Dreaming Death (Krewe of Hunters #32) - Heather Graham Page 0,2

was nothing she needed to worry about. She’d hired me at that point to investigate the situation. Supposedly, Anderson was a good guy; he gave a lot to philanthropies. He was a major supporter of organ-transplant research and more. Anyway, I already had him under surveillance on the day of his death. Yes, I have pictures. But I don’t have pictures of McCarron doing anything to Anderson. We did have a video that somehow magically disappeared. One of my investigators filmed McCarron going into Anderson’s office. The video was the best possible proof. To the best of my knowledge, after I turned it over, someone managed to delete it from the prosecutor’s files. Of course, the defense also said it was gone,” her dad told Adam.

“You and I both know,” Adam said, “that the prosecution has worked hard on this. Another doctor and a nurse are planning to appear as witnesses for the prosecution to swear they heard McCarron threatening Dr. Vargas. But Vargas wasn’t afraid; he dismissed McCarron’s words later, saying he was just a bunch of bluster when he didn’t get his way.”

“What I’ve dug up,” said her father, “is that it seems McCarron thinks his family didn’t get a fair shot—his brother died, in need of a kidney transplant. But he hadn’t come up on the list yet. And Vargas was the best of the best at kidney transplants. By all accounts, Vargas was a straight shooter—he always followed hospital criteria and couldn’t be bought. I think that McCarron had tried just that—to bribe both Anderson and Vargas—and when it didn’t work, well... I guess he thought that anyone could be bought. We just need a bit of physical proof. We know McCarron’s criminal activities go far beyond insider trading and money laundering. The man rules through fear. He’s managed to bribe cops, buy off witnesses, and slip through the justice system time and time again.”

Adam was silent for a few moments and then said, “You’re a danger to this man. You brought in the first proof against him, and he probably knows there is more you might have obtained.”

“I was a Marine, for God’s sake! I can protect myself—”

“No one man can protect themselves against the kind of killer that might be sent in against you,” Adam said. “Think of your wife and child.”

That was it. Her father was a capable man, but he’d also been quick to say no man was an island.

And when it came to his wife and his child, he wasn’t taking chances.

Adam made the arrangements. Agents discreetly came to the house. Then it became a tense waiting game.

Four nights after Stacey first met Adam Harrison, it happened.

She learned about it later.

Stacey and her mother had gone to stay with an aunt. Her father was at home with the agents when a man wearing a demon mask broke into her father’s home office.

The agents stopped him before he could fire at her father. Under arrest, he confessed that he’d been hired by McCarron.

Later, Adam was in the courtroom when the work David Hanson, her father, had done for the local police proved to be invaluable, as several exceptionally malicious and devious criminals were brought to trial and, in the end, brought to justice.

Stacey watched it all on TV. She saw McCarron and the man who had tried to kill her father, as well as those who went on the witness stand and cried and said McCarron was a wonderful man. Several of them were women who were somehow in love with him.

Had he paid those women to swear that he was a good man? The man who had intended to kill her father—and possibly her mother and her—had sworn under oath that McCarron had hired him to do the killing.

“Money can do powerful things!” her mother had muttered. She hadn’t gone to court, either. She’d stayed with Stacey, but she hadn’t kept her daughter from watching the trial.

Stacey saw the widows of Dr. Vargas and Mr. Anderson try to be brave but break down on the witness stand.

Dr. Henry Lawrence’s testimony might have been the saddest of all: crying on the stand, he said that not only had he lost a friend and mentor, the entire world had lost out on a great man.

McCarron was remarkable on the stand. He also broke into tears, denying all charges.

Despite his Oscar-worthy performance, he was convicted and sent down.

So, the McCarron trial was over.

But Stacey’s father didn’t think that was the end of it. She