He had no idea what he would do if this didn’t work.
It wasn’t just Sabrina’s career that hung in the balance. If this failed, not only would he likely lose all credibility within the CIA and secret services, he’d also probably end up in jail, just as Chad had predicted. He would hate to prove his brother right.
In all of his years as a independent military contractor, he had never thought he would find himself in such a compromising position. He’d done many questionable things in the line of duty—but this was by far the craziest. It seemed like some kind of karmic slap that his greatest adversaries wouldn’t be some terrorists abroad, but rather American law enforcement agents.
It didn’t take long to hand the guns off to the tech at the lab; apparently Tina had already made the call.
When he made his way outside to Chad, his brother pointed toward his car and said, “Get in. We will have a jet waiting for you in the morning.” Chad walked around to the driver’s side.
Maybe this was all going to go better than he hoped, but he had a sinking feeling that he was in some deep water.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, the flight took just over an hour, and when they arrived Zoey was standing out on the tarmac waiting for them. Even in the overcast gray sky that seemed to always hover over the city, Zoey’s black hair picked up what little light there was, and the effect created dark blue streaks. Even with her dyed locks, she looked so much like Trish.
There was a town car and a driver waiting beside her.
“Wipe that look off your face,” Zoey said. “Stop worrying. I already hacked into the FBI mainframe. This Mike guy was bluffing, but he’s hoping that they can bring you in for running guns. As such, I made sure he got orders from the top to intercept our ‘trade’ this evening. I also contacted the DOJ. they are sending someone to look into things and find out how deep this corruption runs.”
“And what about Sabrina? Is she going to be cleared?” Trevor asked.
“Depends on her level of involvement. From what Chad was telling me, sounds like you and this woman have been hitting it off.”
He shot a disapproving look at his brother, but Chad just shrugged.
“What can I say, man? We’re a family that hates to keep secrets from one another.” Chad’s half grin reappeared.
As ridiculous as his brother could be, he couldn’t be mad at him. It was this open policy that was currently in the process of saving their butts.
“Sabrina and I have grown close since I got to the ranch,” he admitted.
Zoey smiled. “Yeah, I knew she would be right up your alley when I vetted her for the housekeeping job.”
“Oh yeah,” Chad said. “I forgot that this was all your fault. Thanks a lot, sis. Maybe next time worry less about being our virtual matchmaker and worry more about whether or not the people we bring into our lives belong to the FBI.”
Zoey held her hands up in surrender. “I admit, I may have overlooked the fact that her background seemed a bit sparse, but I just thought she was the kind of girl who didn’t get out much.”
“Well, you were definitely wrong.” Trevor walked to the town car and threw their go bags into the trunk. “Then again, who am I to start pointing fingers? I assume Chad told you everything?”
Zoey nodded. “One thing for certain, you are gifted when it comes to getting us into highly unconventional situations.”
That was one way to put it.
He once again thought of Trish. Zoey gave him a mournful look. “Hey, Trevor, I know what you’re thinking... It wasn’t your fault.”
He wasn’t sure he believed her, or if he ever would.
“The family...we...none of us are upset with you about what happened back there. It was outside your control. You need to start forgiving yourself. Trish wouldn’t want you to hang on to her death like you are.”
It was easy enough for her to say, but she wasn’t living in his shoes. “I hear what you’re saying, but until we get through tonight unscathed, I’m not gonna forgive myself for anything.”
Some tragedies were just too great to overcome...all he could do now was try not to repeat history.
Chapter Fifteen
Sabrina paced around the interrogation room. She couldn’t even begin to count the number of times she had brought people in rooms like this one in order to get them to bend to her whims. And now here she was, on the other side of the table. There was a box of tissues and a stack of magazines at the center of the table. In the corner was a percolating coffeepot. The scent of coffee was there to promote a sense of safety, reminding people of being home and in the comfort of their own surroundings, but the aroma only made her more anxious.
At least they hadn’t forced her to wear the cuffs around the building when they brought her up from her holding cell to the interrogation room this morning. It was already embarrassing enough that she had been brought in here like she was nothing more than one of their normal, run-of-the-mill murderers.
She was never going to be able to show her face around Missoula or the county again. Everyone in law enforcement knew, or had found out by now, that she had been arrested for murder. No doubt, they would have to call in an outside investigation team to review her case, but knowing Mike, he had gone out of his way to make sure she looked as guilty as hell.
What she couldn’t understand was how. She’d had no intuition that they’d been watched or set up. Everything had seemed relatively...normal. Well, as normal as her days at the Bureau could be. Sure, not everybody came across dead bodies every few days, but in her line of work it was par for course.
Mike had to have been plotting this for some time—probably from the first moment they were sent to this remote agency from Washington.
She hadn’t expected Mike to remain her friend, or even an ally, after they broke up. Things hadn’t ended on the best of terms but they owed each other some amount of respect, especially after all they had been through. Instead here she was, standing on the other side of the glass thanks to his denigration of her character.
