“What happened when you talked to your boss?” Landon asked quietly.
Hayes had brought up the idea of telling his supervisors about Thorn after finding the third dead thief last night. She and Landon had told him it was a mistake, that no one was going to take on Thorn, especially when he had absolutely zero evidence to back up his accusations.
Hayes had disagreed. “If Homeland Security considers this is a legitimate possibility, it has to count for something.”
“Say we do,” Ivy had said. “What is that going to get us, even if we convince your boss we’re right? No way are you going to find a judge somewhere crazy enough to sign a warrant to search Thorn’s mansion. Or maybe you’ll just drag him downtown for questioning? Either way, it will be a waste of time. There’s no evidence in his home, and he’ll have a hundred lawyers on you and the MPD before you can even ask your first question. In the end, all you’ll do is let Thorn know that you’re onto him.”
“We’ve worked too hard getting close to him to waste it on a Hail Mary,” Landon had added.
But Hayes had refused to admit they were in a no-win situation. He’d insisted that if he talked to his boss, the guy would back him up. From the look on his face now, Ivy guessed things hadn’t worked out the way he’d hoped.
“Both my division and bureau commanders looked at me like I was insane,” Hayes admitted. “They threatened to toss me out of Criminal Investigations Division if I even breathed a word about Thorn to another human being. I talked to a couple detectives in homicide I knew too. They said the same thing, that nobody in their right mind would go after Thorn without rock-solid evidence.”
No surprise there. People who made it to the upper levels of any police department were all smart enough to know their careers would end the second they went after somebody like Thorn. Hayes was lucky he’d gotten off with just a warning. He could have easily been shuffled off to patrol duty for something like this.
“What are you going to do now?” Ivy asked. Hayes was one driven cop. She doubted he was going to give up simply because his job was on the line.
The detective frowned as he watched the crime scene techs finish taking close-up pictures of Greene’s hands before the ME’s people took the body away. “What the hell can I do? If I keep talking to the suspects on my list, they’ll likely end up dead long before I solve this crime.”
Landon glanced at her. “There is another way,” he said to Hayes.
“Yeah?” Hayes said. “What’s that?”
“Trust us enough to show us your list of suspects.”
Hayes narrowed his eyes at them, immediately suspicious. “What the hell can you two do with a list of suspects that I can’t? Put them in the Federal Witness Protection Program?”
“This is the part where the trust comes in,” Landon said. “We have a plan to take down Thorn, but it’s complicated, and it starts by getting the diamond back.”
Hayes stared at them for so long that Ivy thought he was going to tell them to go to hell and storm off, but instead he sighed and reached into his leather jacket to pull out a carefully folded piece of paper.
“I put this list together a couple hours after I left Thorn’s mansion back when this all started,” he said as he handed it to Ivy. “The list isn’t scientific or based on any detailed FBI profile. It’s based purely on my knowledge of the criminals who live and work in this area and which ones I think have the ability to pull off this kind of crime. None of these names appear in my official case notes or the files at headquarters. I was worried Thorn would get his hands on them if I did.”
Ivy glanced at the list. “There aren’t many people on here.”
“There aren’t a lot of people in the area who meet my criteria for this kind of job,” Hayes said. “It requires a very unique skill set, specifically an ability to work high off the ground and a pair of brass ones that would let them go after a person like Thorn. Those two things alone disqualify about ninety-five percent of the B and E types in this town.”
Ivy glanced at the list again. Besides Rory Keefe, there were only five other names on it, and three of those names were crossed out. That left one man and one woman—Dreya Clark. Ivy listened with half an ear as Hayes gave them the rundown on the man, waiting impatiently for him to get to the woman.
“I’ve picked up Ms. Clark for questioning on at least eight different occasions, but I never came close to making anything stick,” he finally said. “Technically, she doesn’t even have a record since I’ve never been able to get a DA to file charges against her.”
“Then why is she on your list?” Landon asked.
Hayes’s mouth curved into a wry smile. “Gut instinct. Every time I’ve picked her up, it was like she knew I’d be questioning her. She also strikes me as someone who’s completely fearless and good at hiding secrets. There’s also the interesting fact that she is—or was—close friends with Rory Keefe.”
“What’s so interesting about that?” Ivy said. “If she’s a thief, wouldn’t she have a relationship with her fence?”
“Yeah, except she’s not a thief. At least not full-time. She makes high-end jewelry for people with lots and lots of money. She even comes from money and is always hobnobbing with the jet-set crowd. Maintaining a relationship with a known criminal isn’t something you would expect from someone who moves in that world.”
Unless you’re a shifter who gets bored easily and entertains yourself by stealing from the same people you sell your jewelry to, Ivy mused. She glanced at Landon and saw he was thinking the same thing. This was their thief.
“I think it would be a good idea if Ivy and I are the ones who go to talk to these two,” Landon said to Hayes. “Thorn’s men seem to be following you, not us.”
Hayes blew out a breath. “As much as I hate the idea of turning something like this over to you, I’d agree, but unfortunately, I think it might already be too late for that. Word on the street this morning is that there are criminals ratting each other out left and right for a payoff from Thorn. Sooner or later, someone is going to slip his men these two names.”
“Then we don’t go talk to them,” Ivy said. “We bring them in for their own protection. At least until we can get that diamond back. I’ll go talk to Dreya Clark. You two take the guy.”
Hayes frowned. “You can’t go off alone. I just told you that Thorn’s men might already know about Dreya Clark. They could be after her right now.”
