Storm Warning

by Allison Brennan

  But he hadn’t had a lick of alcohol in three weeks, and he was clear-headed. He was not going to deviate from the plan. Sure, it was going to throw them off with Jacob in jail and Ma out of commission. He’d have to think about how to get them out later. Jacob hadn’t really done anything, and nothing the police could prove. He might get out after a short stint. Of course, he didn’t want his little brother in jail. He wasn’t like Kirk; he wouldn’t do well behind bars.

  The important thing was that Jacob wouldn’t rat them out. Sam trusted him. And even if he slipped up, it didn’t matter much—no one, except Sam, knew the entire plan.

  Problem was, now they didn’t have a driver. While Amanda was capable, Sam needed her for the security system. She was the only one who could handle the electronics and that nonsense; Kirk or SueAnn could be the wheelman, but neither wanted to. They liked being in the middle of everything. And no way in hell was Sam going to let them go into the vault alone. He didn’t trust either of them, family notwithstanding.

  That meant changing the escape plan. It was the only way.

  “We have to hit before Tuesday,” Sam said. “No other option—it’s this weekend or never. So we stick to the original plan, but everyone is responsible for getting themselves back here after the hit. And if this house is compromised—we meet up at the Dallas safe house in forty-eight hours. I don’t want to go to prison—do you?”

  “And neither does Jacob, but look where he is!” SueAnn countered.

  “Walk away,” Sam said. “I’ll do this without you.”

  “You can’t, and you know it.”

  “Don’t tempt me, SueAnn.”

  She glared at him, but he held his own. You had to with SueAnn, otherwise she’d walk all over you.

  “Now, are we done with the bullshit so we can go over the plans one more time?”

  “We’ve been over them a hundred times,” SueAnn moaned.

  “And I’m sure you know them by heart, sugar,” Amanda said, all sweetness to keep the peace. “But we still need to make sure we’re all on the same page especially without Jacob. Then we sleep, because we need all our energy tonight.”

  Sam laid out his dad’s old blueprints. He and Reggie had spent months planning this heist, doing recon, making sure nothing would be left to chance. And now Reggie was gone.

  Reggie should be part of this . . . but thinking about him wasn’t going to bring him back.

  “Once we’re inside,” Sam said, “Amanda will take care of the security. Then we have sixteen minutes until the system fully reboots. Sixteen minutes and we have to be out. Understand? No fucking around. We get in, we grab as much as we can, we get out. We should be able to score between ten and twelve million dollars.” He went through the danger of their approach, and the two ways they could get out.

  “Because we don’t have Jacob, SueAnn and I will go north, Amanda and Kirk will go south.”

  “I wanna go with Kirk,” SueAnn whined.

  “No,” Sam said.

  “You’re mean.”

  “You’ll be distracted.”

  “Because he’s such a cutie,” she said, and winked at her boyfriend.

  “See what I mean? Now focus!”

  He went through the dangers, the potential security, and showed them again how to use the specialized tools he’d also found in his father’s belongings. Once Sam was confident they were both paying attention and wouldn’t fuck this up, he told them all to go to bed and he’d wake them at nine that night.

  He knew he should sleep, but he couldn’t. He sat at the dining-room table of the cheap rental and thought about everything this gig had cost him. His best friend. His brother. His mother.

  It had better be worth it.

  Chapter Eight

  Late Sunday Morning

  FBI Headquarters

  There was nothing Lucy could say to convince Sean to stay home. Even Jesse conspired against her and insisted that he would be fine home alone. He even pulled her aside after breakfast and said, “Dad is really worried about you. I think you should let him come. He won’t get in the way.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. Jesse had a lot to learn about his dad, because Sean didn’t sit quietly during a crisis, but she appreciated his concern. Plus, Sean had government clearance, so with the blessing of her boss, he could assist with the threat analysis. Most of the tech people at headquarters liked Sean and appreciated his skills, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

  The good news was that the storm had broken. Because of the updated flood protections in the downtown area, San Antonio came through with mostly wind damage and minor flooding in the suburbs. The rural areas had experienced the worst of the damage and there were still risks of flash floods, plus mudslides had devastated the hills. Many roads were impassable, and the creeks and rivers were being monitored closely. Kane called Sean in the morning and said he and Siobhan would be flying in late that afternoon. Sean filled him in on what was going on, and Kane said they would keep Jesse company.

