When she sat down, her own cup in hand, Agent Cody looked at her and said without preamble, “Tell us about the man.”
“I saw him here first,” she said. “I was getting ready to leave. He was just standing in the doorway of my office. I asked him if I could help him, but he left without saying anything. I followed and tried to find him, only I couldn’t. I told Adrianna about him, but she didn’t seem particularly worried. Of course, Sea Life was still open to the public then.”
“Was he dressed like a tourist?” Diego asked her.
“Yes, actually. He was wearing a guayabera and light trousers. I’ve seen dozens of tourists dressed that way—locals, too.”
“Okay, so then you went home, and when you looked outside, he was in your yard?” Diego asked.
“Yes. I guess he might have been some poor lost Alzheimer’s patient or something, but...how did he get into my yard?”
“Can you describe him?” Agent Cody asked.
“Of course. Fifty plus. Medium build, medium height. Dark eyes and dark hair. I thought he looked like the pictures you see of Spanish conquistadors—minus the helmet, of course.”
The two agents looked at one another as if startled by her description.
“Don’t even go there,” Diego said.
“How could I?” Brett said, his voice sounding deep and scratchy. “We know the man is dead. The DNA on the body parts matched. Not to mention what remained of his face.”
“What are you two talking about?” Lara asked. “You’re really frightening me.”
“Nothing. It’s just that your description sounds like the description of the man we found,” Agent Cody said.
She felt as if she’d been bathed in a bucket of ice. “You mean the man whose body parts we found?” Her voice sounded odd and stilted.
“Lots of people look like other people,” Diego said, turning to Brett. “Hey, I’m half Cuban. I can look like a conquistador. Hell, that description could match Anthony Barillo or a dozen of the men working for him.”
Agent Cody’s voice sounded thick when he spoke. “Yeah, I’ve been afraid that it might have been Barillo or one of his men, frankly.”
“That description fits half the older Hispanic men in the city,” Diego said. “There is one guy I’ve seen, though, does a lot of Barillo’s dirty work. I can’t think of his name, though. But I kid you not, that description fits hundreds of people.”
His explanation made sense, but Lara found that she barely heard him, because Brett Cody was staring at her as if he’d just discovered something important about her.
And he had.
“Washington, DC,” he said. “You were a media assistant to Congressman Walker. Your real name is Lara Mayhew.”
She stared back at him for a long moment before nodding. She supposed it had been just a matter of time before someone figured it out. The killer’s rampage and her own rescue had been national news after all. And these men were FBI.
“Yes, my last name is Mayhew,” she said. “I’ve been using my mother’s maiden name.”
“What the fu—” Diego quickly cut himself off.
Lara barely noticed him. She felt as if she’d locked eyes with Brett Cody. She couldn’t turn away. And yet the look he gave her didn’t make her want to shrink away or hide; he wasn’t looking at her with pity, anger or suspicion. He seemed to have an empathy for her that was somehow reassuring.
“You’re a survivor,” he said quietly.
“I survived—but I wouldn’t have made it without Meg and Matt.”
He nodded at that. “Few of us survive alone.”
“Agent Cody,” Lara began.
“Brett. You call him Diego. So call me Brett. I don’t really have a stick up my ass, and I’m sorry if I’ve acted as if I do. This case is kind of a personal one for me. Diego says I’m obsessed. I guess I am. I feel guilty. We haven’t released the information yet, but the body parts we found belonged to a man named Miguel Gomez. Miguel came to me for help. He’d been pressured for years and forced to help a drug cartel down here run by the Barillo family. I turned him over to the agents—all of them top-notch—who had been working the case for years. We’d thought that he died in a fire, but we were wrong. According to the witness, he showed up and may have killed his wife—before someone killed him and we found his body parts.”
“Brett...” Diego murmured.
Lara realized that Brett had just told her more than the authorities were telling anyone. She was surprised and pleased—more so than she wanted to be, in fact—to realize that he seemed to trust her implicitly.
She turned to Diego. “I was in politics for years,” she said drily. “I’m a pro at keeping my mouth shut.”