Tightrope (Burning Cove #3)(55)

Luther shrugged. “He’s right.”

“Hold on here,” Amalie said. “How do you know anything at all about Smith’s motives? Matthias said that the only man who knew his identity was his superior, and that man is dead.”

“Brackens was shot at his desk,” Luther said. “The authorities called it a heart attack.”

“Of course,” Raina said dryly.

“That was the official story, but no one in the intelligence world believed it,” Luther said. “My department was called in to investigate. There is no doubt in my mind but that Smith murdered his spymaster.”

“Your department investigated?” Amalie asked. “Would that be Failure Analysis?”

“No,” Luther said. “I founded Failure Analysis a few years ago. But during the war and for a few years afterward I worked for and eventually became the director of a small government intelligence agency known as the Accounting Department. We conducted internal investigations for other spy agencies. When you’ve got a problem within a clandestine agency, you can’t just pick up the phone and call the police or even the FBI. A proper investigation would run the risk of revealing too many secrets. The Accounting Department was established to handle those sorts of sensitive investigations.”

“What made you so sure that Smith murdered his superior?” Amalie asked.

“Aside from the body, you mean?” Luther gave her a sharklike smile. “The first clue was that a lot of top secret files disappeared on the night Brackens was shot. I’m very sure that Smith took them and used the information to establish himself in his new career.”

“I see,” Amalie said.

“Not long after Brackens’s death, the Accounting Department picked up the first hints of a dealer who specialized in the buying and selling of weapons and ammunition,” Luther said. “The operation had Smith’s fingerprints all over it. The department chased him for a few years but he was like smoke. He disappeared just as we got close. Still, I think we would have nailed him if we’d had a little more time.”

“Why did you run out of time?” Amalie asked.

“My entire team and I were replaced.”

Raina gave him a considering look. “They fired you? Just like Smith?”

“And like a lot of other people,” Luther said. He swallowed some of his martini and lowered the glass. “I did not, however, murder my superior on the way out the door.”

Matthias smiled. “Instead, you founded Failure Analysis, Incorporated. These days you force the government to pay your outrageous fees whenever they want your services.”

Amalie looked at Luther. “What about the mob connections?”

Luther’s eyes gleamed with dark humor. “Those connections provide me and my firm with an excellent cover, Miss Vaughn.”

Amalie looked a little disconcerted by that news.

“So, the rumors are true?” she asked.

“Yes,” Luther said. “That is, of course, why the cover works so well.”

“I see.” Amalie took a few beats to deal with that information. Then her gaze sharpened with curiosity. “Do you think it was a coincidence that you and the members of your team were let go just as you were getting close to Smith?”

Luther’s brows rose in surprise. Then he chuckled.

“You were right, Matthias,” he said. “Miss Vaughn is a very impressive lady. I like the way she thinks.”

“I did warn you,” Matthias said.

Luther turned back to Amalie. “Let’s just say that I share Matthias’s theory when it comes to the subject of coincidences.”

“There aren’t any,” Amalie said.

Raina looked at Amalie. “Speaking of coincidences, don’t you think it’s a little odd that a few months after someone tried to murder you, someone broke into the Hidden Beach Inn shortly after your name and location showed up in the newspapers?”

Matthias felt Amalie go very still beside him.

“It gives me chills, if you want to know the truth,” Amalie said. “I told Matthias that on the night I was attacked and nearly killed, I could have sworn that there was someone else around, someone who wanted to watch me die.”

Raina was intrigued. “Do you think the killer might have had a partner?”

Matthias paused his drink halfway to his mouth. There was an unusual intensity about Raina now. She was not merely curious, he decided. There was something else going on here. Whatever it was, it was personal.

He glanced at Luther and saw that he was watching Raina very closely, too.

“The police were convinced that the killer acted alone,” Amalie continued. “But then, they were not sure I was telling the truth.”

“I am aware that there were rumors of a lovers’ triangle,” Raina said without inflection.

“I’m lucky that I wasn’t arrested for the murder of Marcus Harding,” Amalie said. “But as for the break-in at the Hidden Beach the other night, it seems more likely that it was connected to the Pickwell incident, not to what happened in Abbotsville.”

Raina turned to Matthias. “What do you think?”

“My first assumption was that the break-in had to be connected to the disappearance of the cipher machine,” Matthias said. “But after Amalie told me that she believed Harding might have had a partner, I’m no longer sure.”