Chapter 3 #2
“Jana and Paolo Russo.” He placed another set of photos beside them, again with the husband on top and the wife below.
These ones showed a couple with matching dark hair.
Paolo had thick brows and olive skin, Jana had delicate facial bones and sharp eyes.
“He’s a venture capitalist, and she’s a stay-at-home mom. ”
He produced two more photos and laid them out in the same order.
“And Sandra Whitley and Michael Vassar. He’s a web designer, and she’s a—”
“Stay-at-home mom?” I finished for him, sensing a trend.
He smiled sideways at me, a hint of smugness shading his eyes. “Actually, no. She’s a freelance writer.”
I picked up Sandra’s photo with a curious frown. The woman coyly smiled back like she guarded a secret. Something in her eyes put an uneasy prickle in my belly. I set the photo down. “So, what are they up to?”
Bray straightened Sandra Whitley’s photo so it lined up perfectly with Melanie’s beside it. I wondered if it was a nervous habit. Or maybe he was just a control freak. “We have reason to believe Melanie, Sandra, and Jana are key players in a smuggling operation.”
I balked and managed to keep a quiet whoa from slipping out.
I had seen many things over my years aiding the DSA, but I never would have guessed the Stepford Wives would be up to no good.
I fully expected Bray to point to the husbands, or perhaps suggest the whole set was involved in some underground sex cult.
I traced a fingertip over Sandra’s photo again since it was closest, my mind running wild with potential. “What’s their operation?”
Bray reached out and straightened the photo again. “Baby products,” he said with such sincerity, I thought it had to be a joke.
“Are you serious?”
His face said he was completely serious.
“The baby goods market is a nearly seventy-billion-dollar-a-year industry. Do you know how much a quality stroller costs? The BuggyBaby X3 is the hottest status symbol on the market right now and retails for almost nine hundred dollars. These women are running some backdoor scheme getting goods imported illegally and reselling them to turn a profit. The problem is, I can’t find their supplier or where they keep their merchandise.
They have to have a warehouse somewhere with the numbers they’re turning over. ”
The sudden image of Sandra Whitley hawking a stroller in an alley almost made me laugh. I bit my lips because Bray was not laughing. “What evidence do you have?”
He slipped a new photo from his file, this one of a shiny black SUV. “Well, for one thing, Ms. Whitley recently got a new Porsche, and the financials don’t add up.”
A spark of irritation sizzled at the back of my throat, and I couldn’t stop it coming out my mouth. “Because a woman couldn’t afford that car? You said she’s a freelance writer.”
Bray frowned. “That’s a ninety-thousand-dollar car. Unless she’s ghostwriting for the president, she’s not making that kind of money.”
I silently and reluctantly agreed with him.
“But the real red flag is her husband. Michael Vassar recently got laid off, and she somehow pulls this beauty into the driveway a few weeks later?”
He made a good point, but I felt the need to play devil’s advocate. It was something I did with Wallace all the time. Poke holes in the story, find the weak spots. It only served my benefit to know all the vulnerabilities.
“Maybe they are saving face. Husband gets fired, they don’t want anyone to know, so they buy a status car.”
He pursed his lips like he was considering it, and I watched the line of his jaw lift. The tiny scar stretched. “Maybe so, but even then, where did the money come from? I checked with the dealer: paid for in full on purchase. Cash.”
I involuntarily scoffed. The rules for who could and couldn’t run around with bags of money were drawn nearly parallel with those marking social class divisions.
With the right skin color, outfit, and name, I could walk into a car dealership with ninety grand in my purse and drive off the lot, no problem.
But someone else would be questioned as to how they came into the money in the first place.
In some cases, they would probably be accused of stealing it.
Sandra Whitley, blonde, brown eyes, five foot five, one-hundred-twenty pounds according to her driver’s license, fell into the former camp, and the thought made me realize, with the right clothes on, so did I.
