Undercover Brother
“Hello, Detective,” Andrew says. He seems resigned to see her. “Please, I go by Trey now.”
Andrew fucking Locke is sitting at the conference table. Busted up, yes, but uncuffed, in civvies, a laptop and notebook in front of him. Like he’s working on the case, not the suspect she knows him to be.
Theresa has rarely been incandescent with rage, but here she is, practically shaking, trying to keep her temper under control.
Being kept out of the conversation because she didn’t have clearance was bad enough.
But the fact that the FBI had Andrew in custody and didn’t tell her or Drake immediately is unconscionable.
“What are you doing here?” she demands. “You look like you should be in the hospital.”
“Yeah. Got sideways with a dude who’s been tracking me for a few days.”
“Let me guess. Blond? Curly hair? Forced you to leave the Atlanta airport?”
“That’s the one. His name is Alex Durov. Total bastard.”
Theresa takes a menacing step toward Baldwin. She can hear the wild fury in her own voice. “Aleksey Ivanovich Durov, to be exact. I had to dig that information from a stone. You had an ID this whole time and didn’t share it?”
“You didn’t come to me with the ID, either, Detective. Now, let’s all sit down.” He shuts the door, ushering them in. It locks behind them, a clunk that screams secure. Theresa realizes the walls are covered in photographs and groupings of people. This is an operation of some sort.
She scratches her head, just under her temple, as if she can make it all make sense somehow. Drake’s jaw is twitching; he’s grinding his teeth. Andrew—no, Trey—looks miserable and exhausted.
“Have you seen Brooklyn?” he asks.
“Of course I have. I’ve been interrogating her for days, as much as one can a woman with a head injury. Why did you try to kill your wife?”
“Wasn’t me,” he says with finality.
“I don’t believe you,” she snarls. “She’s hurt, she almost died right in front of me. And she thinks you’re dead. How could you do that? Again? We all know you got away with it last time.”
Andrew shifts, and Theresa tenses, ready for him if he lunges at her. But Baldwin grabs her by the collar like she’s a cat who needs to be scruffed.
“Hey, hey, take it down a notch, Detective. We’ll explain everything.”
He practically shoves her into a chair.
Drake is glowering. “Take your hands off her, SAC, or we’ll be having more than words.”
Baldwin raises both hands in mock surrender. “Can’t have her attacking my asset before we have a chance to explain.”
“He’s your CI?” Theresa asks, incredulous.
“Not exactly,” Baldwin says. “Coffee?”
At her Gorgon stare, he sighs and dives in.
“I remind you of your NDA. You’re being read in because I don’t see any other options at this point. I can’t have you wrecking this case just as we’re about to wrap it up.”
“Yes, okay. I am bound by the NDA. So is Agent Drake. We acknowledge that, obviously, on the record. Now . . . talk.”
If John Baldwin is put off by her demeanor, he doesn’t show it. He waits for them to settle, like a schoolmaster.
“I run a highly classified international task force that’s in charge of some very sensitive, specific actions. We’re a multiple-agency group that runs completely off book.”
“Black ops?” Drake asks.
“Not exactly. Our job is to police the operators who are running the black ops. Sometimes, the power vested in the men and women who are asked to do less-than-savory things for our government can go to their heads. They start acting beyond the scope of work they’ve been assigned.
We bring them back to the fold and keep them in check, one way or another.
I’m not going to go into more detail about it, but I will disclose that Andrew has been a part of Operation Angelmaker for a decade.
We pulled him from his Air Force service after the crash for a particular task.
To monitor Patricia and Robert Gussin and their organization, the Gussin Group. ”
“They killed Chloe,” Andrew says, voice flat and emotionless. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Wait a minute,” Drake says. “The Gussins killed your first wife?”
“Wait a second,” Theresa says at the same time. “What crash?”
Baldwin takes a seat and waves to Andrew. “The floor’s yours, kid.”
“No, they didn’t kill her. Not directly.
The organization they work with did. Chloe was a warning to my father.
He got crossways with the Gussins’ organization, and she was collateral damage.
