Kate had given her a few of the details. The men had barely made it out of Syria alive. The mission had been a covert, undercover op to rescue two Americans who had been given up for dead. If things had gone sideways, they all would have died. Instead, they’d fought their way out of hell together.
“When I returned home, I was determined to find the people responsible for what went down in Colombia. I searched everywhere and could find no evidence of the meeting ever taking place, much less find the people involved. I looked up the guy we were protecting, and it wasn’t the same man. These people used fake names, fake everything. I was at a dead end. I finally gave up looking, until one day I turned on the television and saw one of the people who was at the meeting.”
“Nora Turner?”
“Yeah. She wasn’t a US senator yet…still a state representative. The thing in Colombia would’ve happened before she even got into politics. At that time, she was CEO of a tech company.”
“Tech Now.”
“You know it?”
“Yes, it’s a huge company. From my understanding, she spring-loaded her political career through the company and her success in running it.”
“Yeah, she’s a smart businesswoman. She’s also rotten to the core.”
“What did you do when you found out who she was?”
“I made an appointment with her, told her I knew she was there in Colombia. She denied it, of course. Told me I was delusional.”
“But that wasn’t when you had to leave the FBI, was it?”
“No. That was after Meg’s death. I did back away for a while though. We were finally closing in on finding a serial killer.”
She didn’t flinch and even managed to calmly murmur, “The Dear Lucy killer—John Leland Clark.”
Odd how she could feel no emotion in using the moniker the press had given the bastard. She could even say his real name without flinching. Without revulsion or pain. She had separated herself from that ravaged, damaged person so well that she could discuss the case as if it was just that…a case.
Some would call it denial. She called it survival.
Ash blew out a long breath. “The son of a bitch had been killing for almost five years, eluding authorities at every turn. I’d been working on the case a few months and then got tapped to head it up after Kate left. We finally found Clark, took him down. I thought it was all behind us.”
“And then he escaped.”
“Yeah.”
“And you believe it was Turner who arranged his escape.”
“I don’t think it…I know it. I just can’t prove it…at least not yet.”
“How can you be sure it was Turner you saw in Colombia and not just someone who looked like her?”
“Because right before the building exploded, I picked her up and carried her out the door. She was being trampled. I got a close-up of her. And if that didn’t convince me, as I was carrying her out, I saw she had a cut on her left arm. The scar is still visible today.”
Yes, she had seen the scar. It would have been a nasty cut, but it could have been so much worse. How ironic that Turner wanted to destroy the man who’d saved her life.
“Kate was one of the few who believed me. She’s been working behind the scenes, looking for the other people who were at the meeting. Trying to find out what the meeting was about. We’re doing the same on our end. We won’t stop until we get justice for those we lost.”
“What about the men’s families? The ones who died? What explanation were they given?”
“They were told different accounts. The family of Yeager Bates, the friend who hired me for the job, was told he died in a car crash. There are records of the accident. If I didn’t know for a fact that it was all a lie, I’d believe it, too.
“But I do know what happened. I was there with him when he took his last breath.”
Though she longed to give him assurances, promises, she couldn’t. Not yet. All she could do was hold him close and hope that it brought him some comfort.
“After I recovered, I went back there…to the meeting site. There was nothing left. The building was razed. It was like it never existed. I could prove nothing.”
“Turner went to an awful lot of trouble and expense to cover everything up. Do you think she did it alone?”