Extreme Liquidation: Caitlin Diggs Series #2 Read online

  Diggs burst into a grin. “Celeste!”

  Celeste voluntarily pushed her small head into the palm of Diggs’s hand, enslaving the FBI agent to her wishes.

  “Look at those beautiful blue eyes. Do you remember me, Celeste?”

  The cat offered a soft meow of acknowledgement.

  Fearing the threat of relapse, Diggs hastily took a seat across from Tara. Celeste loyally followed, making herself comfortable on Caitlin’s lap.

  Tara could see a strain on her sister’s face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, the usual job stress.” In an attempt to change the subject, Diggs inquired about Celeste’s arrival.

  “Detective Carter dropped by with his girlfriend. Umm...I believe her name’s Jill. Anyway, they said to offer their apologies for the quick visit, they needed to get back to Boston.”

  Diggs nodded, still feeling the ill effects of her lab encounter.

  “You know,” Tara began to mock in a singsong tone. “I bet I know something you don’t.”

  “What, that Stanford and Jill are engaged?”

  Tara’s jaw dropped. “How did you know that?” Stanford had made a point to show off Jill’s ring to Tara, explaining he had purchased it two days ago.

  “It’s a pretty ring isn’t it? He must have got it for her the day after we attended the trial in Miami.” Diggs allowed another moment of silence to follow, turning the tables of anticipation on her ever-teasing sibling.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll explain. You know how I saw those dreams last year.”

  “The ones that helped you find Geoffrey’s killers.”

  “Exactly. It seems these visions are fed by random contact with people or things. I had a dream two nights ago about Stanford’s engagement. I promise you, he didn’t tell me a word. But then again, any intuitive female can sense the happiness of love, dream or no dream.”

  “Now that I think of it. They did appear to be more than colleagues.”

  “So you see, Tara. Intuition seems to run in our family.”

  Diggs smiled as Celeste climbed upon her shoulder.

  As the cat became fixated on an object hanging from the ceiling, Diggs perused the contents of her refrigerator. Before she could protest about what Tara had stocked it with, her knees buckled.

  Celeste bounded off her shoulder and into Tara’s waiting arms as Diggs grabbed onto the refrigerator door for purchase.

  “What happened?”

  “I should have told you.” Diggs shook her head in reaction to the near fall. “I sort of fainted at the lab today. I’m beginning to think it has something to do with my visions.”

  Placing the cat on the table, Tara hooked her arm underneath Caitlin’s left shoulder. She guided Caitlin back to her seat.

  “I’ll get you some water.” As Tara ran the faucet, Caitlin began a confession.

  “I guess I need to talk this out. The problem is I can’t do it at work.”

  “What about your boss, Dudek?”

  “You, Agent Rivers and Detective Carter are the only ones aware of my abilities. I don’t think I can tell Dudek. It’s not because he won’t believe me. It’s because I’ll be placing him in a precarious situation with Director Hainsworth.”

  Tara knew her sister blamed Hainsworth for Geoffrey’s death. Celeste seized the momentary silence to pounce back upon Caitlin’s lap, mewling for attention. Caitlin stroked her head to quiet the feline, but the mewling resumed as soon as the conversation did.

  “So you feel Dudek will be obligated to share your secret with Hainsworth?”

  “Yes, but an even bigger dilemma looms. I don’t want to keep my visions a secret from my superiors, or even the public for that matter. It’s not how I operate.”

  Again Celeste cried. She pawed at Diggs’s chest, vying for attention. Diggs was too immersed in self-analysis to heed the cat’s pleas.

  “You’ve always enjoyed keeping secrets from Mom and Dad.”

  “That’s different, Tara. Parents are on a need-to-know basis.” Caitlin smiled, happy she had at least one person she could confide in. Tara laughed knowingly.

  “So how are you going to deal with these visions? And if they continue to harm you, is there any way you can stop them?”

  Frantic now, Celeste resumed her perch on the table, casting a suspicious glance in the direction of an overhead light fixture.

