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“You shouldn’t be.” He glances over at me. “Who are you?”
“Renata,” I say.
Lanzo holds up a hand. “Don’t worry about her. She’s like you, stuck in a shitty situation.”
Craig snorts, shaking his head. “Burian’s a real fucking piece of shit, right? That motherfucker’s going to ruin a lot of lives.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Lanzo leans forward. “Tell me what’s happening.”
Craig drums his fingers on the table. He clearly doesn’t want to be here, but desperation hangs around him like a stink cloud. It’s oozing from his pores, coloring his skin. It’s sad, and I wish I could do something to help, but I know better than most people that there’s nothing I can say that’ll ease his suffering.
“He showed up out of nowhere. Killed a couple guys working undercover.” Craig glances at me. “How much can I say in front of her?”
“Everything,” Lanzo says. “Go on. Keep talking.”
“Fucking shit.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Two dead deep cover agents. Both good men, embedded with the local Bratva. Russians, you know? Real fucking pieces of work too. Violent assholes. It took us years to get guys on the inside, and suddenly, they start dropping like flies.”
Craig sits back. He stretches his back, grunting, and continues. “We thought the Russians just made them, but then another guy gets caught. My fucking partner. One day, we’re joking around together at the office, then the next I get a text, a fucking picture of him strung up in some empty-looking room, hanging by his wrists from an overhead pipe, with a warning. Send over my list of undercover agents, or my partner loses a finger for every hour I don’t respond.”
Lanzo interrupts. “Why you?”
“I’m the undercover liaison,” Craig says with a wry smile. “I’m supposed to be the guy protecting them. The guy that does whatever needs doing to keep them safe.”
“You didn’t give Burian the names,” I whisper, a slow creep of horror falling over me.
Craig nods sharply. “And don’t you fucking judge me for it.”
“I don’t,” I say, trying to imagine the agony of that decision.
“Ten hours later, I got a box on my doorstep.” I glance at Lanzo. His face remains utterly composed. “Fingers. Ten of them. Then I got another message, saying I’d better head into the office. That’s when I heard my supervisor got killed. Some fucker bashed his brains in with a brick at a goddamn carnival.” He laughs, sounding unhinged. “Can you imagine that?”
“No,” Lanzo said, deadpan. “Can’t imagine it at all.”
“Turns out, his former partner was missing, a good agent. Dependable kind of guy. Still working cases at an advanced age, but not everyone gets moved up, you know? The guy has kids, a wife, all that shit. Gets abducted by this psycho.”
Lanzo interrupts again. “You’re telling me Burian hastwofederal agents in his custody?”
“That we know about.” Craig sounds miserable.
“How is this not an all-out manhunt?” I ask, looking between the two men. “There are multiple dead undercover FBI agents, a dead FBI supervisor, two kidnapped agents, one of which was seriously maimed. Why aren’t there a thousand feds swarming Dallas right now?”
Craig looks pained. He rubs his face a few times, scratching at his forehead, before speaking. “When Howard got that brick smashed into his head, that fucked it all up.”
I try not to make a sound.Howardwas the guy that tried to strangle me. Hard to give him my sympathy right now.
Craig continues, “The higher-ups are freaking out. Like you said, we got lots of bodies and two kidnapped agents. This is embarrassing as fuck for the FBI, probably the biggest fuck-up in decades, if not ever. My bosses want a win, they absolutely fuckingcravea win, and they decided that bringing home our two missing agents is going to be their top priority.”
“Which is why you’re not swarming,” Lanzo says, nodding as if it makes sense.
“You’re trying not to scare Burian?” I shake my head. “That’s crazy. You need to chase him out. Who knows if those two guys are still alive.”
Craig’s face stills. His fingers twitch together in front of him. “One of those guys is my partner,” he says, his tone barely steady.
“Sorry,” I say quietly.
“That’s why I’m here. My bosses are being too tentative. They’re gonna get Frankie killed.” Craig pulls at his thinning hair. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t just sit around, waiting for this psycho Russian guy to send me more of Frankie’s parts.”
“We can help,” Lanzo says, sitting up straight. “But you need to tell me everything you know.”
