Secret Investigation
Pembrook nodded and glanced at her watch. “Do it in an hour. That should give her employees plenty of time to get settled in before you march her out of there.”
Davis squeezed his hands together tighter under the table. He could feel the veins in his arms starting to throb from the pressure, but he couldn’t stop himself any more than he could prevent blurting angrily, “Director—”
That was all he got out before she spoke over him. “Davis, I think your military background will come in handy, too. I’m going to let you run lead on this.”
Shock kept him silent, but his hands loosened and the pain in his chest eased up. “Thank—”
“You’re dismissed, everyone. Let’s jump on this.” Pembrook turned toward him. “Follow me, Davis. Let’s have a chat.” Before he could reply, she was out the door.
Davis was slower getting to his feet. As he passed Kane in the doorway, the other agent offered him a raised eyebrow and a sardonic grin, but Davis didn’t care. Not about Kane’s opinion and not about whatever warnings Pembrook was about to level at him.
He was on the case. Whether it was new CEO Leila Petrov to blame or someone else, he wasn’t stopping until he brought that person down.
He glanced skyward as he stepped through the threshold of the director’s office, saying a silent goodbye to his old friend. Promising to avenge her death.
“THE SOLDIER YOU see died at the scene. Army captain Jessica Carpenter, who took the video, also died when she was shot through her bulletproof vest. The army is looking into the circumstances. Keep watching for updates on this story and more. Next up—”
Eric Ross turned off the TV and Leila Petrov had to force herself to swivel toward him. She tried to wipe the horror and disbelief she was feeling off her face, but Eric had known her since she was a lonely thirteen-year-old. He’d been her first kiss two years later. Three years after that, he’d broken her heart.
He read her now just as easily as he always had. “Maybe it’s not our armor.”
“Maybe it is.” Petrov Armor had supplied the military with millions of dollars’ worth of guns and armor in the past thirty years. Their accounts had started out slow, with her father barely showing a profit in those early years. Now, the military not only kept them in business with their big armor purchases, but those sales also allowed her to employ almost two hundred people. It was her father’s legacy. But it was now her responsibility.
The numbers said there was a good chance those soldiers had been wearing some version of Petrov Armor. But logic said they couldn’t be. Petrov Armor was serious about its testing. Any tweak, no matter how minor, was checked against every bullet and blade in its testing facility. Every single piece of armor that left its building was inspected for quality. If the armor was damaged, it went in the trash. The company could afford the waste; it couldn’t afford to screw up.
Leila breathed in and out through her nose, praying she wasn’t going to throw up. Not that she had much in her system to throw up anyway. She’d barely been eating since her dad had stood up to that mugger instead of just handing over his wallet. In a single, stupid instant, she’d lost one of the only two close family members she had left. Tears welled up and she blinked them back, not wanting Eric to see.
Maybe once he’d been her first confidant, her closest friend, and her lover, but now he was her employee. The last thing she needed was for anyone to doubt her strength as a leader.
It had been an uphill battle for a year, getting her employees to take her seriously as CEO. She thought it was working until her dad died. Then she realized just how much resentment remained that she’d succeeded him. She’d come in every day since, not taking any time off to mourn, in part because she’d known her father would have wanted her to focus on work. And in part because work was the only thing that could take her mind off her crushing loss. But it was mostly to prove to the staff that she’d earned her position. She couldn’t afford to lose her cool now, not when so much was at stake.
Leila took a deep breath and tipped her chin back. She spotted the slight smile that disappeared as quickly as it slid onto Eric’s lips, and knew it was because he recognized her battle face. Ignoring it, she said, “We need to get ahead of this. Start making phone calls. Anyone you’ve made a sale to in the army in the past year. Find out if it’s ours, so we can figure out what happened. And we’d better see if we can track down the actual shipment. If there are any other problems, I want to find them first.”
“Leila—”
“I need you to start right now, Eric. We don’t have time to waste.”
“Maybe you should call your uncle.”
