Quiet Protector: Brandon's Story

by Shandi Boyes

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  Phillipa is a good actor, but I was trained to seek deceit in many forms.

  “Not only did Crombie help Castro pin two murders on Milo, he drove him to his death as well.”

  Phillipa doesn’t flinch because she knows every word I speak is true. I also have evidence. Footage from a gas station two miles from where Milo was found has footage of Crombie and Milo driving east. Ten minutes later, the same vehicle is seen heading west. It was minus its passenger that time around.

  “Crombie was sentenced to twelve years. He was out in six. Before your team swooped in and plucked him from Detective Carter’s grasp, he said he pleaded out. My guess is he threw Castro under the bus for a plea bargain. The Bobrovs weren’t popular after the stunt they pulled on the Gottles, and although Crombie doesn’t have their name, he has their blood.” I slant my head, encouraging eye contact with Phillipa before muttering, “I’m just striving to work out what type of relationship he had with you.”

  6

  Brandon

  When Phillipa scoffs as if I’m being ridiculous, I hit her with enough facts, even if she wanted to leave, she couldn’t. “You’ve only worked for IA for the past eight months, and although you had proof an agent had forged evidence, you didn’t need to come in as hard as you did to secure a witness. That means you wanted Crombie for more than taking down an agent suspected of tampering with evidence. You wanted to punish him for hanging you out to dry.” The tears welling in her eyes would have most agents backing down. They don’t work on me. Only one woman’s tears have. They don’t belong to a rogue agent. “What did he do, Phillipa? Give you false information? Turn you like Paavo turned Leesa?”

  A tear almost rolls down her face when she rigorously shakes her head. “It was nothing like that?”

  “Then what was it?” I fire back just as snappy.

  I stare at her, silently warning her this is her only chance to come clean. If she continues with her I’ve-been-unfairly-suspended ruse she’s been running the past week, I’ll throw us both under the bus. I kept my searches hidden as much as possible, only scattering the teeniest bit of crumbs in case my plan folded, but I ensured Phillipa’s name was scattered amongst the breadcrumbs with mine.

  When my glare becomes too much for Phillipa to bear, she sighs. “Crombie was released early on the agreement he would be an informant for the Bureau. He had proof Castro encouraged Milo to seek revenge on the Greggs for the years he’d spent in prison. Having no idea that the Castros had paid for his participation that night, Milo fell for his ruse. An hour after the Greggs’ accident, Castro requested for Crombie to bring Milo to an old mechanics shop once run by the Gottles. He thought he was there to collect the prize his brother had agreed to give him years earlier. Crombie stated Castro killed Milo before he’d fully exited the passenger seat of his truck. His blood was found in the tracking of the door. When Castro gave proof of his death to Henry, he was awarded a generous number of favors. They’re invaluable to men in Henry’s industry.”

  It’s the fight of my life not to nod. The only reason I don’t is because I do not want to give her any indication I’m agreeing with her.

  “Crombie’s evidence was credible, Brandon. We had DNA, photographic evidence, and a sworn statement from a witness.”

  “Then why didn’t you put Castro away?” I ask, frustrated.

  “Because the Bureau wanted more.”

  “They always want more,” I shout as if the fucked-up system belongs solely on her shoulders. After a big breather, I ask more calmly, “How did Crombie know where the Greggs lived? Liam kept everything off the radar.”

  Phillipa shrugs. “I truly don’t know. That information was never disclosed to me, and anytime I asked, our interviews were cut short.”

  I don’t want to believe her, but I do. She isn’t giving off any indication that she’s lying. “What information was disclosed to you?”

  She licks her dry lips before replying, “The sting in New Mexico was based on intelligence Crombie gave the head of my unit.” Tears well in her eyes as she stares straight into mine. “I had no clue he was still working with Castro. If I had any inkling of how things would have transpired that night, I would have demanded that the raid be called off immediately, but I was just as blinded by the turn of events as your team was.”

  Genuine remorse fills her face, but some things still don’t make sense. “How did Crombie know about the sting? Informants give us times, places, and locations. We don’t share that information with them.”

