"All right," Jason said. "I'm calling in the rest of the team, and I'll talk to Damon as soon as we're done here. We'll need to get 26 Fed involved as well. I know we've had concerns about leaks, but at this point, it's all hands on deck. Alina, I want you to coordinate with Homeland Security and the ATF. Wes, I need you and your team to figure out how Qadir got here, where he could be staying, and what identity he might use now."

  "What about the summit?" Tyler asked. "Are we recommending that they cancel?"

  "We are, but that's not our call. I'm sure there will be further discussions today." He paused. "Anything you'd like to add, Mr. Malone?"

  "Ali Qadir is a chameleon. He may not look like anything in that photo now. He can be charming, intelligent, and also completely evil. For him to be here in the US, knowing he's a hunted man, means the stakes are very high."

  "On that note, let's get to work," Jason said.

  As the meeting broke up, Kara said, "Max, Tyler, come with me."

  She led them into a break room with fluorescent lights, vending machines, a coffee maker that had seen better days, and a small table with a bowl of fruit on it. She closed the door behind them and turned to face both men.

  "Okay," she said, crossing her arms. "Before we go any further, we need to clear the air."

  "We don't have time for this," he said.

  "I agree," Tyler replied.

  "We're making time," Kara said with a stubborn glint in her eye. "Max, you first. What's your problem with Tyler?"

  "That's classified."

  "You can say something, so talk."

  "Joint operation," he said finally, "mission was compromised."

  Tyler's face darkened with anger. "You think I sold you out? My team was ambushed, and you weren't where you were supposed to be. One of my team members almost died."

  "And my team members were not that lucky. They died at Qadir's hands."

  "But you didn't. You survived because my team got there in time to save you."

  "My team," Max corrected. "And you weren't even there."

  "Because I had to be somewhere else," Tyler snapped.

  As silence fell between them, Kara said, "So, neither of you has any proof of anything? Is that what I'm hearing?"

  "It was a complicated situation," he admitted.

  "Trust is difficult to come by in that part of the world, especially with a spook," Tyler said.

  "You were doing the same work," he returned, meeting Tyler's gaze.

  Another silence stretched between them.

  "So, your teams both got hit," Kara said. "Both teams were compromised. Is it possible it was an outside setup, that the ones who benefited from your mutual suspicion were the terrorists you were hunting?"

  "It's possible," he conceded.

  Kara turned to Tyler. "What do you think?"

  "It's possible," Tyler echoed.

  "Good," Kara said. "Then, can we all get on the same side and focus on stopping Qadir? Because that's all that matters right now."

  "I can do that," Tyler said.

  "Yes," he agreed.

  "Then let's go stop a terrorist."

  "I'm going to talk to a friend of mine who is well-connected in that part of the world," Tyler said. "I'll let you know what he says."

  "Okay." Kara opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

  Max gave Tyler a thoughtful look, wondering who that friend was and why he was taking off on his own. "I'm still keeping an eye on you, Brennan."

  "Likewise," Tyler returned. "But I didn't set you up before, and I'm not setting you up now."

  "Likewise," he echoed as he left the room and headed back into the bullpen to see what Kara wanted to do next.

  Kara was happy that Max and Tyler had called a temporary truce, although she wasn't sure how long it would last. But she couldn't worry about them; the clock was ticking, and every minute counted. She'd no sooner gotten back to her desk when Wes came over, an unusual gleam in his usually unemotional gaze.

  "Got a new lead on Hartford," he said.

  She was happy to hear that since Hartford's phone had been disconnected, and he hadn't been back to his house in the last twenty-four hours. "What is it?"

  "His former mother-in-law owns a rental house on Long Island and a vacation home on the Jersey Shore."

  She thought about that. "Text me the Long Island address. I feel like Hartford would want to stay a little closer to the action." Then she turned to Max. "Let's go."

