Page 3 of Liar

“The question is, what are you about to be up to? Let’s say I have something going on that’s off the books, and I was looking for someone I trust to supervise from afar. Would you be up for a trip to the Caribbean to supervise my assets?” he asked.

“Howoff the booksare we talking?” I was definitely worried. “You know we have a liaison office that covers that area, right? Can’t you just assign it to them?”

“Let’s call my assets private bounty hunters. They are leading an international hunt for a suspected human trafficking ring operator. As for the liaison office, I don’t trust them.” He took a large gulp of his coffee. When he set the cup down, he crossed his arms again as he waited for me to get my thoughts together.

“You don’t trust them? What spurred that?” I was caught completely off guard by that. He didn’t trust a whole office?

“I learned of human trafficking and smuggling that’s been happening right under their noses for years. Not once has it been looked into by their team,” he explained.

“Maybe they really didn’t know?” I offered, but it sounded more like a question. If there was a human trafficking ring happening and they knew about it, that would be unprecedented. Sure, there had been double agents in the past, but an entire office, that was unimaginable. It would rock the whole world’s faith in the FBI, and the repercussions from that were too harsh to think of.

“It’s a pretty big ring. Lots of women have disappeared over a series of years. I don’t know how they couldn’t suspect a trafficking ring. The same type of victims are always taken, and there are patterns to the kidnappings. I’ve spent a lot of time looking into this since we got the intelligence.”

He was right, something like that did send off some major warning bells. I didn’t want to think that a whole office could be that incompetent or corrupt—but when he laid it out like that, it sounded pretty damning.

“I can’t imagine an operation as large as you’re implying could have existed for so long under an entire field office’s nose. Unless they were in on it. That liaison office is far removed from headquarters.” I was sure to them Washington, DC, felt worlds away. “What if they are getting a cut of the profits, or even worse, what if they are providing weapons or doing the kidnapping?” Those thoughts were even more unprecedented, more outrageous.

His face was full of barely suppressed concern. “I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, because I know what you are going to say next. Even if they really didn’t know what was going on, they should still be fired. Incompetence isn’t an excuse. Not when it comes to the lives of innocent people, and so many of them.”

He was right; I was going to continue playing devil’s advocate. Even doing so, there was no scenario in which the office couldn’t be punished. Incompetence of that scale was massive.

“So you want me to babysit these bounty hunters and…what? Make sure they don’t get hurt? Make sure they do things the right way and do all of this right under the noses of the agents with jurisdiction?” I understood the scope of the issue, but what exactly was my purpose? “What’s the end goal? If we suspect a bunch of dirty agents, what do you want me to do about that? I know I’m a good agent, but I think that’s asking a lot from me. What do you want me to do, sleep with the agents from the office there and see what I can find out?” I ambushed him with questions. I was rambling, but I couldn’t help it. My imagination was running with the details, and my anxiety followed. I could tell that what he was asking for would be very different from my other missions. I was already trying to figure out how to compensate for that.

“Slow down, Abby.” He put his hands up in a calming motion. “My assets are more than capable of tracking down this ring. They are the team of civilians that provided all the intel on the Vegas trafficking operation. Remember that raid that got that Robbie jack-off? Remember that one?” he asked.

“I remember reading the report. I was undercover during that operation,” I countered. I was extremely surprised that it happened the way it did. Mistakes were made, big ones. While I trusted Bob, that investigation and arrest was not one of his best. I imagined it would have gone differently if I was there, but maybe that was just my ego talking.

“They are more than capable—but I don’t want to leave them on their own in another country. I also don’t want them on the radar of the liaison’s office. If we are dealing with dirty agents, we have a big problem. I don’t want them to find out we are investigating the ring. I need someone on the ground that I can trust. Someone who is going to make sure my civilians stay safe and away from the dirty agents. I need you to keep them off everyone’s radar while you work to compile an official case on both the trafficking ring and the liaison office.”

That was a very big task. Running two separate yet intertwined investigations like that, while managing to keep some civilians out of trouble, seemed like work for a whole team, not one special agent. “I really don’t know, Bob. This could blow up in your face—our faces. You want me to watch civilians break laws and then do nothing about it. They may get results, but at what cost? Especially if they fuck up. Is this worth our careers?” I already knew his answer, but I really needed him to think this through. He was the boss, and I’d do what he said, but this wasn’t the groundbreaking work I signed up for. I was here to investigate civilians; I was not part of internal affairs. The Department of Justice would have to look into something like this.

He remained silent, so I continued firing off questions. “Do you really think that a bunch of civilians who got lucky once can run a whole investigation into this operation? Especially if there are dirty agents at play?”

