UNDERCOVER TWIN

by LENA DIAZ,

  Rafe let out a shout of laughter. “Conflicted? Now I know you’ve been talking to my therapist wife way too much.”

  Nick grinned. “Maybe. But psycho-girlfriend did have a lot going for her.”

  “Like what?”

  “She was hot.”

  “Everyone you date is hot.”

  “She was a professional cheerleader. And very...limber.”

  Rafe smiled. “You’ve got me there. All I’m saying is that after everything you went through with her, I figured the next time you got serious about a woman you’d pick someone who—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who said we were serious? We only dated a couple of months. That’s way short of serious territory.”

  “Darby and I only dated a couple of weeks before we got engaged.”

  “That’s because her old-fashioned father knew you two had gotten ‘friendly’ and he shamed you into it. Besides, you two knew each other for years before you started dating.”

  Rafe rolled his eyes. “Her father had nothing to do with us getting married. And being on opposite sides in the courtroom doesn’t count as a relationship. Look, all I’m saying is that you need to take a long hard look at your feelings for her before you do something you might regret.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, if she didn’t really matter to you, on a personal level, do you honestly think you would have twisted my arm to get the judge to reduce her bail? And how many DEA agents would have paid to get a car out of the impound lot and would have driven it to the police station for a woman they don’t care about?”

  Nick ground his teeth together. “I never told you about that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” Rafe gave him a smug look. “I have eyes and ears all over this town. That’s part of what makes me a great detective.”

  “Humble, too.”

  Rafe shrugged, obviously not caring about Nick’s insult. “As I was saying, you obviously care more about Heather than you’re willing to admit, even to yourself.”

  “Since when did you become so touchy-feely?”

  “I guess since I married a hot therapist.”

  “Whatever. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Not that I ever did.”

  “But—”

  “Drop it.”

  Rafe held his hands up in a placating gesture. “All right, all right. I’ll drop it. You said Waverly wants you to meet with the task force. You have to have some idea of why he’d want you to do that. And don’t give me the line about apologizing for your girlfriend. That’s weak.”

  Nick let out a deep sigh. Rafe always could read him, like a Jedi knight using the Force to probe his mind. Or was that Spock on Star Trek? Either way, it was damned aggravating.

  “My DEA buddies tell me the task force still has Heather and her sister in its crosshairs,” Nick said. “They think Heather’s sister is running drugs for a dealer operating out of Key West. They think Heather’s been helping her sister move the drugs, and that Heather flushed that kilo to try to avoid the sting. They believe she would have flushed all of the drugs if she’d had enough time.”

  His brother’s eyes narrowed. “She couldn’t have purposely tried to avoid the sting unless she knew about it ahead of time.”

  “Bingo.”

  Rafe swore. “That’s the real reason they suspended you. Not because you’re a terrible judge of character and got mixed up with a girlfriend who may or may not be dealing drugs. They think you tipped her off about the raid.”

  “If I were them, I’d probably think the same thing,” Nick said. “I’ve been practically living in Key West this past year, building my cover to gather intelligence on the drug activity down there. Maybe they figured I’ve gone in a little too deep, that the past few months I spent up here were more than an extended vacation. Maybe they thought I was helping move drugs up the pipeline, and that Heather and Lily were in on it with me.”

  His brother cursed again, impressing Nick. With language like that, Rafe could go undercover as a DEA agent and blend right in with the dealers as if he were one of them. Too bad he’d wasted his talents as a detective and part-time bomb-squad technician in the Saint Augustine Police Department.

  “How can I help?” Rafe asked.

  “Answer me a question. If you were heading up a task force whose sole goal was to catch a drug dealer with ties to Heather and Lily, what would you do right now?”

  “If I was dumb enough to waste my talents as a DEA agent, you mean?”

  Nick grinned. “Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

  “If I believed the girls were a lead to a major drug dealer, I’d keep my distance. I’d wait for the dealer or some of his lackeys to show up.” His gaze shot to Nick. “I’d use the girls as bait.”

  “Exactly.”

  Rafe groaned. “Ah, hell. You want me to keep an eye on your girlfriend for you.”

  “Ex-girlfriend. And I want more than that. I need you to keep her alive.”

  * * *

  HEATHER FINISHED CLEANING the kitchen and stood with her hands braced on the edge of the sink. She stared through the cutout into the family room and shook her head. To say her apartment was a disaster was an understatement. Lily had always been incredibly messy, but this was the worst Heather had ever seen. Lily usually tried to confine her piles of dirty clothes and discarded items to her bedroom. This morning, Heather’s entire apartment looked as if a tornado had gone through it.

  Probably Lily’s way of paying her back for flushing the cocaine.

  Heather’s shoulders slumped. She slogged her way through the mess to the short hallway that led to the two bedrooms. She paused outside the guest bedroom door and tried the knob. Still locked, like when Heather had first gotten home. She hadn’t even seen Lily yet, because her sister was acting like a spoiled brat, hiding behind a locked door with classic rock blasting from the room. Heather banged her fist against the door. Still no answer.

  “Come on, Lily. You can’t ignore me forever. Open up. We need to talk.”

