"No Mercy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilstrap John)

Chapter Twenty-two

The security breach while surfing through the Carlyle site had shaken Venice. She’d wasted no time getting out of the Archives and back to the safety of Fisherman’s Cove. Safely back in her office now, she held her breath as she logged into the Interstate Crime Information System for an update on the Indiana investigation. Her stomach fell. By far the most critical investigation in the country-the one that was garnering the most bulletins and alerts-was Jonathan’s triple shooting in Samson, Indiana. Since the last time she’d signed in, authorities had figured out that the incident had involved a kidnapping, but it wasn’t obvious whether they thought the shooter was a rescuer or a kidnapper.

Even more startling was the fact that Indiana investigators had tied the name Thomas Hughes to the location of the shootings. They had him identified as a twenty-two-year-old college student from Ball State University, and he was currently being sought as a “person of interest,” which Venice knew from past experience was a label that spanned everything from potential witness to primary suspect. Whatever it meant in this case, it was not good news.

Thomas Hughes’s name on the screen was highlighted as a hyperlink, which usually foretold involvement in a second or related criminal investigation. When Venice clicked it, she gasped and brought her hand to her mouth after reading only the first two sentencepossible.

With her hands trembling from the sudden shot of adrenaline, she logged out of ICIS and pulled up the link for a super-encrypted telephone site. She donned her headset as her fingers flew across the keyboard to pull up Jonathan’s secure satellite phone.

The Hummer was a ridiculous waste of natural resources, Jonathan knew, but given the specific demands of his business and his addiction to high-tech toys, it was the only vehicle that would suffice. In addition to the armored doors and windows, he’d also equipped it with the latest in communication technology. He’d even thought to include a cipher-activated vault below the center console, in which he kept a supply of cash in case of emergencies. Right now, the vault held $25,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Boxers called it the Batmobile.

The hard-lined telephone mounted on the dash was an encrypted satellite phone that allowed him to freely discuss anything with anyone who had similar technology on the other end. Predictably, Boxers called it the Batphone.

And it was ringing.

A wrong number was impossible, but Jonathan nonetheless answered it on speakerphone with a noncommittal, “Yes.”

“Digger, it’s Venice. We’ve got a problem.”

He waited for it.

“The Hugheses are a family of murderers.”

As she drove toward Muncie, Gail Bonneville wasn’t sure what she expected to glean from the scene of the quadruple murder there, but when so many people were dead, and the single name of Hughes was tied to their murders, it was a lead that needed following.

This latest twist was a stunner. What had seemed so clearly to be an altruistic act of bravery on the part of her shooter in Samson suddenly looked like something else entirely. Three people murdered in the rescue of the son of murderers. What could that possibly mean? Every one of the conclusions she’d prematurely drawn to this point was now in question.

The trill of her cell phone annoyed her. One of the good things about long drives was the time it afforded for quiet thought. The caller ID showed her it was her office, but that somehow only heightened her sense of annoyance.

“Bonneville.”

“Collier.” Jesse matched her tone exactly, making her smile. “You in the mood for entertaining news?”

“I’d prefer ‘good’ to ‘entertaining,’” she said, “but I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

“When were tracking down all that flight information a while ago, I made some good contacts,” Jesse explained. “One of them just called to tell me that the Perseus Foods jet has filed a flight plan for a return trip to Indianapolis.”