by CJ Lyons
“They did? Could you tell me when?”
“Six o’clock this morning. Are you Ms. Tierney? They left a message for you.” He handed her an envelope with the hotel’s insignia on it.
Caitlyn bit back her curse and moved to a quiet corner of the lobby to open the letter. Written in a delicate, feminine hand, Sandra Alvarado apologized for wasting the FBI’s time and resources, stating that Caitlin’s services would no longer be needed as they’d received word that Maria was in fact visiting distant relatives back in their homeland, Guatemala.
Great. Just great. Ditched in Cozumel—wasn’t that what she’d joked about with Carver? Damn, she hated it when she was right.
Not just about the parents. About the fact that Maria was in a hell of a lot more trouble than anyone realized.
She called Yates. Despite the early hour, the Assistant Director was in his office, answering his own phone. She explained the situation.
“Do you think they’re involved?” he asked, obviously peeved at the Alvarados’ yanking their chain. As if the FBI were at their beck and call.
“No. If they were, why call us and make such a fuss in the first place? I don’t know what their game is, but clearly there’s something going on in Guatemala that they don’t want us investigating. Maybe there was a ransom demand? Instructions to not get any police involved?”
“They are originally from Guatemala. Maybe it’s some kind of family feud. Ancient history.”
“With their daughter as bait to get them to return?” If so, that meant this was about more than just money. Which meant the danger to Maria could be worse than she’d suspected.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I want to find Maria. If her parents don’t have her best interests at heart, someone has to be there to protect her.”
“I thought you hated this assignment. They really pissed you off, didn’t they?”
“They wasted your time, my time, taxpayer and Bureau resources, and there’s a girl’s life at stake. Damn right I’m pissed.” She held her breath, waiting for Yates’s decision. If he told her to get on the next plane home, she’d be screwed, because no way was she abandoning Maria now. But it would be a whole lot easier with Yates and the Bureau supporting her as she traveled into a foreign country with no backup.
“Here’s how we’re going to play it,” he finally said. “We now have three missing U.S. citizens whose welfare we are concerned for. And since you’re there and already have knowledge of the case, I’ll call State and make sure they know you’re coming, prepare the locals. Let me check with the FAA and see if there’s a way to see where they’ll be landing—”
“Actually, I already checked,” she said, pulling up the screen on her laptop. “There’s only one place their jet could land: Guatemala City. If they’re going to Santo Tomás, the last place Maria was seen, it looks like at least four or five hours by car. But I can get a flight to Punta Gorda, which is closer to Santo Tomás. It’s only a ninety-minute flight, and Punta Gorda is a hour behind Cozumel. If I can find a way from Belize to Santo Tomás, maybe I can beat them there.”
“You head to the airport, I’ll have someone get started on local intel. And digging into the Alvarados’ personal backgrounds.”
“Jake Carver would be excellent at that, sir. And he’s currently unassigned. Good use of resources.”
“I’ll call Carver, get him on it. And Tierney? No international incidents. No bad press on this one. The FBI better come off looking like fucking heroes saving the lives of U.S. citizens with the help of whatever locals you need to involve. We need to be bulletproof. Understand?”
He meant that if the Alvarados began throwing their political weight around, he and the Bureau had to be protected. Which translated as: it was her ass on the line.
“Understood.” She hung up and swung her travel pack onto her shoulder. The weight settled into place, she headed out to navigate through three foreign countries without knowing the language, the land, or who the hell she could trust.
And people wondered why she had control issues.
*
Everything hurt and everything was fuzzy. Like she was floating. Was she still in the water? No, it was dark but quiet; she was on a bed, inside a building. Maria blinked but nothing came into focus. People moved around the room, just out of sight. One of them came close, touched her arm; then everything went dark again.
She fought to open her eyes, to speak. She had to tell them about Prescott, about the men with guns, about the professor. She had to save them.
The more she struggled, the more exhaustion overwhelmed her. The last thing she sensed before she surrendered to sleep was a man’s voice.
“Everything depends on her.”
Was he talking about her? Couldn’t be. Maria had never done anything important in her life—not like her parents, whose business was saving lives. That’s why she’d been so determined to come to Guatemala, make a big discovery. All on her own. Not because of her parents’ money or influence, but because she was smart and talented all on her own.
On her own … All alone … Did someone call her parents? They’d be so mad, so very mad.
She tried to stir again, ask the man, but her limbs were too heavy to move.
Then his voice came again. “Guard her with your life.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jake could have worn one of the new suits he’d bought for his meetings with the lawyers and court appearances. Lynn would have approved. Which was probably why he’d skipped the suit and gone with jeans, a T-shirt, and his leather jacket. Hey, at least he’d shaved.
Lynn would have hated the scraggly beard he’d worn when he was with the Reapers. His hair still brushed his collar, camouflaging the Reaper tattoo on his neck and skull, but no way was he going to trim it until he finished getting the tatt lasered off. He wanted the damn thing gone as soon as possible, but turned out it would take months. The idiot AUSA even talked about using photos of each painful laser session as an “in” with future juries. Damn lawyers. Wished he could laser them out of his life.
