They’d given her San Antonio.
It was relatively common that, after a two-year rookie period, federal agents were given the option to move to any available position in another regional office. When Sean bought the house, she’d told him she’d most likely be transferred after two years. He didn’t care, he wanted a place that was theirs, and she loved him for it. She loved their home, their neighborhood, and San Antonio had grown on her. She didn’t know if she would request a transfer, though she might not have a choice.
Nicole Rollins had spent two years in the Los Angeles DEA office, and her final request was to be transferred to an opening in Houston. She was there for nine months before she was moved laterally into the San Antonio regional office, which was under the Houston umbrella.
She hadn’t asked to be moved again since she landed here.
Lucy made a list of Nicole’s employment history with the DEA, the names of her direct supervisors in each office, and whether she asked to be transferred to or from any office location. Nicole had never bought a house until arriving in San Antonio.
Three years ago.
Lucy stared at the timeline, her heart racing as she realized that Nicole hadn’t been assigned to San Antonio when she killed the drug dealer.
When they DEA recovered the disk three months ago—thanks to Sean’s brother Kane—Nicole claimed that the cartel had used that disk as leverage over her for the last five years, implying that she’d been forced into working for them. Yet, it was clear, after this well-orchestrated prison break, that there was much more to the story. Nicole wasn’t a timid, fearful federal agent being blackmailed into subservience.
Lucy had assumed the disk had been filmed in San Antonio—Ryan had known about the case—but Nicole was assigned to Los Angeles during that time. If she was in San Antonio five years ago, why? Was she on vacation? On assignment? Who was the man she killed and was there another reason for his murder other than taking his money and drugs?
She closed her eyes and remembered the conversation she’d had with Ryan. It was the disk they’d uncovered that had proven Nicole was a corrupt DEA agent. Ryan said it was from a San Antonio case that was still on the books, unsolved. Nicole had gone into the small electronics repair shop, flashed her badge, and shot the unarmed owner in cold blood. The victim was a known criminal, the shop a link in the chain moving drugs up from Mexico and into the rest of the country.
Lucy needed to see that disk.
“Lucy?”
She jumped up, startled.
Brad stood next to her cubicle. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“I was thinking.”
Brad looked over her extensive notes. “You’ve been busy.”
She glanced at her desk. Sticky notes littered Nicole’s file and her desk. It was already after two in the afternoon. “ASAC Durant gave me Nicole’s file to review.”
Brad frowned. “Sam told me. Not to diminish profiling, but we know who we’re dealing with.”
“We don’t know the half of it, Brad.” She tapped the file. “Nicole asked to be transferred multiple times over ten years, but once she landed in San Antonio, she requested no more transfers. That tells me she wanted to be here. I need the disk that showed her killing the drug dealer—we need to look deeper into that case. Ryan said it happened in San Antonio, but Nicole worked out of the Los Angeles office during that time period.”
“What are you saying? That Ryan lied?”
She was surprised. “No, of course not. I’m saying she was here, that she killed the dealer, and we can confirm through DEA records if she was on duty in LA and if not, what her status was. But was it just the one dealer? Were there more? What was the fallout after his murder? How did the landscape change in San Antonio after he was killed?”
Brad pulled over a chair from another desk and sat down. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Nicole claimed that the disk was being used as leverage by Trejo to force her to work for them. Blackmail.”
“I don’t believe that. Not after today.”
“Maybe she became more ruthless as time went on. Once you kill, it’s easier to kill again.”
“Is it?” she asked, her face blank. Because she had that fear, she’d had it since she first killed a man when she was eighteen, without remorse. The man she’d killed had been a rapist and a murderer—her rapist. But still, she’d killed him in cold blood and felt no guilt.
It wasn’t the last time she’d killed. The second time she’d saved the life of an innocent woman. And then, in Mexico, she’d shot six men. She hadn’t counted them at the time, but when it was over, she just knew. She didn’t know if they all died, but assumed they had from either the injuries she gave them or the lack of medical attention after.
That darkness inside scared her. Especially now, especially when she’d finally found peace in her life. Because it was still there. The dark threatened her hard-earned peace.
“She had to turn sometime,” Brad said. “Five years ago? Longer? Does it matter?”
“Yes,” Lucy said without hesitation. “I need to see that video. It’ll help me get into her head.”
Brad scowled. “I don’t want to understand her. I want to find her.”
“We’ll never find her if we don’t understand her,” Lucy countered. “She’s too smart, too calculating. She’s not your average drug dealer. She’s ruthless, seasoned, and she knows our playbook. She’s been a federal agent for fifteen years, in nine different offices. Why? She knows not only how we do things, but how you do things. How Sam does things. That’s why I need to see that tape. Was that the first or a repeat? Killing a man in cold blood isn’t easy—how did she do it? Did she hesitate? Have a conversation with him first? Was it an accident? An assassination?”
“Assassination,” Brad mumbled. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know, but after the cold-blooded murder of two DEA agents and three guards today, assassination popped into my head. We also need to talk—you, me, Sam Archer.”