  Heather rested her forehead against the door. Maybe she should give up on her sister for now and get that shower she’d been longing for since she’d gotten home. The only reason she hadn’t taken a shower already was because when she’d walked into her apartment the smell of rotting garbage coming from the kitchen had nearly knocked her over. How Lily could have ignored that smell was beyond her. It had permeated the entire apartment.

  After taking out the garbage, Heather had started setting the rest of the kitchen to rights and one thing had led to another until she’d ended up scrubbing the entire room. Now the thought of a hot shower sounded like heaven. She might even soak her aching, tired muscles in that bubble bath she’d been wanting since Friday. She hurried into her bedroom, shut the door and took off her clothes.

  * * *

  NICK PAUSED IN the opening to the conference room, surprised to see an assistant district attorney sitting at the table, along with another man Nick had never met. His boss, Zack Waverly, was at the head of the table and motioned for Nick to come in.

  Nick shut the door and took a seat beside his boss.

  “Nick,” Waverly said, “you already know ADA Tom Hicks. He only has an hour window before his next court appointment next door. That’s why we met over here instead of at the DEA office.”

  Nick leaned over the table and shook Hicks’s hand.

  “And this,” Waverly said, motioning to the man sitting at the other end of the table, “this is Special Agent Michael Rickloff. He works out of the Miami office and is heading up the Key West Task Force. He’s the one who called and asked us to perform the sting on the club Friday night.”

  Nick shook Rickloff’s hand. “Miami? You’re not from Key West?”

  “Miami native, born and raised. Key West is my current target,
thus the name of the task force I put together. A major drug pipeline is coming up from the Keys into my city, and as you found out, even as far north as Saint Augustine. I want it stopped. And I need your help to do it.”

  Nick turned to Waverly. “My help? Is my suspension lifted?”

  “Assuming you agree to Rickloff’s plan, yes.”

  “But the internal investigation will continue,” Hicks said. “And if we find anything that concerns us, you’ll be pulled from the operation.”

  So that was why the ADA was here? To warn Nick to be a good boy? If it weren’t for the carrot of having his suspension lifted, he would have gotten up right then and walked out.

  Ignoring Hicks, he focused on Rickloff. “What plan? What operation?”

  “When you raided the club for us, we were obviously hoping you’d find more than a knapsack with four kilos of cocaine. We were hoping you’d catch Lily Bannon meeting her contact here in north Florida. I wanted a bigger fish than Miss Bannon, to ultimately lead me to the head of the pipeline. Since that didn’t happen, I need another way to bring my target down. That’s where you come in.”

  Nick crossed his arms and sat back. “I’m listening.”

  * * *

  AFTER PAMPERING HERSELF with a shower and a long soak in the tub, Heather was finally starting to feel normal again. She’d clipped her nails short the way she liked them and filed them smooth. She’d styled her hair into long curly waves that hung down her back, and she was wearing one of her favorite pairs of slacks—the soft, copper-colored chinos, with an exquisite pair of Italian leather sandals cushioning her feet—clothes she rarely got to wear because she was usually working.

  Her typical work clothes consisted of T-shirts and jeans, things she didn’t mind getting dirty or torn if she had to duck behind a Dumpster to avoid her mark catching her with her camera.

  Thinking about work reminded her of the disastrous phone call with her client she’d made a few minutes ago—correction, former client. He’d been furious that she hadn’t called him Saturday, and no amount of apologizing or telling him there was an emergency had soothed him. Now she’d have to work extra hard to be even more frugal until she could get another big case lined up.

  Determined not to think about her business and financial woes for now, she straightened the bathroom and went to work on her bedroom. Lily must have searched through all of Heather’s drawers hoping to find some hidden money, because every single one of them was hanging open. Heather sighed and straightened the mess, then headed into the living room to tackle the mess in there.

  She stood in indecision, not sure where to start. Not only were there piles of laundry, papers and DVDs lying around wherever Lily had chosen to drop them, but some of the drawers and doors in the entertainment center on the far wall were hanging open.

  She blinked and studied the room more carefully. Was it a coincidence that her apartment was so horribly trashed, after everything that had happened? This wasn’t a typical “Lily mess.” It was far worse. The apartment looked like it had been...searched. She’d worried about Greary and his “employer” finding out about the fate of the drugs. Had they broken into her apartment and searched it? She gasped as an even worse thought occurred to her. What if Lily had been home when they broke in?

  Her entire body started shaking. She whirled around and rushed back into the hall. She twisted the knob on Lily’s door. Still locked. She pounded on the door, praying the awful, sinking feeling inside of her was because she was overtired and overreacting.

  “Open up, Lily! Please. I need to know you’re okay.” She pounded on the door again. No answer. “Are...are you in there?”

  Nothing except for the beat of the music, the same music that had been playing earlier, as if it was on a constant loop playing over and over.

  Oh, no.