He got to the diner right on time, but still had to wait a few minutes for Lynn to make her appearance. Typical corporate mind games. The person who had to wait was always at a disadvantage. He leaned back in the booth, arms stretched out over the top of his seat, and smiled at her as she crossed the diner. He wasn’t playing her games, making him the ultimate winner.
She looked good. Slim build, suit a shade of pale green that brought out her eyes and highlighted her blond hair. Made her look feminine, soft—everything she wasn’t. Camouflage.
He grinned at her, and her step faltered a microscopic beat. Not enough for anyone who didn’t know her intimately to notice, but her loss of control spoke volumes to him. He still had what it took. Funny. He no longer cared.
He wasn’t expecting that. Game over. He lowered his arms and waited for her to slide in across from him. “Thanks for seeing me, Lynn.”
She settled her ostrich-skin attaché case onto the seat beside her and lined up her utensils and napkin in a precise formation before meeting his gaze. “What’s the game, Jake? Calling me in the middle of the night, asking for help with an off-the-book investigation into a couple with political clout and their extremely well connected company?”
“Actually I just heard from the Washington Field Office. The investigation is official now. Background checks on persons of interest.”
She shrugged that away. “There’s more going on here, and you know it. You’re setting me up, trying to steal another case from me, hog all the glory.”
“If I recall, that was your play, not mine.” Lynn’s passion for the job had been what initially attracted him to her—until he realized it was a passion for her own career ambitions, not a passion for justice.
Soon after they were married, she’d accepted a promotion to Assistant Special Agent in Charge of IRS Criminal Investigations, placing him directly in her chain of command—a big no-n
o for spouses. She’d never even asked him before taking the job. And his only choice had been either a move to a desk in another division or joining forces with another federal agency.
When he chose the latter, she’d grown distant and spiteful about his prolonged absences and the perceived greater prestige of his new job with the FBI. Then he’d left for his long-term deep cover assignment with the Reapers. It took months before the divorce papers finally reached him. He couldn’t totally blame her—not like he’d fought very hard for their marriage.
All this passed between them as they held each other’s gaze. Hers was sharp, a stiletto balanced on its tip. He waited to see which way it would fall. Then she smiled and took a drink of water. “Tell me what you have on BioRegen.”
“So you have a case open on them already?” Interesting. It took a lot more to open a case with the IRS’s Criminal Investigations than it did other law enforcement agencies. Which meant Caitlyn’s instincts had been right. Again.
“Not really,” Lynn said, eyes narrowed as she dissected his expression. “A guy over in the Taxpayer Advocate Service opened a file last year but got nowhere. Their work is a bit unsavory, given its nature, but he couldn’t find anything actionable. Then you called. Which of course made me suspicious.”
“Did you bring the file?”
“Better. I brought the case agent. Had him reassigned to me. Temporarily. Until I see how this all plays out.” Typical Lynn, manipulating pawns to achieve her own endgame.
In the years since he’d left the IRS, Jake had forgotten how convoluted its approach to law enforcement was. Just to get a preliminary investigation approved, it had to go through three layers of management before an agent could move forward.
Checks and balances, they called it. More like red tape with the potential to strangle a case before it even started, giving the bad guys time to cover their tracks and escape.
“Great. Where is he?”
“Hang on. I need a guarantee that if you find anything, we make the arrest. We handle all the press.” Right, so she could add to the vaunted IRS “highest conviction rate of any federal law enforcement agency” statistics. Easy to get a conviction when you only go after the cases that were a sure thing.
“And if we don’t find anything?” he asked.
“Then I had nothing to do with it.” Translation: she was willing to sacrifice the poor slub who’d opened the case in order to protect herself from any political fallout. “This was just another FBI case gone horribly awry. And you were just another renegade FBI agent, out of his league.”
Ouch. “Is that what you believe?”
She gave him a sad smile and shook her head, not a hair falling out of place. “Jake, haven’t you learned by now? It’s not about what anyone believes. The only thing that matters is how it appears to the public.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Of course.” She waved a hand, and a light-skinned African American man left the counter to join them. “Tyrese Shapiro, this is Jake Carver.”
Shapiro was maybe five-eight, muscled, with the kind of build that would have had the wrestling coaches back home in Kansas lined up to recruit him.
Lynn slid out of the booth and grabbed her bag. “You boys play nice now. And be sure to keep me in the loop.”
With that, she was gone. Jake hadn’t realized how tense he was until he released his breath. He’d really thought she couldn’t get to him anymore, but ten minutes with Lynn made him want to volunteer for another ten months undercover.
Shapiro slid into the seat Lynn had vacated, plopping a worn briefcase onto the table. “So you and the ice queen. What was that like?”
Jake chuckled. “About what you’d expect. Hey, everyone’s entitled to a mistake or two.”
“Well, whatever it took, I’m glad to be out of taxpayer advocacy and on the enforcement side of things. Hope to make it permanent, you know what I mean.”
“I won’t stand in your way. In fact, we’ll get along just fine if you keep interagency politics out of it. All I’m interested in is anything that can help me track down a missing girl.”
“Missing girl? I thought this was about BioRegen.”
