“Why would someone roofie my water?” Dominic asked.
“Why would someone roofie your water?”
“Don’t use that shit on me, Quentin. I’m too fucking tired and sore to deal with it right now.”
“Why were you really at that bar?”
Dominic closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “I asked Agent Kanas to find out Van’s last movements.” Not technically true, but his career could weather a lot more storms than Ava’s could. “The bar was the last place he visited, that we know of, before he died, so we checked it out.”
“You’re investigating his death.” Savage’s tone was clipped.
“Double-checking some aspects. I also found footprints outside the window to his office and suggested to Ray Aldrich at the Fredericksburg RA that he get the Evidence Response Team out there again.”
“Why’d they miss it in the first place?” Savage asked.
They shouldn’t have. “Probably because it was such an obvious suicide, and no one wanted to list it as such. I don’t know,” Dominic said tiredly.
“Why would someone target you?”
“I don’t know if they did.” The pounding in his head wasn’t making it easy to think. “I identified myself as a Federal Agent to the waitress hoping she had information about Van. And again, to break up the bar fight. That’s the only time my drink was out of my sight. Perhaps someone in the bar didn’t like Feds.”
“It seems a lot of people lately don’t like Feds,” Savage observed. He was talking about Calvin Mortimer’s murder.
Dominic grunted. Was it possible the FBI was really that unpopular? With criminals and politicians maybe. Most law-abiding citizens were glad to have the Bureau’s assistance fighting bad guys. Did seem like a hell of a string of coincidences, or incredibly bad luck, or something else entirely…
“What about Agent Kanas? Do you trust her?” asked Savage.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“She’s ambitious. She could have been the one to drug your drink and then follow you home, waiting to act as savior—assuming you survived…”
“Ava Kanas couldn’t care less about being anyone’s savior.” She was driven by the love of a good man and a determination to get to the truth. “I trust her.” Dominic tried to open his mouth to defend her further, but his tongue refused to cooperate. The nurse must have given him another dose of sedative. That pissed him off. He drifted off wondering how Ranger was and whether or not Kanas was okay. He hoped so. He really hoped so.
Chapter Ten
Lights were on inside the Mule & Pitcher. Despite the “closed” sign in the window, Ava tried the front door and was surprised to find it unlocked. All the stools were up on the tabletops, and the floor was wet after a recent mopping.
Three guys sat drinking at the bar. The manager was at the till, the machine spitting out totals. He looked up at her with an “oh, shit” expression.
“I thought that door was locked.” He raised his voice over the din the register was making and gave one of the men sitting at the bar a glare. “What can I do for you, Agent…?”
The atmosphere grew increasingly tense as Ava slid onto a bar stool. Finally, the cash register finished churning out data and silence reverberated around the room in the aftermath. “This a private party?”
“A couple of friends are keeping me company while I cash out,” the manager answered.
“Huh.” This might be the leverage she needed to get him to hand over the surveillance tapes for tonight and a week ago when Van had come here.
“What’s your name?” She turned to one of the men peering into his beer. She watched him debate whether or not to tell her the truth.
“Bo.” He had a deep voice. Nice enough face.
“You know Lanny Gardner, Bo?” she asked.
He shrugged one lean shoulder. “Lanny? Sure. He’s a regular.”
“He beat up all his girlfriends?”
Bo huffed out a laugh and shook his head, but she didn’t trust his pretty blue eyes. “I don’t know anyone who beats up women.”
“Is that a fact?” She raised one thoroughly disbelieving eyebrow. One of her mother’s boyfriends had once casually punched her in the face before holding her against a wall and sticking his hand down her pants. Fingering her as if he had the right to do whatever the hell he wanted to her body. As if he’d owned her.
She’d been thirteen.
He’d been too drunk to do anything worse. She’d waited for him to fall asleep on the couch and then held the sharpest knife they owned against his throat. Every time he’d exhaled it had bit into his flesh. It had taken him a long time to notice, to wake up. By that time blood was running down his neck in rivulets and had soaked the collar of his shirt.
She’d told him which part of his body she’d cut off in his sleep if he ever touched her again. He’d run out of the apartment, screaming that she was insane.
Afterwards she’d told her mother, and her mother had called Van. He’d arranged to have an FBI agent pay the guy a visit. Van had been watching out for Ava for a very long time.
The bar manager put an open bottle of beer on the counter in front of her with a heavy clunk. Ava eyed it warily. Everything about this felt wrong. At Feldman’s she’d been reacting to preconceived notions and pop culture fear. Here her instincts were crawling all over her nerves and screaming that she’d screwed up. She hadn’t told anyone where her next stop was going to be after she’d questioned Feldman. She hadn’t expected anyone to still be working in the bar much less for the front door to be open.
It crossed her mind that the waitress could have spiked her and Sheridan’s drinks, and that the bar fight could have simply been a distraction so Caroline wasn’t the only suspect.
Ava hadn’t finished the beer she’d left on the table. Sheridan had finished his water when she’d been over talking to Lanny Gardner.