Deadly Bounty: SCVC Taskforce Romantic Suspense Series, Book 11 Page 9
Joe stared at her as if he didn’t get the connection either. She wrote one word on a clean sheet of paper and held it up. He frowned, and shook his head, still not understanding.
And then, as if the lightbulb went on, his face changed. “Veterans,” he said. “Military personnel. Law enforcement. First responders, like the Aztec bombing. They were all patriots.”
Harris was quiet for a tense moment, the silence weighted as he processed that information. “Gatherings like these always have law enforcement and security around. Lots of terrorists try to hit those types of targets.”
Sam tapped the word on her notebook. Joe nodded. “And every one also featured active military or veterans, I bet. Again, I know you’re thinking that’s not unusual for terrorists to pick on, but perhaps in this case, there’s a deeper link.”
“And that is?”
Her theory was too long to write out and she made a slashing motion across her neck. Joe understood, and played dumb. “Let me think about it and get back to you tomorrow. Dinner you said? Shoot me your address and the time. I’ll be there.”
Harris agreed and the two disconnected. Joe put down his phone. “Explain this connection to patriotism and the bombers,” he said, pointing to her chair.
All she really wanted to do was crawl into bed with him, get some sleep, feel his arms around her. Instead, Sam launched into her next conspiracy theory.
13
Sam woke with bright light streaming into the room. The smell of coffee teased her nose and she found Joe placing a cup on the bedside table.
“Sorry,” he said. “But it’s time to get up, sleeping beauty.”
Jack-Jack jumped on the bed and landed on her chest, making her oomph. She tried to move him aside. Undaunted, he began fervently licking her face, and she again, shoved at him, laughing. “Stop that,” she chastised, even though she actually liked it.
She’d always wanted a dog, but her parents moved so much, they would never let her. Plus, because of their jobs, they were often gone and had to drop her at one of her grandparents’ homes, or with people they trusted if they were out of town at the same time.
She rubbed sleep from her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon.” Joe put his hands on his hips. “We need to go over a few things before I leave.”
She reached for the coffee, and tried to keep her eyes off his chest. He was wearing nothing but jeans, his bare feet poking out from the bottom hems. She knew him well enough to know he was flaunting those hard pecs and chiseled abs intentionally. “Where are you going?”
Jack-Jack licked her ear, making her spill coffee. Joe chuckled. “I have to act normal, go about my day. It’s not unusual for me to not go home at night, or be gone for a day or so when I’m chasing a bounty. But with all the scrutiny on me, I don’t want to raise suspicions more than I already have.”
She downed more of the warm coffee, enjoying the scent and taste. Such a simple thing, and yet, one she had missed to the extreme while on the run. “Are you seriously going to dinner at Harris’s tonight?”
Joe strolled to the door, his gaze falling on the t-shirt and shorts she’d worn to bed. “Since I’m contracting for the taskforce, I don’t see that I have a lot of choice. I’m not sure what he’s up to, but I doubt this is a friendly gathering. Harris and his team are smart. They want to pick my brain and see how loyal I am to the cause, I’m betting.”
She rolled her shoulders, easing some of the stiffness. She hadn’t slept that good in ages. “Let me take a shower and I’ll be down.”
“Another shower?”
She kissed Jack-Jack on the top of the head and stood, setting down the coffee to stretch. Sleeping in a bed, enjoying morning coffee, hot showers…she might never get enough of those small necessities of life again. “Yes. After you’ve been living on the streets this long without running water, you can criticize. Until then, shut up.”
He chuckled and pointed at his bag that he’d thrown on the room’s straight back chair in the corner. “Figured you might want to repack that and hide it outside somewhere for easy access. Under the back porch might be a good spot.”
Giving her one last look at his broad chest, he grinned and left.
Jack-Jack stayed as she grabbed the cup and go-bag and proceeded to do exactly that.
Most of the original contents were still inside. She added items from the stashes of girly stuff in the bathroom, some yoga pants, a couple tank tops, and tampons. The bag held two TracFones with phone cards, two waterproof bags surfers used to keep phones and valuables dry and free of sand, and his stun gun. There were also envelopes of cash in various denominations. Once she was satisfied, she placed it by the bedroom door and hopped in the shower.
After a too-brief rinse, she found Joe making pancakes, Jack-Jack at his feet in the kitchen. There was a plate of crispy bacon on the counter, and she was pretty sure the dog had already had a slice or two, but he was a bottomless pit.
She didn’t blame him. Her stomach growled at the smell of the food and she made her way to the coffee pot to refill her empty cup.
Joe was still shirtless, the bastard. He gave her the side-eye, looking over her attire, and she tried to keep the grin off her face. Two could play at the silly seduction game. She’d found a pair of cutoff shorts, a tube top, and an oversized Roxy tank.
She’d scraped her wet hair into a tight ponytail at the back of her head after using temporary hair color to turn it a rich red.
In one of the costume drawers, she’d found colored contacts that turned her eyes a bright emerald green. She flashed her false lashes at Joe and leaned a hip against the counter. “Did you sleep okay on the couch?”
