by KB Winters
“Bullshit,” I growled because I already knew how dirty this fucker was, and no amount of cover up would change those facts.
“It’s true,” Shiner said with a sympathetic smile. “I know you’re from this area, Ellison, so you only know what we wanted the world to know. Dietrich Mueller was a dirty priest with access to tons of cash, international connections via the Catholic Church, who also didn’t know he was undercover, which made him an ideal asset for any number of criminals. The truth is he helped the Bureau and dozens of international task force agencies put away hundreds of traffickers all over the world.”
That might be the official story, but I was looking for the real story.
“I’ve met some of his victims, so with all due respect, that’s a bunch of bullshit.”
Shiner shrugged. “When you have a few more years under your belt, you’ll understand that sometimes you have to break a few eggs before you make the perfect omelet.” He sighed. “Undercover work is difficult and sometimes officers and agents have to do shit they don’t want to do, shit that goes against their moral code, shit that makes them sick. But if it means saving a houseful of children trafficked for sex, you might not see things so black and white.”
My future sister-in-law was proof of that, and I nodded, willing to hear the man out.
“You’ve never spoken to any of the women or children he’s rescued, and I assure you that number is far bigger than the number of victims left out on the street. The ones still being trafficked think he’s exactly who we need them to believe he is, a crooked priest and a pervert. The other ones, the ones who made it out, they know who Richie Mueller is.”
Shit. I couldn’t believe it. I literally could not fucking believe that Mueller was a good guy. More than that, he was a goddamned hero. “Fuck.”
Shiner smiled. “Thanks to good ol’ Richie, thousands of women and children have new identities, some have received U.S. citizenship, scholarships, counseling and whatever else they needed to help them start over and forget the past they were forced into.”
“Okay, he was a great guy,” Beck said dismissively. “Why weren’t we looped in on this earlier? We’ve wasted valuable time.”
“Have you?” Shiner’s amused grin faded, and he sat back, arms folded, waiting for Beck to explain.
“It seems to me that you didn’t need any of this intel to figure out who might want Richie dead.”
He was right, of course. Even if someone had found out he was a Fed, it would only matter if they were a criminal or crooked law enforcement.
“We’ve been looking at trafficked girls as a possibility,” she tossed out half-heartedly.
“And that’s a good line of inquiry.”
“We still should have been informed,” she insisted. The woman didn’t know when to quit.
“Maybe,” Shiner said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You know now and that means you understand why we need to find the person—or people—who did this, like yesterday. This was a decades long investigation for the Bureau, and we need to know if we’re burned completely. I’m counting on you three to figure it out as soon as you can. Take the binders with you.”
I knew a dismissal when I heard one and stood, following Marshall out of Shiner’s office with Beck staying behind, probably to try and argue her point.
She stomped out of the office, angry and full of piss and vinegar as we stepped into the empty elevator. She turned to Marshall, steam coming out of her ears. “Did you know?”
“You know I didn’t,” he said plainly. “Shiner is right, this doesn’t change anything.”
“Bullshit,” she growled and turned to me. “This gives the Ashby fucks a prime motive to kill Bonnie and Agent Mueller.”
“How do you figure? You and Marshall didn’t know he was a colleague. How the hell would Bonnie have found out?”
That wasn’t the answer Beck wanted to hear. As soon as the elevator doors opened, she marched out, her heeled boots smacking against the tile floor until she was outside lighting a cigarette.
“She gets carried away sometimes,” Marshall said with a shake of his head.
That was a gross understatement, but I kept that to myself. “I wonder if it has anything to do with her father working for the Ashby family back in the day.”
A flash of shock crossed Marshall’s face, but he gave no other indication that he hadn’t known that information before now. He shrugged it off with a quiet, “Maybe.”
My phone rang, and I picked it up right away to hear Sarge barking in my ear. “Ellison, there’s a body that might be connected to your current investigation. Behind Lucky Lopez,” he barked and hung up.
I turned to Marshall and told him the news. “Let’s go. Beck needs to cool down without the chaos of a crime scene.”
“Fine by me.”
We drove through the Green Zone mostly in silence, which was odd. “You work in Nevada long?”
“Long enough,” he grunted. “I know the players and many of the victims. Have for years. Why?”
“You think Jasper and Sadie are prime suspects in this?”
He shrugged. “Persons of interest without a doubt. But the Ashby beef is with Ronan Rhymer, which is only Mueller by default. Unless somehow Bonnie Ashby figured something out.”
“That’s what I keep coming back to, Bonnie Ashby. She’s the bug in the ointment and her presence at the murder makes no sense. Unless Mueller killed her first. Because with her background in the Catholic Church, she would have figured him out easily.”
Marshall shook his head and killed the engine in front of Lucky Lopez. “Not necessarily. No one knew he was a Fed. Not even the Feds. Ready?”
“Yeah.” Ready was a relative term, I was quickly learning. Growing up the way I did, dead bodies didn’t make me queasy, but doing this job as a cop was a far fucking cry from that.
“Shit,” I groaned when I caught sight of the body.
“Need a minute?” Marshall’s question was equal parts sympathy and amusement. “Don’t puke on my crime scene.”
