She curls her hands into fists and takes a step away. I fight back the frown trying to form and bite my tongue against the urge to tell her it's okay to trust Octavio. She's obviously afraid of men or just anxious around them. Whatever the case may be, it's blatantly obvious the protection of Oscar Fuentes left her with mental and emotional wounds that are still bleeding.
Octavio seems to know it too. His dark eyes soften with a strange mix of understanding, frustration, and sadness. "Something's come up. I have to go, pequeña," he tells Faith, his voice gentle in a way I've never heard it before…like he's talking to a scared little rabbit. I don't think he's realized yet that his little rabbit has teeth. "Will you be okay here?"
"I'll be fine," she murmurs. Her tone is stilted, stiff.
"Call me if you need anything."
"I'll be fine," she says again.
"Call me, Faith. I mean it."
"I can't call you."
"Why the fuck not?" His brows pull down into a confused glower.
"I don't own a cellphone, Detective Hernandez," she huffs, narrowing her eyes on him even as her cheeks heat with embarrassment. She shoots him a death glare and then slips out of the room and into the hallway.
"Fuck," Octavio growls, snapping his eyes closed before he pops them open and pins me with that hard-ass, no nonsense look cops give so well. "If she needs anything, call me. I'll get her a phone today."
"She can use mine anytime," I promise him.
Roman narrows his eyes at me.
I shake my head slightly, warning him not to say anything. I already know what he's thinking, and I think Faith would rather jump off a cliff than contact Oscar Fuentes or go back to her cage. I also know that it'd upset her if she heard Roman tell me not to let her use my phone. She needs to learn to trust him and Octavio…and alienating her by not giving her the same trust in return isn't going to get them anywhere. She's embarrassed and off-center enough already.
"I'll get her a phone today," Octavio rumbles again and then follows her down the hall, frustration seething in his expression.
"Poor Octavio," I whisper to Roman once he's out of earshot. "And poor Faith. She's trying so hard to put on a brave face, but she's scared."
"Yeah, she is." He sighs, raking a hand through his hair.
"She likes Octavio."
"Does she?"
"He makes her nervous."
"He's plenty nervous himself, I think. You like her?"
I nod.
"You're too sweet for your own good," Roman says, smiling at me. He crosses the room and pulls me into his arms, cuddling me close to his chest. His lips press into my hair as his hand drifts over the scar on my shoulder, like he's trying to remind me what's at stake. "Promise me you'll be careful."
"You worry too much, Roman. We'll be fine. Missy is coming over for lunch. We'll have a girl's day."
"I like worrying about you," he grumbles, making me smile. He tilts my chin up with a fingertip and then brushes his lips across mine. "No ganging up on Luke. I'll be home in a few hours."
I laugh. Luke, like Roman, is all alpha. He's used to being in charge and issuing orders. Even if we tried to gang up on him, I don't think it'd get us very far.
Chapter Seven
Roman
"This is such bullshit," Rick Sanders growls, glaring across the office at me and Finn as he yanks his gun out of his holster and slaps it down on top of Finn's desk. "She fucking wanted it."
Octavio growls at my side and takes a warning step toward him.
I throw out an arm, blocking his way. The last thing I need is for Octavio to lay the smaller man out right now. Though if Sanders keeps running his fucking mouth, I might help Octavio do it. Sanders is a cocky son of a bitch, too goddamn arrogant to keep his mouth shut and take his punishment like a grown man. To guys like him, their victims always want it. No matter how loud or long they scream, guys like Sanders never hear it. They're predators, pure and simple.
"She kneed you in the balls and locked herself in a fucking bedroom," Octavio snaps at him, bristling with anger. "She didn't want a goddamn thing, Sanders."
"Whatever, man," he snaps, clenching his jaw. "You weren't there."
"You're right," I say softly, drawing his attention. "He wasn't there, but Gunner was. He saw what happened. You backed a witness into a corner and tried to force yourself on her. She asked you repeatedly to stop, but you refused until Gunner came in and she kneed you in the balls. She didn't want a damn thing. And even if she had wanted it, as you claim, you'd still be suspended for trying to hook up with a witness."