Joel Petrov, her dad’s younger brother and the company’s COO, hadn’t come in yet. If somehow he’d managed to miss the news reports, she wanted to keep him in the dark as long as possible. He’d handled so much for her family, keeping the business afloat all those years ago when her mom died and her dad had been so lost in his grief he’d forgotten everything, including her. Her uncle had picked up the slack there, too, making sure she was fed and made it to school on time. Making sure she still felt loved.
Right now, she could use a break. Hopefully they’d find out those devastating deaths weren’t due to their armor. She’d worked hard to transition the company from producing both weapons and armor to solely armor. She wanted Petrov Armor to be known as a life-saving company, not a life-ending one. This incident put that at risk.
Maybe the panic Leila was feeling over the whole situation would be a thing of the past before her uncle climbed out of whatever woman’s bed he’d found himself in last night and she’d be able to tell him calmly that she’d handled it.
“We’re looking for Leila Petrov.”
The unfamiliar voice was booming, echoing through Petrov Armor’s open-concept layout, breaching the closed door of her office. Even before that door burst open and a man and woman in suits followed, looking serious as they held up FBI badges, she knew.
Petrov Armor was in serious trouble.
She stepped forward, trying not to let them see all the emotions battling inside her—the fear, the guilt, the panic. Her voice was strong and steady as she replied, “I’m Leila Petrov.”
“FBI,” the woman announced, and the steel in her voice put Leila’s to shame. “Agents Smith and Cantrell. We have some questions for you. We’d like you to come with us—”
Eric pushed his way up beside her, taking a step slightly forward. “You can’t possibly have warrants. What kind of scare-tactic BS—”
“Stop,” Leila hissed at him.
The other agent spoke over them both, his voice raised to carry to the employees behind him, their heads all peering over their cubicle walls. “We can talk here if you prefer.”
Leila grabbed her purse and shook her head. “I’ll come with you.”
“And I’ll contact our lawyer,” Eric said, his too-loud voice a stark contrast to her too-soft one.
She kept her head up, met the gazes of her employees with confident, “don’t worry” nods as she followed Agents Smith and Cantrell out of Petrov Armor.
She prayed that slow, humiliating walk wouldn’t be the beginning of the end of everything her father had worked for, of the legacy she’d promised herself she’d keep safe for him.
Chapter Two
Despite its location in a nondescript building on the outskirts of Old City, Tennessee, the Tactical Crime Division had an interview room that would be the envy of most FBI field offices. Maybe it was a result of working with a profiler who believed in setting the stage for each individual interview. That meant sometimes the room looked like a plush hotel lobby and other times it was as stark as a prison cell. It all depended what Melinda thought would work best to get the subject talking.
Today it leaned closer to prison cell, with uncomfortable, hard-backed chairs pulled up to a drab gray table. But what Davis was most cognizant of was the video camera up in the corner, ready to broadcast in real time to the rest of the team everything he was doing.
Don’t lose your cool, he reminded himself as the door opened. He could hear Smitty telling the CEO of Petrov Armor to go ahead in.
He’d read Leila Petrov’s bio. Even with her undergraduate degree in business with minors in communications and marketing followed by an MBA, thirty years old was awfully young to be the CEO of a billion-dollar company. Then again, nepotism had a way of opening doors that little else could.
He’d seen her picture, too. She was undeniably gorgeous, with shiny, dark hair and big brown eyes. But she looked more like a college student getting ready for her first job interview than a CEO. Still, he wasn’t about to underestimate her. He’d seen what that could do on too many missions overseas, when soldiers thought just because someone was a young female meant they couldn’t be strapped with a bomb.
But as she came through the door, he was unprepared for the little kick his heart gave, sending extra blood pumping to places it had no business going. Maybe it was her determined stride, the nothing-fazes-me tilt of her chin in a room that made hardened criminals buckle. He felt her reciprocal jolt of attraction as much as he saw it in the sudden sweep her gaze made over his body, the slight flush on her cheeks.
She recovered faster than he did, scowling at the setup. “If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s not going to work. I’m here voluntarily. I want to help, but I don’t appreciate being bullied.”