Even if she could prove her innocence, it would take some time. Certainly, the damage to her career would be nearly irreparable. Maybe she really would have to become a housekeeper. Maybe, just maybe, the Martins would hire her full time. But she had likely burned her bridge with that family, once the rest of Trevor’s siblings found out about her role in the FBI.
As of the last she knew, Trevor had protected her secret, but now he’d have to out her in order to ask his family to help. Unfortunately. Even if his family did help, she wasn’t sure that they would be her best allies when it came to standing in front of a judge and jury.
However, she could have sworn she’d heard Trevor say he was working with the CIA, but she couldn’t believe it. If he had been working with the CIA like he said, there was no way that Mike would have sent her in to investigate the family. He had enough clearance to have that information.
But documents and proposals for the investigation had been fast-tracked through the Bureau. It was possible that either someone hadn’t fact-checked properly or that Mike had known all along and had wanted her to disappear at the hands of the trained spook.
The CIA and their operatives, especially those who did not wish to be found, had been known to use their connections to make sure anyone who stepped in their way would fall prey to the shadowy nature of the agency.
There was a soft knock on the interrogation room door. “Yep,” she said, awkwardly.
It didn’t feel right to say anything at all, given the situation. But remaining silent also seemed equally odd. Speaking of remaining silent, she’d need to call in a lawyer.
“Good morning, Agent Parker,” a female agent whom Sabrina didn’t recognize said as she stepped into the room.
The woman had a pixie haircut that did nothing for the wrinkles that creased her forehead and were scattered
around her eyes. Even her lips carried deep creases, like she spent one too many years smoking. As the woman walked into the interrogation room, Mike followed behind her, looking like a pit bull. He was out for blood, her blood, and seeing him made her skin prickle.
She wanted to go toe to toe with him and call him every obscenity that was rolling through her mind, but it would do no good. She couldn’t deal with the situation proactively by being angry. All she could do was play his game—a game of logic and manipulation. Hopefully, she hadn’t entered the game too late.
Actually, there was no time left for hope. She was already under arrest for crimes she hadn’t committed. She’d already lost.
“I want my lawyer.” The words tasted like the ocean, salty and smattered with the remnants of tempests.
“I bet you do,” Mike said.
The woman gave him a look to shut up—it was the same look Sabrina had given him entirely too often when they were dating.
“Agent Parker, my name is Rowena Anderson. I’m the special agent in charge from your sister agency, the Madison County resident office,” the woman said, an air of authority in her tone.
“Pleasure,” Sabrina said, unsure whether or not she should play nice or say nothing. It didn’t seem as though it would be in her best interest to be an ass.
“Yes,” the woman said. “I hope you slept well. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”
She hadn’t slept a wink. Instead she had spent the entire night staring up at the ceiling of her cell and thinking about all the ways her life had gone wrong. For both their sakes, she said nothing.
Agent Anderson pointed toward the chair beside the table and motioned for her to sit down.
She did as instructed, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Mike’s smug face. Looking at him, and the way he seemed to have no remorse for what he had done to her, she couldn’t understand what she had ever seen in him. He was nothing but a weasel.
“Agent Parker, it is with my deepest regrets that we have to meet under such circumstances. However, I’m sure that you understand, thanks to your many years of dedicated service for the FBI, that we all must do our duty. Today, my duty is to talk to you about your role in the two deaths that occurred while you were representing the Bureau undercover.” The woman walked over to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Would you like some?”
The woman was stalling—it was a common interrogation technique. It was the same reason they had kept her locked up in this room for four hours before anyone had even acknowledged her presence. They wanted to make her nervous, to drive up her anxiety level to the point where she’d be easier to manipulate.
By the same token, Agent Anderson had to know that Sabrina was fully aware of her tactics.
The woman took a long sip of her coffee, staring at her through the steam—she was trying to get a read on her. No doubt, she wanted to feel her out in order to determine how she would play this interrogation.
“Sabrina, it’s in your best interest to just admit you killed those two Cussler guys. We found your fingerprints all over the murder weapon.” Mike smirked.
Oh, that bastard.
It was a good thing she had sat down. Her hands fell limp into her lap as the shock worked its way through her body.
Her fingerprints had been found on the murder weapon?
It was impossible.
She’d never even fired her gun—only the one that Trevor had given her on the mountain, a gun she had returned to him. Her own firearm she’d given to Trevor, so Mike couldn’t have sent it off to the lab for analysis. This didn’t make sense.
She wanted to cry out and to tell Agent Anderson that she had no idea what he was talking about. But she knew that they must have had concrete evidence well in advance of her arrest. Which meant they had a different gun...a gun she had likely never actually touched.
