Re/Leased (Doms of the FBI Book 5)

by Michele Zurlo

  “Fine, but don’t pull that shit again. The next time you call me, it had better be because you want to talk to me.” Hardness edged his tone.

  She heaved a dramatic sigh. “Then I probably should delete your number.”

  “Be good, Sugar. We’re going to have a long talk when I get back.”

  Rather than respond—he sucked at listening to things he didn’t want to hear—she ended the call. Half expecting him to call back, she watched her phone until the screen went black. It did not ring. After a few minutes, she realized how pathetic it was to wait for his call, and she shoved it back into her purse. The rest of the morning passed uneventfully. At lunchtime, she slung her bag over her shoulder. She’d brought a half-dozen brownie chunk cupcakes to share. Nothing improved a dessert dish like adding brownies.

  She stopped when she saw Keith striding toward her. Mr. Calder was with him, as was another man who was unfamiliar. Mr. Calder knew that David was out of the office, so why had he brought people to see him? She put on a friendly smile worthy of any professional assistant. “Gentlemen, how can I help you?”

  Keith’s granite face betrayed nothing, but the other man looked guilty. Mr. Calder regarded her with smugness and glee. “I think you’ve helped yourself to enough, Ms. Sullivan.” He motioned Keith and his partner forward. “Agent Rossetti, Agent Adair, arrest her.”

  They stepped forward. Agent Adair said, “Autumn Sullivan, you’re under arrest for fraud and embezzlement. You have the right to remain silent.”

  Keith took handcuffs from his pocket and locked one around her wrist. He leaned down and growled. “Ask for a lawyer, and then shut up.” While Agent Adair finished Mirandizing her, Keith snapped the other cuff on. He’d handcuffed her in front. He took the sweater from the back of her chair and draped it over the cuffs. At least he preserved some of her dignity while escorting her out of the building.

  Mr. Calder followed, beaming the whole way. “I knew David would find out who did this, and now he’s off finding where you’ve hidden the money. It’s over, Ms. Sullivan. You’re going to prison for a long, long time.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Calder.” Agent Adair dropped back, putting distance between Mr. Calder and Autumn.

  Mr. Calder laughed, almost maniacally. “You have tons of evidence. It’s all in the box of papers I gave you. David had it at his apartment, hidden in a closet so the little hussy wouldn’t find it. She thought she could use her feminine charms to sway him, but he was too smart for that trash.”

  Keith helped her into the back seat of his car. “Don’t pay attention to him.”

  Don’t pay attention? The car door closed with the same finality she’d soon hear on a jail cell. How could she ignore the fact that David had fabricated evidence to send her to prison for stealing three million dollars? No wonder he’d saved her from being arrested yesterday. It made sense now. He’d wanted the arrest to be for this. The car pulled away from the building, and all the employees on their lunch break gathered on the sidewalk to gape and gawk.

  A normal person would cry, but she’d done enough of that yesterday. David had obviously found her guilty before he’d stepped foot inside the front door. When he hadn’t found anything incriminating, he’d made it up—and he’d enlisted Malcolm’s tech genius to help. She supposed she deserved it for trying to have a different kind of life from the one her father had raised her to have.

  “Keith?”

  “Don’t say anything, Autumn. I have to report every word.”

  She had to know. “How bad is it?”

  “It’s bad. Did I hear you ask for a lawyer?”

  Agent Adair chimed in. “I did. I heard it. She wants a lawyer. Isn’t your fiancée a lawyer?”

  “She’s a prosecutor. Autumn needs a defense attorney.”

  “Autumn needs a public defender,” she corrected. “Because Autumn is unemployed.”

  They took her to the Detroit field office for processing, and very soon she found herself alone in a jail cell awaiting arraignment, trial, or sentencing. Autumn sat on her bunk, stared at the floor, and thought about the kind of hate that would drive a man to do the things David had done to her.

  ________

  “He did what?” David closed his eyes and counted to ten. The day had not gone well, but he and Jesse had expected this to happen. Bankers in the Cayman Islands prided themselves on discretion. It would take several days and much bribe money to chip away at that confidentiality.

