Fatal Secrets

by Allison Brennan

  “But he didn’t.”

  “Fuck you.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. What Sheldon Rasmussen had done to her haunted her when she didn’t have her guard up. She’d have the scars from his knife for the rest of her life. Because of Rasmussen, she’d never be able to have children.

  Because of Charlie she was scarred and barren.

  “I am sorry.”

  “No, you’re not. Because you were a hero for a day. You saved all those girls while I was attacked by a vile monster thinking you were there to take him down.”

  Charlie spoke quietly. “It was a hard choice to make, Sonia, believe me. But they couldn’t save themselves. They’d all be dead by now. But they’re alive and free, and so are you.”

  “And if I had died, you would have justified it because you saved fourteen other girls that night.”

  He looked pained, and Sonia was glad. She hoped he couldn’t sleep.

  “I’ve paid for what happened. I take jobs where I can. Rogan gives me the lost causes, but I know that Ashley Fox is alive.”

  Even though she was still angry, Sonia was curious how Charlie had ended up with Jones. She asked, “Did Jones have something to do with her disappearance?”

  “Not directly. I found the gang who kidnapped her off the cruise ship. One of the stewards, a Mexican gang member, spilled everything when I tracked him down.”

  Bile rose into her throat. She didn’t ask what Charlie had done to get the gangbanger to talk; she didn’t want to know.

  “She was shipped to Belize and forced to work at a sex club. They kept her drugged, got her hooked on coke and pills. Uppers and downers. I’m not surprised—when she found out she was trapped, she probably needed the mental escape.”

  A familiar strategy—breaking the victim’s will to fight back using drugs, and physical and mental abuse. Sonia put the images out of her head; she had to focus on the facts.

  “And then?”

  “I’m unclear on why they moved her, but she came up through one of Jones’s major suppliers into America. She may be in Canada now, but she came through here, Sacramento.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Sonia slammed her palm against the wall. The picture over her bed slid on its wire and hung crooked. “I’m supposed to trust you?”

  “I got the information. I don’t care if you believe me.”

  Goose bumps ran down her flesh. She bit back her next scathing comment; she wouldn’t be able to convince Charlie that he was no better than them. But this vigilante campaign had to end, one way or the other.

  “Jones knows what happened to her. Where she went. I’m this close to figuring out his codes. I was going to come to you once I saved Ashley.”

  Sonia frowned in confusion. “Codes? What codes?”

  “I’ll give you everything when I get the answers I need.”

  “Tell me now! Are you honestly aiding and abetting a killer? You fucking bastard! Who made you judge and jury? You’re not leaving here, so help me—”

  “What are you going to do? I have your gun.” Charlie laughed, then added wistfully, “Oh Sonia, I’ve missed you.”

  “Don’t.”

  “We were a great team. I don’t blame you for what happened.”

  “Blame me? What am I to blame for?” She asked too quickly, realizing that Charlie was deliberately sidetracking her. “No—”

  Charlie cut her off. “For having me fired.”

  “I’m not going there again.” She couldn’t do it. She was losing her focus: her goal was to gather evidence on Xavier Jones so she could haul his ass into interrogation and get names. “You have information. You can testify. Names, places. What kind of codes? You mean he’s writing everything down?”

  “Yes. He has a journal. Every sale, every player, every exchange. How much money he made on the deal and what his expenses were and the threat level. He charges more for higher-risk endeavors. I made a copy of his current journal. But I can’t figure out—yet—how he codes the people he sells. Without that, I don’t know where Ashley is.”

  “Why don’t you just torture the information out of him?” she snapped sarcastically.

  “Jones wouldn’t rattle under torture.”

  So he had actually considered it. Sadly, Sonia was no longer surprised by Charlie’s decisions. “I know you’re the one who contacted me about Andres Zamora’s escape. Where’s Maya?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t care. She wasn’t with Andres.”

  “You should have called the police.”

  “Not without blowing my cover.”

