Gray Wolf Security: Back Home

by Glenna Sinclair

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “Good.” Joss touched my arm lightly. “We have a lot of ground to cover today. There’s less than a week before they move Mahoney for his trial.”

  “They’re moving him?”

  “Yes. And we have reason to believe there’s a US Marshal on his detail that we might be able to bribe in order to get close to him. If I could just talk to him again…” Joss sighed, suddenly looking exhausted. “Anyway, if you could just take notes, I’d appreciate it.’

  “Of course.”

  She walked away, stopping to speak to this person and that, mostly people I didn’t know. I found a seat against the wall not far from the massive dining table Ash and his people used as a conference table. Ash was already at the head, digging through paperwork while he spoke to a tall, attractive woman I suspected was probably his wife. After a few minutes, he clapped his hands and called order in the room. The woman beside him directed those not involved in the meeting out onto the back property, taking with her nearly half the room’s occupants. The others took seats around the table, the one I recognized as Kirkland moving up behind Joss, goosing her sides as he made a comment about walking down memory lane again.

  Again?

  “Okay, if everyone can settle down.” Ash raised a hand, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “Most of you know why we’re here. The majority of us were in Wyoming a bit over a year ago when Jack Mahoney, leader of the Mahoney Cartel out of Connecticut, was arrested at the bedside of his former niece-in-law. He was subsequently charged with multiple counts of attempted murder, murder, sex trafficking, drug and weapons trafficking, and so many other things that it would take an hour to list it all now.”

  A murmur went up around the table, most of the self-congratulatory type.

  I wasn’t in Wyoming when it all went down, but I heard the stories when Joss came back. Carrington turned on her and orchestrated Ash’s kidnapping, yet she welcomed him back into her home and her bed. I never understood that. But they’d taken down a pretty serious criminal and the ripples rushed through the country for months afterward. Things were just beginning to settle down when the Red Door case started dragging it back to the forefront. For Gray Wolf, anyway.

  For Joss.

  They were all sitting there congratulating themselves when she was the one who had suffered the most. Talk about insensitive.

  “Mahoney’s organization was pretty much ripped open at the seams when he was arrested with dozens and dozens arrested in his wake. However, some remained free and they’ve continued to work in his name.”

  Ash crossed his arms over his chest and nodded to Joss. She stood, a flash of shyness brushing over her face until she met Carrington’s gaze.

  “As most of you know, Mahoney holds me responsible for the suicide death of his nephew, Carl Runion.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Mr. Runion was the drunk driver who crashed into my husband, Esteban’s, truck on a night some eleven—almost twelve—years ago. He was beaten in prison, an act that left him in a wheelchair. Shortly thereafter, he committed suicide. Mahoney feels that is my fault because I pushed for him to be imprisoned.”

  She looked around the room, sighing heavily. “More recently, his niece, Runion’s sister, shot herself in the head while in FBI custody. She was there because we’d caught her gathering information regarding my family in preparation for some kind of attack against them. When I visited Mahoney in jail shortly after—”

  “Way to go, Joss,” someone called out.

  She blushed, though unsmiling, dipping her head before continuing. “When I visited him in jail, he intimated that he was preparing to take another child from me—two children for the two his sister had lost because of me. When I arrived home, I learned that my youngest child, Aidan, had left this compound to go off with a woman she believed to be a friend.”

  There was a collective gasp, mostly from the women sitting around the table, but a few dads chimed in, too.

  “We were able to recover Aidan thanks to the woman who originally stole her. My children are now out of the country with their grandmother and a full assemblage of operatives.” Joss slowly looked around the room. “But we know it won’t stop here. We got lucky, but Mahoney will keep coming after us until we’ve paid the debt he believes we—I—owe him.”

  There were some nods around the table. I watched closely, unable to mark anyone who wasn’t paying attention.

  “Mahoney is being moved in a few days in preparation for trial,” Ash announced, gesturing for Joss to sit. “Our plan is to intercept the convoy moving him and take him out.”

  My head came up. Did he just say what I thought he said? They want to murder this man?

  “Is that really a wise move?” a woman at the far end of the table asked. “Isn’t it up to the state whether or not he’s executed?”

  “If we don’t cut off the head of the snake, we’ll never win this fight, Sutherland,” Joss said quietly.

  “Anyone in this room who is not comfortable with this idea,” Ash said, his eyes moving up and down the length of the table, “you’re welcome to leave now. You will not be judged.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip and watched, waiting for someone to get up. I really expected most of the people around that table to get up and leave, Joss included. But no one did.

  Were they really going to do this?

  It seemed like they were. I sat there for three hours, listening to them discuss exactly how they planned to identify Mahoney and shoot him in cold blood while he sat shackled in the back of an armored car.

  It was insanity.

  “Complete insanity!” I told Stevie later that night. “They all talked about it like it was nothing, like this sort of thing happened every day.”

  “He is a bad guy, Jules.”