  Diggs paused to ponder her sister’s inquiry, completely unfocused on whatever had suddenly grabbed Celeste’s attention.

  Could the visions be stopped? Things would be so much simpler if they could. She never needed dreams before, and managed to solve fifteen years’ worth of cases. Still, she had to admit, she willfully wished for a dream earlier this afternoon. Anything to finally solve Geoffrey’s murder once and for all...

  Diggs rolled a sip of water around her mouth, allowing the conundrum to play out in her mind. Reality took hold. She might have to spend the rest of her life enduring these dreams. The conclusion exhausted her. Excusing herself to bed, Caitlin placed Celeste in a lavish purple cat cushion and bid her two new roommates goodnight.

  As soon as Diggs closed the bedroom door, Celeste resumed her perch on the kitchen table. The feline spent the better part of the night there watching the ceiling.

  Chapter 8

  She slept soundly for two hours until the invasion.

  A vision in the form of a dream may have very well been an army regiment for all the stealth and “take no prisoner attitude” it demanded. It crept up without warning and left Diggs with a surreal wave of lucidness. She swore she was there, contrary to what the back of her mind knew to be true. She had retired to bed early, suffering a stabbing headache from an event that had taken place at the FBI lab less than a day earlier. Nonetheless, here she was, fully dressed in clothes she never knew she had, staring at two men who surreptitiously kept guard at an entrance to a huge corporate structure only a few meters away.

  She looked up, finding a waft of white clouds hanging lazily above the building. She squinted; a golden beam of light suddenly illuminated the clouds. Intuition told Diggs a gateway was being fashioned. She had no idea where this ethereal portal would take her. Would it lead to good or evil? Diggs could not be sure; her gut sensed the sting of betrayal. She cast her eyes downward, hoping those who had constructed the gate would not condemn her to follow it. She found the two men had not moved from their spot—they had been watching her all along.

  Diggs felt as if she were an experiment, a test subject for the men to study. She attempted to block her thoughts, but her heart raced wildly. She gasped shallow breaths of air. It did not satisfy her lungs. The men nodded to each other, sensing her panic. She took notice of her dress as seconds elapsed in slow motion. A gust of wind blew from below, flapping the fuchsia-colored fleece material before her eyes. She suddenly felt this clothing was meant to signify membership, or perhaps a type of camaraderie, with the robe-clad men.

  The very notion of how these men could read her made no sense whatsoever. And more frustrating, why were there so many mixed signals? One minute the men enticed her, the next, they erected barriers. Their faces revealed nothing but blackness. It totally engulfed one man, whose attire consisted of a black, hooded robe.

  Diggs’s stomach flipped as she turned her eyes toward the man on the left. He wore purplish attire, yet the distinguishing mark of color did nothing to illuminate his face. His robe only told her he was in control of the gate and whatever this corporation manufactured.

  Diggs squinted hard, trying to make out the nameplate on the structure, while a golden shard of light cast itself at her with the intensity of a thousand flashlights. She brought her right arm up to shield her eyes. She began to see the name, despite the plethora of tiny specks of golden light that danced before her eyes. It read: Genesis Biopharmaceuticals.

  The spots reminded her of time spent on California beaches. The unrelenting sun always managed to penetrate the darkest sunglasses, blinding her with sunspots
. Now, the two mysterious men reminded her of a pair of dark specters.

  She felt a sudden surge of power course through her veins at the moment she relived the past. It was as if she were now casting the powerful rays of light back at the hooded men. Although they had been unexpectedly blinded from Diggs’s willpower, the men were not entirely angry or fearful from the sudden turn of events.

  The man in purple allowed Diggs to read him, but not his face. She sensed wonder, fascination and the type of recognition one feels when introduced to a kindred spirit. This chilled her. She did not want to be in league with such dark forces. She committed the name of the company to memory and began forcing herself awake, feeding her emotional reaction. She detested the men without cause. She centered upon this unsubstantiated hatred. A tidal wave of feelings rocked her subconscious. The puffy clouds began to darken. The golden glint of sun retracted. The men began to crystallize into one formless, obsidian ink spot.

