Deadly Pasts (Agent Nora Wexler Mysteries) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Copyright

  DEADLY PASTS

  C.R. Wiley

  CHAPTER 1

  FBI FIELD OFFICE

  200 MCCARTY AVENUE

  ALBANY, NY

  Agent Nora Wexler walked into the FBI office one morning, expecting to have a normal day of work, only to discover that her name had been inexplicably removed from her door. Her computer had been taken and all of her things were placed inside a cardboard box on the otherwise bare desk. The entire room had been cleaned out overnight.

  In case that wasn’t enough, there was a note on her chair. If anyone asks, you’re having personal issues and this is your last day.

  Nora didn’t have to guess who it was from. Unable to keep herself from panicking, she went to the window and scanned the floor for the division’s Special Agent in Charge, Lance Boffman.

  Ever since coming back from Seattle, having taken down an audacious serial killer and a murdering boss just weeks ago, her reputation and the regard stemming from it were sky high with everyone except Boffman. She knew their relationship would never be more than lukewarm. He tried making playful, awkward jokes about Nora’s organic tea or her Smart Car, but there was nothing playful about this.

  She watched through her windows as he departed from his position near the coffee maker and meandered toward his office, patting backs and rubbing elbows along the way. Nora got the impression that his smile was unusually feigned, as if hiding something that pressed on his mind. He retreated out of sight and Nora had to crane her neck to see him close his door and immediately pick up the phone.

  Thank goodness for the windows lining the private offices, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to see the grim, pale expression on his face as he pressed the phone against his ear. She couldn’t tell what was going on or why she was apparently being thrown out of her job.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Travis Greer said when he answered her phone call.

  Nora kept her voice down.

  “Do you know if there’s something going on with Boffman today? Have you heard anything strange happening around the office?” she asked, glad he couldn’t see her squirming.

  “Something like what?” he asked. It was obvious he didn’t know. She heard a chuckle over the line that made her regret calling. Nora would’ve rather been talking to Travis about their blooming relationship.

  “Never mind. What time are you coming in today?” she asked, figuring she’d hold off telling him about the situation until she knew more.

  His sigh stung with disappointment.

  “I’m stuck overseeing the cleanup at this burned-down barn in Saranac Lake that had been used as a waypoint to ferry counterfeit bills from Montreal. I doubt I’ll set foot in the office all day,” he said.

  Nora slumped back into her chair. It would’ve been so much easier to get in a better frame of mind if he’d been around to laugh with and ogle. Instead she spent the next few hours wringing her hands while churning through some paperwork. Even though she hated wasting time, it seemed pointless to do anything other than confront Boffman directly.

  Her knock on the door preceded her pushing it open by about a millisecond. A pudgy, balding man with a Cindy Crawford mole by his pursed lips, Lance Boffman was still on the phone.

  “Hey Lance, sorry but I was hoping we could talk…”

  The look she got from Boffman couldn’t have been worse if the phone cord had been wrapped around his neck and suspended from the ceiling. He put up his free hand in full annoyance, effectively pushing her back out of the door from behind his desk. Considering all the times he burst in on her, interrupting her phone calls, and all the times she put the phone down and dutifully attended to him, his response left her grinding her teeth. It left her feeling surer than ever that she was on the hook for something.

  Nora tried to think of some mistake she could’ve made. What could’ve blown up in her face like this?

  At lunch she cozied up to a member of the reception staff, Charlotte, who was a bit unsociable and often ate alone down in the cafeteria. Nora liked her no-nonsense style and usually ate with her when Travis wasn’t around, which proved to be a convenient excuse to pry her for some information. She worked on a different floor and was unlikely to have seen Nora’s nearly vacant office.

  “Boyfriend gone?” Charlotte asked, smacking her lips on some potato chips.

  “We’re not exactly public about that,” Nora said.

  “There’s no need to try to kid anyone. Figuring out who’s dating who is a full-time job for most people around here,” Charlotte said.

  Nora didn’t feel it necessary to parse the current stage of her relationship. She and Travis were both in high-powered, time-consuming jobs, and they were still figuring out how they could manage that and make time for getting lost in each other’s lips. Truth be told, work seemed to always win out.

  “Hey, Boffman’s called a big meeting for later this afternoon. You didn’t happen to hear anything that would give me a leg up on what it’s about, did you?” Nora asked, trying not to tap her heel under the table.

  “Oh, is it about the explosion or breach or whatever that happened?”

  Nora perked up, nodding cautiously as she appraised the sour expression on Charlotte’s face.

  “Do you mean something blew up or there was a loss of information somewhere?” Nora asked.

  Charlotte cringed.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s about a data center, but I’m not certain.”

  Nora nodded. An explosion at a data center would’ve hit the news already. A breach, on the other hand, was something to be circumspect about, especially if no one knew who had done it. It explained why Boffman had been on the phone all day, but did it have anything to do with her?