  “Yeah, but we’re supposed to be the good guys. We’re supposed to be the ones to always do the right thing. If we start playing at cowboy justice, how are we going to set ourselves apart from the bad guys if we all act exactly the same?”

  Stevie tugged me down on the couch beside her and began rubbing my shoulders. “What all did they say?”

  I shrugged. “They just talked about how they would go about it, how many people they would need, the kinds of weapons they would use.” I sighed. “I think Joss was a little worried that there might be a mole.”

  “A mole?”

  “She told me to watch the people in the room, to see who was paying too much attention and who wasn’t paying enough, you know?”

  “Sure. My bosses have me do that all the time, but it’s not necessarily about a mole. It’s just as much about choosing who might work well on a project and who won’t.”

  “This is a hell of a project.”

  “Did Joss say anything else?” Stevie asked, her fingers digging hard into my shoulders.

  “Just that she thought there might be a US Marshal they could bribe to give them a heads up on the whole thing. Like they could trust a fed who was willing to take a bribe.”

  “You’d be surprised what some law officials are willing to do, especially when it comes to a man like Mahoney.”

  I sighed and leaned back into her. “You have this way of making me see things differently. I really appreciate it.”

  “I just don’t want to see you all tied up in knots all the time.”

  I smiled, tilting my head to steal a kiss. Stevie and I had only been together for six months, but it seemed like forever. Maybe it was more serious than I allowed myself to believe. I always thought, well, it was a nice, temporary situation until Joss saw Carrington for the fool he really was and came running to me for sympathy during her divorce. But maybe a future with Stevie wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

  If I’d seen her sneak off to the bathroom with her phone a few minutes later, however, I might have thought twice. And it might have saved me a lot of heartache.

  Chapter 16

  Joss

  Someone tapped on the door to my cottage—funny how
quickly I fell back into thinking of it as mine—pulling me away from the delicious peaches I was slicing in the kitchen. I walked out, tugging the white apron I’d borrowed from Mina over my head. It was Ash holding a folder, looking pensive.

  “What’s up?”

  He held out the folder. “From the governor’s office.”

  I opened it and scanned the few pieces of paper that it held. My eyes caught one line in particular, making my heart sink.

  “It’s what we needed, right?”

  My head came up and I focused on Ash. “Yes.”

  “They move him in two days. Do you think we can have everyone mobilized in that amount of time?”

  “I think we can do anything we put our minds to. And it helps that we have access to several private planes.”

  He grinned. “Comes in handy having a couple of millionaires and a Hollywood hunk working for you.”

  “It does. And I never really thanked you for everything you did to help in getting Aidan back.”

  Ash shook his head. “All I did was provide the plane and the staff. You did everything else.”

  “I still appreciate it.”

  He leaned forward and tapped his cheek with his finger, encouraging me to give him a little peck. I laughed lightly and gave him a kiss. I wanted to add that I was sorry for using him, for everything that I’d already omitted from our conversations and everything I would soon be omitting from them. But now wasn’t the time for that.

  I watched Ash walk away, his stride as confident and solid as it had always been. What was it he’d told me all those years ago?

  “You’re too strong for this bullshit. Too strong and too fucking stubborn.”

  I had been lying in bed, a bottle of pills on the nightstand while I waited for the right moment, for the moment when courage reached the same level as grief. I was going to go be with my husband and child. But Ash wouldn’t let me.

  He saved my life. And look where that had brought us.

  I had to ignore the lies and the subterfuge and convince myself it was all for a good reason.

  It really was for a good reason.

  ***

  I walked into the office for the first time in what felt like forever even though it had only been a few weeks. I could feel eyes on me, but I refused to look at them. I kept my head up, a neutral expression on my face despite the anger burning inside of me.

  That was becoming a normal state, that anger.

  I was wearing jeans that were growing too tight over my hips and waist and an oversized t-shirt that billowed out around me. I wasn’t there for work and my clothes screamed that loud and clear.

  “Jules, can I talk to you in my office for a moment?”

  I’d had five potential candidates for the role of mole. Two were operatives working for Ash. Two were operatives working for me. And one was Jules.

  I couldn’t have been more shocked to realize the culprit had been one of my closest associates since we opened this office of Gray Wolf.

  “How long have we worked together, Jules?”

  She stepped into the office and closed the door, turning to regard me with a confused expression on her face.

  “Five years?”

  I inclined my head. “And in all those years, have I ever done anything to upset you? To make you feel unhappy here?”

  “No!”

  It was a clear, definite response. Either she was a damn good actress, or she was telling the truth.

  I sat behind my desk and opened the folder Ash had given me. “I had a conversation with a man who worked for Jack Mahoney and he gave me some very interesting information. He claims that the governor has been working with Mahoney since before he was elected mayor of Los Angeles, let alone governor. And he says that the governor has been knowingly feeding Ash information on Mahoney’s active goons here in Santa Monica in an attempt to allow his people to get information on both Ash and me. He claims that the whole Red Door operation was Mahoney’s way of alerting me to his game because, seriously, who likes playing a game when the opponent has no idea he’s losing, right?”

