Deep Cover

by Kimberly Van Meter

“Angelo,” he called out, sounding relieved. “I’m so glad I found you!”

  Angelo startled, and when he saw it was Shaine, he relaxed. But he looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  “I have to talk to you. It’s urgent,” he said, going straight to Angelo. “Brandi called me with some wild story and she told me to find you right away.”

  “Brandi called you? Why?” he asked, confused. “Where is she? What did she say? Is she all right?”

  “I don’t know, she sounded scared. What the hell is going on? The things she was saying...it sounds like something out of a movie.”

  “What did she say?” he repeated impatiently. “Just say it already.”

  “Sorry,” Shaine said, acting insulted that Angelo had snapped at him. Angelo immediately apologized, but he gestured for him to continue. Shaine lost his scowl and continued, “Okay, it was a really quick phone call and all she said was—and I hope this makes sense to you because it sure as hell doesn’t make sense to me—she said to meet her at your usual spot with the last shipment. El Escorpion wants you to deliver it personally. If you don’t...she’s dead.” He paused for a minute, watching Angelo’s reaction keenly. “Is she serious? What the hell is going on?”

  “Ahh, shit,” Angelo moaned, bouncing against the box with agitation. “I told her we’d get caught. He’d know we were skimming. He always figures that shit out.”

  “Who?”

  “El Escorpion, you idiot!”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Only the most dangerous drug kingpin in all of Miami. He’s smarter than the cops and he’s got eyes all over this town. I don’t know what I was thinking. Shit.” He ran his hand through his thick, black hair, as wired as a drug addict in need of a fix. “Somehow he found out that we took some of his shipment. I don’t know how but he did and he’s gonna gut Brandi like a pig if I don’t deliver. But it’s a death sentence if I show up like he wants me to.”

  “Is that what happened to Capri?” Shaine fished.

  “What?” Angelo asked, distracted. Then he shook his head, saying, “Capri got caught messing around. She was the favorite.”

  “So El Escorpion is a man?” Shaine asked, holding his breath.

  “Of course,” he answered, irritated. “What’s with all the questions? What the hell am I going to do about Brandi? I can’t just let her die.”

  “But you could let her get the shit kicked out of her?”

  “What was I supposed to do?” Angelo shot back, his eyes flashing. “This ain’t no game. El Escorpion doesn’t mess around. Besides, I didn’t think she’d get it that bad. I thought she might get it easy because she was a female.”

  “Why did you think you could steal from him?”

  Angelo wiped at the sweat at his brow. “I don’t know. We got cocky I guess. The money was insane. Everyone wants Bliss.”

  “Yeah, except the people who are dead,” Shaine muttered, earning a quick look from Angelo. “The drug kills. Capri’s heart exploded in her chest.”

  “What do you know about how Capri died?” he asked with suspicion.

  “Because I saw what was left of her heart when she was lying on the coroner’s slab.”

  “What the...” Angelo’s confusion was a second behind Shaine’s actions as he pulled his gun. “What the hell? You’re a goddamn cop!”

  “Actually, FBI agent, but let’s not split hairs. Here’s the deal, you’re going to call El Escorpion and schedule a meeting. Tell him you have his shipment and you need to unload it ASAP.”

  “Where’s Brandi?” he asked, narrowing his gaze.

  “Don’t worry about her. Make the call.”

  Suddenly, Angelo slowly began to smirk.

  “What’s so funny?” Shaine asked, beginning to feel the back of his neck prickle.

  “I was just thinking...you might be worth a bonus.”

  Pain exploded in the back of his head as something heavy connected with his skull, and Shaine went straight to the floor.

  His last thought was...somehow the bait had become the predator.

  And he was the main course.

  * * *

  Poppy stalked into the safe house and went straight for Brandi, jerking her to her feet as she yelped in pain.

  “Where is he taking him?” she demanded. Thankfully, the entire conversation between Angelo and Shaine had been recorded, but the connection went dead after a loud thunk, which made Poppy want to climb through the line with panic.