“I know her. Tits Stepanova. She lives in the Green Zone and works, well worked, as manager at Lucky Lopez.” And she hadn’t just died in an attempted robbery or rape, she’d been fucking mutilated.
Marshall let out a low whisper as he crouched beside her body, her eyes wide open and lifeless. “Somebody wasn’t too happy with her.”
For starters, her left eye was purple and black, she had a big split in her lip, and her jaw looked to be broken.
“I got a couple of guesses.”
“Any of those guesses Ashby?”
I shook my head. “Nope. This isn’t their style. But she used to date a pusher named Dealio, and he was a real piece of fucking work.”
As far as I knew, Tits hadn’t been abused, but this was definitely a sign, maybe a fucking message.
“Maybe this will help.” The medical examiner had finally arrived on scene and motioned for me and Marshall to help turn the body.
“Holy fuck.” The fuckers cut her up like a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey, and then carved the Ace of spades onto her back, which meant she was killed by the Black Jacks, or copycats of the Black Jacks. “She was still alive when they did this to her.”
“Good eye,” the doctor, his wide smile showing how impressed he was with me. “The streaks of blood mean her heart was still pumping when they did this. The slit throat is what killed her. This was just for fun.”
Marshall stood with a grunt but his gaze never left Tits. “As tragic as this is, how does it help us nail who killed Mueller and Ashby?”
“The Black Jacks did this,” I insisted angrily. Pissed off for Tits because she didn’t deserve this. She was a cool chick who did what most people in the Green Zone did, whatever the fuck they had to in order to survive. “Until recently, the Black Jacks worked with Brendan Rhymer in his bid to take over the family business. When Brendan failed, they started working with the old man.”
Marshall blinked. “Rumor has
it they were behind the kidnapping of Savannah Rhymer.”
“Yep. Kidnapping, drugging her up and gang raping her, if you want the whole story. Orchestrated by her own damn brother if you can call him that.” I shook off that thought because Savannah was free and Tits was dead. Shit. “I honestly thought the Jacks were gone.”
“This case is turning into a pain in my ass,” Marshall growled.
“I need to talk to some people, and it’ll be better if you’re not with me.” I stared at Marshall and waited for him to object, but the guy was old school.
He nodded. “Let me know what you find.”
I nodded and jogged back to the car and headed in search of Savannah and Charlie.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Madison
I didn’t normally answer calls on my cellphone from numbers I didn’t know or even restricted numbers. A lesson I’d learned after too many calls with deep breathing and nasty comments. But when my phone pinged, I answered it without thinking.
“Hello?”
“Maddie? Hey, it’s me. Molly.”
Molly? That was music to my ears. “Molly? Holy shit, I’ve been looking all over the place for you. How are you? Where are you? Just—"
“Madison, stop.” My lips snapped shut, and I closed my eyes and listened. “I’m okay, but it’s not safe for us to talk right now. When it is, I’ll contact you. I promise.”
“But Molly—”
“Please. Listen to me. I’ll call you when I can.” Molly ended the call before I could tell her the good news, that Mueller was dead, and she was safe. I heard the fear in Molly’s voice. Which told me how bad things had been for her, but it was clear she didn’t know about Mueller.
I stood in my room for at least an hour, staring off into space, feeling pissed off that Molly didn’t even give me a chance to explain. Hurt that she didn’t even want to talk to me when I’d spent so much of my time and energy searching for her. Hell, I got myself mixed up in some shit I was quite sure I didn’t want to be involved in, and I did it all with the end goal of keeping her out of her prison.
And she didn’t even ask how I was doing.
That fucking sucked. Big time. Maybe it was time for me to move on from Glitz? It seemed like Molly had a new ID and a new life and wanted nothing to do with me. Maybe I ought to take the fucking hint and leave town, live my life on my own. Completely on my own.
I dressed quickly in jeans and a t-shirt because I no longer felt like getting all sexed up. I grabbed my ID, some cash, and my car keys, and I headed to the one place I knew I could vent and cry until I felt better about it all.
“Hey.” Jameson opened the door with a sexy grin that only curled up one side of his mouth.
“Hey,” I sighed because, hot damn, how was it fair for a man to look so good in basketball shorts and a t-shirt? My heart sped up at the sight of him and my nipples hardened behind the soft cotton cups of my bra, at the searing heat evident in his gray eyes.
“You’re early. By a lot.”
I glanced down at my phone screen and groaned. He was right. I was early by at least three hours. “Yeah well, maybe I was just that excited to see you.”
It was a cop out, but for as fast as I flew here and as angry and hurt as I felt, I wasn’t quite ready to talk about it.
“I can live with that,” he said with a smile before yanking me inside and pushing me up against the door with a low growl. He flashed a dark, hungry grin, and then his mouth crashed down on mine, and instantly he was devouring me. There was nothing slow or timid or hesitant about the kiss. It was full speed ahead, rushing me right past foreplay and into white-hot-I-need-you-now-sex.
