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I began with the phone call from Chad Waters and moved on to me rushing to the crime scene because I had mere minutes to sneak in and out before Chad had to contact Homicide, then the ambush by enemy agents in a hotel lobby that was crawling with police officers. “You heard most of it and probably deduced they destroyed my SIM card and GPS tracking devices.”
He nodded. “When the FBI arrived and didn’t find you, they swept the lobby and found the remains of our trackers.”
I rubbed my forehead, where a tension headache was forming. “I’m sure that made them ask more questions. But you couldn’t tell them about Carbonados, so what did you tell them?”
“Not much.” He grinned. “Which always pisses them off. It was unofficial. Kessler called in a few favors to keep things quiet and cordial.”
Kessler had been a field agent and later a high-level manager at the FBI before joining HEAT. That had come in handy more than once over the past few months as we’d tried to get a handle on the new threat we were facing.
“I thought the Carbonados agents might be FBI until one of them threatened to open fire on children who were in the lobby,” I said.
“We saw security footage of them herding you toward the parking garage, but they knew how to hide their faces, and the security cameras in an around the garage were disabled. Pick up the story there.”
I recounted the events I could recall during the last 30 hours, repeating what he already knew, then adding the escape with shots fired, and ending with our arrival at the cabin in the woods. What happened after that was a private matter between Evan and me. Yes, I knew I was omitting details and intentionally painting Evan in a flattering light, going against yet another element of my HEAT indoctrination. But he had brought me peace and rest for the first time in far too long. I didn’t want TJ’s ingrained skepticism to ruin our brief but perfect moment.
“Samantha, you know the drill. Our personal lives are our own business unless and until they threaten to interfere with the job. This is one of those cases, so I’m going to need you to explain how you ended up in a”—he hesitated and glanced away from me as he spoke—“a compromising situation with a person of questionable intent.”
So much for keeping that perfect moment to myself. “You mean with Evan, the man who saved me from my armed kidnappers?” I challenged TJ. “Alder did a deep dive on him, so why are you still so suspicious of him? Did something else pop in the background check?”
“Not exactly. But there is some missing data. Yesterday, you saw the cover page of an arrest report.”
“Yes, with the rest of the report missing. But I thought it wasn’t his.” I sat forward, on the edge of my seat. “What was he charged with?”
“He wasn’t,” TJ said. “You’re right, he wasn’t arrested. He’s listed as a witness. But the lack of details due to the missing report is a damn good reason for us to be suspicious. And the fact that he’d been on the verge of joining the Chicago PD but didn’t is another thing we can’t explain.”
“And you think the two are connected.” My mind wasn’t up to full clarity yet, but I could follow TJ’s breadcrumbs, which weren’t all that subtle. “You suspect there was an incident that disqualified him from joining the force.”
“Do you know anything about that?” he asked.
I did know Evan had been vague about his reasons for joining the private security company instead of the Chicago PD. The one-night-stand-maybe-hoping-for-a-rematch side of me wanted to keep that pillow talk to myself, but burying potentially explosive information from my team was not an option. I couldn’t risk there being something more to the story, and that something coming back to bite one of my teammates in the ass. Especially if that ass-biting came in the form of mortal danger.
That didn’t mean I had to like sharing our private conversation. I crossed my arms over my chest. “He told me he turned down the offer for personal reasons. He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t pry.”
“We need that information, Bond.”
I widened my eyes. “You expect me to drag it out of him? There has to be another way.”
TJ shrugged. “It’s that or we turn him over to the FBI until we can uncover the truth for ourselves. And to be clear, that cannot be our priority with Carbonados getting bigger and bolder by the minute.”
“So my choice is to cajole his secrets out of him and then betray him, or put him in FBI custody for weeks, maybe longer?”
TJ nodded.
Fuck me. Sometimes my job really sucked.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” I muttered. “But no tricks or lies. I’m going to ask him outright.”
“Good. You’re doing important work. And one more thing.”
I stopped with my hand on the doorknob but didn’t turn around to face him. “What else?”
“We need the information by the time we have our noon briefing.”
Great. I’d bring Evan out of his tranquilized state, talk him down from what would be legitimate outrage at HEAT’s treatment of him, then convince him to tell me something that a night of mind-blowing sex hadn’t knocked loose. Sure, no problem.
Fuck me.
