Leading the way into the bustling diner, Jake scanned the faces of the patrons and spotted Allman at a table for four all the way in the back. The man’s appearance was different from yesterday, but his unshaven face, baseball cap, old T-shirt, and ripped jeans made him fit in among the truckers.
Jake approached the booth and held out his hand, which the other man shook. He then gestured between the fed and Nick. “Craig Allman, this is Ian and Dev’s brother, Nick. Uncle Sam’s Navy gave him a few weeks leave, so he’s been working with me.”
The fed shook Nick’s outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you. Your brothers have some pretty big shoes for you to fill.”
As they all sat, the younger man rolled his eyes. “And they never let me forget it.”
A harried waitress plopped several menus and an insulated pitcher of coffee on the table with a murmured, “I’ll be right back,” before hurrying off again. Taking the initiative, Nick poured cups of the strong sludge for each of them.
Nodding his thanks, Allman slid his cup closer before adding a dollop of cream and a few sugars. “Before we get started, how’s the team doing? I heard a rumor that Devil Dog got married and Ian isn’t far behind.”
Even though he was anxious for the information on Wagner, Jake knew how these games with the feds were played. A little small talk, followed by a bunch of questions about what he knew about their mutual target, would precede any forthcoming intel. And even then, he’d be lucky if Allman told him everything. The U.S. alphabet agencies—the FBI, CIA, ATF, and DEA, to name a few—hated sharing information with each other, but they were even stingier when it came to local police departments or private security companies.
“Yup. The rumors are true. And you can add Boomer to that list. He got engaged over the summer.”
“Damn. They’re dropping like flies around here. What the hell is in the water you guys drink?” Not waiting for an answer to the rhetorical question, Allman continued. “So, fill me in on why you were at the press conference yesterday, looking like you wanted to murder my target.”
Pushing his untouched coffee to the middle of the table, Jake leaned back in the booth. “What do you know about his wife and daughter?”
The fed shrugged. “Went missing last year, about two weeks apart. No one reported seeing them since, until the wife’s body was tossed off a bridge a few days ago in Colorado.” When Jake’s eyes narrowed, Allman held up his hand to stop him from saying anything. “And before you get your panties all twisted, I had no knowledge Wagner had located them and ordered the hit. I was down in Colombia finalizing a few things for his deal with the Diaz cartel. He hired those goons on his own and I found out about it after I returned to Tampa the morning the wife was killed. Wagner told me to contact them to find out what was taking them so long. Unfortunately, by that point it was too late.” While Jake had been pretty certain the man was unaware of the hit being placed on Carrie and Alyssa, he was glad to hear him confirm it. But it wouldn’t have been the first time government agents had turned their backs on a few individuals if it meant the end result would benefit a greater cause. “Now, since I’m not stupid and can put two and two together, why did you help them disappear? Apparently, Wagner kept his family and business lives separate as much as possible. My discreet inquiries these past few months got plenty of speculation, but nothing else.”
Jake’s gut churned as it always did when he thought about what Alyssa had gone through. “The prick was sexually abusing the daughter since she was twelve. Physically abusing both of them, too.”
“Fuck!” The loud curse burst from the fed’s mouth and they all glanced around, making sure it hadn’t attracted any attention. He lowered his voice again. “I only heard he was a wife-beater. But a fucking child molester with his own daughter? Now I have to figure out how to finish this assignment without putting a bullet in his dick and another in his head.”
When the waitress finally made it back to them with an apology for taking so long, all three men quickly ordered the ‘Hungry Man’s Special’ from the breakfast menu, making the woman’s morning a little easier. After she left them alone again, Allman asked, “So, do you know where the girl is?”
Neither Nick nor Jake gave any indication they were aware of Alyssa’s location, but it was the latter who answered the other man. “Nope.”
“See, I’ll call bullshit on that, since I traced the last call she made from her cell to you.”
“Fuck. Does Wagner know? Wait a minute. Did you set that tail on me?”