  After lunch, all she could think about was what exactly had been leaked and who might’ve been involved. The desire to find out what had been taken from where and by whom was mounting, but she couldn’t find out more unless Boffman disclosed it to the department. A few calls to other agents didn’t get her any closer to the truth.

  It was hard not to take the prospect of a data breach personally. Nora’s place at the FBI had become a central part of her identity, and any loss could easily affect her or the cases she was working on.

  The day was coming to a close and Nora still didn’t have the slightest idea about the nature of the data breach.

  She got up to get her jacket and briefcase, reaching past the unwieldy manila folder of yet-to-be-investigated internet crimes.

  She heard the door click open and turned to see Boffman stepping into her office, his face restrained yet stern. He shut the door. Suddenly Nora’s heart was beating fast.

  “Do you know a man named Danny Paulk?”

  “Don’t remind me. What’s he gotten into now?” Nora said. The name of her ex-boyfriend brought her the kind of amusement o
ne would get from a cute puppy for chewing on a shoe. But the words barely rolled off her tongue before she put together what Boffman was getting at. Danny was a hacker who operated in a constant state of legal limbo and must’ve finally gone too far. The FBI data center.

  He seemed to be relieved.

  “Thanks for making it easy, Nora. You’re done with the FBI.”

  CHAPTER 2

  FBI FIELD OFFICE

  200 MCCARTY AVENUE

  ALBANY, NY

  Nora’s heart got caught in her throat. Her face felt flushed and her mouth opened wide enough to scare off a lion. Boffman held up a finger.

  “Careful here, Nora. Don’t make this worse than it has to be. Keep it down, and I’ll let you walk away clean. No formal investigation, official censure, or haunting record. That means walking out with no more than you can carry in your hands and not saying a word to anyone.”

  “So you can explain me away,” Nora said. She managed to keep her voice down, but it still carried plenty of malice. “I’ve already been investigated by your people, and you know exactly what I know. I didn’t feed one iota of information about anything to Danny. Nothing confidential whatsoever. You know I’ve done nothing wrong that would deserve this.”

  Boffman nodded in a way that made it clear what she was saying didn’t matter.

  “I know there’s no trace of any sensitive communications between you two, but there is something else,” he said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a printed image to show her. The image made her stomach dissolve into jelly. “About two weeks ago, this photograph was taken of you and Mr. Paulk meeting at a restaurant in Seattle. He is a leading figure in a hacking collective known as OpenSwordsed, which has just seen its threat level upgraded. Your association with him has made you persona non grata here.”

  Nora could only shake her head. Her arms felt weak and she unconsciously crossed them in front of her stomach. The angle of the picture perfectly captured her and Danny, leaving Travis out altogether, though he’d been sitting right next to her. She had tried to forget the one person who had seen the three of them that night, but the face of Seattle’s most conniving agent became as clear in her mind as the picture in front of her.

  “Meron. He did this just to get back at me for solving those cases. Don’t you see? I called Danny in for help with the search, I told him point blank that everything he did had to be legit, and we cleared it with Johnson. He was not given access to anything.”

  “But you can’t honestly say that,” Boffman said, working himself into a lather. “Even just letting him sniff around the FBI’s business could’ve put the thought into his head to go further. You opened the door for him.”

  “No, I didn’t, and you know I didn’t,” Nora said, her revulsion overflowing. Meron had tried to cripple her efforts in Seattle at every possible point, and now Boffman was trying to do the same.

  “It doesn’t make a difference. This is coming from the very top. There are so many contradicting rules that we’re all tightening our own noose as soon as we take our first step on the job. The question you need to ask yourself is whether you’d like your exit to be due to a routine quarterly review issue, or because you were aiding and abetting known criminals in one of the most audacious incidents we’ve seen since the inception of the Internet. And if you get your father involved, believe me—”

  “I won’t,” Nora said. Leaning on her father’s position as senator would make the fight that much uglier. It was breaking her heart, but there was no way out of this situation except to leave under his terms. Boffman was right. They could find a hundred reasons to dismiss anyone they wanted. And Danny had been right that calling him in could lead to her feet against the flames.

  But even if she was done with the FBI forever, wasn’t Jenny Iverson’s life worth it? One life had to weigh more than one career, even a dream one.

  Boffman straightened up and nodded. The jacket and briefcase would stay. All she needed was her tattered folder of unpunished crimes and her laptop. Having her hands full might’ve been the only thing that kept her from slapping him on the way out.

  “I’m sorry it had to turn out this way. You had promise as an agent. But we all have baggage and yours caught up to you sooner rather than later,” he said, popping the door open.

  Nora had too much pride in herself to let those be the last words she left with.

  “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. How long ago did you abandon them?”

