Worthy of Trust and Confidence

by Kara A. McLeod

  Pushing that notion—and the bile that rose along with it—aside, I shifted my attention to Golzar’s phone records. I quickly located the call from Fallahi and jotted down the number of the phone he’d called immediately after. It didn’t match up to Golzar’s most frequently called numbers, so it wasn’t someone he spoke to often enough to have garnered my attention before. But whoever it was had it now.

  Just out of curiosity, I took all three sets of records and flipped forward a few days to the day I’d been shot. Akbari’s and Fallahi’s phones each had a couple of calls, but not to any numbers I recognized and not during any time periods that had any specific resonance for me. Golzar’s records, on the other hand, were a completely different story.

  I knew from the call logs of my own agency-issued cell phone roughly what time the first shots had rung out, as the last call I’d gotten prior to the shooting had been from Allison. That time was now seared into my brain, which made it easy for me to scour the page for the exact moments I wanted. There, practically jumping off the paper, were two telephone calls placed back to back. Each one had lasted less than thirty seconds, and they’d both been made approximately ten minutes before the first shot had been fired. The first number was an incoming call from the number Golzar had called the night of the Akbari interview. The second was an outgoing call to a number I didn’t recognize. I didn’t yet know who either number belonged to, but I was willing to bet one of them was the shooter.

  I conducted as many database searches on those two phone numbers as I could but determined only that the numbers were registered to burner phones, and none of the systems I had access to at the Secret Service office had any record of either. I intended to scour the JTTF databases for both numbers just to exhaust all possible leads, but I also didn’t expect to find any answers there. That prompted me to speed up the process.

  I shot Greg a quick email explaining what I’d found and asking him to issue follow-up subpoenas for the two unknown phone numbers Golzar had called the day I’d been shot. On a whim, I also asked him to request cell-tower information for both. Maybe learning where the callers had been when Golzar had spoken to them would give me a better idea of their identities. I fully expected to get bullshit names and addresses when the records came back, so what towers the phones had pinged off would likely be my only viable clue. It wouldn’t be much, but it would be better than nothing.

  Greg emailed me back immediately to let me know he was on it and would get it rushed through. I thanked him profusely, though waiting frustrated me.

  I sighed as I clicked the button on my mouse to close the message and leaned back in my chair. My eyes roved over the contents of my office as my mind raced. I needed to find something else to do to keep me from going crazy. Sitting here with nothing to do but think was only going to—

  My thoughts seized, then shuddered and lurched in a new direction as my eyes fell on the two cell phones perched innocently on the edge of my desk. The corners of my mouth curled up in the beginnings of a grin.

  A phone call. Of course. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before. It was the oldest trick in the book and one I’d used on several occasions. It didn’t always work, of course. Nothing in life ever did. But if I called either of the two numbers I might get whoever answered the phone to slip and give me a name or something to go on. If it didn’t work, well, I was no worse off than before.

  I licked my lips in anticipation and picked up my work cell phone, the number of which was always blocked from anyone’s caller ID. My insides fluttered as I dialed the first unknown number, the one Golzar had called the night I’d spoken to Akbari. I’d decided I’d use my well-tested GEICO representative ruse in my fishing expedition, which had been successful in the past.

  As the first traces of ringing from the other end of the line floated through the speaker to my ear, I got up and strode over to my door, intent upon closing it. It was late, and the office was practically deserted, but I still felt like I wanted as much privacy as I could get for this.

  I reached the doorway to my office by the end of the third ring and had started easing it shut as the fourth started up. Out of my other ear—the one not pressed against my cell phone—I could hear the shrill ring tones of someone else’s cell phone wafting out of an office down the hall. That made me glad I’d decided to close my door. Apparently, the privacy would be more necessary than I’d originally thought.

  “Hello?” a gruff male voice finally answered.

  I blinked at the unexpected phenomenon of hearing a voice say the same thing down the hall. I pulled the phone a few inches from my ear and strained to listen.

  “Hello?” the voice said again, sounding more irritated this time.

  Again, I heard the voice come through the speaker a fraction of a second after I heard someone say the same thing down the hall. Feeling vaguely uneasy and unbelievably confused, I hung up.

  Frowning, I held up my cell phone in front of me and stared at it, as if waiting for it to explain to me what’d just happened. Light wisps of dread had started winding around my internal organs, sparking a chill deep inside the marrow of my bones.

  My heart pounded as I crept down the hall toward where I’d thought I’d heard the voice. My mind was screaming something at me, loudly and using many expletives, but I was ignoring whatever it was trying to say as I concentrated on making my way as silently as possible.

  When I was close enough, I leaned back against the wall and slowly pressed the redial button with a trembling thumb. My heart was thudding violently, and my breathing was ragged. I opened my mouth and took slow, deep, and hopefully silent breaths.

  The ringing started again, both in the office and through the speaker of my cell phone. Once. Twice. A thir—

  “Hello?”

  My heart stopped and plummeted, landing with an impressive splat in my gut. The rest of my body began trembling right along with my thumb, and bile rose in the back of my throat. I attempted to both insist upon and deny what I now knew to be true.

