Fatal Secrets f-2

by Allison Brennan

  “No, just a subpoena for your records. But-”

  “There’s nothing at the house.”

  “Then why are they there?”

  “They’re not at your office?”

  “No, but I don’t keep anything important here.”

  “What about my downtown offices?”

  “As far as I know, they’re only at your house, but that doesn’t mean they won’t go downtown next.”

  He glanced at his watch. “It’s after one in the morning. Why so late?”

  “The judge just approved the subpoena. You need to talk to Leland. He can probably fight it in court. But this means they’ve had a grand jury convened for God knows how long-they couldn’t get a subpoena like this without one.”

  His attorney might be helpful in these circumstances, but Xavier wanted more information before he acted. Information was the difference between a bad businessman and a good businessman. Xavier might be able to diffuse the situation without causing a ruckus.

  “Get me the details first. I want to know how the investigation started, when it started, and why. I want to know what they know. I want everything about the FBI agents in charge. Then we can decide how to proceed.”

  “It was Dean Hooper who went before the judge.”

  Xavier felt an inner twinge, of what exactly he was uncertain. Not a man prone to fear, this painful knot in his stomach made him tense and unsteady.

  The FBI’s top cop for white-collar crimes, Dean Hooper’s reputation was legendary in Xavier’s circles. He’d been the man who took down Ricardo Tattori, a crime boss in Chicago, reputedly a distant relative of the fallen Bonanno family of New York. Hooper had also led the takedown of someone closer to home, Thomas “Smitty” Daniels, who had been Xavier’s competitor in the importation of human beings. While Xavier was pleased that Smitty was out of the picture-he was a vile businessman, sampling his imports too regularly and trolling locally-he was displeased that Smitty had been fingered by the government. Though Smitty was now dead after a shoot-out with the feds, Xavier had feared the man had left evidence implicating Xavier or his people. The subpoena tonight proved that his fears about Smitty’s troubles were well founded.

  But that was four years ago, and Xavier had cleaned enough of his books in a sufficient manner. His confidence was high that Hooper would find nothing in his records, and had someone talked, they wouldn’t have been able to tell the whole story. Spreading pieces of information among several people had saved his businesses more than once. None of Xavier’s associates had enough pieces of the puzzle to take him down.

  Still, Hooper could be a big problem. He had the reputation of being a tenacious bastard.

  “Xavier?” Paul whined. “Are you there?”

  “I think I’ll go home.”

  “Didn’t you just hear me-”

  “The best way to confront pompous prick cops like Dean Hooper is head-on. Show him that I have nothing to hide, that I am not scared of what he might find. That he sought to deliver the subpoena while I was out of town-rude, to say the least. I should be there while they paw through my things.”

  “But-”

  “Trust me. Who was the judge?”

  “Barnhardt.”

  “Hmm.” Barnhardt wasn’t one of his, but he also wasn’t one of theirs-the jurist distrusted cops as well as criminals. A wild card. Xavier didn’t like the unknown. Like the missing Zamora kid. He wondered why Hooper had gone to a judge like Barnhardt. He’d have thought Tucci was the more logical choice, considering that he liked fishing expeditions. Perhaps Tucci wasn’t available.

  Vega said from the rear of the jet, “Your driver is at the runway.”

  “Good. Did he say anything?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are there any problems down below?”

  “No. Nothing. He’s been there since eleven-thirty, like you asked.”

  His driver doubled as a bodyguard. Xavier liked Chuck. He was quiet, punctual, and lethal, all appreciable qualities. He was beginning to think maybe Chuck could replace Vega-if a replacement was necessary. He hoped not. It would be messy, since Vega had been with him for many years and the other men took orders from him as well. Xavier didn’t want dissension, but sometimes it became unavoidable.

  He could always make it look like an accident.

  If it was necessary.

  The Learjet descended and touched down at the private airstrip outside Jackson. As they taxied to the waiting Escalade, Xavier called his favorite information broker.

  “Darla, it’s me. I need you to find everything you can on Dean Hooper, an FBI agent currently in Sacramento.”