He debated rethinking the whole interview plan, but decided to trust Melinda. He’d never worked with a profiler before coming to TCD, but in the short time he’d been here, he’d become a believer. “If you think this is being bullied, you have no business working with the military. Take a seat.”
Instead of following the directive, she narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. Her stance shifted, as if she was considering walking right out.
Silently Davis cursed, because the truth was, she could leave whenever she wanted. But he’d picked a course and he refused to back down now. So, he crossed his own arms, lifted his eyebrows and waited.
A brief, hard smile tilted her lips up, and then she pulled one of the chairs away from the table and perched on the edge of it. Rather than looking poised to run, with her perfect posture and well-tailored black suit, she managed to look like she was in charge.
Never underestimate someone who’d made CEO by thirty, no matter the circumstances, he told himself. Then he pulled his own chair around the table and positioned it across from her. Settling into the seat, he leaned forward, reducing the space between them to almost nothing.
If he couldn’t intimidate her with this room and his job title, maybe sheer size would work. She was tall for a woman—probably five foot ten without the low heels she wore—but he still had a few inches on her. And a lot of breadth with muscles he’d earned the hard way in the rangers.
Her eyes locked on his without hesitation. They were the shade of a perfect cup of coffee, with just a hint of cream added. This close to him, he could see how smooth and clear her skin was, with deeper undertones than he’d first realized. The flush on her cheeks was still there, but now it was darker, tinged from anger. And damn it all, she smelled like citrus, probably some expensive perfume to go with the designer clothes.
Clothes that hung just a little looser than they should suggested she’d been skipping meals. Despite her appeal, he didn’t miss the heavy application of makeup underneath her eyes that couldn’t quite hide the dark circles. He didn’t miss the redness in those eyes either, as if she’d been up late crying. Most likely still grieving the father she’d lost unexpectedly three weeks ago.
“I’m Special Agent Davis Rogers. I’m sure Agents Smith and Cantrell told you what this was about—assuming you didn’t watch the news this morning.” Davis knew Smitty and JC wouldn’t have given her much in the way of details. They wanted to keep her off balance by having different agents bring her in than the one questioning her. But so far, nothing seemed to faze her much.
He didn’t want to respect that, but it was a trait that was crucial in Special Operations. He couldn’t help admiring it in a civilian CEO facing a massive investigation of her company and possible jail time.
“The soldiers who were killed in an ambush,” Leila replied. “Reporters say they were wearing armor. I’m guessing, since I’m here, that the army thinks they were wearing Petrov Armor?”
He could see the hope in her eyes, the wish that he’d correct her, say it was all a mistake or she’d just been brought in for her expertise. He actually felt bad for a nanosecond, then he remembered hearing the news about Jessica—over the television as her family had since the video had leaked before notifications could be made. “They don’t think it. They’ve confirmed it.”
She sighed heavily, then nodded. Her gaze stayed serious, no trace of panic, just sadness lurking beneath determination. “I want to see the plates.”
“Excuse me?” Was she joking? “They’re evidence in an open investigation.”
His words should have made her blanch, but instead the hardness in her gaze just intensified. “They’re not ours.”
He couldn’t stop the snort of disbelief that escaped. This was her spin?
She rushed on before he could figure out how to respond to that ridiculousness. “We have a lot of checks and balances in place. My dad joined the military when he was eighteen. He stayed in four years and watched three fellow soldiers die in a training accident. It stuck with him, made him want to do something to prevent it. He decided to dedicate himself to making better gear and weapons. The army paid for his tuition, helped him get the knowledge and skills to start Petrov Armor. It mattered to him—and it matters to me—that what we make saves lives. From the beginning, most of our gun and armor sales were to the military.”
The words out of her mouth were passionate, but Davis had been an FBI agent in white collar crime for four years before getting recruited to TCD. He’d learned quickly that one of the most valued qualities in CEOs of crooked companies was being a good liar. He’d also learned that when things got dicey, those same CEOs would throw others under the bus as fast as they could. So, he leaned back and waited for it.
