No Good Deed

by Allison Brennan

  After dinner, Jimmy called Nicole into his office. Joseph of course came with her—she wasn’t 100 percent sure she trusted Jimmy, and on the eve of her trip east to Quantico and the DEA training program, she couldn’t fuck this up.

  “You may have noticed Tobias wasn’t at dinner tonight.”

  Her chest fell. “Uncle Jimmy, you have to do something about him. He’s going to screw everything up!”

  “I’m taking him to Mexico for a while. For his own good. I know I’ve failed in a small way … I should have found a solution for his sexual proclivities.”

  “You should have killed him,” Joseph said.

  Jimmy growled. Actually growled at Joseph. “Remember your place, boy.”

  Joseph wasn’t scared of Jimmy. That worried Nicole. But Joseph wasn’t stupid. He knew how to stroke her uncle’s ego. “Your plan to infiltrate the DEA is fucking brilliant, but Tobias has put everyone at risk.”

  “He is my son,” Jimmy said. “My flesh and blood. Which is far more than you.”

  Nicole would die if Jimmy hurt Joseph. “Uncle Jimmy, Joseph just doesn’t want me or anyone else to be found out. We’ve painstakingly planned this, I got into the DEA! This is a long game, remember? Remember what you always taught me? That those who can see the future will win the game? Each move is a key part of the strategy, and I can’t keep cleaning up Toby’s messes.”

  At first she thought Uncle Jimmy was going to slap her, but he surprised her. “You’re right, Nicole. You can’t be responsible for Toby anymore. He is my son, and I will fix this. I’m taking him to my house in Mexico. Teach him control. With you in the DEA, and Joseph here to run the operation, I can take the time I couldn’t before.” He looked at Joseph. “I can trust you.” It was a statement, but his eyes questioned.

  “You know where my loyalties lie.”

  Jimmy looked at Nicole. “Yes, I do.”

  “Is there a mess to clean up?”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Then I will do it. I will not risk Nicole.”

  “You are a good man, Joseph,” Jimmy said. “And I know, while Nicole is gone, that you’ll be an example to Tobias.”

  Tobias would never be Joseph. He didn’t have it in him. But it was clear, from Jimmy’s unspoken words, that Joseph was now Tobias’s keeper.

  “You can’t let my mom raise the kid,” Nicole said, almost surprising herself.

  “I won’t be gone long. I’m looking forward to having a little girl around.”

  “It’s a girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep Tobias away from her.”

  “He doesn’t like little girls, Nicole. He’s not a fucking pedophile.”

  Maybe not, but he was still a sick bastard.

  “Actually,” Jimmy said, “I think the baby will be good for Tobias. I can leverage her to keep him in line. He’s very excited about being a big brother.”

  Big brother with a twenty-six-year age difference. Sick.

  Jimmy handed Joseph an address. “Fortunately, he’s gotten smarter. He picked up a prostitute this time, took her out of town.”

  Joseph pocketed the paper. He turned to Nicole and said, “I’ll be back before you leave.” He kissed her and walked out, without giving Jimmy a second look.

  “You trust him,” Jimmy said.

  “With my life,” Nicole replied.

  Thirty minutes later, Nicole was cleaning up in the kitchen, worried about Joseph, anxious about reporting to Quantico tomorrow. The entire application process felt surreal. She thought for sure that someone would uncover her connection to Jimmy Hunt. But he was her aunt’s husband, and she simply left her aunt off the paperwork. Small details were changed, and they had someone in the DEA to smooth things over.

  So far, it had worked.

  Aunt Maggie followed Nicole into the kitchen. “We’re so proud of you Nicole,” she said, her voice mocking.

  Nicole turned to face her, keeping her expression blank. She was more scared of Maggie than Jimmy. She couldn’t wait until she had the power. Then they would fear her.

  “Remember, Nicole—family first. It’s your job to protect Tobias. To protect all of us—including your new sister.”

  “Half sister,” she said without thinking. She straightened her spine. She was twenty-three years old. She was about to train in the DEA. She was about to gain all the power in the family; why was she scared of this petite middle-aged woman who might weight a hundred pounds wet?

