Fatal Secrets

by Allison Brennan

  When Dean looked at the records, all deposited at the same time of the month, all cash, he launched the grand jury investigation. He didn’t know how Daniels was making his illegal money—he had wrongly assumed drugs, which accounted for an estimated ninety percent of laundered money in the United States. It didn’t take long to learn that Daniels was involved in sex crimes, specifically kidnapping minor female runaways for Internet pornography.

  Xavier Jones’s name had come up in the course of investigating Daniels, but there was nothing substantial in Daniels’s records implicating Jones in criminal activity. The major impetus was an old photograph of Jones and Daniels with a group of known or suspected criminals. It was primarily Dean’s gut intuition after seeing that photo that had him looking closely at Jones for the last two years.

  Dean suspected that Jones was involved with the illegal sex trade, but there was no evidence pointing directly at him, and until he learned that ICE was involved, he had assumed it was prostitution—Jones had contact with known prostitution rings. Dean knew less about the international scope of Jones’s activities than ICE agent Sonia Knight—human trafficking was primarily under the domain of Homeland Security. And while he should have known about the ICE investigation, even in this new era of sharing information, not all information trickled down—or up—to the right people.

  He wanted Sonia to look at all his information immediately. He had a feeling she’d see things he didn’t because her experience tracking the buying and selling of people was legendary.

  That Sonia Knight had been sold into slavery as a child, then escaped, was in itself an incredible story; that she’d become a decorated special agent in immigration was even more extraordinary. He hadn’t been blowing smoke up Sonia’s very attractive backside when he told her there was no one else he’d rather work with. She had a reputation for being not only a hothead, but intelligent, extremely knowledgeable, and compassionate. She took risks, probably too many, but in Dean’s experience it was only those agents willing to put their reputation and life on the line for justice who made the difference. He’d admired her from afar for years, but in all honesty he never thought he’d have a chance to work with her. DHS and the FBI were completely separate agencies; he hadn’t even known she worked from the Sacramento field office.

  If she had records of shipments in and out of the area that Jones was suspected of orchestrating, maybe adding that information to his database would make existing information pop, and he could follow that thread to the proof he needed for the U.S. Attorney to indict.

  Tracking money wasn’t the sexiest job in the FBI. Most agents wanted to work counterterrorism or violent crimes; those who were technology savvy, like Dean, usually found themselves in cybercrimes. But white-collar crimes pulled Dean in like nothing else. It came down to trust: if you couldn’t trust your government, your small businesses, your corporations, society fell apart. Criminals reigned, and law-abiding citizens suffered financially, emotionally, and physically. Anarchy was the end result of doing nothing.

  And, frankly, crunching numbers and pattern recognition were his strengths. His father never understood. Clint Hooper had been a beat cop, working the streets of Chicago until the ravages of too many cigarettes and too much fat put him in an early grave. He’d been a good cop, had taught Dean and his younger brother, Will, right from wrong, but a cop was all he was. When Clint Hooper was home, he wanted to be out on the streets. When he went to their ball games, he was always with the other cop dads. As a result, Dean lived with cops, socialized with cops, didn’t know anything else but the life of a cop. He’d wanted something else.

  So he joined the military through the ROTC program and planned to be a career Marine. It wasn’t his first choice—he’d always excelled in math and had considered teaching or being a CPA—but the pressures of a blue-collar father thinking accounting was for wimps had him looking to prove his manhood when he really should have had nothing to prove to anyone except himself.

  He’d learned his lesson, but not before his dad died. He left the Marines, got his degree, and, because of an aptitude test, was recruited into the FBI. He ended up doing what he was good at coupled with the only thing he truly knew and understood: being a cop. Maybe it was in the blood. And that was okay with Dean. This was where he was supposed to be; there was nothing else he wanted to do.

  Sooner than he had expected, he was done inputting the information from Jones’s day planner. Nothing jumped out right away, so he looked again, for notes and odd marks. There were none. The planner was as neat and efficient as Xavier Jones’s house and physical appearance. His perfect, crisp, all-caps printing was neither too small nor too big, with little deviation—Dean had to look closely to see any differences between the same letters. Virtually every “E” looked identical. Almost impossible to do by hand, but the writing was definitely ink. All black, fine felt-tip.

  The handwriting analysts would have a field day with this, if they could get anything useful, other than what Dean had already figured out about his personality.

  Dean looked at today: Wednesday, June 3.

  11:00 A.M. BRIEFING @ XCJ

  12:00 P.M. LUNCH @ CHOPS: CLIENTS

  5:00 P.M. DRINKS @ FRANK FATS: CLIENTS

  Odd. He looked back at all the previous meetings. Jones never identified who he was meeting with, but he always had a location. Was the location a code? Or did he not want a physical record of the people at the meeting?

