“You’ve got a point,” Nico said. “That bothered me as well.”
“His airway could have swollen closed,” Gator said. “With the bruisin’, it would have been natural and there were signs of swellin’. All the witnesses said he was chokin’.”
“But the ME said there were inconsistencies. Anaphylactic shock usually isn’t quite so fast. His EpiPen was nowhere on his body and his colleagues said he always carried one,” Kadan said, his voice thoughtful.
Ryland regarded Sam through half-closed eyes. That sleepy look didn’t deceive Sam for a minute. The man was sharp and he knew Sam wasn’t finished. He simply waited for more of an explanation.
Sam had it to do. Give her up. Azami. I’m sorry. But that wouldn’t cut it. How could she forgive such a thing? Telling his team about her weapons would only force her to answer more questions about herself.
He shook his head, tossed the medical report back in front of Gator, and looked around the room. “It’s possible that someone, using a blowgun, shot a tiny dart into the major’s mouth, poisoning him. The delivery system, no more than peanut-size, could have dissolved. If he wasn’t looking for it, the ME may have missed a very fine needle mark.” He drummed on the table with restless fingers. “If I were an assassin, I would have learned everything about my targets and I would have found out Patterson had a severe allergy to peanuts. If I could deliver the toxin to him, no one would ever know it was anything but an accident, just like the other two.”
There. It was done. He looked around for a glass of water. Tucker had a water bottle unopened in front of him. He snagged it and chugged nearly half of it.
“A delivery system that dissolves?” Ryland echoed. “It’s possible.”
Kadan and Nico exchanged a long look. Finally Kadan shook his head. “Do you have any idea how accurate one would have to be to use a blowgun in full view of the public and hit someone in the mouth when they were talking? The chances of anyone having that kind of skill are nearly impossible.”
He’d given her up. He damn well wasn’t going any further until he had a chance to talk to her. Sam remained silent. He felt like hell, both mentally and physically. He was beginning to sweat again. He tried not to move, the pain from his wound just waiting for the smallest shift of his body to assert itself.
“You make impossible shots in high winds,” Gator pointed out. “It’s not like it couldn’t be done.”
Nico shook his head. “It’s not the same thing. You’re talking about hitting inside the mouth. I could put a bullet in the mouth, but it wouldn’t matter if it was opened or closed. You’d have to time it perfectly. And this was done in a crowded restaurant.”
“Impossible,” Kyle “Ratchet” Forbes agreed. Slightly under six feet, with blue eyes and a medium build, his looks were deceptive. He was abnormally strong and a genius with explosives as well as being a doctor. “No one would try it in a crowded room in a public situation. If they missed . . .”
“But maybe they don’ miss,” Gator said, reluctant to give up on the mystery theory. He looked toward Sam for confirmation.
Sam couldn’t say another word. The room shifted a little, the floor rolling. He was grateful for the chair he was sitting in.
“If you’re assassinating someone, you don’t want a maybe,” Kadan pointed out.
Kyle grinned and gave a little shrug. “There’s that, of course. You’d have to be absolutely confident in yourself to try something like that.”
“Maybe a tribesmen from the lost tribes in the Amazon came a-visitin’,” Gator said with a small laugh.
“I could do it with a knife,” Jonas “Smoke” Harper said into the silence. Lithe, medium height with blond hair and Florentine gold eyes, he was a quiet, highly intelligent man who could have been a master thief. He was an undisputed master with knives. “It would be difficult, but with enough practice, and studying my mark, I’d be able to know his mannerism’s, the way he moves, the little things that give people away when they’re talking.”
“You could hit a man from across the room inside his mouth with a knife?” Kyle asked, half skeptic, half awed believer.
Jonas nodded. “I know I could.” Jonas had grown up throwing knives with a circus family, he’d practically been born with a knife in his hand.
“Really?” Kyle’s eyebrow went up. He leapt up and raced out of the room.
“He’s up to somethin’, Smoke, you’d better watch out,” Gator advised Jonas in his slow Cajun drawl.
The men erupted into laughter. Jonas shrugged and took out one of the many knives he carried most of the time. Around the room on various walls hung well-used targets, testimony to the fact that when idle, Jonas threw knives and was very accurate.
Nico held up his hand. “Let’s think about this. If we’re really going with the assassination theory, the bathroom and the car accidents are very doable. Any assassin worth his salt could rig a car, or make the hit in a secluded bathroom. It’s just the major’s death that’s harder to figure out, right?”
Kadan nodded. “And yet, of all three, his death seems the least likely to be an accident.”
Kyle slipped back into the room, a huge grin on his face. He plopped a can of peanuts down on the table in front of Jonas. “Let’s see.”
Gator nearly leapt over the table. “I want to try. Hand a few peanuts to me.” He didn’t wait but scooped a handful out of the can.
“I said I could hit the target with a knife,” Jonas said, holding up a wicked-looking two-inch throwing knife. “Start talking and let’s see if I can time it just right.”
Kyle threw a peanut at Jonas’s mouth as he spoke. The peanut hit him on the bridge of Jonas’s nose. War erupted. Team members scooped up peanuts and flicked, threw, and chewed the nuts, laughing uproariously. Through it all, Sam was very aware that Ryland remained silent. Hard knots formed in Sam’s belly. He knew Ryland. The man didn’t lead the team because he was stupid. Those piercing gray eyes were locked onto his face. Steady. Unblinking. Sam remained stubbornly silent, making him ask if he wanted any more information.
The room spun a little and he almost hoped he’d just faint and get it over with. He’d never live down an actual faint if it happened. For the rest of his life, Gator and Tucker would dramatically fall to the floor in an adaptation, swooning at every opportunity to remind him, but it might be worth avoiding Ryland’s questions. Sam gripped the table hard to keep from swaying. He became aware of the throbbing, pulsing pain in the region of his gut every time he moved. He’d been able to block it before, keeping the pain to a nagging ache, but now his pulse seem to keep time with that lurching, pounding wound in his abdomen.