No Good Deed

by Allison Brennan

  Blitz pulled out Kane’s sat phone and put it in his own pack. “You also need to know that Kane’s been shot.”

  “How do you know?” He kept staring at the broken radio. Dammit, Kane.

  “That’s the word, that he’s injured and holed up. They’ll find him if we don’t find him first. Or he’ll die.”

  “Kane is too stubborn.”

  “And he has a knife, two sidearms, and an M5. Enough ammo to hold off a small force, but I don’t know how many rounds he may have used earlier, or if he was able to procure more. And that won’t help if they have grenades. Which I assume they do. Good news is that he had the wherewithal to keep his first-aid kit with him.” Blitz looked at him quizzically. “Are you really ready for this?”

  Sean nodded. No, he wasn’t. He didn’t want to die out here. But he didn’t want Kane to die out there, either. If anyone could make it out of this trap, it was Kane—but even Kane wasn’t invincible. Kane was injured, he needed help, and there was no way in hell that Sean would let him die if he could do something to stop it.

  The first bounty on Kane was to grab him alive. Kane didn’t know that the bounty had been changed to a kill order. It was much easier to kill someone than capture him still breathing.

  Blitz pulled down his mask. He’d already darkened his face with cosmetics for camouflage. Sean quickly covered his face, then pulled down his own mask.

  Blitz had a good idea where Kane was hiding. Partly because the gang had already covered much of the area, and partly because Blitz knew Kane’s methodology. He’d want to be near water because of his injury and not knowing how long he would be stuck there. He also would want a good vantage point to identify potential threats.

  “How fast can you get this plane out of here dark?” Blitz said.

  “Fast.”

  “We might not have more than a few minutes.”

  They were not on a real runway, which was the single greatest problem. Sean had spent the hours Blitz was gone going up and down the clearing to get rid of anything that might damage the plane—rocks, tree branches, filling in holes—and prevent them from getting into the air. The other problem was they didn’t have much distance to gain speed for takeoff. If he couldn’t get the plane up, they’d go down a steep rock face and crash into trees and boulders on their way to the bottom of the canyon. Survivable? Maybe. While being pursued by gunmen? Probably not.

  He didn’t want to crash his plane. He liked it, he’d made many special modifications, and he didn’t want to break in another. But this was the one time he wished he could fly a helicopter.

  He was going to take lessons as soon as he got back to San Antonio.

  “I’ll get us up,” he told Blitz. He looked at his watch. 12:05. He turned to his computer and motioned for Blitz.

  The soldier came over and looked over Sean’s shoulder. “That’s almost exactly where I thought he’d be,” Blitz said. “Couldn’t trust my instincts?”

  “We have the tech, we damn well are going to use it,” Sean snapped. He shut down his laptop and stowed it in the plane.

  They had a two-mile trek down into the canyon. Sean had never truly feared for his life before. He’d been in harrowing situations. He’d flown under fire for Kane. He’d fallen down a mine shaft and hadn’t known if anyone would find him. He’d been shot at, barely escaped a forest fire, and once long ago had nearly died in the plane crash that claimed the lives of his parents.

  He’d taken his life in his hands many times. He loved street racing and had crashed twice, once resulting in a broken leg. He’d been fifteen and legally not allowed to drive. He’d been reckless in his youth, not only with his plane and cars and speedboats, but in putting himself into dangerous situations. Maybe he’d had a death wish for a while after his parents died. He’d gotten out of the crash with minor injuries; his parents were dead. He’d buried their bodies. He never talked about it. He hadn’t even told Lucy everything. He really didn’t want to dig too deep in his psyche.

  That was sixteen years ago, more than half his life, and now he had so much more to live for. He wasn’t going to hurt Lucy by getting himself killed.

  “Let’s go,” Sean said, edgy.

  “I’m waiting for someone.”

  Sean froze. “Who?”

  “Ranger.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Because I didn’t know if he’d make it in time.”

  “Yet we’re waiting for him.”

