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“No. Not the FBI, and certainly not your old boss.”
“And what about Josh and Ben?”
Jake glanced at me, but his expression gave nothing away. “They’re safe here.”
“But we can’t all stay here forever, and if you’re saying that this is bigger than you, and you’re handing it off to some alphabet agency, what happens to them?” I was already creating scenarios where I found a different place to keep Josh and his son safe and away from everything that was happening. They were my priority, and I refused to put them in harm’s way.
“Nothing happens to them,” Jake looked as if I’d asked a stupid question. I bristled, but he held up a hand, and I gave him the chance to explain. “The entire case surrounding them might be so big that Sanctuary can’t handle it all ourselves, but Josh and Ben areourpriority. Along with you and your team, of course.”
“My team can look after ourselves,” I insisted.
Jake nodded. “I get the impression that’s true. But to understand how we can help I need to talk to you about how we ended up here. How did you get involved in a skin job, because that is spy novel shit, and what’s your team’s exact role with the FBI? No disrespect, but you seem nothing like some of the active agents we’ve dealt with. You remind me more of my partner, Sean—a former Fed, but he was more than a buttoned-up investigator with the badge. He crossed the line, went undercover, and nearly lost everything.” He shot me a quick smile. “Both idiots and I get the hero stuff; but I don’t understand how what you did fits into a federal agency.”
That was a leading question. I settled back on the sofa, nursing my coffee, which had long since gone cold, and wondering where to start. Icouldgive Jake some bullshit, but if I wasn’t honest, how could he understand the man I was?
“It’s difficult to explain,” I started. “People like me who came back from war—Ryder, Luca, and even Ali—none of us were career military. We didn’t want extra stripes or grand ceremonies, but when we reached the end of our time, we didn’t know what to do next. We had all this training and nowhere to use it. So, when Danvers approached what remained of my team, it seemed like an easy decision. He told us the FBI neededalternativesolutions to things they came up against. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but hell, he made sense. He asked if we were interested in using what the military trained us to do but carry out sanctioned ops on home soil, with cases that might cross borders. He wanted an off-the-books team to straddle the different agencies, thinking outside the box, working in new ways.”
“Breaking the law,” Jake summarized.
I winced, and I could see he was finding it hard to reconcile what he knew of the FBI and what he was hearing about my small team. “Apparently there was a purpose to what we tried to do.”
“And the skin job? Getting you and Josh on camera would mean him losing the custody battle, which means Rouxier would be grateful, and you were getting into Rouxier’s inner circle so you could take him down from the inside?”
“Yup, that was pretty much it.” I didn’t want to debate the gray areas. For two years, we got things done, but Josh would have been a sacrifice too far. I still don’t know if it was the picture of Ben in his wallet, the way he said thank you, or the flood of emotion in his beautiful eyes, but something had snapped inside. Now I was protective—I wanted to look out for him, look after him, and keep him and his son safe. I’d lost objectivity, and what had started as a skin job had become much more dangerous.
“Tell me about Danvers.” Jake sat back in his chair, trying to act as if that wasn’t the one burning question he’d had at the start of this.
Where do I start?“If you look at Danvers on paper, his career was classic FBI trajectory, good at his job, respectful, quick, and a leader. The team he created had a couple of successes by breaking smaller rules, and suddenly, it seemed as if he was ready to break them all. We never even saw it coming, and he’s lost control.” Jake looked at me expectantly, encouraging me to add to my analysis. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“I thought you could give me a better insight. After all, you knocked him out. You locked him in an interview room. Then you got Josh away from his custody and control. What instinct made you do that? There must be something that you can add to the story. You say Danvers lost control? Of what? The case, the team, himself?”
Fuck. So many questions.
“It was his idea to create our team. His superiors must’ve thought it was a good idea, as long as he got results, and then Ryder found evidence that Danvers was logging every single thing he’d asked us to do, which seemed legit. Then, when Ryder dug deeper, every report Danvers filed detailed us as being the ones that went off-book by choice. He’d built an entire paper trail that would back up him denying he was anything to do with us.”
“Okay.”
“He was hanging us out to dry, one case at a time, and we knew it wouldn’t be good for us when we reached our natural, useful end. Danvers didn’t credit my team with brains and intuition. Or count on us having Ryder. He had plausible deniability, and then, when Ryder dug as far as he could, he found deposits to an offshore account.”
“And the money led back to… ?”
“Somehow, Danvers connects to Rouxier, but we don’t fully know how. This all happened two hours before I was supposed to pick up Josh. I tried to block it out; everything was in place, and this was another job, but I went into it with a shit ton of doubt. The act itself was my way of ingratiating myself into Rouxier’s life. I only needed one more night of crossing my ethical line, and I was a step closer to working directly for Rouxier. Now, because of our doubts and my conscience, my team is no further forward in dealing with that bastard, we don’t know how deep the trafficking goes, how the cartels are involved, and now Josh and Ben are under my protection because I fucked up.”
“We all make mistakes.”
I shook my head. “I’ve fucked everything up. So, what kind of idiot does that make me?”
“You kept Josh safe—that he’s here in one piece with his son is a credit to you.”
“I regret it so much,” I admitted.
Jake sighed and then leaned forward. “Life and career don’t run in straight lines,” he murmured. “And conscience is one of those things that always messes with the best-laid plans. But we’re nothing but the bad guys if we lose our conscience. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“As to this case, I’m sending everything you have back to the tech team in Chicago, which is where I sent the rest of your team after they dropped Ben off. Your friend, Ryder, is pretty handy with the tech.”
I’d assumed Ryder and Luca had gone into hiding for a while and would contact me when they could, and I was pleased they weren’t in one of our cheap backup no-tell motel rooms. Jake was still talking, and I tuned back into what he was saying.
