This was the problem with being a computer geek. Four AM might be perfect for tiptoeing around the dark web looking for clues, but it made getting to work by nine a bit of an issue.
She brushed her teeth and simultaneously hitched up her pants, spitting out into the sink. She hadn’t even gotten anywhere last night. Just examined a depressing array of sites that sold sex. There were a staggering number in the US alone.
Ironically, the darknet lived and breathed on the Tor browser. Tor had been developed and funded by the feds as a secure network for government agencies and dissidents from around the world to use. Tor made it possible to mask your identity and the location of your server. All well and good if you were trying to avoid a stalker, or blog about antigovernment sentiment in a country where intellectual freedom got your throat cut. But not so great when the tables were turned and the feds were trying to catch someone who—for example—was selling sex with kids to pedophiles.
She checked her Glock 27 and her backup weapon and pulled on her suit jacket. Sex trafficking was massive with an estimated 600,000-800,000 victims moved across international borders each year. It was the fastest growing industry in the criminal world with profits estimated at over a billion dollars. But the fact it was so prevalent in society today meant it was even more difficult to track specific organizations. Ashley had used a search engine developed by the DOD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to crawl through hidden sites, so they could be scoured later, but it was going to take time to find these people, especially as they’d removed the original sites.
Lucas and Fuentes and the others on the surveillance team had a better chance of tracking down the fugitives with good old-fashioned police work than she did trawling through cyberspace.
She was glad she wasn’t the one doing surveillance. Firstly, Lucas Randall was proving detrimental to her good intentions and she couldn’t afford that. Second, the Chinese connection to this case was beginning to seriously bother her. There might be 1.4 billion Chinese people in the world, and there might be hundreds of Tong and Triad groups in existence, but the sophistication of the network, the fear with which the perpetrators were regarded…
No.
It couldn’t be.
There’d been no definitive trace of them for the last decade.
For her own peace of mind, she needed to stay in the shadows and not draw any attention to herself—another reason to avoid Lucas Randall. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he was loaded. She’d looked him up and the guy was the sort of wealthy that hung out in society pages at the Kentucky Derby. His parents actually owned racehorses for crying out loud. One of his sisters was married to a freaking senator.
Ashley just wanted to do her job. Sex would be nice occasionally, but not essential. It was just scratching a biological itch. A weakness she couldn’t afford to indulge in right now. Maybe when she was back in Quantico she’d find some hot stud in HRT and take him for a ride.
She gave her pale reflection a stern nod and ignored the fact she looked miserable.
She was going to end up a lonely old prune, but that was better than being reckless and dead, or worse—getting other people dead. She grabbed her laptop and coat, noticing that though the sun was shining, it looked frigid outside. February in Boston was a bit of a bitch.
She took the stairs down to the hotel lobby, needing the exercise. On the street she scanned her surroundings. It was always smart to be cautious but Lucas had made her over-suspicious.
On the street the smell of coffee had her making a quick detour to grab a latte with an extra shot of espresso, and a banana that had seen better days.
She’d just ditched the peel when she spotted the first sign of trouble. Ray Tan—the driver of Mae Kwon’s minivan and general all around sleaze bag—strolling toward her. She kept her head down and watched him through her lashes, but he’d recognized her.
Dammit.
She didn’t dare look around for the surveillance teams or call for assistance. It had been her idea to let this guy back on the streets and she wasn’t going to ruin it by arresting the idiot again.
The guy walked right up to her and she was forced to stop or crash into him.
“Excuse me.” She lifted her chin and used her steeliest voice.
“Why you work for the feds?” He sidestepped when she tried to go around him.
She let a cool smile touch her lips, refusing to show him an ounce of fear. “I see you’ve been released, Mr. Tan. I suggest if you want to remain out of custody you get out of my way. Otherwise I’ll be happy to escort you back to the field office for impeding an FBI agent from conducting her duties.”
He inclined his head but his next words froze her marrow. “It’s funny, Agent Chen, but you look very much like a friend of mine.”
“So you can’t tell us apart either?” she sneered even as her heart clenched hard enough to hurt.
“On the contrary.” His eyes lingered on each of her features and then moved slowly down her body. Creep. “I’m very good with faces.”
“And yet you had surprisingly little to tell us during the interview last night. You’re a lot more talkative now. Want to come in to make a statement?”
His eyes narrowed and she saw the violence he kept leashed—the lack of empathy for other human beings. He was not a good man. He was a criminal who would quite happily kidnap, rape, sell, or kill her if he thought he could get away with it. She kept her smile in place and her hand on her weapon. His gaze followed the movement and this time, when she took a step around him, he let her go.
“I’ll be seeing you again, FBI Agent Ashley Chen,” he called after her.
She walked backwards so she didn’t have to take her eyes off the guy. “Oh, you can count on it, Mr. Tan.” She opened her mouth to make another biting retort but a sporty-looking motorcycle carrying a pillion passenger slowed near the curb and diverted her attention. The bikers wore black helmets with tinted visors. Suddenly, she remembered a similar bike passing her in the street near the bombed-out brothel yesterday.
