Tough Justice Series Box Set, Parts 1-8

by Carla Cassidy

  “It’s showtime,” she whispered, covering her mouth with her hand as she moved a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. The wire adhered firmly to the skin between her breasts would no doubt pick up her words with ease. Whatever Cass was about to say was going to bounce back to the ears of every team member in the field. That fact alone had almost stopped her feet from moving forward. If, in the process of getting answers, the truth of her past with Moretti came out, then there was no way to hide it from the team anymore. No way for Nick not to hear it and finally understand how personal the case was to her.

  Lara willed her feet to keep going, almost shaking her head to free herself of the dark thoughts looming.

  If Cass really did talk—if she did reveal the part of the past that Lara wished would remain untouched—then so be it. The team needed answers. The truth about her relationship with Moretti was a cost she was simply ready to pay.

  Lara walked up to what looked like one of two workable doors on the outside of the building. Plans to create an outdoor seating area beneath the shade of the next floor had been stopped, leaving unstained concrete on either side of the double doors. Glass from some of the windows also littered the area around her. Uncertain for a moment, Lara just stared at the weathered wood wondering what truth was on the other side, before she finally grasped the handle and pushed.

  Her body went on high alert and her training kicked in. She became hyperaware of her handgun beneath her jacket. She didn’t figure Cass would be stupid enough to try anything, especially when she had probably already figured out the team was nearby, waiting to storm the building, guns blazing if need be. However, that didn’t mean she was about to go in unprepared. Plus, the redhead hadn’t advised against it.

  “Cass?” she called, voice not entirely aggressive but still warning the woman she meant business. The door opened with ease, and she stepped just inside. Lara paused, not about to go all the way inside until she could confirm where the woman was.

  “Over here.”

  Lara made out the red hair first before collecting details about the rest of the woman. She was farther back in the corner of the open room, body angled in a way that suggested she’d been looking out through one of the windows at the water. Again, Lara hoped Cass wouldn’t try to swim her way out of the situation.

  Light from lamps outside streamed through the large windows that weren’t boarded up. While it gave the open space—which Lara guessed had been planned as the main dining room for a restaurant—enough of a glow so she could see that no one else was inside, Lara pulled a small Maglite flashlight from her jacket and clicked it on. Its beam was small but powerful. Before she moved any closer to Cass, she swept the light to her left. An open set of stairs led to the next floor, splitting and turning out of sight, while two rooms she assumed were bathrooms were tucked in the opposite corner. To her right and across from Cass was another room, doors already attached at two different points. The kitchen if she had to guess. The rest of the open space was oddly barren. Only a few odds and ends and trash littered the floor. Lara walked around the random pieces, noting some of the walls had been tagged with graffiti.

  Cass had her eyes averted to the floor. She was perched atop a broken sawhorse left over from the builders.

  “You picked one hell of a spot to meet,” Lara finally said, eyeing a plastic bucket in the corner. She grabbed it and placed it across from Cass. She took a seat, mindful to keep her sight line to the front door open. The back door that led to an unfinished outdoor dining area was boarded up.

  “I wanted it to be quiet while we talked...” Cass let her words trail off. She finally met Lara’s gaze. It showed her more than she had thought she’d see. Cass looked stricken, miserable even. Her eyes were glazed over and rimmed red. She’d either been crying or was about to start. Lara didn’t know if she felt comfort or trepidation at the obvious guilt. Nick’s words of not wanting Cass to feel as if she had nothing to lose popped into her head. If that was the case, then she was in trouble. “You know, don’t you?” Cass said before Lara could wrangle in what she wanted to say. She decided not to play coy.

  “I now know a lot of things. I don’t know why I didn’t put it together earlier. You engineered my running into my long-lost half sister,” Lara continued. “You staged my kitchen to look like my mother’s murder scene. The most horrific event in my life!”

  “No! That wasn’t me,” Cass interrupted. “Please, believe me. I did get those files, but it was Katya and her boyfriend who did that. I thought Katya was my friend, but that went too far. I trusted her...” Tears rolled down Cass’s face.

