by Diane Capri
Jordan casually strolled to a back hallway, out of hearing range from her coworkers, while Clayton talked, attempting to persuade her to be Flynn-bait. Again. After she’d barely escaped her last experience in that role last night.
Clayton cajoled her, obviously hoping to get agreement. “We don’t need much more. Come to the station and have a conversation with our undercover officer. Tell her everything you told me and we’ll be set. It will be perfectly safe. She’ll make the phone call to Flynn and set up a meeting. That’s it. You won’t go to the meeting. We’ll handle everything.”
“Him simply showing up to meet me somewhere wouldn’t give you grounds for arrest.”
“We’re still working that out. It’ll take us another few hours, at least, to handle the details. Then you come to the station tomorrow and we’ll finalize.”
Jordan said nothing. She needed to think this through. And talk to Sal. And Claire, too. Tomorrow. Would she have enough time to get everything done before tomorrow?
“The other issue is keeping you safe until we arrest Flynn,” Clayton said.
Bull’s-eye.
“I’m not sure I’d feel safe anywhere except hidden underground in another country.” She swallowed hard and leaned into the wall for support when her knees felt wobbly. This leaning thing was becoming a habit, she noticed. One she’d break. When Flynn was in custody.
Clayton must have heard the real fear in her tone because he became more serious, too. “Flynn is a dangerous man. We’ll have an officer in an unmarked car switch you and your dad to a different hotel tonight. Leave your car at the current hotel, in case Flynn is tracking that.”
Instead of calming her, his words made her stomach churn and the nerves hum along her spine. “Why is he tracking me at all? Flynn must think I know something that I don’t.”
“You don’t have to play dumb, Jordan,” Clayton said firmly.
“Meaning what?”
“We know Flynn is trying to coerce Sal and we know why. You don’t want to get Salvador in trouble. Don’t worry. You’re doing the right thing, okay? We’re working on closing down Flynn’s operation completely, too.”
Jordan said nothing because she couldn’t trust her voice. Clayton practically said Sal was under investigation. Which meant he hadn’t gone to the police. Maybe they thought Sal was already involved with Flynn. Maybe she was wrong about that, too. Maybe Sal was involved. She didn’t feel sure of much at this point.
“But I don’t have a budget for this,” Clayton said. “Can you pay for another night in a hotel?”
“We can work it out, yes.” Jordan had no choice. She’d have to take Sal up on his offer to pay, at least until she could find out whether home owner’s insurance would cover the damage to the house and their relocation expenses to boot. It seemed wrong to accept help from Sal at the same time she was working behind his back. But there was nothing else she could do except sleep in a cardboard box under the expressway.
On the other end of the line, Clayton coughed. “I’ve got to get moving on this stuff. But one more thing.”
He wouldn’t ask her to help arrest Sal, would he? “What?”
“Can you not say anything about our meeting to your boss? We can’t risk letting Flynn get word of the plan. It could ruin the whole sting, or put the undercover officer at risk if even one extra person knows. Not that I don’t trust your boss, but, well, you know…” His voice trailed off at the end.
A slight grin stole onto her lips. At least Clayton thought this was her story, even if her bosses didn’t. He was talking to a reporter and asking a favor. She wouldn’t trust a news station to keep information like that off the air, either. “I completely understand.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 10
The next day, Jordan planned to meet Clayton at the police station at 1 p.m. Before the meeting she lingered over brunch at the hotel with her dad until a text from Clayton asked her to bring Flynn’s phone number along to the meeting.
“Something wrong, Freckles?” her dad asked when she read the text. He’d been hypersensitive to her emotions since her mother died and even more so after his stroke. She’d love to tell him all about her problems, like she had when she was a little girl. But the doctors said stress was a factor in causing his stroke, and more stress could cause another. She didn’t want him to worry. Or try to stop her.
She put a smile on her face and spoke as lightly as she could. “Just work.”
