Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Max was waiting in front of the Golden Dragon, looking so deliciously sexy in dark-gray slacks, a navy sweater, and a black coat that her heart flipped over in her chest. He hopped into her SUV and gave her a warm smile.
"Hello," he said as he fastened his seatbelt.
"Hi." She cleared her throat, feeling oddly uncomfortable, not by anything he was doing but the unexpected attraction that seemed to intensify every time she saw him. "Lots of traffic tonight."
"Not surprising," he murmured. "How did your day go?"
"It wasn't going great until about an hour ago. Tyler found Vincent Castellano."
"That's great."
"Castellano admitted to threatening Samantha at the bistro, but he has a rock-solid alibi for the café bombing.
He was clocked in at work in Jersey during the blast. And he was out of town for three days before the blast at a family wedding.
He said his threat was only about the fraud case Samantha was building against the auto shop.
He was terrified of losing his job, and he didn't even know what the Meridien Tower was. He's a thug, but he's not our bomber."
"Why did he run and hide then?"
"After the bomb blast, he realized his threat might get him into trouble. When you think about it, his actions were not well thought out. He threatened Samantha in a public place with lots of witnesses and security cameras. He's not that smart."
"No," Max agreed. "And I can't see a tie between Petroysan and Cooper. Anything else?"
"James Cooper has unexplained cash deposits in his bank account. We're following the money."
"That's good," he said with a nod. "If he was taking bribes, maybe someone didn't feel he held up his end of the bargain."
"Which would go with what Whitney said about him needing to understand consequences.
" She paused. "Oh, there's another thing.
Someone tried to break into the safe house.
Whitney is all right. The agent outside is recovering from a concussion.
The agent inside got off a couple of shots, striking the attacker, who unfortunately escaped.
He ditched his clothes in a laundry bin, and there was blood on them.
We're tracing the DNA now. Hope to have a hit soon.
Things are moving along, just not as fast as I would like. "
"You've made some progress."
"Some," she agreed. "What about you? You said you had news?" Her pulse was steadier now. Focusing on business had put her back on a more even keel.
"I spoke to a friend of mine. He believes that Cal is Caleb Azrani. Caleb's brother, Malik Azrani, worked with Ali Qadir, who is—"
"On every most wanted list," she finished, surprised by his words and the connection of Cal to a terrorist. "I'm familiar with Qadir and his extensive network. We busted a small terror cell about eight years ago that was loosely tied to him."
"This one may be as well. But the bombings don't exactly fit. Qadir's groups go for mass casualties, maximum chaos. These are too surgical, too targeted."
She thought about that. The explosions didn't seem to match the work of a terrorist organization, but the precision strikes might just be the beginning of something bigger. "Do you think your contact can find Caleb?"
"He's working on it."
"Is your contact CIA?"
"I really can't say, Kara."
She frowned, giving him a disappointed look. "Because he's covert?"
"Yes. And because he wouldn't give me information if he couldn't trust me to keep his secrets."
"I really hate secrets."
"Then you're working for the right agency," he said cynically. "Because my life has been one secret after another. Some days, I could barely remember who I was."
She glanced at his hard profile, thinking that was one of the most revealing things he'd ever said to her. "That couldn't have been easy. I only did one undercover stint at the NYPD, and it lasted two days. I can't imagine having to keep up a cover for a long time."
"It becomes a part of you. And when you live in filth, you get dirty. You can't see the lines anymore."
There was a hard edge to his voice. "It sounds like you're glad you're out."
"I have mixed feelings about it. But we don't need to discuss my career choices."
"I'm curious about those choices."
"I know I'm going to regret asking this, but why are you curious?"
"You don't seem like someone who stops before the job is done. The man you captured and brought into the agency was turned into an asset and then disappeared. Now you know he's somewhere out there causing mayhem… That can't sit well."
"I quit before he disappeared. I couldn't stand seeing his smug face when he told me he was on my side now.
I knew he was never on my side or America's side.
As for dealing with the knowledge that he's still out in the world running his network once more, it makes me sick, and I would like to bring him down, but I don't have the resources to do that.