  “Your dad went into your place, found the evidence you’d gathered condemning Autumn, and had her arrested. Keith Rossetti walked her out. He put a shirt or something over the cuffs so people wouldn’t see them.” The static came to a crescendo before the line cleared. Dean added, “I know you want to come back, but don’t. As soon as the judge sets bail, I’ll post it. I called a friend of mine who agreed to represent her, so she has a fantastic lawyer. You’ll do more good if you stay there and find evidence to exonerate her.”

  Dean was right—David wanted to rush back so he could be by her side. She no doubt blamed him. In addition to being afraid, she would feel betrayed—or this would reinforce her decision to cut him from her life. He had no choice but to stay. The only way to prove his love and loyalty would be to make this problem go away.

  “Dean? Make sure she knows, okay? Tell her why I’m here.” The call dropped, so David didn’t know if Dean heard his request, but he trusted his buddy to take care of Autumn.

  He punched the wall, putting a hole through the thin wallboard in their hotel room. Jesse peered at him curiously. “What’s Autumn done now?”

  “My fucking father had her arrested. ‘Give him a chance,’ she said. ‘He’s not that bad,’ she said. I shouldn’t have listened to her. Asshole hasn’t changed at all. He tricked her into calling me, and I told him that I was closing in on the money.” He jerked his hand from the hole in the wall and examined the cuts on his knuckles.

  Jesse looked at his fist. “Flex it, dumbass.”

  He did, making sure nothing was broken. “I’ve hit harder things.”

  “How did your dad get the evidence?”

  “The apartment where I’m staying belongs to him. I’ve warned him to stay out, but he doesn’t. He comes in whenever he wants, and apparently, he’d taken to going through my things.” He flexed his fist again, but the fading pain wasn’t strong enough to distract him from the rage boiling in his veins. “He’s dead to me. Promises to my mother be damned. This is unforgivable. I told him that I’d cleared her.”

  Jesse wrapped ice in a towel and handed it to David. “But you’ll finish out the case so you can clear Autumn. Let’s switch tactics. We tried being nice, but maybe we need to take a leaf from Autumn’s book.”

  Breaking in was a last resort move, a pis aller, because it would burn a bridge they might need for other cases. Just by suggesting it, Jesse was proving once again that friendship came first, not that David had ever doubted it. There would be time later to cultivate other contacts. “Are you sure?”

  “I have the blueprints already. I stashed them in the lining of my suitcase.” Jesse’s eyes gleamed. “I love this part.”

  “So does Autumn. I kind of wish she was here.” On this beautiful Caribbean island—they’d rent a house and spend most of the time naked.

  Jesse extracted the blueprints and spread them on the table of the hotel room’s patio. “I know, Romeo. Get your head out of the clouds. We need to figure out entry and exit points, and then we need to case it to check out the security.”

  David put distracting thoughts on the back burner and studied the plans. The next morning found him sitting at a table outside a café, sipping iced tea as he digested breakfast. Though he wore sunglasses, he still squinted against the bright tropical sun. Jesse emerged from a shop down the street, a plastic bag with whatever tourist item he’d bought to fit in dangling from one finger. He took the seat opposite David.

  The brim of Jesse’s baseball cap shaded his buddy’s eyes, though he also
wore sunglasses. When staking out a location with the intent to break in, it was best not to seem like they were watching the place. “Too many.” Jesse muttered, referring to the guards patrolling the place. “The shops on either side have incredible security. The bank definitely thought ahead with that.”

  “They probably own the storefronts so they could install whatever kind of security they want.” David drummed his fingers against his knee. “It’s clever. Keep that in mind for next time we consult on bank security for a bank that’s not in a stand-alone building.”

  “I think our best bet is going in when they’re open for normal hours. You cause a distraction, and I’ll sneak into an empty office and hack their system.” Jesse fell silent, assessing all the problems with the plan. “It’s a long shot that I’ll be able to hack it fast enough.”

