Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  Lara’s head dropped almost imperceptibly. But for the first time, Nick’s first instinct wasn’t to protect her from the consequences of her actions. Instead, he slipped out of the room and went to the far end of the hallway to make his call.

  “Delano,” his father barked.

  “How’s Trevor?” Nick asked.

  There was a pause. “You seriously called me to find out how my friend is?” Disbelief seeped down the phone line like sinister slime.

  “Not exactly. The hacker in the case I’m working has threatened to spill our family secret,” Nick said baldly. If anyone could protect his brother, his father would. He had no idea why, but his father seemed to have infinite patience for his drug-addicted, petty thief of a son, but not his FBI special agent one.

  “Which one?” asked his father.

  Nick barked a mirthless laugh. “I guess I do need to be more specific, don’t I. Jason. I mean Jason. Our perp is a hacker who has dug up information about the team’s deep, dark pasts. I don’t know why—Jason’s exploits are public record.” He shrugged as he said the words. It was true. Anyone with an internet connection could look up his brother’s appearances in court.

  “Well, except the time he accidentally killed his dealer and I cleaned up the ensuing mess. Except for that,” his father said in a swear-to-God smug tone.

  As if he were proud.

  “What?” While Nick reeled from the information, he couldn’t believe he didn’t know that. He also couldn’t believe that his father’s tone was almost triumphant. As if he’d gotten one over on the police, and Nick.

  “Allegedly,” his father drew out the word as if he was savoring every letter.

  Nick looked at his phone. He wanted to smash it against the wall. Or his father’s head.

  Between gritted teeth, Nick managed to reply. “Well, for once I’m almost hopeful our perp wins the day. I’ll let you know how the investigation goes...maybe.” He pressed the end call button and longed for the days when you could slam the receiver down on the phone cradle. Civilization had lost an important anger outlet when phones went cordless.

  If his father had indeed covered up a murder for Jason, they would both go to jail, and no doubt, Nick would be investigated by the FBI’s Inspection Division, which would be about as much fun, and as invasive as a colonoscopy. He shook his head in disbelief.

  His brother was a killer?

  Was his father even telling the truth? His world as he knew it was disappearing around him like water down a drain. Jennifer killed her sister? Jason killed a dealer? Lara was still as much a loose cannon as she’d ever been. His father covered up a murder, and seemed proud of himself for doing it.

  He dragged his hands over his face, and looked toward the ceiling. He was pretty sure he’d just committed a felony for calling his father. Warning a criminal of his imminent discovery probably wasn’t a move a Special Agent in Charge was supposed to make.

  Damn his father to hell.

  Nick took a few deep breaths and imagined himself on the shore of the Hamptons. He watched the waves crash on the beach for a few seconds, almost smelling the salty air. His happy place.

  Raised voices from the conference room dragged him away. When he opened the door, Xander was on his feet, fists planted on the desk in front of him. Lara was leaning against the wall in her typically defensive position, arms crossed and head tipped to one side.

  Nick shouted. “Enough, everyone. Unless you just want to pack it all in and go to Halpert’s side. Giving him what he wants—the distraction and/or destruction of our team—is only going to make him stronger. So are we still doing this? Or do you want to snipe and blame each other for another twenty-three hours? Make up your minds now.”

  There was silence. Christina spoke up. “When things get tough for one of us, we need to get closer, not further apart. We need to—” Her phone rang. “Sorry. You know what I was saying though.” She looked at the caller ID and frowned. “Excuse me,” she said, heading for the door.

  Nick hoped it was good news. God knew they needed some.

  Chapter Two

  Lara needed to get them all working. Only twenty-three hours until their deadline. The more they sat around the table eyeing one another with suspicion, the harder it would be to snap them out of it.

  The problem was—they had nothing new to work on.

  As if by divine intervention, her phone rang. It was the lab. The bomb that killed Terra Mapson was the same as the other bombs. It was also made from TATP, but this time there was an added ingredient. 2-Nitrodiphenylamine, or 2-NDPA—a stabilizer. Maybe because he had no idea when the bomb would be triggered by Mapson sitting in the car, and didn’t want the volatile TATP to explode before it found its target.

  Xander pulled up a map of the locations in which 2-NDPA could be found.

  “Damn,” Ty said under his breath.

  The map of the United States was peppered with small dots, showing the places where it could be obtained.

  “How about just New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania?” Lara said, taking a seat at the table.

  Xander zoomed in. Fewer dots, for sure. But not so few that it made their task any easier. There were actually none in Manhattan, and just a few in the upstate areas, but New Jersey and Connecticut were filled with them.

  “Oh, God. How about a fifty-mile radius from his house?” Lara said, wincing. There was every possibility that he could have driven to California to get his supplies. Really the options he had were endless. He was, as usual, way ahead of them.

  By the expressions on the faces of her team, she knew they were thinking the exact same thing. It was like trying to fill in a Sudoku puzzle by guessing the numbers. Sure they could be right. But there was a greater possibility that they were wrong, which would render the puzzle impossible to solve without starting the whole thing over again.