  “Aunt Mags, how could you be okay with this?”

  “Our plans?”

  “No—with Uncle Jimmy and my mom. The baby. It’s—” She bit her tongue.

  “You can say it.”

  “It’s sick.”

  Maggie walked over to the cabinet and took out a bottle of tequila. “I’ve always hated Scotch,” she said. She poured a shot glass for both her and Nicole. Nicole wasn’t a big drinker, but you simply did not refuse a drink from Maggie.

  Maggie held up the glass, waited for Nicole to do the same. Then she said, “Family.”

  “Family,” Nicole said and they both drained the tequila.

  “Men are pliable,” Aunt Mags said and put down her glass. “Make them think they have the power, make them believe it, and you can do anything you want. I like Joseph; he’s a good man and he’s now family. But you are the brains of your generation, just as I am the brains of mine. Together, Nicole, we’ll control the entire operation. If I didn’t allow Jimmy to have his fun and games, I wouldn’t have the freedom to do what needs to be done.”

  Nicole didn’t understand what she was saying. Her expression must have conveyed that to Maggie, because her aunt continued. “It was my idea for Jimmy to take Tobias to Mexico. That gives me control over Tami and the kid. That kid is mine, not hers. I will raise her, I will train her, and she’ll take after you. You’ll have twenty-five years, you’ll set up our organization and take it to the top. That girl will continue the legacy. We need to. It’s our responsibility. Once you establish the network—I don’t know how long it’ll take, but this isn’t a quick score. We’re in this for the long haul. Once you have the network in place, you and Joseph will have your paradise, whatever it happens to be. By the time you’re my age, you can retire and oversee the operation. Build the family. Build our empire. And watch it blossom.”

  “I know what to do.” Yet Nicole couldn’t imagine her aunt retiring. She liked control. It had been a while since Nicole had seen Maggie popping pills, and the woman was sharper—smarter—now. Not only were things changing, but people were changing.

  “I thought for a minute that you weren’t ready.”

  It was a veiled threat. The tone more than the words.

  Nicole said, “I’ve been preparing for this since my dad was killed by those bastards. I am not going to fail.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I have ten minutes, sir,” Chris Rollins said over the Skype connection they’d established with him through Nate’s contact at Fort Hood. Rollins was in Afghanistan and it was the middle of the night there, but he’d just gotten off duty. “Our connection isn’t stable.”

  “Thank you for agreeing to speak with us,” Hans said. Lucy and Hans were sitting in a small communications room. Zach had joined them to establish and monitor the secure Skype connection. They had good equipment on this end, but overseas it was sketchy. “I’m Assistant Director Hans Vigo with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is Special Agent Lucy Kincaid. Are you aware that your sister, former DEA Agent Nicole Rollins, escaped from a prison transport yesterday?”

  “That’s what my commanding officer told me, sir. She hasn’t contacted me, and she won’t.”

  “Did you speak with ASAC Samantha Archer three months ago, shortly after the arrest of your sister?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rollins replied.

  “And you told her you hadn’t spoken to your sister in years.”

  “Correct. I haven’t spoken to or seen Nicole since I enlisted in the army through
the ROTC. I was eighteen, she was sixteen. We were not close growing up, and we do not speak now.”

  Lucy glanced at her notes. “According to Nicole’s files, she asked for a transfer to Houston DEA three years ago in order to be closer to family. Specifically, you and her ailing mother.”

  “Agent Kincaid, my mother lives in Los Angeles. We moved to LA after my father left the service. He became an LAPD officer and was killed in the line of duty the year before I enlisted. My mother stayed because that’s where her family is. Where she was born and raised.”

  The way he said family had Lucy’s instincts twitching.

  “And your mother didn’t move to Austin when you were stationed at Fort Hood three years ago?”

  “No,” he said, incredulous. “I rarely speak to my mom. We don’t get along.”

  “Is your mother dead or alive?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Two years ago, Nicole took three weeks off to take care of her mother’s estate and funeral. It was the only vacation she had taken since transferring to San Antonio.”

  “Agent Kincaid, I haven’t seen or spoken to my mother in four or five years. If she died, no one told me.”