  She ran to the kitchen, her gaze darting to every corner, as if someone might be hiding, ready to pounce on her. She yanked the junk drawer open beside the stove and grabbed the skeleton key before running back to her sister’s room. She shoved the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

  Shock had her frozen, pressing her hand against her throat. Everything in the room was shredded, as if someone had taken a razor-sharp knife and gone on a rampage. Nothing was spared. Not the drapes on the windows, the clothes in the closet that was standing wide open or even the comforter on top of the bed. Everything had been destroyed with a violence that sent a wave of fear crashing through her. And there, on the bed, was a small white piece of paper. A note.

  When Heather read what it said, she whirled around and fled from the apartment.

  Chapter Three

  “You’ve been building an undercover presence in the Keys for quite some time,” Rickloff said.

  Nick shrugged. “About eight months, off and on, in preparation for a major op next year. We’ve been coordinating with the Key West office on that.”

  Rickloff waved his hand as though that was inconsequential. “That operation is a long ways off. My need is more immediate. I need you to use your cover now, on my task force.”

  “The Key West office is okay with this?”

  Rickloff exchanged a glance with Waverly. “I haven’t notified them yet, but I will. That’s not for you to worry about. And I’m not asking much here. I just want you to help me draw out the big fish.”

  A gnawing suspicion started in Nick’s mind, the suspicion that Rickloff wasn’t being honest with him. Why would a task force out of Miami operate in the Keys without coordinating with the head of the Key West office?

  “All right,” Nick said. “I’ll bite. Who’s the big fish?”

  “Jose Gonzalez.”

  “The Jose Gonzalez? The top of the food chain in the Keys?”

  Rickloff nodded.

  Nick snorted and shook his head. “Exactly how do you plan to get Gonzalez? The man has never even had a speeding ticket. Everyone knows he’s dirty, that he’s the biggest dealer around, but no one can ever get any evidence against him.”

  Rickloff leaned forward, his dark eyes blazing with excitement. “That’s because they’ve never had the right bait. We’ve got his girlfriend up on charges that could put her in prison for years. If we make a deal with her in exchange for her cooperation, I think we’ll be able to finally get enough evidence on Gonzalez to bring him down.”

  Nick had feared this would be Rickloff’s angle. He’d expected it. But that was before he knew Gonzalez was involved. Using the girls as bait with someone like that was unthinkable, far too dangerous.

  He looked at his boss, expecting him to speak up, but Waverly remained silent.

  Nick cleared his throat and forced himself to speak in a reasonable tone of voice. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying Lily Bannon is Gonzalez’s girlfriend? And that you want to somehow use her to bring Gonzalez down?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. The two of them met about six months ago on a trip up here in north Florida. They’ve been a hot item ever since. Our CIs tell us Gonzalez actually thinks he’s in love with Miss Bannon. We want to use that against him.”

  “Are these confidential informants people you’ve been working with for a long time? You trust them?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then tell me how, exactly, you think you can use Gonzalez’s affection for Lily Bannon against him?”

  “Simple. We want you to be her contact in Key West. We’ll make a deal with her. We’ll drop the drug charges if she gathers incriminating evidence against Gonzalez and gives it to you. As soon as we have enough evidence to make a case against him, you’ll pull Miss Bannon out. In return for your cooperation, we drop your suspension.”

  Nick turned to Waverly. “You do realize this is insane?”

  Waverly turned a dull red. “It’s risky, yes, but I think it could work.�
�

  Nick shook his head. “The problem here is that neither of you fully understand who you’re dealing with. Gonzalez is a twisted psychopath. All the other dealers fear him. If anyone crosses him, in any way, he kills them. I don’t care how much you think he may care about Lily Bannon. If he suspects for one second that she turned on him, that she’s providing evidence to the DEA, she’s dead. And exactly what makes you think you can trust an alcoholic and a junkie to hold herself together for this kind of operation? She’ll crack under the pressure. And when she does, Gonzalez will pounce. There’s only one outcome from this. Disaster. And I want no part of it.”

  He scooted his chair back from the table and stood. “I’d rather stay suspended than risk a woman’s life. I’ll take the paid vacation while Internal Affairs investigates me. And I assure you I’ll be contacting Lily Bannon to advise her not to help you. It’s far too dangerous.”

  Rickloff shot up from his chair. “You’ll do no such thing. We need Miss Bannon’s cooperation.”

  “Don’t count on it.” Nick strode to the door and yanked it open. He froze when he saw who was walking through the squad room toward him.

  Rafe. And Heather.

  Heather looked so pale the freckles on her face stood out in stark relief.

  Nick met them halfway. “What happened? Are you okay, Heather?”

  She shook her head but didn’t say anything.

  Rafe reached into his pocket and pulled out a clear evidence bag with a piece of paper inside. “Lily Bannon has been abducted.”

  * * *

  THE CONFERENCE ROOM quickly filled with a mix of DEA agents and police officers. Captain Buresh—Rafe’s boss—barked out orders, along with Waverly and Rickloff.

  Nick stared at the note through the plastic bag.

  I’ve got what you want. You’ve got what I want. Let’s trade.

  The most obvious interpretation was that Gonzalez had abducted Lily and wanted to trade her for his kilos of cocaine.

  So much for Rickloff’s theory that Gonzalez was in love with Lily.