“Yeah. Avoiding Kelsey backfired on my ass. I had to confess. Best if I get her stamp of approval before I use my plan.”
“There wasn’t enough planning involved to call it a plan,” I said, getting up and dumping the contents of the gym bag onto the table. “Tech, can you get me a background on Chaves? I only have the arrest reports.”
“Maggie sent me some information, but I’ll dig deeper.”
“Speaking of Maggie, I’d better call her back.”
Tech slid an extra laptop my way, and I clicked the video-call icon, calling Maggie.
Maggie’s face appeared on the screen after the first ring. “You good?” she asked.
“Yup. Thanks for letting me vent yesterday.”
“You’re not pissed at me for sending Grady your way?”
I looked at Maggie and then glanced over at Grady, who was chuckling.
“You just ratted yourself out,” Grady hollered across the table. “I didn’t tell her you texted me and sent me to the war room.”
“Oh, oops. Oh well,” Maggie said, grinning. “What are we working on? I’m bored. Kierson won’t let me near any live cases yet.”
“Can you come to Michigan for the weekend?” I asked.
“Sure. Genie was only going to work a few hours today, so I’ll drag her with me. I take it you need help with the Chaves mess?”
“We’ll handle Chaves and loop you in if we need the FBI. But I’d like your help with my mother. Yesterday, I spilled the rest of my childhood secrets to Grady, and he smashed out all the windows in the war room. I don’t know how everyone else is going to react when they find out.”
“Sounds like you need someone who can help you work it as a case instead of polishing their sniper rifle.”
“Something like that.”
“Got it. We’ll be there in time for dinner.”
“Thanks,” I said before disconnecting.
“Do you remember that you’re in charge of dinner tonight?” Tech asked, not looking up from his laptop.
“Crap.” I sighed. “I’ll have to order something. Who’s available to pick it up later?”
“If I get a free dinner out of it, I’ll pick it up,” Wayne said, walking into the conference room and grabbing a chair.
Grady slid a pile of Sorato’s junk toward Wayne. “Until then, you can make yourself useful and help me sort.”
“No problem. And Ryan wanted me to share that he thought it was odd we didn’t find charges, caps, and wires in Sorato’s room or truck.”
I thought about the C-4 and the other components that would be needed. I wasn’t trained in explosives, but I had taken a course that the bomb squad offered in Miami. I mentally retraced searching Sorato’s room. “He also didn’t have any tools like pliers or wire cutters.”
“What are you thinking?” Grady asked.
“That he had a partner.”
“Another spy?” Tech asked.
I nodded. “I read the report the FBI had on Sorato. There was nothing indicating he had any training in explosives. I’ve also read several reports on the Hell Hounds. I don’t recall anything exploding in their long list of crimes.”
“You can learn a lot on the internet,” Wayne said.
“Sorato didn’t have a moral bone in his body, but he wasn’t stupid. And you have to be pretty dumb to teach yourself online how to build things that can blow your face off.”
Tech stood and turned toward the door. “I’ll grab the trainee files.”
“Shit,” Grady cursed.
“I’m going to go warn the other guys,” Wayne said. “Be back in a minute.”
“The C-4 wasn’t left on the property, was it?” I asked.
“No. Ryan took it home with him,” Grady said. “Don’t tell his wife.”
I shook my head. “If we ever get married, I expect you to tell me shit like that.”
Grady looked up from the pile of Sorato’s crap he was sorting. “Does that mean you’re considering marrying me?”
“No,” I laughed. “Maybe. No—I don’t think I’m ready.”
Grady chuckled and went back to reading. Flustered with myself, I exhaled a long breath and printed the list of the original twenty-two trainees. I crossed off Bridget’s name and sighed. Twenty-one to go.
~*~*~
Two hours later, I had the list narrowed down to five trainees: Ross, Scallon, Bailey, Alverez, and St. Clair.
“Why do you have Bailey on the list?” Grady asked.
“We fact checked everything we could find, but during the time he was in the gang, there’s a lot we don’t know. I can’t eliminate him as a suspect yet.”
The door opened and Bridget entered, followed by Bones, who carried an old plastic tote. I nodded toward the corner of the room and Bones walked over, setting it on the floor.
Grady tapped a pencil against my notepad to capture my attention. “But do you think Bailey’s our guy? I’m not a profiler, but I can’t see him coming after us.”
“Can you see any of them as the bad guy?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I didn’t think Sorato would turn out to be dirty, either.”
“Well, it can’t be Alverez,” Wayne said. “She’s too damn cute to be the bad guy.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Bridget asked, a puzzled look on her face.
“We think Sorato had a partner.”
Bridget turned toward the gym and then looked back to me.
“What is it, Bridget?”
“Alverez was pretending she knew nothing about fashion.” Bridget moved over to the files and dug through them, pulling out Alverez’s file. After flipping through it, she grimaced. “She has her high school listed as Clarence High, but it’s really Clarence Milborne Academy—a very expensive boarding school.”
“But she’s a veteran. Why would a boarding-school girl go into the Army?” Wayne asked.