  They headed down to the garage, and she grabbed the keys for one of the team's SUVs. Max's Jeep was too well known at this point. She slid behind the wheel as Max got in next to her. After putting the address into the GPS, she shot out of the parking garage, eager to find Hartford and figure out if her theory about him was correct.

  "You were good back there," Max said, surprising her with his words.

  "In the meeting? I was just relating the facts."

  "In a way that made sense. But I was actually talking about the way you forced Tyler and me to talk to each other."

  She flung him a smile. "That was easy. I have a stubborn younger brother, who I used to babysit. And when his friends came over, there was often some sort of dispute. I found the best way to handle it was to make them talk to each other. For some reason, males of all ages seem to prefer to avoid that."

  "You're not wrong," he said. "I will say that Tyler's speedy exit to talk to an unnamed friend still raised my suspicious radar."

  "I get it. But you have a lot of meetings with unnamed people, too. I'm going to trust Tyler to be on the right side, just as I trust you. If I'm wrong, I'll deal with that when it happens. But I don't think I am."

  "You're probably not. When you made me look back in time, I have to admit my evidence for distrusting him was pretty flimsy."

  "And his for you." She paused, changing the subject. "I really hope we can pick up Hartford today. If he's not guilty, then a lot of my assumptions are wrong."

  "It seems unlikely he'd have done a disappearing act if he wasn't guilty of something."

  "I agree. But if we're wrong, we could waste a lot of time."

  "Always a risk, but I trust your instincts, Kara."

  She was touched by his words. "I hope I don't let you down."

  "You won't," he said confidently.

  She turned her attention back to the road. Only one way to find out.

  Chapter Twenty

  The house belonging to Hartford's former mother-in-law sat on twenty acres overlooking Oyster Bay, a sprawling Tudor mansion that spoke of generations of wealth and privilege. They parked at the end of the long driveway, using the landscaping to approach the house without being seen from the windows.

  "There he is," Max said quietly, pointing toward a large window at the back of the house where they could see David Hartford stuffing papers into a leather briefcase.

  "Back door," Kara whispered, spotting a service entrance partially hidden by ivy.

  Max tested the handle. Locked, but it was an old lock that yielded quickly to the lock picks Kara pulled out of her bag. They slipped inside through what appeared to be a mudroom, then moved silently through the house toward the study.

  As they reached the open door, Kara pulled her weapon, as did he. Then she moved into the room with purpose. "David Hartford, FBI. We need to talk."

  David's head jerked up in surprise. "You?" he said. "You're FBI?"

  "Yes."

  David's shoulders sagged, and he looked suddenly older than his forty-five years, his expensive suit hanging loose on his frame, as if he'd lost weight along with everything else he'd lost. She glanced at the open briefcase. There were papers and also framed photographs.

  "How did you find me?" he asked, sinking down in the chair behind the desk.

  "That doesn't matter," she said. "You need to tell me what's going on, David. Why you hired people to blow up a café and a building."

  He stared at her, then his gaze moved to the photograph in his briefcase. He picked it up, gave it a long look, then turned it around. "This is my wife, Tori, and our daughter, Ariel. It was taken at Christmas, six weeks before they died. This was the last photo taken of all three of us."

  It was a heartbreaking picture of a once-happy family. David looked young and confident, on top of the world. Tori was a stunning redhead. Ariel had the sweet beauty of an innocent six-year-old.

  "They're beautiful," she said, still keeping her weapon trained on him.

  "They were my everything. They didn't deserve to die. They didn't deserve for their last minutes to be filled with smoke and fire and terror, trapped by a system that was supposed to protect them but prevented them from escaping."

  "So you decided to punish the people responsible for their deaths. But Samantha Barkley wasn't responsible."

  "She let them walk," he said, energy returning along with his hatred. "She made plea deals to keep her rich friends out of trouble. And Cooper signed off on the building construction after taking a bribe. They weren't innocent. They were criminals. Someone had to make them pay."

