Alec arrived a few minutes later. He took the cup of coffee Cordie offered and sat down at the table. “I’ve got some good news,” he said. “Charles Kendrick is on his way to Chicago. Liam reported that he boarded a plane in Sydney using the name Charles Ford and is carrying a passport with that identification.”
“And that’s good news? I’m assuming he’s coming here to kill me. Right?” Cordie asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.
“Right,” Alec agreed.
“We won’t let him get near you, Cordelia,” Aiden assured her.
“I know that.” She took a deep breath. “So what’s the plan?”
“Jack and I are going to be at the gate to welcome him to Chicago with a gift . . . handcuffs,” Alec said. “We’re taking him in as soon as he steps off the plane.”
“Shouldn’t you catch him in the act? You can’t charge him with attempted murder if he doesn’t try.”
“For the love of God,” Aiden muttered, appalled by the idea.
“No, we have enough to get what we want,” Alec said. Once again he refused to expound, and no matter how much she nagged, he wouldn’t elaborate.
Aiden could see how discouraged she was. Living day to day with the unknown was unnerving. After Alec left, he tried to cheer her up. “It won’t be long now until you can go anywhere you want.”
“That will be nice,” she said, appreciating his optimism but almost afraid to hope.
“Tonight we’ll have a good dinner and watch a movie.”
“Sorry. I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
She picked up a bagel and tore it in half. “I’ve got plans. What did I do with my orange juice?”
“You drank it. What plans? You aren’t going out. Stop messing with me.”
“I’m playing cards with Walker.”
“You couldn’t have just said that?” he demanded.
Of course she could have, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.
? ? ?
Charles Kendrick wasn’t happy to see two FBI agents waiting for him. As soon as he got over his shock, he became surly. Alec thought the man believed he could bluster and intimidate his way out of an arrest. They put him in an interrogation room and let him sweat while they went through his duffel bag. In one of the pockets, wrapped in socks, were three Testor phones. One of them already had a Sydney number programmed in. To Jack and Alec, the find was better than Christmas morning.
Liam had already gone through all the phone logs on every cell phone, home phone, and business phone owned by the Rayburn family, and there weren’t any calls to or from Chicago, which meant the number programmed into the phone they held most likely went to another burner in Sydney. The only way to find out whom it belonged to was to call.
Jack led the interrogation. He sat across from Kendrick at a metal table in a small, windowless room. Wanting Kendrick to feel closed in and trapped, Jack had handcuffed him to the table, and Alec leaned against the wall behind him, observing. Every once in a while he’d circle the room and stand behind Kendrick, all but breathing down his neck. Kendrick fidgeted in his seat. Sweat trickled down his forehead, steaming up his round Harry Potter glasses. The first words out of his mouth were expected. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Jack sat back in his chair and couldn’t have looked more easygoing. “You have a unique opportunity here, Charles. You can help yourself by giving us the name of your boss. All we want to know is who hired you to kill Cordelia Kane.”
“Are you crazy? No one hired me to kill anyone,” he blurted. “I’m just here to see the sights.”
“Oh, I misunderstood,” Jack said apologetically. “Well, now that you’ve cleared that up, you can be on your way.”
A flash of relief crossed Kendrick’s face before he recognized the sarcasm in Jack’s comment. He slumped down in his chair.
Alec moved to stand close behind him again. “It would save time if you told the truth.”
“I am telling the truth.”
“Let’s go back to this unique opportunity,” Jack suggested smoothly. “If you tell Detective Buchanan and me now, if you work with us, we’ll help you.”
“I’m not telling you squat,” he muttered. “Lawyer. Get me a lawyer.” There were beads of sweat on his forehead.
Jack acted as though he hadn’t heard his demand. “It’s a sweet deal,” he said. “But here’s the thing. There’s a time limit. Once we call the number you have programmed into the burner, we won’t need your help. The deal goes away then, and Detective Buchanan and I will do all we can to make sure you get the maximum sentence.”
“For what? You’ve got nothing.”
“Let’s start with a forged passport,” Jack said. “That alone will put you away. If you don’t cooperate with us, we’ll see that you go to prison for a very, very long time.” He pushed the chair back. “I’m going to go get you a lawyer now.”
Alec followed him to the door. He turned back and said, “You’ve got five minutes before we make the call.”
They left Kendrick to sweat—and hopefully panic—and headed to another interrogation room, where Jenkins waited. They’d had him brought up to the fourth floor so they could have another chat with him . . . or, as Alec called it, round two. The plan was to play one suspect against the other.
In the hall Jack said, “Five minutes? You gave him five minutes to decide what he wants to do? Where did that come from? We agreed to tell him he had twelve hours, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember, but five minutes sounded more dramatic. Twelve hours didn’t have the same kick.”
Jack laughed. “You’re right.”
“I want to call that number now.”
“Me, too, but we have to wait. We’re working blind here, but doesn’t it make sense that Kendrick wouldn’t call his boss an hour after landing? He wouldn’t have anything to report. So we wait a little longer, maybe five or six hours. If the boss is spooked and doesn’t answer the phone, we’re screwed, and easy becomes hard.”
“Unless Kendrick and Jenkins tell us what we want to know.”
The rest of the day Alec and Jack rotated between the two interrogation rooms, hoping to wear down one or the other of the two suspects, but neither Jenkins nor Kendrick was giving up anything. Threats of longer prison sentences for their crimes didn’t seem to faze them. As though they had rehearsed their denials, each separately insisted they were not taking orders from anyone.
Jack was the last to question Kendrick. When he walked out of the room, Alec was waiting for him. “The tech is ready.”
A minute later they stood next to a technician as he played a recording that sounded like electrical static. “Will that work?” he asked them.
“Perfect,” Jack told him.
“Kendrick’s going to cry entrapment, you know,” Alec said. “This will never fly in court.”
“That’s true,” Jack admitted. “But it might give him the motivation to open up.”
“Time to make the call,” Alec said as he picked up Kendrick’s burner phone, touched the screen, and laid the phone in the center of the desk so everyone could hear.
The men hovered over it, listening. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . the phone kept ringing. They glanced at one another. No one was answering. Six . . . seven . . . eight . . . Alec shook his head and was about to pick up the phone when suddenly there was a click. A few seconds of silence followed, as though whoever was on the other end was waiting for the caller to speak first. Finally, the silence was broken.