  “You have to trust me.”

  Sean didn’t say anything. He did—and he didn’t. He didn’t trust many people. Not anymore. There’d been a time when he trusted the wrong people.

  “He knows where we are. He parachuted in on the other side of the mountain, to avoid being detected. I’m giving him fifteen more minutes, then we go with or without him.”

  “Don’t leave without me,” a voice said behind them.

  Sean whirled around, gun in hand. Blitz didn’t.

  “You’re edgy, Little Rogan,” Blitz said.

  Ranger came out of the shrubs. That a man as large as Ranger—six foot three and two-hundred-some pounds of solid muscle—could be so stealthy was almost unnerving.

  “It’s my brother who’s been shot.”

  “And our commander,” Blitz said.

  “And my best friend,” Ranger said. “Kane Rogan is not going to die today. But we’d better go, because they’re getting close. They’re going to find this plane at the first crack of light.”

  “I don’t plan on being around at sunrise,” Sean said.

  “Good.” Ranger slapped him on the back. It hurt, but Sean didn’t show a response. “Don’t get yourself killed, kid.”

  At least he didn’t call him “Little Rogan.”

  Sean turned on his cell phone. On the top of the mountain he had a signal, one bar, and that’s all he needed to get out a text message.

  Going dark. I love you.

  He watched the message clear, then he turned off his phone and followed Ranger and Blitz down the mountain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Lucy was dozing off when her phone vibrated. She reached over and grabbed it. She’d been up here for an hour going over the files. Maybe she’d slept for ten minutes.

  It was a message from an unfamiliar number.

  Going dark. I love you.

  No signature, nothing to tell her it was from Sean, but she knew it was him.

  She shifted her papers around and her laptop woke itself up when she bumped it. She’d been reading a long legal document that the AUSA had sent to Logan Dunbar. That’s what had put her to sleep.

  She was about to shut off the computer and go find Jack—he needed to know about this message from Sean. He might know what it meant. Maybe he’d heard something else. But a phrase on the screen caught her eye.

  Civilian consultant CC474, authorized by ASAC DEAN S HOOPER, Sacramento Division, FBI, the former director of the White Collar Crimes Division out of Washington, piggybacked a program on the wire transfers in order to prevent EVERETT from transferring the full amount of the laundered money to the account controlled by TOBIAS.

  Civilian consultant.

  Sean.

  Undercover agents, informants, and anyone else the AUSA or FBI didn’t want to publicly identify were given a coded number. Access to that list was severely restricted, and she didn’t know if even Nicole would have someone that far up the ladder working for her.

  Except … she’d read something that afternoon about a civilian consultant. What was it?

  The memo from Barry.

  She searched Dunbar’s documents for anything from Barry Crawford. She found a memo, not from Barry but from Dunbar to Rick Stockton. He’d written it after Sean had found the bug in Worthington’s office, when he was still angry that the investigation into Worthington’s murder might impact his investigation into political corruption. This was before Adeline Worthington had been killed and before they’d connected her money laundering to Tobias an
d, by extension, Nicole Rollins.

  She skimmed most of it because it was a rehash of the conversation they’d had in Ritz Naygrow’s office at the time. Most of it was accurate, though slanted from Dunbar’s point of view. Until near the end when he wrote:

  I hesitate to mention this because I know that you have a professional and personal relationship with Rogan-Caruso-Kincaid Protective Services. I respect much of the work that they’ve done over the years as consultants to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. However, I was told that Sean Rogan resigned from RCK. He has no contract with the FBI or any other government agency, and I am concerned that using him as a civilian consultant on the Harper Worthington murder investigation could come back to bite us in court. While I was told by SSA Casilla that Rogan was hired by Worthington’s company to run the security audit, it’s clear that he assisted the FBI in identifying and tracking the legal wiretap on Worthington’s office phone.