“I need to get out in the field and find her.”
“The marshals are doing everything they can, and they’re the best. But even so, they need more information. Were they able to trace Nicole after the helicopter landed?”
Brad shook his head.
“Do we have an ID on any of the men who helped her escape?”
Again, Brad shook his head.
“I also want to talk to her brother, Chris. He’s stationed out of Fort Hood. I don’t know if he’s deployed or on base. I’m going to ask Nate to help—he spent ten years in the army and was stationed at Fort Hood. He’ll know people there, who to talk to, to get me to Chris Rollins faster. And I want to go to her house.”
“Her house?”
“According to the file, she owned a house in San Antonio that’s currently secured by the DEA under asset forfeiture laws. But I don’t have any information about her belongings—computer, paperwork, personal effects.”
“Well, fuck. All that was destroyed when Tobias planted the bomb in our evidence locker.”
Lucy froze. “All her personal effects were destroyed?”
“I don’t know exactly what was there, but we seized her phones, electronics, date books, anything that was potential evidence.”
Lucy stared at the file. “What’s the conventional wisdom on why Tobias wanted to destroy the evidence locker?”
“The initial reason still makes sense—that there was something in evidence that implicated him, and we didn’t know about it. But another school of thought, which I lean toward, is that he simply wanted to fuck with us—we’re scrambling with all the cases we had pending. Evidence is gone. Some bastards are going to get off. The AUSA has already dismissed three cases because we no longer have the evidence—which leads us to the third school of thought. That Tobias wanted someone specific to be released.” He narrowed his eyes. “Not Nicole—not only do we have copies of most of the evidence we lost, like the disk, but we have her co
nfession that she was being blackmailed by Vasco Trejo. What we lost was only physical evidence.”
“But you had some of the things from her house and desk in that evidence lockup.”
“Of course.”
She mulled it over. It made sense. It was the only thing that did make sense. “During your conversation with her two weeks ago, when she implied that Tobias had set up the hit on his own people, you came away with the thought that she may have known him, but more likely knew him by reputation.”
“She was questioned extensively about Tobias and said she’d never seen him.”
“She’s a liar. We can’t believe anything she says.”
“She was interrogated by our best people. And her plea agreement was predicated on providing truthful information. If we caught her in a lie, the agreement was null and void.”
Lucy clearly saw the truth; why couldn’t Brad?
“Brad, she never intended to fulfill her end of the agreement. It didn’t matter if she lied, because she was already planning the escape. The only thing that makes sense is that she’s been working with Tobias all along. She knew the protocol for drug evidence. She knew that you’d lock it in evidence prior to being sent to the lab for testing, so the risk that anyone would find the bomb was slim. Plant the bomb, wait until the evidence is secure, blow the locker. There was something you had in there that she didn’t want us to know about.”
“That’s a long stretch. And those drugs were worth a million dollars on the street.”
“Were they? You did a field test, but didn’t test for potency or test all the bricks, correct?”
He hesitated. “I see what you’re saying, but—”
“She planned a complex and dangerous escape while in solitary confinement, which meant either her lawyer was helping her or one of the guards. She may have made plans before she was ever captured, in case her duplicity was discovered. The surviving guard, Isaac Harris, said she was privy to information about the escape that she only could have known had she been part of the planning.”
“You give her a lot of credit for being smart.”
“Nicole Rollins is smart. She is willing to do anything necessary to secure her freedom, though what her endgame is, I’m not sure. But I’m positive she knows. She does have a plan, and she started the ball rolling the minute she was arrested. I need to get into her house, then talk to her brother.”
“When we first arrested Nicole, Chris Rollins was deployed. I don’t remember where off the top of my head, but he was overseas. Sam talked to him, then someone from the DOJ. He claims that he and Nicole hadn’t spoken in years, that they were estranged.”
“But no one was asking about who Nicole was as a kid while they were growing up. What she did, who she socialized with, how she handled setbacks or disappointment. All that is important to develop a reliable profile.”
“I still think it’s a huge waste of time to dig around in her psyche when that isn’t going to guarantee we’ll find her.”
Brad was getting frustrated, but so was Lucy.
“What is it you want to do now? The marshals are leading the manhunt, so what now?”
“Don’t you have to stay here and work on that?” he said with disdain.
Lucy was used to the skepticism of many cops about using psychology as a tool. Not because she had experienced it—she wasn’t officially a profiler—but because her older brother Dillon was a forensic psychiatrist and she’d lived with him and his wife, Kate, for seven years. She thought that after years of successful criminal profiling that led to the arrest of killers, more cops would understand it was a valuable tool.
“I can do this while you drive.”
That seemed to satisfy him. He said, “I’d really like to wring her attorney’s neck, but the marshals are all over the guy. So far, he hasn’t given up anything, but we have a lot of latitude. One shred of proof that the lawyer aided and abetted her escape, and he’s toast. Disbarment, potential jail time.”
