Deep Cover--A Love Over Duty Novel

by Scarlett Cole

  “Fair point. What is number two?”

  “Smurfing.”

  Cabe laughed. “For real? What the hell is smurfing? Like the little blue people?”

  “Believe it or not, that’s where the term comes from. Smurfs worked like a collective. Smurfing is taking a big transaction and breaking it down across several people, sometimes referred to by casinos as agents.”

  “I prefer smurfs,” Cabe said.

  This time Amy laughed. “Yeah. Me too. There are, of course, also some legit reasons for breaking down a large transaction. Like a husband and wife who each get chips. He goes to play poker, she goes to blackjack, and they get back together at the end of the night and cash in the chips. Not everyone who splits up transactions is a bad guy.”

  “Okay. What’s number three?” Cabe leaned back in the sofa.

  “Minimal gaming. Say you have twenty grand you need to get rid of. Maybe they are marked bank notes. You go to a high-value slot machine. Like a thousand-dollars-a-spin kind of machine. You load all the bills in, press the button once, maybe twice, and then cash out. If you win, then yay for you. If you lose, it’s a small loss to get clean cash. Those machines tend to pay out in slot tickets that you take to the cage to get clean bills.”

  “And number four?”

  “As you said earlier, complicit employees—which may or may not be synonymous with complicit casinos. It’s not unheard of to buy off a cashier, or even plant a cashier. Someone who ignores the smurfing or smaller transactions. Someone who turns a blind eye to the same person returning four times over the course of the day.”

  As Cabe made another note, she leaned over to see what he was writing. It brought her close to his shoulder. He turned to look at her. His mouth was close to hers. She noticed his gaze drop to her lips and then immediately back to her eyes. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to read over someone’s shoulder?” His voice had dropped an octave, and it made her shiver.

  “I take in details,” she whispered. “It’s what I do.”

  He held her gaze for a moment, and at first she thought he was going to kiss her. With a sigh she could feel brush against her skin, he leaned back. “I was making a note to ask one of my team members to play near the slots as opposed to the tables. And to ask one of our tech guys if we can hack the camera feed so we can do our own assessment of who is showing up at the cages and whether any staff are letting the rules slide.” His voice had returned to normal, and the moment passed.

  “This is going to be a long assignment, isn’t it?” Cabe asked, his dark eyes fixed on hers.

  Her insides flipped a little as it dawned on her exactly what he meant. He didn’t mean literal days and weeks, he meant moments, time spent together trying to fight whatever it was that was between them.

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  When he was younger, Cabe’s sex life had been fulfilling enough, but none of the women he’d dated had gone on to become longer-lasting relationships. Then he’d met Jess at a charity event, a muddy ten-kilometer obstacle course. They’d been placed on the same four-person team. By kilometer three, her fitness level had impressed him. By kilometer six, it was her endurance. By kilometer eight, it was a motivational speech she’d yelled while halfway up a rope cargo net that had given them all the push they needed to finish first.

  It was only when he’d picked her up later for dinner that he noticed how fantastic she looked in her skinny jeans.

  After a dinner that had gone on for five hours, he realized that time spent in the company of a smart woman revved his engines. That Jess, and everything she was, did it for him.

  He loved intelligent women.

  He loved women who knew shit. Random shit. Honestly, they could talk about anything they were passionate and knowledgeable about. Six had always laughed at the way Cabe had found women’s IQs way more interesting than their bra sizes.

  But listening to Amy explain money laundering was having the same affect.

  When she’d walked in, all red pout and doe eyes, he’d let his prurient fantasies run riot, but he preferred her like this. Soft pink lips on a smart mouth.

  And then he’d let his concern slip out: This is going to be a long assignment, isn’t it?

  He didn’t mean that literally. The assignment was straightforward. He meant being around her, every day, until it was over. Staring into those blue eyes, holding that gaze, shouldn’t be this easy, should it? It was scary how normal it felt.

