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“We’ll get through this,” Chavez said. “He’ll only be here for a few days.”
“He has Quinn working for him! She’s a stain on the LAPD and is going to be an embarrassment to Costa, the MRT and the FBI. Don’t say I didn’t warn everyone.”
Chavez glanced around the room, realizing that Thornton’s outburst was now fuel for the rumor mill. She gave Sloane a half smile, then looked pointedly at Thornton and said, “We have more important issues right now, so you need to let it go.”
He watched her with narrowed eyes, then recognized what Chavez had: there were others in the room.
Not for the first time, Sloane wondered what they discussed in private.
The rest of their squad came in for a staff meeting. Thornton ran the meeting efficiently, the SSAs gave status reports, and cases were handed out. Chavez was in white-collar crimes, and they worked primarily fraud and money laundering investigations. Los Angeles and New York were the largest regional offices with multiple SACs, each managing multiple ASACs who each managed multiple squads. The bureaucracy was overwhelming and often redundant.
When Matt Costa approached Sloane two weeks before she graduated from Quantico, she thought she was being tested. It took two conversations with Matt, his boss Assistant Director Tony Greer, and the assistant director of the Los Angeles FBI for her to be comfortable not only with what they asked her to do, but her ability to do it.
She’d never forget how nervous she was when Matt Costa approached her while she was running on the track one afternoon, or how curious she was after he spoke to her. He’d been intimidating, but straightforward.
“On paper, I picked you, but I had to be certain,” he told her.
“Picked me for what, sir?”
“I have to ask you not to repeat this conversation. Whether you accept or not, what I say needs to remain strictly confidential.”
Matt explained that Sloane, a rookie, had no allegiances or loyalties. She could go into the LA office without preconceived notions. Plus, she was an older recruit: she’d gone to college, had twelve years in the Marines, and had both maturity and experience going for her. He’d even gone so far as to speak to her former commanding officer directly.
“Because of your background—family, military and FBI training—coupled with your psych evaluation, you are ideal for this position. It won’t be easy. Not only is it emotionally stressful to go undercover and investigate your colleagues, but you’ll also be a rookie agent and required to do the job. You are intelligent and resourceful, and I’m confident you’ll be able to handle the pressure, but it will still be difficult.”
Spying on your colleagues was never an easy assignment. She’d done it once before, in the Marines, and she vowed never to put herself in that position again.
Yet...there was something deeply immoral about a sworn agent forsaking their duties and obligations for personal gain or vendetta. It grated on her sensibilities as a Marine, as an American, as a law enforcement officer. So after hearing about what they knew and what they suspected, she agreed to report back to Matt Costa and Brian Granderson on not only the actions of Agent Thornton, but everyone else on Chavez’s team.
Part of the problem was that Sloane had to observe and not ask too many questions. What seemed suspicious or unusual might have a logical explanation. So she simply reported what she learned.
It wasn’t enough and she knew it.
Her personal phone vibrated in her suit pocket. She glanced down and saw the message from Brian Granderson.
Meet 7 am, full debrief w MC.
He’d included an address downtown.
She had nothing new to report and wondered if they were going to pull the plug on their investigation. She hoped not—there was something here, she just hadn’t found it yet. She suspected whatever Thornton was doing involved the LAPD files she’d found on his desk, but there had been no opportunity to return to his office for more information.
When the staff meeting was over, she went to her cubicle and pretended to work. Mostly, she was listening to Thornton complain to Tom about Costa. Finally, they both left. Sloane soon found her chance when Brenda from Accounting came in looking for Thornton. Few people were in the office right now, so Sloane took the initiative.
“Hi, Brenda,” she said, “he left, won’t be back until this afternoon.” She didn’t know that for certain, but he’d turned off his office light, indicating he was leaving the building. If he was going to another office, he always left it on. “Can I help with something?”
“I need him to sign off on these expense reports by Friday. I swear, it’s the twenty-first century but we still have too much paper. You’d think they could have streamlined expense approvals.”
The expense reports were all submitted online, but then Accounting would process them by squad, print a summary report, and each supervisor would sign off. That was done on paper. Redundancy was built into the federal government, and the FBI wasn’t immune to it. Brenda could have sent them interoffice mail, but she was one of the friendliest non-agents on staff and liked delivering files by hand.
“I can put them in his office,” Sloane offered.
“Thanks, sugar. I have three more to drop off, then I have a dentist appointment. I hate the dentist. You have amazing teeth—must have cost you a small fortune.”
“Genetics. My dad has good teeth, too. And I’ve never missed a six-month cleaning.”
“Neither have I, but you wouldn’t know it by the cavities I keep getting.” Brenda smiled and walked away.
Sloane took the files directly to Bryce’s office. She stuck a sticky note on top and scrawled that they needed to be approved by Friday, but held on to them while she looked around his office.