  Sean didn’t want to leave Jesse alone all day, but Jesse convinced him he would be fine. “I’m thirteen, Dad. I’ve stayed home alone before. And Uncle Kane said he’d be here by five. Really—I’ll do my math homework and then just play video games, okay?”

  Sean and Lucy followed Nate to FBI headquarters at ten thirty. There was a task force meeting at eleven, run by White Collar Crimes agent Mike Crutcher, the lead agent on the Trembly case. By the time she and Nate had arrived at headquarters yesterday, he’d left to talk to Jacob Trembly at the jail. She was curious to find out what he’d learned, if anything. Lucy didn’t think that he’d give up his family, but she could be wrong.

  Sean clipped on his visitor badge and told Lucy that he was heading to Cyber Crimes, where the analysts were working on narrowing the field of possible hits. “Zach’s there, and I’m already cleared, so don’t worry about me.”

  He turned down the hall opposite to where Lucy’s squad was housed. Lucy and Nate found Rachel in her office. “I didn’t think you’d stay home,” Rachel said. “The debrief is in twenty minutes. I heard your husband volunteered to assist Cyber Crimes. Normally I would say no because we have one of the best cybercrime teams in the country, but there’s a lot of data and they haven’t narrowed down whether they’re going for a bank or a jewelry store. There are hundreds in the city, we can’t cover all of them. Banks are closed—so Crutcher thinks it’s going to be a jewelry store. But which one? In San Antonio or San Marcos or Austin? It could be anywhere.”

  “San Antonio,” Lucy said. “Based on the conversation Bobby overheard, he thinks it’s San Antonio.”

  “He’s an eight-year-old kid who was held hostage at gunpoint. His recollection may be clouded.”

  “He had it together,” Lucy said. “What about Jacob Trembly?”

  “Crutcher and his partner interviewed him last night and went again this morning; he’s not talking. Denies there’s any heist planned, says it’s all a misunderstanding. We did figure out what happened up in Brady, his sister, the petite one—”

  “SueAnn,” Nate filled in.

  “Yeah. She told the hospital she was Jennifer Smith. No I.D. She slipped out when the nurses turned their back. She wasn’t seriously injured.”

  “We figured it was staged.”

  “And smart, too. Jacob goes into the jail cell, tells his brother what the plan is, the others flood the jail, they’re transported out.”

  “But there was no guarantee that we’d pick them up, or that they’d be transferred together. And why not just break him out? Why did Jacob need to give him information?”

  “Good questions,” Rachel said. “Maybe Crutcher has answers by now. This is all on us—SAPD has their hands full with storm management, power outages, road closures. When we have a hard target we’ll get backup.” Her phone rang and she said, “I’ll be in but might be late—I’m dealing with another issue right now. But I wanted to tell you—Robert Thomsen sent a note to the SAC last night commendin
g you both for your actions in protecting his family. You rescued and secured his daughters, then risked your lives to save his son. Good job.”

  She picked up the phone, and Lucy and Nate stepped out and closed the door to give her privacy. “That’s nice,” Nate said. “We don’t usually get a thank-you.”

  Even though most of the Trembly gang had escaped, Lucy wouldn’t have done anything different. A family was intact, and that was a win as far as she was concerned.

  Lucy poured coffee and walked into the conference room. No one was there yet, so she sat down and looked over the report she’d sent to Rachel and Crutcher yesterday. She and Nate had written it together after Leo picked them up in Fredericksburg. Because of the urgency in this matter, formality went out the window—Crutcher needed all the information possible to do his job.

  “He’s late,” Nate muttered. There were a handful of agents and analysts who had trickled into the room.

