Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(85)
If panting like a dog in the summer sun was proper breathing, that is…
“You killed them?” Boss asked, still standing, the equivalent of a giant human exclamation point. “Why would you do that?”
“Because that’s what I was trained to do. What I was ordered to do,” the man replied, the deep, nearly overwhelming sadness that pervaded his tone had Vanessa glancing uncomfortably away from his face.
As she looked around, she noted the courtyard was still wet from the previous night’s passing thunderstorm, little puddles of glistening water standing in the small irregularities of the slate covering the ground and darkening the shingles on the roofs of the outbuildings. And the air? It still smelled damp and electric. Like perhaps another storm was rolling in. Something massive and dangerous and altogether too mysterious.
She shivered in response.
“What did you say your name was again?” Boss asked.
“Jonathan Dunn. And I was The Cleaner for The Project.”
Hearing those last two words had stars dancing in front of Vanessa’s vision.
Could it be…? After all these months, could they really be on the brink of clearing Rock’s name? Of bringing him back to life? Or was Mr. Dunn completely full of shit? Some CIA operative sent in here to mess with them?
But he knew about The Project…Then again, maybe he was The Project. Maybe this was Rwanda Don, the freakazoid they’d been looking for. Maybe this…
Uh-oh. She’d better regulate her oxygen intake, and fast. Because her head was spinning.
Leaning her elbows on her knees, she let her head drop between her shoulders and concentrated on taking deep, slow breaths.
“Please take a seat, Mr. Dunn,” Boss insisted. “It appears you’ve got a story to tell, and we’re all eager to hear it.”
And that was putting it a touch mildly.
The scuffling of Dunn’s shoes on the slate and the scrape of a metal lawn chair leg assured her the man had finally done as instructed. And then he started talking. And talking, and talking…
After five minutes of listening to him outline a story very similar to Rock’s, she figured she’d tamed her breathing and was no longer on the path to going horizontal, so she glanced up.
Dunn sat on the very edge of his seat, his forearms braced on his thighs, his hands clasped together loosely, his face still the picture of heartache and misery. According to his story, he worked in the Albany field office of the FBI, and about a decade ago he’d been assigned a case investigating an organized crime ring. Apparently, that case brought him to the attention of the local crime boss—a man like the men Rock had described, a man who ran the show but was so far removed, hidden under so many layers of cover, that evidence linking him to any overt crimes could never be solidified. As a result of Dunn’s involvement, and the subsequent arrests of quite a few of the crime boss’s family members, the man put a hit out on Dunn’s wife and daughter. Only, like everything that’d gone on before, the crime boss was savvy about it, and the deaths were never pinned on him. Which left Dunn with a broken heart and the fire of revenge burning in his belly.
Enter the CIA, The Project, Rwanda Don, and the promise for an opportunity to exact some of that revenge…
“Now I don’t know why your guy, Babineaux, was blamed for those men’s deaths,” Dunn was saying, in his thick New York accent. “For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why a simple motorcycle mechanic would get pinned for the jobs. Then a friend of mine at the FBI informed me of the real nature of the work you all do out here, and I began to wonder if maybe he’d pissed off a higher-up who was looking to eighty-six him. Then I found out the truth about that last man…” His voice broke, utter anguish in his tone.
“What about the last man?” Boss pressed.
“He was innocent.”
Bahm, bahm, bahm… She could almost hear the three-note trombone slide in her head, and she held her breath—screw the stars that started blinking in front of her vision again.
Steady, who was looking dark and deadly over at the picnic table while thoroughly cleaning his Smith and Wesson .45 caliber ACP handgun—the Knights were not above a little theatrics, and it was always good to let an unfamiliar get a glimpse of what was in store for him should he make one wrong move—asked, “How do you know he was innocent?”
Dunn reached for his hip pocket, and Vanessa caught the subtle movement of the men’s hands. The Knights’ concealed weapons were going to make some quick appearances should Dunn try to pull anything from his pocket that was bigger than a credit card.
Thankfully, all he extracted was a thumb drive.
“This contains the supposed audio file of the interrogation of Fred Billingsworth. If you listen to it, it sounds like he’s confessing to a series of heinous crimes, just like…” Dunn shook his head and stared off into the distance, his mouth thinned. “Just like the others. But this one isn’t like the others. This one’s a fake. A guy at the sound lab at Quantico confirmed that after I got suspicious as to why my kills had fallen on Babineaux’s head. I started questioning everything, had my man review all the audio files on all the targets. But the only one that’d been tampered with was Billingsworth’s. I…I don’t know why, but Rwanda Don lied to me about Fred. Gave me false proof of his guilt. And as a result…” He stopped again, taking a moment to compose himself. “As a result I killed him.”