Free Mortal Sin by Allison Brennan Page B

Smoking gun? Alibi didn’t check?”
    He shook his head. “The Kincaids—Kate and Dillon—check out. Morton was killed with a nine-millimeter—Kate has her service pistol, a Glock .45, and a personal firearm, a .38 revolver. Her husband doesn’t have a gun registered to him. Lucy Kincaid is licensed to carry, owns a .22 and an H&K .45. Not that any of those facts means squat, considering their connections to RCK and law enforcement—and buying a gun on the street would be easy for anyone who knows even a fraction about the underground that Donovan does.”
    Abigail laughed humorlessly. “It sounds like you want one of them to be guilty.”
    “No, I just don’t assume that they’re innocent.”
    “Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’?”
    He just stared. In his three short years with the FBI, most suspects were guilty.
    Abigail shook her head. “Come on, Armstrong. Kate Donovan had nothing to do with Morton’s murder and you know it.”
    “I’m inclined to agree.”
    “Did Lucy Kincaid come in yet?”
    “She called this morning and said she’d be in at ten.”
    “I’m surprised Kate is letting her come alone.”
    “I suspect that Lucy does what Lucy wants to do.” Noah didn’t think Lucy had faked her reaction when told that Morton was out of prison. It was too raw. He supposed she could be an extraordinary actress, but he didn’t see it. In fact, in Lucy he saw a rare quality: the inability to lie.
    Half the night, he’d been thinking about what she’d said and how she’d reacted. She’d been on his mind when he woke this morning after four hours sleep. He’d come in early to finish reading the files and financials that had landed on his desk at eight a.m. And he’d done more research on Lucy Kincaid.
    Out of all the suspects, had Lucy shot and killed Morton, she would have gotten away with it even if she’d called the police and confessed. No jury would have convicted her after hearing what she’d suffered at the hands of Morton and his sick partner.
    Noah honestly didn’t know exactly what to make of Lucy Kincaid, which made her both suspicious and intriguing. Her FBI file was surprisingly thick—and he’d been able to access it only after Hans Vigo cleared him. Few people knew that she’d killed Adam Scott, pulling the trigger six times, emptying a .357 revolver into his chest. It disturbed Noah, showing him that she could and would kill if threatened.
    Six bullets was overkill.
    Except he hadn’t been there. And if he’d learned anything in the military, it was to avoid the shortsighted criticism of the politicians and media sitting high and mighty—and safe—in the states, second-guessing command decisions when they didn’t understand the immediate threat.
    Morton had been killed with a single bullet to theback of the head. The point of impact told Noah that the killer knew exactly what he was doing and where to aim.
    Executions were for betrayal or money. And depending on the criminal enterprise, they were carried out in a variety of ways. A single bullet suggested a calculated hit. It seemed impersonal. A hit or business.
    Could Morton have been killed for a reason completely unconnected to his past criminal enterprises? Or by someone upset that he’d turned state’s evidence? Who had suffered when Trask Enterprises went down?
    “Abigail, can you run a list of all Trask Enterprise employees and associates? Current address, records, anything you can get.”
    “What are you thinking?”
    “The method. Bullet to the back of the head. It’s cold and impersonal.”
    “Kicking his balls wasn’t impersonal,” Abigail commented.
    “Yes, but the killer, or killers, had privacy—the marina was deserted. No security cameras in the area. They could have beaten him to death. Tortured him. Shot every limb and made him suffer. If it was personal.”
    “Remind me not to get on your bad side, Armstrong.”
    “There’s one thing I don’t understand yet,” Noah