  She didn’t care about protocol, didn’t care that she was manhandling a witness. Poppy knew Shaine was in danger and she wasn’t going to just sit there and hope for the best.

  “Who?” Brandi cried, frightened of the rage in Poppy’s eyes. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Angelo is taking Shaine somewhere. Where would he take him?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Brandi answered, her teeth clacking together when Poppy nearly shook her head off her shoulders. “Put me down! Help!”

  “I will rip your head off and feed you to the fish if you don’t start talking.”

  “You need me to testify,” Brandi said, her lower lip trembling.

  “I couldn’t give a shit about the case if anything happened to my partner. Where is he taking him?” She bruised Brandi’s arms within her grasp. “Start talking.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, tears jumping to her eyes.

  “Think!”

  “Maybe the warehouse,” she cried as Poppy thrust her back into the chair. Brandi winced as she tried to get into a better position. “That’s where we did the drop-off of the product. That’s all I know! Angelo was always the one who handled that stuff.”

  Poppy leaned in to growl, “If anything happens to Shaine, I’m going to personally take great pleasure in breaking every bone in your body.”

  She texted Victoria the location of the warehouse, knowing Victoria would handle the details of getting backup there, but Poppy couldn’t wait.

  She knew that if Angelo was taking Shaine to the warehouse to meet with El Escorpion...he wasn’t coming out alive.

  * * *

  Shaine’s head throbbed as wet stickiness oozed from his injury. His hands were bound with duct tape. Someone had brained him from behind and trussed him up like a Christmas turkey.

  How could he be so stupid?

  He’d been played.

  They’d all been played.

  Angelo had gotten them to show their cards too soon. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about Brandi or what’d happened to her.

  The whole point had been to flush out the embedded agents.

  Shaine opened his eyes to darkness and realized he was in the trunk of a car.

  Enclosed spaces were not his favorite. Panic threatened to squeeze the air from his lungs. He closed his eyes and focused on staying conscious.

  The most important thing was to keep his head. If he stayed levelheaded, he would walk out of this alive.

  If he panicked, he was already dead.

  The car stopped and he heard footsteps approach the trunk. It opened and he squinted against the pain in his head.

  Raquel stood next to Angelo, a cruel smile on her lips. “For a big guy, you went down easy.”

  So Raquel had been the one to clock him. Guess that MMA fighter training was still good for something.

  The tattoo, the scorpion... Sometimes the most obvious answer was the correct one.

  “Bring him inside,” Raquel said, turning on her spindly stiletto heels to walk into the warehouse.

  Angelo jerked Shaine to his feet and pushed him in front of him.

  “I’m always amazed at how stupid cops must think we are,” he said conversationally. “You aren’t the first task force to try to take down our operation. Before it was Bliss, we moved Ecstasy, before that, it was heroin. We try to stay on top of the newest trends, the newest party flavor.”

  “So what’s the real reason Brandi was beat up?” he asked, the throb in his head making him nauseo
us.

  “Oh, that was true. The best lie has a bit of truth,” Angelo answered. “Brandi was a bad girl and needed to be punished.”

  “You’re a sick freak. Did you watch?”

  Raquel gave a sidewise glance at Shaine as she said, “There’s a certain finesse to the way Bear does his work. Messy, though.” She turned to Angelo. “Next time, you’re cleaning up the mess. She’s your bitch, anyway.”

  Angelo laughed. “It was always you, baby. Always you.”

  Everything had been an act for their benefit. They must’ve been on to them the moment—or close to the moment—they showed up on the scene.

  “Your act was pretty convincing. How’d you know?” Shaine asked.

  “You said that you worked at Grind. Miami is a small town. I know everyone who works at the best clubs. No one had heard of Rocco Pacheco. A little digging and, boom...all the references were fake. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.”

  Raquel laughed. “And there’s no way your friend was ever a stripper. Her moves were too refined, too classical to be anything but a good girl pretending to be a bad girl.”