One of the men pulled a pistol from inside his jacket.
“Gun!” she screamed, drawing her own weapon. The massive plate glass window behind her shattered and large shards of glass crashed to the sidewalk. People started screaming and running. A woman with a stroller stood between her and the motorbike.
“Get down!” Ashley yelled. Ray Tan was on the ground, blood pouring from a hole in his chest.
The bike took off. Ashley swung her weapon toward the motorcycle and lined up her shot. She fired once, clipping the one guy in the arm. The gunman didn’t return fire. Instead, he clutched his injured arm and stared over his shoulder at her as the driver snaked between vehicles and sped away. There were so many bystanders in the crossfire she didn’t dare shoot again.
Shaken, she pushed herself to her knees and crawled toward the man who lay bleeding out on the sidewalk. There were shouts and screams as people ran around her, panicked, probably thinking it was a terrorist attack, not an assassination.
She pulled off her coat and then her suit jacket, balling up the latter and pressing it hard against the gaping wound in the man’s chest. She knew other agents would be scrambling, calling for backup and an ambulance.
Ray Tan opened his mouth and gasped for breath. His eyes had a faraway look in them as they locked on hers. An amused light entered them and he whispered in a voice that was barely audible over the chaos of the street. “You seek the Dragon Devils, and yet you look exactly like one of them,” he spoke in Cantonese.
The blood drained from her face. “Who?” Ashley demanded urgently. “What did you say?”
But he didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes rolled before his entire body went slack. Someone grabbed her and tugged her away as other agents rushed to give CPR, but most of Ray Tan’s blood was already soaking into the Boston concrete and Ashley had seen enough death to recognize its grip. Her insides felt like they’d shriveled up. Her knees buckled, and she found
herself swept up into strong arms.
Lucas.
He carried her away from the mayhem of the shooting, propping her against another storefront, searching her for wounds. Pieces of glass clung to her knees and palms and small cuts bleed profusely. But she hadn’t been shot in the attack.
“Ashley, snap out of it. Were you hit?” Lucas asked fiercely.
She shook herself out of her stupor and realized he’d been talking to her the entire time.
“I’m okay.” She blinked away the shock and her training kicked in. She brushed the glass away from her clothes, and picked a shard from her thumb. “Really, Lucas, I’m fine.” She sounded hoarse, breathless, as if she’d been running. “I realized when that bike pulled up that I’d seen it before—near the brothel, just before we headed to the high rise and found Susan Thomas’s body.”
Lucas’s eyes were almost black as he looked down at her. She glanced around and saw paramedics working on Ray Tan. Unless they were in the business of resurrecting the dead, they were wasting their time.
“What did he say to you?”
“Who?” She blinked up at him, fear gripping her insides. The Dragon Devils were one of the most fierce, most ruthless, most elusive Chinese gangs. She’d thought they’d stopped operating more than a decade ago. She’d thought they were all dead.
“Ray Tan. It looked like he was telling you something just before he passed out.”
He hadn’t passed out. He’d died, but no one was ready to admit that yet. Ashley pulled away from Lucas and forced herself to stand on her own two feet. She couldn’t believe her life had just been irrevocably altered and yet everything looked the same. Same sky, same street, same handsome FBI agent making her long for more than she had to give. She needed to get out of here, but running screaming down the road would probably draw too much attention.
“What did he say to you, Ash?”
She snapped out of it. “He called me a bitch for working with the feds and getting him killed.” She looked away, unable to hold Lucas’s gaze as her eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t crying because a man had been killed, and Ashley hated herself for that too. But her empathy for gangsters and criminals had died years ago on a beach in Thailand. Instead, she was crying because, for the first time since she’d joined the Bureau, her background had impeded an investigation. She’d lied to keep her own ruinous secrets.
Now she had to figure out what to do about the fact that her worst nightmare had come true. Her family, who for years she’d thought were dead, was behind this trafficking organization and she faced a choice. Did she do her job, a job she’d trained for and worked hard at and loved with every ounce of her being, and help put these bastards in prison where they belonged? Or did she run and hide like the spineless frightened sixteen-year-old she’d once been?
Her brain screamed run, but the warm arm around her waist made her want to stay.
Blood trickled down her hands and knees as she watched the paramedics load Ray Tan onto a gurney and whisk him away. Everything she cared about, everything she’d worked so hard for was about to come crashing down. Another catastrophic explosion. Another devastated life. But she was the only one who could see it. She was the only one who knew.
* * *
All the preparations for moving their headquarters to another island were set. Andrew had packed up the computer system to be shipped on the next flight, although he kept his laptops with him, always. The fact Lily still hadn’t come to him stung. Surely she’d known he had no choice? Everything he’d done had been to protect her.
Had she been forced to go to his uncle again? Or had she enjoyed being with one of the most powerful crime bosses in the world?
His uncle was not an attractive man, but power was a tremendous aphrodisiac. Andrew had seen some of the most beautiful women in the world walk past him and Brandon like they were little boys, to kneel at his uncle’s feet.