  “Hello?” the voice barked again, causing me to cringe.

  Hastily, I pressed the “call end” button with my thumb and stood frozen as the owner of the cell phone muttered angrily about butt dialing and telemarketers.

  I continued to stand there, rooted in place, for what felt like an eternity as I tried to force my mind to accept what’d just happened. I knew who that voice and that phone belonged to. And no amount of mental gymnastics or logical argument could change it or make me unknow it. My world slowly started to crumble.

  I knew whose pocket that burner cell phone was sitting in even as I lurked outside his office door.

  I now knew who Golzar had called that night.

  I now knew who tried to have me killed.

  My boss. Assistant to the Special Agent in Charge Mark Jennings.

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As quickly and as quietly as I possibly could, I fled back to my office, terrified and desperate. My feelings decreased only marginally when I reached my office and silently shut the door.

  Okay, don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. I leaned against the door and took a deep, shaky breath as I tried to will my traitorous heart to slow down from its gallop. Trembling badly, I wasn’t surprised when my legs gave out, and I slumped down to the floor.

  Reaching up behind my head, I thumbed the deadbolt. I’d have felt a million times better if I’d had my gun, but I still wasn’t back to full duty, so I wasn’t allowed to carry it. Did my dad have it at his house, or had he moved it to the safe in his office? Not that it mattered much. No way was I going to chance the journey up to Mahogany Row, where all the big bosses sat, in order to retrieve it. Not when I couldn’t be 100 percent positive that Mark wasn’t lying in wait for me somewhere out there.

  Merely thinking of him made the adrenaline spike painfully in my system again, and I shook even worse. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, ducki
ng my head. I closed my eyes.

  Ten seconds, I told myself firmly. You can have ten seconds to freak the fuck out. And then you really need to get your ass in gear and take some sort of action.

  I inhaled deeply, slowly counting out five languid beats. Then I paused for an instant and exhaled as completely as possible, counting the remaining five seconds of allotted break-down time. When that was over, I repeated the process, rationalizing that twenty seconds wasn’t too much to ask.

  Mental disintegration put on hold for the time being, I crawled over to my desk and hid on the floor behind it. Part of me felt like an idiot, cowering the way I was, but the majority of me agreed that if a man—a federal agent, no less—could order a hit on one of his own employees, then logic was clearly out the window, and the notion of an office murder was possible.

  Frowning, I reflected on Mark’s behavior the past few weeks and saw each interaction in a new light. His demand to know why I’d been on Utica Avenue the night I’d interviewed Akbari. His fishing for further information regarding the subsequent investigation. His insistence that I keep him in the loop on the case’s progression. His sudden appearances at my office during the oddest times, only to look surprised to find it occupied. His rooting through my desk the other night in search of some mysterious object. When I’d thought about it—which, truthfully, hadn’t been either deeply or often—I’d dismissed his actions as part of his latest campaign to get me fired or have me transferred out of his squad. Now, however, when played against the backdrop of what I knew, all those scenes took on a much more sinister connotation.

  Now that I knew more or less the who behind the assassination attempt, I needed to figure out the why. I chewed on my lower lip and rested my chin in the palm of my hand as my mind worked furiously to try to come up with a possible motive. I mean, I knew Mark hated me, but to actually want me dead? That seemed like overkill. Pun intended.

  I pulled the phone records from Golzar’s phone from my desk down into my lap and began to sift through them, looking at the other days I’d previously ignored. I wasn’t particularly surprised to see the number I now knew to be Mark’s frequently peppered into Golzar’s call logs. Clearly, the two had a relationship of some kind. And, according to the records I’d subpoenaed, it’d been going on for quite a while. Before the Akbari interview even. What the hell?

  I tried to come up with something, anything, that could possibly tie them to one another, because based on what I was reading in these records, their relationship definitely hadn’t started because of me. I kept chewing on my lower lip as I thought, considering and then discarding one inane theory after another.

  The counterfeit connection seemed to be the most plausible link. Golzar had long been suspected of financing a good deal of his activities through the sale of counterfeit currency. We’d never been able to make that charge stick before because the AUSAs in New York seemed to require a confession inked in someone’s own blood that that’s what he was doing. And that all of Golzar’s supposed minions were caught with different types of counterfeit bills had confused us no end. Normally, perps tended to pick one type of bill to print and stuck with it. The entire situation had frustrated the bejeezus out of us, but we hadn’t yet been able to acquire enough concrete proof that he was the mastermind behind the entire ring.

  So, throwing solid, tangible evidence out the window and applying the standard of reasonable doubt, perhaps Golzar was in fact using counterfeit currency to fund his activities. That I could fathom, but I couldn’t wrap my head around Mark’s role in this twisted play.

  Mark had been the AT of the Counterfeit Squad right before I’d transferred in a few years ago. He’d actually been leaving just as I’d been reassigned, so our paths hadn’t crossed. I tried to recall who’d been in the squad with him when he’d been the boss. Rico had already been there when I’d transferred in, so he must’ve worked for Mark for at least a couple of months before the switch. I’d have to ask him.

