by Alexa Wilder
Pretending not to care what William Harper wanted with Emma was going to be a different story. After a tense negotiation with Tierney, we determined that I had two goals. The first was to get William Harper to confess to as many of his crimes as possible while I was wearing a wire. Evers had brought our equipment with him. I’d refused to let Agent Tierney wire me himself. Until I figured out who was betraying us, I wasn't trusting anyone. My second objective was to try to get Emma's laptop back from Harper. I didn't think we'd have much luck with that, but I’d prepared a scenario that might work. Harper's response to my proposal would tell me a lot about where he stood.
It didn't take me long to reach Harper’s exclusive subdivision. He met me at the door, looking like a shadow of the man I'd seen the night I delivered Emma. Then, William Harper had been giddily triumphant. Now, he was pale and agitated, his eyes darting from side to side as he opened the door and let me in.
He closed it behind me more firmly than necessary, locking the door and setting the alarm. I followed him down the hall to his office. He gestured at one of the heavy seats opposite his desk before sitting down himself. I sat, wondering if this was the chair he’d used to restrain Emma. The thought sent a flood of raw, aggressive rage through me.
I had to lock it down and push all thoughts of Emma as my girlfriend, my lover, out of my mind. If I wanted her safe, I had to do my job, and at that moment, my job was to get this fuckwit talking, not to beat the shit out of him for hurting Emma. Already wanting to leave, I decided to skip the formalities and get the ball rolling.
“What can I do for you today, Mr. Harper?”
Harper shifted nervously in his seat. "It's odd, but I ran into a problem after you left the other night. Emma—Miss Wright—she got away."
I decided to fuck with him just a little. "What do you mean, she got away? I thought you planned to call the police?"
"Yes, well, no. I decided I didn't want the publicity. I called a partner in to take her off my hands, you know, just to scare her a little, and, well, before he could get here, she got away."
"She was wearing handcuffs," I said, enjoying his discomfort a little too much. "Did you uncuff her?"
"No, no, but…" he trailed off, probably trying to figure out how to explain what had happened without making himself look bad. "Apparently, a neighbor said they heard a scream. They called the police, and when the officer found her handcuffed, well, he took her with him."
"But you have the evidence, right? You still have her laptop, don't you?" I asked.
"I do, I do," he said. "But I needed to talk to her and find out if she’d done anything else, talked to anyone else. I have associates, and they're not comfortable with only the laptop. They—we—need to know more. We need to know everything she was up to. Who knows if what's on that laptop is the extent of her thievery? I need you to find her and bring her to me."
I resettled myself in my seat and studied him, watching him squirm under my level stare. “What are your plans if I find her and bring her back to you?" I asked. Harper looked away, but he didn’t answer. "Let's be honest with each other," I said, taking a risk that I could push him a little further. “You never intended to call the police on Emma, did you?"
Harper let out a gust of air as if he'd been holding his breath and got up from behind his desk. He crossed the room to pour himself a glass of whiskey from his bar. He held the crystal decanter up, offering me a drink. I shook my head. The amount of whiskey Harper poured into the glass indicated that he was even more anxious and uncertain than I’d guessed.
He swallowed almost all of the whiskey in one gulp. Good. Once the alcohol hit his brain, he’d be less careful of what he said. I settled back in my seat and stretched my legs out in front of me, prepared to take a little time while the alcohol did my work for me.
“Have you had a chance to take a look at the laptop?" I asked casually.
Harper gave a jerky shrug of one shoulder. "It's in my safe, but no, not yet. I already know what's on it, anyway."
"Are you sure about that?" I asked. "Can you get into it on your own? She encrypted everything worth seeing,” I commented, enjoying the way Harper's eyes flared in alarm.
“I didn't realize she would know how to do that," he said.
"Emma Wright was full of surprises," I said. "I can get into the laptop for you, if you need me to," I offered, hoping he would take the bait. He didn't.
"No, that's not necessary. I'm just going to destroy it."