  XCJ was Jones’s lobbying firm. Again, Dean flipped through the book. He had no business listed except weekly “briefings”—almost always on Mondays, except today.

  Was that because he’d been out of town this past Monday?

  There were no appointments scheduled for this week Monday or Tuesday, the days he had been gone. Dean looked at the book closely. Several things had been whited out. Again, meticulously. And because it was felt-tip, Dean couldn’t see the impression of the individual letters through the white-out, so he couldn’t recreate the meetings that had been canceled. He turned the page to see if he could read the bleed-through and decipher the backward text. The flip side had been whited out as well.

  Maybe the evidence response team could come up with something, but Dean wasn’t holding his breath.

  Another thing that stuck out to Dean was that for a multimillionaire philanthropist who owned several businesses and millions of dollars in property, there was surprisingly little written in the day planner. The e-teams unit had already informed Dean that Jones didn’t use the calendar on his computer. They were looking at possible online calendars by going through his browser history, but they had to re-create the history since Jones used sophisticated software to permanently erase his files and Internet travels.

  Who else might keep a calendar for Jones? He couldn’t keep all his plans and meetings in his head, could he? Maybe his cell phone, but Dean didn’t have a warrant for phone records. And Jones wouldn’t put anything incriminating on it. With one of his employees—that was more likely. Separating himself from any record of illegal activities by having a third party involved.

  Employees … how did he pay his employees? Cash? That wasn’t enough to prosecute, especially if there was a record of it. Dean noted large withdrawals from Jones’s bank account once a month. Payroll? Maybe. He had employees through two businesses: XCJ Consulting and XCJ Security. Dean had taken a look at the tax forms and nothing jumped out at him as odd about the businesses, other than that they were very profitable—and Jones was paying his required taxes on the profits.

  Sam Callahan walked over to Dean’s cubicle and said, “We missed breakfast. I’m starved. I’m going to the deli down the street. Want something?”

  Dean glanced at his watch: 11:00.

  He knew where Jones was going to be at noon. Dean would be interested in finding out which “client” he dined with after his trip down south.

  “How about a working lunch?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Let’s head downt
own. Chops.”

  “You’ve been here three weeks and I’ve never seen you eat anywhere other than this desk or the conference room. How do you know about Chops?”

  He tapped Jones’s day planner. “Jones seems to think it’s pretty good. Has lunch there every week. In fact, he’ll be there today.”

  “What about our meeting with Sonia Knight?”

  “We’ll be finished by one. I just want to see who Jones likes to eat with.”

  Sonia left her office early so she could swing by her adopted parents’ house before driving across town to the FBI’s headquarters. They lived in the established neighborhood of South Land Park, where stately homes and classic Tudors and Craftsmans had been built over more than one hundred years to create a warm, inviting, and pricy feeling to the tree-lined, curving streets. She lived in a small bungalow only two blocks from her parents, and her brothers, Riley and Max, shared a house a few blocks in the other direction. A Marine, Max returned home only a few weeks a year and was currently deployed in Afghanistan, where he’d recently re-upped for another three-year tour, so Riley pretty much had the place to himself. But they congregated in the family house. Few days went by without visiting her parents.

  Sonia found Andres after getting an “anonymous” tip that a ten-year-old boy who’d been held against his will at Jones’s house would be walking along Ione Road. She’d assumed that the untraceable email came from Greg Vega, who had every reason to be paranoid; now she wasn’t so sure. She’d gone easy on the kid after learning what he’d been through and his declaration that he’d never seen Xavier Jones, didn’t know who he was, and just wanted to find his sister and go home.

  Sonia couldn’t send him home, and she hadn’t yet been able to locate Maya. The safest place for him was with her parents while Sonia worked discreetly through the system to find his family in Guatemala. Sonia had been fortunate to find a home after she’d been rescued; but she’d seen what happened to the kids who went through the system. There was little anyone could do except send them home. Those they rescued weren’t only illegal immigrants kidnapped or smuggled into the country under false pretenses, many were runaways taken off the streets by predators with the promise of food and shelter. After they were separated from any friends they may have made, they were forced into prostitution. Some of the kids were kidnapped young and trained to be whatever the buyer wanted—a sex slave, a servant, a soldier—or as Sonia had heard child soldiers called, cannon fodder.

  The truth was, they saved very few once the victims disappeared into the human trafficking network. With over eight hundred thousand women and children manipulated or kidnapped each year, the situation was out of control. The United States, with other countries, made small inroads into the illegal system, but the evil continued to grow until sometimes Sonia felt it was all but hopeless.

  Except that she personally had saved numerous victims and helped them get their lives back. That alone made it worthwhile. As long as she focused on those she helped, she could do the job. And she had the most incredible support system in her adoptive family. She knew her life would have been far different, and much worse, if they hadn’t been there for her. If they hadn’t given her unconditional love and a real home.

