Don't Look Back

by Christie Craig

  “Fucking unbelievable,” Connor seethed. “This guy might be the head of a human trafficking ring and they just let him go. Did you tell Brie?”

  “Not yet. I heard she’s helping Mildred go through the files.”

  “She’s not going to be happy,” Connor muttered.

  “I called Brown to see if I could change his mind. He said if the FBI wanted this guy, they could put one of their own on him.”

  Connor exhaled. “I’ll tell Brie.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mark studied him. “How much do you like her?”

  “Stop.” Connor watched Mark walk away, trying not to think about his question. He called to get someone to take Willie Nelson to jail, and was headed up to give Brie the bad news about Armand, when someone said his name.

  “Detective Pierce?”

  He turned around to see a short stocky man with a receding hairline walking toward him. “I’m Detective Quarrels with vice. Detective Acosta sent me those pictures. Then he called me about Lawdon Davis. I just picked him up on that outstanding warrant.”

  “You got him?”

  “Sure did. I wanted to say thanks. The guy’s a real scumbag. Raped and beat up his ex-girlfriend. Slapping the handcuffs on him felt good.”

  “Glad to help.” His protectiveness over Brie spiked again.

  “There’s one other thing. In addition to the picture looking familiar to one of our guys, one of the names you’re looking into—Tammy Alberts—it sounds so familiar to me. I ran it through the system, as I’m sure you guys did, and nothing came up. But it’s bugging me. I know that name from somewhere. Last year I helped ICE out on a case. I’m wondering if that’s where I heard it. Do you mind if I run it by a buddy there?”

  “No. I’d appreciate the help. Call me if you get anything.” Connor handed him a card. Heading to the front to tell Brie the bad news, he stopped when he saw her and Mildred laughing. The sight of her caused his chest to tighten but brought a smile to his lips. Yeah, he liked her too much. Way too much.

  * * *

  “Why not?” Brie fumed at Agent Calvin. When Connor told her the department removed the tail on Armand, she went directly to her boss, who’d taken up residence in one of the conference rooms at the station.

  “Because we have no proof that he’s behind any crime. We don’t even know if he’s who Agent Olvera thought he was.”

  “He was named as being seen roughhousing my sister two days before she was found dead.”

  “That witness recanted the statement.”

  “Because he was threatened. He killed my sister and you are going to stand by—”

  “We don’t know that, Agent Ryan. And right now, I’d rather concentrate on finding out who shot one of my own men than chasing down unverified leads. I’d think you’d want that, too, since you are the reason he’s here.”

  His accusation landed like a sledgehammer right to her heart. She caught her breath. “Fine, I’ll tail him myself.”

  “No, you will not! You are on leave and you’ll stay that way until I decide if you are even coming back to the bureau. Do not interfere with this investigation. In fact, I’m thinking it might be best if you leave town.”

  “I won’t leave Carlos.” Or the investigation.

  “You realize how close you are to losing your position at the FBI?”

  “I’m good at my job.”

  “I’m trying to remember that,” he said. “It may not be enough.”

  It took everything Brie had not to reach into her purse, slam her badge on his desk, and tell him what he could do with his job. She couldn’t. When she had the proof she needed about the leak, and the proof that Armand was behind her sister’s death, she’d need someone to put the cuffs on Armand. And now that he was on the move, she couldn’t count on the Anniston PD to do that.

  She had to play nice. For now. After this, maybe she wouldn’t even want to go back to the FBI.

  She stormed out of the room. Connor stood in the hallway. “You okay?” His gentle tone made it worse.

  She swallowed to keep from tearing up and walked faster.

  He met her pace. “Brie. Talk to me. What did he say?” She kept walking.

  “Damn it. Can you put our personal issues aside and deal with the case? We slept together. It was wrong. Then I was a world-class jerk, a dick even, I admit that. You deserve to hate me. I’ll take the hate. But we have a case to solve. Work with me to catch who shot Agent Olvera and who killed your sister.”

