by Desiree Holt
Kate turned in her chair, trembling. “Quinn? You promised me. You said we could trust Jake. That it would be okay.” She looked at Jake, still watching her with hooded eyes. “I’m not putting myself out there like that. I’m sorry, but I’ll say it again. I heard Peter himself say they’ve got people paid off everywhere. Even prosecutors and federal agents. All over the country. Remember?”
“Jesus.” Jake ran his fingers through his hair. “Are you telling me you actually heard him say those words? Because it’s damn near next to impossible to get to anyone in our office.”
“Do I have a reason to lie to you?” she demanded. “Why do you think I didn’t run to you or the police first thing? Shouldn’t I have done that right away?”
His hand tightened on his pen. “If there’s any possibility of truth in that, Noah and Clay will be royally pissed off, too.”
“Who?” Quinn frowned at him.
“Special Agent-in-Charge Noah Delaney is the FBI’s point man in the investigation. Clay Rogers is the DEA’s chief representative. They’ll be kicking butt when I tell them their houses might not be so clean.”
“So you see,” Kate cried, “how can I be sure he hasn’t already gotten to someone in your office? That they won’t find out about this? And me?”
“Nothing is ever foolproof, but our office is as tight as it can get. Kane Barton, the U.S. Attorney for this district, is the most honest man you’ll ever meet. He’s not a man to mess around with. If the Osunas got to someone on our staff, we’ll squeeze him out in a hurry. And life won’t be very pleasant for him when that happens.”
“But not until after they’ve found me and k-killed me.” She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering.
“Honey,” Quinn began.
“No.” She stared at Jake defiantly. “I’m not doing this. Or anything else. You don’t trust me. Why should I trust you?”
Quinn leaned his mouth close to her ear. “You can trust him because I do. Because I made a promise to you. And you know you have to give him your little treasure. If you’re afraid to just hand it over, isn’t the smart thing to do for you to give it to his boss yourself? I swear to God, Kate, I can vouch for those guys. No reservations. We have to get the cartel off your back and this is probably the only way.”
“Can I possibly ask what you’re talking about?” Jake broke in?
“In a minute,” Quinn told him. He lowered his voice again. “You have the means to see these people put away. But let’s do it on our terms, okay?”
She looked at him a long time, then nodded. “Okay. I guess it makes sense. But our way, right?”
He nodded. “Or we don’t do it. We pack up and get the hell out of here. Find someone else we can work with.”
“Okay.” Jake threw his pen down. “Enough. What the hell’s going on?”
“Maybe we can do each other some good.” Quinn looked at Jake. “You up for a little horse trading?”
Jake scowled. “What kind of horse? And how much trading?”
Quinn turned back to Kate. “I think it’s time to bring out your little surprise.”
Jake shifted his eyes from one to the other. “What little surprise? What aren’t you guys telling me?”
“If we show you something very important, will you get Kate off the hot seat with the brass? You can tell them she’ll come into town but on our terms.”
“I can’t say until I know what you’ve got.” Any trace of a smile had disappeared from Jake’s mouth and his eyes. He was serious as a heart attack now.
“Let’s just say it’s something the Osunas and Peter Fleming would kill to get their hands on,” Quinn told him.
“Are you by any chance talking about the reason for the big dragnet the cartel has out for you, Kate? The reason there’s such a big target on your back?”
“Do we have a deal?” Quinn asked again. “Yes or no, or we’re done here.”
“I could take her in as a government witness.”
“Not unless you plan to arrest her.” Kate had never heard Quinn’s voice so cold. “And don’t even think about trying to get a subpoena. You know how fast I can disappear.”
Jake threw up his hands. “All right, all right. If it’s as good as you say, I’ll cut you some slack. But not much. This is too damned important. And you know it’s not entirely my call.”
“But you can make it your call. You can convince them.”
“Fine.” He shook his head. “If I get fired, you’ll have to make room for me out here.”
Quinn turned to Kate. “Tell him.”
Kate took another sip of wine and set her glass down carefully in front of her. “I left one little thing out of my story. The night I left, I took a flash drive Peter had left in his computer. According to what I overheard, it has all kind of records on it. Transfers and things like that.”
Jake looked as if he was about to strangle on his own tongue. He took a careful sip of his wine, his eyes shifting from Kate to Quinn and back again. “Let me get this straight. You’ve been running around the country with a little gizmo that has all the records for the Osuna cartel on it? And you have it in your possession now?”
Kate nodded and moved closer to Quinn.
Jake glared at Quinn. “You knew this when you came to me? And didn’t think it was important enough to mention? To ask for my help then?”
“He gave me his word,” Kate interrupted. “He knew how afraid I was. Especially about prosecutors being bribed.”
Jake looked as if he wanted to throttle her. “Kate, you have to give it to me. This could be the very thing we need to break the case open. The information we’ve been killing ourselves to get. And you have to come to our offices to be interviewed. Face it. You can’t hide in Quinn’s house forever. I promise you, if this is what you say it is we’ll give Quinn all the backup he needs to keep you safe. You have my word on that.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “The cartel reaches out everywhere. There’s no one but Quinn I can trust. But I’ll make a deal with you, because I want this over, too.”
