by Misty Evans
“I can call Grey. He’ll put Teeg on it.”
“You want your friends to hack into the FBI? You said you didn’t want to involve them unless necessary.”
Mitch shrugged. Shrugged. God help them. The man acted like infiltrating a government database ranked right up there with deciding whether dinner should be chicken or beef. “I know what I said, but after seeing those pictures…” He shook his head. “Besides, Teeg’s hacked the Bureau database before. Remember a couple years or so ago when the black hats took down the FBI and DOD websites?”
“That was Teeg?”
“He was one of them.”
She burst out laughing. “Mitch Monroe, you will be my ultimate downfall. I know it. I stand here looking at you and I immediately turn dense.”
He smiled at her, all Mitch, conqueror of evil, and heat spread low in her belly. Mitch inched closer. She should move back, out of his gravitational pull, but there were a lot of things regarding Mitch Monroe she should do. Instead, she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his jeans and those focused eyes—well, they shot wide. Who was in control now?
She tugged him forward and kissed him. Whammo. He drew her closer, gripping her hips hard and…and—yes, yes, yes—this was what she wanted. Lips and tongues and fire that somehow only happened with Mitch.
Every date she’d been on since the-night-that-never-happened had been a sorry letdown. Each time she went into it hopeful that she’d find the one person who could eject Mitch out of her mind and heart and, in a lot of ways, her body, because her body craved him like an addict. But with each date and each man, she quickly gave up trying. Whether the world should be thankful or not, there was only one Mitch Monroe.
The chime of her email sounded and Caroline gripped Mitch’s waistband, bunching the fabric in her grasp, pulling it tight and holding him in place because the damned emails could wait a second. Even if she’d been in a hurry before, her mind had suddenly derailed.
“Ow,” Mitch cracked, but kept kissing her. “Don’t damage me. I may need what’s down there later.”
Oh, and the thought of that. Between the two of them they were about fifteen feet tall, all long legs and lean, athletic bodies that could go all night.
Intelligence gush complete.
“I hate you.”
He backed away, shoved his hands into her hair and hit her with a wicked, vagina melting grin. “My dick doesn’t care. Not sure the rest of me does either.”
The evidence of that was obvious from the bulge against her tummy. Caroline jumped back, her breaths coming fast and hard and—yowzer—it was like being let out of sexual prison. Freed from a lifetime of boring men who couldn’t figure out how to crack the Caroline-needs-an-orgasm code.
“Stop!” she yelled. “It’s too much.” She paddled her hands. “It’s like…like…I don’t know. But it’s too much. You’ve been gone too long and this isn’t what we should be doing now. Right? I mean, we’re professionals. You’re a fugitive. You could go to prison and then what? Conjugal visits once a month?”
Mitch’s lips quirked. “Only if you marry me. I don’t put out for free.”
“Marry you? I want to dismember you!”
Dammit. She sounded insane right now, but this is what happened with him. His fault. He made her this way. Every time. “Laugh at me, and I will get my gun and shoot you. Then we’ll see who needs conjugal visits.”
Finally, he laughed and yep—where’s my gun?—hearing that sound, that deep belly laugh she’d missed so damned much, made her laugh too. Hopeless. That’s what she was. Stupid and hopeless.
But maybe, for a little while, stupid and hopeless was tolerable.
Chapter Eight
Detach. Disassociate. Disengage. Mitch hovered over Caroline’s shoulder as she sat at the desk and opened each photo one by one.
You’ve viewed hundreds of crime scenes. This one’s no different.
Except it was.
But he needed to do this for Tommy. For Kemp. For himself. He had to think and act like a Bureau agent again. Cut out the damn emotions and stick to the facts staring him in the face.
Caroline didn’t speak, but occasionally snuck a glance at him as she scrolled through the pictures. The photos devoid of Tommy’s body were easiest to take. Those were area shots. The bystanders, the location, the street sign. Buena Street. No one should die on a street named Buena.
