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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

By 4 p.m., Richie and I had arrived back at the private airfield northwest of the university where we’d flown in. A Beechjet 400A was fueling up. I stood inside a glass building fifty feet away, talking to Frank and Cassie.

“So Kagan’s in Georgia?” I said. “That’s where we’re headed?”

“You’re putting down in a place called Elliot Field in Dawsonville,” Frank replied. “It’s four miles from the cabin where he lives.”

“What do we know about him?” I asked.

“He left the Bureau this past December,” Frank said. “Retired at thirty-eight. How much time do you have to talk?”

A flight steward was motioning a pilot aboard the plane. Turning my head, I saw Richie emerge from a building where he’d been using the restroom.

“Minutes,” I said. “Give me a topline on his CV.”

“Burke Kagan grew up in Atlanta,” Frank said. “Went to Georgia Tech. Got a master’s at UGA and was in the Bureau by twenty-six.”

Cassie explained that Kagan had worked for five years on a team in St. Louis that investigated bank fraud and identity theft. In 2014, he transferred to the Oklahoma City office.

“So fraud was his specialty?” I asked.

“‘Was,’ as in past tense,” she said. “In OKC, he worked in Crimes against Children.”

This was a group tasked with providing a rapid response to abuse and exploitation. They recovered underage victims of trafficking and broke down networks that promoted the production of child sex abuse material.

“Bee-tee-dubs, Gardner,” Cassie said. “I applied to that same division years ago. Hella hard to break into. No one ever leaves.”

“So why did he?”

“If you trust what’s in his file, he got burnt out,” Frank said.

His file? I considered my own. It showed no reason why I was exiled to El Paso in the summer of 2013.

The plane started up, and Richie and I began walking toward it. “Any ties to our vics?”

“None,” Cassie said.

I held the phone close to my ear as I crossed the small tarmac.

“And Gardner,” Cassie added. “We found no connection to Montana State, either. Frank even checked Kagan’s travel requisitions. No reimbursements from the Bureau for trips to MSU.”

So Kagan had traveled on his own dime to speak to a botanist about how to deliver a poison. This felt like the most damning evidence so far.

“We’ve got locals coming in to assist with the takedown in Georgia,” Frank said. “They’ll meet you at a staging area. What else do you need?”

I walked up the steps to the jet. Richie was already settling in and blowing on his hands. “Nothing,” I said. “Just keep digging.”

“With a few calls to OKC,” Cassie said, “we could find out the tea on this guy real fast.”

I laid down my bag at the rear of the plane. “First we get eyes on him,” I said. “The last thing we need is someone tipping him off.”

I thanked them and hung up. The jet was an eight-seater, twenty years old, with cream-colored bucket seats. While the Beechjet had a solid safety record, I recalled reading about one that had overrun a landing strip at Cleveland-Burke Lakefront Airport. That ended in an ice accident.

I put on my seat belt and watched as Richie did the same.

“I did good, right?” he said. “Getting the bug here in the petri dish? The interview with Volus?”

I nodded, reminded that Richie was a rookie, still in his first week on the job. And that he was a member of PAR, not a suspect in this case.

“You performed acceptably, Agent Brancato,” I said, and Richie beamed.

I sat back and heard the Beechjet’s engine roar. The killer we were searching for had a high IQ. And so far, he’d anticipated every move we’d made. Could we surprise him this time?

I texted Frank before I lost signal.

Tell the locals—nobody near that cabin until we get there.