  I feel compelled to mention this because the case I am building against Congresswoman Reyes-Worthington is solid, but her attorneys will exploit any hole, jeopardizing a year-long investigation. It’s one of the reasons that I have been vocal in my opposition to using civilian consultants in many of our white-collar investigations. The risk may be slight, but it exists and cannot be overlooked.

  I understand that Sean Rogan has unique skills and was instrumental in infiltrating the hacker organization known as NET, resulting in saving an untold number of lives, but the potential conflict with his involvement with a federal agent and involvement in a major investigation remains. I look forward to discussing this further with you when I return to DC after this case is put to bed. I apologize if I have overstepped, but felt it was important to let you know that there could be a problem in the prosecution of our case if we don’t restrain our use of civilian consultants.

  She jumped up and ran from her room. She found Jack and Nate in the dining room talking quietly. Jack had moved Sean’s security iPad to the table in front of him and was monitoring all the cameras Sean had set up around the property. Hans wasn’t there.

  “I know why Nicole is still in town.”

  “I thought you were asleep,” Jack said.

  “I dozed off, just for a few minutes.” She showed him the message from Sean. “He sent this about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Good.”

  That momentarily sidetracked her.

  “Good?”

  “I suspected Sean would break protocol and contact you before they went to retrieve Kane.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Not much. Ranger parachuted in to assist in the rescue operation.”

  “Rescue?” She was repeating Jack, but she was confused.

  “I don’t know specifics,” he said. “The Juarez gang has been dispatched to a region southeast of Santiago because of the increased bounty for Kane. That’s why Ranger decided to go down. Ranger was part of my unit before I retired. He’s one of the very best. You have to let this go for now. Go back to sleep.”

  She sat down at the table. “I can’t,” she said. “I know why Nicole wanted Dunbar’s files.”

  She rubbed her head. Maybe she was blowing it out of proportion.

  Nate slid over a water bottle. She drank, then said, “There was no reason for Rollins to kill Dunbar. And why in DC and not in San Antonio where it would have been easier to get to him? Because they needed something from him. His laptop. Logically, he would travel with his laptop, and that laptop has all the information about Congresswoman Worthington’s case.”

  “But none of that is private. He would have sent memos and reports to everyone else involved. If they destroyed the laptop, the information is still out there.”

  “They didn’t want to destroy it, they only wanted to see it. They need information. For Nicole to escape and have a chance to survive on the run, she needs money. The money that Sean siphoned off into the FBI asset forfeiture accounts.”

  “Did Dunbar have access to that information?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know—but in the hundred-and-ninety-page court brief, it clearly states that a civilian consultant was responsible for hijacking the money transfer under the authorization of Dean Hooper. It doesn’t name Sean, but it has a UC code.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’ll know it was Sean,” Jack said.

  She shook her head. “The brief isn’t the problem, it’s everything together. First the brief clearly states how their money was seized. Then a memo that Dunbar wrote to Rick Stockton after Sean found the bug in Worthington’s phone identified Sean as the one who found the bug, and he explicitly said that Sean was acting as a civilian consultant. Dunbar also referenced Sean’s involvement in going undercover with a hacker group in New York. It wouldn’t take a genius to realize that the civilian consultant in the brief is Sean. Hooper is in Sacramento; Sean was born in Sacramento. Sean graduated from M.I.T. They know Kane Rogan was in town two weeks ago, they know Kane and Sean are brothers, and they know that I’m living with Sean.”

  She looked from Nate to Jack. “We have to find a way to warn him!” Her voice cracked. “He needs to know that he’s as much a target as Kane.”

  “He’s always been a target, because he’s Kane’s brother and he was in Mexico when Kane raided Trejo’s complex.”

  Why didn’t they see what she saw? “Rollins wants Sean to get their money. It’s the only reason she would stay local when every cop in every agency is looking for her. We’re talking about over ten million dollars. Money that she would consider hers and that Sean has the skills to retrieve. I think this whole bounty on Kane was initially because she thought Kane took the money. Sean told me”—she glanced at Nate, then continued—“that there were some operations where he hacked into a cartel’s account at the behest of Kane.”