After they’d looked through all the photos, Caroline went back to the one with Tommy and the gun. “Let me enlarge this one.”
She did, blowing up the pixels until they could make out the serial number on the AR-15’s magazine well. At least a partial number. At this magnification, the numbers were fuzzy and the last one was half hidden by one of Tommy’s fingers.
“Can you clean it up any?” Mitch asked.
“I don’t have a program on this computer for that kind of thing.”
“We need Teeg. He can find out if the ballistics report is in and he can clean up this photo so we can trace that number.”
Caroline harrumphed. “This is a bad idea.”
“Cold feet?”
“Smart feet. How far are we willing to take this investigation?”
“That’s a question you have to answer. I have nothing to lose.”
She stewed. Knowing Caroline and her Type-A personality, she was making a list of positive and negative outcomes and ticking off her mental boxes. “Call Grey.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve come this far. I have to know why this case is being buried. Why Ethan was told to stay out of it and why, quite possibly, someone framed you for murder.”
Mitch didn’t need further encouragement. He withdrew his phone and emailed Grey with the basic details of what he needed Teeg to do. If Grey or Teeg had qualms and didn’t want to join this circus, he’d respect that and try a different route, but he doubted they’d even blink.
He sat back and scanned the photos. “If it was one of Balboa’s minions, why leave the gun on Tommy’s body and the rest in the trunk?”
“Maybe, like Ethan theorized, someone tipped him off that Tommy was a UC agent. He might have thought the guns were tagged.”
True. “So he kills Tommy and leaves the gun he used as a statement.”
Caroline waggled her head. A habit he’d learned long ago meant she didn’t like whatever it was running through her brain.
“What?”
“Maybe Tommy had the gun himself. It could have been one from the stash in his trunk.”
“If he did, there was a reason. He was not selling them. I know it.”
Caroline wrapped her hand around his wrist and squeezed. “I’m spit-balling here. That’s all. I feel like we’re all over the place.”
She hit the computer keyboard a couple of times and opened a new document. “We need to record everything we know. All leads. Then we’ll go from there.”
Forty minutes later, they had hashed over everything they knew, a couple of possible killers—disgruntled criminals Tommy had busted while in New Mexico, gunrunners, gangbangers—and Caroline had worn the carpet bare in spots from pacing. She needed her murder board, but even if they’d had one here, no way Mitch would have let her set it up. Better not to freak out the housekeepers. And if they needed to head out of town quickly, no need to leave anything like that behind.
His phone beeped with an incoming email. “BatHat” was the sender’s ID. Had to be Teeg. The kid was a Batman fanatic as well as a criminally good hacker.
There was no message, just an email attachment. Mitch forwarded it to Caroline’s email. It showed up a few seconds later on her laptop.
The marvels of modern technology. He clicked the attachment button and a screenshot of a ballistics report popped open. As expected, neither Grey nor Teeg had an aversion to hacking into the Bureau’s system. “Teeg found the ballistics report.”
FBI Laboratory, it read across the top. There were multiple pages. The case number, the lab’s identification numbe
r, the department number, and the date were clearly spelled out.
The first page was a summary of items examined. The rest of the pages detailed the results of the examination. Fingerprints were taken from Tommy’s car, the gun found on his body, and the ones in the trunk. The only positive conclusion was that Tommy had handled the weapons. No other fingerprints, not even partials, were found on any of the weapons.
Damn. Not what Mitch wanted to hear after Caroline spit-balled her theory about Tommy possibly selling the guns.
Next on the report was a list of the bullets that had been removed from Tommy’s body. Each had been given a simple letter-number designation. All the times Mitch had read ballistics reports, it had never seemed quite so…sterile.
Turning a discharged bullet that had killed someone into nothing but a simple ID reinforced why he needed to remember his Bureau training. Stay detached. He’d always struggled with detachment, unlike Grey who could shut down his emotions with ease.
