Deadly Little Secrets Page 0,65
county, he’ll know what to do. Yes, I know.” He answered the woman’s question about making a statement, being available. “You can send someone here.” He rattled off the address of the estate.
Meanwhile, Ana had Pretzky on the phone. “We’ve got another incident. Shots fired, my address.”
“What’s the situation? Report, Agent.”
Ana laid it out. Pretzky snapped orders for her to come in, but Ana cut her off. “Bromley’s driver is taking us to Mr. Gianikopolis’s estate. Locals are meeting us there, since there was an incident at the estate last night as well.”
“Incident? What incident?” When Ana laid it out, Pretzky demanded the address and said she would meet them there. She hung up before Ana could deter her.
“My boss is meeting us at the estate,” Ana said, rising from her crouch as they got farther away from the city. They wound into the hills and pulled up to the hyper-lit front of the estate. There was a police cruiser under the portico when they pulled up.
“Good, Bax is here. We’ll talk it through.”
Alexia, Gates’s ultra-perky assistant, led them to a cozy living room. A fire burned in the fireplace where Dav and a detective waited for them.
“Hey Baxter,” Gates called, his tone weary. “We’ve got another one for you.”
The detective gave him a sharp look, then took in Ana’s appearance. His eyes narrowed, and she wondered if she had some kind of I’M A LAW ENFORCEMENT GEEK sign over her head.
“This is Agent Burton with the CIA.” Gates seemed to relish the look of shock on the detective’s face, but Detective Baxter masked it quickly and shook Ana’s extended hand. “We’ve been working together on another matter, and she was with me tonight when we were fired on. I was just getting ready to drop her off.” He gave the address. “We called City dispatch, but I gave them your name. If they send CSI over there, they’ll find at least one casing since the shot impacted on the bulletproof glass.”
“You think it’s related?” The detective was writing things down, and didn’t even look up as he asked the question.
“Don’t know,” Gates said, without leaving Ana’s side. “Agent Burton was targeted yesterday on her own. Could be separate. Her SA’s coming up to the house.”
“We’re going to need to step up our patrols here, while Dav’s in town this time,” Bax said, still writing. “Someone’s going to get hurt with this going on, even if it’s not Dav.”
“I agree.”
“Ana,” Dav finally spoke. “It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”
“And you, Dav,” Ana replied. “I’m sorry you had trouble as well.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “It comes and goes. However, I’m thinking that you aren’t usually one to be fired upon. This is not good. Either you are being targeted for being here, or something in your case is the reason,” he said, tucking his hands behind his back and rocking from his heels to his toes, and back.
“Special Agent Pretzky, my superior, is on the way,” Ana offered. “She tends to agree and would like us to work together on this if you have no objections. If checking these old leads gets this kind of response, it’s likely that there’s a whole heck of a lot more to this case than meets the eye.”
“We thought that at the time,” Dav replied, shooting Gates a glance. “It was prior to Gates coming to work for me, as you know, but he reviewed everything. It was agreed that something about the entire affair was skewed. We were not sure if, at the heart of it, it was about the art or not.”
“Really?” Ana was surprised. Neither of the agents she’d talked to had commented on that; they had obviously still considered it to be mainly an art-fraud case, even with the violence of the deaths. Then again, McGuire and Hines were not in total accord on that, a point that was becoming more obvious each time she talked with McGuire. “Why would you think that?”
“It was too random,” Gates interjected, pouring himself a cup of coffee from what she now presumed to be ever-ready carafes. “The way two of the dealer’s employees were killed was way over the top.” Ana watched him closely. He’d made the statement with calm detachment, but there was something in his posture, his demeanor that clued her in to his anger. He was offended by those deaths; incensed. Then again, she reflected, so was she. The details were