Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  “Toter-what?” Nick had no idea what Ty was talking about.

  Lara smiled. “TEOTWAWKI guy?”

  “Yeah, exactly,” Ty said.

  Lara looked over at Nick as Ty made his way into the bunker. “The survivalist expert. They call it TEOTWAWKI expertise. The End of the World As We Know It.”

  “Yeah, anyway, those guys helped a lot. Especially when they found out internet signal would be critical to Halpert. They pretty much tracked a series of satellites dishes Halpert set up in bushes and trees. Stuff we never would’ve known to look for.”

  Ty turned on the lantern that hung by the door. “So here it is. Halpert’s home away from home.”

  Like Ty had told them, it was small. Barely room for a cot along one side and a small desk and chair on the other. Ty spun around slowly so they could take it all in. One wall held jugs of water and cans of food. A tiny camp stove rested on a shelf beside the supplies.

  Another wall held stacks of clothes, different styles, what looked like some wigs and multiple pairs of sunglasses.

  “His disguises,” Nick muttered. Lara nodded.

  Another shelf beside it seemed mostly empty.

  “We found explosives there.” Ty pointed to the shelf. “Jennifer and I felt like they needed to be removed before anyone went inside.”

  Nick nodded. “Good call.”

  “There were enough explosives for at least a half dozen more bombs. And looks like he took some with him when he left.”

  “And used at least one here on Terra Mapson’s car.” Lara grimaced, rubbing the back of her neck.

  “And he has more with him, for sure.”

  Ty continued to scan around the room, showing the small cot, then got to the desk. Half of it was filled with laptop batteries and burner phones.

  “Your TittyWaki guys said he was using the phones basically as an internet plan. It’s not really cost effective, but it’s an easy way to get 4G without ever having to use your ID to buy a phone or pay for a service. All those phones come with unlimited 4G for the first forty-eight hours of use.”

  “So the bunker had no electricity. He had to use batteries for everything.”

  Ty nodded again. “Yep. He couldn’t have lived down here indefinitely, but he could’ve holed up for a while. According to the park rangers, they walked right by this area in their search and never spotted anything.”

  Nick sighed. “Does the room tell us anything we don’t already know, Ty?”

  “Forensics will be going through it more thoroughly in a few minutes, and maybe they’ll find something life-altering. But I doubt it.”

  “Okay.” Lara sighed. “At least we know he’s not hiding in the wilderness right under our noses anymore. Hopefully, he doesn’t have twenty of these bunkers all over the state.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” Ty muttered. “We did find one thing that was really interesting. A clue, I’m afraid, as to who Halpert might be targeting next.”

  “What’s that?” Nick asked.

  Ty moved his glance up from the desk to the wall right in front of it, a section of the bunker they hadn’t been able to see before.

  There was a printed picture of Lara taped on the wall.

  A dart buried right between her eyes.

  * * *

  Seeing that picture of herself with a dart in the middle of her face had woken Lara from whatever funk had enveloped her at the death of Terra Mapson.

  There would be time to grieve the death of Terra. The death of a strong woman who had helped build a multimillion dollar company, who didn’t want to be brought down by the likes of Mitchell Halpert.

  To grieve that Lara hadn’t been quick enough, aware enough, to stop her death.

  But right now the grief would have to step aside. All Lara planned to focus on was catching this bastard.

  They were all meeting back at the office. She and Nick had already arrived. Christina had never left. Everyone else would be arriving soon.

  They needed to regroup. Circle the wagons. Figure out how to stop this guy before he struck again.

  Lara’s phone buzzed in her hand and she was almost afraid to look at it. Officer McKenney, Benjamin Johnson’s babysitter.

  “McKenney? What happened this time? Is he terrorizing another Starbucks barista?”

  Silence met Lara.

  “McKenney? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Something bad happened.”

  “What?” When the man didn’t answer right away, Lara got more frantic. “Are you hurt? What happened?”

  “No, I’m not hurt. Stunned a little. But not hurt. They just came in here and took him away.”

  “Who took him away? Was it Mitchell Halpert? A young kid, geeky, about twenty years old?”

  “No ma’am. The SWAT force, they came and took him away.”

  What the fuck was going on? “McKenney. Dammit, what’s your first name?”

  “Jamell.”

  “Jamell, I want to make sure I understand exactly what you’re saying. You were at Benjamin Johnson’s house and a legitimate SWAT team came and arrested him?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

  Lara rubbed a hand over her face. Would this day ever end? Had Mercer set up something Lara didn’t know about?

  “Jamell, can you hold for two minutes?” Lara needed to check with Nick. Make sure nothing had happened she wasn’t aware of.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please don’t call me ma’am, for God’s sake. This day is bad enough as it is.”

  Lara put him on hold and yelled for Nick. Found him in the conference room.

  “Did you or Mercer send SWAT to bring Benjamin Johnson in from protective custody?”

  Nick looked as confused as she felt. “What? No. Why would we do that?”

  Lara felt a little bad that she had just lumped Nick in with Mercer. “I didn’t really think you had done it. It seemed more Mercer’s overkilling speed.”