“So you don't want to know what she took?" I asked.
"I already know what she took," Harper said, and then continued cryptically, "it's more important that no one else knows what she took."
At first, his comment made no sense. Harper finished off the whiskey in his glass and went back for more while I sat in silence, letting his words filter through my brain.
If Harper was going to destroy the laptop, then it wasn’t enough to have stopped it from getting to the FBI. Harper didn't want the FBI to have the information Emma had taken, but he also didn’t want anyone else to know what was on the laptop either.
As soon as we got them, I needed to go through the files Emma had sent to her friend. Harper hadn't come straight out and admitted much yet, but my guess was that the laptop didn't just contain evidence against Harper. It contained evidence that tied Harper to Tsepov. For Harper, the only thing more terrifying than the FBI getting that evidence would be Tsepov knowing it existed in the first place.
Evers had been right the day before. Tsepov did not have a forgiving reputation. I'd run into him in the past, and I knew he didn't tolerate incompetence in his employees or his associates. If he found out that William Harper had collected hard evidence tying them together, Harper was a dead man.
He must have thought his problems were solved when he had both Emma and the laptop, but with Emma running around loose, he was at risk again. Judging by his slightly unsteady gait as he made his way back to his desk with a fresh whiskey, I decided to push a little harder. "Do you want me to find Emma and bring her back?"
“Yes. I need you to find Emma Wright and bring her to me so I can question her."
"I'd be happy to assist you with the questioning," I offered. "I and most of my team are well trained in interrogation. We’ll probably be able to get more out of her than you could on your own."
“No, no. I can handle it. My . . . associate . . . will be able to get all the information that we need."
"And after you get the information you need?” I asked. “Will you need help dealing with Miss Wright when you’re finished with her?” I wasn’t sure he was drunk enough to take the bait, but the whiskey had done its work, and this time, he was.
“No, my associate will handle that. I can't have Miss Wright becoming a problem in the future."
"I completely understand," I said, my gut burning at the casual threat against Emma's life. “I’d feel more comfortable delivering the woman to you if I had some idea exactly whom I was dealing with. Who are your associates?"
Harper finished the rest of his second whiskey and shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his eyes darting everywhere to avoid meeting mine.
"I don't know,” he said haltingly. “I don't think . . . that is . . ."
"Harper,” I interrupted, “Stop bullshitting me. Something you should know about me is that I don't ask questions to which I don't already know the answer. I know you're working with Sergey Tsepov."
The blood drained from William Harper's face as I said Tsepov's name out loud, as if by speaking his name I could conjure him from thin air. Harper’s eyes darted around the room once more, his hand trembling where it rested on the desk.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he protested in a weak voice. I sat back in my chair and propped my ankle on my knee. Now that I had him scared, I could get him to talk.
"If you're not going to be straight with me, I don't have time for this,” I said. “I’m not exactly desperate for the work, you know. I've had dealings
with Tsepov before. I don't fuck around with him, so I need to know exactly what the situation is and what I'm dealing with before we go any further. If you won’t talk, you're going to have to deal with Miss Wright on your own."
I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for Harper to break. It didn't take long. It was becoming clear that he needed to get Emma under his control before Tsepov lost patience with him, and without any resources of his own to accomplish this, he was desperate for my help.
“I . . . I am working with Sergey Tsepov, it's true. He, uh, contracts me to move . . . certain things," Harper said. He was weighing his words carefully, but the whiskey made his efforts useless. He’d just admitted to moving shipments for a known mob boss. Now I’d see if I could get him to admit what the shipments were.
"Tsepov's crew is known to deal in a lot of shit, Harper. What have you got your fingers in? Guns? Drugs? Women? Or all of it?"
Harper's back went straight at the direct question. He shook his head wildly, his thinning hair swaying with his jerky movements.
"I'm not . . . that is . . .” he stammered, not willing to give me an answer.