But then Mitch had never before had to solve a crime involving someone he cared about.
Focus. Mitch scanned each entry until he hit the one he was looking for.
Caroline saw it at the same time. “Look.”
Exhibits 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 were found upon microscopic comparison to have been discharged from the barrel of Exhibit 1.
Bingo. His eyes combed the list of weapons again. Exhibit 1…the AR-15. Mitch clicked on the photo screen showing the magazine well of the gun with the serial number and put the two screens side by side. Caroline read off the serial number on the photo as he followed along on the report.
A total match, except for the last digit on the photo they couldn’t read.
Caroline did a fist pump. “Ethan was right.”
It wasn’t much, but it was all they had. And the way his heart was triple-timing it told him they’d only scratched the surface. Or possibly it was the way Caroline stood over him, her breasts pressing into his shoulders, giving him A-fib.
“Now we can run that serial number for chain of custody,” she said.
Caroline stared at the ballistics report, not really seeing it, but nonetheless trying to absorb it. They had a sealed report they’d just broken any number of federal laws to acquire and it only told part of the story. The information she needed—the critical information of who purchased the gun and where—could be found by using her login for the FBI database. A few simple finger strokes and they’d have what they needed.
Simple.
Sure.
Simple if she wanted to flush her career. Maybe get arrested to boot.
Mitch pushed away from the desk. “Forget it, Caroline. You can’t.”
Actually, she could. Whether or not she should was the question. And when it came to Mitch, that question could apply in so many ways.
“ATF is overwhelmed with gun tracing requests and has been beta testing what will soon be a shared firearms tracking system,” she told him. “It’ll give law enforcement agencies limited access to information so they can quickly identify if a weapon has been used in other crimes. All local law enforcement will eventually have the new system, but right now, it’s just the agencies under Justice. We’re the guinea pigs and only supervisors have admin rights. I have access to it so if I have a case involving a firearm, I run the gun through the system and report any bugs.”
“No, Caroline. Logging into that system is the equivalent of standing on good old Donaldson’s desk screaming ‘Look at me! Look at me!’”
Having already experienced Donaldson’s wrath—dumpster diving anyone?—if she ran the gun when she was supposed to be out on a sick day, she’d definitely ping Donaldson’s radar.
Mitch gripped her upper arm. “We’ll figure out another way. I can send the make, model, and serial to Teeg. Maybe he can track it without tipping our hand.”
“Maybe. But we’d lose time. He got this report fast, but who knows how long it would take him to crack into the ATF tracing system.”
He shook that off. “ATF and the FBI have the serial number of the gun that killed an FBI agent. They’ve already run the number and traced it to its owner, but there haven’t been any arrests. Instead, the taskforce has been disbanded and the case sealed. What does that tell you?”
It told her she only had one sick day and time was short. It told her that whatever the FBI and ATF were up to, it wasn’t good. It told her that a good agent—an honorable and very dead agent—was about to be the government’s sacrificial lamb. If the roles were reversed and she was the agent about to be posthumously crucified, she’d want someone to step in and make it right. She jerked free of Mitch’s hold. “Get up.”
The stubborn mule didn’t move. Fine. She leaned over him, unplugged the laptop and picked it up. She’d sit on the bed and do this.
“Caroline, you’re harboring a fugitive whom you transported across no less than seven state lines. If Donaldson gets wind that you’re logging in remotely, he’ll trace the IP address, figure out you’re in New Mexico and your career is toast. He’ll not only end your career, that dickhead will send you to prison.”
She locked eyes with him and grinned. “Only if he catches me.”
He finally moved, leaving the chair and crossing his arms as he stood at the end of the bed. “Don’t throw your life away for me.”
Oh, she had him this time. “That’s the thing, Mitch. It’s not for you. It’s for Tommy. The thing you’ve wanted all along. Now shut up and let me do this.” She returned to the desk. “No offense, but you distract me, and if I’m about to jeopardize my career, I don’t want distractions.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah, I do.”