  “I’m aware. That’s long in the past. RCK doesn’t sanction those actions anymore. We can’t, not with our relationship with federal law enforcement.”

  “But Sean did it, not Kane—yet they might think it was Kane because he took responsibility for the theft. He’s the face behind the Trejo raid. So they wanted him to get their money thinking he’s the one who took it. Now they have discovered that it was a quasi-sanctioned federal operation, and that Kane didn’t do it. Sean did.”

  Jack didn’t say anything for a minute. He and Nate exchanged looks and Lucy wanted to scream. Did they think she was paranoid? She knew she was right. Deep down she knew that as soon as Nicole hacked into Dunbar’s hard drive, she would realize it was Sean who took her money.

  Jack said, “I’ll call Padre. He’s the contact for the team. The first place they’ll go is Hidalgo.”

  “Okay. Okay.” She took a deep breath, let it out. “Thank you.”

  Jack took her hand. “I’m not going to let anything happen to Sean.”

  She didn’t say anything. Jack couldn’t make a promise like that. Hundreds of cops were looking for Nicole, combing through her contacts, her family, her cases. Everyone wanted her caught. Lucy believed in the system. There were more good cops than bad. No one was going to stop looking until they found her and put her in prison for life.

  But between now and then? Sam Archer was dead. Barry Crawford was dead. How many people did Nicole hate enough to kill? No one Lucy cared about would be safe as long as Nicole was alive.

  Prison hadn’t stopped Nicole before; it wouldn’t stop her now.

  * * *

  In the deep darkness, Blitz set a fast, steady pace down the mountain. The three of them wore night-vision goggles. The air was warm, there was no breeze, and every footfall sounded like a cannon, but they moved as quietly as possible. Blitz took the lead, Ranger the rear.

  Sean realized that he was ill suited for this kind of work. His specialty was computers and electronics. Give him a security system, he could hack it. Give him an airplane, he could fly it from anywhere. He’d even go so far as to say he could survive in the wilderness if he had to. But military-style operations weren�
��t his strength, and he could count on one hand the number of ops—outside of being the getaway pilot—he’d done with Kane. And that included the raid of Trejo’s compound three months ago after rescuing the boys.

  He trusted Blitz and Ranger because Kane did, but he recognized that Kane’s men had formed this line with him in the middle because Sean wasn’t a soldier.

  Stop second-guessing yourself, Rogan. Kane is your brother. You can do this.

  It was the fear that they would find Kane dead that terrified Sean most of all. He didn’t want to fly his brother’s corpse back to Texas. Kane was a loner with many friends. Friends like Ranger and Padre and Blitz and Jack, who were soldiers and comrades. But Kane still had an aura of loneliness. He kept the family at arm’s length, and while Sean knew some of the reasons, he didn’t completely understand. He wanted to. He admired Kane, respected him, was frustrated with him, but mostly he didn’t want to lose him. It bothered Sean greatly that he was closer to Lucy’s brother Patrick than to any of his own brothers. He was closer to Jack than he was to Kane, and Jack and Kane were two of a kind. Except—Jack didn’t keep his family at arm’s length. Jack recognized that family mattered, that family made life better.

  There was nothing Sean wanted to do more than marry Lucy. Getting Jack and Patrick and the others as his brothers was icing on the cake.

  He had a lot to ask Kane. Things he’d tried to get him to talk about before, but Kane refused. Like about their parents’ plane crash sixteen years ago. About their older sister Molly’s overdose even farther back. About what had happened to make Kane hate their brother Liam, and if that event had forced Liam into what was essentially an exile in Europe. Sean wanted to understand some of the choices Kane had made and why. Kane never talked about himself, but Sean had to change that.

  Blitz put his hand up. Sean stopped walking. No one moved for a long minute. In the distance Sean could hear vehicles, but he saw no lights and no people. Then Blitz motioned to move forward, but at a slower pace.