"There are things I'll touch, Harper,” I said in a hard voice, “and things I won't. What are you into with Tsepov? Tell me or I walk."
"All of it," Harper said, defeated. "Okay? All of it. I put my notes in a file in my desk so I could keep it all straight, and Emma stole the file for the FBI. You got it before they did, I think. I hope. I don't know exactly when she took it . . .”
Harper trailed off. I'd have to go back through the documentation once we got it from Emma's friend, but I was fairly sure that any hard copies had already been turned over to the FBI. The files I'd caught Emma with a few days before—it seemed like a lifetime ago—had all been digital.
Not letting Harper know he was screwed, I pressed further.
“And Emma Wright? You lost her, but she's not coming back to work, I assume."
Harper shook his head back and forth, his bloodshot eyes now fixed to the polished surface of his desk. I went on, “We got the files she was going to give to the FBI, so why do you need her?"
“She knows too much,” Harper said, not taking his eyes from the desk. “She just knows too much. She has to go. I was going to give her to Tsepov to sell with the other girls, but now . . ." He trailed off.
"Why don't you just have Tsepov take care of the problem for you?” I asked, thinking about the shooter the night before. My guys had caught him and they had him in our safe room, but he wasn't talking. I doubted he was someone Harper had hired, because if Harper had those connections, he wouldn’t have needed me to find Emma.
Harper was shaking his head. "No, no. I can't tell him yet. If he knows I fucked up like this . . . he can't find out."
This whole situation was one big clusterfuck. Someone had sent the shooter after Emma, and it hadn’t been Harper. Harper thought he still had time to get Emma, and he didn't know where she was. The only other person I could think of who would want Emma dead was Tsepov. Which meant the mole was working for him. I had work to do.
Harper had admitted more than enough for the FBI to use against him. I was done with him. Abruptly, I stood and said, “I’ll take the job. I'll keep you posted on my progress. It shouldn't take me long to find her.”
Harper didn't stand to show me to the door. He just gave me a weak smile and said, “Thank you."
I let myself out, climbed into my SUV, and called the office. Jamison picked up in the control room. "Got it, Boss."
“Good job. Get it backed up and send a copy to Agent Tierney. I’ll be there in ten.”
"I'm on it, Boss."
I drove back to the office. Tierney expected me at the safe house as soon as I was finished with Harper, but I had a few things to take care of first. Harper was neutralized, between his hiring me to find Emma and admitting his guilt on record. He didn’t have the resources to cause us any more trouble. But somewhere out there was Tsepov’s mole. I had a feeling we’d have to take the investigation away from the FBI if we wanted to stay alive. Since the FBI currently had Emma, I had to make some arrangements.
31
Emma
I sat on the couch in the living room of the FBI safe house, waiting for Evers to make a move. Two playing cards lay facedown on the coffee table in front of me beside four other cards, these face-up. For the past hour and a half, we’d been playing Texas Hold 'em.
It was a good thing we weren't playing for real money, because Evers was kicking my ass. I was terrible. I’d never played much poker, and I’d learned that Evers played a lot. The safe house didn't have cable, and I still didn't have my phone, so our options for entertainment were limited to cards or staring at the brown and yellow striped wallpaper in the living room.
Poker with Evers was much more entertaining than staring at the walls, and it helped me pretend that the atmosphere in the safe house wasn't quite so tense. Agent Tierney paced around the kitchen like a caged animal, every so often stopping to have a hushed conversation on his cell phone. The two FBI agents from that morning rotated through the house, keeping an eye out for any threat.
Agent Tierney seemed to make them nervous. Every time he paced close to them, they got stiff and hyper-alert, as if determined to show him what a good job they were doing. I wondered why Tierney would have assigned two such junior agents. From what I’d learned so far, Tsepov was no one to mess with. The young agents gave the impression they’d drop their guns and run if a real threat showed up.
It didn't make sense, but then a lot about the situation didn’t make sense. The day felt like it lasted forever, punctuated by seemingly endless rounds of poker, then war, then solitaire, which Evers and I played together, arguing over strategy the entire time. He liked to peek at the cards, and I said that was cheating.