  “This map may not even help. I’m pretty sure you need a license to get your hands on 2-NDPA. We need to figure out where you’d go if you didn’t have a license,” Jennifer said, leaning forward.

  “How about that bones guy?” Lara asked. It was time to exhaust every possible resource.

  “Who?” Jennifer asked, tapping a pen on the blank legal pad in front of her.

  “The...guy. You know the first guy we questioned...what was his name? Dennison? The anthropologist with a PhD in homegrown terrorism.”

  James looked at his phone. “Yup. It was Dennison. Howard Dennison.”

  “I still can’t believe they have PhD programs in homegrown terrorism,” Jennifer said.

  “It’s a whole new world out there,” Ty replied, throwing his pen on the table in front of him. “I’m beginning to wish they had programs like that when I was at school.”

  “He had a completely watertight alibi for the bombings,” James said with a frown.

  “No, I don’t mean he’s a suspect, I mean let’s use him. He’s an expert. I say let’s get him in. Make him sign a confidentiality form and read him into the case. At this stage, what do we have to lose?”

  Xander puffed air from his cheeks. “Not much.”

  “Nick?” Lara asked, wanting his opinion.

  “I don’t remember ever reading a civilian completely into a case, but, you’re right. At this point we don’t have anything at all to lose. We’ve never been this far behind the curve before.” He seemed despondent, which unnerved her a little. He was usually the motivator, the energy behind every investigation. She wondered if she’d done anything to piss him off. Well, something outside the usual realm of her ability to piss him off.

  “Do you think we have to pass it through Mercer?” she asked.

  “Better ask forgiveness than ask permission. Especially after the bomb disposal debacle at the warehouse,” Nick said with a barely perceptible shrug.<
br />
  He’d taken heat over his decision to overrule Mercer, their desk-jockey temporary boss, but nothing that had seemed to bother him too much at the time.

  “Xander, let’s get the virtual murder board up for him. I’m going to call him and send NYPD over to pick him up. I want every lead on the screens here. Try not to leave anything out—I want him to see everything. Maybe except for Halpert’s most recent threat.” No need to put the team’s dirty laundry out for a consultant to see.

  “Sure. It’ll go quicker if Christina can help. She has access to some programs and databases that we’ve used that’d take time to get me approved for,” Xander said.

  “I’ll go in and get her after we’ve called him,” Lara said, paging through her notes from the first day of the investigation. It seemed like it had been eons ago. Goddamn Halpert was putting years on her.

  She found his number and dialed. Dennison was interested, and happy to help. She told him to wait for the cops to show up and that they’d bring him to the FBI office.

  “Isn’t that nice? No negotiation over consultant fees, or publishing rights,” Lara said.

  “Well, let’s wait until he’s had the ride over to think about it,” Nick said cynically.

  “Come on, let’s get Christina,” she said, wanting an opportunity to ask him if everything was okay.

  * * *

  Nick steeled himself for a barrage of questions as soon as the conference room door closed behind them.

  “What’s up? You went from Boy Scout to emo boy in, like, ten minutes back there.”

  “I’m just tired.” That much was true. He was tired of just about everything. He wanted a vacation. A break. A few months away from his life. From everyone.

  “Sorry I interrupted your sleep before,” she said with a small grin.

  It was fairly typical of Lara to fix on the superficial level of what he told her, and this time he was grateful that she was never really that interested in the darker parts of his life. Grateful that they never really got that emotionally close that she was able to read him as easily as he read her. He guessed that it was she who hadn’t gotten that emotionally close. He, unfortunately, had—for a while at least.

  They opened the door to Christina’s office, and stopped in the doorway.

  “Don’t leave the door open. Come in,” Christina complained. At least her voice did. Their gazes were fixated on the other person in the room.

  They shuffled forward and the door whooshed to a close behind them.

  Both she and Nick continued to stare.

  There was a kid sitting in Christina’s chair. She wore a short kilt, a white blouse and deep black hair tied in two bunches on the side of her head. A school blazer hung on the back of the chair. “Uh, hello?” Lara stuttered.

  Christina’s head popped around from behind one of the servers. “Hi.” Her gaze followed Lara’s and Nick’s. “She’s a consultant,” she said, almost bristling with defensiveness. She went back to her task, which seemed to involve messing around with a circuit board.

  “Does her mommy know she’s out of school?” Lara asked, still trying to take in the fact that Christina seemed to have allowed this girl to use the FBI’s systems.

  Christina looked up and rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ageist, Lara. Eloise—this is Special Agent Lara Grant, and Special Agent Nick Delano. Nick, Lara—this is Eloise McAulty.”

  “Of the Upper East Side McAultys?” Nick asked slowly. Was she Daniel and Rachel’s daughter? He looked at the badge on her blazer, but realized that he had no idea what school she went to.

  Lara cast a derisive look at him for knowing anyone by their geographical location in Manhattan. He didn’t blame her, but being brought up in boarding schools and exclusive clubs, he knew these people. Or at least he thought he did.

  “Duh,” Eloise said, as if he should have known exactly who she was.

  Charming. “What are you doing here Ms. McAulty?” Lara asked her, although her gaze rested on Christina, expecting her to answer.