There’s no way Sal would give her Flynn’s number no matter how she asked him. Besides, she’d already left three messages for Sal that he hadn’t returned. Nor had she been able to talk to Claire. Neither one of them knew what was going on with her and that made her nervous, too.
Jordan texted Claire: Do me a favor? Can you find Flynn’s number? Without telling Sal?
She didn’t get an answer from Claire until she was walking in to the police station.
Score. Found it. Not sure I wanna know why u need it…be careful…305-555-9215.
Jordan wished she could tell Claire about the meeting she was about to have. She hated keeping so many secrets from so many people.
Soon. This would be over soon. Life would go back to normal. Whatever “normal” turned out to be.
Clayton met her at the station entrance and led her down a hallway flooded by too-bright fluorescent lights to a wooden door with a small, reinforced window. On the other side was a conference room with a phone in the center of the table. Also sitting at the table was an older, balding police officer, and a young woman in uniform.
“Jordan, this is Officer Matthews.” Clayton gestured to the older man. “And this is Leslie.” Clayton nodded toward the woman. “She’s the undercover officer that will help us with the phone call.”
Leslie’s blonde hair was tied back tight. She looked very serious. No smiles. She offered her hand. Jordan shook it.
Jordan felt a strange combination of powerful and terrified. She had information that might be used to bring down a killer. That was the powerful part. The terrified part was everything else.
“Thanks for coming in, Jordan. Our mission here is to do two things. Lure Flynn out of hiding and arrest him,” Officer Matthews said. “After that, we’ll get his DNA and test it against what we found on the bomb fragments. With me so far?”
“Yes.”
“This is how things will work,” Officer Matthews said. “You brought Flynn’s phone number, right?”
She nodded. “Why couldn’t you pull that number yourselves? You guys have access to phone records.”
“We tried. He uses burner phones. He changes them too often. The last number we got two days ago and it’s already no good,” Matthews explained. “Let me see what you’ve got.”
Jordan grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down the number Claire had sent. She handed it over in slightly trembling fingers. Matthews looked at it and then compared it to something on the notes in front of him.
He said, “This one is not on our list. Let’s hope it’s current. It won’t work for more than forty-eight hours, if he keeps up his usual pattern. We’ve gotta hustle here.”
Jordan clasped her hands together in her lap to conceal her nervous tremors. “What can I do to help?”
“Again, all we need for this stage is two things.” He held up a pudgy index finger. “Get him to agree to pay a bribe in exchange for your silence and,” he held up an equally pudgy middle finger, “agree to meet you somewhere so we can go pick him up. With me so far?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s the plan. After some rehearsal with you, Leslie’s gonna call Flynn, pretending to be you. She’ll arrange to meet him at the SoftSuites hotel where you stayed that first night after the explosion because he knows you were there.”
“What? How could he know that?” Jordan jumped in before he could continue. She had felt relatively safe at SoftSuites. More importantly, she’d thought her dad was safe. They’d already moved to a ne
w hotel, but learning Flynn had known her whereabouts produced something she could only name “delayed panic.”
Matthews had stopped when she interrupted him. Now, he looked at her more closely and a bit of his gruff exterior seemed to fall away. “You’re just a kid, aren’t you? Clayton had me expecting a hardened reporter. I’m sorry. I figured you knew. Flynn has been monitoring Salvador Caster’s communications.”
She felt numbed. Her lips would barely move. “You mean…”
“Phone calls, texts, voice mail. Everything. And Caster’s girlfriend, too.” He waited a moment for that news to sink in.
When she grasped what he was saying, she sat up straighter and put a hard tone in her voice. “You mean you’ve been spying on me?”
He shook his head. “No, we have not.”
“But you’ve been spying on Salvador Caster, haven’t you?”
“Just be careful, Jordan. You’re dealing with very dangerous people here,” Matthews said. As if she didn’t already know that. “Now, can we move on? We don’t have a lot of time.”