Sanders opens his mouth to argue, but Finn cuts him off.
"If I were you," he warns the younger man, "I'd shut the fuck up while you're ahead. You can plead your case with Internal Affairs, but as of right now, you're suspended until further notice."
Sanders glares at me and then at Octavio, his hands clenched into tight fists. He keeps his fucking mouth shut though, opting instead to toss his badge on the desk beside his service weapon and then storm out. The door slams behind him so hard it rattles the windowpanes.
"Little prick," Finn mutters, plucking the gun off the desk. He checks over the weapon, dropping the magazine and the bullet in the chamber, before he tucks the gun into his waistband. Once he's done he meets Octavio's gaze. "I apologize for his behavior, Detective Hernandez. I can assure you, he will be dealt with."
Octavio jerks his chin in a nod.
"I checked into putting someone else on her detail, but the big wigs don't want to approve it. Unless she gives us something solid soon, they want us to cut her loose," Finn tells Octavio.
"Pull her detail," Octavio says. "Whatever progress I'd made with her, Sanders blew. If we can get her to talk now, I'll let you know. Until then, I'll keep an eye on her."
"Are you sure you don't want to put someone else on her?" Finn asks him as if he has another choice here.
"Even if you could manage it, she's scared enough already. Locking her up with someone else she doesn't know won't help her learn to trust me."
"Luke and Mila are going to help us keep an eye on her," I tell Finn.
"She's okay with this?" he asks, glancing between me and Octavio.
Frustration rolls through Octavio's expression. "She's not okay with any of it, but it is what it is. At least this way, she isn't alone with someone like Sanders." He glances at his phone and then back to Finn. "You need anything from me?" he asks. "I've got a debriefing in half an hour."
"You're good," Finn says, waving him off. "I'll let you know if IA needs to speak with you."
Octavio nods, bumps my fist, and then strolls out of the office.
Finn waits until he's gone to turn to me. "Sanders is as good as fired," he says with a disgusted shake of his head. "The little prick is lucky Hernandez didn't rip his balls off."
"Octavio is too smart to do it with witnesses around," I murmur.
Finn snorts. "I probably would have let him do it."
"Sanders will get what he deserves," I remind Finn. IA does not take kindly to federal agents using their badges to prey on women. Especially when those women are in their custody.
"You sure you're good having Ms. Donovan around Mila?" he asks, pinning me with a no-bullshit look.
"Like Octavio said, it is what it is." I blow out a breath. "After seeing her again today, I'm not so sure Octavio's wrong about her. She's jumpy as hell, scared. Whatever she was doing with Fuentes, I don't think it was by choice. We need to know what she knows, and this is the best way to ensure she's safe while Octavio figures out why they want her back so goddamn badly."
Finn nods and then glances at his phone when it buzzes, his brows pulling down. "We're being summoned by the DEA. They want us at their offices within the hour."
"What the fuck for?" I ask, scowling. I've got enough shit to do today, thanks to Sanders. I've got to talk to IA, figure out how to keep Octavio from losing his shit, check on Kincaid, and stop in to see Tristan and Lillian. It's not e
ven noon and I already know I'm not going to get home before dark. Again.
Mila's going to be pissed.
"Don't know," Finn mutters, shoving his phone into his pocket and grabbing his keys. "Let's go find out."
"Fuck, fine. But it better not be another goddamn press conference or I will start flipping tables," I warn him, stomping out of his office.
He chuckles like he thinks I'm joking, but I'm not.
Stepping inside a conference room at the DEA headquarters an hour later sets my teeth on edge. Five of the DEA's big wigs are huddled around the table, dressed in suits. They're all unsmiling and grim-faced. They nod politely at me and Finn as one of their secretaries ushers us inside.