  “You’re no better than they are. You fit right in with Jones and my father.”

  Charlie’s face hardened and he took a step toward her, his knees touching her bed. He shook the gun at her and she involuntarily shivered. Charlie was volatile. He could kill her, even if he didn’t want to. “I’m just the driver.”

  “Bullshit. I want Jones’s journal.”

  He ignored her demand. “I got Andres out. You found him, didn’t you?”

  She wasn’t giving Charlie any information about Andres. “I want the journal and a signed statement detailing everything you know about Jones and his operation. Then maybe you won’t be spending time behind bars.”

  He glared at her. “So you’re working with the FBI?”

  Sonia saw no reason to give Charlie any information, so she simply said, “Yes. And I need to debrief you. Let’s go.”

  He shook his head. “I have—”

  “There’s a shipment of girls coming in any day and I need to nail Jones with them. We know that he uses Omega Shipping, and we searched their ships coming through Stockton last week, but found nothing.” As Sonia said it she realized that she and Dean Hooper had been in the middle of that conversation when she heard about Riley’s attack. She needed to compare her notes with Dean’s.

  She rubbed her temples, tense from this verbal and emotional battle with Charlie.

  “I need the names and players. I want to stop Jones from selling people. Not just one—all of them. You’re there. You have to help! We can arrest him red-handed. What do you know about it?” She didn’t want to sound desperate, but her frustration level had reached the breaking point.

  Charlie didn’t say anything for a long minute. Sonia fidgeted but didn’t take her eyes off him. “I know he keeps them somewhere in the foothills. I don’t know where. The shipment is planned for midnight on Saturday. That’s all I know. If I had found out what happened to Ashley, I would have tipped you off.”

  “If you didn’t find her would you have tipped me off? What about those girls?”

  Charlie was obviously torn. “I would have found a way to rescue them, too.” He didn’t sound as confident.

  “You are but one man, Charlie Cammarata. You can’t do it all. It’s amazing you’re still alive.”

  “Hell, Sonia, you didn’t even know the day and time.”

  She glared at him. “You’re in over your head. You’re under arrest, Charlie.”

  “No, I’m not. Honey, I—” “Don’t call me honey.”

  “I’ve always cared for you. You know that. I never wanted you to get hurt.”

  “You care for no one but yourself.”

  “I love you.”

  “Don’t, don’t, don’t!” Charlie had told her ten years ago, after she had testified against him, that he loved her. She didn’t believe him then. Maybe in his own warped way he had affection for her, but he had no concept of how to love. She’d never thought of him as anything more than a respected mentor. She had loved him like she loved Wendell Knight, the Texas Ranger who had saved her twenty-one years ago. But Wendell had never lied to her, never betrayed her, never left her to die.

  Charlie said flatly, “Jones is dead.”

  It couldn’t be true. “Did you kill him?”

  “Hell no!”

  �
�What the hell is going on, Charlie?”

  “I drove him to a meeting at his restaurant—the one under renovation in Clarksburg, on the river—and he told me to stay hidden and keep watch. If things turned, I was supposed to kill the man he was meeting. There were three of them. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and it was dark. I don’t know who they were—two were well over six feet, one, the man in charge, was not more than five foot ten. Lean.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that you don’t know who these men were.”

  “I don’t.”

  She didn’t believe him. He was lying to her yet again. When she was younger, she had believed everything Charlie said, now she saw his “tell”—he could look her in the eye and lie, but he was calm. Too calm. “And?”

  “They spoke. The short man, the one in charge, and Jones. Jones was angry about something. Ten minutes into the conversation, without warning, the stranger shot Jones in the stomach. When he was down, he shot him four more times. One of the other men picked up the body and carried it to the end of the pier and dropped it in the river. Then he was also shot, point-blank range three times, and fell into the river.”

  Charlie was sincere. She saw it in his eyes and posture. This part, at least, was true.

  “You’re telling me that the UNSUB shot his own man?”

  “It’s true.”

