Resolution (Trackers #3)

Chapter Thirteen

RAVEN

Miguel and I walked into the FBI offices thirty-five minutes after Snow hung up the phone with his SAC flanked by a phalanx of armed agents. I was pissed, because I was here with my injured partner—who still desperately needed to rest and recover—and I knew we were in for more grueling hours of interrogation, when all Miguel needed was rest. Okay, I knew interrogation was probably the wrong word for it. But we’d be expected to go through the last six months of crap we’d encountered ever since Miguel had returned a call from Gregory Aston, our first big case after we’d opened Trackers.

I knew the goddamned DEA would want to know all about the Mulberry diamond recovery, John Sutter, Miguel’s time in the service, and how all that played into this mess we’d gotten ourselves into. But worst of all, Judy would probably find herself in jail for hacking into bank accounts and emails now that every federal law enforcement agency I could think of was involved. Hell, having Max Prince here with his U.S. Marshals Service background, brought those guys into it as well.

My sick grandmother was in hiding with her nurse, an unknown assassin had tried to take me out in a shopping center parking lot, and Miguel had nearly been kicked to death by an FBI agent with his head so far up the Sanchez Cartel’s ass, he couldn’t see.

I had fumed all the way over from the hotel to the office in Westwood, and it wasn’t even noon. Even though Miguel had said he was much better, I kept a close eye on him, had painkillers in my pocket, and I’d clutched his hand the whole car ride over. I was ready for the first asshole who dared to raise their voice to Miguel. We’d heard Lincoln’s boss yelling when he’d called Snow, even though his phone wasn’t on speaker. Let any of them try to do the same to my man. If they dared, I only hoped they’d be ready to get their faces smashed with my fist.

We walked into the office, and the conference room window blinds were drawn as we walked by it, so I couldn’t see anyone inside. Snow, who was leading us into the office, stopped at the door and turned to us. “Go on inside. I’ll be back shortly.”

Great. So, he was abandoning us too . I glared at his back as he opened the door and peeked in, smiling at the occupants, before waving us in. Expecting the worst, I was surprised to see only Judy sitting and talking with Noah. The man with a kind smile and beaded braids was in a wheelchair. How had I not known that? No one had said. I noticed there was no laptop in the room anywhere. They both looked up when we walked in, and Noah immediately reached for a control on his chair. A whirring sounded as he drove the chair around the big table right up to us.

“Hey there,” he greeted, smiling and holding out a hand. “It’s so nice to meet you, Raven…Miguel.” We both shook his hand and smiled back at the warm greeting. “I’ve ordered some lunch for the four of us. It’ll be here in a minute. Why don’t you have a seat?”

Judy rushed around the table, throwing herself at Miguel so fast, he had to brace himself to catch her. She hugged him hard before holding him out to arm’s length. “Madre de Dios!” she cried. “Look at your poor, bruised face. It looks worse in person.” She had tears in her eyes as she cupped his cheeks, before hugging him again.

Miguel chuckled and patted her on the back. “Come on, Judy, I’m fine. I just took some pills, I’ve been sleeping for days, and I’m all in one piece…really.”

We took seats at the table and Noah returned to where he’d been near Judy. “Where is everyone?” I asked. “I expected thirty people in this room, all bombarding us with bullshit.”

Noah laughed, grinning at Judy.

“I told you, right?” she said.

He high-fived her. “Fierce. So hot.”

Miguel chuckled.

I looked at him. I was lost. “What?”

“My guess?” he asked.

I nodded at him.

“My guess is that Judy probably told Noah you’d come in here all hot under the collar. Then, you’d give everyone shit about dragging your boyfriend out of our cushy hotel room when all I needed was to rest and recuperate from a ‘brutal attack from malicious thugs,’” Miguel said, using air quotes. He grinned at the tech gods. “How close was I?”

Noah let out a belly laugh. “Pretty fucking close.” He laughed again. “She actually said you would put your fist in the face of the first person who raised their voice to Miguel. So our SAC made an executive decision and gathered the others in his office so they could deal with all the particulars and work out a plan while we ate lunch.”

