Vendetta by Nancy Holder Read Free Book Online Page B

manpower. So he had obligations too—to keep himself together in order to help them.
    She wondered how Vincent was faring. Ten years ago, he had served his country in a war zone. Now he was serving his city—and he was just as hated and feared now as then.
    “What I mean is that you will have our full attention and we will do everything we can to bring Angelo home,” Cat said.
    “Whatever it takes?” He raised his chin as if daring her to say otherwise.
    “Of course. Within the law, of course.” It was a relief to apply her skills and training to a complex case that didn’t throw beasts in the mix, too. But that relief was tempered by the fact that she was dealing with a powerful man who believed that laws were meant to be shattered if they stood in his way.
    He smiled slowly. “Well, aren’t you a spunky lady. I like you.”
    Cat didn’t smile back. She wasn’t here to be liked. She needed him to be cooperative so she could find his son, but that was all.
    Gonzales cleared his throat. “I’ll debrief you. Mr. DeMarco is far too upset. At approximately one-ten p.m. the power went out in the DeMarco building. The backup generator system did not turn on, as it was designed to do, until one of Mr. DeMarco’s people physically went down into the basement to reset it.”
    “We’d like to talk to that person,” Tess said.
    “The next thing that failed was the backup for the security system.”
    “Wow,” Tess said.
    “You don’t need to be broadcasting that,” Mr. DeMarco snapped. “There’s still a blackout, right? I don’t need my business rivals thinking I can’t protect what’s mine. It’s been fixed. All of it. We don’t have any problems.”
    “Who’s in charge of that system?” Cat asked Gonzales.
    “We’ve already debriefed him,” Robertson insisted.
    Tess stayed cool. “Maybe he’ll remember a few new details by restating their story to a new interviewer.” Allowing other departments who were working on a case to interview key subjects was Investigation 101, no matter who you worked for. Robertson was just being a jerk.
    “All you need to do is look for Angelo,” Mr. DeMarco said. “You’re NYPD. You know the city.”
    The FBI had twelve hundred agents in New York City. They knew the lay of the land as well as the police department.
    “The more we know about
how
he was taken, the closer we get to who may have taken him, and where,” Cat said. Surely he knew this. “I respect your need for privacy, and I’m sorry you have to permit strangers into your home.”
    “Strangers who can take what they learn and use it
later
,” he said. He pointed a finger at them. “You can bet it’ll be changed up, so don’t bothering taking a lot of notes.”
    “If it’s going to be changed up,” Tess ventured, “then it won’t matter if we talk to the people who put the current system together.”
    DeMarco blinked at her. Then he actually smiled. “You’ve got moxie. Both you ladies.” He looked at Robertson. “They can talk to Bailey.”
    “Okay.”
    Cat could tell by Tess’s carefully neutral expression that she was finding this conversation just as odd as she was. DeMarco was dictating the terms of the investigation to an FBI agent. It spoke volumes about how powerful he was—and suggested that Robertson, at least, was content to let him take the lead.
    “Okay, I see that your ERU is keeping busy. What do you have so far?” Cat asked briskly. FBI might have jurisdiction, but that didn’t mean that the NYPD was somehow a lesser entity or a junior partner. If they were going to assist, they needed facts, information.
    An evidence tech approached carrying a dark-blue plastic bin. “Here’s the ransom note,” said Special Agent Gonzales, reaching inside the bin. The tech set the box down on DeMarco’s desk. Gonzales held up a clear plastic evidence bag for Tess and Cat to see. It would have been nice if they could have examined the note before it had been bagged. They had