“What kind of deal?” Jake’s voice was skeptical.
“Like Quinn said, we want to do this on our own terms. You have to guarantee a situation where I’ll be safe and assure me your boss is not on the cartel payroll. Agree to what we want, and I’ll hand it over to him.”
“Listen, we’ll have armed guards if that’s what you want,” Jake told her, his face tight with anger. “And they won’t be cartel employees. But we need that drive and any other information you might have.”
Other information? Oh, damn! How could I forget this?
“Wait.” Kate looked at both men again. “Before I get the flash drive, there’s something else I almost forgot.”
Because I’ve been so scared my brain doesn’t work quite right.
But sitting here, talking about this with Quinn and Jake, the library visit came popping back.
“Jesus, Kate,” Jake said. “Now what?”
She looked at Quinn. “My trip to the library.”
“Library?” Jake asked.
She swallowed and let out a slow breath. How could she not have remembered this? “I, um, wanted to do a little research on the law firm. Apparently, everything I knew was a lie so I wanted to see what I could find out. You know, get some background.” She shrugged. “But it was a useless attempt.”
“Kate.” Jake’s voice was very quiet. “Are you telling me you actually Googled these people on the Internet?”
“Yes, but it was a waste of time.”
“And did you get anything?” Jake asked.
She wrinkled her forehead. “Not very much. And nothing on the law firm.” She looked at Quinn. “And I’m so sorry, but I did something you told me not to do.”
To his credit, he didn’t jump up and throttle her. “You did a search on Peter. After I specifically told you that was a bad idea. Is that what you’re saying?”
Her heart did a swan dive. “I’m sorry. I k
now how to cover my tracks, and I just thought…”
“Never mind. We’ll discuss this later,” Quinn told her in a flat voice. “Just tell us what you found?”
“Nothing. It was so strange, but I couldn’t find anything at all on him.”
“What happened when you hit the sites?” Jake asked.
“Not much.” She shrugged. “Most of them came up with the message Server Offline or Error, Page not found. Please tell me what’s wrong.”
The silence in the room became so thick Kate thought she could touch it. Both men stared at her.
Quinn looked at his friend, and they said with one voice, “Traps.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Traps? What traps?” Kate stared at both men. “What are you talking about?”
Jake looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Peter would certainly want to know if anyone’s trying to dig for information on him. We know he’s a computer genius, so it’s a given he had electronic traps on the links you accessed. They alert him when anyone taps into them and sends the IPS address of the computer doing the search.”
Now her heart was doing cartwheels, but she did her best to conceal it, although her fingers du
“I don’t think I tripped anything,” she assured them, praying it was so. “I know how to build layers of anonymous servers to hide the original source before actually doing a search. I’ve done this before. I was very careful. So even if he got an alert, I’m pretty sure he couldn’t back trace to me. Anyway, I used a library computer. I could be anyone.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jake shook his head. “Exactly how many people do you think would be going to a library to look up Peter Fleming? Or that law firm, which has only one client? Think, Kate. It gives them a geographic location on you.”
“Jake’s right,” Quinn put in. “Damn it, I should have thought of that, but I just let myself get rusty. Out of the blue, in the midst of all this craziness, someone decides to do an Internet search on Peter and Burke-Fleming. You don’t think that would set off alarms somewhere?”
“And remember,” Jake added, “this is Esai’s town. Knowing this, no one would be foolhardy enough to do a search on any computer, let alone a public one.”
“Maybe they’d think it was your office,” she said almost desperately. Hopefully.
Jake shook his head. “They’d know better than that. For one thing, we wouldn’t use public computers. And it wouldn’t be anyone trying to cut into their business. They’d have other sources.” He pounded his fist on the table. “Damn it. Let’s hope they aren’t focusing they’re search on this area now.”
Kate paled. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” She looked at Quinn. “You didn’t want me to do it, and I should have listened. It was a stupid thing for me to do. I just never thought about traps or anything like that. I thought I could cover myself.”
Quinn slapped his palm on the table. “No, I’m the stupid one. I never should have let you do it. But I’ve been out of this for so long, I didn’t think about electronic traps.”
The ringing of his cell phone interrupted the tension in the air. He spoke briefly and when he hung up his face was grim. “Time to stop fooling around, Kate. That was Mike at the garage.”
“W-What about? We already junked the car.”
“Some guy came in today looking for a vehicle with your license plate number. Said he was looking for his sister, checking any place she might have had her car fixed. His family was worried about her.”
“How the hell did they find her?” Jake wanted to know. “How in the fucking hell did they figure out where she was?”
“Oh, my God.” Kate thought she would faint. She was shaking so hard Quinn had to hold onto her. “Yes, Jake. How did they get those plates? I bought it…I just…” She had to clench her teeth together to keep them from chattering.