  “I’m sorry,” Cabe said. “You know what … I should probably go. Coming to your apartment was a bad idea.”

  He stood to go, but Amy put her hand on his arm. “Just sit down,” she said quietly. “We should talk. Perhaps talking about this”—she gestured between the two of them—”will help clear the air.”

  This was way out of his comfort zone.

  Amy looked up at him. “You want a glass of wine?”

  Cabe shook his head. “Not sure alcohol is the best idea. Looser inhibitions are the last thing I need.”

  “Yeah, well, I need one to tell you what I’m about to.”

  He watched as she walked over to the fridge that had been stocked for her. She pulled out the bottle of white and cracked the screw top before grabbing a large glass from the cabinet. “You sure?” she said, holding the glass in his direction.

  “I’m sure.”

  Amy poured it and took a sip before placing the bottle and glass on the kitchen island. “We have to work together. We have to trust each other. So I’m going to trust you with something I wasn’t going to tell anybody.”

  Her tone was not quite sad, more like resigned. He wanted her to trust him. In spite of all his mixed emotions, he deeply did.

  “I was sexually harassed before I moved here. By an agent. It’s why I moved.”

  “Holy shit, Amy. That’s … that’s fucked up.” He thought about some of the shit Jess had had to deal with as she’d worked her way through the ranks. Men who commented on her body. Men who doubted her capabilities. Men who questioned her commitment. Wives of men questioning whether she would lead their husbands astray.

  Amy nodded. “That’s one way of describing it. He was a senior agent on a case I was working who also happened to be married. At first, it was hard to put a finger on what made me feel uncomfortable around him. Sometimes I’d catch him looking at me in the hallway. I don’t know. It just felt creepy.”

  Cabe walked toward her and took a seat on the stool on the other side of the island.

  Amy took another sip of wine. “It’s always a risk as a woman to call out a man. It’s too easy to be labeled as the one who couldn’t handle herself, the one who couldn’t take a joke. The one who needed others to solve her problems. But that isn’t what stopped me. He didn’t care about the women we were looking for. There were five missing prostitutes and he didn’t feel they were worth our resources. I knew if I reported him, the old boys network would close in and I’d be the one reassigned. And if I left the case, I knew it would turn into a cold case because he really couldn’t give a shit if we found those women. Every night, I’d lie in bed, wondering if he was making anyone else feel the same way he made me feel. But those missing women had no one speaking for them, no one was advocating for them. I couldn’t let them down. So I ignored his stares and just tried to stay out of his way.”

  It shouldn’t make him feel warm inside that she was trusting him, but it did. “He didn’t get the message, right?” he asked.

  She walked around the counter and sat on the stool next to his. She was close enough that their knees touched. “The first time he brushed his hand across my ass was in a crowded conference room.… ‘Sorry. Too little space for too many people,’ he said as he shrugged. I knew it was deliberate. And I knew I’d get laughed at if I tried to say he’d grabbed my ass in a packed room. So I learned to walk down the opposite side of the room when I saw him coming. I employed the usual girl-code strategies to avoid him. On days we were both in the office, I’d get
one of my girlfriends to meet me at my desk to go for lunch. And I know—I even knew then—that I was modifying my behavior to stay away from a predator instead of confronting him, but sometimes that’s the only option women have.”

  “What a douchebag,” Cabe said. “Wasn’t there anyone you could trust? Someone else in the department who could have spoken to him? Someone more senior who might have listened to you?”

  Amy shook her head. “You know, I thought through all those options, but they all felt like too much of a risk first to the chance of finding those women, and second, to my career.” She sighed. “And then, at our Christmas party, he cornered me in the hall on my way to the bathroom and asked me whether my breasts were real or fake. I called him on his behavior. Told him to back off. I said it had gone too far and that I was going to report him, but he said there weren’t any witnesses. And, of course, there weren’t. In the end, I stopped going to company events all together because the time I would spend dreading any interaction with the guy far outweighed any enjoyment I got out of actually attending.”

