Chapter Twelve
“What the hell just happened?” Sloan stood in the doorway of the break room looking like an avenging angel.
Lucas shook his head and took a large gulp of coffee. He’d been expecting to spend the whole day squeezed tight into the back of a van with Diego Fuentes, but that was the FBI for you—never a dull moment, as long as you didn’t count paperwork.
It was a miracle no one else had been killed. The feelings that had churned inside him when that gunman had pointed his weapon at Ashley were like a tourniquet around his throat. In that moment he’d been completely helpless. He forced the strangled feeling aside. He needed to be professional. He had things to do.
He poured them both another cup of coffee and followed Sloan through to her office.
“They took out any potential threats to their organization before they became a problem,” Lucas answered gruffly. “And they made us look like a bunch of fools while doing it.”
“These guys are leading us in circles and we’re still no closer to IDing the group responsible, let alone the three men who escaped the brothel. They’ve undercut every plan of action we’ve made.” Sloan rubbed her eyes as she settled in behind her desk.
He placed the coffee at her elbow.
“Thanks.” She took a sip and grimaced.
The coffee was thick as tar, but did a good job of kick starting sluggish neurons.
“Funerals start tomorrow.” The sadness in her eyes was echoed by the heavy feeling in his chest. And there were still many unidentified bodies at the morgue. The case was a mess of callous death and destruction.
Sloan gritted her jaw. “And I haven’t seen my bed, let alone my husband in six days. I think Brian’s gonna leave me for someone who doesn’t treat him like an enemy spy and who’s occasionally home at night. Hell, the cat is better company than I am.”
Randall closed the door and sat down, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “We have to start working the very real possibility they have someone on the inside. Someone they compromised and blackmailed into working for them.”
Sloan’s mouth went wide on a yawn, but she looked far from shocked. “I had the office swept for electronic listening devices the day Susan Thomas was murdered,” she admitted. “It’s clean, so if there’s a leak, it’s a human one.” She picked up the coffee again. “Tastes like someone threw in a handful of dirt.” She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “So, how do you suggest we go about figuring out who might be the leak?”
“Feed different tidbits of information to different pools of people and see what surfaces in the wrong place?” he suggested.
Her lips twisted. “Easier said than done until we have some real clues about these guys.”
“We have clues—that’s why they’re panicking.” And their panic had meant more bloodshed on the streets of Boston.
There was a knock on the door and Ashley poked her head inside. Mallory had fetched her fresh clothing from their hotel room and at some point Ashley had showered and changed. Her hair was wet. Skin pale. Lips pinched. A gunfight would do that to a person. She wore all black, which seemed grimly appropriate given the mood. He wanted to touch her, to take her in his arms and make sure she was okay, but this was work and she was an FBI agent, not a civilian, not his girlfriend.
“Agent Chen. Come in. Take a seat. Glad to see you’re still with us,” Sloan said with a strained smile.
His stomach clenched at the reminder of how close she’d come to dying today. Bloodstains had covered the knees of her pants, and her palms were crisscrossed with minor lacerations, yet she’d escaped relatively unscathed. The EMTs had cleaned her up on the street, after she’d refused to go to the hospital.
“What happened out there?” Sloan asked.
“I’ve written up and submitted my reports,” Ashley said. The Bureau loved paperwork, especially when an agent fired their weapon in public.
If she thought that let her off the hook, Sloan’s patient gaze persuaded her otherwise. “I stayed up late, poking around the Tor server until four this morning, so I overslept. I’m very sorry about that.” She stared straight ahead, obviously waiting to be chastised.
Sloan eyed her. “Agent Chen, I’m aware our jobs aren’t always nine-to-five. I’m smart enough to appreciate the different skill sets people bring to the table.”
Some of the stiffness eased out of Ashley’s shoulders but her mouth remained tense. “I was walking to work at about nine-thirty. I grabbed a coffee, but when I came back outside I spotted Ray Tan walking toward me. Obviously, I know he’s being tailed, but I didn’t want to give that away. He started giving me grief about working for the Bureau. I told him to keep hassling me and I’d take him straight back to the field office for impeding an agent trying to perform her duties.” A line formed between her brows. “He finally left me alone and that’s when I heard the bike roar to a stop beside us. And I remembered.”
“What?” Sloan leaned forward.
“The same bike drove past me and Agent Rooney after we questioned the tobacconist near the brothel. I remember because they were going so fast as they weaved through traffic.”
“You think the same guys killed Susan Thomas?” Lucas asked.
She nodded. “I should have connected it to the shooting yesterday.”
“Can we put a rush on ballistics to compare the slug we pulled out of the dog and the ones fired this morning?” Lucas suggested.
“I’ll request it.” Sloan made a note on a pad of paper. She turned to Lucas. “The guys on the bike—could you tell if they were the same ones from the brothel or not?”
Lucas shook his head. “They wore tinted visors and were bent over on the back of a bike. Too hard to tell their height and build, but they could have been.”
When Ray Tan had confronted Ashley on the street he’d been torn between running to her aid, arresting the guy on what they had on him, or trusting she could handle herself and staying put. Only concerns for Becca’s safety had kept his ass in the van. They needed to get the major players off the streets if that kid was to have any chance of a normal life—but every second watching Ashley on the street without backup had made him silently scream.