  As the vision blurred and shook, Diggs wriggled free from its hook. A pounding headache ensued as Diggs broke the tether. Dazed and suffering from sunspots, Diggs swallowed huge gulps of air, commanding herself to calm down, now that she had reentered her reality. She had never experienced an interactive vision quite like this. While she had been able to communicate verbally with Geoffrey McAllister’s attackers, she had never been able to read emotions before. What did the hooded men have to do with anything? Maybe their robes signified they were empaths, telepathic beings who could read emotion. Was she one as well? The questions begged answers, but her headache would not allow further analysis.

  She rolled over to grab a notepad and pen off her nightstand. She jotted down the name of the corporation, realizing with certainty its connection to her case. The men had attempted to block the identity of this firm from her. Perhaps a pharmaceutical company might be responsible for manufacturing whatever had affected Greg Salinger and Rivers. In the morning, she would begin investigating this lead, hoping the mysterious men might emerge from a cloudy vision into the light of a brand new day.

  Chapter 9

  Still out of focus, Diggs’s sapphire eyes could only flutter in response to an extreme burst of winter morning sunlight; it permeated her bedroom windows in harsh conflict to the black shadows cast from satin draperies. Suddenly, the shadow of a small creature flittered across the ceiling. Diggs bounced off her stack of down pillows to assume an upright position. She gasped for air, half believing she had entered another dream state.

  Then she heard soft mewling. Celeste had pounced upon her mattress without managing to shake a single box spring.

  “Hi, girl. How did you get in here?”

  A door squeaked. Tara stood there smiling, enjoying her sister’s disorientation.

  “Hey, sorry to wake you before your alarm, but Celeste had to see you.”

  “I see.” Diggs scratched Celeste softly behind her right ear.

  “I also wanted you to know, I will be going out this morning. I have a date with the moving guy. You know, the cute one I told you about.”

  “I see he made a move on you.”

  The sisters smiled at each other for a moment. You can’t kid a kidder. Diggs knew this engagement would be more than a date. She often used the same line upon her parents. And there was evidence as well. Tara coyly stood in the doorframe decked out in a rose print skirt with a skimpy lime green top, leaving little to a man’s imagination.

  “Don’t be alarmed, sis. It’s simply a first date, a meeting, you know. I will only be gone a few hours, then I promise to come home and look for work.”

  Diggs sighed, not at Tara’s response, but at her condition. Still petting Celeste, she drew her free hand up to her forehead.

  Tara’s puzzled expression begged for an explanation.

  “It’s the remnants of a bad headache.”

  “Do you want me to help you up? I don’t want to come home and find you on the floor.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary. But you can grab me some aspirin from the bathroom. I must make some calls. I think I have a new lead on my case.”

  Tara popped back into the room in under a minute. Celeste pounced from the bed upon her shoulder.

  “How about taking kitty for a while?”

  Tara traded the bottle of aspirin for the purring feline.

  The sisters looked at each other, envious at how easily their new pet basked in contentment.

  As soon as Tara stepped into the kitchen, the cat resumed its watch upon the kitchen light fixture.

  Tara set Celeste down upon a chair and beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom. Her mind was far too occupied with moving guy to notice the cat’s fixation. Caitlin was also oblivious, multitasking to swallow two bitter tasting pills and firing up the burner to make coffee.

  In seconds, the kettle produced a low ominous rumbling sound. A flash of panic surged through Caitlin’s mind, giving birth to an unsubstantiated compulsion. She must ask Tara to break her date, but the ring of the phone interrupted her train of thought. Still preoccupied with the strange sensation, Diggs barely registered an audible greeting to the caller.

  Rivers repeated herself, unsure if she had dialed the right number.

  “Agent Diggs?”

  “Yes . I’m here.”

  “You don’t sound too good. I hear you collapsed at the lab yesterday.”

  “I think I’m okay. Maybe I caught a touch of the flu.”

