All In (Walsh and Callahan #1)

Chapter 1

Jake Walsh had been in Tampa eleven months, and this was the first time Ray had used the word urgent in a text.

Not when they'd tracked a witness to a trailer park in Polk County.

Not when the Marshals fumbled a pickup and their RICO case nearly lost its foundation.

Ray Crawford didn't do urgent. Ray did when you get a chance and let's discuss and, when things were genuinely pressing, my office, eight sharp.

A lifetime of friendship had taught Jake to read every shade of Ray's communication no different than how he'd once read terrain maps, and urgent was new.

So he'd driven in fast, parked the Range Rover, and taken the stairs because the elevator in this building operated on federal time.

Now he was sitting in Ray's office, in the chair by the window that he'd claimed the first week because it gave him sight lines to the door and the hallway, and Ray was explaining about a missing witness named Ryan Costa.

Jake was listening. Mostly.

"Costa was Vance's accountant for eleven years," Ray said. He was behind his desk, jacket off, reading glasses on, which meant he'd been here since six. "Flipped four months ago. Full cooperation agreement. Emily's been building the RICO case around his testimony."

"Emily."

"Emily Callahan. AUSA, Major Crimes. She's lead on Vance." Ray turned to him. "You haven't met her yet?"

"I've seen the name on case files. Callahan. Files are tight." Jake stretched one leg out, crossed his arms. "So Costa's in the wind."

"Two weeks. Missed his last three check-ins. Marshals can't find him, which is embarrassing for them and a problem for us." Ray took off his glasses and set them on the desk. "I need you to find him."

Jake considered this for approximately three seconds.

A cooperating witness who'd gone dark wasn't unusual.

People got scared. People got stupid. People convinced themselves that hiding from the government was somehow safer than testifying against the man who'd been laundering money through shell companies for a decade.

Costa wasn't trained. He wasn't connected.

He was an accountant from Clearwater who'd cooked books until the math caught up with him, and now he was hiding from lawyers and Marshals like that was a plan.

Jake had found high-value targets in Helmand Province before lunch. This was a milk run.

"When's she getting here?" Jake asked.

Ray checked his watch. "Should be any minute. She and Claire are—"

"Claire?"

"Claire Harper. Emily's best friend, also an AUSA here. They came up together." Ray studied him. "You'll like her."

Footsteps in the hallway. Two sets. One purposeful and quick, the stride of someone who moved through this building like it belonged to her. The other lighter, easier, keeping pace but not matching it.

Ray's door was open. Jake was already turning toward it when she appeared in the frame.

Emily Callahan walked into Ray Crawford's office like she was about to cross-examine everyone in it.

She was carrying a coffee in one hand and a file in the other, and she was mid-sentence, talking to the woman behind her, about a motion deadline. Her hair was down, dark blonde, just past her shoulders. Professional but not stiff. A blouse that fit her as confidence fits, without apology.

Then she looked at him.

Jake had been in rooms that went still. He'd been in rooms where the air changed because something significant had entered. He'd stood in briefing rooms at Bragg where a single piece of intel rearranged every assumption in the building.

This was not like that.

This was worse.

Emily Callahan's eyes found his and Jake Walsh, who had walked into ambushes with his pulse barely touching seventy, lost his footing without moving.

She recovered before he did. Whoever she'd been talking to was forgotten. The motion deadline, abandoned and her expression assembled itself back to composed and professional, almost hiding the half-second where it hadn't been.

Almost.

"Ray." She didn't look away from Jake when she said it. "I wasn't told we'd have company."

"Emily Callahan, Jake Walsh." Ray gestured between them with the calm authority of a man who was either oblivious to what had just happened in his office or understood it completely. "Jake's our contract investigator. He's going to find Costa."

"Jake Walsh." She said his name like she was testing it for structural integrity. She set her coffee on the edge of Ray's desk and extended her hand. "AUSA Callahan."

Jake stood. Took her hand. Her grip was firm and professional and the contact traveled through his entire nervous system like a message he'd been waiting to receive.

"He didn't mention you were beautiful."

The words left him before any reasonable filter could intervene. Not because Jake Walsh was reckless, not because he was unprofessional, but because Emily Callahan was standing three feet from him and his brain had apparently decided that honesty was more important than strategy.

Nobody moved. Jake registered it without any shift in the room's atmosphere, automatically, with the same instinct that had kept him alive in places where stillness meant something was about to go wrong. Except nothing was going wrong. It was going very right, and he had absolutely no plan for it.

Emily's hand was still in his. Her eyes had widened by a fraction, enough that someone who hadn't spent seven years reading micro-expressions might have missed it. The woman behind her, Claire, made a sound that was trying very hard not to be a laugh.