  "Why now?" Max asked. "That was seven years ago."

  "Because they were happy. I saw Samantha Barkley at a charity gala with Dominic. She was laughing, flirting, and having the time of her life. I realized she probably didn't even remember my wife and daughter. Or any of the others. She'd moved on with her life. They all had. Redstone changed its company name, but it kept making smart systems. Wexler Properties built more buildings, using the renamed systems, bribing the city to look the other way while they cut corners."

  "Who's next?" she asked. "Do you blame Dominic for what happened?"

  David's gaze narrowed. "He's the one who funded Redstone in the beginning. If he hadn't given them money, maybe they wouldn't have been able to build the system that killed my family."

  "Why not go after him directly?" Max challenged.

  "I was building up to it. I wanted him to feel pain first: the loss of a loved one, the worry that danger was coming for him, the realization that he might not be as untouchable and invincible as he might think. But…" His voice trailed away. "He's going to get away."

  "Why?" Max asked. "Because your plan is falling apart?"

  "Because my plan has been taken over," he said, anger and fear burning in his eyes now. "And they don't want Dominic dead. He's too valuable to them. They don't care about my other targets. They took my money to fund their own plan, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it."

  "Who took your money? How did this start?" she asked, eager to finally get some answers.

  "After the civil case was over, I was venting to Elias about how no one paid for what happened to my wife and daughter, and he said he might be able to help me. He knew someone who could handle jobs like that."

  "How did you know Elias?" she interrupted.

  "I have a personal training session at Forge Fitness every week. Sometimes, Elias stepped in when my trainer was unavailable. And at times, I gave him some personal financial advice. Anyway, he connected me to Alex Novik, who got me onto an encrypted site where I could post a job." David paused. "I wanted people to feel what Tori and Ariel felt. It couldn't be a bullet or a blade. It had to be an explosion. And I found someone who could do that." He took another breath. "I thought about it for a long time. Didn't really decide to do it until I saw Samantha with Dominic, and her smile made me crazy. It was so unfair, so wrong."

  "Who took the job? Caleb Azrani?" Max asked.

  "I know that's his name now, but at the time, it was someone named Cal475. He said he could make bombs. And he had people to place them. But he would need me to double my offer. I didn't care what the cost was."

  "He must have loved that," Max said dryly.

  "I became a mark," David agreed. "I thought I was in charge, but I wasn't. I realized that too late. Other people were getting hurt. The explosions weren't as targeted as I wanted them to be. And I was worried that once the FBI started looking around, they could trace everything back to me. Cal assured me that wouldn't happen. I paid him more money to make sure he tied up any loose ends."

  "Was Jonas Cray one of those loose ends?" she asked. "Was he the one who placed the bomb?"

  "I found out later that he was, but that was after I heard he was dead, and I realized that Cal had hired Jonas. I had left it up to Cal to do whatever he needed to do and use whoever he needed to use to get the job done. I didn't want names or details."

  "Cal also tried to kill a woman named Whitney Holden," Kara said. "She works in the Building Department. She got James to reschedule his inspection and check out the closet where the electrical boxes were placed."

  "I don't know about that. Look, I wanted to be done after the last bomb went off. Nothing was going the way I thought, and I wanted it to end, but Cal said he wasn't done. I would have to keep paying him, or he'd turn me in. He had everything on me. He could send me to prison. Or he could kill me. I'm not sure which he had in mind. But he told me there would be more explosions, that everyone on my target list would eventually die or suffer terribly, but other people would, too, because this was bigger than both of us now."

  "Was he talking about the summit on Tuesday?" Max asked. "Where Dominic is the headliner, where the city officials will be, and some of the other investors and builders tied to Wexler and Redstone and all the others?"

  "I think so, but I'm not sure. Cal said something about not being obvious."

  "When did you last communicate with Cal?" she asked. "And did he mention who else he was working with?"