I deflated. She had been spot on. “Oh.”

Miguel looked at me and the minute he got a good look at my face, he joined in the laughter. “It’s exactly what you were going to do! You were building up a head of steam and stewing all the way over here in the scary, black cars, weren’t you?”

“YES!” I said that a little too loud, feeling totally embarrassed and sank lower into my chair.

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close, kissing my head before I wiggled free.

I sat forward. “Wait, so you’re not going to jail?”

“For what?” Noah said.

“For, I don’t know, hacking or something?” I waved my hand at the empty table where the laptop should have been.

The two exchanged a glance. “No. Man, you really do have a vivid imagination,” Noah said. “We requested the bank files for Roy Cabe from OPR and as far as the law firm’s accounts go, it turns out, Financial Crimes already had the bank statements from Mr. Billings himself.”

“Mr. Billings?” Miguel asked.

Noah smiled then turned to Judy who was blushing. “Turns out that between you, me, Noah, and these four walls, I didn’t have to hack into the law firm’s accounts. Emmerson Billings Esq.—Aston’s partner—already turned over all their bank records to the FBI’s White-Collar Crimes division which included all statements from their clients’ various trust accounts. Turns out, someone in their office had noticed money missing and they suspected Aston of embezzlement since the missing money came from the trust account of one of his cases. Billings looped the FBI in about two months ago.”

I gaped at her. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” Noah said. “While you were driving over here, Bruce Martin, the ASAC for White-Collar Crimes, walked into the office to ask why in the hell we were looking into his case.”

“White-Collar. I thought the case was with Financial Crimes?” I asked.

“Financial Crimes is part of the White-Collar Crimes division,” Noah clarified. “Anyway, I took Martin into the SAC’s office and the SAC offered him a seat on the taskforce.” He nodded at the door. “He’s in there with the rest of the chuckle club probably catching the DEA up with our investigation.” The door opened and we all turned to see a frowning Snow.

“Hang tight. We’re gonna be a while.” He nodded and closed the door again.

I turned to Noah. “He looked grim.”

Noah sighed. “Yeah.”

“I’m confused about something,” I said.

“What?”

“Well, I thought Lincoln Snow was the Special Agent in Charge for this office? What happened?” I asked.

“Well, that changed recently. Lincoln was the SAC. But with a young family and his wife, Sarah Connor, being the SAC for the ATF here in L.A., they decided that both having jobs with long hours and endless weekends, wasn’t working. They didn’t want their daughter, Chloe, being raised by a nanny, so Lincoln volunteered to be the one to step down. He’s the ASAC now which suits him well. He leaves the office at a decent hour and unless something out of the ordinary is going on, he has weekends off. Our new SAC is Donovan Bradley and he’s great. He allows Lincoln the flexible hours he needs with the family and he still leads our team. We’re happy but most importantly, he’s happy without all the stress.”

I smiled. “That’s great.”

Noah nodded. “Yeah, and Bradley is a fair man. He rarely loses his temper, so when he raised his voice at Lincoln this morning, I was a bit surprised. I think he didn’t like being surprised by the DEA and he took it out on Snow. Lincoln’s been briefing him with every twist and turn in the case, but as you both know, things have been moving fast. I’m pretty sure Bradley came into the office this morning, read Lincoln’s daily report on his email, got the call from the DEA, and flipped out. He came in and got updates from Judy and me, and called everyone else in. Don’t worry about Bradley.”

“I’ll reserve judgment then,” I said.

“Really,” Noah said. “We all get along with him. And even though Snow still runs our team, we like it, he likes it, and that’s the way it should be. When we have to go out of town, Max takes point so Lincoln can stay in the office unless Bradley insists he be there. So far, that’s a rare occurrence. Linc does very little field work these days, and it still works because of the way everyone on the team specializes. Having Dr. Reeves here has rounded out the team and we work very well together.”

“Good,” Miguel said.