  His words slammed into the guilt Agent Calvin had given life to.

  Fracking Hades! Connor was right. She stopped. Swallowed her pride. Pushed her hurt aside. She needed his, and his partners’, help. “Calvin won’t have Armand followed. I threatened to tail him myself and he said I’d be fired.”

  “Well, Armand knows what you look like, so that wouldn’t work. But…”

  “What?” she asked.

  “I have a friend, a cop, in the Houston area. I can have him go to the strip club and confirm Armand’s there.”

  She nodded. Knowing Armand was there and not getting on a plane headed back to Guatemala would take the edge off her angst. Still, the knot in her throat doubled. “I feel like this case is floundering. We’re not getting anywhere.”

  “That’s not true. We’ve got Tomas. He’s a witness. And we’ve got the phone. You know how investigations go. Not all cases are solved overnight.”

  Connor’s cell rang. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. “It’s Juan. Maybe he has something on the phone.”

  Connor took the call. “Yeah.” He smiled at Brie. “Good. We’ll be right there.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Why would Carlos have a burner phone?” Eliot sipped from his water glass. He’d already eaten his lunch, while she picked at hers.

  “I don’t know. He must have been worried someone was tracing his phone.” After getting all the updates from Juan, she left the precinct, grabbed Eliot, and they went to get some Tex-Mex. Unfortunately, she could barely force any food down.

  “Are they sure it was Carlos’s?”

  “Yeah. He’d called his home number and checked messages.” She stabbed a piece of chicken.

  “Were there any other calls on it?”

  “One to a José Hernandez, but now the phone connected to that number has been shut off. They’re trying to find him. But do you know how many José Hernandezes there are? It’s like John Doe.” She ran her fork through her refried beans.

  “Something will come up. You’ll get a break.”

  Damn, she must be pretty pathetic if Eliot was pushing optimism on her. “Agent Miles came to see Carlos earlier.”

  “Sam told me. Did Miles say anything?”

  “He started talking nonsense, saying maybe it was Carlos who was the leak in the Sala case.” She looked up. Eliot seemed to chew on that information. “It’s not true.”

  “I don’t think it is, but I’m trying to understand what angle Miles had for accusing Carlos.”

  “To throw suspicion off himself?”

  “But wouldn’t accusing Carlos just invite further investigation? If he’s hiding something, I’d think he’d want to shut down the whole idea of an FBI leak.”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.” She tapped her fork on her plate. “I’m afraid he’ll use the fact that Carlos has a burner phone to give credit to his story about Carlos being behind this.”

  “It’s easy to throw out accusations, but they have to be proven. Aren’t the detectives looking into Agents Bara and Miles?”

  She nodded. “I’m told they are. And I was told Agent Calvin refused to turn over the phone records for Carlos’s office. He said there might be confidential informant calls on there, and he won’t divulge.”

  “Then he should redact those he has to, and give them the rest.”

  “That’s what he’s doing. But it’s just another delay.” She exhaled. “I feel like I should be doing somethi
ng. Not sitting on the sidelines.”

  “You’re assisting the APD. Aren’t they keeping you abreast of everything?”

  “They are. But they aren’t telling me everything,” she said.

  “What about the charge on Carlos’s credit card in Willowcreek?”

  “They’ve spoken with the restaurant. The check was for two people.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s all we got. It’s another damn delay. The waitress is on vacation. Mexico. She’s supposed to be back tomorrow. I’m going to go interview her with one of the detectives.”

  She stabbed a piece of fajita chicken.

  Eliot frowned. “You look exhausted. And playing with your food isn’t eating.”

  “I ate some. And I am tired. Maybe that’s why I can’t think straight.” Or why every few seconds her mind would take her back to last night with Connor. Which made her feel even more guilty. Carlos is on death’s door, her sister’s killer is still on the loose, and she’s fixated on a one-night stand.

  “You need to go home and rest.”

