If I Should Die_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [90]
THIRTY
Lucy took a few moments to compose herself before returning to the conference room. The group was adding her information to the timeline for Victoria Sheffield.
Lucy skimmed through documents related to Sheffield’s original case, completely bored by the White Collar unit’s methodical report, until she got to the bottom line and saw that the studio that had brought the case to the Feds estimated they lost over six million dollars on one movie alone.
Studio One was familiar to Lucy. Where had she seen that name before?
She had started going through her papers when her cell phone vibrated with an email message. Noah read his phone at the same time. It was from Sean.
Sheffield met with Paul Swain on December 23. I need to talk to both of you ASAP—without other Feds eavesdropping.
Lucy glanced at Noah. His jaw was clenched so tight she saw a small vein throb at the top of his throat. He stood, and said, “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.” He didn’t ask Lucy to join him, so she remained where she was.
Sheffield’s communications were rather generic, and listed from most recent to oldest. Lucy turned to the back of the packet and scanned the messages that came in prior to December 23. A full year before she disappeared, Sheffield wrote to her supervisor, Marty Strong.
I finally got a meeting with Studio One lawyers, along with G.T. from mounted police. We worked out the proprietary confidentiality agreement, I’m attaching it for approval.
Lawyers! That’s where she saw Studio One. They were a client of the law firm Jon Callahan worked for. That was Sheffield’s connection to Spruce Lake and her connection to Jon Callahan.
It didn’t explain why she switched investigations midstream from intellectual property theft to drug running, but it was a place to start.
She wanted to say something, but the computer expert was continuing his presentation about the data analysis. He felt that none of the messages supposedly sent by Sheffield after the twenty-third were actually from her. Marty Strong disagreed.
Noah stepped into the room. “Brian, Ms. Hart, may I speak with you?”
Candela and Hart followed Noah out. What was that about? There were murmurings until the trio returned less than two minutes later.
Hart said, “Tara, Marty, Dale—you stay. Everyone else, you’ll have to be excused for a few minutes.”
Lucy rose and gathered her notes. This had to do with Sean, she knew it, and he was in trouble.
Don’t panic.
If anything happened to him … her life would be empty.
“Lucy,” Noah snapped, “where are you going? Sit down.”
Lucy sat, startled by Noah’s tone, and a bit irritated. Hart said, “I was referring to my unit.”
When all but the seven of them had left, Noah said, “Sean Rogan is a principal at Rogan-Caruso-Kincaid, which is a security firm with high-level government clearance. They do quite a bit of work for different agencies, primarily Homeland Security, the DEA, and the FBI, and have several former law enforcement officers working for them, including Lucy’s brother Patrick, who was a cybercrimes cop in San Diego.” Noah turned on the speaker phone. “Sean?”
“I’m here.”
“The room is clear. There are seven of us—Lucy, myself, the SAC Elizabeth Hart, ASAC Brian Candela, and Agents Marty Strong, Tara Fields, and Dale Martinelli.”
“Your need-to-know team is quite large,” Sean said over the speaker.
Hart spoke up. “With all due respect, Mr. Rogan, I didn’t want to agree to this conversation at all, but Agent Armstrong convinced me to trust you. Please get to the point.”
“Certainly, Ms. Hart. Agent Sheffield visited Paul Swain in prison on December twenty-third. I read the report, and it said that Agent Martinelli was part of the task force, so you’re probably familiar with the Swain sting.”
“Correct,” Hart said.
Strong interjected, “Why would she meet with a known drug dealer? Victoria worked white-collar crime.”
“She went to Swain because in the course of her investigation of pirated DVDs she uncovered something bigger. Swain wasn