  There was something in his tone that had Lucy wondering if Nate had a history with Crutcher, but she didn’t say anything.

  He finally came in with his partner, Laura Williams, nearly fifteen minutes late.

  “Jacob Trembly isn’t talking,” Crutcher said. “I have ten minutes, then I’m heading over to the hospital to talk to the mother. When she realizes that her kids are all facing capital charges, she’ll help.”

  Lucy disagreed. “She won’t give them up. You might be able to trick her into spilling information. The harder you push, the less she’ll give.”

  “I don’t think you could possibly know that after spending five minutes with her,” Crutcher said. “She’s a fifty-five-year-old woman who has no record and we don’t have much of a case on her—she talks, she gets probation.”

  Lucy mentally reviewed the family dynamic that she witnessed yesterday. The mother was a true matriarch. Based on what she witnessed and what Bobby had said, Sam Trembly was the leader, but everyone deferred to the mother.

  And Bobby said she’d put a gun in his face. That was a cold woman.

  Before she could comment, Crutcher went on, “Cyber Crimes analysts are reviewing every possible target, but leaning to jewelry stores. There are dozens, but based on what they hit before and the potential take in each store, we’re looking closely at about nine of them.”

  One of the task force members asked, “Why jewelry stores and not banks?”

  “Every robbery has been during the day and normal business hours. Banks are closed today and tomorrow, for the holiday. If the intel is accurate and they’re planning something for today—a Sunday—it’s going to have to be a jewelry store. Of the stores on our list, one is definitely not going to be opened—the street it’s on was flooded, and while the businesses are safe, it’s shut down for at least forty-eight hours.”

  “And,” Laura said, “while they have someone well versed in security, they haven’t shown that they can take down a silent alarm system. Based on what we know of their previous robberies, all of which were well planned, they couldn’t have predicted the extent of the storm. It wasn’t supposed to come this far inland.”

  Crutcher said, “Laura and I searched Sam Trembly’s trailer in Brady early this morning and determined that he wasn’t using the place to stage his robberies. There were very few personal items. The apartment where Jacob Trembly was arrested for the alleged domestic violence wasn’t even his apartment—we’re still trying to track down the renters, but they’re out of town. They may not have even known someone had broken in. Nonetheless, we confiscated the computer in case Trembly used it. We have their phone records, but their personal effects were lost yesterday.”

  He looked directly at Lucy. She’d heard that the FBI van had been partly submerged and the weight of the water had pushed it off the road and into muck. It had taken a construction tow truck to extract it, and it was being sent to the local FBI lab to see if they could retrieve any evidence—though Lucy doubted anything was there, except maybe the recording of the escape.

  She wasn’t going to take his bait—she and Nate had done what they had to do to survive and protect Officer Riley. But she realized that there was a recording of the Trembly brothers for the entire drive. They could have communicated something that Lucy missed.

  “They were using sign language to communicate—we don’t have audio in the back of the van, but the camera would have caught their conversation. That’s saved to the dashcam. There could be something on there that could help us.”

  “If it’s salvageable,” Crutcher said, “we’ll have it. If you’d just grabbed it to begin with, we wouldn’t have to cross our fingers.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nate straighten his spine. This wasn’t going to end well. She didn’t know why Crutcher was being such a prick, but she was willing to dismiss it based on the fact that he likely hadn’t slept last night. Laura looked uncomfortable as well and quickly jumped in. “We have contacted all jewelry stores in the area—plus made personal contact with the owners of the nine we believe are likely targets. They are on heightened alert. Six already employ a guard, and three are bringing in extra employees for the next two days.”

  Leo Proctor had walked into the room with Rachel a few minutes before and he’d maneuvered to stand next to Nate—did he sense the hostility between Crutcher and Nate as well? Leo was the head of FBI SWAT, which Nate also served on, and they were friends.

