Page 83 of No Vow Broken

“We have to consider it, Slash,” Candace said. “You’re a valuable target.”

Bob nodded in agreement. “Or Lexi. It’s no secret you two have powerful enemies.”

I leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms and thinking. Something still wasn’t adding up. “It just doesn’t make sense,” I said. “If someone was determined to kill me, and could afford to hire an exceptionally experienced team to do it, why carry it out at a heavily guarded event with a lot of high-profile people, including the first lady? Or at a secluded church with a lackey drone pilot? There would be a million other more effective and easier ways to do it. They could have killed me in the park, but they didn’t. A drone flew right over me and had a perfect shot.”

Another thought occurred to me. “We also should consider the possibility there’s someone on the inside of our wedding party. Someone who knows our movements and is reporting that to our attacker. Someone had to know Lexi and I would be at the church this afternoon and would most likely be in the car together.”

General Norton nodded again. “The Secret Service and FBI have been working that angle since the original attack. We have an important breakthrough on that to report. Bob, you want to take it from here?”

Bob leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Since attack at Bluff House, the FBI has been investigating the internal leak hard, as that was the only angle we had to work with. As General Norton notes, we made significant progress on that front earlier today. Teams of folks began investigating everyone associated with the rehearsal dinner plans and subsequent activities. We quickly narrowed in on three possible candidates. We put resources on monitoring all three, and we got lucky late last night. One suspect reported via phone to a caller that there was going to be a group of you at the church this afternoon. We got a court order early this morning and raided his house. We detained him and collected his phone and computer. He hasn’t cooperated, but we’ve confirmed he received multiple calls from the same disposable phone numbers as Tranh and Tubbs. Not only that but our suspect has recently received bitcoin payments from the same account as the drone operators.”

“Can you share who the suspect is?” I asked.

“As this is a criminal matter and the investigation is not complete yet, this information is not for public release or discussion.”

“Understood.”

“His name is Dominic Sobol and he’s the new boyfriend of your wedding planner, Amanda McCormick.”

I sat back in my chair, taking a minute to process that. “Amanda’s boyfriend? Damn, that’s unexpected. Do you think she’s in on it?”

“We can’t rule it out, but our initial assumption is she’s not.”

My mind raced with the new information, zeroing on the most promising lead we had. “The bitcoin connection between the suspects is important. Have we pursued the money angle to try and find the owner of the source account?”

Bob glanced over at Eugene, the head of the Secret Service Cyber Fraud Task Force. “That’s why he’s here.”

Eugene dipped his head in acknowledgement. “The drone operators have authorized our use of their phones and bitcoin accounts in exchange for some leniency. The FBI and the Department of Justice have agreed to consider that going forward. We’ve been working with all their information, and that of Mr. Sobol, but we haven’t cracked the source account yet.”

I straightened in my chair. Bitcoin was trackable and identifiableifyou were good and had a lot of resources…and I was good. I looked at Candace, and she tipped her head. I wasn’t just brought here so they could question me. They had a job they wanted me to do.

“Would you like some assistance in pulling that thread?” I asked hopefully.

“We certainly would,” Eugene confirmed. “Are you on board?”

“Absolutely.”

General Norton spread his hands on the table. “Eugene is confident his team could trace the accounts with time, but since this is urgent, he asked us for some assistance, and here we are.”

“If time is of the essence, then I suggest we bring in some more big guns,” I said.

General Norton raised an eyebrow. “There are guns as big as you?”

“Lexi and the Zimmerman twins, of course. We’re a good team, and together we’re fast. Exceptionally fast. We’ve tackled this type of problem together in the past. Add to that, the last few days have us highly motivated to start being the hunters instead of the hunted.”

“Do we really need to bring in all these outsiders?” Martin, the CIA guy asked irritably. He didn’t seem happy about that possibility. “That would be highly irregular given the sensitive intelligence information that they might have to access.”

“Each of them has already participated in intelligence operations on behalf of the US government, and they all have active top-secret clearances with access to multiple code-word and SCI compartments,” I countered. “Bringing in more firepower is only going to move things along a lot faster.”

“Slash is right,” Candace said. “Time is important. We need to find out what is going on as soon as possible. These individuals have worked with NSA in the past. Let him have what he needs to help us get some answers.”

“Sounds good to me,” Eugene said. “Let’s get started.” He glanced at the clock that read one thirty in the morning. “We’ve already wasted half the night. What do you need, Slash?”

“We’ll need the helicopter to go pick up Lexi, Elvis and Xavier and a clearance granting authority to read them in for the necessary network access. They may already have most of the clearances, but we don’t want a holdup in case they need access they don’t already have.”

“I’ll have it taken care of,” General Norton said.

“Eugene, I need you to bring me up to speed with what you’ve done so far and all the relevant information from their bitcoin accounts. Obviously, we need a secure space big enough to hold all of us, the fastest laptops you have, and some specialized equipment and software I suspect you probably already have. I’ll make a list.”

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