I nodded in agreement and grimaced at Miguel. “I really feel stupid for overreacting. I’m sorry.”

Miguel smiled at me, leaning close and bumping my shoulder. “You love me. Thanks for being my bulldog.”

The door opened again, and a female agent came in carrying bags of food. She set them all down on the table, smiled, and left.

“I hope you like Chinese,” Noah said. “Judy said you would.”

“We made sure to order all your favorites,” Judy said, passing out chopsticks and napkins as Noah began opening containers.

“This is so not what I was expecting when we got here.” I handed Miguel a carton of sweet and sour eggplant and vegetables he adored.

“Thank you.” He grabbed some fried rice and filled his plate as I scooped some kung pao tofu onto steamed rice.

We ate happily for quite a while before anyone spoke again.

“So, you guys have really been through it, Raven,” Noah said.

I nodded, swallowing the food in my mouth before replying. “Yeah, it’s been a long six months.” I glanced at Miguel, who eyed me up as he bit into an eggroll. “But I wouldn’t change a thing except being shot at by a crazed guy who was mad that we broke into his house, being shot at by an ex-con, meeting a guy with a gun in a dark stairwell, being shot at by a cartel assassin, and watching Miguel getting kicked in the head. I could go on.”

“Please don’t,” Miguel grumped.

Noah snorted.

“Seriously, though, Noah, I want these guys caught and I really don’t care who does it. What’s the deal with the DEA? The look on Lincoln and Mac’s face when they heard the DEA was involved in all this—” I pointed my chopsticks at him. “That shit was scary.”

Noah laughed. “The DEA is filled with cowboys, and they don’t work well with the FBI,” he said. He seemed to think about it for a minute. “Think of it as surfer boys versus men in black suits. Is that enough of a visual?”

“I get it. The FBI is buttoned up and the DEA boys have lesser wardrobe standards.”

Noah grinned. “It goes far beyond wardrobe. The DEA spend most of their lives undercover unless they’re part of the top brass. They’re cleared to take drugs if that’s what it takes to catch a drug kingpin, and the FBI frowns on all of that except in extreme undercover circumstances. Let’s just say that the FBI, which holds the most power of any federal agency because they operate globally, have the ear of the president, and administer justice in every law enforcement jurisdiction in the country. While the DEA has its own mandate, they are limited to drug offences and offenders, and even though they operate globally as well, they are often forced to coordinate what they do—which means justifying their methods—with the FBI. It’s just a lot of politics, I guess.”

“So, the two agencies basically hate each other,” I said.

“In a nutshell.” He nodded, his beaded braids clicking like castanets.

We paused to continue eating for a few minutes before I spoke up again, pointing to his hair. “How often do you have to have that done?”

“The hair?”

“Yeah. I mean, how often do you have to do the braids and all?”

“ Mm… I can go six weeks but four weeks is better.”

“Do they have to unbraid it all and then rebraid it?”

He pursed his lips, nodding as he chewed. “Oh yeah, because they need to get to the roots.”

“Makes sense.”

“Do you have extensions?” I’d noticed the hair fell way down past his shoulders.

He nodded. “Oh, yeah.” He held up one hand showing his thumb and forefinger spread wide open. “Six or eight inches at least. My hair grows fast, but I still need extensions. My hair grows about an inch a month.”

I nodded. “Mine’s about half an inch.” I picked up a carton and pulled a wonton out, popping it in my mouth. The food was delicious.

We waited forty-five minutes after we’d cleared the food away, leaving the conference room door open to air it out while we waited for the big meeting to conclude. I made sure Miguel was doing okay and then excused myself to the breakroom to get coffee for Miguel and myself.

When I came back the entire bullpen was packed with people. There were too many to be in the conference room. I was introduced to FBI SAC, Donovan Bradley, the DEA boss, Hope Bannister, and two of her agents. Lincoln’s entire team joined us with Cassidy, Mike, and Damon. I noticed that the guy from White-Collar Crimes wasn’t there. Maybe he’d decided not to join the taskforce after all. I took a seat beside Miguel, handing him a cup of coffee.

