

So she went all Anna/yoga on her breathing and tried to slow it down, breathing in through her nose and trying to focus on the sensation of the air entering her lungs, then breathing out equally slowly. It took all her effort to do this as quietly as possible, though in part of her mind she knew she probably looked ridiculous to the people in the shop. Anna would be proud.

Hopefully it was like most coffee shops and there were used to the kind of liberal New Agers that still came to these places these days. She let the thought flit away as best she could.

Brantley.

It hit her like the snap of interlocking building blocks. Her eyes flew open and her fingers flicked across her screen to open Brantley’s file. She sped through several pictures until she found one he had posted from his law school graduation.

There were the eyes. Green, dull almonds. Perhaps a dash of cunning, but honestly unremarkable. Nevertheless, that had to be him. 

Who was he? The last names were different. Step-brother? Half-brother? She hadn’t delved too much into Brantley’s family. It wasn’t really something he had detailed on social media, and she hadn't thought it relevant enough to do a deep dive before. But now was different.

Maybe she could find an obituary of a parent or grandparent of Brantley. Get a little more information. It would be reckless to use his relative's car service for something like that, but how many people could a guy like that know? He had the motive with Fordelli, and he had the means...perhaps . . .

What would Roy have known that could hurt Brantley that badly? Had he been lying the whole time about not knowing who the boss was?

She could confront him tomorrow, after running it by Carter. How were they doing with Bruman, anyway?

***

Landon followed Carter through the bureau's labyrinthine hallways in a daze. His head swirled as they walked. The conversation in the interview room ravaged its way through his mind. It just didn't add up at all.

Bruman had lied for him. Or for herself. To a federal officer, over something that should not be a big deal. What was going on here? Had he been duped on that shipment after all? But
why?

Finally, Carter came to an office and swiped open the door. She stood aside for Landon to go in. He did so, and she followed. It was a small office with a flag on the wall and just enough room for a desk and a chair.

She shut the door behind her and walked past him, straight to her desk. Landon trailed behind, unsure of where this was going.

“I have heard from many people that you’re an intelligent man,” she said at last, walking around to the chair behind her desk. She motioned toward the chair in front. “Please, sit. I’d offer you a drink but I haven’t replenished the vodka bottle I keep in my desk. Finished it off last week. Maybe you can imagine how that is.”

Landon forced a smile, though he did take a seat. So she was old school, then.
Very
old school.

“I’m alright," he said. "I'm just surprised you don't have a case of Nvigorate or something in here.”

"Maybe you can hook the department up."

He shrugged. "Seems like you pump them in pretty well here anyway."

Carter nodded, dropped her own air and set her face in a grim, thin-lipped expression as she sat down herself. “I need your cooperation on this to get anything to stick. The truth is, that lawyer is going to have a field day with my bosses if I don’t come up with anything to even charge her with.”

“I understand.”

“Do you still think she’s worth pursuing?”

Landon sighed. If he said no, Bruman would go off scot free and this could all be tallied up as a big mistake. Carter would be left with a mess, but he would get off pretty light. He would still, of course, have the same problems he had with the Phobos project and being attacked, but at least he wouldn't have to deal with a lawsuit too. At least probably not.

Of course, he couldn’t do that. “She lied in there about signing for me,” he said. "It's something she does from time to time."

The agent brightened. “Good, I thought she might have. Do you have proof?”

Landon shook his head. “It would be a pretty naive system if we left proof, wouldn’t it?”

Her smile fell. “So no proof. Not even a stamp or something?”

“No." He swallowed, sifted the thing through in his mind. "What evidence do you have on your side?”

She sat back in her chair and exhaled slowly. “Well, we have a shipment that went missing for almost twenty-four hours. Your company claims that was an innocent mistake. It was intended for the Department of Defense and arrived a day late. Which is no big deal unless you're talking about a potential war crime.”

“That was a shipping error,” Landon said. “The company did a significant investigation. It ended up being a relatively trivial matter.”

“Who conducted that investigation?”