  “Charm offensive,” David suggested. “Marlene, the account rep we met with last night, kept playing with her hair and looking at you.”

  “You want me to get into her place, see if I can find her logon information?”

  David eyeballed his buddy critically. What he proposed wasn’t out of the ordinary, but it could cross some lines that Jesse might not want to cross. “She wasn’t unattractive.”

  “She had a nice shape. I’m not opposed to loving and leaving.”

  “You never are.” David snorted.

  “I believe in love at first sight,” Jesse said. “When I see the woman I’m meant to spend my life with, I’ll know immediately—like you did with Autumn.”

  David removed his sunglasses so that Jesse couldn’t mistake his reaction. “I didn’t fall in love with her the first time we met.”

  “No—you fell for her when you saw her picture. Meeting her just confirmed it.”

  He’d been struck by her beauty, and the melancholy hiding deep in her eyes had tugged at his heartstrings. He hadn’t fallen in love. Even now, he cared for her deeply, but that wasn’t the same four-letter word. “I liked her. It’s different.”

  “You loved her.” Jesse set his sunglasses on the table, the gesture communicating that the gloves were off. “It’s in your voice when you talk about her, and it’s guided your entire investigation. Frankie thinks you took the case because you wanted to get closer to Autumn, and the promise to your mother was a convenient excuse. This isn’t the first time your old man has contacted you, asking for help. You fell in love with her the moment you saw her picture. You’re just too chicken-shit to admit it.”

  “She’s kept things from me.”

  “More excuses, Dave. You’ve known her for a little over two weeks, and she came with a fairly blank background. That means you had to get to know her the old-fashioned way—through spending time together and actually talking.” Jesse hooked an arm over the back of his chair, slouching like an alley cat. He appeared relaxed, but he was ready to shred someone at a moment’s notice. “Throw away all the stuff related to this case and look at what’s left.”

  What was left when his questions were gone? Simple—a woman who’d freely given her submission and her heart. Hard truths smacked David like a lead-lined bat. “She told me that she loves me.”

  “And so naturally you ignored it, strong-armed her into justifying her actions Thursday even though you knew what motivated her, and then you released her.”

  Though sarcasm dripped from Jesse’s words and left a palpable slime trail, David didn’t try to avoid it. “And then I apologized and told her that her father was a kidnapper. It’s all she has, and I tried to take it from her. She’s right. I hate my father, and I didn’t even try to figure out how she could blindly love the man who raised her.” He’d devastated her, and a few hours later, he’d been on a plane.

  “Now that I’ve sufficiently torn you down, are you going to admit you believe in love at first sight?” Jesse smirked because sometimes he was a jerk, and sometimes David needed his head jerked out of his ass.

  He’d uttered the words before to a few long-term girlfriends, but what he’d felt for them paled by comparison to his feelings for Autumn. This was love. “Yeah. I do.”

  “Great.” Not one to gloat for long, Jesse switched topics. “Marlene gave me her number. I’m going to see if she wants to meet for lunch. I’ll pass her cell phone to you. Malcolm can talk you through the hack. Just be sure to get it back to me as soon as possible. If we get what we need, then I’ll end it there and we can grab a flight back. If not, then I’ll extend the date so you can search her house.”

  They’d run these kinds of protocols on investigations before. It was fairly straightforward, but it would go even faster if they had a full crew present. He waited while Jesse made the call. The conversation started slowly, with banter and flirting, so he took a walk.

  Dean picked up immediately. “I’ve been trying to call you.”

  Immediately on high alert, David paused in front of a window full of jewelry. “My phone doesn’t show a single call or voicemail. What’s going on?”

  “International coverage can be tricky. I’ll have Frankie look into the problem. Anyway, I couldn’t get a judge to do a bail hearing for Autumn until Monday morning.”

  That meant she would spend three nights in jail. The coffee he’d just enjoyed settled like poison in his stomach. “She doesn’t sleep well in strange places.”

