Shift

by Sidney Bristol

  “What the hell is going on?” She twisted in her seat, peering at the car. Matt. “You couldn’t have told me he was picking us up?” For that, she smacked Emery’s arm. He merely frowned at her, not the least bit bothered.

  “Come on. It’s the easiest way into the station.”

  They got out of the Tesla and met the detective between the two vehicles. There wasn’t another uniform in sight.

  “Thanks for coming.” Matt shook their hands.

  “Thanks for the ride.” Emery strode to the back of the truck.

  “Should you handcuff us first?” Tori had an aversion to cop vehicles of any nature. She’d had her fill already.

  “Easiest and fastest way in. Sorry. We’ve got a tight window to make.” Matt held the door for her while she climbed inside and strapped in. Unlike the marked cars, Matt’s SUV was comfortable and clean, a lot like the man behind the wheel.

  “Won’t the on-duty officers, or, I don’t know, the security cameras see us?” This didn’t make any sense to Tori. There were too many holes. Just how were they supposed to do any sneaking in or out?

  “Well, it just so happens that our security cameras are unreliable since an incident with a hacker.” Matt twisted in his seat, grinning at them as he reversed.

  “I didn’t touch that part of the system.” Emery scowled.

  “You know that. I know that. But the Feds? They don’t know that.” Matt straightened and accelerated, merging into traffic.

  “I think we’re a bad influence on you.” Tori slumped down in her seat, amused by the officer’s shenanigans. She just hoped it didn’t come back to bite him in the ass.

  “You know whatever he tells us we might not be able to tell you?” Emery said.

  “Sure, but you guys will do something with it. These assholes just want to shove paper and insults around. He’s only spoken to his lawyer since you guys left.” Matt slapped the steering wheel.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what the FBI agents had done or said to earn the proverbial middle finger from the detective.

  Tori and Emery kept their heads down while Matt drove them around behind the building and in through an automatic rolling gate. It locked them in a large garage that could hold maybe a half dozen cop cars two abreast and three deep. To their right was a door and two panels of bulletproof glass. If they were actually being processed as they had been earlier, there would be mug shots taken, a pat-down search, among other boring bits of paperwork. This time Matt hustled them past officers too busy shuffling paper to notice them beyond buzzing them through the doors and gates.

  “We’ll get maybe fifteen minutes before they bring the prisoners back from the showers,” Matt said. They strode down a cinder-block hall.

  They entered a large, square space. An empty desk sat against the left wall. Cell doors were set into the cinder block. These were more secluded and secure than the general holding cells Tori and their crew had hung out in. Matt went straight to the desk while Emery and Tori approached the only closed cell.

  “Victor Sleigh?” Emery stopped in his tracks.

  Tori almost ran into his broad back. She peered around him and gasped, her stomach rolling in violent protest. The buzzer rang and the locks on the cell disengaged.

  Emery rushed through first, shoving the bars back, but he pulled up at the edge of the blood pool. Tori was right behind him. The silence was absolute. There wasn’t even a death rattle.

  “What? What happened?” Matt crowded into the small space behind them.

  Victor Sleigh lay awkwardly on his side, his neck slashed. His chest didn’t move. His eyes didn’t blink. The only thing moving was the blood pool as it slowly drained from his body. Emery even scooted back to avoid contact.

  They could never have been here.

  Matt whirled and called out for an officer by name.

  “We have to go,” Emery said, grabbing her arm.

  “But—what was he going to tell us?” Tori glanced around the cell, but there was nothing. The man hadn’t been in lockup long enough to accumulate keepsakes. Everything he’d had with him would have gone into evidence.

  “I don’t know, but we’ve got to get out of here before they decide we were involved.”

  Tori spied a crumpled-up bit of trash under the bunk bed. She cleared the blood pool and body in a single leap, going to her knees and grabbing the balled-up paper.

  “Tori, come on.” Emery scowled at her from the cell door.

  “You have to leave,” Matt said.

  “We know,” Emery replied.

  Tori edged around the body and slipped out after Emery, keeping her hands to herself. The last thing she needed was her prints in the cell.

  “Go back the way you came. They’ll let you out.” Matt grabbed a radio on the desk. “Go.”

  Emery took her hand. This was bad. Very, very bad. Matt had organized for everyone to look the other way for a very narrow bit of time. Someone knew that. And at the perfect moment they’d managed to kill the only person willing to talk. Hell, the death had to have occurred the instant the cameras went down, to have killed him so fast.

  Officers rushed past them, turning a blind eye on their presence. They made it back out of the precinct without anyone stopping them. It was a minor miracle. Someone was going to take the fall for Sleigh’s death; she just hoped it wasn’t Matt. The guy had helped them so much, but that probably made him an easier target.

  “What did you get?” Emery asked. They strolled down the sidewalk almost a mile from the car.

  “I don’t know.” She dug the paper out of her pocket. “They would have cleaned out the cell of everything, even trash, before putting him in there. So whatever this is, it was dropped while he was in the cell. Where do you think he got it from?”

  They paused, Emery peering over her shoulder. She smoothed the thick piece of paper out, studying it.