"Agent Gregory, Finn," Agent Randolph—one of the agents in charge of their special ops—says, reaching out to shake hands with us. His cool blue gaze brushes cursorily over me before moving to Finn. His expression never changes from mild politeness even though he's known Finn for years. They've been friends for longer than I've been with the ATF, but he's as grim-faced and steely-eyed as the rest of the motherfuckers crowed around the table.
My hackles rise in response, wariness shooting through me. Whatever they want with the two of us…I have a feeling I'm not going to like it.
Randolph quickly introduces us to the other men in the room, though the only one I've ever met is Agent Cassidy, who oversees their guys who are embedded on the gang taskforce. Finn seems to know all four of them, though he's spent as much time over here in the last week trying to get Tristan cleared as he has in his own office. I nod politely at Cassidy before claiming one of the only two seats left at the table. Finn drops heavily into the seat beside me while Randolph locks the door behind us.
I shoot a look in Finn's direction. He meets my gaze and gives me an almost imperceptible nod, letting me know he's right there with me, suspicious as hell.
"Agent Gregory, I understand you've been looking into Remi Pledger," Agent Cassidy says a moment later, resting his elbows on the table. The motion pulls his sleeve up, showing a sliver of a tattoo on his wrist.
"I have."
Cassidy nods at Randolph, who slides a file folder across the table to me.
I stop it with one hand, shooting them both a cool look, silently demanding an explanation. When neither seems inclined to give me any answers, I narrow my eyes, sweeping a cold look around the room. The other three don't break a sweat or say a damn thing. I bite back a curse and flip open the file folder.
A birth certificate rests on top of a sheaf of official documents. I thumb through the first few pages, my eyes growing wide when I come to an order of adoption. Remi Pledger's name is typed neatly across the document, absolving him of his parental rights to a son.
"What the fuck is this?" I bark, holding it up so Finn can see what I'm looking at.
Finn curses beneath his breath, shock written all across his face.
"Remi Pledger and his college girlfriend, Dawn Oliver, had a child in the summer of 1989. A boy. Six days after the child was born, they gave up their parental rights," Cassidy says.
"So he has a kid no one knew about?" I ask.
Cassidy nods, something flickering through his expression before he quickly schools it. "As you can see, the adoption was closed. As far as we've been able to tell, not even his ex-wife knew about the kid. Once he signed the papers, he never looked back."
I don't bother to ask how they found out about it. We're federal agents. Information may not always come to us as quickly as we'd like, but when we want something, doors tend to open and orders get signed, giving us what we need to do what we have to do. With Remi going rogue on their watch, I'm guessing the DEA has been using their collective influence to open a whole hell of a lot of doors and sign a flurry of orders.
"So, what? You think him defecting had something to do with the kid?" It certainly makes more sense than him running to Francisco to save an old man, but something doesn't sit right. "Have you located the kid?"
Cassidy nods, a muscle in his cheek ticking. "We have. Tristan Riley killed him a week ago."
"You're kidding me." I glance around the conference table, sure they're fucking with me. But they're all as grim-faced and silent as they were when we walked in five minutes ago.
They aren't joking.
Elijah Noel was Remi Pledger's kid.
"Jesus fucking Christ," I breathe, stunned.
Finn looks equally as shell-shocked.
"You're certain?" he asks.
"Positive." Randolph nods toward the folder in my hands. "Flip through a few more pages."
I glance from him to the folder and then do as instructed. The Medical Examiner's report on Noel's official cause of death—severe blood loss stemming from a gunshot that nicked his external pudenal artery—and a detailed list of his other injuries take up the next several pages in the folder. Immediately following that report is the results of his DNA test.
"Given that no one knew exactly who Noel was, we thought it prudent to run his DNA through the database to see if we could find a match," Randolph explains as Finn reads over my shoulder. "Imagine our surprise when it spit out a hit on Pledger, indicating he was the man's father."
He's lying. Call it intuition or a sixth sense for bullshit or whatever, but Randolph isn't being completely honest. I file that away for a moment and scan through the report, shock turning to certainty and then to ice cold rage. Not only did Remi help give birth to the son of a bitch partially responsible for inciting a gang war, he then helped the little motherfucker carry out his twisted plan. To protect his psychotic kid, he risked the lives of mine.