Our bickering got on Agent Tierney's nerves and he snapped at us to shut up more than once, but we ignored him. At one point, Evers got a text. He looked at his phone briefly, put it away and whispered to me, “Axel’s out of the meeting. Everything's good. He’s going to do a few more things, and then he'll be back."
A few minutes later, Tierney approached us and said to Evers, “You’re staying until I can release your brother and Emma. I can't have you Sinclairs coming and going all the time, attracting attention. We should be able to make an arrest soon. Until then, you stay."
I expected Evers to argue, but he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Fine with me. You leaving?"
Tierney gave a short nod in response. "Axel sent me the audio from his meeting with Harper. I've got work to do. You two stay put. Axel should be back soon. I want everybody to hold tight until we bring Harper in."
"Will do," Evers said, his tone just sarcastic enough to irritate Tierney, but not overt enough to give Tierney an excuse to get mad. I suppressed a smile. The day had been so boring that I might have welcomed some drama, but I didn’t want Evers to get into trouble. Since Tierney was the reason I was so mind-numbingly bored, I was happy to watch Evers poke at him.
Wisely choosing not to respond to Evers’s taunt, Tierney grabbed his phone and keys off the kitchen counter, had a short word with the agents by the front door, and left, slamming the door behind him.
"I'm sorry you got tangled up in this,” I said. "The safe house kind of sucks."
Evers tossed his head back and laughed, looking so much like Axel that my heart tightened in my chest. “It seriously does. I know the FBI's budget isn’t huge, but this place is miserable. Or maybe I'm just spoiled. When Sinclair Security does a safe house, it’s nothing like this."
After seeing Axel's lake house and his penthouse, I wondered what a safe house Axel designed would look like. I hoped I wasn't going to find out. We'd been here less than twenty-four hours, and I was already thoroughly sick of safe houses.
Evers looked at me and said, “Another game?”
I rolled my eyes. I was tired of card games. “Can you tell Axel to bring a book? Or a tablet? Something?”
“You’re done playing cards with me?” Evers asked, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“Not if it’s the only thing to do,” I said. “But anything else would be fun at this point.”
“Obviously, you haven’t been on many stakeouts,” Evers said, shaking his head. “In this job, you get used to boredom.”
“Tell me about your favorite case,” I said, curious about the kind of thing they did at Sinclair Security.
“Our clients are confidential,” Evers said. “But I can think of a few jobs I can share without giving too much away.”
Evers proceeded to launch into a story about protecting the mistress of an extremely wealthy businessman who also wanted Sinclair Security to spy on said mistress, who he suspected was cheating. She had been—with his twin sons, who were working against him to conspire with the board of the family company to send the old man into an early retirement. Ouch.
After that, he told me about a hostage rescue in a South American country he refused to identify. It turned out that Sinclair Security had a hostage recovery team so respected that the FBI often consulted with them. He was halfway through recounting a protection detail involving a starlet and her yappy Chihuahua when the front door opened.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding at the sight of Axel in the doorway. He’d changed from his suit into jeans and a dark gray sweater while he’d been gone. He looked hot in a suit, but I loved casual Axel just as much. At the sight of the bag of take-out Chinese in his hand, I had the fleeting and useless wish that we were alone and none of the rest of this mess was happening.
I missed dating Axel, cooking with him and pretending to watch a movie while we made out on the couch. I liked Evers, but I wanted him—and the two FBI agents—gone.
More than that, I missed seeing Axel relaxed. I rose to meet him at the door. He pulled me in for a quick kiss, but his attention was on Evers. Evers gave him a slight nod and Axel tipped his head forward. Their silent brother-speak was annoying. I had no idea what they were saying to each other, but I could feel the tension in Axel’s shoulders. He gave me a squeeze around the waist and let me go, saying only, “Let’s eat while it’s hot.”