I was met with more silence, and it frustrated me. I wanted to throw a coffee cup at him to get a reaction. Instead, I pressed on. “What happens if the dirty office figures out what’s going on and reports us? Surely you know there are protocols for reporting suspected illegal activity by agents. This is not the way to go about it.”

“It’s risky, I know, but there is something going on, Abby. I can feel it. I’m reading between the lines thatRobbiepunk painted. Someone is helping this ring operate.” His voice was full of passion, and his eyes were alight with zealousness. Gone was the man who kept his composure and his posture. Instead, I saw a man consumed by a new mission, and the thought frightened me. How far was he willing to jump down this rabbit hole? And how far was I willing to jump with him? I was Abby, not Alice, and I wanted to keep it that way.

“Robbie’s trial ended only two weeks ago. Since then, I’ve given this team all the intel we were able to gather, and they ran with it. This new suspect, he’s the leader of an international trafficking system—and like Robbie, he has people who do the legwork for him. Due to the work these kids did, we’ve convicted several traffickers and we have new leads. We’ve only begun to unravel these twisted threads. These civilians started that,” he said, his fiery passion only growing. He was going to bat for them.

What he didn’t add was all the other ways their investigation and the resulting convictions impacted the bureau. We received increased funding to the sexual crimes and human trafficking unit. Bob went to the highest decision makers at the bureau and reported how utterly embarrassing it was for the organization to have civilians get this information and how that was completely unacceptable. After all, that was one of the biggest busts our team made in a while, and it had been spearheaded by civilians. He wanted more staffing, better training, and most importantly more powers to intervene when a ring was suspected. The last part was out of their control—we could only operate within the laws—but everything else was considered and granted. Although those changes only came after Bob gave a statement as an anonymous source to the national news to make sure the bureau felt the pressure to increase the budgets. Luckily for him, it worked, because it could have not been his problem anymore—he could have been fired. They weren’t able to prove it was him, so he didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. He was becoming ballsier by the day now that retirement was almost upon him. I liked this version of Bob, because it got results, but it was scary to ride his coattails.

Since the increased funding, several more agents were hired and currently in training. They were to join the team soon. Bob was pushing me extra hard to make sure I’d be ready for my new role as their mentor. I was told they were like me—rough around the edges with a chip on their shoulder and something to prove.

“But why me? I don’t see what I can add to a team who did our job faster than we could. Why haven’t you hired them for the bureau? Why not have them investigate the bureau without involving an agent from said bureau?” I asked. I was hoping I could get Bob to talk himself out of this or, better yet, go straight to the higher powers with his suspicions. He was a respected agent; they’d listen to him.

“I don’t have actual control of the civilians, especially when they do operate within the laws. If they joined our team officially, they’d be split up. They don’t want that.” He paused for a moment, thinking hard about his next words.“Without permission from the country, we won’t be able to go in and act or arrest suspects. As bounty hunters, they just have to get the suspects or victims into international waters where we can have a ship waiting to transport them. They collect the bounty money, and they continue to work on their own terms—together.”

“Why are they willing to go to all this trouble? The money can’t be that good divided up between a large group. Do they really want the task of taking on the FBI? As civilians, that’s going to bring down a world of hurt on their shoulders.” Did they all know how harebrained this sounded?

“They don’t know my suspicions about the rogue agents, and it needs to remain that way. I don’t want to ruin their trust in the bureau. I also don’t want to skew their investigation. I need them to track down the ringleader, and while they do that, you can catch any corrupt agents that are spun in the traffickers’ web.”

“So I’m supposed to just keep them away from the other officers, keep them off the radar, and then document any suspect agent activity? That’s going to be incredibly challenging, if not impossible.” This was a tall order—and I thought New York was bad.

“You’ll get it done. I have faith in you.” I felt the sincerity of those words. “This group is special, and once you see them in action, you’ll know what I’m talking about. They take their mission very seriously.” He paused again, and I could see how conflicted he was to continue with his thought, but I knew Bob—he’d say what he needed to, regardless of how it would sound. “The two women in that group were severely impacted by kidnapping, and one of them was almost trafficked herself. One of the assets, Jones, his sister was taken by the Vegas ring. He and the others tracked her down, and that’s how we got our intel. The men are retired Special Forces Green Berets, and they rally behind saving others from the same demons they survived. It’s a purpose they all desperately need,” he said with a sigh.

His fingers tightened around the coffee cup. His earlier pacing and the several long pauses told me he was holding back. I knew just how to push his buttons into spilling it, but I hoped it wouldn’t drive a wedge between us. He seemed protective of the group. I was almost jealous. He and I had been working together much longer than he and the civilians. Yet he clearly cared about them, in the same way he cared about me—and that slightly irritated me. Call it selfish, but I wasn’t perfect.

“So a bunch of washed-up soldiers get to run around and flirt with such a high-risk operation?”

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