Allman grimaced as he swallowed a gulp of his acrid coffee. “Yeah. I knew Wagner would have me investigate who she contacted and didn’t want him questioning me if he talked to the two fuck-ups he sent on the hit. I told your tail to observe and nothing more. Figured you could handle yourself.” He chuckled. “Want to tell me what you did to them? All they said was they had a run-in with you and refused to follow you anymore.”
While Nick grinned widely and chuckled, Jake just smirked. “Let’s just say Egghead and Polo were able to sharpen their interrogation skills.” He paused as a female trucker walked past their table on the way to the rest rooms. “All right…give us the lowdown on why you’re sitting on Wagner.”
“You’re not going to tell me where the girl is?” When Jake gave him a what-do-you-think look, Allman sighed and relented. “Fine. At least I know she’s in good hands and probably far away from here. The last thing I need is a teenage girl mixed up in all this.”
Taking a sip of his coffee, Nick frowned at the bitter taste. “Shit. I thought truck stops were supposed to have good coffee.” He pushed his cup to the side, then glared at Allman. “So, are you going to tell us what this is? Or do we have to play twenty fucking questions? Because I, for one, hate that fucking game.”
Snorting, the fed shook his head. “Yeah, you’ll fit right in with the rest of Trident.” He rested his forearms on the table. “Wagner came up on our radar about a year ago. Before that he was hometown-oriented—didn’t have many dealings that originated outside the Tampa area. Mostly white-collar stuff like money laundering.” The waitress returned with their orders and the fed waited until she was out of earshot before continuing. “Apparently one connection lead to another, and next thing we know, his name is being mentioned with illegal guns. I think it was just a matter of opportunity knocking and his greedy little hands getting itchy. Word was he became a middle-man for the Diaz cartel’s arms business, so my bosses sent me under. The guns get shipped as phony business orders, then distributed via his companies to clients in the Southeast. We’ve just been waiting for the opportunity to get Diaz up here.”
Suddenly losing his appetite, Jake knew where this was going and he wasn’t happy about it. “Let me guess—you guys don’t give a fucking crap about Wagner. You want Emmanuel before the DEA or FBI can get him and you plan on having Wagner cut a deal and testify. That prick is going to walk when this is all over, because you know damn well he’s the type to rat instead of going to prison.”
“Fuck,” Nick muttered under his breath and Jake was surprised the kid didn’t go on a rant. There were only two ways Alyssa was ever going to be safe and one of them just went down the shitter.
Allman held up his hand with a look of regret on his face. “I know. I’m not happy about it either after dealing with this asshole and it pisses me off even more after what you just told me about the daughter, but it’s not my call.”
Even though anger coursed through him, Jake knew not to take it out on the undercover guy—he was just following orders from higher up on the chain of command. “All right. So, when is this all going down? And where?”
“The shipment is coming in day after tomorrow. Diaz, himself, will be there along with a few cartel members who are spread out up and down the east coast. He’s coming to the states to start branching out again—wants to show his U.S. contacts he’s the real deal and can supply them with whatever they need. When I was down in Colombia, I overheard two of his lieutenants talking
about the white-slavery trade. Looks like he’s getting things back to where they were before his brother died.”
Jake knew all too well what the Diaz cartel had been like under the eldest brother, Ernesto. Members of the original Trident team had been on SEAL Team Four at the time the drug czar was being investigated by the U.S. government. It was during one of their missions that the man was ultimately killed in a shootout.
“Where?” he asked again.
Allman shook his head. “Sorry, Jake. I know you guys are good at what you do, but I’m not risking this op for anyone—not even a teenage girl. I’ve worked on this too long to have it fucked up.”
When Nick growled and opened his mouth to say something, Jake subtly kicked his ankle under the table. “Look, I understand where you’re coming from. But is there any way you can make sure the deal is for the weapons charges only. If he’s got a blanket immunity, there’s no way we’ll be able to go after him for the rape, child abuse, and murder conspiracy charges.”