“Bridget was a boarding-school girl,” Bones said. “Just because you come from wealth, doesn’t mean you follow the family mold.”
“You’re right,” Wayne said, frowning. “But I’ve hung out with Alverez. Hell, I even asked her out on a date.”
“But she turned you down,” I said as a statement, not as a question.
“It’s that obvious?” Wayne asked. “I must be losing my touch.”
“You’ve still got it.” Bridget winked at Wayne. “But if she’s Sorato’s partner, she wouldn’t want you to get too close.”
“Grady—” Tech said. “Can you reach out to someone in the military and find out if Alverez was trained in explosives?”
Grady nodded, pulling his phone and walking over to the corner of the room.
I turned back to Alverez’s file. “We need her family history. Her file is pretty sparse.”
“She doesn’t have any social media accounts,” Tech said. “I’m working through county records for birth and death certificates, but it takes longer. I know from her application that her mother died when she was five and her father died when she was sixteen.”
“Not a single social media account? Are you sure?” Bridget asked. “Is she using an alias?”
“Her military discharge papers and photo match what we have on her application.”
“What if she was married and changed her last name?” I asked. “Her social media accounts could be in her maiden name. Especially if the marriage didn’t last long.” I looked over at Grady.
He nodded to me that he had heard us as he continued with his phone conversation. “Thanks, Mike. One more question, is Alverez her married name?” Grady paced as he talked until he stopped mid-step and turned cold eyes back to me.
“Shit. Her maiden name is Chaves! They’re related.”
“Thanks again, Mike. I owe you,” Grady said before disconnecting. Grady tossed the phone across the room, nearly hitting the window that overlooked the gym.
“Watch it!” Bridget snapped. “You’ve broken enough windows this week.”
“Arianna Nicole
Chaves married Sergeant Alverez while on leave. He died in combat two months later.”
“Was she trained in explosives?” Tech asked as his fingers clacked furiously across the keyboard.
The TV screens lit up with social media accounts of Alverez, including pictures of her and Ernesto together at her high school graduation. The comments read that she was excited to see her brother at the event.
“The army trained her for ground level explosives,” Grady said as he looked at the pictures on the TV screens. “This makes no sense. Just like Bailey—I can’t see Alverez hurting us. It doesn’t feel right.”
“I agree, man,” Wayne said, shaking his head. “She’s not the most personable gal I’ve ever met, but she doesn’t strike me as a cold-hearted killer.”
I stood, walked to the door, and opened it. Looking across the gym, I saw several of the trainees, including Alverez, working out on the mats. “Alverez! I have a job for you!”
She jogged over. “What’s up?” she asked as I held the door open and gestured for her to enter.
Bones moved toward the door and blocked the exit as Alverez stared at her face on the TV screen. “Game over.” Bones glared, slamming the door closed.
She pulled out a chair at the end of the table and sat. When she looked up, she was glaring at Grady. I leaned against the wall to wait and watch.
“You destroyed my brother,” she hissed, pointing at Grady. “His reputation was ruined. He wasted a year of his life sitting in a cell. He was innocent.”
“Your brother is a bastard,” Grady said, dropping his weight into the chair next to her. “He makes money on the lives of innocent women and children.”
“You’re lying! My brother is a kind, decent man. He gave me everything I have in this world. After our father died, Ernesto took me in. He paid for private schooling. He supported my choice to go into the military.”
“I’m sure he did,” Bridget said. “Hiding his criminal enterprise from you was easier if you weren’t around to witness anything.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alverez said.
Wayne sighed. “Ari, we know about the C-4 and your training. Were you going to hurt the kids?”
“Of course not! I wasn’t going to kill anyone! I planned on blowing up the building when no one was around, but there was always someone around. I told Sorato to get rid of the C-4, but before I could confirm he had, she—” Alverez nodded toward me “—discovered who he was.”
“How could you work with someone like Sorato?” Tech asked, shaking his head. “He kidnapped children and sold them for money.”
“I’d never met him. I was told he was a little flakey, but someone I could trust. I didn’t know he had a criminal past or that he’d worked with that Nola woman.”
“Last summer we caught a sniper after he shot someone who’s like a brother to me,” I said, pushing away from the wall and sitting next to Alverez. A shiver raced up my back as I remembered Reggie lying on the plateau of the ridge while his horse danced around his unmoving body. “My friend ended up with only a minor wound, but when we questioned the sniper, we discovered he’d been manipulated into thinking he was working for the good guys. He believed the lies he was told without looking any closer.”
“My brother is a good man.”
“Your brother is a broker in human trafficking. And we can prove it,” I said, tossing a pile of folders in front of her. “Are you willing to pull your head out of your ass long enough to review the evidence? Or are you going to keep blindly following whatever bullshit your brother feeds you?”
She glared at me. “It was you.”
“Who figured out what your brother was up to? Yes, it was me. Others helped me put the puzzle pieces together, but I was the one who turned everything over to the FBI, which led to the raid.”
“The case was thrown out. My brother was innocent.”
“No,” I said harsher than I intended, but holding eye contact with Alverez. “Your brother was released because he plays the legal game well. He buried the money in the Cayman Islands and has good lawyers. That doesn’t mean he’s innocent. It just means we couldn’t prove he’s guilty.”
