his lawyer, but that wouldn’t last long, and Anderson was already on record. All that information Kate had shared with every law enforcement agency investigating either Mona Hill’s murder or the prison break. She wanted to make sure that the authorities knew that Sean was a victim, not a perpetrator.
All this was great news, but it still didn’t help them find Sean.
“Where is Kate?” Lucy asked.
“Houston headquarters. She slipped out early this morning—she’s calling now.” Megan answered. “Kate, you’re on speaker with me, Lucy, and Patrick.”
“I might have found Paxton.”
“Where?”
“Jack and Kane made friends with Hunt’s mistress. She shared all her financial records with them. Including recent payments. He was paid $150,000 last summer, then $150,000 three weeks ago—the day after Elise Hunt was released from juvie. Portia said that Elise took all the second payment for what she called ‘Operation Payback.’ Hunt was supposed to collect the final payment yesterday after the escape, but no money has been wired.”
“How does that help us find them?” Lucy asked.
“The money came from a shell corp. It took me and the two best people in the white-collar crime unit a couple of hours to trace it. It’s the parent company of the shell corp that paid Michael Thompson.”
“You connected Paxton to Thompson? On paper?”
“No, because I don’t have a connection between these shell corps and Paxton, but we connected one of them to Colton Thayer and found property in the corporation’s name in Montgomery, Texas.”
“That’s less than an hour away,” Lucy said.
“Rick thinks it’s actionable, we’re putting together an FBI SWAT and hostage rescue team right now. We’re not informing Houston PD. They have been riding our ass about Sheffield, and we’re not budging. Rick and I both think someone will get trigger-happy. They are looking for two escaped convicts. We know Sean’s innocent but it still looks bad right now.”
“What about the tape from the bus?” Lucy asked. Someone had shot out the cameras on the bus, but techs were working on salvaging the tapes.
“We’re working on it. I don’t want to get your hopes up, not until I know whether we have the potential to retrieve the data or not. It’s seriously damaged. I’m going to go back and take another run at Sheffield, he might know more than he’s said.”
“I need to be part of the raid,” Lucy said.
“No.”
“If Jonathan Paxton is there, I’m the only one who can talk to him. You heard Dillon last night. Jonathan thinks of me as his daughter. He framed Sean because he thinks Sean is bad for me. Everything he did, he did because of me. I don’t want anyone else to die. There’s been too much bloodshed, both the guilty and the innocent.”
“Don’t let them know I told you that they’re staging at headquarters right now and ETA to leave is twenty-two minutes.”
Patrick said, “Go, Lucy.” He looked at Megan.
“I got her,” Megan said and followed Lucy out.
* * *
It was Rick Stockton who gave the okay for Lucy to join the team. Her phone rang as soon as they started toward Montgomery.
“Kincaid,” she answered.
“It’s Stockton. Don’t make me regret this. Not only is your job on the line, but mine as well.”
She swallowed heavily. “I—I truly appreciate this.”
“I sensed you think that I believed Sean was guilty. I never did. Sean drives me crazy sometimes, but he’s one of the best men I know, and I am destroyed that he’s gone through this. I helped negotiate the pleas for Paxton and Thayer to keep them out of prison. Paxton because he would have really screwed the FBI and a multitude of cases, it would have been a fucking nightmare with all the legalities, lawsuits from families of the sex offenders, and more. And Thayer, because of Sean. He pleaded with me to find a way to give him probation or time served. I know that Sean felt guilty for infiltrating Thayer’s organization, his past friendship, everything they’d been through together—all that played into it. I shouldn’t have done it, I was wrong. I might have lost Sean’s respect and friendship, but Thayer should have gone to prison. I made a mistake.”
“No, Rick, you did the right thing. You were between a rock and a hard place with Paxton because of who he was and what he’d done … and Thayer did the wrong thing for the right reason. They both could have started fresh, done something good with their lives; instead, Paxton used Thayer to fulfill his vendetta against Sean.”