Jordan said nothing. She was confused and more than a bit frightened. What had she talked about with Sal and Claire on the phone? Had she said anything that would make matters even worse? If worse was even possible? She’d been gripping her hands together hard. She noticed the white knuckles and pried them apart before painful spasms set in.
She nodded.
Matthews picked up where he’d left off and Jordan tried to pay attention. “Flynn knows you’re young and inexperienced. We’ve created a sting that should be consistent with his expectations. Pretending to be you, Leslie’s gonna tell him the police want to know more about the explosion. And then, still pretending to be you, she’s gonna offer to avoid dropping his name, if he’ll pay five thousand dollars. She’ll say something like you’ll use the five thousand to get out of town and avoid the meeting completely. That’ll get him paying hush money to obstruct justice, for which we can get a warrant. And it’ll lure him into the open where we can grab him. I don’t see why he wouldn’t agree to it. Do you?”
Jordan’s emotions were a mess. She tried to sort them out quickly. She felt outraged that he’d labeled her a naive newbie. She was curious about whether Flynn would take the bait and how it would play out. And above all, she was scared for herself and everyone she cared about. So she said the first thing that popped into her head. “I don’t know the guy. But it seems like a piddly amount of money to change my whole life, doesn’t it?”
“We talked about that internally. We figure he’ll think you lack sophistication because you’re young and broke. And we wanted to choose an amount he’d have on hand so the deal will close quickly.”
As much as she hated letting anyone think she was such a rube, she had to trust the police knew what they were doing. “Sounds fine.”
They reviewed the facts of the case—what Jordan had told Clayton at Cambridge Exchange yesterday.
“So let’s practice,” Leslie said.
Which is what they did for the next two hours, Leslie trying and mostly failing to get the script right while Jordan’s stomach roiled, until Matthews finally motioned toward the door. “Let me ’n Leslie go over this a few times. We’ll call you back in when we’re ready.”
Clayton asked, “You’ll want us here for the actual call, right?” He seemed disappointed.
“We’ll see,” Officer Matthews said, wearily, rubbing his big paw over his mug.
Jordan and Clayton stepped out, closing the heavy wooden door behind them.
Jordan’s stomach churned. “Where’s the restroom?”
Clayton pointed.
Jordan made it to the bathroom in time to gag into the sink. She leaned against the bathroom wall, took a few deep breaths, and when her rubbery legs would move again, splashed water on her face. She needed to stay calm. The worst case scenario was probably survivable. Even if Leslie got this phone call wrong, and Flynn found out that Jordan had run to the police, and he decided he wanted to kill Jordan, he might not know where to find her. Plus, he probably wouldn’t attempt another murder because he’d know the police were onto him.
Probably everything would be okay.
Probably.
She hoped.
Jordan left the bathroom, dropped a few quarters into a vending machine, and selected a cola. Sugar and carbonation soothed her stomach well enough for now.
Clayton sat in a chair outside the training room waiting for her. “You all right?”
Jordan held her stomach and sat beside him. “Much better now.”
Officer Matthews stepped out of the room. “You two can go. We’ve got it from here on out. We’re gonna do another couple of practice rounds, and then we’ll let you know how it went after she makes the call.” He hesitated a moment. “And Jordan? Don’t communicate with Caster or his girlfriend about this. Flynn will find out about it and we’ll all be back at ground zero. Understand?”
CHAPTER 11
Jordan collapsed on the bed of her hotel room, wishing for someone besides her father to comfort her. All his vulnerabilities only made her more protective. Claire? She was too involved with Salvador to be objective. Clayton? Seriously? Why did that name even pop into her head? He had a nice smile and a hot bod, but her relationship with him was strictly professional. Even Paul didn’t seem like such a bad idea right now, although when they were together she comforted him a lot more than he ever comforted her. Why hadn’t she seen things like that about him before he broke her heart?