  “That’s so awful you had to go through all that. And I’m sorry you had to handle that alone. Is he still with the FBI?”

  Amy shook her head. “He got fired.”

  Her words sunk in and Cabe smiled. “You called him out? Good for you.”

  Amy laughed sardonically. “Sort of. He forced my hand. I got home from work one Friday and had run a bath. I was supposed to go out for drinks with a girlfriend for her birthday. When someone rang the bell, I thought it was Kadia, since we were going to get ready to go out together. Stupidly, I didn’t check the peephole. And it was him. He’d told his wife that he was away working for the weekend, so we could spend time together. I slammed the door and called the police. Then I called my boss. And HR.”

  By the way her shoulders slumped forward, and given that she was currently in San Diego instead of Atlanta, he figured that wasn’t the end of the story. “How did you end up here?”

  “Well, somewhere between those phone calls and him getting fired, my complaints were challenged, my reputation torn apart. At first I was accused of making it up. That was his immediate defense. He told the police that we were having an affair, and that I had only called the police because I was mad that he wouldn’t leave his wife. Because there were no witnesses to any of his other abusive actions, it was my word against his. Then he had the audacity to claim that I’d promised him sexual favors in return for mentoring and promotion and he’d just gotten carried away.” Amy pursed her mouth and swallowed deeply. She shook her head quickly and pushed her hair over her shoulders. “Anyway,” she said breezily, “back to us working together. I’ll be honest and say I liked you in the bar. I’d seen you with your friends when I walked in. I was mad when you left. Madder still when I saw you again. But now … I’m sad and just a little frustrated because I like who you are, and I don’t think that’s going to go away. But I can’t act on it, no matter how much it might seem like a good idea. I can’t give anyone an opportunity to think I moved here and hooked up with another more senior guy in a different office. I can’t allow my actions now to lead those people back in Atlanta to believe they were right all along. That this is how I operate.”

  Unnamed emotions bounced around in Cabe’s mind. It was hard to process them all. Each was like a kernel of corn in a popcorn maker, exploding in front of his eyes but then disappearing into a pile in front of him. She liked him. That was first. She’d been treated badly, and he wanted to kick someone’s ass. Guilt. For being a douchebag when they’d first met. And the same frustration she probably felt at being denied the opportunity of being together. Because of her job, he wasn’t sure there’d ever be a future in it for them.

  He considered telling her about Jess and explaining his reasons for having walked away that night. But he wasn’t certain that it wouldn’t come out more like Well, if you don’t want me, I don’t want you either. Which wasn’t what he would mean. After listening to her and getting to know her, not falling fast and deep into a relationship with her felt like the absolute wrong thing to do. But the right thing to do was to respect her wishes, because he understood them as much as they disappointed him.

  She placed her hand on top of his and let her fingers fall in between his. He looked down at their tanned hands entwined. The image of their legs tangled in white sheets sprung to mind, but he buried it deep.

  He moved his gaze to her eyes, the depth of the blue catching him off guard as it often did. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about where this could go. You’re a pretty awesome woman, Amy, and it’s complete shit what you’ve had to go through. I understand you need some distance from that before you consider anything else.”

  Goddamn, the look in her eyes, the heat they held just for him made him want to throw everything he’d just said out of the window and press his lips to hers, but for both of their sakes, he knew he needed to do the opposite. He stood. “I’m gonna go. Not because of the line you just drew underneath this, but because I agree with what you just said.”

  “But why go?” she asked. “We could work some more.”

  Cabe sighed and gave into the urge to place his palm on her cheek and let his thumb run gently along her lower lip. The sigh she emitted would be, he was sure, the very memory he would jerk off to in the shower later. “We both need this to settle between us,” he said. “And if I don’t leave, we both know I’m going to kiss you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Amy looked at the report on the Sokolov family finances one last time and then slammed the lid down on her laptop. “There’s got to be a way in to the financial paper trail,” she said to Six, who was still staring at the copy on his own computer.