"Excuse me?" Emily said.

"Ray." Jake released her hand but didn't step back. Didn't break eye contact. "He told me about your case record. Your conviction rate. Your clerkship. How you build a RICO case from the ground up." He held her eyes. "He left that part out."

"That part isn't relevant to the case."

"Probably not." Jake smiled. He couldn't help it. "But it's relevant to everything else."

Emily stared at him. Jake could see her running the assessment behind those hazel eyes: Is he competent? Is he trustworthy? Is he going to be a problem? The answers, he knew, were yes, yes, and absolutely.

Claire had sat in the other chair. Jake noticed how she'd positioned herself, close enough to Emily to support, far enough to observe. A woman who understood spatial dynamics.

"Ray mentioned you're former military," Emily said. "Special Operations."

"Delta." Jake said it in the same manner he said everything about his service. Like a fact, not a credential. "Seven years."

"And before that?"

"Rangers. And before that, college. And before that, high school. You want my kindergarten records?"

"I want to know who's looking for my witness."

"Someone who finds people." Jake didn't look away. "Someone who's going to find him, bring him back safe, and make sure your case stays on track. And if that's not enough for you, ask Ray. He'll tell you the rest."

Emily glanced at Ray. Whatever she saw in his expression was apparently sufficient, because when she turned back to Jake, the look on her face had shifted. Not her walls. Those were still up, still reinforced. But behind them, in the place where she made decisions, she was considering.

"Fine," she said. "Walk me through your approach."

"I'll need everything you have on Costa. Financial records, family contacts, patterns of behavior. Last three months of check-in reports." Jake paused. "And I'll need to work with you directly. Not through channels. Not through intermediaries. You and me."

"Is that how you typically work?"

"It's how I work when the case matters."

"All cases matter."

"This one matters to you." Jake watched her face. "I can tell by how you’re holding that file."

Emily looked down at her hands. She was gripping the folder tighter than a case file required, and the fact that he'd noticed traveled across her features like weather she hadn't checked the forecast for.

"You read people," she said.

"Occupational habit."

"Is that what this is? Professional observation?"

His phone rang.

Jake pulled it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and held it toward Ray. Ray leaned forward, read the name, and his eyebrows rose a quarter inch.

"I gotta take this." Jake was already moving toward the door. He answered as he walked. “Eric. Yeah, I got your message. Hold on one second."

He stopped in the doorway. Turned back.

Emily was watching him. So was Claire. Ray eased into his chair with the posture of a man who could see exactly what was about to happen and had decided to let it.

"Come have drinks with me and my friends tonight," Jake said. "Eight o'clock. The Anchor. Bar in Clearwater."

Emily stared at him. "What?"

"Come have drinks with me and my friends."

"You're asking me out."

"Yes."

"No, I—"

"Bring Claire." Jake glanced at the woman beside Emily. "She looks like she knows how to have fun."

Claire's eyebrows rose. "You're inviting me based on vibes?"

"I'm inviting you because you've been fighting not to laugh since this briefing started."

He put the phone back to his ear. "Hold on, Eric. I'm dealing with something important." Then he looked back at Emily, whose face was showing the early signs of a flush she was going to be furious about later. "Well?"

She smiled. Then erased it. "I'll think about it."

Jake grinned. The kind that started before he gave it permission. He pointed at Ray. "Tell her where it is."

Then he was gone, his voice in the hallway shifting to the clipped, easy shorthand of a man who had a DEA agent on the line and a bar to get to and a woman in his head who'd just smiled at him before she remembered she wasn't going to.

Emily stared at the door he'd disappeared through. She could hear him in the hallway, laughing at whatever was said, his voice fading as he moved toward the stairs.

"Who is he talking to?" she asked.

"Eric Rodriguez. DEA liaison he ran joint ops with in Afghanistan.

" Ray leaned back. "Still active, still connected, still owes Jake about a dozen favors.

Jake's got a network that makes my contact list look like a phone book from 1985.

FBI, DEA, ATF, plus a dozen guys from his unit who landed in three-letter agencies after they got out. "

Ray paused. Looked at Emily. Looked at Claire, who had given up any pretense of professional composure.

"Everything he runs is sourced and clean," Ray said. "His intel will hold up in your courtroom. That's a promise."

Emily was still looking at the empty doorway.

"He just put a DEA agent on hold," she said. "To ask me to drinks."

"He did."

"In the middle of a case briefing."

"Also true."

"And you're not going to say anything about that."

Ray leaned back and let out a sound that lived somewhere between a laugh and a concession. The sound of a man who'd watched his best friend walk into a room and do exactly what he'd known he was going to do once he'd decided to put them in the same room.

"Well," Ray said. "Now you've met Jake Walsh."