“Thank you.” Miguel smiled, putting a hand on my knee as I was introduced to the newcomers.

“Nice to meet you.” I nodded at the DEA boss who looked like she was in her early thirties. Her two agents had a college student look to them. The SAC, Hope Bannister, was dressed in a pantsuit, but her agents, both male, were in jeans and T-shirts. I had no doubt Noah had been right if they spent most of their time undercover as drug users, pushers, or part of a gang. They were both very young, tatted up, and one of them had a septum piercing with a mop of blue hair. A late teens image but they were probably mid-twenties. FBI SAC Bradley looked directly at me from where he stood at the head of the room with Bannister.

“Sorry for the long wait, folks,” Bradley said. “Snow has fully briefed us on what’s been going on. It’s the failure of the FBI for not looping the DEA in on this investigation until this morning. Now they’re up to speed and we’ve been informed they have an undercover agent connected to this case, we asked that you be brought in so we could discuss how to work together and accomplish all our goals while getting our agent back.”

“As I’ve told SAC Bradley, we need to get Agent Willis out of that house,” Bannister said. “But even more importantly, we need Oscar Castillo and his cartel brought down once and for all. The Sanchez Cartel has been on a murderous rampage for a decade or more, laying waste to whole communities and leaving hundreds of widows, children, and other family members behind. We’re very close to making a case to take down the whole organization—” She turned to frown at Lincoln.

“That was until the FBI stuck their fingers in our pie.” Bradley opened his mouth to protest but she held up her hand. “We’ll work together going forward, SAC. As you said, the FBI couldn’t have known about SA Trevor Willis, and we admit that we aren’t good at sharing.” She turned back to us. “In any case, that’s where we are. We need to figure out how to insert Huerta, and how to keep him safe while he’s inside.”

Miguel sat forward. “What?”

My gaze went from him to Bradley, to Bannister. “What? Insert Miguel where? Inside what?”

Bannister sagged, shot Bradley a look, then turned back to us. “I’m sorry. I—you—probably should have been in the meeting. Let’s catch you up with what we want to do.”

“That would be good, because I don’t like it,” Lincoln said, crossing his arms.

“And as I’ve said, Snow, we’ve all heard about your misgivings, but we all agreed that we should talk to Mr. Huerta and get his thoughts on it before dismissing it out of hand.”

“Fine,” Snow said, looking at Mac. The big man looked just as pissed as Lincoln.

“What do you want my help with?” Miguel asked.

I reached for his hand, not caring who saw. He curled his fingers around mine, squeezing them. Even the touch of his hand did little to settle my nerves.

“In short, we want you, Mr. Huerta, to allow yourself to get taken—willingly—into the Cayman Islands compound so that we can get Oscar Castillo on tape admitting to crimes.”

I felt heat rushing over my skin as my heart began racing. I felt sick inside, like someone was squeezing all the breath out of me. My ears started buzzing and I was pretty sure I was close to passing out. I snapped out of it when she started talking again. “No! Absolutely not!”

“Raven,” Miguel admonished, “let SAC Bannister finish.”

“No!” I yanked my hand out of his and stood. “He’s not going to allow himself to be taken willingly or any other way into that house so he can be killed along with the rest of them.”

“Raven, sit down,” Miguel said.

He looked hurt and sick and just so fucking…unwell. I shook my head vigorously before glaring at the rest of them. “He’s already been nearly killed…by an FBI agent no less. You’re the experts! You put your lives on the line because it’s your jobs!”

“And we have an agent in that house too, Mr. Mathis,” Bannister said cooly.

“And I’m sorry about Trevor but he’s undercover and I’ll say it again in case any of you didn’t hear me. It’s his job.”

Miguel took hold of my wrist and tugged on it. “Raven! Sit down and let the SAC finish.” He sounded angry, embarrassed, and so hurt.

I sank into my chair, feeling sick to my stomach as I turned to him. I framed his cheeks, looking into his eyes as tears filled mine. “You’re hurt and you cannot do this…not like this.”