It was supposed to be me. They were there to kill me.
We don’t know what happened, other than they killed Chloe and then took off.
I was supposed to be home, but I missed my flight. Remember?”
Theresa does remember this. “But the Gussins are Brooklyn’s family. Not blood relatives, as we’ve discovered, but they’ve acted as her aunt and uncle her whole life. How in the world are they tied in to you, too?”
“My father was being pressured to give up information about the classified work he was doing with Lockheed. He wouldn’t play ball.
So they approached me. I was in a prime position for recruitment.
Air Force grad, just starting my career, lots of overseas travel, and a young wife who could be leveraged.
They wanted me to provide them with documents of the new weapons systems my dad was working on.
The bastards told me my father worked for them as well.
They offered money, just enough to make me think they were genuinely serious.
I didn’t believe them about my dad. And I wasn’t about to betray my country.
I told them I’d think about it and went to the feds instead. ”
Baldwin clicks his tongue approvingly. “A brave move. You’d be shocked at how many of our servicemen and -women are approached to engage in light espionage.
Little things here and there. It adds up.
Happily, many of them do report the contact, and sometimes, we’re able to leverage ourselves right back.
We did that with Trey. Gave him the means and material to go back and say yes, he’d be happy to work with them. ”
“And then my plane went down. We lost all flight control, the electronics went on the fritz, so we had to parachute out. It was labeled a training accident, but I knew it was more than that. Planes don’t just seize up like that.
And I was right. The black box showed that the flight software had a bug in it.
” He shudders, and Theresa starts to understand why he doesn’t like to fly.
A plane crash? She would have second thoughts about strapping in, too.
“Jeez. Not cool.”
“Not cool at all. We assumed I’d been made.
My dad pulled some strings, and my service was officially severed.
I headed home to surprise Chloe, not knowing someone had been sent to take me out in person.
They ended up killing Chloe instead.” His voice is thick with tears now.
“How you thought I could do that, Theresa. You know I loved her.”
“Then why did you run?”
“I didn’t.”
“Trey came across my radar not long after Chloe’s death,” Baldwin says.
“Several months later, we saw an opportunity to insert him into a long-term undercover position. We sent him to Mexico to get to know Brooklyn Thomas, with the express goal of getting close to the Gussins. They are bad people. Very bad. Gussin is the bank for multiple cartels. He’s laundering their money through TGG under the auspices of building venture capital funding.
His brother, as I know you’ve discovered, was in charge of trafficking the goods.
“Unfortunately for the Gussins, Roman likes his blow a little too much. He’s sloppy.
They had to remove him from the organization when he was indicted, but his supply lines were still intact.
It gave us an inroad. We took it. Trey has walked a fine line for a decade, playing both sides as we built the case. ”
Theresa’s jaw is on the floor now.
Drake taps a pencil on the table. “So your marriage to Brooklyn is a total farce? That’s pretty cold, don’t you think?”
“It’s not a farce at all. I love Brook and the kids with everything I am.
She’s the one good thing about this accursed situation.
I fell hard when I met her. I know it was less than a year after Chloe’s death, but I was sad and lonely, and they wanted me to get close to her.
It wasn’t exactly a hardship. We fell in love. ”
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” Baldwin says. “But it helped. Brook brought Trey into the family, and Robert Gussin recognized how smart he was and trained him himself. We’ve been able to watch every dime move through the system for several years now.”
“What are you waiting for?” Drake asks. “Why not wrap it up now, if you have that information?”
“Because the case isn’t fully ready yet. You know how it is, Agent Sheehan. Sometimes we have to let things play out. There are people over the Gussins, and we need to take them down, too.”
“So why were you stealing funds?” Theresa asks Andrew. “So you could get out?”
“I wasn’t. I was playing the game. Move money around, replace what’s lost. Bob has been ripping off the cartels for a few years now.
When they caught wind of it, he blamed me.
Went to the FBI and said I’d been stealing, made it look all aboveboard.
The bastard tried to put a rope around my neck.
I’ve had a target on my back ever since.
