She found her partner standing in front of the vanity completely naked and staring at his phone, an intent—dare she say worried—expression on his face.
“Did you miss a call?” she asked. “I never heard it ring.”
He nodded absently. “Yeah. Tanner called earlier, but he didn’t say what it was about, and his phone went to voice mail when I called him back. There’s an email from Seth Larson, too, but I haven’t read it yet. I got caught up in a text from that friend at the FBI I told you about—Tony Moretti.”
That caught her attention. “The one doing the bomb analysis? What did he say?”
“It’s a long report,” Trevor said, scrolling his finger down his phone. “But the most interesting thing is that the bomb was made with military grade C-4 and military blasting caps. Tony was able to use the chemical markers they put in the C-4 to track the explosives back to a specific lot number, most of which are from the black-ops world.”
“You mean like the CIA?”
He looked up at her. “Or the DCO.”
She frowned. “Okay, that is scary. Anything else?”
“Nothing that will make you feel any better.” He scrolled through the report some more. “There was a partial lot number on one of the blasting caps as well. It traces back to the black-ops world, too, except a friend of his at the CIA is sure they consumed all of those caps in training years ago, so Tony doesn’t think our bomber could have gotten them from the Agency.”
She considered that. “So either his friend at the CIA is lying or we’re looking at a blasting cap that might have been issued to the DCO?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
She walked over to lean around him so she could look at his phone. “Any way we can check?”
“I’ll never get anywhere near the DCO’s ammunition inventory system, not without raising a bunch of red flags,” he said. “But maybe Jake could. One of his additional jobs in the DCO used to be helping with the monthly inventories before everything went to crap and he got labeled as persona non grata thanks to his association with me.”
“Call him,” she urged. “Let’s see what he can do.”
Trevor’s brow furrowed. “I’ve been trying to keep him out of this, so he won’t get any more screwed over than necessary.”
Alina nudged his big, strong shoulder. “How about you let Jake decide that? I’m pretty sure he wants to catch John’s killer as much as anyone.”
Trevor sighed but didn’t say anything.
She nudged him again. “So are you going to call him?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Let me see what Seth has to say first, then I’ll call Jake. Why don’t you go ahead and jump in the shower? This might take me a second.”
Alina had barely stepped in the shower and gotten the water turned on before she heard Trevor curse. She opened the glass door and looked out. “What’s wrong?”
“Seth identified three people going into the main DCO building about thirty minutes before the blast. John Loughlin, his secretary, Olivia, and this guy.”
Trevor turned his phone around, showing her a photo of a guy with dark hair cut military style and blue eyes.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
He turned the phone around and stared at it, as if to assure himself he was seeing straight. “It’s Ed Vincent, my former teammate—the one who quit the DCO within days of the bombing without ever bothering to tell me. Oh, and by the way, Ed used to help with monthly ammo inventories, too.”
Alina gaped. “Wait a minute. Are you suggesting one of your former teammates provided the explosives that Shishani used to make the bomb? That Ed’s the one who brought the thing onto the complex and put it in John’s office?”
Trevor frowned. “I don’t want to believe it, but what the hell am I supposed to think? There’s no reason Ed should have been there at that time of the morning. Hell, he shouldn’t have been anywhere on the DCO complex. He was supposed to be with Jake, doing some kind of training that week. It’s one of the big reasons they didn’t go with me on that mission up in Maine.”
Alina wanted to ask what the mission up in Maine had been about but decided against it. There would be time for that later, after they dealt with this.
She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, then placed her hand on his chest. His heart pounded beneath her fingers. “You need to call Jake and get him on this. Because right now, we’re merely guessing.”
Trevor nodded, his brow still furrowed. “All right. I’ll call him now. But I can promise you, Jake isn’t going to like this. Go take your shower.”
Alina cleaned up as quickly as she could. Over the running water, she could hear her partner arguing with Jake. Apparently, Jake wasn’t happy with the idea of checking up on an ex-teammate. After Trevor told Jake why he was suspicious, the other man must have calmed down and agreed to do a little digging, because Trevor hung up.