  “And I trusted you. But you dug up my past, and you served it to me on a silver platter and then pretended to be as surprised as the rest of us. You.” Lara pointed at the woman for emphasis in a jab that clearly showed aggression. Just because she could control her tone didn’t mean her body language had gotten the memo to quiet down.

  Even from the flashlight beam radiating up from the floor, Lara could see Cass’s eyes starting to glass over even more.

  She nodded. “Yes, I did,” she admitted, voice dropping in volume. Lara leaned in closer.

  “Why, Cass? Why go through all of that trouble? Because I know it must have been a lot of work. Meghan and I have had no contact since I was a teenager and she changed her last name. Sneaking into my father’s house?” Lara’s voice was starting to betray her. It started to slide, riding building waves of anger as she recounted the obstacles of the past several days. Ones that had not only affected the case but had also shaken Lara right to her core. “Why go through all of that trouble? I don’t understand what makes any of that worth it, not to mention how it even fit into whatever plan you wanted to execute by going through all of those motions. Why?” Lara realized her heartbeat had sped up a bit. She wondered if her team could hear it through the mic attached to her.

  Cass dropped her chin down a fraction, making her long loose hair cascade over her shoulder. Her glasses slipped across the bridge of her nose, but she didn’t set them right.

  “When you first brought down the Moretti organization you came into Victoria’s office and told her about kissing Moretti,” she started, eyes traveling down to her hands intertwined on her lap. “I couldn’t leave it alone. I wanted so badly to understand everything I could about what had happened on the inside. I wanted to know how you’d bested Moretti. I wanted to know for certain that he was really caught this time. That he was really going to pay for everything he’d done. I wanted to know that he was going to pay for what he’d done to Allie.” She gave a weak shrug. “I waited until you were fully debriefed, and I accessed the classified files.” Her gaze went from her hands to Lara’s eyes. “I learned everything.”

  Lara froze.

  In that moment she knew exactly what Cass had found out. She’d been ready to pay the price of the truth being exposed earlier, but that had been when she thought Cass still hadn’t known all of the details. Now she was certain of one thing. Cass knew everything. A wild impulse to tear open her shirt and rip off the wire before stomping on the mic zipped through her entire body.

  “Cass—” she started, trying to search for the right words to keep the woman quiet.

  The guilt that had plagued Cass suddenly vanished. Her eyes turned hard, her jaw setting to match. She fixed Lara with a stare that was so cold Lara nearly reached for her gun. “And I read something I never thought an agent—a human who knew what he was and knew what he did—would do.” Lara might have given into the thought of destroying the wire and letting her team burst through the door a few feet away had Cass not riveted her to her seat. The other woman was about to tell everyone the truth, yet Lara couldn’t move, paralyzed by each new word. “You laid it all on the table. You’d fallen in love with Moretti. You’d had sex with Moretti. And the cherry on top? You were pregnant with his child.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nick’s concentration shattered as he heard Cass’s words.

  All thoughts rush
ed to the image of the man he’d seen in files, on the news and even in prison once and the beautiful agent who’d taken him down, tangled together in between sheets. Lara’s bare skin. Her smile. Her rubbing her pregnant stomach.

  Nick became so immersed in his own shock at the revelation that he didn’t register the footsteps behind him until it was too late. Pressure was applied to the back of his head, undeniably the barrel of a gun.

  “Take your earbud out,” the voice whispered, “and smash it on the ground with your foot. Or I’ll shoot you now and be done with it.”

  If Nick had been Lara’s only backup, he wouldn’t have followed orders. As it was, he did as he was told, cutting off his only communication lifeline. The sound crunched beneath his shoe.

  “Get on your knees, and if you make one wrong move, I’ll not only shoot you but I’ll take out Agent Grant before anyone will ever realize you’re dead. Understood?”

  Nick hesitated, debating on the validity of the statement. No one was in that building but Cass and Lara. They’d made sure of it.

  But what if they’d missed something? What if him fighting back right now cost Lara her life?

  “I said, get on your knees.”

  But then Nick remembered again, he wasn’t her only backup. Getting to your knees in front of someone with a gun never ended well. If he didn’t fight back then, he’d be as good as dead anyways.