“And that was it, I was out. I took Brook and the kids and ran. But someone got wind of it and followed us. I firmly believe they diverted us to Atlanta somehow, which means they were watching me. My computer had a monitoring program illegally installed on it, called Pegasus. I’m sure Bob did it somehow.
It has keystroke analysis. They managed to get in there and track my every move.
“And then at the airport, I was approached by Durov, who said he’d kill Brook and the kids if I didn’t walk out of the airport. I’m not stupid. These people are vicious. I thought my family was safely on the plane to Italy. That they’d fly without me. I was wrong.
“I got away from Durov in Atlanta and texted Brook to meet me in Venice. When she told me she hadn’t gotten on the plane, that she was with Eden Barrow, of all people, I panicked.
I went to Eden’s house to get her and saw the ambulance.
I couldn’t grab the kids at that point. Once Margot got to them, I knew they’d be safer with her and guards than with me. ”
Theresa is still trying to wrap her head around this. “You’ve left Brook and the kids unprotected this whole time. And Alex Durov has been doing his damnedest to kill Brooklyn since you left.”
“She’s had guards on her room from the moment we realized he was coming for her.
The kids are under constant surveillance.
They’ve been much safer away from me.” He gestures to his own injuries.
“We’ve tangled a few times already. There’s a body at the Knights Inn, by the way.
No idea who he is, but he was driving the SUV that took me from the airport. ”
“Otto Deppe. Low-level lowlife. What about your parents?”
Trey shakes his head, eye shining. “Another message,” he manages. “You know I couldn’t do that.”
Drake has been quiet through all of this. He comes to life with an annoyed growl. “So what the hell is your tie to Durov? How does he fit in all of this?”
Baldwin gets up and points to a photo on the wall.
A man with curly blond hair and ice-chip eyes stares out from a passport photo.
“Serious bad guy. He’s a bagman for the cartel.
Has ties all over Europe, used to run drugs.
He went off the radar a decade ago. No one’s seen anything from him until he showed up in Atlanta this week. ”
“He was in jail in France for a while, then jumped ship. Interpol has a Red Notice out for him.”
“Yes, I saw that. And now you’re up to speed,” Baldwin says.
Theresa scoffs. “Sort of. What’s the plan here, Andr––sorry, Trey? What are you going to do, take off and leave them behind again?”
“Of course not. How can you think that? Everything I’m doing is to keep Brooklyn and the kids safe. Everything.”
Baldwin gestures to the wall. “Our hand’s being forced.
Durov thinks Trey is dead. He dumped him on the side of the road in rural Tennessee last night.
But there are too many people peeking under the covers for this to stay quiet much longer.
” He lets the words linger, and Theresa knows he’s talking about her and Drake.
“We’re keeping Brooklyn and the kids under constant surveillance while Trey finishes moving the money around so we can finalize the case.
We can’t tip off the cartel—or the Gussins, for that matter—that we’re wrapping them up.
This can still go sideways on us. The Justice Department is involved, so are Homeland, the SEC, and the CIA.
We are coordinating. We can’t take down the Gussins without taking down the cartel, too. ”
“And when is that going to happen?” Drake asks.
“In the next twenty-four hours. I assume we can count on you to keep out of it?”
Drake looks at Theresa, who nods. “Yes. But I need something from you, too. I need to know who killed Chloe. Because if it wasn’t you, the only lead I have is a blond-haired man who stayed overnight in a barn near Malogen the night after the murder.”
“It was Aleksey,” Andrew says quietly. “He told me, in the car, leaving the airport. That if I didn’t cooperate, he would do to Brooklyn what he did to Chloe.”
“Okay,” Theresa says. “Then he is my responsibility. So where is he now?”
“You don’t want to go up against him, Theresa,” Andrew says. “Let the task force handle him. He’s dangerous.”
She flexes her hand. The stitches itch and pull. “So am I,” she says. “So am I.”
Andrew follows them out into the hall, limping. He looks hard. Tired. Determined.
“Theresa. If you’re going after him, I’m coming.”
“You absolutely are not. Look at you. You can barely stand up. Stay here and finish your job. I’ll handle the rest.”