At the shanty, she had watched Trevor pick up the gun that had killed the first brother. He’d wiped it down and left it there. She’d never touched it—or even gone back inside the shack. But that didn’t mean someone hadn’t tampered with the evidence. If the FBI, or Mike, had gone to that shanty they easily could have planted her prints on that gun. Or maybe there was an entirely different gun. She just couldn’t be sure.
If only they had just called in Wyatt and the sheriff’s department when they found the body. Wyatt was probably going to have a fit when he learned where she was. If he admitted to his role in her supposed cover-up of the second Cussler brother’s death, his future would be in jeopardy. Everything she had done, every choice she had made, had been wrong.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” Mike said, taunting her.
“Agent Couer, I told you that if you wished to stand in on this interrogation, you were to remain silent,” the woman said. “As you seem incapable of such a daunting task, and given your familiarity with Agent Parker, I think it best that you leave.” She pointed toward the door.
Mike opened his mouth to argue, but quickly shut up. It was the smartest thing she’d ever seen him do.
If only she could tell the woman the truth. And yet this woman had no reason to believe anything she said. It was normal for the accused to immediately start blaming others. A perpetrator rarely admitted fault. And even if they did passively admit to some wrongdoing, there would always be some extenuating circumstance that explained their misdeed away. She couldn’t be like one of those people. But she also couldn’t sit here and be accused and do nothing.
Mike stepped out of the room, but not before giving her one last sidelong glance and an accompanying smirk. The door clicked shut behind him.
“Now, Agent Parker, back to our conversation,” the woman said.
“I didn’t kill anyone. I’m innocent.” She put her hands on the table, palms up, the universal sign of submission and forthrightness.
The woman looked down at Sabrina’s hands and then in the direction of the closed door. “I have reviewed the entire case, and the evidence they have against you. As of this moment, the evidence is not in your favor. However, I’m finding holes in Agent Couer’s assessment of the situation.”
Sabrina wasn’t entirely sure what the woman meant, so she remained silent.
“There’s not a lot of information I can give you at this time. However, if you help me in my investigation, it will not go unnoticed.”
She implied she would get Sabrina a deal without directly offering anything. When interrogating, Sabrina used the same method to elicit trust from her suspects.
She couldn’t get sucked into this woman’s charade.
“And what is it that you would like me to do?” Sabrina asked, curious.
Agent Anderson looked back at the door, almost as though she expected it to open again at any second. If anything, it appeared as if she were more nervous than Sabrina was. “About the meeting in Seattle. We want you there. Along with Agent Couer.”
“What? Why?” Did they want to publicly broadcast her shame for the rest of the Bureau? No. She wasn’t going to be their whipping boy.
“I know you’re gun-shy after what happened. But believe me when I say it’s in your best interest to help me out.” The woman reached over and gave Sabrina’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
The simple action surprised her. The interrogation room was currently being filmed. Was the woman trying to tell her something that she couldn’t say on camera? Or was she stringing her along?
“Trevor said he worked for the CIA. You don’t think he’s really involved with the illegal gun trade, do you?”
“Oh, he and his family are very involved,” Agent Anderson said. “We believe he may be using it to increase his income. It’s fairly common for those behind the curtain to participate in unsanctioned deals like this.”
Sabrina couldn’t help but feel even more deflated. The man she had fallen in love with couldn’t be a criminal. He
wasn’t the man the Bureau made him out to be.
If they went to Seattle, she risked being made an even a bigger fool in the Bureau, and yet she would get to see Trevor at least one more time. And she could prove that she had been right about distrusting him.
For all she knew, he wouldn’t even be there and instead it would be a team of his people. It would be smart of him to call off the entire deal now that he knew that he and his family were under investigation by the Bureau.
A part of her also wanted to save him. If she went there, she could try to alert him to the danger.
She was already damned by the Bureau’s standards, and probably out of a job now that she was under arrest. Even though she was innocent, she would be lucky if she didn’t go to prison.
A chill ran down her spine as she thought about being stuck in a federal prison with inmates she had sent there. The situation wouldn’t end well—but from the beginning of her investigation, the only thing that had gone well was the night she spent in the mountains with Trevor making love.
If only she could go back in time...to a time and place where things weren’t so complicated.
Chapter Sixteen
The gun sat heavy in Trevor’s hands. Though the assault rifle weighed only a few pounds, it felt as though it was imbued with the weight of everyone who depended on him.
Zoey was sitting in the corner office, out of sight from where their operation would take place. Even if he couldn’t get out, perhaps she would.
Though they had planned everything to the last detail, it didn’t mean that it would go off without a hitch. Things had a way of going haywire any time guns were involved. He would be lucky if he made it out alive.
Chad was sitting above him in the skywalk, and as Trevor looked up, his brother gave him a thumbs-up. In a matter of seconds, and with a rearrangement of fabric, Chad disappeared into the darkness, perfectly camouflaged. For all intents and purposes, Trevor appeared to be alone.
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