Lucy thought back to only two weeks ago, when Tobias’s people had held a woman and her children hostage to force a white-collar criminal to transfer funds into their account. If her theory that Tobias and Nicole were truly connected held, that meant that anyone working with Tobias was also connected, in some way, to Nicole.
Elise Hansen. Tobias’s much younger sister.
“Brad—I need to talk to Elise.”
“She fucked with you last time you went to see her, you can’t do that again.”
“Don’t coddle me,” Lucy snapped. “I’ve faced far more dangerous psychopaths than Elise Hansen. And she tried to get under my skin, but failed.” Mostly. “She must know about Nicole. Elise still claims she’s Tobias’s little sister.” Lucy was skeptical about that. Tobias was in his forties. Elise was sixteen. It was possible they were brother and sister, but it seemed too much of a stretch. Still, Elise knew him, she’d talked to him, she’d seen him. They had substantive proof that she’d acted on Tobias’s orders when she killed Congresswoman Worthington’s husband. She could very well know something of Nicole Rollins’s plans—at least as much as Tobias himself knew.
“I’m not coddling you, Lucy.” He ran a hand through his sandy hair. “Maybe, just a bit. You push yourself to the edge.”
“And it’s warranted, especially now. Nicole was party to the murder of five cops. She’ll kill more if she gets the chance. She has a deep loathing of law enforcement, and the DEA in particular. We need to push ourselves. Find out more about Elise and her relationship with Tobias. More about Nicole and how she hooked up with him. And really—why did Tobias help Nicole escape and not his own sister? It wouldn’t be as difficult to free her as this elaborate breakout this morning.” She shook her head. “That part doesn’t make sense. Yet.”
“We don’t know that Tobias had a hand in Nicole’s escape.”
“We might not be able to prove it, but he was part of it. She couldn’t do it alone, she had to have someone on the outside with substantial resources. If not Tobias, who?”
Brad didn’t have a response.
Nicole needed money and resources. A safe house. The helicopter, the men, the vehicles, the access to Saint Catherine’s bus—all that required time and money. Lots of money. The DEA had frozen Nicole’s accounts, but she could have had money the DEA hadn’t found. Cash in safety deposit boxes, private storage units, under false names and identification. Tobias had a substantial pool of money, even though the FBI had seized the accounts Congresswoman Reyes-Worthington had used to launder Tobias’s illegal money.
Was Tobias planning on letting Elise rot? She was sixteen, she could be tried as an adult, particularly since she had been involved in serious felonies. Lucy’s partner in the Worthington case, Barry Crawford, had been working closely with the AUSA on Elise’s case, because it was a sensitive investigation. So much of the evidence they had against her—for murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, conspiracy, and more—was circumstantial. Last she’d heard, before Barry left on his vacation, the AUSA was working on a plea deal, but Elise wasn’t budging. She was holding firm to her statement that she didn’t know what was going on, that she only did what she was told because she was scared, and that her brother Tobias would kill her if she said anything.
That last part may have been true—whether or not Tobias was truly her biological brother. But Lucy could see that Elise wasn’t scared of anything. She had no fear, no remorse, no thought for anyone. She didn’t fear death, and she didn’t fear imprisonment. It was a game to her, pure and simple. She looked at the cards each day and made her decisions, with the end goal always to finish ahead of everyone else. She’d change tactics midstream if it benefited her, and if she was caught lying she’d switch tactics again.
Lucy had to find a way to manipulate the game. To manipulate Elise into revealing the game plan, without Elise realizing Lucy was manipulating her. And someone like Elise would be extremely hard to trick. How could someone so young be such an accomplished con artist and l
iar?
It would also take time to set up. It was midafternoon, and there was no way they could get in to see her today. Lucy would much rather have Hans there as well—if not in the room with her, then observing.
In fact, Lucy suspected that if Hans were in the room, Elise wouldn’t talk at all. She didn’t respect men. She saw them as a means to an end, weak through sex, easily manipulated.
But observing, Hans might see something Lucy couldn’t, because of his experience and distance from the case. She wanted to talk to Barry first. She sent him a text message to call her as soon as he returned from vacation. He would have the most up-to-date information on Elise’s case.
“Brad,” she said, “I’m going to talk to Elise tomorrow. I’d like you to observe as well.”
Brad sighed. “If you really think this is important, fine.”
“I appreciate your faith, Brad. I can’t do this without you. You know Nicole better than anyone, even Sam.”
“Then why couldn’t I see her for who she really was?” Brad said quietly.
“Brad, two years ago I was working for a nonprofit company that tracked repeat sex offenders. We’d compile information and evidence for law enforcement, and helped take hundreds of child predators off the streets and put them back in prison. I was obsessed with the program. It was run by a former FBI agent—a woman who’d become something of my mentor. She’d been one of the first female FBI agents, was well respected, and after retirement she committed her life to rooting out these vicious people.” Lucy paused, unsure exactly how much she should tell Brad. “I had total faith in her. Blind faith, really, because she was using me to identify parolees for the purpose of killing them.”
No Good Deed Page 7