Leila leaned forward, closing the gap between them again.
He hid his surprise at her boldness, trying not to breathe her subtle citrusy perfume.
“Nothing leaves our facility without being inspected. Furthermore, we don’t make changes without testing them with every kind of weapon we promise to protect against. There’s no way our products were breached by the kind of weapons the news reported were being used. So, either the bullets the insurgents were using changed or those soldiers weren’t wearing Petrov Armor.”
Since she was sticking with her story and he had no idea how long she’d hang around, Davis decided to help her out. “What about the person in charge of inspections? Or the people in charge of testing? Isn’t there a possibility that corners were cut without you realizing it?”
If she had any brains, she’d agree with him, give herself a little distance in case the whole thing blew up in her face—which he was pretty sure it was going to do.
Instead, the fury in her gaze deepened. “You really think I’m going to sell out one of my employees? No. That’s not possible. Anyone in a key role like that has been at Petrov Armor a long time. We don’t concentrate power without unannounced checks by other members of the team. It was my father’s rule long before he took the company public and the board of directors and I stand by that to this day.”
Davis felt himself frown and tried to smooth out his features. She was either a better liar than she seemed or she actually believed what she was saying.
The problem was, he believed the army. Jessica had been wearing Petrov Armor when she died. Which meant someone else was lying.
He had a bad feeling it might have been Leila Petrov’s father, longtime CEO of Petrov Armor and as of three weeks ago, dead. If Davis was right, then he’d already missed his chance to throw the bastard in jail. If he was right, there’d be no way left to truly avenge his friend’s death.
MELINDA LARSEN HAD seen some of the best liars in the country during her twelve years with the FBI. Before that, while doing her graduate thesis in psychology, she’d talked to incarcerated serial killers. They’d woven the most convincing tales she’d ever heard about their innocence with almost no body language tells that contradicted what they were saying. They’d also scared the hell out of her, with so much evil lurking beneath calm or even neighborly exteriors.
It had all been practice for her role at TCD, where she didn’t have the luxury of months-or years-long investigations, but had to make assessments almost on the spot. It was a near impossible task, but Melinda had discovered she thrived on the challenge.
It was also the best distraction she’d found in the past decade to keep her from thinking about the losses in her own life. Because no matter how much she’d thrown herself into her cases before TCD, there was always one unsolved case at the forefront of her mind. But here, that case was starting to fade into the background. She was starting to finally accept that she might never know the truth about the most important case she’d never been able to officially investigate. At TCD, she was finally starting to move on with her life.
Leila Petrov hadn’t presented much of a challenge. But Melinda still gave her standard disclaimer as she stared at Davis and Pembrook. Because no matter how good she was—and she knew she was one of the best—she wasn’t immune from mistakes. “One interview isn’t enough time to form a complete assessment.”
Jill Pembrook gave a slight smile as she nodded, half amusement and half encouragement. It was a look Melinda had come to expect in the year she’d worked for Pembrook. Davis just crossed his arms over his chest, looking pissed off in what Melinda thought of as his civvies—well-worn jeans and a dark T-shirt that emphasized the strength in his arms and chest. But she knew Davis’s anger wasn’t directed at her. It was for the high-priced lawyer who’d shown up in the middle of his interview with Leila Petrov and pulled her out of there.
“I think she’s telling the truth. She doesn’t know anything about it.”
At Melinda’s proclamation, Davis seemed to deflate. “I agree,” he said. “And let’s be honest, Petrov Armor isn’t small, but it’s not exactly a huge company. Unless it was pure sloppiness—which I doubt, given their history supplying the military—there’s something unusual going on here.”
“Cutting corners,” Melinda suggested. “Maybe these checks she thinks are in place aren’t being followed. Or she’s too distracted grieving her father to notice they messed up a big shipment. Or we could be talking about sabotage.”