  She did. “I need help. I brought in the best.” Christina went back to her circuit board.

  “The best what? Cheerleader? I know Nick’s pep talks haven’t been up to scratch recently, but—” Lara began.

  “Shut up,” Nick said with a testiness he couldn’t suppress.

  There was silence. Christina continued with her keyboard and Daniel’s daughter just kept watching Nick and Lara from beneath long eyelashes, which Nick was pretty sure were fake. Sometimes he thanked God that he didn’t have teenagers to deal with. And sometimes, not.

  Lara broke the silence. “Well, what is she the best at?”

  Christina met Nick’s gaze and frowned. “She’s a hacker.”

  Awesome. That’s all they needed. A teenage, hormonal hacker with who knew what kind of axe to grind.

  “Trust me,” Christina said.

  “Who authorized this?” Lara said. “Is the FBI paying a teenager? Is she even old enough to pay taxes?” she scoffed.

  Christina paused, still looking at Nick. He looked behind him to see if she was looking at something else.

  By the time he looked back at her, she was back at the circuit board with a tiny soldering iron. “It’s all taken care of,” she said. “Eloise is the best. Better than me. You should think about hiring her when I leave.”

  “You’re leaving?” Lara said.

  “Eventually. This is the longest I’ve stayed with one team. Variety is the spice of life you know. Anyway, you should snap her up when she turns eighteen. Don’t let her go to the dark side.” She grinned and glanced at Eloise who just rolled her eyes.

  “How did she get so good at—” Lara cleared her throat “—hacking?”

  “You can ask me, you know. I’m right here,” Eloise said, dropping her hands from the keyboard.

  “Well?” she asked. “How did you get so good?”

  Nick suddenly had a flashback to Jennifer confessing, and held up his hand in case she was about to mention something illegal, but she was already talking.

  “A girl’s got to have something to do when she’s been sent to her room.” A smile played over Eloise’s face.

  “Just how often did you get sent to your room?” Lara said, already smiling. Trust her to form a bond with another hot-headed lone wolf.

  “Put it this way, they think they sent me to my room forty minutes ago.”

  Lara’s grin widened. “Okay, then. Better get all this solved before they realize you’re gone.”

  “It’s okay. They won’t check on me for another three hours. I expect I’ll be finished by then. As long as you can give me a ride home.” There was no ego there, just stating fact.

  Nick hoped she was as good as she and Christina seemed to think she was.

  “I’ve got her working on tracking him through his ghost servers. When she needs a break, she’ll start restoring Ben’s identity for him. Try and get him out of jail at least,” Christina said. “Anyway, what did you come in for?”

  “Oh, right. We’ve got a consultant of our own coming in to help us. We want a full virtual murder board up in the conference room, and Xander says you need to use your log-in to access some systems,” Nick said slowly, wondering if it was the right call to leave Eloise alone in Christina’s office.

  “Sure.” Christina grabbed her laptop and tucked it under her arm.

  When Nick didn’t move, she nudged him. “It’s okay. We trust her, okay?” She said the words as if she was imparting some important secret.

  “Okay?” Sometimes he was just bemused by the things the women around him expected him to know. It worried him. No, it didn’t. Sometimes ignorance was bliss. And he’d take his bliss where he could find it.

  * * *

  Lara waited in the building’s large reception
area to sign in Howard Dennison. She paced up and down the length of the front window waiting for him. Could he be their golden ticket to...something? He knew about explosives, criminals and even the psychology of terrorists. And even if Halpert wasn’t a traditional terrorist with one MO, he still counted. He was definitely part terrorist, part serial killer.

  In fact, aside from Dr. Oliviero’s initial profile, they hadn’t really thought much about his psychology at all—there simply hadn’t been time. It had been one emergency after the other. For days. She was just about running on fumes. They all were. Maybe Eloise and Howard would be the silver bullets they’d been searching for since Halpert first struck. God, she hoped so.

  A black-and-white screeched to a halt directly in front of the building, lights flashing. The rear door opened and Howard Dennison emerged, hugging his laptop case and looking very nervous. Lara bit back a smile. When she’d said to the NYPD that the delivery was urgent, they clearly took her at her word. She gave a wave to the driver, who nodded and pulled off squealing, leaving more burned rubber on the road. Dennison jumped.

  Maybe some calming herbal tea would be in order?

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Dennison,” Lara said, holding out her hand.

  The hand that shook hers was cool and clammy.

  “I’m sorry for the urgency, but we’re desperate. We need your help,” she said, ushering him into the building.

  “That was certainly the impression the car ride gave me,” he replied dryly.

  She signed him in and pressed the button for the express elevator to their floor. “You know what we’re investigating, and you’ve undoubtedly seen on the news that he’s escalating. We’re looking for a different perspective. We’re hoping that a fresh set of eyes will see something we didn’t.”

  The elevator doors opened and they got in. As they ascended he asked the question Nick assumed he would. “Can I write about this?”

  She shook her head very slightly. No one did anything just as a good deed any more. “What kind? A book? A research paper?”