Miguel nodded at me, then turned back to Bannister who was standing with her arms crossed over her chest, clearly not happy with my outburst. “Tell us what you’re thinking and then we’ll tell you what we think of it.” He turned back to me. “Hear them out, Raven.”

I felt my skin flush hot as my ears began to burn. I searched the face I loved for a few seconds and then took a deep breath as he took my hand, wrapping it in his warm one. “Go on,” I said to her.

She dropped her arms. “Our thoughts were that the best way to get Oscar Castillo on tape was to have Miguel taken into the house so we could get his voice on a recording device. I readily admit it’s dangerous. I won’t lie about that, but we need his confession in order to put him away and break up the Sanchez Cartel once and for all.”

“With all those guys and automatic weapons?” I asked. “No way! For all you know Agent Willis is already dead, along with Aston, Tawny Flores, and Brian Leopard. And you don’t even know the first thing about what Alex Filmore tried to do to us!”

“Yes, they do, Raven,” Lincoln said. “They’ve been fully briefed. That’s why you see your friends from the FBI, the LAPD, and even the CIA here. We’ve laid out a timeline of events.”

I stared at him. I trusted Lincoln. He’d always been a friend but now I wasn’t so sure. To even entertain this horrifying plan, made me feel betrayed. “You’re on her side? Of course, you’re FBI!” I jumped up from my chair and fled the bullpen, hearing Miguel and the others shouting behind me. I needed air.

I jogged down the hallway and blew by the receptionist, slamming into one of the glass doors leading to the corridor outside the lobby. It pushed open slowly and I squeezed through the gap, then headed for the elevator. I stood in front of the double doors, punching the call button over and over, watching the numbers at the top as the car ascended floor by slow floor, seeming to stop on every one. I heard the double glass doors opening at the end of the corridor and then Miguel’s shout.

“Raven! Raven!”

I leaned forward and punched the button three more times. “Come on! Come on!”

“Raven! Stop being a child! Listen!”

He was walking as fast as he could, holding his head, fury written all over his face. I whirled on him. “No, they want to use you! They don’t care that you’ve been hurt! They don’t…they don’t—”

His arms came around me as he yanked me against him. To my horror, I burst into tears. “Raven…stop,” he crooned into my hair as I felt sobs rolling through me and him rubbing my back. “ Shh. It’s okay, it was just a suggestion. Shh. I won’t do it.”

I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his shirt, shaking my head against his collarbone. I heard steps coming toward us and lifted my head. Cassidy and Mike were headed our way. I pulled out of Miguel’s arms as he let go. “You can’t let them do this to Miguel, Cassidy. You and Mike have been looking out for him since he was a teenager. You know what this means? He’s going to be cut off from everyone.”

“It’s not going to happen, Raven,” Cassidy said, reaching out his hand to clasp my shoulder as he and Mike got to us. “It was the DEA’s idea and that’s what took us so long in SAC Bradley’s office. Mike and I argued against it and so did Lincoln, Mac, and everyone else on his team. We’re your friends. We all understand that it’s been years since Miguel had to face an enemy on this scale and never unarmed. It’s suicide. You’re right, but the DEA SAC insisted on presenting her idea anyway.”

I nodded, swiping at my eyes as Miguel surrounded my shoulders with his arm. He pulled me into his side; I leaned hard against him. “Okay. Okay, then.” I blew out a long breath, feeling my panic beginning to subside.

Cassidy and Mike looked at Miguel as the elevator car finally arrived. The doors swished open. “Take Raven downstairs but stay in the building. It’s not safe for you two out there. When you feel better, come back up and we’ll talk about this some more.”

“Come on, Raven.” Miguel pulled me into the elevator, and I turned, noting Cassidy and Mike’s grim expressions as the door closed. I reached for Miguel. As he pulled me into his arms; I hugged him tight.

“It’s gonna be okay, Sunshine,” he crooned into my hair. “It’s gonna be okay.”

I wasn’t sure it was ever going to be okay.