he saw. He leaned closer, studying it. Had they been wrong all this time? “Damn! It’s a woman.”
Peyton rubbed her forehead. “I don’t understand. We haven’t talked about a woman at all. There hasn’t even been a mention. Who is she?”
“I’ll let Rocket show you,” Eagle told her. “He’s the one who worked the database.”
“Okay.” Blaze looked at the other man. “Let’s have it. Who the fuck is it?”
“That’s the kicker,” Rocket told them. He clicked some keys on his laptop then turned it around. “Have a look.”
Everyone stared at the driver’s license displayed on the screen.
Finally Blaze cleared his throat. “Diane Kendrick? Is she Owen’s sister?"
Rocket shook his head. “His wife.”
For a long moment no one said a word as the name dangled in the air.
Peyton spoke first. “His wife? No one’s even mentioned her before this. I mean, she’s barely been a blip in the background. If she’s the driver, do you think Owen knew about this and has been protecting her all this time?”
Blaze nodded. “That’s my guess. But what about Peter Kendrick, Owen’s father? Do you think he knows it’s her? That she was the one driving the car?”
Tom shook his head. “Not from what I gather. I think we’d be seeing a lot different situation if he knew.”
“You think he’d throw her under the bus?”
“Without a doubt. Word on the street is Peter Kendrick is building a long-term political campaign for his son. Having a murderer for a wife wouldn’t do him any good. They’d ditch her like yesterday’s trash and find him someone more suitable.”
“Okay.” Blaze looked at Rocket. “The car. What did you find out?”
“Tom helped with this.” Rocket grinned. “Again, it helps to know people in low places.”
“Yeah, I get it. Let’s have it.”
“Long story short, I found the last few pieces in a chop shop. How it got there is immaterial unless we need the info for leverage.”
“But if it’s his wife’s car,” Peyton said, slowly, “what’s she been driving since then?”
“We’re still working on that. But now we need a whole new game plan. We can’t use regular police channels with this because we don’t know who else is paid off.”
“But we did a job for the police commissioner,” Viper drawled. “He was very grateful. Said if we ever needed anything to ask him.”
“Agreed.” Blaze took a slow sip of his coffee. “But let’s make sure we have all our shit together before we do. “
“We can’t just go to them with what we’ve got?” Peyton’s voice was edgy. “I mean, we have the picture and the driver’s license. What else do we need?”
“We need to make sure of two things,” Blaze told her. “That there’s no way to dispute the identity in the picture for one.”
“And that we have backup proof, which we need to work on.”
Blaze clenched his fists in his lap, working on his control.
“And making Sulzberger face the music after all this time. Where the hell does he live, anyway? I thought he had that big estate in Maryland?”
“He does.” Rocket nodded. “But he also has a place in Miami where he hides out. Tom says he only bought it less than a year ago. Apparently, he’d been up here helping his good friend Peter Kendrick solve his problems.”
“Just realize,” Viper told him, “you can’t go off and shoot him, much as you’d like to. Much as we’d all like to.”
“If you really want to destroy him,” Viper put in, “let’s get everything we can together. You know there’s proof somewhere. Then send it wide to the media. He’ll be as good as dead after that.”
Everyone sat quietly while Blaze rolled it all over in his mind.
“Tom can help us with that. He’s got connections.”
“And we’ll talk to him about it,” Rocket agreed. “After we get our primary objective achieved.”
“Getting the police to open the case again?” Peyton asked. “And giving them the info on Diane Kendrick?”
“Yes.” Viper leaned forward, his face set in determined lines. “You can count on it.”
“Are you contacting the police commissioner like you said before?”
“We are.” Blaze answered her himself. “I promise you, this will get taken care of and Dane and Brianne will be avenged. That’s what we do.” He looked around the table. “Who’s contacting the commissioner? Eagle, I think it should be you, since you were the lead on the case we did for him.”
“No problem.” Eagle picked up his cell phone and stood up. “Let me go in the back and give him a call right now.