  It was a ticket. Like, something handed out at concerts or sporting events.

  “Jupiter Hammerheads?” Emery muttered.

  Tori turned the ticket over and over, looking for anything unusual about it other than that it had shared space with Victor at the time of his death.

  Tickets.

  Why did that sound so—familiar?

  “That’s a two-week-old ticket. It’s just trash,” Emery said.

  “No, wait.” She spun, placing her hand against his chest. “That spy ring in New York the FBI broke up.”

  “The Russian one?” The thought lines around his mouth deepened.

  “Yes. They used hats, umbrellas, and tickets—tickets—to communicate with each other. What if he got this from his lawyer, or someone, to leave us a trail?”

  The case was still ongoing. She wasn’t sure how they’d used the tickets or why, but it was a chance.

  “I think . . . I’m not sure that’s applicable here.”

  “Okay, hang with me for a second.” She turned and started walking toward the car, faster now. “Victor knew my background. He knows I was born in Russia. Let’s say he also knew that trying to turn on Evers and getting picked up by the cops meant he’d just risen to the most-wanted-dead list. He could be trying to tell us where to pick up the information. A drop site.”

  Emery’s frown wasn’t the greatest vote of confidence, but he wasn’t stopping her. And maybe she was grasping at straws, but it was something when before they’d had nothing.

  * * *

  Emery crept down the concrete stairs by feel more than sight. The almost full moon shed enough light on the small stadium that he could see across the field easily enough, but there were still too many shadows and places to hide. Sleigh might be dead, but Emery was highly skeptical that they weren’t being watched. What if Sleigh’s final act was to ensure Tori died? Of course Tori wouldn’t wait at home or in the car while he did the pickup.

  They’d chosen to wait for the cover of night to jump the fence into Roger Dean Stadium. This way there were fewer questions, and more importantly no one knew where
they were. He was still skeptical that anything waited for them. Why would Sleigh refuse to help them, then change his mind? It didn’t make any sense. He didn’t have the heart to tell Tori she was grasping at straws, that they were probably not going to find anything, that the ticket was just what it appeared to be: trash.

  “This is the row.” Tori pointed ahead of him, two rows down.

  “I see it.”

  He kept his gaze moving, searching the shadows, ready to throw Tori behind him if someone should take a shot. There were too many places to hide. This close to the field, they were completely exposed. It would be a great setup for a sniper hit. Of course, Tori hadn’t wanted to hear any of that. He could have tried locking her up, but he had no doubt she’d escape and come here by herself. Which was how he wound up agreeing to this idiotic plan. If it came down to it, he’d be her human shield. He’d done stupider things in his life, but none of them were better motivated.

  Where Tori went, he went also. It was the way of things now.

  He edged sideways down the row while she counted the seats out loud until they got to number forty-three. This was it. If someone wanted to hit them, this would be where it would happen. He crouched and pulled out a flashlight, shining it on the bottom of the seat.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said, part relieved and part disappointed.

  “Let me look.”

  “Hold on, just give me a second.”

  He pushed the seat down, searching under the armrests, and got down on his hands and knees. Still nothing except sticky residue. He was about to tell her they’d wasted their time when something glinted gold near the base of one of the legs. Stretching, he reached back, brushing God-only-knew what, until he could get his nails behind a plastic casing.

  “Damn it,” he grumbled.

  Tori had been right.

  He pried the plastic case of an SD card out from the metal support, gripping it in his hand. He’d have felt better if they didn’t find anything. What bomb had Victor Sleigh just dropped in their laps?

  “What is it?” Tori whispered.

  Emery straightened and glanced around the empty stadium. It wasn’t empty. Whatever was on this SD card was worth killing for. That meant it was valuable enough for someone to hang around, waiting to see if it would be picked up.

  “Go.” He pushed Tori back the way they’d come.

  “What is it?” She was excited, like a kid on Christmas, but he wasn’t about to open her casket. There was still a chance this could be a setup.

  “Go now,” he snapped.

  Tori’s spine straightened and she whirled around, no arguments passing her lips. She’d left her hair down, so it bounced and shimmered down her back as she took the stairs two at a time. He stayed right behind her, never letting her get more than a step or two ahead of him. They didn’t speak all the way back to the gate they’d left open, until they were back in his Tesla. Even then he could still feel eyes on him.

  “Emery?”

  He glanced around the empty lot, seeing movement in shadows everywhere. It was his mind playing tricks, but he felt better punching the accelerator. Didn’t even mind the squeal of tires as they shot forward, out onto the main drag and away from whatever danger lurked.

  “Here.” He handed the SD card to her.

  She took it, turning it over in her hands.

  “There’s a tablet under your seat.” He’d stashed several things in the car after their latest round of excitement, just in case. He would never be caught unprepared again.

  Tori dug the cheap tablet out and plugged the SD card into the side slot. It took her a moment to pull up the files. He itched to grab it from her, do it himself, but there were only so many things he could multitask and do well behind the wheel.

  “You’re going to have to look at this. It’s gibberish to me,” Tori said.

  He eased to a stop at a red light and took the tablet from her, flipping to the details view.