Well, so did Lauren Thomas.
And it was that moment I understood why I had been flown across the country to suburbia.
I looked up at Bray, who had stood beside me to lean over the photos. “So, you want me to infiltrate their operation. Their baby operation.”
“Baby products,” he corrected with a nod. “Don’t say baby operation; it gives the wrong idea.”
He made a good point. Baby operation could mean something else entirely.
“And yes. I can’t crack them, so that’s where you come in.” He placed a hand on the table and angled his body toward me.
I eyed the length of his arm, the curve of his thumb where it rested atop the photos. His hands were clean, soft. I guessed he did a lot of desk work. “How exactly do I come in to this case, Agent Bray?”
His lips split into a grin, and he picked up the center photo. “Lucky for us, Melanie Browning needs a new nanny.”
A laugh burst from my mouth. I had posed as many things over the years: a student, an art gallerist, an insurance agent, a cult member, a drug smuggler, a radicalized nutjob on the verge of domestic terrorism, but this … This might have been my hard limit.
“A nanny? I don’t know anything about kids.”
Bray gave a pleasant chuckle. “Come on, you have to have nieces and nephews or something. Friends with kids?”
I gave him a stare so flat it could have penetrated lead. “Have you read my file?”
His smile dropped, and I saw his Adam’s apple bob when he gulped. “I read what I could. Parts of it are classified.” His voice hitched with interest, but now was not the time to get into that element of my past.
“Then you know I have no siblings and had no childhood because my mom died when I was twelve and my father was a career criminal who used me as bait. Then when I was eighteen, he got himself sent to prison and almost took me with him. Lucky for me, the DSA was there to prey on a vulnerable young woman who bargained immunity in exchange for a life of servitude. Or is that last part not in my file?” I gave him an artificially sweet smile.
He looked mortified.
“So, in case it’s not clear, no, I don’t have any nieces or nephews.
And you have to have friends in order to have friends with kids.
Kind of a prerequisite, no? Hard to keep any gal pals around when you’re constantly lying about your identity and moving cities all the time.
” My tone dripped with sarcasm, and a look of genuine remorse smoothed over his face.
“Look, Lauren, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just thought …”
I waited for him to finish his thought, but he didn’t. He left the sting of my new name lodged in my chest like a thorn.
“It’s fine. All part of the job.” I gave him a tight smile, which didn’t reach my eyes.
Bray tried to smile back, and most of it ended up in his eyes.
The bottomless blue-gray swam with sympathy.
It turned that thorn into something soft and warm.
He released a tight breath and picked up Melanie’s photo.
Back to business. “She’s kind of the queen bee of the neighborhood.
I figure you get close to her, and we get close to the whole operation from the inside. ”
I took the photo and studied it. Melanie Browning’s shiny smile reminded me of a tiger. I got the sense she knew how to hunt and enjoyed the thrill of toying with her prey. “What happened to her old nanny?”
“She fired her.”
I had a feeling I knew the answer to my next question—or at least I knew what the answer would not be—but I asked anyway. “How many nannies has Melanie Browning fired?”
A telling beat of silence passed.
“Four.”
I scoffed, hard, just as the doorbell rang.
Bray’s hand snapped out and gripped my arm.
Not forcefully, but protectively, and I put a little more faith in his reflexes.
I felt the warmth of his curled fingers through my hoodie and decided not to shake him off.
When his other hand moved to his holster, a nervous tingle started at the base of my spine.
“Who’s that?” he whispered.
“Hopefully Wallace coming to save me from this,” I muttered. “Why are you whispering and reaching for your gun?”
He looked down as if he suddenly realized he was holding on to me and his weapon. He dropped his grip from both and began shuffling all the photos back into a folder. “Sorry. Just … be careful.”
I wasn’t sure what I needed to be careful about in a place where contraband baby products were enough to call in one of the most secret off-the-record branches of the government, but still, I set off to answer the door with caution.