Then the bullets had started to fly.
“So what’s the next plan?” Ashley’s voice wobbled and her hands shook. She wouldn’t meet his gaze. She was probably still in shock and should take the day off.
“ASAC Frazer is making loud noises about you and Rooney heading back to Quantico and continuing your assistance from there. He’s pissed you were involved in a major shooting incident this morning and found a still warm body before that. He took great pains to explain to me the role of the BAU in an investigation.” Sloan’s lip curled. “In the meantime, our people are convinced they’ll be able to crack the cell phone in the next twenty-four hours and get us whatever information is on it.” Her expression turned sour. “But then they said the same thing yesterday.”
Sloan stared at the surface of her desk for a few moments. “I hear you figured out how these guys tracked down Susan Thomas.”
“I did?” Ashley mumbled wearily.
“Frazer told me you’d given a suggestion to a cybersecurity consultant he worked with. They ran with it and found evidence someone had hacked the FinCEN system and pulled the information attached to the money transfer between the Strombergs and Susan Thomas.” Alex. “They’ve set up a trapdoor, fixed the intrusion and patched other federal systems. All thanks to you.”
Lucas sat down. Wished he could take Ashley’s pale hand in his.
Did Alex still not think they could trust this woman? She’d more than proven her worth.
Ashley sent Sloan a fierce grin. “We just cost these people a lot of money—that’s gonna piss them off.”
“Not to mention improving the security of the United States federal government,” Lucas added.
Finally Ashley met his eyes, but hers were cloudy with internal turmoil. Then they hardened and turned ba
ck to Sloan. “I wanted to spend time trying to figure out if they’ve set up shop again on the darknet. Because they will, it’s just a matter of time.” Her eyes flicked between them in agitation. “I just need a starting point. If we could nail one of the johns and find out how he paid—”
“Remember that lawyer we picked up before you went in on Wednesday?” Sloan interrupted, addressing Lucas.
“The one who gave us the password to get me in the door?”
Sloan nodded sharply. “Theo Giovanni.”
“He’s one of the few starting points we do have,” Lucas agreed. “But we can’t touch him because of the deal he made.” Protecting people’s privacy and civil liberty was important to him, as was keeping his word, but Theo Giovanni was pure slime.
“I know, but it’s a shame we can’t get into that slippery bastard’s financial or internet or phone records and see if there’s anything there that can help us.” Sloan sighed dramatically. “Unfortunately, officially, we can’t use him in any way.”
Ashley stared at them both as if they’d lost their minds. Lucas was beginning to think he might have.
“I’m just going to excuse myself and go work on searching the dark web. You know where to find me if you need me,” she said.
“Check in with Agent Randall at the end of the day,” Sloan ordered. “And if you need to take time off, do it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ashley didn’t look at him as she left, closing the door behind her.
Lucas eyed Sloan with a frown. “I take it that’s your first test?”
Sloan smiled grimly. “Most of the squad, including you, knew his name from the initial surveillance and subsequent deal we did with him, but the degenerate is still alive and well. Wouldn’t he be dead if the leak was one of us?”
Lucas shrugged. Maybe they just hadn’t got to him yet. The gangsters had been pretty damned busy mopping up other loose ends. “Let’s hope Theo Giovanni stays alive for Agent Chen’s sake.”
Sloan’s phone dinged and she checked the screen. Her eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. “Well, this is new. The Chinese are sending us one of their people to assist in the investigation.”
“They have information?”
“I guess we’ll have to ask Detective Nelson Shaw of the Hong Kong Police Department tomorrow morning. He works for their Criminal Intelligence Bureau.”
A spark of anticipation lit his blood. “What time is he arriving?”
“Nine.”
“I’d like to be in on that meeting.” The criminals they were dealing with weren’t newbies. They were too well organized and disciplined not to have honed their craft somewhere. Maybe that somewhere was Hong Kong.
“Are you going to see our little friend today?” Sloan asked.
She meant Becca. He nodded.
“Did you mention her to Agent Chen?” For all she must be exhausted Sloan’s gaze was sharp and assessing.
He shook his head, too tired to glare at her. She leaned back in her chair, apparently satisfied.
“We need to think about moving her to a safe house soon.” Lucas rubbed the top of his nose to try and ease a growing tension headache.
“You haven’t found the mother yet?”
He didn’t hold back his snort of incredulity. “I haven’t even had time to start looking for the woman.”
Sloan pursed her lips in consideration. “If Chen passes my test and Theo Giovanni doesn’t meet with a tragic end in the next twenty-four hours, bring her on board and get her to trace the girl’s family. There’s got to be someone somewhere out there who cares about the kid.”
“And if there isn’t?” he asked the question that bothered him most. What if, after all this, there was nowhere for Becca to go except foster care? It would be almost as bad as the system letting down Agata Maroulis.
“Let’s take this one disaster at a time, Agent Randall.”