  Anger burns me alive from the inside out when Phillipa scratches the back of her ear. If that isn’t as obvious as a snitch asking to speak to the DA in private, I don’t know what is.

  After dropping her hand into her lap, Phillipa says, “Crombie didn’t feel comfortable meeting in public.”

  Hearing the words she didn’t speak, I ask, “So you held your meetings in hotel rooms?”

  “Yes.” The swiftness of her reply authenticates the honesty of it.

  Too curious to hold back, I ask, “Did you sleep with him?”

  Phillipa immediately shakes her head. “No. Our relationship wasn’t like that.”

  I slant my head and arch my brow. “Relationship?”

  She waves her hand around like a professor giving a lecture on ethics. “Studies have proven intimate relationships between undercover agents and their informants are far more beneficial than casual relationships because intimacy involves a deep level of trust.”

  “You just said you didn’t sleep with him.”

  Her hair slaps her face when her eyes rocket to mine. “I didn’t. I flirted with him. I acted as if I was interested in having sex with him, but I didn’t. I stroked his ego while doing my job! That’s all I did.”

  Phillipa sounds honest, but I’m still wary. “Then how did he know about our sting?”

  “I don’t know! Even when I was undercover, I never discussed other ops around him. We barely talked, for crying out loud. He was one of those stare-at-you-from-across-the- room guys who thought adjusting his hardened crotch a hundred times a day was a turn-on.” As she sucks in a sharp breath, the rattle of her vocal cords becomes more noticeable. “I had planned to ask him how he knew about the raid when his signature popped up at a warehouse fire in Ravenshoe, but I lost the chance when I discovered him hanging in his cell.”

  Although her face reflects her anger, there’s also an immense amount of pain. Crombie’s death isn’t her fault, however, she’s taking the blame for it.

  “Do you believe Crombie killed himself?”

  Her head shake isn’t as quick as the one she gave me earlier, but it’s still brimming with determined confirmation. “He was apologetic and remorseful, but I didn’t see any indication he was suicidal. Cocky men like him don’t commit suicide.”

  My thoughts drift to Joey for the quickest second. It isn’t long enough to dispute Phillipa’s claims that only the depressed end their lives, but it does award me a moment of clarity.

  “If Castro killed Milo to garner favors from Henry, why didn’t he wait for him to finish the job before killing him?”

  Phillipa wipes her nose with her sleeve before leaning forward to grab her briefcase she dumped on my dining room table before my tour of the perp boards. “I don’t have solid proof, but I’m beginning to suspect Henry is always one step ahead of his competitors because he has access to intel his enemies don’t.” When she pulls out a massive stack of paperwork, my eyes bug out. “You weren’t the only one burning the candle at both ends the past week. My relationship with Crombie deserved scrutiny. It could have been perceived as immoral, but what I’m not okay with is being dumped into IA as punishment and being told to keep my mouth shut. That’s not the way things work. You can’t get answers if—”

  “You don’t ask questions.”

  She nods. “I’ve been asking questions for months, but since no one was willing to answer me, I went higher.” She doesn’t mention he
r father’s name, but her face tells her story without additional words needing to be spoken.

  When she dumps the massive file onto the table with a thud, a handful of photographs fall out. They’re all of the same man—Kwan Turgenev.

  “You were right. Kwan was on the scene at the Greggs’ accident. He also took a witness statement after the death of Marjorie Hawke and her unborn son, and he was the first ‘officer’ on the scene when Police Chief Rory Langfield was gunned down.” She slaps down photographs to each corresponding event. “He’s also been a butcher, a chef, a pilot, and a marine.”

  My throat becomes scratchy. “A marine? So we have a file on him?”

  Phillipa shakes her head. “No, we don’t because he’s a ghost.”

  I ‘ha’ out loud. “A ghost who enjoys having his photo taken.”

  “Not that type of ghost. He’s a ghost, ghost.” She speaks her last sentence super slow.

  It takes me a few seconds to click on, but when I do, I’m left breathless. “He’s a spy?”