  “I have a lawyer for her. We’re trying everything, but they’ve had massive budget cuts, and night court is only a TV rerun. You know what the problem is? We’ve turned down every job in Michigan until last month when Brandy Lockmeyer called in a favor that Jesse and Frankie owed. I have no contacts here in the DOJ.”

  Another thing that was David’s fault. He’d avoided the state where his father resided, and that was crippling their ability to be effective when Autumn needed him the most. He’d let her down spectacularly. This would definitely get him a Boyfriend of the Year award. He squeezed his forehead as if a solution would ooze out, but nothing happened. “Keep trying. Did you tell her I had nothing to do with this?”

  Jesse, finished with his flirty call, leaned against the jewelry store’s window and waited for David to finish his call.

  “Tomorrow is visiting day. Keith, Jordan, and Agent Liam Adair have been ‘questioning’ her just to get her out of there, and they’re making sure she’s eating well. Oh—Keith took a DNA swab during processing. He’s running it against the samples provided by Sylvia and Warren Zinn years ago when the FBI started keeping that kind of data on file for missing kids.”

  The line crackled awfully, and David had to piece together most of what Dean was trying to say. “Keep me posted, and get her out of there as quickly as you can.” Once again, the line was dead, and David didn’t know if Dean had heard the last part.

  Jesse adjusted his cap. “They didn’t set bail?”

  “No. She’s still in that shit hole.”

  “Dean will take care of her. He knows what she means to you. We all do.” Jesse tugged David’s sleeve, and the pair sauntered down the street to the next recon point. “Plus she’s useful. I’ve never seen anyone with such a natural gift for picking a lock. She didn’t leave a scratch.”

  “Please tell me you have a lunch date.”

  “Nope. She’s visiting her sick auntie, but she’s free for dinner. I’m picking her up at seven. That’ll give us time to check out places to take her that are more conductive to our plan.”

  Nothing was proceeding as quickly as David wanted, but he had to be patient. He knew this operation would take time. It wouldn’t be so bad if his father hadn’t interfered. Autumn didn’t deserve to be put through this hell. She’d been through enough.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sleeping in jail wasn’t as bad as Autumn thought it would be, though she didn’t delude herself into thinking this was how she wanted to spend the next five years. As far as sleeping in new places went, she actually got a decent night’s sleep because it reminded her of falling asleep on a subway or a train with her head on her father’s lap and Summer on his
other side.

  Julianne visited on Sunday. She cried most of the time, and Autumn found herself in the exhausting role of having to comfort a friend when she was the one in dire straits. Before Julianne left, Autumn extracted a promise that she’d keep visiting Summer at least three times a week.

  She saw a judge first thing Monday morning, and the bail was set at ten thousand dollars, which apparently was reasonable considering the crime. However, it was so far out of the realm of possibility that Autumn didn’t bother getting her hopes up. Julianne might have helped out if it was five hundred or a thousand, but nobody she knew could come up with that kind of cash. And so she resigned herself to her new quarters.

  To her surprise, Dean came forward as soon as the amount was entered into record, and he paid the bail. Autumn had assumed that bail paying would be a long, drawn-out process by which someone would need to fill out a lot of paperwork, and then they’d take an hour to get her out. But she was wrong. Dean had already filled out the paperwork. He simply handed the cash over to the appropriate person, and the officer who had escorted her in took her directly to a room where she could change back into her clothes.

  Twenty minutes later, she stood face-to-face with Dean and tried to figure him out.

  He pressed his lips together. “I’m so sorry you had to stay in there all weekend. I tried to get the judge to set your bail on Friday, but he wouldn’t.”

  “Why did you pay my bail?”

  He took her hands in his. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, Autumn. I swear it’s a mistake. David was furious when he found out what his father had done.”

  Autumn didn’t want to hear about David. She extracted her hands from between his. “Dean, thank you for this, but I don’t want to hear you justify David’s actions.”

  He nodded. “I understand. David is flying home tonight. He can explain everything to you then. Can I take you home?”

  “Sure.”

  He’d parked in a garage down the street. “Are you hungry? We can go out to lunch.”