He flipped one of the cakes and nodded. “I assume you found the bed to your liking?”
The only thing that would’ve made it better was having him beside her. “Any news on Kyle’s death?”
“It’s been reported.” He layered several pancakes on a plate and handed it to her. “Nothing so far has been leaked about his involvement with the government or you.”
She accepted the breakfast and nearly tripped over Jack-Jack as the dog stayed right under her feet, hoping she might share. Maneuvering around him, she made it to the table, where butter, syrup, and assorted jellies were laid out. “Yet,” she emphasized. “They may not plant that idea in the media, but I bet they have within the law organizations looking for me.”
After turning off the stove, he grabbed his own plate, carrying the bacon with it. He sat down and started to dig in, and she sighed heavily, trying to keep her eyes off his chest. “Guess I’ll find out when I talk to Walsh and Harris today,” he said.
Hunger gnawing at her, she dug in as well, nearly swooning at the delicious food.
Joe consumed about half of his portion before he stopped, wiped his fingers on a napkin, sucked down some coffee, and began to nibble on a slice of bacon. “So if someone purposely instigated the bombings in all these different places in California, trying to target law enforcement, military, and first responders, what was their motivation?”
She swallowed a mouthful and followed it with coffee. “Funding. A biggie at the top of my list. After 9/11, we poured money into counterterrorism, both domestic and abroad, but in recent years, a lot of that’s been diverted. Homeland and the other alphabet agencies claim we haven’t had any major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since, because of the efforts everyone’s been making, but along with that comes a decrease in America’s focus on the subject. Most counterterrorism organizations have seen funding sources dry up or be diverted to other areas.”
She chewed on a slice of bacon. “People have been moved around and shifted into other departments. Walsh’s domestic team is a fraction of what Homeland had here five years ago. He’s running a huge section of the country with a handful of people culled from the various organizations. Dupé’s taskforces have dwindled from north to south, under orders of the Justice Department and FBI headquarters.”
“You’re suggesting treason.” She could see skepticism in his face. “Someone behind the scenes starts blowing up soft targets throughout the state in order to cry terrorism and increase funding for security measures?”
She didn’t care if he was skeptical. “Follow the money, Joe. It’s happened before. The public doesn’t hear about such stuff, but you and I both know it’s a possibility. Look at urban crime and the war on drugs. Taskforces and law enforcement want citizens to feel secure, and they manipulate the numbers to make it look like violent crime is down or drug related crimes are static. Then, when the higher-ups have no facts to substantiate that gangs, drug dealers, and the violent crime rates are rising, what’s the first thing they do? They beg for money, and our government sucks at doling it out. Cities and counties become gridlocked, even D.C. shuts down at times. Why? Because legislators can’t pass a simple budget to keep their offices open. By the time they look at something like domestic terrorism, they don’t have a clue how to budget for it. The only time they get into the nitty gritty is when there’s an outcry from the public.”
“That comes when people don’t feel safe, and the best way to inspire terror is to threaten their homes, families, and independence.”
“Exactly.”
He finished off his slice of bacon. “And that’s what you were investigating? Who did you suspect—the Bureau? Homeland?”
“That’s what I was trying to investigate. Along with my undercover assignment with Jimmy T, I was slowly putting pieces together. When I took my preliminary findings to Frank, he laughed at me. Literally laughed. Called me paranoid and always trying to stir the pot. He said, ‘I love you, Sammy girl, but this is nuts even for you.’”
Frank Jesson had taken Alison’s place after she was fired.
Joe leaned back, grabbed a folder from the counter and slapped it on the table. Sam wiped off her fingers and lifted the flap to peek inside. The top sheet looked like an organizational chart of the FBI. There were X’s through some of the names. “What’s this?”
“I looked for connections and possibilities, running on your theory. Not just about who set you up with Jimmy T, but about this idea that someone on the inside was coordinating the bombings. These are the people I crossed off.”
Most of those listed had a red X through them, including her boss, Frank, and several of the other mid-level managers. “I could have told you Frank and these others”—she pointed to several names—“couldn’t have fallen into the suspect category.”
“Frank was easy. I knew he didn’t join the West Coast FBI until last fall.”
When she and Joe were still together. The unsaid words hung in the air. “Of course.” They’d talked about it in passing after Alison had been fired and Sam refused to take her job. “Would have been difficult for him to coordinate bombings that occurred earlier in the year from his previous post in the South. Besides, he was completely opposite to Alison. Very supportive. I was his favorite—he told me that many times.”
“What about some of the others?” Joe stood to refill his coffee, and tried not to let the remark about Sam’s boss tweak jealousy in him. The guy was old enough to be her dad, for Christ’s sake. He was glad she’d had a decent superior after Alison had been such a train wreck. “I ruled out a few because they wouldn’t have the means to pull off something as intricate as this. It would take someone inside the counterterrorism group, don’t you think?”
She eyed the chart. “Definitely. Our suspect had to have access to potential terrorists and a means of contacting them.” Several were circled as possibilities. Two were on her list as well. “He or she needed access to databases as well as the physical contacts and resources.”