" He cleared his throat. "And that's all I'm going to say about him.
We're almost to Queens, and I want to know what I'm walking into. "
She didn't really want to change the subject, but Max was clearly done talking about it for now, and she needed to prep him for what he was about to walk into.
"It's my Uncle Danny's birthday, and the party is at Hannigan's Pub, which is a firefighter bar owned by my uncle and two of his fellow firefighters, Jack Hannigan and Ray Connover.
They bought the pub when Hannigan's father retired.
They didn't want to lose their favorite drinking hole. "
"Sounds like a fun place."
"It will be packed with family and friends. My uncle is very popular." She smiled. "Fair warning: They're going to ask you a million questions, so if you're having second thoughts, you can still bail and take a rideshare back to Manhattan."
"I'm not afraid of questions."
"You just don't like to answer them," she said dryly.
"Well, I don't think we're talking top-secret level questions, are we?"
"They'll be very invasive, but they won't be about you; they'll be about why you're with me. Whether we're dating. If we're in love. If you're my boyfriend. If they can start putting you in the family pictures."
"Wow, that's a lot."
"Like I said, you can change your mind."
"So, why don't you have a boyfriend?" he asked curiously. "Or do you? I didn't see any evidence of a guy at your apartment, but maybe you spend time at his place."
"I'm not in a relationship now. And I haven't been for almost two years, which has actually been a good thing."
"Two years, huh? Isn't that about the time you left the NYPD? A lot of changes in your life at the same time."
"You're very perceptive. My last boyfriend was a cop.
We were together for over a year, talking about moving in together, but he didn't like any of the decisions I made during that time.
He wanted me to look the other way, get a transfer, just focus on myself and on him, because whatever I did could damage him, too. "
"Sounds like a great guy. Someone you could really count on," he said dryly.
"He definitely revealed his true colors. I understood I was making a choice for both of us. But I couldn't just ignore what I'd seen. I was supposed to be on the side of the law. We all were. That was our job. He told me if I was going to take my partner down, then we were done."
"It was your integrity or him."
"Yes," she said. "He left that night, told his buddies the next day that we were over, that I wasn't someone he could be with.
That protected him a little when I went to Internal Affairs.
They believed he'd tried everything he could to talk me out of it and to convince me I was wrong.
He kept his friends and his job. It all worked out for him. "
"For both of you," Max corrected. "You got a better job, and he didn't deserve you."
"He didn't. And I don't regret my decision.
I do regret not having seen who he really was before that.
It makes me cautious now. I haven't been in a hurry to get back into the dating world.
It feels so fake most of the time. And I have a job that I can't really talk about, which complicates matters.
I also work long hours, and men don't always understand that. "
"Women, either," he commented.
She gave him a quick look. "Does that mean you're also single?"
"Yes. And in no hurry to change that."
"Because…"
"Because I have a job and long hours that would complicate a relationship," he said, echoing her words. "Maybe someday, but not now."
"That's how I feel, too," she said, a little voice inside her head suggesting that she might make an exception for the right man, maybe even the man sitting next to her.
But she immediately pushed that thought out of her head.
"So, back to the party… My mom and her sister-in-law, Beth, Uncle Danny's wife, will be the worst. They'll want to know all about you, so let me know what you want me to tell them.
I can say we're just colleagues, let them assume you're FBI.
That should shut them down. Then they'll be off you and trying to set me up with every single guy in the bar. "
"Well, since you don't want to get set up, and I don't want to be your coworker, why don't we say we're dating?"
Her hands tightened on the wheel so hard she had to pull back from a speedy swerve. "What? Why would we do that?"
"To save you from having to talk to someone's single friend. And to stop them from asking me about work."
"They'll still ask you about that. They'll want to make sure you're a good catch."
"We'll tell them part of the truth. I work for Dominic Ashford's company, in his security department; keep it vague. A good cover has a few details, but not too many."
"I don't know. I'm not sure anyone would believe we're together, because we're not together."