Page 68 of A Shot at Love
Ky nodded. “Very good, wraps, actually. I haven’t been able to figure out why my agents left the hotel with him that day. They were under strict orders to never leave the floor we’d had him sequestered on.”
“Orders they disobeyed?”
“Apparently.”
“No.”
When he didn’t respond, Bannerman turned this laptop around so Ky could see the screen. “This is the cell phone call log of your dead agent Jackson Hunter from the day of the killings.”
Ky stared down at the screen, speechless. And furious.
“How can you possibly have access to this?”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. Just accept it as a gift, no questions asked.”
“A gift?”
“Yeah. Your witness bought it at what time?”
Ky told him.
“Look at the log. An hour and half before they were killed, Hunter received a text from this number.” He pointed to the screen. “Do you recognize it?”
“No. Whose is it?”
“That, I can’t answer. It’s an untraceable number and believe me, I tried. The only thing I can tell you is when I pinged the towers connecting the call, I got bounced through a shitload of routers. The closest I can come to figuring out the origination point is somewhere in DC, New York, or Philadelphia.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything. It could be anyone who called him, from his wife to another agent at the bureau.”
“True, but it’s a mighty big coincidence your agents were barred from leaving the hotel for what? Six weeks or so? And then ninety minutes after one of them gets this text, they’re out the door and dead. Makes you wonder.”
Ky had to agree.
“Any thoughts, then, on why they left?”
Through pursed lips, Ky said, “None.”
“My guess, if you want to hear it, is someone told them it was okay to take Calafano from the hotel.”
Ky shook his head. “No one had the authority to do that. No one but me. And I certainly didn’t give permission for it. Every meal had been ordered in and eaten in the suite we had him secured in.”
“Interesting. Who knew where you were keeping Gemma after she was attacked?”
“The remaining agents on my team, my superior, and the agency director.”
“No one in justice?”
“No. Since we obviously had a leak, I figured the less people who knew her whereabouts, the better. Why?”
Bannerman typed again for a few seconds. When he was done he turned the screen back to Ky. “This number,” he said, indicating the one on the screen he was referring to, “comes up four times on the ASA assigned to the case.”
“Barly?”
“Yup. All the calls were made after you had Gemma in seclusion.”
“Do you know whose phone the calls were made from?”
Bannerman sat back and lowered his chin, his gaze targeting straight to Ky’s. He got the impression he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Yours.”
Ky’s mouth fell open.
“It’s a number personally registered to you.”
“That’s impossible.”
Bannerman nodded. “Josh felt the same way when I told him. That’s the only reason you’re still sitting here—alive.” He said it as if they were discussing what to have for lunch: calmly, without any inflection in his voice.
“If he thought for one minute you were a danger to his sister-in-law,” Bannerman continued, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation and Gemma would be with me on a flight back to New York while your body rotted in the woods.”
Ky believed him.
“So, it looks like someone’s setting you up for a fall, son.”
Chapter Twelve
Gemma stepped from the shower, wrapped a towel around her body, and swiped the steam off the wall mirror.
The image reflected back at her looked exactly the same as it had that morning. On the outside, she hadn’t changed one bit.
On the inside was a whole different story.
How in the name of all that’s holy could one kiss affect her so powerfully, change her so completely, and leave her so bamboozled that all she could think of was when could she kiss him again?
Because she really did want to kiss him again. Really. Kyros Pappandreos’s kiss had been like no other she’d ever received.