  She steeled herself for the walk through the mostly vacated floor, unwilling to betray even an ounce of hurt, but by the time she collapsed into the driver’s seat of her car her composure had unraveled completely. Hugging the steering wheel, her first impulse was to call Danny and ask him what he’d been thinking breaking into that data center. Had he known he would do this to her?

  No, contacting Danny was out of the question because her former colleagues were probably tracking her, hoping she would get emotional and make a mistake. Instead, she deactivated her phone and tossed it in a dumpster. She wasn’t about to make it that easy for them.

  Distraught, Nora spent several hours sitting in a shopping center parking lot. Going to her place held no appeal, at least not in comparison to spilling her guts to Travis. By this time he was surely back from the field. She drove to his apartment and let the car drift into a parking spot. Even seeing his pickup truck parked a few spots away helped her feel better.

  Without a job to go to in the morning, the night suddenly seemed to have so much potential. It would be far from the best circumstances for a first intimate encounter, but she had a hunch Travis would know how to distract her from her problems.

  Nora took a deep breath, straightened herself up in the rearview mirror, then climbed out of the car and hiked the flight of steps toward the entrance to his apartment. The plain cement balcony looked over a ditch, some wire fencing, and the back of a liquor store.

  She knocked on the door, waited for a few moments, and was starting to consider letting herself in when the door swung open, only for the person standing there to be a tall woman with long brunette hair who wore an unzipped brown leather jacket over a silky green blouse and jeans. Startled, Nora stopped in her tracks.

  “Who are you?” Nora asked. The woman in the doorway smirked.

  “That’s not how this works. You were the one who knocked. How about we start with who you are?” she said, leaning against the frame and putting a hand on her hip.

  Glancing around the woman, Nora could see the lit living room beyond. The ceiling fan, stack of magazines on the coffee table, and the large nature photography on the walls all gave away that she had found the right apartment.

  “Travis?” she called past the obstruction in the doorway.

  The woman rolled her eyes and looked back into the apartment.

  “Trav, there’s somebody here. She’s not delivering pizza. Or at least she didn’t bother carrying it up.”

  Travis poked his head out of one of the adjoining rooms and entered the hallway. He wore basketball shorts and an old Army t-shirt wrapped tight over his biceps and pectorals, looking perfect to get close to.

  “Nora, what are you doing here?”

  “I came by to talk.”

  The woman in the doorway emitted an audible sigh.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  Nora took a careful look at Travis. Anything other than “girlfriend” was going to be the wrong answer, but Travis sidestepped the question altogether.

  “Just give us a minute,” he said. He came out and guided Nora toward the balcony.

  “Travis,” she said, looking over at him. He’d calmed down and even had a slight smile on. Since he didn’t have a jacket on, she got a good sense of his body heat. They stopped a few feet away from his apartment door.

  “I was just surprised. What’s going on?” he asked with carefree ease.

  “What’s going on is I showed up to your door expecting to see you, and instead you were with some strange wo
man. I’m not really the jealous type, but I think it deserves an explanation.”

  Travis nodded and glanced back at his door as he scratched his unshaven cheek.

  “Oh, that’s Vanessa, my ex,” he said, immediately putting Nora on her guard.

  “Your ex? And what is she doing here with you? I thought we were—”

  “We are,” Travis said, looking her in the eye. “It’s just that Vanessa and I were together a long time and there are still some entanglements that have to be taken care of. There’s a life we’re responsible for.”

  Nora’s jaw dropped.

  “You have a baby together?” She couldn’t have spat the words out any faster. Travis flinched.

  “No, I’m sorry. Bad choice of words. Too much FBI talk about saving lives. We have a Dalmatian that we take turns watching. Dingo is asleep on the couch.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry that this sprung up in front of you all of a sudden, but I’m telling you there’s absolutely nothing romantic going on with Vanessa. I meant everything I said to you. And besides, there are probably still tons of things in your life I haven’t found out about,” he said.

  Nora nodded carefully, letting herself put any thoughts about Vanessa aside. Having a dog was understandable. And he was right, there were still things about her that he didn’t know. Although the time would come for him to see her hand-painted, nightclub-themed Star Wars figurines, there was something more important that he was in the dark about.

  “Yeah, about that. I had to see you now because…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  “Because you wanted to see from how far away I could shoot a deer?” he suggested, grinning.

  “No. This isn’t a joke. I lost my job. I don’t work at the FBI anymore.”

  “What?” Travis’s face went slack and lost most of its color. He got it, and even that much validation triggered an outpouring of all those emotions she’d tried to hold in check.

  “Boffman told me I’m done, an off-the-record dismissal. That’s why I called you earlier to see if you knew anything. I found out from Charlotte that there was a breach at one of the data centers, and apparently Danny Paulk and his group were involved.”