Bile burned the back of Andrew’s throat but he swallowed it down and washed it away with water that sat on his desk. Women weren’t trustworthy. They cheated and lied and pretended they loved you and then fucked half the football team.
But Lily wasn’t like that.
Sweat gathered on his brow. Lily was quiet. Sweet. Innocent, until he’d come along. She lived with her mother on the island and had avoided his attention for months before even talking to him.
Did she hate him for not standing up for her? For not laying claim to her? Didn’t she know that would have meant certain death? He’d had to pretend he was just using her for sex so his uncle wouldn’t see her as a threat.
Had he lost her?
Of course he’d lost her.
He held his head in his hands. She’d said she loved him, but he hadn’t said it back. He never did. Not anymore.
Once he’d found out exactly who his uncle was, it had been easier to understand some of the man’s actions. Yu Chang had to show strength. He had to be the dominant male in the organization, especially now. Andrew understood all that. But how often did Andrew have to prove himself to the man? How many women would the old man claim for himself? And what would happen if Andrew ever wanted to take a wife? Would his uncle insist on bedding her, too? Or would the old man pick Andrew’s bride as another way of controlling him?
The thought appalled him. He’d learned long ago his own survival depended on his loyalty to Yu Chang and he’d given it unconditionally, but the notion of marrying someone he didn’t care for just because his uncle told him to?
The idea made his stomach clench.
They’d taken him in as an orphan, loved him, and given him tremendous power and responsibility. After losing his parents, and then Jenny, so close together, he’d needed the security of belonging somewhere. He’d needed his extended family, no matter how illegal their business practices had turned out to be. And over the years they’d come to need him, too. They couldn’t exist without him. They wouldn’t even know where to find the goddamn money. He slammed his fist into the table and relished the streak of pain that ran from his wrist to his elbow.
His cell rang.
Brandon. It didn’t matter how many times Andrew told Brandon how rash his actions were, the idiot always did exactly as he pleased. But Andrew would be the first to be blamed if Brandon was caught because the feds had tracked his frickin’ cell phone.
“You shouldn’t be calling me,” he hissed.
“This is important. I think I saw something after we went to…tie up those loose ends.” Brandon said it easily, as if they weren’t talking about killing real people. People who’d been loyal accomplices until circumstances had made their allegiance questionable.
Andrew had resigned himself years ago to the fact that his cousin was amoral and depraved. The bigger surprise was the fact Andrew was even halfway normal.
“Are you there, Andy?” Brandon asked.
“Yes,” he spat out. What the hell did Brandon want? Andrew was doing everything possible to get Brandon and the others out, but with every cop and federal agent in the land looking for them, it wasn’t easy. No one wanted to involve themselves with the Dragon Devils’ problems. And the Devils would never reveal how desperately they needed help for fear of other gangs seeing them as weak and trying to take over their operations.
“You need to sit down,” his cousin said calmly.
What the hell had he done now? “Just spit it out.”
He was probably the only person in the world who could talk to Brandon this way, but they were more like brothers than cousins. He’d saved Brandon’s life during one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike. The fact they’d lived through it was a miracle. Thousands hadn’t.
“There’s an FBI agent working in Boston called Chen. She was one of the people who made the arrest at the gambling den yesterday, and she was on the street with Ray Tan when the shooting went down this morning. She clipped me, but I’m okay.”
“Don’t tell me you killed another fucking federal agent?” And a woman to boot. The
country would be in an uproar.
“That’s not it.” There was something fearful in Brandon’s tone. Not something Andrew usually associated with the brash hothead, not even when on the run.
“I don’t have time to play guessing games—”
“The FBI agent looked just like your little sister.”
Andrew felt as if someone had punched him in the throat. Rage spewed inside him, rage that someone would taunt him this way. “Jenny’s dead.”
“I know, brother, I know. But…she looked so much like you. I couldn’t grab her because the place was swarming with cops. You should check her out, it’s probably just a stupid coincidence, but it saved the bitch’s life today.”
Andrew would have rolled his eyes or snapped at his cousin about the idiocy of shooting FBI agents if he hadn’t been struck mute. His sister was dead. She’d died moments after they’d had a terrible fight and he’d never forgiven himself.
“I have to go. I can’t believe I’m still stuck here. Fuck, Andy, get me the hell out of this shithole!”
“I’m working on it,” Andrew snarled as if Brandon hadn’t just catapulted him back into that nightmare of anger and grief.
“Just look the woman up using your crazy ninja computer skills. I might have been seeing things, or she might just look similar. Whatever. But it was freaky, brother. Really fucking freaky.”
Andrew let out a hoarse breath. “Yeah. Fine. Hang up and get rid of this damn phone or the feds will track you down.”
He picked up his glass to take a drink of water, but could barely hold the cup because his hand was shaking so much.
This was stupid. Jenny was dead. He put down the glass and booted up his laptop, mentally figuring out the best approach to look for this woman called Chen without anyone sensing he was in the system. He needed proof this fed bitch wasn’t his beloved sister. She wasn’t Jenny. She couldn’t be Jenny.
Cold Secrets (Cold Justice Book 7) Page 16