  “Allegedly,” Phillipa responds, her mood picking up from what it was moments ago. Purging has that effect on you, especially when the person you’re spilling your guts to believes you. “Crombie’s sealed testimony was like unlocking a vault. He said Castro had jumped the gun when he killed Milo. He was so eager to claim his prize, he didn’t authenticate Milo’s story that all members of the Gregg family had been in the car when he plowed into them. He was at the Gottle compound when Henry received word from Kwan that Melody was alive.”

  My jaw twitches as it begs to drop open. “That’s why he waited. It would have looked suspicious if Melody showed up dead hours after he claimed to have taken down the man responsible for the Greggs’ murder.”

  Phillipa nods then sighs. “Believing justice had been served, Henry ordered that the scene be declared an accident. He’d risk another cartel war if his enemies discovered he had been hit unprepared.” Air whizzes from her nose as she gently shakes her head. “He had no way of knowing every man on the scene that night would end up dead within the next two years. Castro had improved his game. Instead of making them straight-up murders, he covered them with a range of incidences—a boating accident, a drive-by shooting, a suicide—”

  “Suicide? He made one of his murders look like a suicide?”

  “Yeah…” She peers at me with unease before dropping her eyes to her file. “Crombie couldn’t remember the exact date, but he told officials it was late May se—”

  “Seven years ago? Fuck.” I clench my fists so tightly, my nails dig into my palm. “My brother committed suicide seven years ago. He had blond hair like mine with a newly shaven chin. You couldn’t mistake us as strangers. We had a lot of similar features.” Moisture burns Phillipa’s eyes when I lock my watering ones with hers. “I was on the scene of the Greggs’ accident. Could they have mistaken Joey for me?”

  “Don’t make me answer that, Brandon. Please.” Her demand is more telling than giving me a straight-up answer. “No matter what, we can’t go back and change the past.”

  The brutal hammering of my heart is heard in my reply, “But I can prove Joey didn’t kill himself. I can admit it was my fault.”

  Hair falls into Phillipa’s eyes when she shakes her head with force. “It wasn’t your fault—”

  “They were supposed to kill me! I was the one they were targeting. How is this not my fault?”

  I glare at her when she pulls a duh face. “I can think of a few things. Like you were just a kid. You trusted that not everyone had a black heart, and how about having no clue Liam was thrusting you into the middle of a mafia war when you were four!”

  “Five, not that it matters. I would have signed up anyway.” Nothing but honesty is heard in my reply. “You can’t fault Liam for wanting to protect his family, Phillipa.”

  “Just like you can’t fault Joey for doing the same thing.” She lowers her voice a notch before my neighbors call in the feds, then locks her eyes with mine. “If any of this is true, if Joey was killed by Castro because he thought he was you, who’s to say Joey didn’t know that? Perhaps he was protecting you. You don’t know what was going through his mind at that exact moment.”

  Her excuse is piss-poor, but when you’re grasping at straws, you have to hold on tight. I want justice for Joey, and I’ll get it, but only once I’m certain those still living won’t fall on the same knife he did. “You said Castro was killing everyone on the scene, so why didn’t he go after Kwan and Melody?”

  My flipping stomach rolls through some extra churns when Phillipa slides a faded polaroid to my side of the table. It appears weathered, but to someone who didn’t assess every perfect imperfection on Melody’s face, they may believe the woman lying lifeless on a single bed in a dorm-like room was her. She has the same tulip-shaped nose, kinked hair when she lets it dry naturally, and the tiniest slither of silver above her right brow from her home invasion.

  After sliding a second photo my way, Phillipa says, “The family crest tattooed on Milo and Crombie’s neck are similar, but they’re not identical.”

  I scoff at her, well aware she’s wrong. “I went over their tattoos with a microscope. They’re identical…” I eat my words when she reveals a third photo. This one has the lights switched off. “They had invisible ink embedded in them?”

