“I can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I don’t have time. They may kill her. You just have to trust me.”
“I’m trying to save your life, Jake. Someone has hired a professional hit man to take you out. It’s not just the police out there hunting for you.”
Jake tilted his head. A hit man? It had to be the same guy from the park earlier. Who would’ve hired a hit man to kill him? Was it Steve? But why would he have done that when Jake was already in serious trouble with the police and the FBI?
“Who wants you dead, Jake?” Dani asked.
“I don’t know. But I have to go now.”
Jake wanted to tell Dani the truth. He desperately wanted help. He felt so alone in all this. But it scared him to get the FBI involved at this point. He believed he was close to the truth, and it would lead him straight to Piper. So he had to risk being shot. He turned to leave, but Dani yelled at him.
“Jake! Don’t move, or I’ll have no choice but to shoot you!”
But Jake didn’t turn back. Instead, he raced off into the woods.
Dani never pulled the trigger.
THIRTY-FOUR
Twenty minutes after letting Jake go, Dani stood in the living room of Steve Kingston’s house surrounded by a swarm of police and other emergency personnel who were all working the crime scene. Her boss, Simon, stood in front of her, arms crossed, looking more pissed off than she’d ever seen him. She’d had no choice but to admit her reluctance to take down Jake, as he’d ordered, because a security camera on the back patio had captured the entire event. Dani was still reeling from what had happened and the confusing conversation she’d had with Jake. Why wouldn’t he tell her what was going on? Who was the other guy who’d nearly shot her on the patio? So many unanswered questions were ping-ponging in her head. But the scowl currently on Simon’s face told her she was not going to get the chance to go after the answers.
“I have no choice but to suspend you, Dani,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“Jake Slater is innocent. How do you expect me to shoot a man who’d just saved my life?”
“You can’t say that for sure. How do you know the other guy shot Steve Kingston? It could’ve been Slater. Or they could’ve been working together. We don’t have that part on camera. You’ve gotten yourself too emotionally invested. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“If they were working together, why would Jake have tackled that guy?”
“I don’t know. But I have a real mess on my hands now. I can’t keep you on this case anymore. The media is already going to crucify me. Mitchell will take over from here.”
Dani wanted to argue. She was getting close. She could feel it. But she knew fighting with Simon about this right now would get her nowhere fast.
“Do what you have to do, Simon.”
“Look, just take the afternoon off, and go clear your head.”
Dani left without another word. But she had no intention of taking the afternoon off. Jake had saved her life, and she wasn’t going to leave him hanging out there on his own. Even if it jeopardized her job. Dani’s phone buzzed as she was getting into her car. It was the old FBI friend she’d reached out to earlier who had retired to the Bahamas. Jester Bannon. He was a veteran agent who had taken her under his wing her first few years in DC.
“I got him,” Jester said.
“The pilot?”
“Yep. Name’s Marcus Jett. You believe that? A pilot with the last name Jett. Anyway, I tracked him down at a beach bar while he waited for his next client’s flight.”
“What did he say?”
“Said he had no idea who his passenger from New Jersey was this morning. His paperwork listed him as Jerry Tupoli. The passenger didn’t say much and didn’t want any help with his items. So the pilot just left him alone. But he did have the client who chartered the plane on his paperwork. Wyatt, Banks, and McKenzie. I already looked it up for you. A large corporate law firm in Austin.”
A law firm? That could mean a lot of things. “Anything else?”
“Nah, that’s it. I bought the pilot a couple of beers, and he happily shared.”
“I really appreciate this, Jester. I owe you. How’s the fishing down there?”
“Glorious. You should come visit.”
“I will. Soon.”
Dani hung up and immediately started searching the law firm on her phone. She pulled up the firm’s fancy website and began scrolling through attorney profile pages. She didn’t have to look very far to find a match for the gray-haired man who had been in the airport hangar with Logan Gervais earlier. Nelson Wyatt. He was a name partner. She did an individual search for Nelson Wyatt. He was clearly a hotshot attorney. There were dozens of stories and photos of Wyatt involved with big cases for high-profile corporate clients. She doubted Wyatt had hired a professional hit man for his own personal reasons. He had to have done it for a client. So which one? And why? She wondered if she could get her hands on a client list. Unlikely. She’d have to go straight to the source and see what, if anything, she could stir up.