  “Not that I don’t agree, but why would he send in SWAT to bring Johnson somewhere? I don’t think he’d want to approve the funding for someone as low on the totem pole as Benjamin Johnson.”

  That was true. If there was thing Mercer tended to be consistent on it was following the budget.

  “Can you look it up really quick? Make sure FBI SWAT wasn’t called in to Johnson’s apartment for some reason in the last hour?”

  Nick typed in the info. “I can’t even find Johnson’s address in our system. But no, FBI SWAT hasn’t been called anywhere in the last hour.”

  A bad feeling stuck in Lara’s throat. What if Halpert had gotten more complicated? Decided to hire people who looked like SWAT or something to get to Johnson? She reconnected with McKenney.

  “Jamell, you with me?”

  “Yes, ma—Yes.”

  “Listen, are you sure it was legit SWAT? The FBI hasn’t sent out their SWAT team, so it couldn’t have been us.”

  “No, Agent Grant, I’m sorry. I guess you and I think of different things when we think of SWAT. This wasn’t the FBI SWAT’s team. This was the NYPD SWAT. And yes, I know they’re legit because I know a couple of them.”

  At least it wasn’t some killers who had been paid to impersonate officers. But hell if Lara knew why NYPD would be moving a federal witness without authorization from her. Or somebody.

  She could figure out who ordered it later and chew them out. Right now she just needed to figure out where Ben Johnson was.

  “Where did they move him, do you know?”

  “Oh, they weren’t moving him at all. They were arresting him.”

  “What?”

  She could hear the young officer getting upset. “It was insane. They burst through the door, using stun grenades and
smoke and stuff. At first I thought it was an attack.” Jamell paused for a second. “Then they grabbed him, cuffed him and dragged him out to their vehicle.”

  “What the hell? Did you explain he was a witness, not a suspect?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t even gotten to the crazy part yet. Like I said, I have a couple of friends who are on the SWAT team. They told me they were arresting Benjamin because he was an escaped sexual offender. Convicted of four counts of raping minors.”

  “What?” Lara couldn’t even believe what she was hearing. Nothing they’d found on Benjamin Johnson had pointed to any sort of child abuse history.

  “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if maybe you hadn’t told me everything.”

  “I swear, Jamell, I told you everything I know. There was nothing in Johnson’s record about any of this.”

  “That’s when my friend said, ‘This Nelson de Silva guy is bad news.’ I immediately told him they had the wrong guy. Told them this guy was Benjamin Johnson.”

  “Jesus Christ. What happened?”

  “They dragged him back out from the truck. Took his fingerprint and ran it in the system right there in front of me, Agent Grant.”

  “And?” But Lara already knew what happened.

  “Benjamin’s picture came up. But it said he was Nelson de Silva. Convicted child molester. Supposed to be serving a twenty-year sentence. Johnson started screaming that it wasn’t him. Crying. I swear I tried to explain, but what could I do?”

  What could he have done indeed? Nothing.

  “They did listen to me. They looked up Benjamin Johnson in the system, but there was absolutely nothing. Nothing that even suggested either of us was telling the truth.”

  Lara looked up Nelson de Silva in the FBI data base. Sure enough, Benjamin Johnson’s face came up. As well as a rap sheet that would pretty much equate to a death sentence, or worse, once he was in prison.

  “It says the same thing in the FBI database. Our Benjamin Johnson, based on fingerprints, doesn’t exist. Only Nelson de Silva. If I didn’t know it was him, I wouldn’t believe it myself, Jamell.”

  “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I didn’t know what to do. They were taking him to Rikers until he was permanently transferred somewhere else.”

  “You called me right away. That’s the most important thing you can do.”

  She hung up with McKenney and spent the next hour trying to fix this. Made calls to the warden at Rikers Island trying to explain the situation. Got Christina on it to see what traces of Johnson’s true person could be found. Even swallowed her dislike and called Mercer, explaining what was going on to see what he could do at his level.

  The fact of the matter was that without an electronic trail no one had reason to believe that Benjamin Johnson wasn’t exactly who the computer said he was: Nelson de Silva. His pictures, his fingerprints, his driver’s license all said it was him.

  The only one saying it wasn’t him was Benjamin Johnson. And Lara. Neither of them held much weight with the warden at Rikers.

  Mercer came through. He called Lara back.

  “The warden at Rikers has agreed to keep Benjamin Johnson, aka Nelson de Silva, alone in a temporary holding cell for forty-eight hours. The warden is keeping the information out of the prison’s computer system so that it cannot be corrupted from the outside.”

  “Thank God. If Johnson went into general population with that rap sheet...”

  Lara didn’t think Johnson would’ve survived the night. Which is what she was sure Halpert had intended.

  “This is just a temporary fix, Grant. You need to get a judge to listen to this whole brouhaha and get him to release Johnson into FBI custody. It’s not going to be an easy sell. You need as many pictures, printouts, anything noncomputerized that you can use to show who Johnson really is.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lara said. “I’ll get on it immediately. And thank you.”

