“He doesn’t expect you to put out the same amount of material while all of this is going on, does he?”
She picked up her coffee. “I guess I could try to work something up about the forensic accountant’s report, even though she—”
“You heard back from her?” Zach didn’t know anything about this.
Natalie looked over at him. “I didn’t tell you?”
He shook his head. “I guess you didn’t get a chance.”
“She didn’t find any smoking guns, but she says the school’s endowment is very high for a private high school. And she’s right. I poked around the Internet and couldn’t find another private girls school in Colorado or anywhere else for that matter that came anywhere close to it.”
“That’s why you were logged onto the school’s website last night.”
“I was trying to figure out where the money came from, looking for major donors, hoping to compile a list you could check for ties to the Zetas—or that’s what I started doing.” Her lips curved in a sad smile. “I got caught up looking at photographs. They have a slideshow of photos that reminded me of my years at McGehee.”
Zach stood and walked into the kitchen to refill his coffee cup. “That list of donors is good thinking. I’ll definitely run it. In the meantime, I’ll see whether Rowan wants to assign someone to dig into the school’s endowment. She’s not as convinced as I am that the school is tied into this. Are you done with that dossier on Cárdenas or do you—”
Glass shattered behind him.
He turned to find Natalie staring at nothing, her eyes wide and startled, the plates she’d been carrying in shards on the wood floor. “Natalie, are you—”
“That’s it! That’s where I saw him!” She met his gaze. “Find the dossier! That’s the connection!”
HER HANDS SHAKING, Natalie turned the pages in the Cárdenas dossier, looking for one particular photograph. “I know it’s here! I saw it! Why didn’t I remember—”
Zach took her hands, held them in his. “Breathe, Natalie. It’s okay.”
She drew a deep breath, calmed by the reassurance she saw in his eyes, her heart still beating hard. With his help, she went through the pages one by one again, more carefully this time, until she found it.
A younger Cárdenas stood in the foreground holding some kind of assault rifle, wearing aviator-style sunglasses and a broad smile on his face. In the background, also smiling, stood another man, a bit older. Both were dressed in camouflage, a military vehicle parked behind them.
Natalie pointed toward the man in the background. “That’s him. It has to be.”
“That’s who?”
“You’ll see.” She reached for her laptop, typed Whitcomb Academy into her browser, misspelling it three times in her haste. “Damn!”
Finally, she made it to the school’s website and launched the slideshow she’d watched last night. The photographs drifted by one at a time—happy girls playing volleyball, camping, working in a science lab, studying in a library. And then . . .
“See. That’s him.” She paused at the photograph of the girl receiving her award, pointing to the image of Edward Wulfe. “Look at him. He’s older, yes, but it’s the same person. Look at the gap between his front teeth. Look at the helmet hair. And his face—so bland, so plain. That’s why I couldn’t remember.”
“Give me that.” Zach took her laptop, looked back and forth between the two images. “I’ll be damned. You’re right.”
“He and Cárdenas must be using the school to launder drug money.”
“That’s a good guess.” Zach set her laptop down on the coffee table and set the dossier beside it. He stood, drew out his cell phone, and dialed. “McBride here. I need everything you have on one Edward Wulfe and his past association with the Americas Institute for Tactical Training, often abbreviated AMINTAC. That’s Wulfe—Whiskey-Uniform-Lima-Foxtrot-Echo . . . Yeah, thanks. As fast as you can.”
He disconnected, walked toward the patio, and stood looking out at the city, his leather shoulder holster making a dark X against the white of his shirt. And for a time, he just stood there.
She stood also, his silence making her uneasy. “What is it?”
“Just something Quintana said yesterday.” Zach turned toward her. “ ‘Your enemy follows no rules, while you are bound by many,’ he said. Now I know what he meant by that.”
“Tell me.”
Zach turned to face her, his expression grim. “AMINTAC is the bastard offspring of the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. If Wulfe worked for AMINTAC, he’s almost certainly former CIA. He knows all the tricks, has access to all the latest technology, not to mention connections and inexhaustible cash. We are in such deep shit.”
Natalie felt chills shiver down her spine.