“Is it about what I told you? About the children?” she asked.
“Yes, and there are some dangerous dynamics in play. I just need to know that you are safe, so I don’t have to worry.”
“I get the feeling that there’s more that you’re not saying. Like the fact I think Trina is also a Fed.”
“Police detective, actually,” Trina clarified.
I shot Trina a look, and she winked at me. “There is a lot more to tell, Em, but I don’t have time right now. As soon as Trina and I catch the bad guys, we’ll explain everything.”
“Okay, then. I’ll promise to stay home if you promise to be careful and stay safe.”
“Deal,” I agreed and bent over to kiss her. “I love you, sis.”
“I love you more,” she said, as she always did.
Reporting In – Ruby Grace Sutherland aka Joyce
On the drive over to the pizza restaurant, Trina seemed preoccupied. She was contemplative in the scrub room as we changed back into our clothes, silent as we walked out to the car, and now, she seemed a thousand miles away.
“What’s bugging you?” I asked.
“What? Oh, sorry. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
She glanced at me. “What happened to your sister sort of punched a big hole in my theory.”
“Yeah, I thought that might be it.”
“I mean, I’m glad she wasn’t involved, but now I’m back at first base with two strikes and three balls.”
“Baseball analogy? Really?”
Laughing, she shook her head. “Paul’s a big Houston Astros fan.”
“Of course,” I retorted. “So, can’t your theory still work without Emily being a part of it?”
“Sure but being that far off base about her has me standing out in left field picking my nose.”
“Um… interesting way of saying you think that you’re back to square one.”
“Exactly,” she proclaimed with a wave of her hand.
“Well, I don’t think you are. But instead of arguing, how about you think up another theory?”
“Okay, now you’re just feeling sorry for me,” she said gruffly.
“No, seriously. How do you feel about the whole situation now?”
She glanced at me to see if I was being sincere, which I was, and then looked back at the road. “I’ll let you know after you talk with your boss.”
***
Special Agent in Charge, Jack Gray, tall, broad-shouldered, with graying brown hair, sauntered through the door, looked around and frowned. Then he saw me and frowned again. For a SAC, he had a very emotional face. One of the things that made me trust him was that I could always tell what he felt about things by his facial expressions. When he saw me and frowned, I knew he was trying to hide the fact that he was as relieved to see me as I was to see him. I was still eager to prove myself to him, to make him proud.
Gossip around the coffeemaker was that he was in his late fifties and had a twenty-year-old mistress. They were half right. I actually knew for a fact that he was gay and had a gray-haired, handsome lover. I saw them kissing once on the beach in Galveston. Like a rookie, I interrupted them and introduced myself and he reciprocated. He seemed nervous, embarrassed even, so I found an excuse to leave without making the usual chitchat. He never said anything about our chance meeting and I never told anyone. If he wasn’t out yet, it wasn’t my place to push him out.
“Give me a sit-rep, Ruby,” he said as he sat down. He was the no-nonsense type. He could see I was all right, so he wasn’t going to bother with the pleasantries.
The haggard-looking waitress, who I had placed my to-go order with earlier, walked up and asked Jack if he wanted anything.
“Yeah, give me a black coffee and a slice of cheese pizza, please.”
She nodded and walked away.
Jack looked at the empty table in front of me. “Aren’t you going to eat something?”
“I’m meeting a friend after this so I’m getting it to go,” I explained.
He nodded and waved his hand for me to give my report.
With one eye on the door, I told him how I gave my guard the slip and ended up in the hospital with no memory. I just left out the part about the sexual assault, hoping that he hadn’t gotten the police report yet. Then I gave him the SD card with the accounting figures.
“You know, I took a big risk sending a novice agent in,” he said, holding the card between two fingers. “Even took some heat from my superiors. But I told them you were the agent for the job, and you have more than proven me right. Good job. This will go a long way if we ever get them in court.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, feeling a twinge of guilt at not telling him the whole story.
Jack pocketed the card. “Joey has moved his operation and we’re not sure where, but we think he’s still in Houston.”
“Check out the last transfer of money, I think it might be a clue to the properties they own.”
“I’ll get someone on it ASAP, thanks. So, here’s all I know,” he said, clasping his hands together on the table. “We got an ID on the cemetery guy you found.”
“It’s not called a cemetery, it’s called a graveyard because it’s owned by the church,” I said, correcting him.
“Duly noted. One of the names you provided us was an alias for an ex-con who the police found dead in a graveyard.”
“Harold Rogers? He’s the man who attacked me. What’s his real name?”
“Grady Underwood. He did a nickel at the penitentiary in Huntsville. Got out three months ago. And now he’s dead.”
The memory of that man’s eyes coming at me in the dark caused the hairs on my arms to stand on end. And now he’s dead. “Before he came after me, he was working as a maintenance man at the convent where my twin sister, a nun, lives. I can’t figure out the connection. Was he after my sister and mistook me for her or vice-versa?”