  “Do you have anything else on him?”

  “He arrested Smitty.”

  “Good place to start. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Sooner, Darla. I’ll make it worth your time.”

  The rumors were wrong: Sonia Knight wasn’t just pretty, she was a knockout. Long, long legs packaged seductively in jeans that hugged round hips; a masculine black T-shirt that couldn’t hide her feminine attributes; and functional black boots that only added to her allure. Hell, Sonia would look good in a burlap sack.

  To avoid looking at the sexy ICE agent, Dean Hooper pulled out his notepad and scrawled notes he didn’t need to write. He still saw her hazel cat eyes watching with the quiet intensity of a feline predator deciding when to pounce on a mouse. Any other woman with looks like Sonia Knight and Dean would suspect-rightfully from his experience-that she’d obtained her position on her back. But Sonia was not a woman to compromise, either a case or her principles. In that, her reputation was dead-on. Fiery, dedicated, smart, and a marksman. He’d seen the first three in short order; he looked forward to seeing her in action as well.

  No warm-blooded male could ignore the passionate and notorious ICE agent, but Dean put his physical reaction on the back burner. He had a more immediate concern: Jones wasn’t home. He should have been here an hour ago. Dean had planned the raid to coincide with his return. Had someone talked? Alerted Jones while he was still in the air that the FBI was coming? Dean didn’t see how-he’d gone to the judge at the same time Jones was scheduled to land.

  There could have been delays, Dean knew, but he didn’t have anyone inside the organization to give him up-to-the-minute status reports, and he feared Jones would flee if he knew the FBI was on his ass. He had enough money to make it extremely difficult for anyone to find him. Especially since Dean didn’t have an arrest warrant and not enough evidence for the U.S. attorney to take over the case.

  He’d already taken a huge risk going to Barnhardt and pushing for a full-on search-and-arrest warrant without actually wanting it. He’d played a delicate game, but in the end got exactly what he wanted: a limited and specific subpoena for Xavier Jones’s personal and professional tax records at his home. He didn’t expect to find anything, but he couldn’t tell that to Barnhardt. A man like Jones wouldn’t leave incriminating documentation lying around where it could be easily seized. What Dean needed to complete his analysis were the unconnected details, but those innocuous items wouldn’t give him enough cause for a warrant. He had to use Jones’s link to a known criminal to make the case to Barnhardt.

  All Dean wanted to do was rattle Jones’s cage. Make him nervous. Force him to make bad decisions. But men like Xavier Jones didn’t rattle easily. The subpoena was just the first step. He did keep a record of his illegal finances somewhere; Dean would find it. It’s what he did best.

  Having ICE and Homeland Security involved was a problem, but not such a hindrance that Dean couldn’t turn it to his advantage. He needed to make a few calls to neutralize Sonia Knight. She was a hothead who could jeopardize his investigation. Corruption of this magnitude demanded patience and finesse.

  Sam Callahan returned with Sonia’s partner and reported that no one was on the property.

  “No one?” Dean asked.

  “I could have told you that,” Sonia Knight snapped. “We’ve been sitting on thi
s house for two days.”

  Dean wanted to ask why, but that would have to wait. “Did you reach his attorney?” he asked Sam.

  “Left a message at eleven-thirty when we left Barnhardt’s house.”

  “Has his plane landed?”

  “What?” Sonia asked.

  He raised an eyebrow and said rather mockingly, “You didn’t know he was out of town? I’m surprised.”

  She tensed and Dean was almost sorry that he’d rubbed it in, but she’d pissed him off with her not-so-veiled comments about his motivations. He cared more about the people Jones hurt than he wanted to talk about.

  “He didn’t take a commercial flight,” she snapped.

  “He has a private plane. Learjet.”

  “I know that.” But it was clear from her expression that she thought it was still at the airfield. Which made him think she had some bad intel. Or was ICE running with too much work and too few resources, like the FBI?

