Soft Targets Read Online Free PDF Page B

that? They were children .
    Dom held up his hands. “I mean no offense. But you’ve been with the FBI for what? Ten years? Twelve?”
    “A little over thirteen.”
    “Which is the same as a little under fourteen,” Dom said. “My point is that that you’ve had time to make a lot of arrests and accumulate a lot of enemies. Yet you seem so sure that your enemy in this case is Barney Jennings.”
    Irene saw his point. “There are . . . similarities,” she said. “The Harrelson boys disappeared without a trace. I mean, literally without a trace. We don’t begin to know where to start looking for them.”
    “And you determined that after a full investigation that was run by your entire team.”
    “Yet Jennings stayed ahead of us. Not far ahead, mind you, but just a step or two.”
    Dom scowled. “Are you suggesting inside information?”
    Irene steeled herself with a deep breath. She didn’t want to say what was coming next. “Truthfully, I don’t know what I think.”
    “But you know what you suspect.”
    “Yes, I do. I’d had hints of it other times during the investigation—that sense that Jennings was either the luckiest or smartest son of a bitch on the planet—” She caught herself cussing and blushed. “Sorry.”
    “Oh, that that were the worst that I heard on an average day, even coming from the school.” He waited a beat. “You were about to tell me whether you think there’s some kind of inside-the-FBI involvement.”
    “I worry that there is,” Irene said.
    “And because of that, you fear that if you involve the police, Jennings will find out and do something to the girls.”
    Hearing the words from someone else churned her stomach. “Yes.”
    “So, what’s your plan?” Dom asked. “What do you need from me?”
    Irene felt tears pressing in and she shut her eyes tight. She took a huge breath and held it, hoping that her nerves would settle. After a long time, she said, “I’m not sure I even know, Father. I was hoping that by talking it through I might . . . I don’t know, I might get an idea.”
    “Why don’t you pay Mr. Jennings a visit yourself?” Dom asked.
    “I have no official probable cause,” she said.
    Dom scowled deeply and cocked his head to the side. “You’re putting bureaucracy ahead of your daughters’ welfare?”
    Sadness became anger in the space of half a heartbeat. “Dom!”
    “Again, no offense,” he said. “But I’m confused. If you know who the perpetrator is, and you know where he lives, and you fear that he’s snatched Ashley and Kelly, I don’t understand why you’re here instead of there.”
    “What if I’m wrong?” she asked. “Suspicions are not facts. If I charge into Jennings’s house and demand an answer and he is not the right guy, I can lose everything. The real kidnapper can know what I’ve done, he’ll hurt the girls, and I’ll be boiled in oil by the Bureau.”
    Dom looked at her for a long time, and as he did, his gaze narrowed. “Sounds like you need a reliable team,” he said, after a long silence.
    “What I need is a suspension of the Constitution and the rules of discovery. I need to find out what has happened to my kids.”
    “And it needs to be outside of the law,” Dom said. “May I ask why you came to me?”
    The question confused her. “I didn’t come to you for answers, Father. I came to you to talk things through. You’re a friend, a priest, and a shrink. This is the only moment in my life I can think of where I’ve needed all three at exactly the same time.”
    She smiled as she said that, but Dom’s face showed no humor. She feared that she’d offended him.
    “Are you okay?” she asked.
    “How far are you willing to go?” Dom asked in return.
    “Excuse me?”
    “How far are you willing to go to be reunited with your daughters?”
    “I don’t understand the question.” If it had come from someone else, she might have, but coming from Dom, it was a complete cypher.
    “I’m not speaking in