Davis looked intrigued. “Cutting corners could suggest her father knew about it and was just trying to make more money from substandard, cheaper materials, and maybe less vigorous testing, too. Sloppiness would suggest one or more of her employees are taking advantage of her grief to be lazy. Or maybe they’re all grieving and distracted, too. But sabotage? Are you thinking someone inside the company or out?”
“Given what I’ve read about their process, sabotage from someone who doesn’t work there seems unlikely. So, I’d say inside. If that’s the case, it could be someone with a grudge against the military.”
“That’s unlikely too, considering what Leila said about the people in charge of anything important being there for years,” Davis cut in. “If this had been happening a long time, what are the chances the military wouldn’t have already found out?”
“I agree,” Melinda said. “So, if it’s sabotage, it’s probably someone who wanted to discredit Neal Petrov himself. But honestly, I think the most likely motive is the most obvious.”
“Greed.” Davis nodded. “They produced inferior products to save money, get a bigger profit. Well, it sure backfired. But if that’s the case, we’re back to Neal Petrov. As CEO and biggest shareholder, he’d be in the most likely position to profit. With him dead...”
“JC has been on the phone with the army while you were interviewing Ms. Petrov,” Pembrook said. “He’s confirmed that the shipment of armor the soldiers who were killed were wearing went out after Neal Petrov was killed. It’s possible he set it up before he died, but I think there could be an accomplice.”
“It makes sense,” Melinda agreed. “If there are really as many checks and balances as Leila Petrov claimed, it might be hard for one person to pull this off, even if he was the CEO. Two, on the other hand...”
Davis nodded, anticipation back on his face that told Melinda how badly he wanted to put someone behind bars for his friend’s death. The case was probably too personal for him. It could lead to mistakes. But it could also be exactly the dogged determination they needed.
“Melinda and I have been talking about sending someone inside,” Pembrook said, staring at Davis.
“Undercover?” He sounded frustrated as he said, “Well, Leila Petrov knows me, JC and Smitty, so we’re all out. Who were you thinking about sending in?”
“I think you should do it,” Melinda said, before Pembrook could respond. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about who might go undercover before Davis had come into the room.
Before the interview, Davis would have been the last person she’d have suggested. But the more she’d watched him and Leila, seen the sparks practically flying between them from both anger and attraction, the more the idea had grown.
Davis stared at her like she’d gotten into the head of one too many criminals and finally cracked. “What would I do undercover that—”
“This.” Melinda cut him off, holding up her cell phone. She’d found an advertisement for a job as an office assistant to Leila Petrov. “We lucked out.”
“How?” Davis demanded, glancing from her to Pembrook as if their boss would set her straight—or suggest Melinda get her own head checked. “Leila Petrov is never going to go along with this.”
“I think she will,” Melinda contradicted as Pembrook just watched them, her mind probably running through a million scenarios at the speed of a computer.
“And why’s that?” Davis demanded, even though he had to be dying to be the one to go in.
“Attraction,” Melinda said simply.
As she spoke, Kane Bradshaw walked past the open doorway. He didn’t pause, just lifted an eyebrow at her, looking amused.
Forcing herself to ignore him, Melinda told Davis, “There was an immediate physical attraction between you two.”
When Davis frowned, she added quickly, “It’s my job to catch these things. I’m not saying you were unprofessional. But you can play on that attraction to gain her trust.”
“She’s in charge of the company,” Davis argued. “There’s no way she’s going to go along with this.”
“I think she will.”
“Because she thinks I’m cute? Come on. This isn’t high school, Melinda.”
She couldn’t help a wry smile in return. The six-foot tall, broad-shouldered African-American agent was cute. That would probably influence Leila Petrov, whether she wanted it to or not. But it wouldn’t get Davis into the company; it would merely stop the door from being slammed in his face before he could make his case to her. “No, but we both agree she’s probably innocent. I think she wants to find the truth. You can help her get it.”
That quieted him down, but only for a minute, before he frowned and shook his head again. “Believe me, I want to be the one to find whoever’s responsible. But this seems like a crazy risk. It’s not worth it.”