  “What the heck are those?” Tori asked, peering over his shoulder.

  “Holy shit . . . FTP connections. A lot of them.” He scrolled through them, noting the numeric categorization. It meant nothing to him right now, but it couldn’t be a difficult code to break.

  “FTP I get, but—what are these?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he tapped one and an Internet browser popped up. More files filled the screen. Emery selected one and opened it. Each FTP file would connect to a new server. A new batch of files. And God only knew what they would contain.

  “I’ll be damned,” Emery muttered.

  The file tried and failed to load, but he knew the extension type. It only loaded in a popular accounting software program.

  Victor Sleigh had given them hundreds of accounting files. For what? Or who?

  The light changed green and he shifted, driving nowhere as fast as he could, his brain working a mile a minute. He could feel Tori’s impatience across the car. He took her hand and kissed her knuckles, thankful for the moments of quiet to focus.

  “Some file transfer systems use a downloadable packet to connect a machine, our tablet for example, to the server. These give us automatic access to whatever’s inside the server.” And it could be anything. Anything at all.

  “Are you serious?” She clutched the tablet to her chest. Information was gold. They lived and died by it.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what do we do with it? Julian and Aiden—”

  “Can’t know.”

  “What?” She stared at him, jaw dropped. He’d never point out to her just how much she and Roni had come to rely on the group. They might fancy themselves two boats adrift on the ocean, but the truth was they’d banded together with the rest of the crew to make something bigger. Better.

  “CJ’s leaving,” he said quietly. That truth still hurt, but he had to think carefully about what they did next. “The FBI will send a new case agent down to oversee us. Julian and Aiden will have to tell them everything they know. If they don’t know about it, they can’t tell the FBI.”

  “So, we keep it a secret?”

  “Maybe. Gabriel has a lot of contacts. Maybe we could use one of his sources to analyze everything once I download it.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. Once their new FBI overlord arrived, things were going to get dicey. He’d have to keep his nose clean to protect not only himself, but Tori.

  “Okay. I’m sure Roni and I might know someone, too. But is this the best plan? I’m not arguing, but really?”

  He pulled into an empty lot and shifted into park. He twisted to face her, draping one arm along the back of her seat.

  “Things are going to get messier. I don’t know why the FBI has kept us in the dark, but I can’t bring myself to trust them when they chose to put the people I care about at risk.” He pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear.

  Right now, nothing mattered more to him than Tori.

  She stared at him for several seconds, as if weighing him and the crew. She was loyal to a fault, even if she didn’t realize it. He’d show her that they were protecting those they cared about, that he had her back.

  “Okay. I’m in then.” She squeezed his hand, one side of her mouth kicking up. “And, I’m pretty sure I love you, too.”

  Those words took the breath right out of his lungs. He stared at her, replaying that moment again in his mind. Tori leaned toward him and he met her halfway, sealing his mouth over hers, drinking her in. Emery could spend a lifetime with her, and it wouldn’t be enough. He’d never seen this one coming.

  Epilogue

  Six weeks later . . .

  Tori watched the second hand make yet another full pass around the clock on the wall above Emery’s desk. He hadn’t glanced up once in five minutes from whatever he was doing. He might be able to kick ass and take names, but a five-year-old could take him out if he was this concentrated on something. She loved his single-minded focus at times, but the man needed some serious situational awareness.

  She ble
w out a breath and grabbed the back of his chair. He blinked back at the screen as she rolled him away from the desk he’d practically chained himself to.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked, staring at her. He had the most adorable, boyish look on his face when he got that entrenched in his work. Of course she’d never tell him that.

  “Just walked in.”

  Lie.

  He probably realized it, but she wasn’t going to call him on the lapse in awareness just like he wouldn’t willingly dig himself a deeper hole. It was no wonder the man worked in a bunker. When he was focused, nothing in the world got through to him. Well, she had gone to some pretty creative lengths to get his attention, and succeeded, but it was always for his own good.

  She plopped down on his lap, letting her legs drape over the arm of the chair, and rested her head on his shoulder. He cradled her closer, shifting until she fit perfectly against him. There was something to be said for having a man with some serious strength in his arms.

  “You’re wet.” He frowned at her bikini.

  She grinned. How nice of him to notice.

  “Want to find out how wet I really am?”

  His gaze narrowed and he frowned. She laughed. Teasing him was her new favorite pastime.

  “Oh, come on. Give it a rest for a bit, okay?” Tori tipped her chin up and batted her eyelashes at him. She tried her best to not take up too much of his time, but she was no saint.

  He held out for a count of three.

  “Fine.” He stroked her leg in an absentminded gesture she adored.

  “What are you working on?”

  “I thought you said to give work a rest.”

  “I’m curious, okay?”

  Emery swiveled the chair, glancing at the door. They’d brought Gabriel in on the secret after downloading all of the files. Victor Sleigh had given them the accounting ledgers. All of them. To every single front business he supplied drugs for. It was a mountain of information, and buried in it were the puzzle pieces to figure out who he’d been working for. Who Evers worked for. But it wasn’t a fast process.