  Jules tilted her head slightly. “I don’t understand.”

  “Sure you do. Mahoney likes to play games and his current game is with me. And to play that game, he had to have information on me that he couldn’t get from his prison cell. So he contacted his friends who remain in high—and low—places.”

  “Are you accusing me of something?” she asked, her back stiffening as she continued to stand by the door.

  I sat back, resting my hand on the top of my growing baby bump. “The governor knew that telling Ash about the Red Door and the girls being victimized there would draw him in. He couldn’t have known that it would draw me in unless he had someone in Ash’s office or someone in mine giving him that information. And he couldn’t have known about the raid on the port before the arrests of Rush and cohorts, couldn’t have known that I would be at the prison when Conway was released. He couldn’t have known those things unless someone told him.”

  Jules shook her head. “No one here would have leaked that information, not even to the governor’s office.”

  “Maybe not intentionally.”

  I studied her face for a long moment, my heart melting a little as I watched the confusion dance in her eyes. She really seemed thrown for a loop.

  “The governor’s been playing games with us, acting like he wants to help, but sabotaging us at the same time by telling Mahoney our every step before it happens. In fact, I have reason to believe that Mahoney already knows we’re coming after him when he’s moved from his current location and that he knows where to plant his men in order to head us off.”

  “Someone at the meeting?”

  “No. The thing is, we didn’t know what route Mahoney would be taking when we had our meeting yesterday. But that doesn’t mean that the governor didn’t learn about the meeting and our intentions. And it doesn’t mean that he didn’t give us coordinates that are, at this moment, changing.”

  “Joss, I don’t know what you think is going on here, but I didn’t see anyone at that meeting acting unusual and I’m sure no one texted or did anything else to release information during the meeting.”

  “No, they didn’t. David had the room electronically secured so that couldn’t happen.”

  “Then how would someone—”

  “I spoke to five people before the meeting and gave each a different little snippet of information that was supposed to be kept between me and them. I wanted to see if that snippet of information would somehow make it in to the information Ash asked the governor to get for us before the meeting even took place.” I gestured to the file open on my desk. “That information arrived this morning. And one of those little snippets is in there.”

  “Then you know who the mole is?”

  “I do.” I gestured toward her. “It’s you.”

  Jules immediately began to shake her head. “I would never!”

  “It’s here, Jules. The things I said to you? It’s all here.”

  The color drained from her face.

  “’There will be seven US Marshals in the SUV carrying Mahoney and surrounding vehicles to supplement the ten state troopers who will also be present. While we would not recommend bribing a law enforcement officer on active duty, there are three who might be open to such a prospect.’” I sat back again. “How would the governor’s office know we might be interested in bribing a US Marshal? You were the only one I mentioned that possibility to. I never said it at any other point during the meeting and no one else mentioned it.”

  Jules was staring down at the floor, her expression transforming from confusion to anger and hurt.

  “It could be a coincidence, but I don’t believe in those.”

  “Joss, I—”

  “Tell me how this happened, Jules. Are they paying you?”

  “No!” She pushed away from the door and came to me, dropping to her knees beside me, tears streaming down her face. “It’s not like tha
t! It-it’s this woman I started dating. I didn’t know she was using the information, really, I didn’t!”

  “What woman?”

  “Stevie Prior. She’s a speech writer in mayor’s office in Los Angeles.”

  I nodded, anger burning through me still, but a little tempered now. I studied her face, watched her watching me, begging me with desperation in her eyes. She tried to take my hand, but I pulled away, not ready to make nice.

  “What have you told her?”

  Jules shook her head. “Everything.” A sob slipped from between her lips. “She’s my girlfriend! I thought…I thought I could trust her!”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  She shrugged. “Six months.”

  “For six months, you’ve been giving her Gray Wolf secrets?”

  “I thought—”

  “Fuck what you thought! You signed a non-disclosure agreement when you came to work here!”

  Jules dropped her head. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I had to get up, had to make some space between us. “That man orchestrated the kidnapping of my child, Jules! He harassed me, my family, sent a killer to my doorstep! And you’ve been helping him do those things for months!”

  “I didn’t know! I’m sorry!”

  I shook my head, the wheels slowly beginning to turn in my head. I needed to know what she’d told this woman, but I also needed to know who this woman was reporting to. And why. Why now? Why had all this just begun now?

  That was the one hole that still bothered me.

  What had spurred Mahoney into coming after me now? If it was just his arrest, that was over a year ago. And if that was connected, what about the ten years between Runion’s arrest and Conway’s recruitment of Carrington? It couldn’t be that he’d simply decided to put it all on the back burner until he had time or felt the right opportunity had come up to mess with us. There had to be more to it than that.

  Something had changed. I couldn’t help but feel that figuring out what that was was the key to everything.

  “I assume you’re still with this woman, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you seeing her tonight?”