  "Yesterday. He requested another payment, even bigger than the last. He said the people in charge now needed cash, and the only way he could stop them from killing me was to pay up. I paid him last night, and then I got a motel room. I was afraid to go home. I drove out here a few hours ago. I had decided to leave the country, but I needed to get some photos to take with me and I couldn't go back to my house. I knew Amelia, Tori's mother, had some here."

  She couldn't believe he'd halted his escape plan to get a few family photos. But clearly, David Hartford had been obsessed with his wife and his child and their tragic deaths.

  "I don't like it," Max said suddenly.

  Her gaze swung to his. "What do you mean?"

  "He wasn't that hard to find. And it's too quiet." Max shook his head. "We need to get out of here. Get up," he ordered Hartford. "If you don't want to die, you better come with us, because we're the only ones who can protect you."

  Hartford stood up, grabbing the photo and holding it close to his chest as they ran through the house to the back door. They had just cleared the house and gotten into the middle of the driveway when David stopped abruptly, his face panicked. "Wait. The letters Tori wrote to Ariel when she was a baby. They're in my briefcase. I have to get them."

  "Stop," she yelled, but he was already running back to the house. "We have to get him."

  Max grabbed her arm as another heart-stopping, ear-ringing blast knocked them off their feet and onto the paved drive. The pain in her ears was even worse than before. And she could barely breathe with dust and debris falling around her. When the smoke finally cleared a little, she looked for Max, terror entering her heart once more.

  "Max," she yelled as she struggled to get to her feet.

  She didn't see him anywhere, but he had been right beside her. He had stopped her from going after David. God, David!

  She pressed her hands to her ears in a desperate attempt to stop the painful ringing and moved forward, but it was hard to see more than a foot in front of her. And then she heard him call her name.

  "Kara!"

  "Max," she yelled back, a wave of relief running through her as he came toward her. He looked into her eyes, then wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his chest. She breathed him in, feeling the safety of his embrace, but she couldn't linger there as much as she wanted to. "Are you hurt?" she asked.

  "No. You?"

  "I'm fine."

  They turned to look at the house, which was engulfed in flames. And there, by the side door, was David. He wasn't moving.

  But when she got to his side, she dropped to her knees and saw his eyes were open, flickering, his hand against his chest, his whole body shaking as a sharp, jagged piece of metal was coming out of his chest.

  "Call 911," she told Max, but he was already on his phone, calling it in. "You're going to be okay, David. Help is coming."

  "I just wanted someone to pay," he gasped. "Just the bad people, the ones who didn't care about the loss of life, who didn't know that my daughter was about to have her seventh birthday, and my wife thought she was pregnant."

  The pain and grief in his gaze were difficult to see. "I understand," she told him, even though she didn't. Because he'd tried to kill those people and had hurt others in the process. But she needed him to calm down, to hang in there. He still had the information they needed. But his breath was coming in strangled gasps.

  "Better this way," he stuttered. "Now I'll see them again."

  "David, hold on," she ordered. "Where is the next explosion going to be? Tell me so I can stop it, so you can make up for what you did."

  "Too late," he said, the last word barely getting off his tongue before his breath stopped and his eyes turned glassy and unseeing.

  He was gone, and they still didn't have the answers they needed. Someone had made sure of that.

  It was more than an hour later and a little after six o'clock when they finally drove back to the city in grim silence. After communicating what had happened to the various agencies that had shown up, including her own, Kara had driven away from the scene of yet another explosion, another blast that had rocked the world and taken a life.

  "Does this make sense?" she asked Max. "Why kill Hartford in such an explosive way?"

  "It's a good way to destroy evidence. They might have gotten lucky and killed us, too."

  "I didn't see a car. Maybe the bomb was on a timer."

  "Probably, or they would have set it off before we could get out of the house." She glanced over at him and saw him wince as he shifted positions. "Are you sure you're okay?"