But the last thing Noel needed on his first day as an official special agent was an assault charge on his hands. He kept his firearm trained on the man and waved the backpack. “Yasmine, I’m throwing this to you. Release his arms. He’s not going anywhere. Right?”
“Whatever,” muttered the man.
Yasmine released her hold, and Noel tossed her the backpack. She unzipped it and looked inside, then nodded at him. The gun was there. They had the sniper.
“Who sent you?” Yasmine looked angry enough to rival any FBI interrogator. “Why are you shooting at me? Who shot up my apartment?”
The man on the ground flipped onto his back, looked up at her and grinned. His jaw tensed as though he’d bitten down on something, and a shiver ran down Noel’s spine. Something about this wasn’t right...
Suddenly the man’s eyes rolled up, and he began to convulse.
“Yasmine, get back!” Noel reached for her and pulled her next to him, stepping away from the suspect.
Foam rose from between the man’s lips as he shook. Then, as quickly as it started, it was over. The man didn’t move. His eyes were open and glazed, lifeless. Horror seeped into Noel’s insides as he considered the meaning of the man’s seizure. He stepped up to the body and knelt, pressing his fingers against the side of the man’s throat. No pulse.
“What just happened?” Yasmine stared at the man on the ground. “We had him. We had him and he was going to tell me why I’ve been used for target practice today.”
Noel shook his head and stepped back. “No, he wasn’t.”
Yasmine regarded him with wide eyes. He didn’t want to have to tell her this, to explain that he suspected something very big was going on and that she had to know why. She had to be hiding information. No one got targeted twice in one day.
Even fewer had their assailants commit suicide upon capture.
“Yasmine?” He tried to keep his voice level, for her sake. It had taken only seconds for this seemingly fearless person before him to go from warrior to worried young woman.
“What?” Her hands shook as she held the backpack, and he wished he knew what thoughts swirled through her head.
“You said when we were in the police station that you suspect your brother’s death wasn’t an accident. Regardless of what Officer Wayne believes, I think we need to sit down so you can tell me why. Because if it’s true, seems like the death of one Browder wasn’t enough. Somebody’s eager to make sure you’re out of the picture, too. It’s time to tell me what you know.”
Yasmine’s hands trembled as she waited in the police station for Noel. She held a lukewarm cup of coffee that she’d accepted more for the warmth radiating from the beverage than anything else. She felt cold, so very cold, and her stomach hurt. Whether from lack of food or the strain of the day, she didn’t know. Did it matter?
She rubbed the side of her left knee, feeling for the place a bullet had grazed her as she ran through the apartment building only hours before. It still stung, but it hadn’t bled too much, and going to the hospital to stitch it up seemed a needless waste of time. It would heal if only she stopped running away from shooters and watching them die in front of her.
It didn’t make sense. Why would anyone want to kill her? And why would the shooter, once caught, commit suicide to avoid talking? The only thing she could figure was that this whole day had to be a case of mistaken identity.
Noel had wanted her to talk immediately about Daniel’s death, but the police had arrived on-scene—thankfully Officer Wayne hadn’t been among them—and they’d had to give those reports first. Besides, she felt a little silly for having blurted out her suspicion to him earlier. She’d been pumped up with adrenaline after escaping the shooters in her apartment, not to mention unexpectedly seeing Noel again after ten years. When it came right down to it, her hunch about Daniel’s death was just that—a hunch. She had no proof, nothing concrete but a knowledge that Daniel was an exceptionally careful worker and that the routine investigation into the work accident that claimed his life had been wrapped up in less than forty-eight hours. Packaged up with a little bow and presented in a press release in the local paper. Unfortunate tragedy, they’d said. Completely preventable, if only Daniel had taken the correct precautions during his shift. Yasmine couldn’t believe that her brother, the safety fanatic, would have done anything to endanger himself or others.
And it only added to her uncertainty about the whole thing that just a few days before, Daniel had said something she wished she’d paid more attention to at the time.
“I think I stumbled across something at work today,” he’d said as she rushed to pack herself a lunch at quarter to five in the morning. Daniel wasn’t usually up so early, but sometimes he had trouble sleeping and spent time online playing games or working on lesson plans for the online engineering courses he occasionally taught through a local adult education center. She’d hardly paid attention to him as he spoke to her that day. “I was waiting in the boss’s office to present him with a briefing, and I saw one of the reports I’d filed a week earlier. It didn’t look right.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she’d said, barely giving him a second glance. “Not right, how?”
“The numbers on the inspection sheet... I didn’t get much of a chance to take it all in before Clarke returned to the office. We got caught up in conversation, so I forgot about it. But now that I think back, it can’t have been right. Those numbers were not the same.”
“You probably missed the date or something,” she’d said. “Maybe you were looking at an old report. You said yourself that you didn’t get much chance to take it all in.”
Daniel had rubbed his eyes and sighed. “That’s true.”
“So why are you losing sleep over it? And if you’re worried about a problem, you should talk to your boss about it, not me.” She’d closed her lunch sack and tucked it into the colorful patchwork messenger bag she used as a purse, a gift from one of her Amaran cousins. “He might even be grateful—if there is a problem, he might be too busy to have spotted it. You might be doing the place a favor.”
He’d nodded, but even when he agreed with her, his voice sounded uncertain. “Yeah. Maybe. Thanks, sis. Hope you don’t burn anything today.” He’d playfully punched her in the shoulder and she’d punched him back. “Bring me home a cinnamon roll or some baklava.”
“You don’t need any more sweets, Daniel.” She’d given him an appraising eye, just like their mother used to do when either of them took a second helping of dessert, and they’d both laughed. He’d waved her off and she’d headed to work, forgetting about the conversation moments after closing the apartment door.
Days later, he was dead. And it wasn’t until a week after the funeral that she’d recalled their conversation and realized that maybe—just maybe—she’d told him to do the very thing that had gotten him killed.
It was supposition. Pure conjecture. But still, she couldn’t shake the awful feeling that somehow, Daniel might actually have seen something he wasn’t supposed to. And she’d told him to tell his boss about it.
The timing all seemed a little too convenient.
On the other hand, without proof or anything to substantiate her feelings, nobody had any reason to take her seriously. Especially not Noel, the big FBI agent.
“Ready to go?” Noel crossed the station toward her, tossing a set of keys up and catching them as he moved. Officer Wayne came with him, his expression flat and unreadable. “I went through your old reports with Wayne, and we’re set to go.”
“You have your car back?” Yasmine made a point