He blew out a long, slow breath. This
had
occurred to him, but it wasn't as simple and Carter probably thought it was. “Ms. Bruman, along with the Director of Operations for the plant in question and our Director of Technology.”

“You weren’t directly involved?”

“I read the executive summaries prepared for me. Nothing seemed especially out of the ordinary. It was in capable hands. Not only Ms. Bruman, but my Directors of Operations and Technology.”

“Because you’re a busy man.”

He put his hands up. “Even for a sensitive pharm like Phobos, I wouldn't handle something like a shipping error unless it seemed necessary after an initial investigation. There did not seem to be a need according to the report I received.”

“Can you provide me with that executive summary?”

Landon bit his lip, shrugged. He took his comm out of his pocket. “Where would you like it sent?”

She told him, and he took a few minutes to find the message on his company server. The whole operation came off without a hitch and soon the file was sent. Carter was waiting for it on her tablet and opened it immediately.

It only took her a few minutes to scan the document. “This is it? This is all you looked at?”

He had to fight down a sigh. “It wouldn't be a very good summary if it took a long time to read, would it? I put people I trust in charge of the investigation. I didn’t see the need at the time to confirm any more than what is provided there.”

She looked at him skeptically.

He sat up straighter. "It had to be signed off on by all three of them. It isn't like there's a single point of failure on this."

Carter nodded, her bright eyes still narrowed. “Did you interview the employees she claims to have interviewed?”

“Not personally. That would be redundant." He shifted in his seat. "I suppose you could bring them in to talk if you believe it would help.”

She waived her hand. “It’s already eight o’clock. She’ll be sprung by the time I have anything on that front.”

He nodded. They needed hard evidence of
something
or there was no way Bruman was getting charged. He wracked his brain for any tidbit that might help. 

“What made you so sure you wanted her brought in, anyway?” she asked. "You had to be confident. By my research, you've known Bruman for a long time."

He sat up straight. Of course.
Known
.

“Did you confiscate her comm when you brought her in?” he asked excitedly.

"No," she said, brows arched. "But we could get a warrant for it in a snap. Why?"

He could feel his pulse throbbing in his throat. “Get it and run all the IDs she’s called or messaged with in the last two days," he said quickly.

“Why?”

His fists clenched. “Because someone who broke into my safe house and tried to kidnap me told me she was involved. If she is, there's going to be contact information for someone else there. I saw the guy's comm and can do a Recall for the comm's ID.”

Carter’s jaw dropped, then snapped up like a hand caught in the cookie jar. She recovered her composure. “Did you say someone tried to kidnap you?”

"Yes. It's not important right now."

"Where is this person?"

“I don’t know," he said with a wave of his hand. "He escaped.”

Her expression, a mixture of shock and a scowl, told him she didn't want to drop it so quickly. “And you didn’t feel the need to report this to the authorities?”

“There wasn’t a good opportunity."

"There wasn't a good opportunity for you to call the police? But you had a comm. I talked to Kristina on it."

Landon stared at her heard, his face very still. Had he just said too much? Was she really going to hold things up over Roy's escape?

“Do you want to bust her or not?” he asked at last.

Finally, she heaved a deep breath, her chest rising and falling dramatically. "Good lord, you people. This is why I'm out of vodka."

"I'll get your next bottle."

Her expression brightened. That seemed to cheer her up, at least. “What am I looking for?” she asked.

“Pre-paid IDs. Things you can’t trace. She has to have something.”

“You want me to trace the IDs?”

He shrugged. “That can’t be too hard for you.”

“No, but it will take time to get one of the techs free, even once we have the device. We're understaffed for these kinds of things.”

Of course they were. Government offices always claimed they were understaffed for everything. But his mind jumped nimbly through several solutions almost at once. “Threaten a geo-location on any unidentified number as part of your investigation.”

Finally, her face brightened. "A bluff? You think she's protecting someone?"

"Maybe."

She pressed her lips together hard, thinking the matter over. Then pulled her comm up on her desk.

“You're right," he said, straightening up the lines of her suit. "I'm putting the order in now. Then we go back in.”