  Shaine wanted to send a roundhouse kick straight to Raquel’s smug mouth, but his head was still weeping blood and he was dangerously close to passing out. He may even have a skull fracture, which meant he could lose consciousness at any moment if his brain was swelling.

  Was the pain because of the blow to his head or because he was in actual danger of dying?

  It could go either way with blunt force trauma.

  Angelo shoved Shaine and he nearly went flying, but he managed to regain his footing and avoided sprawling to the floor. “C’mon, someone wants to meet you.”

  They walked onto the empty warehouse floor, not a trace of the party remaining except a few fluorescent lights overhead, and saw a man in a fine linen suit awaiting them.

  He turned and smiled with calculating precision. “Ahh, finally, Agent Kelly...or should I call you Rocco Pacheco?”

  Shaine stared at the man, swearing under his breath.

  Ramirez hadn’t been far off the mark.

  “Where’s his partner?” Mateo asked Angelo sharply. “You were supposed to bring me both.”

  “He came alone. But we’ll get her tonight when she comes for her shift. She doesn’t know we’re on to her.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Shaine asked, smiling through the pain. “How do you know you’re not being surrounded right now?”

  “Good try,” Angelo said. “We already know you’re sucking air on this case. You aren’t the only one with someone on the inside.”

  Shaine tried not to show his alarm as his mind raced. All of the people brought into this operation had been thoroughly vetted. Who could possibly be working on the inside? Immediate fear stole his breath as he realized Poppy was completely unaware of what kind of danger she was in.

  “That’s enough, Angelo,” Mateo said, pulling a small baggie from his jacket pocket. “We shouldn’t keep our guest waiting. He’s come a long way and we don’t want to disappoint.”

  Raquel smirked as Mateo came closer. Angelo gripped him by the arms and held him tight.

  “What are you doing?” he tried to keep his voice strong, but there was an edge of fear he couldn’t quite avoid. Then he saw that the baggie was filled with pills.

  “My sister is a brilliant woman but she doesn’t take risks. We were working on a drug that would elevate the serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain for depression, but something went wrong in the trials and instead of lowering the test subjects’ anxiety, it left them in a euphoric state. One of the test subjects said it was like ‘bliss.’ The product had been a total failure for the market intended, but it had huge potential on the black market. One thing led to another and now we have eager customers eating it up. We couldn’t keep up supply and demand.”

  “Except people were dying,” Shaine said. “Dead users aren’t much for repeat business.”

  “True. Which is why we were changing the formulary when you showed up on the scene. Unbeknownst to you and your partner, you were the first test subjects for the newest batch.”

  Shaine felt ill. “And if we would’ve died? Don’t you think that would’ve ruined your little operation?”

  “No one would’ve found your bodies.” Mateo’s smile was deadly. “You aren’t the first test subjects that had to be disposed of quietly. It’s amazing what you can stuff in a fifty-five-gallon drum of chemical waste.”

  Shaine could only imagine how many dead bodies had been eaten by chemicals and disposed of, none the wiser.

  “So what now?” Shaine asked. “How does this end, seeing as how you were on to us the whole time?”

  “It ends with you OD’ing on Bliss. I’m sure you can imagine where I’m going with this.”

  Raquel checked her phone. “It’s about that time.”

  Mateo motioned to Angelo. Suddenly his mouth was wrenched open and pills were shoved inside. Angelo pinched Shaine’s nose and held his mouth shut until he had no choice but to swallow them.

  Raquel rolled an empty drum over to them. “Look what we have here. A handy container for nosy FBI agents.”

  Shaine tried not to show fear, but he was terrified of going into that drum. He kicked and fought as Angelo and Raquel dragged him to the drum and hoisted him up to dump him inside. He yelled as the top was slammed down, sealing him inside.

  Panic fluttered in his chest as the darkness closed in around him. This was worse than being shot.

  This was worse than anything he ever could’ve imagined.

  He was going to die and no one would ever find him.

  Worse was the realization that Poppy was walking right into a trap.

