The Girl Next Door (Shadow Agents 6)
Page 63
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AN FBI AGENT. What were the Feds thinking? To get involved in an EOD case like this just wasn’t protocol. Mercer should have shut them out immediately.
“Right here,” Penelope said, her perfume seeming to swirl in the air around him. She threw open the door. “Agent Noelle Evers, this is Cooper Marshall. He’s—” Penelope broke off, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “I think he’s working with Gabrielle,” she murmured, sounding confused.
“I’m her partner.” Cooper crossed the room and offered his hand to the slim redhead. He’d never seen the woman before. Her handshake was brief but solid, and he had the feeling the woman was assessing everything about him—probably because she was.
He glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see Gabrielle.
But Penelope was the only one there, and she was shutting the door.
He pulled away from Agent Evers. “Gabrielle...”
“Oh, she’ll be right in. She just stopped by the restroom.” Penelope lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Talking with Hugh got her emotional. She hated to see the old guy go. He was like a father to her.”
Her real father had left her too soon and with a fear of storms and a quest for justice that wouldn’t end.
He headed for that door. If she was upset, he wanted to be with her.
Penelope blocked his path. She smiled at him, but her gaze drifted to the FBI agent. “You’re here about the D.C. Striker, aren’t you?”
The D.C.—
“Yes,” Agent Evers said, voice smooth, “I am.”
Excitement lit Penelope’s gaze. “He’s a serial killer, isn’t he? Hugh was right about that. You’re here because that’s what the FBI does. You hunt serials.”
“It’s one of the many things we do,” Agent Evers said, still in that smooth voice that didn’t give away any emotion. “We hunt them, and we try to figure out why they do the things that they do.”
Her job was very different from his.
He didn’t try to understand the killers. He just eliminated them.
* * *
GABRIELLE SANK INTO Penelope’s chair. Her fingers were trembling as she pushed the flash drive into position.
A few clicks of the mouse, and she had that drive open.
There were two files stored there.
One was titled...EOD.
She clicked that one first.
Her gaze darted over the document that opened. It looked like it was a series of notes that Hugh had made.
Ex-military. Covert Ops. Specialize in hostage retrieval and unconventional warfare. Lockwood and McAdams...military records are sealed. Possible EOD agents.
Then Hugh had listed what appeared to be a series of locations and dates. Were those EOD missions?
A phone rang beside her, and Gabrielle jumped. She glanced up, made sure no one was watching her then she went back and clicked on that second file.
That file was labeled Striker.
She expected to find more notes within that file. Instead, she found data on—Cooper.
Military records. She had no idea how Hugh had gotten access to these files. Lane had tried and come up empty-handed.