“We think he was after your sister at first. My theory is that they got wise to her alerting us and targeted her… at first.”
He sounds just like Trina.
“Grady got himself hired on when the other custodian conveniently died of a heart attack. We’re looking into that. Then Grady probably saw you working for Joey, and I think he thought you had left the convent. Someone, most likely the other guy you saw with Grady, told him to go after you and left the ‘snitch’ note. You were damn lucky to have gotten out alive.”
Damn it. “Um, Jack, I need to tell—”
The waitress returned with his coffee and slice of pizza and placed them in front of him. He waited for her to leave before continuing.
“Based on the intel you provided, we think we know where the auction will be taking place.”
My eyes shot up and locked on him. “I want in on it.”
“Figured as much,” he responded. “But you’ve been made, so I don’t see that happening.”
I didn’t argue with him, but I did see that happening… with Trina’s help. I didn’t have time to wonder if I had the right to ask her to risk her life.
He picked up the pizza and held it while he gazed at me. “Plus, you’ve been through a horrific event which, I assume, is the reason you were afraid to tell me the truth about your attack?”
“How did you know?”
“Captain Mathison with the HPD called me and filled me in.”
“Shit.” I could feel my face flush red as I looked away. I inhaled slowly and then I met his eyes. “I deserve to be in on the catch, Jack. I’ve paid my dues twice over and want to be there to see those girls freed.”
“My God, Ruby. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”
I stared at him defiantly, but he shook his head.
“Protocol, when a female agent is raped, is to put them on leave and send them to a shrink. Only when you are released by the psychologist are you allowed back.”
“To hell with protocol, Jack. I don’t even remember the actual rape, just the man who raped me
and, like you said, he’s dead. I’m as stable as you are, and I need to see this through to the end.” A little white lie for a good cause.
He bit into his pizza, still staring at me as he chewed.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you everything, but I knew if I did, you’d want to pull me off the case.”
“And you would have been right. You should watch from the sidelines, but…” He paused and picked up his cup of coffee.
“But?”
“But if you were a man—”
“If I were a man, I wouldn’t have been raped?”
“No, you’d be dead. I was going to say if you were a man we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I trust you to know your limits, Ruby, but I want your promise that you will take some downtime and talk with someone after this case is wrapped up.”
“Thank you, Jack,” I replied, smothering my excitement.
“However,” he said, pointing his coffee cup at me. “If we don’t have this case wrapped up within six weeks, you are to stand down and report to a shrink. Yours or ours, I don’t care which.”
“But, that’s not enough time,” I protested, searching for a compromise.
“It’s either that or I pull you off this case right now.”
I leaned back and thought about it. Jack was going out on a limb for me, and I had to make it work. I leaned forward again and looked at him. “I understand, and it’s not a problem. I’ll get it done before then,” I assured him, trying to sound confident.
“I thought you might feel that way.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a slip of paper. “This is where we think you’ll catch him. Be careful, they are waiting for you.”
“I will, and I won’t be going in alone,” I said, picking up the piece of paper and stuffing it into my jeans pocket.
“Yes, I know about Detective Wiles.”
I wasn’t surprised that he was aware of Trina. He was always very attentive to the details. “So, then you must know about the infiltrator?”
“At HPD, yes, I know.”
“No, the one back at the office.”
“Are you saying we have a mole, too?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes. It may be one person, but they know what both agencies are doing. They knew I was staying at Trina’s apartment. They broke in and left another message.”
“Snitch?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “That’s another reason you should stand down. They know who you are and if you’re right, about a spy in our agency, then it’s only a matter of time before they catch up to you.”
“And that’s exactly what I want them to do.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Don’t Try to Stop Me – Ruby Grace Sutherland aka Joyce
“How’s your pizza?” I asked, wiping my lips with a napkin.
“It’s good,” Trina replied, picking up another slice.
On the drive back to the hideout, as I preferred to call Trina’s ex-girlfriend’s condo, while Trina took precautions in case we were being followed, I told her about my meeting with Jack and how her captain had ratted us out. Once we got settled in on the couch, sitting cross-legged and facing each other, with our beers and the pizza on the coffee table, the questions started coming, and not just from her.
“So, Jack is giving you six weeks to solve the case.”
Picking up a slice of pizza, I said, “Yeah, he’s really going out on a limb for me.”
“Sounds like a good boss,” Trina acknowledged.
“Have you formulated a new theory yet?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“As a matter of fact, I have,” she replied. “I think the mole is working both agencies and I think he is an FBI agent. He found out you were working for Joey and they set you up.”
“What led you to that theory?”
She shrugged as she took a sip of her beer. “Your identification and DNA were wiped from the database, right? But they burned off your fingertips anyway. Why?”
I looked down at my red, still painful, fingers.
“Because your fingerprints were all over your room at Joey’s apartment building. With you dead, which I believe you were supposed to have been, we wouldn’t be able to identify the body and connect it… you to him. They didn’t count on you having a twin sister who matched your DNA.”