Jake filled him in on Maria and her parents’ strange behavior. “Tell me about this complaint you received on BioRegen.”
“Complaints. Thirteen of them, last I counted. From every agency in the alphabet soup. After folks learned I was interested, they all get sent to me.”
“Really? And there was nothing there?”
“Nope. Shady as far as ethics, but everything totally legal.”
“Walk me through it.”
Shapiro glanced at his watch. “How about if I show you in person? We should just about have time.”
“Time for what?”
“A funeral.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Shapiro drove a Prius. Smart car for the D.C. gridlock, although Jake preferred the freedom and maneuverability of his bike. They headed across the river and down to Alexandria.
“Nice car, Shapiro,” Jake said as they idled silently at a red light. He couldn’t help the uptick in his voice on the agent’s name—guy looked nothing like a Shapiro.
“What do you get when you cross a St. Louis beat cop with a junior high math teacher?” Shapiro chuckled. “An IRS agent who hates paperwork and loves doughnuts.” He aimed a thumb at himself. “Don’t worry, I’ve heard all the jokes. That’s why I really want to hang on to this criminal investigation gig if I can. And I just know there’s something going on with BioRegen.”
“How long have you been investigating BioRegen?”
Shapiro made a face. “Last year, they first came to my attention. One of those cases that reminded me of my mom’s stories from her days working crimes against persons. Did an internal review, nothing to reach the level of an audit, just a gut feeling that something was off. My supervisor shut it down, told me to make better use of my time and paper-shuffling skills, but I kept my eye on them. Spread the word that I was interested. Nothing much popped until a few months ago. Since then there’s been over a dozen complaints, all over the country, all with BioRegen’s name mentioned.”
“Complaints against the company?”
“No, that’s the problem. They farm out the dirty work, so the complaints were all against mortuary services and hospitals. But they all lead back to BioRegen.” They pulled into the crowded parking lot of a funeral home. Stately red brick, white columns, tasteful flowers on either side of the front doors. “I even put the local mortuaries on notice to contact me if they had any problems with a BioRegen transaction. Hoping maybe I could find something solid enough to build a case with. This place called me in yesterday.” They left the car, Jake wishing he’d worn something nicer, and approached the entrance.
Several women gathered in the front hallway, all black, all ages. Children ran up and down the wide corridor, dressed in their Sunday best, their cheerful voices a welcome contrast to the somber decor. The only men Jake saw were a few sullen teens slouched against the back wall, all wearing gang colors.
One of the women, dressed in a tasteful black jersey dress that went all the way down to her ankles, mid-forties, holding a handkerchief, rushed toward them. At first, Jake thought she was going to kick them out, but then she grabbed both Shapiro’s beefy arms. “Mr. Shapiro, you came back.”
“I promised I would, didn’t I?” He wrapped the woman into a quick hug. “How are you all holding up? Is your grandma doing okay after what happened yesterday?”
The woman shook her head. “Doctor said she should rest at home today. Too much stress.” She looked at Jake with a question in her eyes.
“Excuse my manners,” Shapiro said. “Deidre Thomson, this is Special Agent Jake Carver with the FBI.”
Jake forced himself not to flinch at the use of his real name out loud, in public. Reminded himself that he wasn’t living the undercover lie anymore. He stretched a hand out to Thomson. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. I’
m sorry for your loss.”
“The FBI? Mr. Shapiro, you brought the FBI? So you really think you can do something, stop this from happening again?”
Shapiro stretched himself tall, which brought the top of his head to Jake’s ear. “We’re sure going to try, Ms. Thomson. I thought, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble and with your permission, I could show Agent Carver the extent of the problem?”
She hesitated, looked over her shoulder at the older women behind her. “Yes, but would you mind going alone? I just don’t think I can take seeing that—I mean, what they did to poor Vincent…” Tears crowded out her words.
“Of course, of course.” Shapiro patted her arm. “We won’t need but a minute.”
“Take your time. After what happened yesterday, when we realized—well, instead of a graveside service, Mr. Decker agreed to cremate Vincent, no extra charge. So we were all just leaving—oh, but you’re welcome to come to the wake.” She nodded at Jake, including him. “Both of you. If you have time.”
“Thank you, Ms. Thomson. That’s very nice of you. I’m afraid Agent Carver and I have a long day ahead of us. But we do very much appreciate the offer.”
“Okay. Please, let us know if there’s anything more we can do to help.”
“Of course, of course. And tell your grandma that she and the entire family are in my prayers.” Shapiro grasped the woman’s arm and nodded solemnly.
A few minutes later, they were sitting in the funeral director’s office. “That was quite a show,” Jake told Shapiro as they waited for the mortician. “Very diplomatic.”
“No show about it,” Shapiro replied. “Vincent Thomson was a victim of a drive-by. Shot eleven times, caught four of them in the face. Kid was fifteen—Deidre’s great-nephew. His mom’s locked up, dad’s out of the picture, you know how it goes. Anyway, had to be a closed coffin, but Deidre and her grandmother—Vincent’s great-grandmother—came yesterday to place some special items in the coffin with him.”
“And there’s a federal case in there somewhere?”