  Phillipa nods. “I asked a scientific photographer to take a look at the photo Melody sent you.” I’m tempted to ask how she got a copy of an image on my phone, but the guilt in her eyes saves me wasting my breath. “Kwan’s tattoo isn’t real. It’s as fake as his ties with the Bobrov entity.” She hits me with photo after photo after photo that shows a timeline of Kwan’s childhood. Katarina Rouse features in nearly every one of them. “Katarina adopted Kwan when he was ten. Unfortunately, it was years too late to save him from the lifestyle Tobias removed Isabelle from. He was still grateful, though.” Her next lot of images show Kwan with Henry. He’s older, rougher, and ten times more deadly—especially in the last image where he appears to have a bullet hole between the eyes.

  My lungs become breathless when the truth smacks into me. “Who faked their deaths?”

  Phillipa shrugs. “We don’t know. Crombie wouldn’t say.”

  “Do you believe it was Henry?”

  She glances over her shoulder to check we’re still alone before nodding. “With the last two witnesses believed to have been contained and Kirill returning to Russia, things went dormant for years.”

  “Then Crombie’s deal ruffled feathers.”

  Although I’m not asking a question, Phillipa answers me as if I am. “Yes. You weren’t the only one suspicious about his early release. Henry started asking questions, and for some reason, his were answered more readily than mine.”

  “He also has a scary amount of access to government buildings in New York. Although Crombie wasn’t technically a threat to Melody anymore, he was one of a rare few who knew Melody wasn’t dead, so it makes sense for Henry to cut off that loose thread.”

  Phillipa remains as quiet as a church mouse, but I don’t need her to speak to know she too believes Henry organized Crombie’s death. Her eyes are very telling. The investigation of Crombie’s death taught her the consequences of throwing someone into the deep end without first assessing all the evidence presented. She doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice.

  I use her silence to decompartmentalize all the information we’ve unearthed jointly and separately the past week. Although it appears obvious who I should be devoting my attention on, there are too many teams in game mode right now to solely focus on one. I can’t change what happened to Joey, but I can stop the same thing happening to Melody.

  If Melody is being sheltered under Henry’s umbrella, she’s virtually untouchable. An army of men couldn’t protect her better than Henry’s enemies knowing the consequences they’ll face if they touch her, but I don’t want to hand responsibility for her safety over to Henry. He may be related to her by blood, but Liam removed he
r and Wren from that environment for a reason. If he didn’t believe Henry’s reputation could keep them safe, why should I?

  I shouldn’t, and that’s why I’m not going to.

  Phillipa’s chest stops showcasing her breaths when I say, “I need you to amend the transcript from your interview with Melody to include the photographic evidence you missed.”

  “What photographic evidence? I didn’t take any.” Her eyes pop open as the left side of her brain clicks on. “And aren’t you concerned that will cause more conflict for Melody? As much as I love the Bureau and one hundred percent believe it does more good than bad, there’s more going on here than we realize. What I had to give up to get access to these files is proof of that, not to mention being placed on suspension only hours after submitting my initial report.” When I peer at her in confusion, uneased by the last half of her comment, she discloses, “My father only agreed to give me these files after I said I’d remain with IA for the rest of my career. If I’m chasing rogue agents, I’m not dodging bullets.”

  Her lips curve into a faint grin when I murmur, “Allegedly.”

  “Allegedly,” Phillipa parrots as her smile picks up.

  Her eyes float from her balled hands to my face when I ask, “Do you think his opinion would change if you took down the twelfth man on the FBI’s most-wanted list?”

  I smile when she replies, “Rimi Castro hasn’t been seen since the foiled sting at his compound last year.” An average agent wouldn’t have known who I was referencing without first checking the FBI’s database. Phillipa knew immediately, meaning she doesn’t belong in IA for the next thirty-plus years. She should be on the field—with me.

  “He could be tempted out of hibernation for the right reason.” The fact Phillipa doesn’t jump in like she usually does, exposes her confusion. Hoping to ease it, I say, “Kirill Bobrov returned to the US stronger than he was when he left. He has amassed an impressive amount of wealth, grew his army by over a thousand men, and is wiser than he was seven years ago. That amount of growth gains him the admired eye of many, including his enemies.”