“Same thing.”
“Ari,” Wayne said. “It’s not the same thing. Especially to the innocent women and children your brother destroyed. Torture. Rape. Murder. He allowed his clients to do whatever they wanted as long as he got paid.”
She glanced over at Wayne, doubt showing in her eyes for the first time.
“Before you continue to judge our actions,” Grady said, tapping on the stack of files, “read the files. Wanting him to be innocent won’t make it true.”
She glared at Grady before turning toward me. I held her stare until she nodded and opened the top file. Based on her tightly clenched jaw, she had no intention of being proven wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Four
We all worked quietly for the next hour, passing scraps of information we’d discovered between us to share, but careful not to say anything in front of Alverez. Grady found two notes, both appearing to have been from Alverez to meet up at different times. Tech pulled Sorato’s phone history, but only found calls to various burner phone numbers. Wayne found a Playboy magazine that seemed to entertain him until Bridget told him it probably had Sorato’s man juice all over it. The magazine was tossed in the trash, and Wayne went to wash his hands.
Bones doled out work assignments for the trainees and managed the other security assignments for Headquarters, the store, and our houses. Bridget bounced back and forth between the conference room and the war room as deliveries for the war room arrived. Tech and I both watched as large wooden slabs were carried past the conference room windows and up the stairs.
And I sat trying to read through everything relating to Chaves: his finances, friends, enemies, and employees, but my focus kept drifting toward the tote that sat untouched in the corner.
“Go ahead,” Grady said, nodding in that direction.
“No. It can wait. We’re not meeting with the lawyer until Monday, so I have the weekend to go through it.”
“What is it?” Tech asked.
I glance back at the tote. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what was in there. “Hopefully, the witch’s spell book.”
Grady laughed while trading laptops with me. Tech looked between us and shrugged.
I leaned back and stretched my arms above my head, glancing over at Alverez. She was reading the fourth file which held witness statements from the victims who were rescued, along with statements from some of Chaves’ staff who had intended to testify against him. Wayne returned and moved to sit beside her, handing her another tissue.
“Wayne,” I whispered. “Why don’t you both take a break?”
Wayne nodded and pulled Alverez up from the table.
“Aren’t you worried I’ll escape?” Alverez asked.
“If you want to leave, then leave,” I answered.
Alverez looked at Wayne, then back at me. “What if I go to my brother and tell him what you’re doing?”
“Tell him what? That we know he’s trying to kill us? That we’re studying him? Go for it. I’m sure he already knows since the snipers he sent didn’t succeed.”
“What snipers?”
Wayne placed a gentle hand on Alverez’s shoulder. “Snipers shot at Bones and Grady the other day when you were working security for Nana and Dallas.”
“Did you catch them?” Her eyebrows scrunched, causing deep lines to form across her forehead.
“We haven’t been able to ID them yet,” Grady answered, sliding two pictures from a folder down the table to her.
She studied the photos before laying them back on the table. “That’s Parker Hanner and Teddy Bear Curtis. They work security for my brother.” She moved away from the table and looked out the exterior window to the field beyond. “If the witness statements are true, why wasn’t it enough for a trial?”
“As you read, some of the victims are too distra
ught or too young to testify,” Tech said. “Then the three top witnesses were executed, scaring the rest into recanting their stories. I’d be surprised if Chaves lets them live, though. They know too much.”
“Video evidence?” she whispered.
“The night of the raid, the guards destroyed the servers before we could access the security room,” Wayne said.
Alverez snorted. “I should’ve known. So that’s how this ends.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What are we missing?”
She returned to the table and looked down at the files. “I don’t know that man,” she said while pointing at the file. “He sounds nothing like the man who raised me.” She turned to face me. “But if he’s guilty of these crimes, he needs to be punished. He needs to be accountable to those women and children.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She dragged a hand through her hair. Her focus shifted from the files, to the windows, then back to me. She finally nodded. “Years ago, I was home for Christmas when his security system crashed. I helped reset it. Ernesto was upset that some of the data was lost so I built a backup system that could be accessed using a ten-key password.”
“Do you have the password?” Tech asked.
“No. But I can get it.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Wayne said, shaking his head. “If he catches you, he’ll kill you.”
“The brother who raised me would never harm me. This man…” she said, waving a hand to the files. “I have no idea what this man would do. But if my brother sent Teddy Bear and Parker to kill you, then he knows I don’t have the C-4 anymore.”
“He knows. He had Sorato killed while in FBI custody,” I said, leaning back in my chair and tapping a pen on my knee. “Chaves would’ve expected us to search Sorato’s room and find the C-4.”
“Forrick,” Alverez said.
“What’s that?” Wayne asked.
“Agent Forrick and Ernesto grew up together. He’s been around my whole life. He’s an arrogant ass, but he’s loyal to my brother.”
“Damn,” Kierson said from the doorway where he stood next to Charlie. “I had personal plans this weekend. I wish I wouldn’t have heard that.” He tossed my SUV keys to me before wrapping an arm around Charlie.
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