Sean took the folder with one gnarled hand and opened it, reading the information. “Let him.” Anger glittered in his eyes.
“Okay,” Nari murmured. “But right now he has your daughter, and we want to help her. Please, trust us. What’s in the journal?”
Sean shut the file folder and set it down on the desk, flattening his hand over it. He was quiet for a moment, obviously working things out in his head. Finally, he spoke. “When I got out, I had to take leverage with me. Otherwise they would’ve hunted me down, friends or not.”
Raider breathed out, not wanting to spook the guy. Was he finally going to spill?
Sean sighed. “In the journal, I have records of transactions with certain officials, some high up by now, as well as carefully detailed records of crimes that don’t have statutes of limitations.”
In other words, homicides. Raider kept his gaze stoic. “Just records? Why is Eddie so consumed by this?”
Sean smiled. “Well, the journal isn’t all. I have recordings, pictures, and even a couple of documents.”
Raider mulled over the facts. “Why come after you now? I mean, Brigid or your wife could’ve been used for leverage at any point through the years. I understand that Patrick Coonan is dead, and Eddie has taken over, but that information has been safely in your hands for decades.”
“Pat was my friend,” Sean said simply. “The leverage gave me freedom and him a way to save face and let me out of the organization. We were brothers, although we’d gone down different paths. He knew I wouldn’t betray him, and I knew he didn’t want me dead.” He focused on the pretty shrink. “It probably doesn’t make sense to you, especially since we bonded in crime, but there was still loyalty between us.”
It did make sense to Raider. Loyalty mattered. Period. “Eddie shares no such loyalty.”
“Nah. Eddie has always been over-the-top paranoid, and having information like that out there probably keeps him up at night,” Sean admitted. “Plus, I’m getting up there in years, and he’s probably afraid of what will happen to the information if I pass on. Jackass doesn’t realize I have a good forty years in me yet.”
Reaching a hundred years old wasn’t impossible. “Where’s the journal and box of evidence?” Raider asked, trying to profile the man. Where in the world would he hide something like that for decades?
“Buried in a cemetery right outside of Boston,” Sean admitted. “I didn’t have a backup plan in case Pat Coonan took me out, because I knew he wouldn’t. So I secured the box and forgot about it to live my new life.”
Was the evidence even safe? Sitting in the ground for decades didn’t sound like an ideal situation. “You know that whatever we find will implicate you as well,” Raider warned. Not that he cared. Brigid’s safety took precedence over everything else.
Sean shrugged. “Good luck.”
Smart, wasn’t he? Well, the guy had walked away in one piece from the mob. “I need that journal,” Raider said.
Sean scoffed. “You going to just walk in the front door with it?”
Raider glanced at Nari and then back. Sean was holding something back. He could feel it. But he’d have to figure out what later. “No. I’m going in without it first.” He jerked his head at Wolfe. “We can’t leave Brigid in there by herself any longer. We’ll have Force get the information, but we have to go right now.”
Sean shook his head. “You go in there without something to trade, and you’ll be dead in less than a minute.”
Raider breathed out. It was a chance he’d have to take.
* * *
Brigid had unraveled Eddie’s passwords in about ten minutes and delved deep into his home accounts, making mental notes of anybody he emailed often. There was no evidence of crime on the computer or in the emails, but she found a trail to a series of computers she pinged to a bar on the outskirts of Boston. There was a computer system there, but she couldn’t get into it. The server must be local and it was protected well. She memorized the address.
She caught sight of another protected file and went to work, using an encryption code she’d created. She found numbers and dates and other numbers. What were those? Latitude and longitude? She memorized the page, trying to make sense of it. Some of the material was a code, and she ran through several she knew, finally unraveling a series of places: Thailand, India, and Haiti. She memorized the entire sheet.
Then she scrolled through his email. Nothing. What about another account? Humming, she ran another algorithm and found a secret account where Eddie was named Bulldog. It kind of fit. The recipient was called Lion. Interesting. Dogs and cats didn’t usually get along. Her blood quickened as she caught a scent. She traced it, following it, and found Lion on another site. Then another, and finally, a name. “Scot Tyson,” she murmured. How did she know that name?
Then a sound echoed down the hall and she quickly exited the computer and rushed to sit, settling the blanket over her legs.
The door opened, and Eddie Coonan walked in, knife in hand.
She jumped over the side of the chair and edged around it, her mind spinning. She’d taken some defense classes at the HDD, but securing a knife from an experienced killer was out of her skill set. “Get away from me.”
He walked inside, his clothes somehow still perfectly pressed. “I’ll only take a pinkie or an earlobe. It’s your choice.”
Her stomach lurched. She eyed the door, but the outline of a man with a gun proved Eddie’s claim that guards patrolled the property. She needed her pinkies to work hack, and she liked her earlobes.
Eddie moved forward. “Don’t fight me, and it’ll go a lot easier.”