  So, I had Golzar’s connection to counterfeit and Mark’s connection to counterfeit. But what was their connection to each other? How had they met? And when? What’d been the progression of their relationship to have left us here? And did the fact that they both had knowledge of counterfeit currency—albeit it from completely opposite perspectives—have any bearing on the situation?

  Cocking my head to one side, I listened intently, trying to determine where Mark was at the moment. His office was too far away from mine for me to tell whether he was still there, but I didn’t hear any footsteps approaching my workspace. That was a good sign.

  Feeling a little bit less terrified with a puzzle to distract me, I slowly eased myself up so I could reach my laptop. With a few well-placed keystrokes, I was into the main file server that our office shared and had instigated a search for any files containing the keywords “Jennings” and “Iran.” I drummed my fingertips on the top of my desk in what must’ve been quadruple time as I watched the system execute its search.

  The ringing of my cell phone sliced into the near silence with a suddenness that made me shriek. I clapped my hands over my mouth and prayed to any deity who’d listen that Mark hadn’t heard me. I doubted my ability to act normally around him at the moment, and I really didn’t need him to suspect I was onto him. I didn’t put it past him to lead me out of the office at gun point and kill me, leaving my dead body in the marshes of Long Island where all those hookers had been found several years ago. And if there was one place I definitely didn’t want my body discovered, it was Long Island. Dead was the only way to get me there willingly.

  I clawed at the phone where it rested on the edge of my desk, determined to silence it. Naturally, I simply managed to smack it, and once I did, it fell off the desk and skittered across the floor out of my reach. I felt like a cartoon as I leapt across the room to throw myself bodily on top of it in an attempt to at least muffle the ring. Holy hell, that hurt. I groaned and tried not to move as my body adjusted to the pain.

  When the ache had been downgraded from agonizing to almost bearable, I resumed my quest to quiet my phone. Wincing against the clatter my chair made as I kicked it and it rolled across the floor, I wrapped my butterfingers around the slippery little device just as the ringing ceased. With a gargantuan sigh of relief, I lay panting on the floor, as much from physical pain as emotional turmoil.

  A knock against my closed office door stopped my heart for what felt like an eternity, and when it finally resumed pumping again, it was racing so fast I couldn’t distinguish the individual beats from one another. It just felt like one painful, continuous roar. A cold sweat broke out across my brow, and I struggled to make as little noise as I could while attempting to regain a standing position. I refused to be on my knees when I faced the man who tried to have me killed. I also wasn’t going to make this easy on him in the slightest. If he wanted me dead, he’d have to do it here and now. No way was I leaving the office with him. Fuck that!

  “Ryan?” The voice was muffled by the metal between us, but I’d have recognized it anywhere. I was just having trouble figuring out why I was hearing it at all.

  Stymied, I opened the door, chancing a quick glance around what I could see of the rest of the hallway to make absolutely certain Mark wasn’t lurking anywhere. “Allison? What are you doing here?”

  I grabbed her hand and pulled her into my office before poking my head out to take one last look. Then I silently shut the door again and turned to face her.

  Allison’s normally sparkling black eyes were dull and lifeless, highlighted by dark circles underneath. The familiar air of confidence-bordering-on-cockiness that she normally wore—the one I was as attracted to as I was irritated by—was absent. Her shoulders were slumped, her clothes slightly rumpled. She looked beaten.

  “Are you okay?” she asked me, looking me up and down.

  “Are you?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “Sure. I’m fine. Why?”

  “You look a little…I do
n’t know…shell-shocked.” She glanced around my office as though she were looking for someone.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked again.

  She made a face. “Nice to see you, too.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just…I wasn’t expecting you.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, all the air whooshed out of my lungs like I’d been sucker punched. Had Mark seen her? Oh, shit! She’d been with me the night before when Mark had been rummaging through my desk. If he paid any attention to the office gossip, he already knew she and I were together, which meant she was probably in more danger than I originally feared. Fuck! We had to—

  “Clearly. I went by your apartment first, but you obviously weren’t there. I figured this was the next logical place to find you.”

  My pulse pounded just beneath the surface of my skin, and I was suddenly light-headed. “Did anybody see you?” My voice sounded small and far away, like someone else had spoken.

  Allison frowned. “No. I don’t think so.”

  My dizziness lessened, and the world seemed more in focus, though I wasn’t completely relieved. “Good.”

  “Is this about people knowing we’re together?” She sounded hurt. “Because I told you I don’t care.”

  “What? No, no. It’s not about that. I wasn’t even…” I buried my face in my hands and clawed at my forehead with my nails. “Jesus Christ.”

  Soft hands closed gently around my wrists and pulled my hands down. Could Allison tell they were trembling? She had to be able to. I took a deep, shuddering breath before I met her eyes, praying I didn’t look even a fraction as panicked as I felt.

  “Ryan, what’s going on?”

  I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry, and my throat felt like it’d swollen shut. The muffled sounds of voices approaching and then passing my office made me freeze, and though I was thrilled that neither was Mark, I realized that I had no idea where he was at the moment. My breath was coming in short gasps, and mental images of Allison bleeding to death on the ground assaulted me. I drove them away with a violent shake of my head and forced myself to concentrate on her.