  Her phone rang and she picked it up to check who the caller was, praying it was good news. But when she saw the number, she frowned.

  “What?” Eliot asked.

  “It’s the Black Diamond.”

  “If Armand isn’t there, there’s no need for you to go in.”

  She saw the steely expression in his eyes—parental protection and love. At least for tonight, she agreed with him.

  “But I should still answer it.” She took the call. “Hello.”

  “You need to come in,” Mr. Grimes said in lieu of hello.

  Just the sound of his voice caused what little food she’d eaten to sit heavier in her stomach. “Can’t. I’m out of town.”

  “How far out of town are you? I need you here by eight.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Look, Candy didn’t show up. I need a waitress. So get your ass—”

  “I said I can’t.”

  “If you value your job, you’ll—”

  “Can’t.” She hung up. No way he’d fire her. He was already down one waitress.

  “What?” Eliot asked.

  “A waitress didn’t show up. I’m pretty sure she was pressured into having sex with Armand two nights ago. And she had bruises that I think he gave her.”

  Eliot’s jaw clenched. “Pressured by who?”

  “The boss.”

  Eliot shook his head. “Have you told your detective this? Why haven’t they arrested that piece of scum?”

  “It’s not illegal. He’s careful with his words. He doesn’t say it explicitly. Believe me, nothing would make me happier than seeing his butt thrown in jail, but right now nothing would stick. Being a douchebag isn’t illegal.”

  “It should be.”

  Brie gave up pretending to eat and pushed her lunch away.

  The waiter came and removed the plates. When he left, Eliot asked, “How much do you know about your sister’s time here?”

  “Not much. After one of the dancers said I reminded them of someone who used to work there, I asked about her. They said she was talking about going to school and that she lived with another dancer. I visited the apartment where they lived, but it flooded a month after Alma disappeared, and most everyone had moved out. I found a couple of neighbors, but all they could tell me is that three women and a baby lived there.”

  “And nothing else from her time at the Black Diamond?”

  “No. She only worked there a few months. Her file said she missed work one day, then quit because she had another job. When the cops interviewed her roommate, Linda Kramer, she told the cops Alma had found a new job. But she didn’t know where, or even what kind of job it was. Alma’s bank records show she deposited her last check from the Black Diamond. After that, there were only cash deposits made into her account.”

  “Do you think she was doing something illegal?”

  “Possibly.” Brie had considered it.

  “Have you spoken with the roommate?”

  Brie turned her glass. “I’ve tried. She’s one of the missing women.”

  “Missing women?”

  She told Eliot about how she’d been searching for ex–Black Diamond employees.

  “You told the detectives this?”

  “Yeah. I sent them everything I have. They’re looking into it. Even going through old files to see if anything matches.”

  Brie and Eliot went back to the hospital and chatted with Tory and Sam. When visiting hours rolled around, she went in to see Carlos again. And it hurt just as much as it had before. The whiteness of the room, the beeping of the monitor, the sterile smell, it felt like an assault on her senses.

  Tory kept saying how his color looked better. Brie didn’t see it, but she lied. Because she knew he was grasping at hope.

  Before she left the hospital, she got a copy of her sister’s file from Connor on her email, followed by a text. Armand at Houston club.

  She typed in the word—Thanks—then almost deleted it. In the end, she sent it. He didn’t have to call a friend. He didn’t have to save her cat. Then again, he didn’t have to be such a dick last night. But for her sister and for Carlos she could do this.

  Now if she could just forget how good last night had been. And she wasn’t referring to the sex. It was what happened before the sex that left a dent in her heart. The empathy she’d felt for him—empathy about his dad, his mom, his partner, and the young boy he’d killed. It was that need to be understood. To understand someone. To not feel…alone.

  Not like love or anything serious. She didn’t believe in love at first sight. Lust at first sight, yeah. She saw that played out in the club most nights. But that wasn’t what happened with them. Oh, she’d felt attraction, but it was that time on the sofa, sharing, talking, the not-so-alone feeling that had her peeling off her clothes.