  “Are you sure ? I mean, your diagnosis sounds way too rational to me. I would have expected you to blame the incident on something—how should I say—more paranormal?”

  A pause followed as Rivers enjoyed her sarcasm. Diggs wanted to razz her rookie partner back, but the dark memories of last night’s dream begged Diggs to get down to business.

  “Okay . You’re right to assume this may be something more than the flu. The truth is I think I got it by touching a piece of evidence yesterday. If my hunch is right, this might explain how you were adversely affected by contact with Salinger.”

  “About that, Caitlin , I didn’t call you to simply ask how you were doing.” Rivers’s gruff honesty jolted Diggs like a caffeine surge. She wondered if she were this callous with Hoyt. When Diggs heard the weight of Rivers’s breath during a pause, she had to conclude her partner had also spent the night preoccupied with troubling thoughts.

  “Dudek reinstated me this morning. My system is drug and alcohol free. So I’m ready to consider any of your unsubstantiated hunches if it helps solve our case.”

  Rivers didn’t need to clarify the underlying motive. She must clear her name. Ultimately, she had to make Dudek one hundred percent certain she hadn’t self-medicated in response to Dudek’s preferential treatment of Diggs.

  Caitlin’s head began pounding again.

  “I need you to handle an interview today, by yourself.”

  “From an unsubstantiated hunch, I take it?”

  “Yes . A vision, if you must know. If you look in the Maryland and DC directories I’m pretty sure you’re going to find a company called Genesis Biopharmaceuticals. They may have manufactured a drug or something chemical that could have acted as a catalyst, for the purpose of enhancing emotions. I think someone paid Alyssa Morgan to chemically seduce Greg Salinger, promising her drugs to feed her habit. Apparently, that wouldn’t be too difficult with Morgan being a methadone junkie and all. I’d bet a dozen donuts Morgan even risked arrest to score the drugs, never realizing she would pay the ultimate price and become collateral damage in the process.”

  Deondra wrote down the name. “And how do you suggest I proceed with this interview? We can’t go charging into that company making accusations.”

  “That’s where your great tact and charm will come in handy.” Diggs paused, enjoying her turn at sarcasm. “I would suggest you ask the owner to assist our investigation regarding experimental drugs. You may tell him our chemical analysis suggests the deaths of Alyssa Morgan and Greg Salinger were not merely a murder and suicide and that we need
to quantify our supposition with his expertise. Don’t insinuate his involvement at this point. But do watch his body language closely. I would like to know if he squirms.”

  Tara popped by with a wave. She mouthed goodbye.

  “Tara...”

  Diggs called out too late. The front door had already swung itself shut.

  “I’m sorry, Agent Rivers. I was talking to Tara.”

  Diggs had to ignore her impulse to go bounding after Tara. The kettle began to whistle loudly, demanding attention.

  “Please hold on, Deondra.”

  Turning down the burner, Diggs wished she could quell her dark intuition about Tara. She attempted to dismiss the feeling with logic. She was probably overreacting to her experience at the lab, her vision from last night or possibly the nagging memory of Tara’s abduction last fall. Any one of these assumptions should have quieted her conscience. Diggs knew better than anyone she could never quiet the inner voice, the one that valued instinct over any FBI protocol.

  She returned to the phone, hoping she could close the call quickly, but Rivers had more information: Hoyt had found no matching prints for the other person who had touched the vial.

  “Whoever it was, he doesn’t have a record. Hoyt ran the print through IAFIS after you left. There were no matches in the database.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re not guilty of something. They simply haven’t been caught yet.”

  “I definitely agree with you on that, Caitlin. Listen, I’ll check in with you at the end of the day. In the meantime, I’ll tell Dudek you need a sick day. And don’t worry, I won’t tell him where we got our lead .”

  “Appreciate that.” Diggs pressed the end button.

  The beep of the phone segued into a soft knocking sound, interrupting Diggs from returning the phone to its cradle.

  A low growl erupted from Celeste.

  “Don’t worry, girl. It’s probably Tara. She probably forgot her keys or something.”