Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

At least he wouldn’t have to find his own way back.

“Neptune’s eye?” Kendra was driving back down the mountain with Lynch. After Lynch’s helicopter rescue, he spent over thirty minutes practically dictating the fire chief’s report for him. The entire team had watched him pull Williams from his car before fire consumed it completely, so there was no longer talk of arrest or handcuffs. Harley was now eagerly licking Lynch’s grimy neck from the backseat. The combination of engine smoke and dried perspiration was irresistible to him.

Lynch tried without success to push Harley away. “Neptune’s eye is exactly what he said. I’m sure of it. But I don’t know how much stock we can put in that, since he was coming in and out of consciousness at the time. It was one of the last things he said to me.” Lynch held up his phone and typed with his thumbs. “According to Google, Neptune’s Eye is the small dark spot on that planet’s atmospheric surface.” He scrolled down the search results. “It’s also an old song.”

“Hmm. Neither of those seem to be a likely hiding place for Chloe and Sloane Morgan.”

“Agreed. But I got a strong response from Williams when I mentioned the Dayton Group. He seemed surprised that I knew about it.” He added quietly, “And there were signs of torture to the body.”

That was worse than she’d thought. “Torture?” she whispered.

He nodded. “I’d say that someone wanted information very badly, but they might not have gotten what they wanted. His clothes were almost torn off his body and there was a bullet in his back as if he’d been shot while he was on the run from his pursuers. They may have been chasing him up this mountain.”

“On the run,” Kendra repeated. “It could be the same person who caused the Morgan sisters to disappear. Perhaps even the killer the FBI was searching for at the park.”

“The Morgan sisters? We don’t even know if they’re still alive,” Lynch said. “The only one who did might have been Todd Williams.” His lips tightened. “But we’ll find out. We won’t let it go on.”

“No, we won’t,” Kendra said. “So much death and cruelty. It seems to go on and on. I want it to stop.”

“It will,” Lynch said. “I promised you it would. It will just take a little while. In the meantime I want you to stay close to me. There’s every chance you could be a target.”

“So could you,” she said dryly. “I wasn’t the one who was shimmying down that cliff just now. He didn’t give you any idea what the Dayton Group is?”

“None whatsoever. But his reaction tracks with what we saw on that coffeehouse security camera video. It was obviously important to him and Chloe.”

“So what now?”

“Now… I think I need to speak to Griffin.”

“Why?”

“Williams told me to talk to him, for some reason. Griffin was working the case for the Bureau fifteen years ago.”

“But he said himself that he didn’t get very far with it.”

“Yes. Because the killings stopped shortly after the FBI took over the investigation. But I’ve been researching and talking to people, and something’s been bothering me. The killings stopped, but that doesn’t explain why more investigating wasn’t done into the murders that had already been committed.” Lynch thought for a moment. “The San Diego PD did a good job investigating those murders, and the Bureau would have had access to their files and interview transcripts. But when the FBI takes the extraordinary step of taking over a case, they almost always take a fresh look themselves. According to the research I’ve done, it doesn’t look like they did that here.”

“That could be why Chloe and Sloane worked so hard to investigate it.”

“That could be. I’d like to talk to Griffin about why it happened that way. He was there at the time.”

Kendra nodded. “Okay. Shall we go now, or do you want to shower that grime off first?”

“Actually… I think I should go see Griffin by myself.”

“What?”

“I should speak to him alone.”

She snorted. “Like hell you should.”

“It would be for the best.”

She shot him an incredulous glare. “How do you figure that?”

“I may be pushing him to discuss some things about the inner workings of the FBI. Things that could be considered extremely confidential.”

“So? If he can talk about it to you, he can talk about it to both of us.”