  “And you couldn’t see them? You don’t know who they are?”

  “I couldn’t see them. Sonia, I don’t care if you believe me, but I now have free access to all of Jones’s material. He doesn’t keep his documentation in his house. The FBI are a bunch of spineless idiots. Going after Jones for racketeering. Bullshit. They just alerted him to be even more careful. He has bank accounts the FBI doesn’t even know about.”

  “And you do?”

  “Some. And I have a copy of one of his journals. I’ve almost cracked the code.”

  “I want that journal, now.”

  “You’re not getting it, Sonia, not until I know where Ashley Fox is. I promised her mother—”

  “You’re going to let an unknown number of girls die or disappear this weekend to maybe save one? Ashley disappeared a year ago. These girls who are being sold Saturday night? They have a real chance!”

  “So does Ashley.”

  “Damn you! Give me the fucking journal!” She had been edging closer to him, and now she lunged, tackling him and slamming him against the wall.

  He grunted and hit her with the butt of her gun. God, she thought as she fell to the floor, her eyes burning with unshed tears and hot anger, she had been a fool.

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her up. Held her close to him, face-to-face while she shook her head to clear it. “I shouldn’t have come here. I thought you could fish out the bodies in the river. Jones has his current journal on his person.”

  “Waterlogged.”

  “Maybe. But I’m sure your friends in the FBI can work with it. Maybe in time to figure out where the exchange is Saturday night.”

  “I can’t let you walk out of here, Charlie.”

  “You have no choice.”

  He pushed her down hard enough so she couldn’t quickly follow, and fled the bedroom. Her cheek hit the edge of her nightstand and she bit her tongue, blood filling her mouth. She swallowed with a grimace and pulled herself up, shaking off a dizzy moment. She grabbed her backup gun from the drawer in the hall as she ran after him.

  “Stop!” she shouted as she followed Charlie.

  He was already in her backyard. She ran after him, barefoot because she hadn’t taken time to put on her shoes.

  But by the time she hopped the fence and ran to her front yard, he was gone. He’d left her gun on the hood of her car.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Noel Marchand had lost his patience with the turncoat.

  “Greg,” he said with a heavy sigh, “I’m unhappy with your answers. For the last twenty minutes I have been asking very simple questions. Who’s your contact in the FBI? What did you tell them about Mr. Jones? What did you tell them about me? I cannot understand why you refuse to answer.”

  Jeremy Ignacio had met Noel and Ling at Vega’s house to disable the alarm system, which had been the primary reason Noel had had to wait until after four that morning to break into the traitor’s house. Fortunately, the Vegas had been sound asleep in bed, the wife easy to grab with her large belly sticking up.

  Mrs. Vega was tied to a chair where Greg Vega could see her. Ling stood behind her, a gun at her head.

  Vega was hard to shake. He had been a good employee for Jones until he went running to federal law enforcement; he would have made a good employee for Noel.

  “Let my wife go.” His voice had begun to quiver slightly, but he’d maintained for twenty minutes that he wasn’t a traitor and had never spoken with the FBI.

  “I was surprised it was you,” Noel admitted. “I’d planned on taking you on when Xavier became too great a liability. Losing that little kid was truly the final nail in his coffin, and since you’ve been with him longer than anyone, well, I thought you’d be his natural successor here in the West.”

  He nodded to Ignacio, who walked over to the adjoining kitchen.

  Noel continued. “Jones and I disagreed on one key point. He picked men with families because he felt that the implied threat to your ‘loved ones’ would keep his men in line. I, on the other hand, prefer employees who are unattached. Individuals who enjoy the unique benefits of our business. And until now our different philosophies have never been a problem.”

  Ignacio retrieved the bug he’d planted earlier from under one of the kitchen chairs and held it up. Noel gestured at the bug and saw the fear in Vega’s eyes. Fear was useful in getting information, but it wasn’t a beneficial emotion. Especially since there wasn’t anything Vega could say or do to save himself.