For some reason that reminded him of the contraceptive pills the assholes had forced the little girl to swallow. More than five hundred before she’d given up counting. He got to his feet, nodded to Sloan and headed out into the fresh air of Boston, hoping it would be cold enough to quench the anger that wanted to consume him. There was no way he was letting that kid rot in the system. And no way were these bastards getting hold of her ever again.
Chapter Thirteen
Ashley sat alone in the conference room where she and Mallory had been working. She’d finished the endless reams of paperwork associated with this morning’s shooting and spent the rest of the day holed up out of sight. The press was going nuts, stirring up the good citizens of Boston into a terrified frenzy until many were scared to leave their homes. Luckily no one had caught the incident on their cell phone and her face wasn’t plastered all over the media.
It didn’t matter how much training she’d received, or how experienced she was as an agent, being involved in an exchange of gunfire had shaken her. The temptation to run had been almost overwhelming. Having started her life over, twice now, Ashley was reluctant to throw away a career that gave her the power to fight back, especially on the word of some two-bit gangster.
As a civilian she was no one, but as a government agent she could help nail the bastards to the wall. Working for the BAU meant that with a bit of luck they wouldn’t even know she existed.
The Dragon Devils had always been by far the most secretive of all the Asian secret societies, but the Devils of today might bear no resemblance to those of 2004. The current leadership might not even know who she was. Her repulsive uncle hadn’t been seen since the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake had ripped a hole in the world. The gigantic wave that had resulted from the quake had stolen more than two hundred and thirty thousand lives in fourteen different countries—why not his? The tragedy had traumatized a generation and given her the opportunity to fake her own death.
She refused to wonder if her brother had survived, or her odious cousin, although Ray Tan’s comments suggested one of them had.
So she could run, or she could keep a cool head and help put these bastards away.
If the Bureau ever discovered the lies she’d told to get into the FBI Academy she’d be out on her ear, and probably up on fraud charges. It wouldn’t matter that her intention had only ever been to serve her country, and seek justice for others. The powers-that-be would take a different view.
Whatever she did, fight or flight, she might still lose her career, but at least this way she had the chance to make up for some of the evil her family had perpetrated.
It was late and Ashley yawned widely. Mallory had been assigned to advise the team who was about to begin rounding up men they’d believed visited the brothel as paying customers. The team was figuring out who to approach first and what angle to take. They didn’t want a string of dead potential witnesses—at the same time, they needed to end this thing, and punish those who involved.
The port, border crossings and airports remained on high alert for the fugitives, but Ashley had the feeling they were still right here in Boston. How else could they respond so quickly to perceived threats? And the way that pillion passenger on the motorcycle had stared at her… The lab had his DNA from a blood trail after she’d clipped him. They might get a hit.
The ballistics report landed in her email inbox. It confirmed a match between the gun used to shoot Susan Thomas’s dog and the men who’d gunned down Ray Tan in the street that morning. It was the same gun used to execute Agata Maroulis in cold blood when the girl had escaped.
Ashley shuddered. Her family were monsters. They needed to be locked up.
Her laptop dinged with the results of another search she’d run on the lawyer who’d given them the password to get inside the Boston brothel. Theo Giovanni.
What a piece of work. A named partner in a small Boston law firm, Theo was as creepy as a red-kneed tarantula. Married with three small kids, he spent a lot of money entertaining in restaurants and clubs.
That could be legit given his job, but he visited porn site
s the way most people checked Facebook. She spoofed an email and sent him a link to an explicit site that specialized in young-looking teens. Once he clicked on the link she’d be able to track his every command and listen in to his microphone.
The FBI wouldn’t approve.
Despite bad press and widespread public paranoia, the Bureau tried to respect US citizens’ privacy, not to mention they were too damn busy to randomly snoop. Giovanni was different. He’d already gotten what amounted to a free pass on this case and he was definitely guilty. Nothing she discovered was covered by a warrant or admissible in court and no way was she going to admit to doing this to anyone. But if he gave her a clue to follow, a breadcrumb that might lead her to the bad guys…she’d take it.
It was almost eleven by the time Giovanni logged into an online banking account under the name of one of his junior associates.
Gotcha.
Ashley wondered if the poor sap knew anything about it.
Giovanni transferred several thousand dollars to another online facility and bought bitcoins, the virtual online currency. He then made a payment to a website on the Tor server that looked innocuous enough, but she doubted anyone paid a thousand dollars for a pound of actual carrots.
She eyed his transaction history and saw he had items delivered to a mailbox near his workplace. Probably coke. It might be worth alerting the US Postal Service about this supplier.
Giovanni logged off and shut down his computer and everything went silent. She turned off all her monitoring programs and sat back in frustration. She didn’t have the resources or the authority to put a tail on the guy. Better to call it quits and head back to the hotel.
Outside, reporters were conspicuous in their absence. The field office had released a brief statement with a description of the men they were looking for and asking anyone with information to come forward. The press knew they wouldn’t get anything beyond the party line.
She kept her hand near her weapon, glanced over her shoulder. It was only a fifteen-minute walk back to the hotel, but she’d swear she could feel eyes on her every step of the way. Her cell rang just as she entered the atrium of the hotel.
Cold Secrets (Cold Justice Book 7) Page 17