Her phone rang. It was Clayton. Already? She fumbled over the phone and almost hung up instead of answering. “Clayton?”
“Jordan,” he answered professionally. “They made the call. They asked me to let you know.”
“What? I thought they were gonna practice some more.” She expected to have more time to process all of this.
“I guess they thought they were ready.” All business. Good. That’s all she wanted from him.
“So? Did they get him on the phone? Did he pick up?” Now that she knew it was done, she wanted details. Her heart was palpitating as fast as ever.
“Yes.”
“Did he agree to meet up?” She couldn’t get the questions out fast enough.
“They say he totally bought it. They have no reason to believe he didn’t think it was you.”
Jordan exhaled a thousand pounds of pressure from her chest.
“The call didn’t go perfectly,” Clayton said, a little less professionally than before. Maybe she heard an apology in there somewhere. Not what she was hoping for. She’d wanted a slam dunk.
Jordan tensed and her stomach flipped again. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“I guess Leslie let him haggle the deal a little.” Now he was tentative. Something unexpected was coming and it didn’t feel good already.
“Haggle? What’s that mean?” She jumped up and paced the room, unable to keep still as he trickled out the info.
“We—uh, he—he didn’t want to meet at the hotel.”
“Where are we meeting him?” Jordan’s voice squeaked.
“He’s cool with giving you the five-thou to get out of town.” Clayton avoided her question, which she took as another bad sign. “But he wants to do it on his turf. Not yours. He wants to meet you at a rave night tomorrow at ten o’clock.”
Jordan’s mouth dried up. “A rave?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Raves were dangerous. One of her classmates had overdosed on drugs slipped into her drink at a rave. Two other guys she knew from college had to be hospitalized after raving all night. She’d seen plenty of pictures of raves, and even the photos scared her. Fraternity parties were nothing compared to the rave scene.
“He changed the location, too. Club Ecstasy in Centro Tampa. He said he’d wait in the second floor lounge near the men’s room,” Clayton said. “Which is both good news and bad news.”
Club Ecstasy was known for its wild parties, some lasting through the night. And Centro Tampa, just east
of downtown, was one of the most dangerous parts of Tampa. In high school, the only people who went were those who sneaked out of the house. Jordan did it once back then. Grinding with strangers in a sweaty club in a short skirt and heels, peeling strangers’ hands away wasn’t her idea of fun. Rave night might be different than a regular club night, but probably not in a good way.
“How the hell is meeting at Club Ecstasy good news?” Jordan managed to ask.
“Well, the choice confirms he’s a drug dealer. Why else would a guy his age be at a rave?” Clayton asked. “He’s there to hand out drugs. Several kinds, we think, including counterfeit pharmaceuticals.”
“Still waiting for the good news.”
“We’re more confident in him as a suspect now. We’ve been working around the clock on this and we believe he’s involved in a larger criminal enterprise. But we don’t have enough info to support that yet. Of course, we can’t arrest him on his meeting location request alone. The bad news is, well, it’s a rave.” He laughed. “Have you ever been to Club Ecstasy?”
“Dragged in there by my drunk friends a couple of times. Never to a rave, but I know the club scene. I’ll have backup, right?”
“That’s the thing,” Clayton said. “It’s too dangerous. Leslie should not have agreed to his plan. You’re not going.” His voice was deeper, stronger, more authority in the words now. As if he had the right to control her and the ability to make it happen.
“But you can’t send someone else. He knows what I look like.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. But facts were facts. Flynn would know if they tried to send in a ringer.
“That’s why we have to call off the Club Ecstasy meeting and finish our work before we go to Plan B.” Clayton sounded like he knew what he was doing, but Jordan wasn’t persuaded.
“Plan B?” Jordan asked.
“I’ll call you back on that when we get everything worked out, okay?”
“Clayton. When is Plan B going to be ready? I deserve to know, don’t you think? I’m Flynn’s target here, not you.”