  Making up his mind, Nick spun around.

  He wasn’t quick enough as his assailant executed a precision pistol whip. Nick fell to his side just as the sound of a splash met his ears. Confused and in pain, all thoughts of Lara Grant and the secrets she had carried disappeared.

  The world around Nick Delano went dark.

  * * *

  Shame. Embarrassment. Guilt. Anger.

  Picking out an emotion to land on was harder than coming to the realization that the truth was finally out. The entire team had just heard it, courtesy of the wire between her breasts. Betraying her heart, while taped almost directly above it, an irony even in her stunned haze she didn’t miss.

  Whatever had started with Nick had surely ended at Cass’s outburst.

  “I snapped,” the redhead continued. “I just snapped. You weren’t just in lockdown after the bust for your safety. You were fucking pregnant.” Her hands were clinched, but not balled. She was taking care not to break eye contact. “At first I was sure I’d read wrong, but you kept on, discussing your plans to put it up for adoption and requesting witness protection for the baby and the family.”

  “The baby would have never been safe with me,” Lara whispered, still shell-shocked. Pain twisted around her heart as she pictured the baby in the photos she’d been given. “I had to protect her.”

  Cass seemed to lose some of her enthusiasm at that, but the anger didn’t waver.

  “Katya Auerman asked to meet with me shortly after I heard all of this,” she started up again. “She found me and asked to talk. She was a trafficking victim, Allie’s best friend while they were both held. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but she kept telling me personal details about what happened to Allie. Sharing memories about what had happened, her fears and her hopes. What she went through...she was the only one I could talk to, the only one who understood. Then I learned about how back in the DC bureau you had kept voting not to go after Moretti when the windows to take him down started opening.”

  “We didn’t have the intel to infiltrate yet,” Lara defended, remembering each time she had voted to wait. It had and hadn’t been an easy decision to make. “I wanted to save them—save all of them—but I’d had to look at the bigger picture. Taking down a man like Moretti had to be done with precision and accuracy. There was no room for mistakes. If he slid through the cracks, then we would have run the risk that he’d never be found again. We only had one shot and I had wanted to be sure we made it count.”

  But Cass was filled with grief and had been since Allie’s death. It clouded reason, her rationality. Lara explaining her actions would get them nowhere. No matter how badly she wanted to explain. That realization had made Lara go cold. A feeling of panic warred within her. The past investigation was now jeopardizing the life of her daughter in a way she hadn’t foreseen.

  “While you voted against going in, my sister was being trafficked, pimped out, tattooed and killed,” Cass said, disgusted. “And when you finally decided to infiltrate, you actually slept with that monster. You had sex with Moretti willingly. You had his child. Then when the case was over you just dumped the baby off on to someone else, probably because it was too late to do anything about it, huh?” Lara gritted her teeth. Her jaw hardened. Cass had picked up steam again and was now bulldozing across territory she should have been walking on eggshells across. There was fire in her eyes. Conviction of feelings.

  But Lara had those, too.

  “It was a team decision. If we had gone in any other time we wouldn’t have had anything on Moretti. We wouldn’t have been able to bring him down,” she reiterated. “We had to be sure, Cass. Or we never would have done it.”

  The flames among the green of Cass’s eyes seemed to weaken. Her shoulders lost their current tension and sagged a fraction. The spirit—the conviction—she’d picked up by retelling a story she’d been living was starting to ebb.

  “I snapped,” she said again, the strength behind her earlier words gone. “I thought you’d purposely left my sister and Katya for selfish reasons. I couldn’t understand why you became romantic and sexual with the bastard Moretti. A man that has brought so much pain to the world. Who has ruined so many lives. And when I heard about you giving up the baby...” Cass paused, averted her gaze to her hands for a moment before leveling her stare back at Lara. “In my anger, my bitterness, I wanted revenge. I wanted you to know what it felt like to be stalked and hunted and watched. To feel an ounce of what Allie felt.” She hesitated, picking at her fingernail before dropping her hand back to her lap. She motioned to the empty room around. The light bouncing up from Lara’s flashlight cast an eerie glow across the agent’s face.