“I’d say when they lost the trail they went back to square one in L.A. and started from there. Then someone probably had the bright idea they might have scared her enough at the bus terminal that she decided to buy another car. They know she has to hoard her money, they don’t know if she has proper identification and she needs to find someplace close. So they start looking for junk car places around the terminal, doing a block to block. And Bingo! Up pops wherever you bought the car.
“Highway Harry,” she whispered.
“Who may be riding the highway in the sky by now,” Jake pointed out. “After some physical exercise, I’m sure he was more than happy to tell his new friends anything they wanted.”
“Including the make of car he sold Kate and the license tag,” Quinn put in. “They get the cops they bought and paid for to search for it in their computers and keep an eye on the roads.”
Jake nodded. “Put that together with your trip to the library and the alerts that dinged back to Peter and there you go. They have an area to focus on.”
“But how did they get to Mike’s specifically?” She was hanging onto her control by a very thin thread. “This is a huge area to search.”
“I’m sure good old Peter called the Osuna brothers, told them he’s got a hot location on their target and everyone should get their asses out and start canvassing the San Antonio area. My guess again is by sheer dumb luck they found someone who saw your car being picked up by the tow truck. Maybe asked around in a diner or a coffee shop. Whatever. Who the hell knows? The crooks catch all the breaks.”
“W-What did Mike tell them?” she asked Quinn.
“That he found it on the highway and claimed it for salvage. But you can bet they’ll start pinpointing this area, getting everyone on their payroll to track you down. And that means we’ve got a huge problem.” He pulled Kate tight against him.
“A no brainer,” Jake agreed. “They want Kate, and they want that flash drive. So now, boys and girls, we’re done playing games. And Kate? If you’re frightened, you’ve got a right to be.”
She gripped his fingers until hers almost lost their feeling, her body trying to push itself inside his.
“What do you think?” Her voice was barely audible.
Killing her will be easy. I’ll call you when it’s done.
“I think we have to do what Jake says,” he told her, his voice low and soothing. “But we aren’t going to run around like some idiots. We’ll make preparations so we can keep you safe.” He looked at Jake. “Right?”
“Right.” He raked his fingers through his hair, a good sign of his frustration at the turn things had taken. “Listen, Kate. You say you’re willing to give that drive to Kane Barton? Now is the time to do it. We’ve got to get these guys and put them away before they really do kill you. Stopping them is the only chance you’ve got.”
He got up and went to the cupboards, took down a glass and filled it from the tap. He stood at the sink chugging it, then refilled it before he sat down again.
“Tell me what you want. Then let me talk to Dean and Kane in the morning and see what we can set up. Dean may want to call you and talk to you again himself.”
“To make sure we’re still here?” Quinn’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.
“No. Listen, Ace. I know you. You’re smart enough, now that we’ve got this information, to know this is one thing you can’t outrun. Right?”
Quinn gave him a grudging acknowledgement. “All right. And I do have a suggestion about how to do this. We obviously can’t just march her down there in broad daylight with the entire work force present and watching.”
“So what’s your idea?”
“Try this. What if we do it at night when almost everyone’s gone?” Quinn suggested. “You can sneak us in through the underground garage, like we’ve done with other people before. That way we have a contained situation, and it all but eliminates the risk.”
“But there is still some risk involved, isn’t there?” Kate asked. “Nothing is one hundred percent.”
Jake leaned across the table toward Kate, his face grim. “I can tell you one thing that’s a hundred percent. If
you don’t help us tie a knot around the Osunas, these assholes will kill you deader than yesterday’s news. Look how close they are to you already.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. Even the warmth from Quinn’s body couldn’t shake the cold invading her.
“Okay.” Her voice was small and tremulous. “I’ll trust you two to take care of me. But I’m not handing over the flash drive until we get there. That’s my insurance that you’ll take care of things properly.”
“I’ll probably get my ass handed to me when I report on that, but I’d say this is the best way to play it.” He pulled out a tired smile. “You’re doing the right thing, Kate. My office could go about this a lot differently, but we’d be putting you at greater risk, and I don’t want that. I’ll call you guys first thing in the morning after we’ve got everything set up.”
He picked up his briefcase, getting ready to leave.
Quinn kissed the top of Kate’s head as he, too, rose from his chair. “I’ll just walk Jake out to his car and be right back, darlin’.”
Kate watched the two men walk out to the driveway, then began to clear away the glasses from the table. The fear she’d been able to control the past few days had erupted full blown with this latest piece of news. If she could have bolted, she would, but she had to trust Quinn on this. And Jake was right. Where could she run to now?
****
Out in the driveway the two men spoke in quiet tones.
“You know I don’t have a choice,” Jake said as they stood by his SUV. “She has to come downtown and bring that gizmo with her.”
“But her safety comes first. Just keep that in mind. Anything looks suspicious, and we’re out of there.”
“She seems to have a lot of guts. She’ll get through this, especially with you to help her. But you and she had better understand something else. When this goes to trial, she’ll probably have to testify.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, let’s get through tomorrow.”
Jake studied his friend. “She seems like a special lady, but this is a very dicey situation. And you’ve already been through one fucking tragedy.”