  “We’re on the same team,” Dean said, extending the olive branch. “I want to compare notes. But right now we need to prepare for his arrival.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s after oh one hundred hours. When did he land?” He’d been told Jones was going to be back between eleven-thirty and midnight, which was why he had delayed arriving by an hour.

  “Twenty minutes ago.”

  Sonia put her finger to her ear, listening. Dean waited, hoping she would share the information without being asked. Any branch of Homeland Security could be dicey to work with, but ICE used to be independent, and while the FBI didn’t have the best relations with their sister agency, Dean had never encountered any problems himself.

  Sonia said, “Jones’s car turned off the highway. ETA four minutes.”

  “You really do have a-” he stopped. An idea occurred to him. “Jones knows who you are.” He said it matter-of-factly.

  “Of course he does, I’ve been in his face enough.”

  “Right now I’m serving a limited warrant for specific financial documentation.”

  “Why would-”

  “I don’t have time to explain, but I’m asking you to trust me. Take your partner and go back to your surveillance post. You’re entrenched right now; we didn’t make your team anywhere on the property.”

  A hint of a cocky smile emerged on her lips. “Of course you didn’t.”

  He gave her an appreciative nod. “You train your people well. I’m asking you to let me serve the subpoena and shake Jones’s confidence. Then we’ll leave, and you monitor comings and goings, see who Jones taps when he’s on the hot seat. Do you have a wiretap?”

  “Do you?”

  “Dean,” Sam Callahan interrupted. “Three minutes.”

  “We’ll meet at the FBI office at noon,” Dean said. “Okay?”

  “We’ll meet at my office at one,” Sonia said. “Full disclosure.”

  He extended his hand to seal the agreement and smiled. “My office. One is fine with me. I have too much paper and equipment to transport downtown, and believe me, you’re going to want to take a look at it.”

  Her hand was soft and cold, but her grip strong. “Don’t disappoint me.” She reached into her pocket and dropped an extra-strong magnet into his hand, then gestured toward the security cameras around the house. “The security office is in a room off the kitchen. The door is unmarked. If you don’t have a warrant for the tapes, you might want to erase them-though I don’t really care one bit if Jones knows I’m on his ass.”

  Sonia didn’t want to walk away, but Hooper’s identity threw her off her game. She hoped she hadn’t given away her surprise when the Fibbie gave his full name. Dean Hooper.

  She had already started down the porch steps when she remembered the reason she was here in the first place. She ran back up the stairs and leaned close to Hooper’s ear. He smelled of expensive cologne and leather. Voice low, she said, “I’m looking for an Hispanic teenager, a thirteen-year-old female. She was kidnapped from Argentina two weeks ago, and I have good reason to believe that Jones knows where she is. If you see or hear anything-”

  Sam said, “Sixty seconds.”

  Sonia caught Dean’s eye. He’d understood. Motioning for Trace to follow, she ran down the stairs and stayed low to the ground, in the shadows, until she was out of sight.

  Dean Hooper. She hadn’t made the connection when he had first introduced himself as Hooper. Agent? An understatement if she’d ever heard one.

  Everyone in the business for more than a couple years knew Assistant FBI Director Dean Hooper. The FBI’s own Eliot Ness. He’d said her reputation preceded her? She had nothing on Hooper, and under any other circumstances she may have had a fan-girl moment and asked about some of his more interesting cases.

  She didn’t like that a fed with such a high rank was on Jones’s ass, because while she wanted to nail him, she needed more than his tenure in prison. She needed information, and her man inside was still working. If Hooper acted too soon, she’d lose names and files and more people-women and children-would disappear or die. What was he doing in the field, anyway? She assumed he worked out of Washington; if he was in Sacramento or San Francisco, she would have known.

  Sonia didn’t partner well. She thrived in her authority and command of her office, but trusting a partner only resulted in disaster. She called Trace her partner, but she was technically his supervisor, so she didn’t have to worry about him making decisions without consulting her, or going behind her back to plan an operation that could get agents hurt or worse.

