Page 95 of Dangerous Liaisons

“We don’t know yet. After Lanton left the warehouse, he went home and confronted Helen. We’ve had his house bugged for months. He accused her of using his email account to tip off Perez.” Nielson raised a brow. “She’s a cool one. She asked how he and his mistress liked their membership in Submissions.”

“Perez didn’t know the email came from Helen Lanton? And Lanton didn’t know who tipped off Perez?” Jesse looked helplessly at Cole. “She really killed him?”

He nodded. “We fished his body from the Potomac. He had a small caliber bullet hole to his head in a faked suicide. The bullet wasn’t the cause of death. Helen Lanton hit him fourteen times in the head.”

“My God,” Jesse breathed, and remembered something her mother once said, Men are violent but, let’s face it, honey, women can be downright cruel. Her stomach roiled. “I fell for it, hook, line and sinker.”

“If it’s any consolation, you are responsible for us getting him,” Nielson said.

She frowned. “You said I nearly botched it.”

“You did. And your cowboy heroics aren’t acceptable. But our timetable established a twelve to twenty-four month operation. We’re a team, Miss Evans. You are not the Lone Ranger. We work together. That way, fewer people die.”

“What about the people dying as a result of the drugs Perez ships over here?” she demanded.

Pity filled his expression. “You haven’t heard? Gilbero seized Perez’s cocoa fields.”

Jesse choked back tears. For every Perez, there were ten more waiting to take his place.

“You want the person responsible for killing Green Team?” Nielson asked.

Jesse’s vision cleared. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded.

She stood. “Wait—”

He appeared surprised.

She faced Cole. “Who are you?”

He grinned. “Cole Smith-Murphy.”

“What?”

“My mother gave me her name as well as my father’s.”

“But I found nothing in your dossiers about the name Murphy.”

“Nope,” he replied. “Smith throws ‘em off every time.”

He lifted a brow and she felt as if he’d been inside her mind the day her cell phone rang in that Newark hotel and she saw the name Cole Smith. She’d laughed when she saw his caller ID pop up. She wasn’t laughing now.

“If you’d bothered to ask…” Cole shrugged.

Jesse took a deep breath and looked at her boss. “Harris, how is he?

“Took a bullet to the shoulder. Lost some blood, but nothing serious. He’s a tough man.”

A trickle of relief loosened the knot constricting her stomach. She didn’t expect it to last.