  “You know what you can do to thank me, Grant?” Mercer scoffed. “Your fucking job. It’s time to catch this son of a bitch before he does any more damage.”

  For once, Lara couldn’t agree with her boss more.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lara found a judge willing to listen and look at the evidence she had to provide. She had just typed up her briefing, printed it and sent it over to the judge via courier.

  Normally the files would just be sent via email but Lara wasn’t taking a chance on Halpert being able to access and manipulate them in some way.

  Hopefully, the judge would understand and at least get Ben Johnson out of Rikers before he was thrown into general population.

  One more mess. One more thing splitting their focus, making it take longer to catch Halpert.

  Or if you looked at it from his perspective, another brilliant move.

  When the lights dimmed slightly in the CMU offices Lara thought maybe they were about to have a power outage. Just what they needed.

  “What the hell?” she heard James mutter.

  Jennifer let out a curse when the computer she was working on completely rebooted. But a few seconds later power restored to normal.

  And on every single screen in the CMU offices was a message in bold white letters against a red background.

  LARA GRANT:

  LET ME EXPOSE YOUR SECRET ABOUT MORETTI, OR...

  Lara held her breath, unable to tear her eyes away from the screen even if she wanted to. Everyone waited with her since the words had taken over every screen.

  A moment later the rest of the message flashed.

  ...WELL, YOU KNOW THE DRILL.

  Halpert wanted to play with her? Wanted to make her a participant in his sick little game?

  There was no way in hell.

  “Christina!” Lara bellowed, not even trying to keep her voice down.

  “I see it. It’s on my screens, too. I can’t shut it down yet.” Lara could hear Christina’s fingers tapping frantically as she talked.

  “I don’t want you to shut it down.”

  Now her fingers stopped. “What?”

  “I want to talk back to him. Can we do that?”

  “Um, actually yes. He left a response path open for me to—”

  Lara cut the other woman off. “What do I have to do to talk to him?” She was still staring up at the words, so gaudy against the red.

  “Just tell me what you want to say.”

  “Tell him to go ahead.”

  “Lara.” She hadn’t even realized Nick had come to stand beside her. She looked over at him as he reached out to her. “What are you doing? Let’s think this through.”

  “Yes, Lara, perhaps you should think this through.” They both spun around as an unknown voice came through the speaker of Lara’s computer on her desk.

  “Halpert?” Lara asked.

  “I’m honored you would recognize me, Agent Grant. Since we haven’t officially met.”

  Lara looked over at Christina. She shook her head and motioned with her finger to keep Halpert talking. The last thing Lara wanted to do was have a conversation with this bastard.

  “How about if I tell you to go fuck yourself. Would that make you feel honored?”

  Halpert chuckled. “Actually, yes. But why the language, Agent Grant. Am I getting to you?”

  Yes. Yes, he was getting to her. Although she’d be damned if she’d show it.

  Exactly like Terra Mapson had felt right before she died.

  “I got your message, Halpert. Did you get my reply? Go ahead and tell everyone everything. I won’t play your game.”

  “Are you sure you want me to do that, Lara? Spill all your dirty secrets about Moretti? About your tryst?”

  Everybody in this room already knew Lara’s dirty little secret. And at this moment, s
he didn’t care if everyone in the world knew, too.

  “That I slept with a criminal not knowing he was head of a crime syndicate at the time? Go right ahead and take an ad out on the front page of the New York Times, Halpert. I don’t care.”

  Lara wasn’t sure if Halpert knew about the baby, so she didn’t mention her. That would be Lara’s only regret if Halpert went through with his threat. There would be an innocent family that would suffer. But only their privacy. It was a chance Lara was willing to take.

  “And you know what else, Halpert?” Lara continued, trying to egg him on. Give Christina the possible chance to figure out where he was. “Nobody else cares either. I’m not the first woman to fall for a guy who ended up being a liar and a jerk. Do you know what it’s like to have a relationship with someone, Mitchell? A lover? I doubt it.”

  She saw Nick shake his head at her tactics but didn’t care. Nick probably would’ve used more diplomacy, as always. But damned if Lara was going to play Halpert’s game.

  “You’re trying to make me mad, Lara.”

  “I’m not trying to do anything but see that you rot in a cell for the innocent people you’ve killed.”

  “Speaking of cells.” Halpert chuckled. “How’s our friend Mr. de Silva?”

  Lara clenched her fists, struggling to keep her anger out of her tone. To not give any information away that Halpert didn’t already have. “I don’t know a de Silva, but I can assure you that Benjamin Johnson is just fine.”

  Halpert was silent for a second and Lara smiled. She hoped this conversation wasn’t going at all like he’d planned. Maybe he’d thought she’d cry. That she’d beg him not to tell her secret.

  Mitchell Halpert probably ought to learn that you should never mess with someone who had nothing to lose.

  Halpert sighed. “You’re not making this very fun for me, Lara.”

  “Your entertainment is not my priority. As a matter of fact, I’m getting pretty bored with the whole conversation.”

  She saw Nick grimace and give her a look that in essence asked what the hell she was doing. Lara just held up her arm to get him to step back, which he did, walking a few steps away, shaking his head.