  “We’ll be on high alert for the next two days,” Crutcher said. “We also have a team in Austin interviewing everyone who knows the Tremblys or the Hansens. They left Austin two years ago, but their last known address was a ranch outside of the city. They could still be in contact with some of their neighbors. Trembly and Hansen had worked in construction together, and we’ve already talked to their former employers and colleagues.”

  Lucy asked, “Do you know specifically what they did in construction?”

  Crutcher stared at her blankly. “It was years ago, and it hardly matters. They built houses for the most part.”

  “What I mean is, the skills they had to flood the jail in Brady and divert the drains outside Fredericksburg to delay response when our transport was attacked, those skills may be put to use in this heist. We know that one of the people—I suspect Amanda Trembly, the sister who graduated with a degree in computer science—is the one who is handling the security systems.”

  “Which is all they need to do. Handle security. We have teams ready to mobilize, and we’re tapped into SAPD to be notified as soon as any silent alarm is tripped or shut down—in case they’re going after one of the jewelry stores that are closed. That’s not likely, because the jewels are locked in a safe, and so far this gang hasn’t been able to get into any of the safes—and not for lack of trying.”

  Lucy felt they were missing something, and then it hit her. “In all the reports, none of the jewels have been recovered. It’s very difficult to fence stolen jewels, unless they have a private buyer lined up, but none of these people have those kinds of connections. And they haven’t shown up on the market—”

  “Agent Kincaid,” Crutcher cut her off, “you handle violent crimes, let me handle white collar. Most jewel thieves hold on to the goods or sell them into a private market, where the buyer recuts or waits until the heat dies down. They move them outside of the immediate area to minimize the chance of being discovered. Many of these jewels end up in other countries.”

  “But none of the jewel heists yielded a payday,” Lucy said. She was talking off the cuff, because there was something here that she wasn’t quite seeing. “None of them scored more than twenty thousand in jewels, and that’s retail—”

  “Because we’re not dealing with rocket scientists, Kincaid,” Crutcher said.

  She decided to keep her mouth shut. Crutcher was right, she didn’t know a lot about white collar crimes, and she didn’t want to get in the middle of it.

  Crutcher glanced at his watch. “My team—monitor the jewelry stores. Keep me in the loop. I’m going to give Mrs.
Trembly an offer she can’t refuse, and maybe this will all be a moot point.”

  Okay, Lucy couldn’t quite keep her mouth shut.

  “Did you make that same offer to Jacob? Because while he’s loyal to his brother, he is also worried about the operation and his family. He doesn’t want them hurt.”

  “Hell no, we believe that he’s one of the gang, which makes him an accessory to murder.”

  “Monica Trembly is involved as well. In fact, I think she’s running this operation.”

  “There’s absolutely no proof of that.”

  “About as much as you have on Jacob,” Lucy countered. Why was Crutcher being so belligerent? “I don’t think that Jacob will talk—at least not willingly. But lay out the full repercussions and he might give us something because he doesn’t want anyone in his family to get hurt, especially his brother, Sam.”

  “Wow, you must have had a heart-to-heart with him before you let him and his brother escape.”

  Nate slowly rose from his seat. “Watch it, Crutcher.”

  “It was a simple prison transport in a fully armored van and you gave them the keys.”

  “Mike,” Lucy said, trying to defuse the situation, “another officer was in immediate danger. They would have killed him.”

  “Oh, and I thought in your report you said that Jacob and Sam weren’t violent? Changing your mind?”

  “I said that SueAnn and Kirk were volatile and violent, and they—”

  He waved his hand at her. “Be that as it may, backup was on the way and you blew it.”

  Nate took a step forward. “The roads were flooding and they sabotaged a drainage system.”

  “But you didn’t know that at the time. You let them go. It’s not important at this point—”

  “You didn’t read a damn thing,” Nate said. “You think you know what happened? You know nothing. You weren’t there. You were supposed to be my partner in this, but you couldn’t be bothered. Thank God I had Kincaid with me, because you would have gotten either Officer Riley killed or that little boy killed, all because you have no idea what it’s like to be on the ground.”