She double clicked the icon and the system’s welcome screen popped up. This is it.
“Caroline—”
“Zip it.”
She’d made her decision and he, of all people, should know when she made decisions, that was it, no going back. No matter if she spent a minute or a year deciding, when she reached a conclusion, she went to the wall with it.
She typed in her username and password and sat back in the crummy chair in the crummy motel and one last time considered the crummy situation.
Tommy doesn’t deserve this.
Boom. She smacked the enter key.
“Ah, Christ, Caroline. You’re in it now.”
“Mitch, I was in it the second you stepped onto that range.”
While the hourglass chugged, she tiled the screens alongside each other and prayed no one would flag her.
Quickly, with tingling fingers, she entered the serial number and double checked it. Missed a digit. Dammit. She fixed it, hit enter and jumped from her chair—oh, God, oh, God, oh, God—waiting the few seconds for the result to pop up. She rubbed her hands over her head and down her ponytail. What had she done?
Mitch extended one arm, reaching for her. No way. Not now. Not when she had to concentrate. His hands on her muddled her normally surgical thinking.
She smacked him away and a second later another screen popped up. She and Mitch leaned in.
“Notes,” he said, grabbing the notepad on the desk while Caroline skimmed the contents of the screen.
She rattled off the manufacturer, the model number, and serial number. And how fascinating that the gun shop where the gun was purchased and the purchaser information had been left blank.
Bastards.
Beside her, Mitch scribbled. On his best day, his handwriting was atrocious. What he had in front of him, he’d better be able to interpret.
She clicked on the download arrow. “I’m downloading it. Don’t have a coronary.”
“What’s that code number?” he asked, pointing to a five digit alpha numeric code next to the where the purchaser’s name should have been.
Government agencies were chock-full of codes and acronyms, but she’d never seen anything like this on a trace report. “I have no idea.”
“I’ve got it. Shut it down.”
Mitch drop
ped his pen and jumped back like the chef in one of those television cooking shows that had reached his time limit.
Now, now, now. Dragging the arrow to the logout button, she clicked. There. Done.
Career in flames.
Worrying about it wouldn’t help her. She spun away from the desk, found Mitch tapping the screen on his phone. “What now?”
“We call Brice. If you don’t know what that code is maybe he will. It could be an ATF thing.”
Within three minutes, Mitch opened the motel room door for Brice.
“What’s up?”
Caroline shoved Mitch’s notes at him. “We were able to get a copy of the ballistics report.”
“Get the fuck outta here.”
Mitch smacked him on the back as he strode past him. “Welcome to the dark side.”
“How?”
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Mitch said.
Caroline sighed. “Meaning, in this instance, you don’t want to know. All you need to know is the gun Ethan found on Tommy’s body is indeed the weapon used to kill him, and even though it probably just ended my career, I ran a trace on that serial number.”
“Lady, you’ve got some solid steel balls.”
Working around loads of testosterone-filled men each day gave her a warped sense of achievement because a man telling her she had steel balls, in her world, was the absolute king of compliments. She waved the paper again. “The trace came back with a GBL code. I don’t recognize it.”
He skimmed the paper, flicked his eyes back to her, then to the note again. “This was in the trace report?”
“Yes.”
Mitch leaned against the windowsill, crossing his arms. “You recognize it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
Caroline paddled her hands. “And?”
“When I was in ATF, we used the GBL codes on a couple of taskforces to track guns bought by identified straw buyers. That code lets an agent know to go to a separate database for more information on the gun, the straw buyer who purchased it, if known, and where the weapon turns up—say if it’s used in crime.”
Guns being legally purchased by people—straw buyers—was nothing new. People with criminal records had to acquire their guns somehow and since they couldn’t purchase said guns themselves, they paid others to do it for them. The guns would be purchased by the straw buyer and then simply turned over to the third party. If the gun were traced back to a crime, the straw buyer would say the gun had been stolen.