  “You sent the pictures of the baby to my apartment. Even wrapped it in a pink bow,” Lara started, voice devoid of emotion. It was a flat sound that ran linear without any deviations. She didn’t want Cass to know one way or the other what she was thinking. Even she didn’t know what she was thinking.

  Lara had been so afraid that Moretti would find out about their baby. That fear alone had been all-consuming, she realized. She hadn’t really even looked in any other direction. Who else could have done it? Who else could have known?

  Cass.

  “Yes. But this? Everything that has happened so far? I never intended for any of it to happen. I—I just wanted to do something about my anger.”

  Anger. That was an emotion she could land on right now.

  “Did you murder Mei?”

  Cass shook her head once. “No. I had nothing to do with the murders, but once it all started—including getting stabbed—I didn’t know what to do about any of it. I didn’t even know who was behind it until you discovered Moretti had a twin. I had no clue about Mason.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t know Katya was dating Mason Moretti?”

  “What? No! I mean, I knew she had a boyfriend, but I’d never met him.” Cass shook her head in confusion, then horror came over her as Lara’s words hit home. “Oh God! It was Mason? I told Katya everything and she must have told Mason. After what happened in your kitchen, she stopped all contact with me. Now I know why. I’m such a fool!”

  Cass’s eyes began to gloss over. “I know it probably doesn’t mean much, but I’m so sorry. I’m fully prepared to turn myself in, but I wanted you to know what I did and why I did it before that happened.”

  Lara didn’t speak for a moment. Shock at Cass’s story—of finally knowing some answers amid all the questions that had come with Dunst standing on a ledge—made her hesitate. Loss had made the woman in front of her into a shell, only letting anger inside. Whatev
er anger Lara had felt moments before had lessened just as it had within Cass. Now all there was was a deep sadness that split across her heart.

  “Does Moretti know about the baby?” Lara asked when she found her words again. They were sharp, pointed and deadly. For whatever empathy she felt for Cass and what she’d been through, it would all mean nothing had the agent led a madman directly to her child.

  Cass looked up from her fingers again and was about to answer when her eyes darted over Lara’s shoulder. She gasped. Belatedly Lara realized a door had creaked from the direction of the almost-kitchen. She’d been so enraptured by finding the truth she’d forgotten to be on guard.

  “I just finished texting that bit of congratulations to my brother,” said the man.

  Lara spun around, hand already around the butt of her gun.

  “Oh, Lara, I wouldn’t do that. Unless you want that pretty little head of yours covering that pretty little red head of hers.”

  Lara’s hand froze.

  And so did her heart.

  Standing just outside of the bathroom was none other than their blond cowboy. Mason Moretti had a smile on his handsome face and a gun in his hand. It was pointed at Lara. It did not waver.

  “Everyone looks so surprised to see me,” he said, grin ear to ear. “You’d be caught less vulnerable had you been smart enough to check and monitor the other rooms and their points of entry before sitting down to have your powwow. You hold too much faith in the idea that one man can stop me from entering a place I have my sights set on.” His gaze flickered over to Cass. “But, I truly am glad you two weren’t more vigilant. I would have hated to have never heard this fascinating conversation.” Cass made a noise that Lara pictured as shocked or surprised. If Lara’s mouth hadn’t gone dry that moment, she might have had her own half-indignant noise bubble up. Mason’s grin only stretched farther, as if he was encouraged by their new, acute discomfort. “Oh, don’t look so startled, Cassandra,” he basically cooed. “I know you didn’t mean to lead me here, but things happen, you know? I mean, surely you had no idea that I followed you—easily I might add—to set up what story makers would dub the ‘final showdown.’ The mean old antagonist up against the flawed, yet redeemable good guy.” Mason took a step closer. It forced Lara to take a step back, the beam from her flashlight only emphasizing the distance she was trying to keep between them. Mason continued talking, gaze giving the two women equal attention. “Who doesn’t like the ever popular tale of the hero versus the villain? Good and evil?” The question was open to them. He waited for an answer.