recall the difficulty he’d had returning to the vehicle. His thigh was seizing and cramping from the punishment it had taken. His chest felt as though it were on fire. Hobbling unaided to the vehicle had been a further indignity. Most of the time Adam managed to forget the physical limitations his three days in LeCroix’s captivity had cost him. Intellect trumped physical prowess nearly all the time. But tonight those limitations had been particularly impossible to ignore.
The sheriff’s deputy that had responded to the scene had looked a bit dubious at his story of a hit-and-run but had agreed to investigate the car’s description and partial plate that Adam had managed to see before taking cover.
“I know there’s a lot more to the story than the stingy details you gave the deputy.”
Feeling Samuels’s gaze on him, Adam straightened and faced him. “You could say that.” In a few terse sentences, he filled his friend in and waited for his response. He trusted this man like no one else. Which was odd, since Adam wasn’t a person to whom trust came easily. But with one decision eight years ago, he had aligned his fate with Samuels. He’d never had cause to regret it.
“Not feds then.” There was a slight frown on the shiny brow beneath Paulie’s balding dome. “Send a tail, sure that’s their style. But they wouldn’t try to kill you.”
“If the driver was armed, he never fired. He might have been ordered to just get me out of the picture for a while. Long enough for the case to proceed without me.”
There was a long pause. One he read as surely as if the other man had spoken. “You don’t agree.”
“I might, had it not been for uncovering this earlier today.” Paulie reached into his wool jacket. Since he’d come from a “friendly” game of cards, he wasn’t clad in a suit, so he was sans tie, which was usually adorned with some sort of gambling scene. Instead he wore a hideous sweater in eye-popping green and red argyle. Each diamond in the fabric showed a royal flush.
Unfolding the papers his friend handed him, Adam frowned down at them, immediately irritated. He hated dealing with techy details. That’s why he had men like Samuels working for him. But he was able to get the gist of the information on the first page. “You discovered who paid the shooter in Philadelphia?”
“Not exactly. But I was able to do a backward trace of the payments through a front of false overseas accounts to one that rang a bell. It’s there on the second sheet.”
But Adam had already found it. And the info had the recently healed bullet wounds in his chest throbbing anew. “I’ll be damned.”
“Most likely, but beside the point. Payment for your shooter came from one of the accounts I tracked the ransom money through last winter for the Mulder kidnapping.”
Adam didn’t need the reminder. In January he and a couple investigators from his agency had been called to find an eleven-year-old girl snatched from her father’s estate in Colorado. They’d found and killed Vincent Dodge, the man who’d abducted her. But whoever had hired Dodge had managed to clear three million of the ten he’d demanded in ransom. Paulie had diverted the rest and devoted a great deal of time and energy to following the three million as it skipped from bank account to bank account across the globe.
“Interesting.”
Paulie snorted, sent him a quick look. “Interesting? That’s all you’ve got to say? It’s fucking unbelievable. Not only that I was genius enough to find where the accounts intersected—and your awe and gratitude is duly noted—but this means that whoever ordered the girl’s kidnapping last January has a hard-on against you . Enough to want you dead. Damn near succeeded, too. What were there, four attempts before Jennings turned you into a human sieve in May?”
As usual the man’s frank speech relaxed something in Adam. He narrowed his good eye in concentration. “If you count blowing up
The sheriff’s deputy that had responded to the scene had looked a bit dubious at his story of a hit-and-run but had agreed to investigate the car’s description and partial plate that Adam had managed to see before taking cover.
“I know there’s a lot more to the story than the stingy details you gave the deputy.”
Feeling Samuels’s gaze on him, Adam straightened and faced him. “You could say that.” In a few terse sentences, he filled his friend in and waited for his response. He trusted this man like no one else. Which was odd, since Adam wasn’t a person to whom trust came easily. But with one decision eight years ago, he had aligned his fate with Samuels. He’d never had cause to regret it.
“Not feds then.” There was a slight frown on the shiny brow beneath Paulie’s balding dome. “Send a tail, sure that’s their style. But they wouldn’t try to kill you.”
“If the driver was armed, he never fired. He might have been ordered to just get me out of the picture for a while. Long enough for the case to proceed without me.”
There was a long pause. One he read as surely as if the other man had spoken. “You don’t agree.”
“I might, had it not been for uncovering this earlier today.” Paulie reached into his wool jacket. Since he’d come from a “friendly” game of cards, he wasn’t clad in a suit, so he was sans tie, which was usually adorned with some sort of gambling scene. Instead he wore a hideous sweater in eye-popping green and red argyle. Each diamond in the fabric showed a royal flush.
Unfolding the papers his friend handed him, Adam frowned down at them, immediately irritated. He hated dealing with techy details. That’s why he had men like Samuels working for him. But he was able to get the gist of the information on the first page. “You discovered who paid the shooter in Philadelphia?”
“Not exactly. But I was able to do a backward trace of the payments through a front of false overseas accounts to one that rang a bell. It’s there on the second sheet.”
But Adam had already found it. And the info had the recently healed bullet wounds in his chest throbbing anew. “I’ll be damned.”
“Most likely, but beside the point. Payment for your shooter came from one of the accounts I tracked the ransom money through last winter for the Mulder kidnapping.”
Adam didn’t need the reminder. In January he and a couple investigators from his agency had been called to find an eleven-year-old girl snatched from her father’s estate in Colorado. They’d found and killed Vincent Dodge, the man who’d abducted her. But whoever had hired Dodge had managed to clear three million of the ten he’d demanded in ransom. Paulie had diverted the rest and devoted a great deal of time and energy to following the three million as it skipped from bank account to bank account across the globe.
“Interesting.”
Paulie snorted, sent him a quick look. “Interesting? That’s all you’ve got to say? It’s fucking unbelievable. Not only that I was genius enough to find where the accounts intersected—and your awe and gratitude is duly noted—but this means that whoever ordered the girl’s kidnapping last January has a hard-on against you . Enough to want you dead. Damn near succeeded, too. What were there, four attempts before Jennings turned you into a human sieve in May?”
As usual the man’s frank speech relaxed something in Adam. He narrowed his good eye in concentration. “If you count blowing up
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