His tongue dipped inside my mouth, and the heat of it had my pussy clenching in my white, cotton panties. His hand cupped my ass, and I moaned into his mouth, wrapping my arms around him and pressing my body up against his like that move could satisfy the heat pooling low in my gut. His other hand went to my ass and lifted me up, sandwiching me between the door and his body, his cock hard and insistent between my thighs, all while his mouth feasted on mine.
Too soon, it was over, and I was back to thoughts of Molly basically abandoning me. I grunted as my body slid over every hard angle of Jamie’s until my feet hit the floor, and I took one more gratuitous feel of his hard abs just because I could.
“Hello to you too, Officer.”
His lips kicked up into a grin and Jamie took my hand and led me to the sofa where I’d deepthroated his cock just a week ago.
“What’s wrong?”
I shrugged and dropped down on the sofa with a grunt. “Who says anything is wrong? Maybe I was just in the neighborhood, and I wanted to stop by and say what’s up.”
“Cut the shit, Madds. What’s going on?”
Did it make me a slut that his tough words hardened my nipples into tight little beads? Did I care? No.
“It’s Molly. She called today and pretty much told me to stop calling her. Can you believe that shit?”
Jamie sighed and nodded. He fucking nodded like he could understand. “She’s been through a lot, Maddie. I know for you this whole search has been difficult, but think about when a grown man, who you’re supposed to trust, betrays that trust and then threatens them and their family if they say anything? She’s probably been programmed to stay quiet. I mean, we don’t know what she’s been through.”
Fuck. That was the last thing I wanted to hear or think about. Of all the bad shit that Molly had been through, I never once considered that shitty pervy priest or the people she went to work for had threatened her to stay quiet. “Thanks for that.”
Jamie laughed and dropped a hand on my thigh. “My pleasure.”
I turned to face him and sighed. “I’m sure she’s been to hell and back, and no matter how hard I’ve tried not to think of the details, I can’t stop. I know she’ll be different. I get that, but I still want her back.”
I sighed again, feeling frustrated that my words wouldn’t come out right. “I’m so angry at Mueller, goddammit. I wish I’d been the one to put that bullet in him.”
It was a petty thought when the asshole was already dead, but I couldn’t help it. The man had taken my sister from me, and it looked like I might never get her back.
“I get that feeling, Maddie. I do.” Jamie let out a long, slow sigh, and I froze, pulling back to get a good look at his face.
“What?”
His dark brows dipped low in confusion. “What?”
I shook my head and gave his chest a shove. “What do you want to say that you don’t know how to say?” It wasn’t like Jamie to keep his thoughts to himself; he was brutally honest. An open book. “You want to stop fucking me, is that it?”
“What?”
“Don’t say what like you don’t know what I’m talking about, Jamie. Just spit it out. We agreed that when this stopped working for one of us, we would just say it and go back to being friends. So, just…fucking say it.”
It was the last thing I wanted to hear, but if that’s where this conversation was going, then I’d rather know now. “Well?”
Jamie stood and shoved his hands deep in his pockets, jaws clenched with his gray eyes glaring down at me. He was pissed.
“I’d tear your clothes off and fuck you right now if I thought it’d knock some sense into you, because clearly you are out of your fucking mind.”
“Just say what you have to say, Jamie!”
“Fine.”
Just like that, his demeanor changed. Instead of frustrated and angry, he was resigned. Resolute.
“It’s about Mueller. Turns out he wasn’t a piece of shit. He was undercover FBI.”
“Bullshit.” I spat out, feeling the sting of betrayal all over my skin like the strap of Mom’s leather belt when it landed. “It hasn’t even been two months, and you’re already siding with the Feds?”
“That’s really what you think?”
I shrugged. “What else can I think when you suddenly do a fucking one-eighty on a
child trafficker?”
“First of all, this isn’t some fucking job for me, Maddie. It’s my career. I have to think long and hard about what I share, but here I am, telling you information that only six people in the world know about. I don’t know if you’ll run back and share this info with Sadie and Jasper, who I have no loyalty to, but I’m trusting you with it, Maddie. You.”
When I didn’t say anything, he got in my face. “I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
I let out an angry snort. “That’s what everyone always says. You know why? Because it makes them feel better, that’s why.” I poked his chest. “That’s why Kat lied to me about my sister. That’s why Molly is keeping me away. She’s terrified of Mueller.”
He walked away, his bare feet smacking on the floor as he disappeared down the hall and reappeared a minute later.
“You know everything right, Maddie? So goddamn tough and knowledgeable about the world. Well, take this file and read it. Look through every fucking detail and then tell me I’m not trying to do the right thing.”
I hesitated, but Jamie held the file with a steady hand, daring me to walk away from the details contained within. Daring me to find out the truth.
“Fine. Whatever.”
I snatched the thick folder out of his hand and scanned the papers as he wanted me too, looking at name after name of women who’d gone through horrible shit and would never recover, no matter the good deeds done by one Richie Mueller. I gasped when I saw what Jamie wanted me to see, a report written by Richie Muller about Mueller, requesting new identification for Molly.
“Polly Bennett.” It was the same name Cal had given me. “What is this?”
“What does it look like?”
“How long have you known?”
I didn’t even know why I was so angry, in general or at Jamie, but it roared through my veins like a wildfire, making my skin itch and my heart burn. “Well?”