And unless I miss my guess, Cassidy, Randolph, and the three other suits at the table knew about it well before today.
"You knew."
Cassidy won't meet my gaze.
"How long?" Finn asks.
Stony-faced silence greets us.
"Son of a bitch," I swear, glaring daggers at the men gathered around the table. They've known for long enough that Remi had a kid, and they never said a word. They probably even had an inkling that Noel was his kid when he defected…enough of one to decide to run that DNA test anyway. All that time we spent trying to figure out why Remi went rogue, and they had the pieces to the puzzle we were missing. The fact that they're sharing it now means only one thing…they want me to help cover it up.
"You aren't sharing this out of a sense of obligation or duty. What do you want?" I ask warily, dropping the folder to the tabletop. I meet their gazes one by one, unflinching, unyielding. There's not a goddamn thing on earth that'll convince me to let Remi walk. Doesn't matter if he birthed Elijah Noel, Pedro Francisco, or the Devil himself. Remi's life ended the second he betrayed his oath and put my family—blood and badge—in danger. I'm not stupid enough to tell a room full of federal agents that though.
"If word of this gets out, all hell will break loose," Cassidy says, linking his hands together on top of the table. "Thanks to the gang war and Agent Riley's actions, not to mention the aid you rendered him, we're under enough scrutiny at the moment. We'd prefer for the media not to get ahold of this information."
"I did what I had to do," I mutter, refusing to be cowed by the admonition in his voice.
"You think Remi plans to leak it?" Finn asks, refusing to twitch to whatever strings they're trying to tie to us. He won't defend my actions to them because they hold no sway over him or over me. He's here merely as a courtesy, because several of the guys on our team are DEA agents like Luke Santiago, embedded to extend the reach of the taskforce and make everyone from LAPD to the FBI look good by doing it.
Cassidy shrugs a shoulder. "If not him, then someone. If we don't bring him to heel quickly, anything is possible."
I eye the men at the table for a long moment, disgust coursing through me. If this gets out, they're going to have to answer a whole lot of questions that won't look good for any of them. The man Tristan has been hunting for months is the son of one of theirs and they suspected as much long
before today. Of course they're more concerned about covering their own asses than about anything else.
"I'm not letting him walk," I tell them. On that, I won't be swayed. They can eat a bag of dicks.
"We aren't asking you to let him walk," Randolph hurries to assure me. "We're asking you to help us bring him in as quickly and quietly as possible."
Finn snorts like he knows Randolph is full of shit.
"And if I refuse?" I ask, the only question that really matters. They can pretty it up as a request all they want, but everyone in this room knows that's not what this is. They want something from me and they dragged me and Finn here to make damn sure they get it.
Randolph glances at Cassidy, who nods.
"You've shot eleven people in the line of duty, including Jose Guerrero," Randolph murmurs. For a split second, it looks like he might actually regret whatever the fuck he's trying to do, but he presses forward anyway. "We're prepared to push the ATF to open an inquiry."
Why am I not fucking surprised?
Apparently Finn is. He growls wordlessly, leaping to his feet. The vein in his forehead throbs, his expression twisting to rage. I fight the urge to smile when Cassidy flinches. Guess he forgot who the fuck he was dealing with. Finn isn't a puppet, and he doesn't dance on anyone's strings. He's a force to be reckoned with, and they're about to find that out for themselves.
I sit back and watch it happen.
"What the fuck is this?" Finn barks, glaring at Randolph and Cassidy. "Roman was cleared in every single one of those incidents and you damn well know it. Any inquiry you open will find the same fucking thing."
Randolph can't even look him in the eye.
Cassidy has no such qualms though. He's practically boring holes into me with the weight of his stare. "The only federal agent currently employed with a higher body count than Gregory is Michael Kincaid. People aren't looking too kindly at trigger happy cops these days."
I clench my jaw so hard it feels like it might crack.
Desire Me (Her Best Friend's Father Book 4) Page 10