Brutal Obsession (The Safeguard Series, Book One) Read Online Free PDF

department meeting and air his dirty laundry in public…not that anyone of the lead prosecutors still thought of him as any kind of angel.
    “You have fifty-two minutes to be back downstairs,” Gina announced as Ashlyn managed to finally make it to her destination. She gave a wave to her team of hard-charging go-getters, all four of them already at their desks buried within the maze of cubicles swilling coffee. She acknowledged them before walking into her office to set her stuff down next to her desk. “Chief Garner wants to meet with you beforehand, Victor Wright is sending over an IT technician to review your desktop computer, Mia and Parker are currently up on the schedule to go with you to court today, and Mr. Rutledge would like to confer with you on the Haung case before he schedules depositions for next week.”
    “Chief Garner will have to wait until I’m back from court this afternoon. I need to confer with my witness one more time before he goes on the stand today, which means I’m leaving here in the next five minutes for conference room 5B downstairs.” Ashlyn set down her coffee and then rummaged through her purse for her phone. She could already see the list of missed messages, but she had a time constraint this morning. She switched her cell phone to silent before sliding it into the back pocket of the leather portfolio. It wouldn’t do to have it ring during court. The very sight of a cellular device inside a federal courtroom could send some judges into the stratosphere. She’d even heard that Judge Randolph had crushed Bishop’s iPhone with his gavel in open court. “Call Victor and tell him I’d like to see him around five o’clock today. I want Parker to stay in my office with the technician, especially since Agent Coulter is having his own specialist confirm that nothing has been disturbed on my work computers. Parker has the most computer knowledge on the team and I don’t want anything botched at this point. If even one of my working files goes missing, I’ll have Victor’s entire department crucified. Oh, and try to schedule Rutledge in tomorrow before lunch.”
    Ashlyn had spent the time looking at the other message slips on her desk in reference to incoming phone traffic, deeming them relatively unimportant…at least for the timeframe of her pending appearance. There wasn’t anything of urgency that couldn’t wait until the end of the week, maybe even late tomorrow. She picked up her briefcase and her coffee before heading for the door. She barely managed not to appear irritated at the man who currently stood at the threshold.
    Jarod Garner was the Chief of the Criminal Division that oversaw her department, as well as many others, and he was in fact very good at his job of supervising the administration of the division. That didn’t mean she could just drop whatever she was doing to speak with him regarding the very topic he’d dismissed out of hand three months ago.
    Unfortunately, those in Ashlyn’s line of work had their fair share of threats and intimidations from those on the opposite side of the law. She was lucky to get through any given week without some corrupt criminal defendant threatening to kill her in some depraved way.
    The majority of emails, letters, and various packages sent to the U.S. Attorney’s Building in D.C. addressed to federal prosecutors were vetted through a jointly operated U.S. Government/Postal Service facility which specialized in detecting all manner of threats. Ninety-nine percent of the mail—including all kinds of packages—were discerned to be nonthreatening and distributed through a secure service to the mailroom in the basement of the building.
    It was only when some letter or parcel was detected and proved to be a risk through a battery of determining methods that the item was rendered hazardous and the FBI was called in to take a closer look. The FBI always took lead because delivering a threat, either materially or by unlawful