  CHAPTER 27

  Poppy started to run for the front door when a bullet zinged past her, burying itself in the drywall.

  She took cover and grabbed her gun. More gunfire erupted as the security detail returned fire, but whoever was shooting was deadly. Two bodies fell to the ground and Poppy caught sight of a department issue boot.

  “She’s in here!” Brandi screeched, pointing at Poppy’s hiding spot.

  Poppy bailed and dove behind the couch just as another bullet exploded the couch cushion, sending stuffing flying.

  The sound of footsteps followed as the shooter knew exactly where to go.

  “She’s behind the couch!” Brandi yelled again, and Poppy wanted to shoot her first.

  But as it turned out she didn’t need to.

  “Thanks,” said the shooter dispassionately, shooting Brandi in the head at point-blank range.

  Poppy didn’t have time to do much more than fire off a round and scramble to another spot, using the wall as a shield. She aimed and fired, missed and the shooter returned fire.

  Ducking, she ate plaster as the bullet narrowly missed her face.

  Her mind was reeling.

  She knew the shooter.

  Of all the people...why?

  “When did El Escorpion buy your badge?” she called out, angry and sick to her stomach at the same time. “When did you sell out? Was it worth it?”

  Victoria Stapp, Shaine’s partner for the past six months, was trying to kill her. Rage blotted out any fear as she thought of all the ways she wanted to kill Stapp for betraying the team and, worse, Stapp’s own partner.

  “How could you do this to Shaine? He was your partner. He had your back.”

  “You’re naive, Jones. The only person who has my back is me. You and Kelly have the same problem. You’re both so blind to what’s right in front of your face because you think you’re so badass.”

  “Yeah? So is this some kind of revenge to show us up? I’m flattered.”

  “That’s just a bonus. It’s all about the money. Lots of it. Let’s be real, no one’s retiring on anything but a pittance in government work unless you’re the director, and I’m done with all this glass ceiling shit. By this time tomorrow, I’ll be sitting on a white, sandy bea
ch, sipping a froufrou drink and watching the clouds go by.”

  “Sounds kinda boring to me,” she called out, thinking fast. “And think of all the sunscreen you’ll have to wear to avoid burning that blindingly white skin of yours.”

  “Somehow I’ll manage. For what it’s worth...it’s not personal. Not really. Kelly was an insufferable ass but we had some jokes, some good times. I don’t know you enough to care about you. Sorry about this, but loose ends and all that.”

  Poppy knew that Shaine had been set up. They’d all been set up. No one was supposed to get out alive.

  “Was it you who killed Marcus?” she asked, trying to stall for time.

  “Not with my own gun, of course. He didn’t see it coming, either.”

  “You’re a piece of shit, you know that?” Poppy said. “Killing one of your own... There’s a place in hell reserved for people like you.”

  “Save it, Jones. Your judgment means nothing to me.”

  “Apparently, neither does your lack of integrity.”

  “Screw you, you don’t know my life. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

  “Cry me a river. Let me get my small violin.”

  “Yeah, not gonna miss that smart-ass mouth...” Victoria took a shot as Poppy whipped around to take one, too.

  Her bullet struck payday, knocking Victoria back. She slammed into the wall, smearing blood as she slid down. The bullet hole was weeping blood as her heart pumped like a geyser.

  Poppy kicked the gun away from her nerveless fingers and checked for a pulse. A faint heartbeat thumped sluggishly as she slowly died. The light went out of her eyes and Poppy knew she was gone.

  “Traitor,” she said to her lifeless face. “If you weren’t dead, I’d kill you all over.”

  She rose, called Ramirez and then jumped in the car to find Shaine.

  The last time Poppy had prayed to God, she’d been staring down the business end of a gun, hoping that somehow she lived to see another day.

  Now she was praying again...only this time, she hoped she wasn’t too late to save the man who meant everything to her.

  * * *

  Shaine was drifting in the darkness. The Bliss was taking over, casting a fuzzy blanket of nothing over the panic trying to eat him alive, and he actually started humming, his voice echoing in the drum.