Joe had been with the Bureau for nearly eight years before resigning. He was right about the perpetrator probably being in the counterterrorism department. Someone like him, who worked kidnappings and missing persons, would have little access to potential perpetrators or the ways to coordinate the bombings. There were still four people circled. The most logical made her stomach flip—Victor Dupé.
He was a god in the West Coast FBI, and although she’d never met him, she looked up to him. He seemed bigger than life, infallible, garnering the admiration and respect of everyone who worked under him. Plus, since he’d swept Olivia off her feet, Sam hated the idea he could be dirt.
Dr. Walsh had a similar fan club.
In Southern California, Dupé’s taskforce, run by Harris, was one of the most widely recognized. The other teams sprinkled throughout Los Angeles, Sacramento, and further north were equally filled with highly trained individuals from the FBI, NSA, Homeland, ICE, and DEA.
They worked in conjunction with Walsh’s Domestic Terrorism Taskforce, also revered throughout the state, but it seemed Walsh and Harris had a special camaraderie.
Walsh spent as much time south of L.A. as he did in the City of Angels. Of course, Southern California was rife with violence attributed to the border, gangs, and the drug pipeline coming up from South America. To say the SCVC Taskforce had its hands full was an understatement, and Walsh lent his team to them frequently.
There was a time when Sam had dreamed of joining one of them. Everyone there was an expert. Regardless of what organization they hailed from, they worked to form two well-oiled machines. It was one of things she’d always wanted to be part of.
But Dupé had repeatedly turned down her request to the join the SCVC, ignoring her reports. Or maybe he never saw them, thanks to Alison. Even Frank said he didn’t want to lose her. Maybe everything Sam turned in CC’d to the director got tossed in the garbage or shredded.
It would literally ruin her if she found out Dupé wasn’t the hero everyone believed him to be, but she’d seen it happen. Heard her parents’ stories about the traitors within the CIA, FBI, even the NSA. Yes, they were few and far between, but sometimes the more powerful they were, the more untouchable they believed themselves to be.
Joe brought the pot to the table and refilled her cup. He motioned at the pan that held a few remaining pancakes as if to ask if she wanted more.
She did, but she was stuffed, and now her brain was working on the possible traitor amongst them. Plus, she still needed to track down Kyle’s girlfriend/assassin. She shook her head. After not eating much for the past few weeks, she’d consumed more than her shrunken stomach could handle.
“What are your plans for this afternoon?” she asked.
“Head back to my condo, check in with my brothers, do more digging on all of this.” He waved his hand over the file. “We should have the tox screen on Kyle today, and I wanna be sure I touch base with Harris about the possibility he was murdered.”
“I want to take some stuff to Hetty and Dec,” she said sipping at the coffee. “You can drop me off at the bridge before you head to your apartment.”
His gaze touched her hair, her eyes, her bare arms. “No dice. Remember our agreement? You’re staying here, out of sight, regardless of the getup.”
She met his gaze. “I can’t just sit here on my ass and do nothing.”
He shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less what she thought. “That’s the deal if you want to stay in my beautiful safe house with all the food you can eat.”
His face was inscrutable, but she heard the underlying teasing there anyway. He loved when he had some control over her, which was almost never. “You need to put the go-bag under the back porch.”
“Sure. Anything else?”
“How do you know I won’t take off when you leave?”
“I know how big that brain of yours is, and that you’ll accomplish more sitting at my computer today than running around San Diego looking for a ghost in the wind who might’ve murdered Kyle.”
“You’re going to let me use your computer?”
“I assume you’re going to hack into some things I don’t want to know about, so do me a favor and cover your tracks, okay?”
She grinned. “Least I can do after you fed me and let me shower.”
As he headed toward the bedroom, Jack-Jack barked at her, as if agreeing. She rolled her eyes and called after Joe, “The least you can do is put a shirt on.”
14
North San Diego
Joe parked in the condo’s lot and locked up. Inside the main hallway Ted and Tony, his neighbors, passed him, the former carrying a paddleboard.
“Hey, bounty hunter,” Tony quipped, looking him over. “You don’t happen to find lost bikes, do you?”
Joe paused, flipping through his keyring for his house key. God, he hated the BH moniker, but he held his tongue. He tried not to let the rush he felt show on his face. “Lost bikes?”
Ted, a true SoCal looking blond, balanced the paddleboard on one knee and swept his long hair from his eyes. “Somebody stole mine the other night.”
Tony—a dark, swarthy guy—gave his partner the stink eye. “If you’d locked it up like I told you to…”
Crap. Was the bike in the trunk of his car Tony’s? “I’m afraid lost items are out of my realm of expertise, but I’ll keep an eye out. Probably a kid used it to get to the beach. I’m sure it’ll turn up.”
Ted gave a thumbs-up, Tony waved, and the two thanked him before heading off.
Joe continued on to his door. The building’s maintenance man was on a short stepladder, fiddling with an overhead light.
Except the body shape was wrong. The hair too.
Joe’s internal warning system went off. “Where’s Carlson?” he asked offhandedly as he stuck his key in the lock.
“Be back tomorrow,” the man said, but his voice wasn’t right.