Major Crimes. Janie Crouch

and was led away.

       Chapter One

      Four years later

      Cain often dealt with the worst of humanity as part of the Omega Sector Protection and Recovery Division.

      Crisis management and bodyguarding were a regular part of his job. He and his team also dealt with hijackers and kidnappers on a regular basis.

      But his mission right now was to rescue not a person, but the entire Critical Response Division of Omega, which was being hijacked in its own way.

      They had a psychopath on their hands, set on destroying the team one by one—by killing their loved ones. And someone on the inside was helping the madman in his quest.

      Cain was currently watching a video of Damien Freihof—said psychopath—who had slit the throat of Omega psychiatrist Grace Parker last week.

      Freihof and his cohort within Omega Sector had decided it would be fun to send the murder as a live feed to all active Omega Sector agents—forcing them to watch as Dr. Parker died without them being able to step in and do anything about it.

      So now Cain was able to watch it over and over. Watch as Grace’s eyes dulled in death. Watch as Freihof’s eyes had filled with something akin to joy as the doctor—a beautiful woman in her fifties, and an integral part of the Omega team—died sitting right in front of him.

      Freihof had made it no secret that he wanted Omega Sector’s Critical Response Division to pay for the death of his wife, Natalie, years ago. That he blamed the elite law enforcement task group for her untimely demise in a bank hostage situation.

      He was determined they would feel the pain of losing loved ones like he had.

      Grace Parker had been just one of those loved ones Freihof had gone after. For the past five months he’d been the mastermind behind attacks on nearly a dozen Omega Sector agents or their friends and family. Grace had died last week. Two other Omega agents were in the hospital after an explosion.

      And Freihof was reveling in it all.

      Freihof had to be stopped. But just as importantly, the mole inside Omega—the one who was feeding Freihof information that was allowing him to be so successful in his attacks—had to be stopped. Steve Drackett, director of the Critical Response team, was unsure who could be trusted.

      That’s why Cain was here, brought from a different division of Omega, to help catch this traitor.

      Cain watched the death of Grace Parker again, hoping to notice something this time that maybe he’d missed before. He hadn’t personally known the woman, which allowed him to look at the footage more objectively, see things others—people who had cared deeply about the psychiatrist—might miss.

      Cain was known for his ability to separate emotion from the job. It was how he’d risen to assistant director of Omega’s Protection and Recovery Division when he’d barely reached his thirtieth birthday.

      Because he got the job done, no matter what.

      He’d proven that four years ago.

      Cain studied the footage again, pushing all thoughts of Hayley Green aside. Right now he needed to understand as much as he could about Damien Freihof. Because anything Cain could find out about him would hopefully lead to information about the mole.

      In a way—as psychotic as Freihof was—he was easier to understand. The man wanted vengeance. Sure, he may want vengeance for something that Omega Sector wasn’t actually responsible for, but at least his motives were clear.

      What did the traitor want?

      There couldn’t be much money involved in helping Freihof. Maybe a little, but not the sort of big payoff someone was usually looking for in order to risk their reputation and/or life.

      That left a lot of other factors. It could also be vengeance; maybe Freihof had found a kindred spirit also looking for some sort of revenge for something Omega had done. Maybe the person had a desire for control, or was some sort of political zealot, planning to bring down Omega Sector from the beginning.

      Or maybe Freihof had control over the man—or woman—and was blackmailing him or her in some way.

      The motive didn’t really matter to Cain in terms of justifying why the traitor was behaving the way he was, but understanding motive always provided information in an unknown suspect.

      Cain sat in a private conference room attached to Steve Drackett’s office. It was one of the few places Steve had assured him there was no way the mole could have any type of surveillance devices.

      While Cain trusted Steve completely, he wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Cain had his own countersurveillance device that allowed him to know for certain that no one was recording or transmitting visual or audio data from this room.

      Files of every employee—agent or not—of the Critical Response Division sat in groups on the large conference table. Cain had already been in this room for more than eight hours going through the files.

      He had four distinct groups: cleared, unlikely, unknown and suspicious.

      People like Steve Drackett, whom Cain had known for years and who had spent most of his life fighting people like Freihof, were in the cleared category. Other agents also, like the various members of the Omega SWAT team who had been injured or nearly killed by Freihof over the last few months. Employees who had joined Omega very recently were also cleared, as well as those who had no access to the type of information that had been given to Freihof.

      But that still left a hell of a lot of people in the unlikely, unknown or suspicious categories.

      Long-term operatives and agents were in the unlikely category. Cain rubbed the back of his neck as he walked around the table looking at the files. The thought of the culprit being a colleague who had been involved with Omega Sector for years churned like acid in his gut. He drowned those thoughts by taking a swig from his now-cold coffee mug, the only substance he’d had today. He wanted to move these agents to the cleared list, but he couldn’t.

      Emotion had no place in solving crimes. No matter how much Cain wanted someone to be innocent, he knew firsthand that wasn’t always how things panned out.

      He looked through all the unknown files again. People with a background in computers who would be able to get Freihof the information he wanted without being detected. The one thing they knew for sure was the traitor was highly skilled in computer usage.

      But a number of people were skilled in that area. Even people who had jobs not involving computers or intel could still have the prowess needed to be the mole.

      Cain picked up a file for John Carnell. The guy was a genius; his damn mind worked like a computer. Abrupt and sullen, he was often difficult to work with, but almost always the smartest person in the room.

      Cain slid Carnell’s file from the unknown to the suspicious pile. There it joined half a dozen others. Two from people who had filed complaints with the head Omega office in Washington, DC, when they were bypassed for promotions—maybe one of them had an ax to grind and had become the mole. SWAT wannabe Saul Poniard’s file was also in the pile; he had such a perfect record that it bugged Cain.

      And Lillian Muir, a member of the SWAT team. Cain didn’t like putting her name in the suspicious pile, especially since she’d been one of the people injured in an explosion a few days ago at Freihof’s last known place of residence. A wooden projectile had lodged itself in her shoulder. A painful but non-life-threatening injury.

      But Cain could not deny that Lillian’s past—and how well hidden she’d kept it—made her a suspect. Someone who had gone to the lengths she had to hide her past was someone who had something to lose.

      When Steve Drackett walked in the door, Cain slid Lillian’s file under another one. He knew Steve was too emotionally involved with his inner team to objectively consider the