Her eyes sparkled as she explained her theory, and I was transfixed by them. Then a question popped into my head. “But Harold, I mean Grady Underwood, worked at the convent. Why else would he be there if he wasn’t after my sister?”
“That’s the most intriguing, devious part of this whole hideous crime,” she replied.
She sounded like Sherlock Holmes, and I couldn’t help but chuckle, because I knew she didn’t mean to. I swallowed my laugh and said, “Sorry. Go on with what you were saying.”
A slight frown creased her forehead and then quickly disappeared. “Grady never actually met your sister. Remember, the Reverend Mother said that you, I mean your sister, was away finishing up her college degree during the time Grady was jerking off on her mattress.”
“I don’t remember her saying it quite like that, but I see what you’re saying. But if your theory is correct, then there was no connection between Emily’s attack and mine. Still, I feel better knowing that there’s a guard on her door.”
“Well, there’s still a question I can’t answer,” Trina said, scratching her head.
“How Grady ended up raping me and who was that man with him?”
“That’s the one, or I guess that’s two questions. I’ll check in with Paul and see if they’ve done the autopsy yet. So, changing gears, how do you plan to solve the case?”
It was inevitable that she would ask that question, and I knew her well enough now to know that she wasn’t going to like my answer. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I couldn’t give her an answer until I had it all planned out. Then again, maybe I should just ask her to help me with the planning.
I placed the pizza slice on my plate in my lap and wiped my fingers on the napkin. “Okay, now hear me out before you go off the handle.”
“When have I ever… strike that. Go ahead.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at her frown.
“And whatever you have planned,” she added, “you’d better be including me in on it.”
It was as if she had read my mind. Are we in sync or what?
“Then I’ll need your help planning it out. Joey may have moved his operation but I’m pretty confident that he would be too afraid, or more likely too embarrassed to tell his parents not to come for his birthday party. His father’s scrutiny pretty much dictates everything he does and why. So, the tip Jack gave me about where the auction will be held is probably also where Joey will be holding his birthday party.”
“His party was supposed to be next week, right?”
“Sunday night, actually.”
“And the auction?”
“The day after, on Monday. But I overheard one of the hired thugs say Joey was inviting a lot of important people to his auction, so I think we should wait and catch him red-handed.”
“Nice. That would give him a false sense of security.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“And how do you plan to get in? He knows what you look like. As well as the informant. You’ll be made before you cross the threshold.”
“That’s where I need your help,” I explained. Watching her face for a reaction, I continued, “You dress up like a rich oil baron and toss money around, and I’ll dress up like your pimply-faced teenage son.”
“An oil baron who’s there to buy his son a sex slave?” she asked, darting her eyes to visualize the scenario.
“Yes. We’ll be wired for sound, but we can’t take in guns. They’ll search us at the door.”
“Not necessarily. If I’m a fat cat, I’ll need to have a fat belly. We can hide a couple of guns in there.”
“Yes, brilliant. And it
would help to cover your breasts,” I said, excitedly looking at her breasts. Compared to mine, she was well endowed.
I blushed when I realized that I was staring at her breasts and blushed even deeper when I saw that she was looking at mine. And underneath that blush was a tingle so sharp in my loins that I almost gasped.
“So, um, I will let Jack know, but the thing is, we may have to do this without backup.”
“Because of the informant,” she stated, picking up her bottle of beer. “It will be very dangerous… and we may not come out of it alive.” Her eyes locked onto mine, and there was an unspoken question in them.
I swallowed hard and lowered my eyes. “Yes, that’s true. So… if you’re having any second thoughts, let’s hear them, but don’t try to talk me out of it. I can find a way to do this without you. Either way, I’m going in.”
I’ll Take Your Pain Away – Trina Wiles
“To hell with that. It’s not going to happen,” I said, more gruffly than I intended.
“Excuse me, but it’s not your call to make,” Joyce replied heatedly, placing her plate and beer on the coffee table as if she were preparing for a fight.
“You know, you’re sexy when you’re angry,” I replied, also putting my food and beer on the table.
“If you think this is me being angry,” she said, pointing at her face. “Then you’re about to have a rude awakening.”
I cocked a grin and winked at her. For a moment, I thought she was going to slap me and I held up my hands in surrender. “You didn’t let me finish. You going in alone is not going to happen because I want in on the action. This is as much my case as it is yours, and I have a stake in it, too.”
Her frown morphed into a beautiful, grateful smile, and suddenly, she grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me back. “You drive me crazy,” she hissed, looking at my lips as if she wanted to devour them. She kissed me with a feral need that I wasn’t expecting, and it heated me up instantly. My hunger grew, and the fire ignited, and I slipped my hand behind her neck and pulled her closer, taking the kiss deeper.
She parted her lips and glided her tongue inside, then slipped it out again, quickly. An invitation I accepted instantly, then realized what I was accepting. I gently pushed her back.
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