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Her screech would have satisfied me if I’d been in a better mood. “I deemed you clean enough to work this case, unlike Johnson and Batesman who I didn’t. Don’t make me wonder why you’d be questioning our presence on this team when we’re still key sources of intel.”
She gaped at me until she sputtered, “My record is pristine.”
“No one is pristine,” Anton drawled, making Hoyt straighten her shoulders at the silent reprimand. “Star and Conor’s presence on the team, despite their backgrounds, is vital to ongoing operations. If you have issues with their help, I don’t want to hear anything about it unless it’s to resign your post in the department. Have I made myself clear?”
He received a bunch of shrugs and grunts for his pains from Ingridsdottir, Schmidt, and Deschamps, but Hoyt’s was definitely the most vinegar-laced.
“Anyway, Star, we were discussing the best way to deal with the FBI who isn’t cooperating with our red notices. They claim we procured our evidence illegally.”
“That’s ridiculous. Other agencies aren’t fighting this,” I retorted. “They’re just grateful for the intel.”
“The FBI isn’t clean of the Sparrows’ taint,” Conor said flatly.
Wasn’t that the truth.
I knew for a fact the Five Points had uncovered a Sparrow in the FBI—Caroline Dunbar.
“We can’t trust that they’ll act neutrally,” one of the cops, Aaron Goldstein, agreed, nodding at Conor’s statement.
Conor had brought him in during my ‘absence’ when Aidan’s game plan had been to tear down the NWS by planting law enforcement officers with known Sparrows, who’d work to gain their trust, and who would eventually be inducted into the organization.
That plan hadn’t gone swimmingly.
Dead To Me had told me she’d taken out Senator McClure on Conor’s orders because Goldstein had uncovered the sex slave he was holding in his fucking basement.
“Act neutrally?” I repeated with a scoff. “You can’t trust they’re not Sparrows more like. While you can’t compel a law agency to make an arrest, you can shame them into it.
"Of the recent arrests that have been made, is there anywhere they refused to act but, say, the DEA didn’t?”
Goldstein cleared his throat. “Most of our groundwork has been on the European side of things. Stopping the trafficking in its tracks.
"The SEC has been cooperating and we’ve made ground with the Washington DC Police Department as well as the DEA and Homeland, but with the Feds blocking us, things are slower in the US than we’d like.”
Shit, I had spaced out if I’d missed that part of the conversation.
“Throw an unknown Sparrow under the bus and use that as proof the Feds need to clean house,” I rasped, well aware that Conor shot me a sharp look.
“Meaning you ‘know’ of an unknown Sparrow?” Goldstein queried.
“If I give you this intel—”
“They’re a dirty cop who turned rat to the Five Points?”
“Yes,” Conor grumbled, nodding at Anton’s insight.
Clearly, he wasn’t happy about burning the insider connection, but I knew the Irish had the FBI director in their pocket, and if Dunbar’s arrest shamed the Feds into cooperating, well, good.
Goldstein shrugged. “They must have left a trail.”
“Undoubtedly. Do I have your agreement you won’t bring the Five Points into this?”
“This is why we don’t work with known mobsters,” Hoyt mumbled.
“That’s a load of crap,” I retorted. “You take the intel where you can find it and be grateful for what you’re given. In this instance, a way to bring the FBI to heel.”
“The name, Conor?” Goldstein asked, pen poised over a notepad.
“Caroline Dunbar. She works out of the—”