  Chris Rollins had no reason to lie, but Lucy couldn’t reconcile all these falsehoods in Nicole’s personnel file. “Chris, was Nicole a habitual liar while you were growing up?”

  “Liar? Yeah, you could say that.”

  There was a lot of hostility in his voice.

  “It seems we have a lot of misinformation in our file,” Lucy said. “It would greatly help us if you could clear up a few things, particularly how your father’s death impacted you and Nicole.”

  Christ stared at them, a slight delay in the video feed freezing his disgusted expression. “Your file is a mess. I can’t believe anyone let her into the DEA in the first place. I assumed all federal law enforcement agencies did extensive background checks. No one talked to me about Nicole, because I would have told them she was fucked up. Excuse me, ma’am, but it’s the truth.”

  Lucy flipped rapidly through Nicole’s file. “Sergeant Rollins, during Nicole’s application process sixteen years ago, an Agent Adam Dover contacted you via phone while you were stationed in Iraq. He indicated that you had given him no reason your sister shouldn’t be admitted into the DEA agent training program.”

  “I never spoke to any federal agent in the DEA or the FBI about my sister prior to three months ago when Agent Archer contacted me about my sister’s arrest. I told her I didn’t care, wasn’t surprised, and I had to leave—we were in the process of breaking down camp.”

  “What would you have said had you been interviewed?” Hans asked.

  “I would have told the truth, sir. That Nicole is ill suited for any law enforcement position because she has no respect for authority.”

  “Did she have a problem with your father? He was in the military and then a police officer.”

  “Nicole worshipped our father. I used to as well.”

  “Used to?”

  “Until I learned that he was a bad cop. None of that will be in his file, because no one knew until he was dead. But my uncle Jimmy certainly believed it.” He paused. “You don’t know about Jimmy, do you?”

  “No, Sergeant, we don’t,” Hans said.

  “Jimmy Hunt. My mother’s brother-in-law. Born and raised in LA. He said once, after my dad was killed, that he’d lost his best inside man. I didn’t know it at the time—but I later learned that Jimmy was a narcotics dealer. My father targeted his competition and protected Jimmy’s people on the street. I got out of LA as fast as I could. Army ROTC saved my life, sir.”

  How Hunt and John Rollins operated was almost identical to how Nicole worked both sides in the DEA.

  “Can you prove any of this?” Hans asked.

  “I left home twenty-two years ago and have never been back. Uncle Jimmy told me if I walked out, I was no longer part of the family. I couldn’t prove anything, just talk around the dinner table. Truthfully, I didn’t want to know.” He paused. “Jimmy implied that if I said anything about what I thought I knew, I’d be dead. Since my dad was a corrupt cop, I figured there were others. Jimmy’s charismatic, smart. I’m not surprised that Nicole fell for his line of bullshit. She has no moral code to speak of. And—” Again, he hesitated.

  “Anything you can tell us will help us find her.”

  “I don’t see how this helps, but Jimmy told us that the DEA had killed our dad. That they were so gun-happy and empowered by the war on drugs that they would kill innocent people if they could get at one of their targets. Collateral damage, he said. That was my dad. I wanted to believe it—until I found out the truth.”

  “There was nothing in the LAPD report on your father’s death that indicated the DEA was involved in the shooting,” Hans said. “It would have come out in Nicole’s application process.”

  “I don’t know what was in the report. And you know what else should have come out but didn’t? Me. No one spoke to me. When I heard Nicole got into UCLA I thought that maybe she was turning her life around somehow, that she’d get out from under my uncle’s thumb, but it didn’t happen.”

  “How do you know this if you haven’t spoken to her in twenty-two years?” Lucy asked.

  “Fair enough. Like I said, I don’t talk to my mom much, but when she calls, she blabs. Nothing incriminating, but she once said that Nicole was Jimmy’s bright, shining star. I didn’t ask what that meant. You should definitely look into Uncle Jimmy’s record. Jimmy, not James. Jimmy Hunt. I heard on the news, or read in the paper, that he had to leave the country, he was wanted for questioning. I never talked to my mother about it—in fact, I don’t think I’ve spoken to her since. She probably bolted with him.”