Mulling it over a moment, Allman chewed and swallowed a mouthful of food. “Not sure about the murder charge, since I’m privy to the act—even though it was after the fact. His lawyers will make sure that’s in any deal. As long as we don’t come across evidence of the other charges, I think we can keep them out of it. I can talk to my superiors and the federal prosecutor, but I’m not guaranteeing anything. Most likely, they’ll jump at a chance to have their cake and eat it, too, but you know as well as I do, things can become cluster-fucks. Do you think you’ll be able to nail him?”
Jake’s cell phone rang and when he saw the number, he answered it. “Donovan.”
“I’ve got what you need,” the female voice told him. “Can you meet me at the airport? I have to take off on an assignment as soon as possible.”
“Yeah. Where?”
“Cell phone lot where you wait for arrivals, in a half hour.”
Jordan gave him her rental car description before hanging up. His gaze met Allman’s curious one. “In answer to your question, yeah, I think we can nail him.” Pulling out some cash, he threw it on the table to cover the bill and tip, then gestured for Nick to slide out of the booth. “We’ve got to go. Call me if anything else comes up, Craig.”
“Same goes for you.”
Minutes later, Jake and Nick were back on the highway, this time heading to the airport. Traffic was still a little heavy, but they were only ten minutes away from Tampa International. Just as Jake changed lanes, his phone rang again. This time he activated the Blue Tooth feature and Tiny’s voice came over the speakers. “Reverend, I’ve got bad news and you can kick our asses later. Alyssa’s gone—took off on her own.”
His hands gripped the steering wheel. “Fuck! What the hell is she doing?”
The big man’s baritone voice was filled with worry and regret. “Honestly, I think she’s on her way to kill her father.” Jake and Nick looked at each other in shock. “Long story short, we got distracted with stuff and she took Henderson’s gun and money. She dumped her cell phone in the driveway before taking off in our SUV. At most, she had a ten-minute head start before we realized she was gone. I called Sheriff Montgomery and asked him to check the roads heading out of town, but most of his deputies are out on a bad, multi-car accident. His brother volunteered to come get us. If we don’t find her, we’ll head to the airport. I’ll call Ian and have him send CC up with the jet. Sorry, man.”
“Shit.” Jake was pissed, but it would be a waste of breath to bawl the guy out. It was obvious Tiny and Henderson knew they’d screwed up, but Alyssa had taken advantage of the situation and probably would have ran off anyway at some point. Was she really on her way to kill her father? Fuck a fucking duck. “All right. Listen. We’re on our way to meet Carter’s contact. She apparently has what we need. There’s other shit going on that Alyssa has no knowledge of and she’s walking into a minefield down here. If you find her, lock her down tight. And call me the second you have her.”
“Got it.”
As Jake disconnected the call, Nick gaped at him. “Is she out of her fucking mind?”
“Apparently. Damn it.” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel then, realizing he was about to miss their exit, glanced in his blind spot before quickly changing lanes. “I don’t know what the fuck she thinks she’s doing, but we’ve got no way to track her. As far as I know, the vehicles up north are older models, so they don’t have locators in them. But shoot Egghead a text and ask him if they do, just in case.” Nick pulled out his phone and began typing. “If not, we’re just going to have to wait for her to show up, which means tailing Wagner and that’s going to piss off the feds, but I don’t fucking care at this point.”
When they pulled into the designated cell phone lot, Jake spotted Jordyn’s vehicle and pulled in next to her, facing the opposite direction, so they could talk without getting out. Both rolled down their driver’s windows and he got his first look at the woman who seemed to have the man-whore, Carter, twisted in a knot. She was about thirty years old and Foster had been pretty close in his imagined assessment—slender, yet fit, long black hair pulled up into a ponytail, and exotic brown eyes. Jake’s guess of South American heritage was neither confirmed nor denied when she spoke without an accent of any kind as she handed him a thumb drive. “This is the original from the safe. All his kiddie-porn is on it—and there’s more than one victim.” She ignored the men’s simultaneous curses and held up another drive. “I copied data from another drive that I left behind. This is the diary he kept on his other crimes—money laundering, arms and drug dealing, and some other stuff. Know anyone who’d be interested in getting this anonymously? We can’t just hand it over without explaining how we got it and screwing up the chain of evidence.”