  But Dean Hooper had looked her in the eye with a confidence that spoke of unwavering honesty, and she wanted to trust him. She had no choice, really. He’d blindsided her with not only his arrival but his identity. And if Xavier Jones thought that the FBI and ICE had made a major connection in his activities, he’d cut his losses and run.

  She’d give Hooper tonight.

  Sonia heard her team report that Jones’s black Escalade had pulled to a stop in the driveway. She and Trace sprinted to their original position and she grabbed her field binoculars to observe the scene at the house.

  “What’s going on?” Trace asked her.

  “A minute.” She watched Dean Hooper on the porch, standing next to Sam Callahan. Dean was an inch shorter, but with a far greater presence, for lack of a better word. She watched as nothing happened for a full minute. Then the driver got out.

  Sonia’s mouth went dry. The coffee she’d been drinking all night churned painfully in her gut, and she froze, staring. She had to be wrong. It had been years since she’d seen Charlie Cammarata; how could she instantly recognize him?

  As the driver closed his door, she saw part of Charlie’s familiar arm-length tattoo. But her mind filled in the rest of the intricate black cross with vivid, blood-red letters dripping down the center:

  La vendetta e mia.

  Vengeance is mine.

  What was the disgraced, renegade ex-ICE agent doing working for a known criminal?

  What are you up to, Charlie?

  Charlie opened the back door of the Escalade and Xavier Jones, the devil himself, stepped out. Sonia had half a mind to put him in her sights and kill him. That she also wanted to put a bullet in Charlie scared her. She thought she’d gotten over his betrayal. She thought she’d forgiven him.

  The urge was short-lived-going to prison wouldn’t help them find Maya or any of the buyers Jones supplied with a steady stream of young foreign women. She needed the bastard alive in order to identify and arrest every damn one of his business associates. She would go through their files one by one and track down every woman they’d sold into sex slavery or forced labor and give them a future. The ones who were still alive.

  She watched Jones walk to his front porch, and his confident stride and arrogant half-smile told her Hooper’s arrival wasn’t a surprise. Sonia noted that Charlie acted like a bodyguard, imposing and fearsome. Greg Vega was there, too, and she sighed in relief. She’d been worried about her spy, knowing the huge risk he had taken in c
ontacting her. But he was safe, at least for now. She hoped he had something solid for her so she could get him and his pregnant wife into a safe house.

  Charlie glared at the feds while Callahan handed Jones the warrant. Did Callahan or Hooper or any of the other longtime agents recognize him? Probably not. Charlie’s punishment had been swift, and while it hadn’t involved prison time, he’d lost everything. As well he should have. Before his fall from grace, he’d been primarily undercover, and few agents outside of the then-INS knew his name, let alone his face.

  Charlie was here because he had his own vendetta against Jones or someone close to Jones, Sonia was certain. Charlie did nothing without revenge as the motive. It didn’t matter if it was his revenge or that of others-at least, that’s how it had been in the past. But now? Sonia didn’t know. She hadn’t seen him in ten years. Was he the feds’ contact? It made sense. How Hooper knew about the travel, when they left the airport. But Sonia didn’t see a man like Charlie Cammarata giving anything to the FBI. He’d never had an ounce of respect for that agency; he’d barely tolerated his own employer.

  Dammit, she wished she could hear what they were saying! Sitting on the sidelines was excruciating, almost as painful as giving up control-and to the FBI, no less. She hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake giving Hooper the lead.

  “Dammit, Charlie, what are you doing with Jones?” she muttered.

  “Who?” Trace asked, looking through his own field goggles. “Who’s Charlie?”

  Trace had been in high school when Charlie was fired. He wouldn’t have known him. “Charlie Cammarata,” she said reluctantly. “My partner when I was working out of El Paso.”

  She breathed easier when Trace didn’t comment, thinking he didn’t know about what happened. Her relief was short-lived.

  “Why is a former INS agent working for Jones?”

  Trace sounded like Charlie had gone to the dark side, become one of the bad guys. And while Charlie was no saint, he wasn’t trafficking in humans. “If I had to guess, he’s working a job.”