  * * *

  After Brie left, Connor, Juan, and Mark all sat at their desks, reading over files, searching for a lead, a break. The financial records on the three agents had come in. Juan was combing through them, while Connor and Mark were reading over the Sala case.

  Come Monday they had to interview the three agents, and they needed to know enough to question them. Know enough to catch anyone in a lie.

  But Connor couldn’t concentrate. He kept thinking about Brie. About last night. About how awesome the sex was. About how big a piece of shit he was. Then he kept replaying what Brie had told him about her father, her sister, and her mom. Their childhoods couldn’t be more different, yet the emotional damage caused by them felt similar.

  It didn’t surprise him that the only person Brie was close to was Eliot. At least growing up, he’d had his mom. She might have put God before him, but she’d cared and didn’t push raising him onto someone else.

  Having been abandoned by his father, Connor knew that pain. It was easy to just slap his old man into the deadbeat-dad, or a sorry-son-of-a-bitch category, but how much more would it have hurt to know his old man had chosen another child over him. That would’ve taken the pain to a whole new level.

  Frustrated with his inability to concentrate, Connor swapped out the Sala file for the Ronan one. He tapped his pencil on his desk and read about Mr. Ronan.

  He looked up. “I think we need to talk to Brie’s father.”

  “Why?” Mark looked up from the report.

  “Besides me wanting to neuter the bastard?”

  “Why do you want to neuter him?” Mark asked.

  “You two didn’t pick up on the fact that Ronan abandoned Brie as a kid to go live with Alma and her mom, then had the gall to call Brie and ask her to help find the daughter he chose over her? What kind of piece-of-shit person does that?”

  “I guess that’s pretty low.” Mark and Juan shared a look, as if they knew something he didn’t.

  “What?” Connor asked.

  “Nothing,” Mark said. “It’s just…you seem to be emotionally invested in Brie’s issues.”
r />   “Not more than any other case.”

  Juan leaned back in his chair. “Yeah it is. And calling Brie’s father out for being a terrible parent isn’t going to help this case.”

  “He lied to the police. This police statement says he hadn’t heard from Alma in six months. But Brie told me that he was the one who told her to call Brie. Now, I can’t help but wonder if he knows more about Alma’s life when she went missing than he’s said. And if he knows something, then we need to know it.”

  “I see your point,” Mark said. “Do you have his phone number?”

  “I do. But I want to go in person.”

  Mark lifted his arms over his head and stretched. “Didn’t I read he lives in Henderson?”

  “Yeah.” Connor picked up a pen and rolled it between his palms.

  Mark continued to stare. “It’s a two-hour drive. You think it merits that?”

  “Yeah. I do,” Connor said.

  “Then call him and set it up,” Mark said. “But leave your neutering tools at home.”

  Connor grabbed his phone and punched in the number. No answer, but his voice mail picked up. “Hi. You reached Mr. Ronan. Looking to sell your house? Want to buy a house? Leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

  “Mr. Ronan, this is Detective Pierce in Anniston. It’s about your daughter’s case. If you care at all, call me back.”

  When Connor hung up, he saw Mark and Juan looking at each other again. “What?”

  “If you care at all?”

  “He’s a piece of shit!”

  Juan rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “Well, which one of us is going to Willowcreek with Brie tomorrow to talk to the waitress who served Agent Olvera?”

  “Billy would love to do it,” Mark said smugly.

  “Stop!” Connor said.

  “Stop what?” Mark feigned innocence.

  “I’ll go with her,” Connor said.

  “Without killing each other?” Juan asked.

  Connor shot his partners the bird and they all went back to work. At least Connor tried to. His mind kept remembering walking out on Brie.

  Five minutes later, Juan blurted out, “Shit!”

  “Tell me that’s a good ‘shit.’ As in you’ve got something.”