  “Now we’re done with the lies. Answer my questions or your wife will suffer.”

  Noel bent over Vega, who futilely fought his restraints. His nose had been broken from the brief scuffle in the bedroom, and dried blood covered his face. Noel had already cut off one earlobe, which continued to slowly drip blood onto the white T-shirt Vega wore. His legs were bare, only boxers covered his ass.

  Noel took his knife and stabbed it into Vega’s bare foot so hard that it went all the way through the carpet and padding and into the hardwood floor beneath.

  Vega screamed and spouted profanities. No one heard him, though; he lived in the country, a nice five-acre spread in Galt. Probably thought it was a good place to raise kids. Probably thought it was safe.

  “Talk now or the next knife goes through wifey’s stomach.”

  Kendra Vega screamed against the cloth in her mouth. Noel had told Ling to gag her when her sobs and pleas began to irritate him.

  Vega’s teeth clenched and sweat poured off his face. Noel impatiently tapped his own foot. He nodded to Ling, who hit the woman across the head so hard her chair fell over on its side.

  “It wasn’t the FBI!” Vega screamed. “Don’t touch her again, you fucker! Don’t touch her!”

  “You’re lying—” Noel considered Vega’s words. “If you didn’t talk to the FBI, who did you talk to?”

  Vega’s squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m tell you. Please don’t hurt my wife. I’ll begging. Kill me. Don’t hurt her. Please.”

  Noel didn’t respond. He waited.

  Vega had been in this business long enough to know there would be no survivors. His choice was to die with pain, or without pain. Vega broke down when the silence extended into the third minute.

  “Immigration.”

  Noel pulled a blackjack from his pocket, the leather-wrapped weight solid and comfortable in his grip. He hit Vega across the cheek. Blood and a tooth fell from his mouth and onto the floor. “You brought ICE down on my operation?” Noel’s voice was a mere whisper.

  Vega shook his head, spat blood onto the carpet. “Not you. Just Jones. I swear to God, just Jones.”


  “You never mentioned my name?”

  “No! No one. I told them I didn’t know any of the players. I just wanted out. I wanted to disappear. She only wanted Jones.”

  Of course ICE wanted Jones. Jones knew all the players, knew where all the money came from and where it went. Noel was certain Jones had records, somewhere, of his activities. Jones was a meticulous bastard, he’d have something. By the time the FBI found it, Noel would be out of the country, so he wasn’t hugely worried about incarceration. What bothered him was rebuilding his business. It would cost him an extaordinary amount of money, not to mention rebuilding trust with his clients after something like this.

  If Vega was lying, ICE—and probably the FBI at this point—knew him as Noel Marchand. That name was now in their ridiculous law enforcement database. But Jones didn’t know the Devereaux identity he used in the States, and therefore Vega also couldn’t know it.

  But there were still other issues to contend with.

  “Does ICE know about the pending shipment?”

  “No details. Just that it’s going to happen. I didn’t have the time and location. Mr. Jones always tells me right before. I swear. God, please, let my wife go.”

  Noel asked, “Who’s your contact?”

  “Agent Sonia Knight. I swear, she’s the only one I’ve talked to, and I haven’t spoken to her in days. I’m supposed to call when I have the details about the next exchange, and that’s it. I swear, I never mentioned you or anyone else, she’s just after Jones. God, please, I swear.”

  Noel’s blood ran cold. “Sonia Knight.”

  “Y-Yes.”

  He hadn’t thought about Sonia Knight in some time. He’d known she’d been in the San Francisco office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but had not known about her transfer to Sacramento’s regional office. Or was she here solely because of Jones? What did she know? This was a complication Noel couldn’t afford.

  “How did you pick Agent Knight?”

  “I-I didn’t. I contacted their hotline. Two months ago. She’s the one who met with me. I’ve only met her face-to-face once, talked to her a couple times. I swear to God, please—”

  “What does she know?”

  “She has no proof. I think … I think she has theories but no proof.”