Free Killer Focus by Fiona Brand

discharged from here you need to get out of town, disappear for a while. Give me time to find him.”
    He pulled a business card from his wallet. “I know you won’t want to contact me, but I’m going to leave this with you anyway.” He crouched down by her bedside cabinet, took out her purse and slipped the card inside one of the side pockets.
    He straightened, the movement fluid for a man in his fifties, but then, not much about Jack Jones looked either old or decrepit. He had a toughness, an edge she recognized, and the reality of what her father was finally sank in. “Did you ever kill anyone?”
    The glance he gave her was sharp and utterly neutral. “Be in touch.”

Seven
    A week later, Taylor took a seat in Bayard’s office. The fact that she had made it up the front steps of the building, albeit with Dana’s help, was a major triumph given that she still felt as weak as a newborn baby.
    Bayard shook Dana’s hand, his expression controlled. Colenso and Janet Burrows, who had been assigned her case, looked uncomfortable, and Dana was distinctly unhappy. She had tried to convince Taylor to wait until she felt better, but Taylor had insisted on the meeting. She was the victim of a professional hit. After months of having her credibility questioned it was finally clear that she wasn’t crazy and she wasn’t paranoid. She had answered Colenso’s and Burrows’s questions, provided a statement and waited as long as she could. Now she needed answers. And she wanted back into the investigation.
    Janet leaned forward and poured coffee from the tray set on Bayard’s desk as Colenso ran through the ballistics report. Two slugs had been recovered, both from the fountain. The caliber of the bullets emphasized the fact that some kid high on meth with a Saturday-night special hadn’t just wildly discharged a gun into lunchtime shoppers and randomly hit her in the back. The larger caliber was usually associated with hunting weapons and sniper rifles, a much more exclusive club of killers.
    Janet offered Taylor coffee, but she refused. She didn’t need food or drink. The way her heart was pounding, a shot of caffeine would finish her off.
    Colenso slid a set of black-and-whites across the desk. A window in one of the photos was circled with black marker. An arrow indicated the trajectory.
    Sixth floor, which would have given the shooter plenty of angle. “Have you got details of the tenant?”
    Janet handed Bayard a cup, then set the coffeepot down. “The room was supposedly rented to an advertising firm. They never moved in. I checked the address and telephone number. The address was false, and the telephone was a cell phone that was only used for that one call.”
    Bayard opened the file in front of him. These days he spent more time working budgets and politicians than he did taking part in investigations, which in Taylor’s opinion was a criminal waste. In the intelligence world, Bayard was a shark. He also had a formidable knowledge of every agency the Bureau liaised with, and a prosecution rate second to none. When it came to cutting through red tape and getting results, Bayard reigned supreme. It had been his quick action and commitment to keeping his people safe that had gotten her out of Eureka alive. If she trusted anyone’s opinion, it was his.
    He slid a document across the desk. “We’ve gone over that room with a fine-tooth comb. So far, we have fifteen different sets of prints, but only three of them are traceable, and two of those belong to employees of the cleaning firm the building uses.”
    Taylor skimmed the top page, which was a list of National Crime Information Center fingerprint identification reports. The two cleaners were female, one with a conviction for shoplifting, the other for prostitution. The third file belonged to Pedro Alvarez, and outlined a ten-year-old conviction for car theft. According to the