"PBM has a small airstrip a quarter mile from here," Noah said. He and Sean had cased out the place once Sean knew the target.

What the h.e.l.l had gone wrong? Was Sean on that plane? Was he flying the plane?

It was all Noah could do to stay here instead of following the tracks. By the time the paramedics arrived and took over, the plane was long gone.

Local police were right behind the ambulance. He ordered them to put Carol Hattori in one of their vehicles and secure the scene; then he and Suzanne followed the trail that had been left by Sean and the others.

"We should wait for SWAT," Suzanne said.

Noah didn't respond. He knew what he should do and what he had to do.

He moved forward and found, about a hundred yards from Colton's body, another sign of a fight. In the middle of it was a large yellow feather that looked like a small badminton birdie. Noah carefully picked it up by the end of the feather. There was weight to it.

"That looks like a tranquilizer dart," Suzanne said.

"It is. Do you have an evidence bag on you?"

Suzanne reached into her back pocket and opened up the bag. Noah dropped the dart in.

"You think they used that on Sean?"

"Yes." Sean had seen his friend shot. He'd obviously been half-dragged to this spot. There didn't appear to be blood, but he certainly had not cooperated. He'd found an opportunity to fight, and they tranqed him.

Why? Why did they need to kidnap Sean? Why not just kill him?

And why had they shot Colton?

Noah and Suzanne followed the tracks all the way to the small airstrip. Another body lay at the edge.

The body moved. Noah approached cautiously and identified himself. It was the guard.

Suzanne helped the guard sit up. "Are you injured? Shot?"

The guard shook his head. "Someone knocked me from behind." He put his hand to the back of his head and came away with blood.

"What happened?" Noah asked.

"I heard a fight outside, saw a woman shoot a man in black; then another man was Tasered. I called to them, and they left through the trees. I went back in to call for help, then pursued. By the time I got to the airstrip, they were loading someone unconscious onto a small plane."

"They-how many?"

"I saw two men and a woman, plus the unconscious guy. Maybe he was dead; I don't know. But I think there was also a pilot."

"Then who hit you?"

He frowned. "I guess there was someone else."

"You guess."

"Noah," Suzanne said quietly.

"Stay with him," Noah said. "I'm going to talk to SWAT." Not that they can do anything now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

Thursday

Lucy and Dorothy brought in dinner and worked together until after midnight, when Dorothy said, "The a.s.sistant director told me to make sure you left by eight. I've already disobeyed, but midnight is my witching hour. If I don't leave now, I won't be able to make it home. I'm not as young as I used to be."

Lucy smiled and yawned. She rubbed her eyes. "Sleep will help. Maybe I'll see something different in the morning."

"We already have a lot done. We've connected Skylar Jansen with Kurt LeGrand and we've found a discrepancy in his testimony that no one in the U.S. Attorney's Office or on the Avery and Block defense team caught. It's enough to have the AUSA sweating bullets that her conviction will be overturned on appeal."

"You found it," Lucy said. "I would never have seen it."

"Don't sell yourself short, Lucy." They walked out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building together. "You are diligent and focused and asked all the right questions. I have forty years on you." She stopped. "Where did you park? The garage?"

"I took the Metro."

"I'll drive you home."

"You don't have to-"

"Where do you live?"

"Georgetown."

"Hop, skip, and a jump from here. I'm not taking no for an answer."

Dorothy had an a.s.signed parking place in the garage, right next to AD Stockton. She saw Lucy looking at the sign. "It doesn't mean anything except I've been here a long, long time."

"The a.s.sistant director thinks highly of you."

"And of you," Dorothy said. As she pulled out of the garage she glanced at Lucy. "You're preoccupied. Why?"

"I'm frustrated," Lucy admitted. "I want to know what Obsidian is, and there is nothing on it anywhere."

"In my experience, which isn't all that limited, there's always something somewhere. It's just a matter of looking in the right place. If Obsidian isn't a business in the United States, it could be that he had a foreign client."

"Or," Lucy said as a thought came to her, "he had a foreign sh.e.l.l corporation set up. Can we get the tax records of the company? They had a U.S. tax ID number."

"We can-with a subpoena."

"d.a.m.n."

"The wheels of justice may turn slow, but they do turn. Tomorrow morning I'll get a subpoena."

"You can do that?"

"No, but I can make the right calls and get it done. It's all about who you know-and what names you can drop. Outside of the director himself, 'Rick Stockton' is probably one of the most powerful names that can be dropped. The AUSA will jump."

"Maybe we should ask him first."

Dorothy laughed as she pulled up in front of Sean's house. "Sweetheart, you're adorable. I'll tell Rick what I'm doing, but I'm retiring in six months. There's really not anything he can do to me if he disapproves. And I know Rick very well-he'll do it, on your recommendation."