  “Working on it,” he said, rolling his neck from left to right.

  They’d been at it for most of the day. Mac was in the corner with Lite working on a plan to set up better tracking of Sokolov. Cabe was poring over schematics of the casino.

  When her phone rang, she reached for it, but then realized it wasn’t her work phone ringing. It was her burner. “Quiet!” she shouted, and the room fell silent.

  Six stood and walked to the door, she assumed to keep anyone from running in.

  She grabbed the phone on the fourth ring. “Hello,” she answered calmly, if not a little flightily. That was the persona she’d created. A voice a couple of notes higher than normal, a tone that sounded just a fraction away from laughter.

  “Amy, it’s Johnnie Ortega. Do you have a couple of minutes?”

  Amy grinned. This time it wasn’t part of the act. She was certain from the tone of his voice that she knew what he was going to say, but she played along. “Sure thing, Mr. Ortega. What can I help you with?” She could feel Cabe’s eyes on her and she gave in to the urge to turn and look at him. The anticipation in the room was palpable.

  “The job is yours, if you want it. Forty hours over five shifts. Salary at the rate we discussed. I brought in cover for this weekend, but I’d love for you to start on Monday if you can. The casino is a little quieter Monday through Wednesday, so it’ll be easier for you to get the lay of the land before the crowds rush in at the weekend.”

  For a moment, she thought about offering to come in sooner and making a counter-argument against delaying, but deep down she knew the best thing to do was accept the conditions he’d laid down and use the rest of the time preparing. “Thank you, Mr. Ortega. You’ve made my day.”

  She spent a couple of more moments on the phone clarifying the details of her shift, how and when she’d get paid, and when she should swing by to collect her uniform. And of course, she spent a few minutes gushing to Johnnie Ortega about how pleased she was, and how excited she was, and yes, how grateful she was.

  When she finally hung up the phone, there was a momentary silence, and then a whoop came from behind her as Six patted her on the back. “Nice work, Murray.”

  Cabe held her gaze and grinned. “You did good. Really good. We should celebrat
e with something better than this tepid coffee,” he said, lifting his cup up in the air.

  “I have Scotch in my drawer,” Six said. “Just one shot though, given we’re all driving later.” He walked past them to, she assumed, go get it … and hopefully some cups too, because there was no way she was doing that swig-from-the-bottle-and-then-wipe-it-on-your-sleeve thing.

  Her stomach flip-flopped as excitement and nervous adrenaline began to build.

  She was in.

  It was a big deal. A huge freaking deal.

  “When do you start?” Cabe asked. “We should refine our plans based on that. Figure out which G-men will be joining us.”

  Amy snapped out of her excitement and focused. “Monday. I’ll call Cunningham.” His use of the slang term for an FBI agent—Government Man—told her Cabe wasn’t happy with the additional FBI support in the casino. Only this morning, she’d overheard Cabe point out to her boss that the men who had sat in the room with them on the first day had an abject lack of poker face. Cabe had pushed to have his own team there, but in the silence that followed, she was certain that Cunningham had reminded Cabe it was a joint op and had refused to budge.

  The sound of a cell phone ringing cut through the conference room. This time Cabe reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, grinning when he looked at the screen before answering it. “What’s up, Noah?”

  Noah. Wasn’t that his brother? The one with SDPD?

  It had been two days since Cabe had asked his brother for help in finding Eve Canallis. She had begun to regret the decision to rely on the police and not go straight to the FBI. Hopefully he had news.

  Six walked back into the room with a bottle of whiskey, some red plastic cups, and a large white cake box. Her stomach grumbled at the sight of it, but she was distracted by Cabe flipping his laptop open.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Cabe said. “How long ago was that?”

  There was another pause, long enough for Six to open the cake box and pull out a platter with different types of cake on it. He waved a fork in her direction. She looked over at Cabe one last time as he continued to study whatever was on the screen. He ran his fingers along his jaw. “Did you check it out yet?”