  Chris turned to listen to someone offscreen, then turned back to Hans and Lucy. “Agents, I really need to go. If you have more questions, contact my commanding officer.”

  “Thank you for your time.” Hans nodded to Zach to shut down the call. “Agent Novak in LA is going to be interested in this information.”

  Zach said, “If you don’t need me, I need to bring Juan some papers at the hospital.”

  Lucy reached out and touched his arm. “Is Nita okay?”

  “I don’t know. It was a lot worse than Juan told me this morning. They almost lost Nita and the baby. The baby is healthy, but Nita is still sick and they don’t know why.”

  “Would Juan be up for visitors later?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Zach left, and Hans got on the phone. “Assistant Director Hans Vigo for Supervisory Special Agent Blair Novak.”

  While he waited to be connected, he said to Lucy, “What office was Dover assigned to when he allegedly interviewed Chris Rollins?”

  “Los Angeles, the same office that recruited Nicole out of college.”

  “Your report said she moved around a lot.”

  “Yes. She asked for more transfers than she received, but she moved several times before landing in Houston. She didn’t ask—at least not officially—to be transferred to San Antonio, but San Antonio is under Houston leadership.”

  “Call Noah. Tell him exactly what you told me, and then ask him to talk to Rick about any investigations into the LA or Houston DEA offices over the past fifteen years.”

  She was going to ask why, but Hans began talking to Agent Novak, and it was clear they had known each other for a long time.

  Lucy left Hans and went to her desk. She picked up the phone, but realized she was out in the open. Anyone could listen to her call, and she remembered Kane’s admonition that there was someone corrupt in her office. She didn’t want to believe it was anyone on her team, but what did she really know about these people?

  Zach had already left, so she went into Juan’s office and closed the door. Took a deep breath, feeling out of place in her boss’s office, especially without permission. But Juan had an open-door policy and she needed this conversation to be strictly confidential.
Just in case. Juan’s office was neat but it was obvious he’d left in the middle of work. Files were stacked on the desk, the blotter had a stack of messages, and on the short credenza behind his chair were the squad’s open case files. Most information was routed through the computer system, but so much was gathered from external sources they needed to maintain paper files, which would later be digitally archived.

  She picked up the phone and dialed Noah’s direct line.

  “Armstrong,” he answered briskly.

  “Noah, it’s Lucy.”

  “I was going to call you.”

  “News about Agent Dunbar?”

  “Not exactly. Do you have something?”

  “Hans wants you to talk to Rick about past investigations into the Los Angeles or Houston DEA offices, going back fifteen years.” She told him about the conversation with Chris Rollins, Agent Adam Dover’s false report, and the rumor about Nicole’s father possibly being a corrupt cop. “Sergeant Rollins also said he’d heard his uncle, Jimmy Hunt of Los Angeles, had fled the country to avoid arrest. Hans is working on getting information about Hunt now.”

  She could hear Noah writing everything down. “I’m seeing Rick in an hour, we’ll talk about this. I need your help on something.”

  “Anything.”

  “Agent Dunbar’s computer was cloned—his killer copied his hard drive. It was password-protected, he probably couldn’t crack the code on sight, but he was able to copy all the data.”

  “To bring to a hacker.”

  “Exactly. They didn’t take the laptop, and there was no sign that it was tampered with, no sign that the killer went through the house. He may not have known that there’s a log generated for every action—even copying the hard drive. He must have brought his own equipment.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “I have a copy of all the data on Dunbar’s laptop. I’m going through the financials because I’m familiar with Dunbar’s investigation, but there are hundreds of emails, memos, and reports and nothing has popped out at me as being important to Rollins or her people. Some of it is public information or soon to be made public, such as a copy of the entire report into Adeline Worthington and her real estate and money laundering partner James Everett, plus Everett’s statements. Everett is already in witness protection, and nothing on Dunbar’s computer relates to his whereabouts. We’ve contacted the other witnesses who may be in jeopardy—most of them are in DC. The marshals are taking point on protection. So far, going through these memos, there is nothing they couldn’t get through a less violent approach.”