"Why?"

"Because he trusts your judgment. And if he trusts you, so do I-otherwise I wouldn't have given up my night to help."

Lucy thanked Dorothy and went into Sean's town house.

It was strange being here in the middle of the night without Sean. Without even her brother to talk to. She petted Chip and gave him fresh food and water. Her mind was working overtime, but she felt sluggish.

She showered to wake herself up. She should sleep, but she wanted to explore more of Kurt LeGrand and Skye Jansen's connection to Avery & Block. The discrepancy in his testimony, about how he found the proof of fraud, was a small point, but it told Lucy that he was lying and forgot the lie for a moment.

She slipped on sweatpants and a white tank top from her growing waredrobe at Sean's, then loosely French-braided her hair down her back. She sat at Sean's computer and stared, willing her mind to start working again.

It was one in the morning and she didn't want to call Dorothy, but she had told Lucy she could call her with anything.

Lucy dialed her cell phone. "Dorothy?"

"I thought you might be calling."

"Are you still driving?"

"No-I live in Chevy Chase. Already home and in my pajamas."

"I took a shower and thought, what if LeGrand and Skye were responsible for either embezzling or hiding the money from Avery and Block?"

"Hmm. That would explain a lot, except, to be the devil's advocate, the FBI is really good at tracking funds. Where is the money and why didn't the FBI find a trail?"

"Did the three princ.i.p.als accused of embezzling deny taking the money? Or did they admit it?"

"Why would that matter?"

"If they admitted it, then it wouldn't be necessary to talk to them; if they denied it, then we should interview them and figure out if they were lying or maybe the money was stolen out from under them."

"Or they could have been involved in something illegal that they didn't want to admit to. If the FBI can't find the money, then it's harder to get a conviction."

"One of them committed suicide."

"Chester Block. The brothers, Greg and Brian Avery, are in prison."

"Was there a suicide note?"

"If there was, it didn't make it into the FBI files I saw. But all we have are digital files. There are thousands of pages that were part of the trial."

Lucy was on the cusp of the truth, but she was so d.a.m.n tired that her mind was working too slow.

"The FBI said there was at least six million dollars missing. Is there that much money in mortgage fraud?"

"Mortgage fraud is fairly straightforward. On the surface it's confusing, but in the end it's similar to graft and corruption. They padded their fees, received kickbacks, but the big-money program for this scam was PMI."

"White-collar isn't my strength. What is that?"

"Private mortgage insurance. When a buyer puts less than a certain percentage of money down on the house, the lender often requires PMI in case of default. The beauty of the Avery and Block scheme was that they padded the closing doc.u.ments with a five-year prepayment of PMI, when in fact that money was going directly to them and not mortgage insurance. The money was rolled into the loans. Then, the real PMI was labeled differently, because they were smart and covered their tracks. So homeowners were being defrauded, as well as banks."

"Let's a.s.sume for a minute that LeGrand and Skye took the money and hid it from the FBI. How could they do that?"

"According to the file, the money went missing from the accounts, but on paper all the money was there."

"The money they received from the PMI fraud," Lucy clarified.

"Right. Wait-" Dorothy flipped through some papers. Lucy smiled. She had brought work home with her as well. Lucy really liked this woman. "Block killed himself at the beginning of the investigation, and it was his suicide that prompted the Avery brothers to talk. They pled, said that Block was a figurehead and was distraught over being accused of the fraud. He must have confronted them and couldn't live with the dark cloud. So in guilt the Averys admitted to the fraud, but said the money should have been in the account. The FBI said the money had never been deposited in the account-no deposit history, though the internal accounting records indicate the money was there."

"This is why I'll never go into White-Collar."

Dorothy laughed. "I have a little knowledge of a lot of areas, but the FBI hired me originally because I had been an accountant. There's really only two logical possibilities. Either the Averys never deposited the money, but falsified internal records so their colleagues wouldn't find out, or they deposited the money, but someone else took it and covered their trail by erasing the deposit history."

"Is that possible?"

Dorothy thought for a moment. "Yes-very difficult, but with computers and multiple sets of books it can be done, at least well enough to fool us for a while. You know-if the case went to trial, they would have more a.n.a.lysts looking at the data. But because the Averys pled out, there might not have been as much scrutiny."

"But it is possible. It would have to be an inside job."

"Kurt LeGrand."

"And Skye Jansen. But why didn't they take the money and run?"

"Because they couldn't get to it," Dorothy said, excited.

"You know why?"

"Possibly. I need to make some calls first thing in the morning, but all evidence is with the U.S. Attorney's Office pending resolution."