“Send it to Keon at the FBI. He’ll make sure it gets to the right people.” Larry Keon was the Deputy Director, the number-two man in the agency, and Trident’s contact. He’d helped them on numerous occasions and the team returned the favors every chance they got.
“Fine.” Jordyn pulled down her sunglasses from where they’d been perched on her head and covered her eyes, but not before he saw them fill with loathing. “Tell that asshole, Carter, not to contact me again. I’m tossing my phone in the airport, so the number you have is no longer valid.” She put her vehicle in drive, her frown dropping further. “And nail this fucking pervert to the wall for me—otherwise, I’ll be tempted to come back and do it myself. And I guarantee it won’t be pretty.”
As she drove away, Jake turned to face Nick with his eyebrows almost reaching his hairline. “Damn. Carter’s going to have his hands full if he goes after her the way I suspect he will–sooner or later. And I can’t wait to watch the sparks fly when he lights up that firecracker.”
CHAPTER 25
Putting on her turn signal, Alyssa exited the highway at a rest stop just outside of Tampa and pulled up to the gas pumps. She was exhausted after driving straight through to Florida. Thank God she found a GPS unit in the vehicle’s glove compartment, since she would have been hopelessly lost without it. The trip should have taken her a little over nine hours to get to Tampa, according to the calculations. But with the traffic, pit stops for gas and food, and a three-hour nap at another rest stop in Georgia, it was now close to ten o’clock at night.
Along the way, she’d thought about how, where, and when to approach her father. It would be hard to sneak up on him at the house, since she was sure he’d changed the alarm code again. He had a habit of doing that every few months, without telling anyone, and it’d driven her mother crazy when she came home and couldn’t shut it off. And her father always had other men around—men she didn’t like. While her father had never forced her to have sex with anyone else, she never liked the way some of his associates and friends had eyed her like she was a piece of meat and they were starving.
The best idea she came up with—and it wasn’t a great idea, either—was to lure him somewhere private, with no one else around, and ambush him. O
nce she killed him, she would toss the gun in one of the many lakes or swamps in the area so no one could connect it to her. After that was where she became unsure of what to do next. Would Jake help her? She was sure he would eventually figure out what she did. Would he turn her in to the police? From her experience, anything would be better than letting Oliver Wagner live and continue to molest her or any other girl. Yes, she was aware she hadn’t been the only one, but she never knew who the other girls were or how many of them had been abused. Her bastard father liked to compare her to the others while he was doing vile things to her.
She shivered and forced the memories from her mind. For now, she would gas up the empty tank and then find a place to sleep until the morning. She had to be on her toes when she faced down her abuser because when it was over, there would only be one of them left alive and Alyssa didn’t have a death wish. Even though for the past year she’d been scared her father would find them, she’d also learned that her future was what she made of it. And she wanted the future she’d dreamed of long before her perverted father changed her life forever.
* * *
“Anything?”
A hushed round of ‘negative’ answers flooded back through Jake’s headset. Marco, Brody, Nick, Devon, and he were scattered throughout Wagner’s neighborhood and the surrounding areas in discreet locations, keeping an eye out for Alyssa. It was a little before oh-one-hundred hours …plenty of time for her to have made it back to Tampa, even if she made some pit stops. They’d been in the area since six p.m. and nothing unusual had caught their attention. Boomer, Foster, McCabe, Tiny, Henderson, and one more operative on loan from Blackhawk Security would be taking over the watch soon, so the first shift could get some sleep. Ian had flown up to Washington D.C. for another one of the meetings he’d been having with the Pentagon and he was still being closed-mouth about what was going on.
Topping the Alpha: Trident Security Series Page 18