  She knocked on the door, then entered with her key. “Mom? Dad? It’s me.”

  “In the kitchen,” Marianne Knight called out.

  Sonia walked through the cluttered but immaculate living room and formal dining room to the bright kitchen in the back. Her mom was at the stove grilling sandwiches and brother Riley was drinking coffee and lounging in sweats and an old Led Zeppelin T-shirt. He worked swing shift in the Sacramento Police Department—four to midnight—and lunchtime was his breakfast. He was a year younger than Sonia, though they’d gone through high school in the same grade because Sonia had had to play catch-up when she came to live with the Knights.

  She affectionately punched Riley on the arm with a “Hey” and hugged her mom.

  “Nice surprise,” Marianne said. “I’ll grill another sandwich.”

  “I don’t have time,” she said as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “I need to talk to Andres.”

  “You can take it with you.” Marianne’s tone said no arguments.

  Riley smirked when Sonia glanced at him. “Don’t fight it, sis. Besides, you can’t live on coffee alone.”

  “I had breakfast.”

  “Ha. Let me guess: drive-through Starbucks, blueberry scone.”

  “They were out of blueberry by the time I got there,” Sonia retorted. “I had to get vanilla.”

  “You slept in so long you missed out on blueberry scones?” Riley teased.

  “I was on a stakeout. Didn’t leave until nine A.M.”

  Marianne frowned as she took a perfectly toasted ham and cheese off the pan. “And you haven’t slept?”

  “Trace drove back,” Sonia lied, only so her mom wouldn’t worry. “I had nearly an hour of sleep.”

  Riley gave her the look that said bullshit, and whether Marianne believed her or not, she didn’t let on. “An hour’s sleep isn’t good for your reflexes,” she said. “Be careful today.”

  “Where’s Andres?”

  “At the park with your dad. Owen is teaching him baseball. Andres is a natural, has taken to the sport better than Riley and Max.”

  “Not for lack of trying,” Riley said.

  “They’ll be back any minute,” Marianne said.

  “How’s he doing?” Sonia asked, sitting across from Riley. He gave her a look, obviously curious about her stakeout. Later, she mouthed. Riley knew she was going after Jones, but she didn’t want to go into details in front of their mom. It was a clandestine investigation, and she technically shouldn’t have talked to Riley about it, but she had needed his help to find Andres last week after the anonymous email. And she liked to talk to her brother. He was easygoing and smart. He both listened and offered sound advice.

  “As good as can be expected,” Marianne replied. “He’s worried about his sister, of course, but he’s eating well and seems to enjoy going to the park. And before you say it, yes, we’re keeping a close eye on him.”

  “I know,” Sonia said.

  The back door opened and Owen and Andres walked in, all smiles, with balls and bat and a large German shepherd who bounded over to Sonia when he saw her, and sat at attention, his tail barely restrained. She scratched the former police dog between the ears. “Hey, Sarge, I missed you, too.”

  Andres’s smile faltered when he saw Sonia, and she felt awful that he expected bad news from her. “Hi, Andres,” she said in Spanish with a smile. “I hear you’re the next Jose Canseco.”

  He beamed nervously, glancing up at Owen. After family, Owen’s next love was baseball.

  “I have tickets to the Giants game tomorrow,” Owen said, “and I’d like to take Andres if it’s okay.”

  “Sure,” Sonia said. “It sounds like fun.”

  “You can come?” Andres asked hopefully.

  She shook her head. “Sorry, I have to work.”

  “I have the day off,” Riley said. “I’ll go.”

  Andres smiled.

  Sonia glanced at Riley, but said nothing. She knew he didn’t have the day off—he worked Monday through Friday—but their parents didn’t seem to catch on and Riley subtly shook his head at her.

  “Andres, I have a couple questions for you.”

  “Wash up,” Marianne interrupted, pointing them to the sink. “Lunch is ready.”

  Sonia glanced at her watch. Marianne handed her a paper bag. “You can eat in the car, dear.”

  She kissed her mother’s cheek and took the bag. “Thanks, Mom.”

  When Andres sat down, Sonia said, “Andres, when you left the garage where you had been held, you said that a man left the door unbolted and told you to run when he walked away.”

  Andres nodded, his brown eyes troubled.

  Sonia took a picture out of the folder she’d brought with her. “Is this the man?”
>
  Andres looked at the photograph of Charlie Cammarata. Riley tensed beside her. Sonia hadn’t told her parents about her history with Charlie, but she kept few secrets from her brother.

  “Si,” he said. “He said run.”

  Sonia’s chest tightened. Charlie was in the middle of a dangerous game. “Thank you.” Her voice was clipped as she forced a half-smile. She had to find Charlie and talk to him. Something big was going on, otherwise he wouldn’t have sidled up to a known trafficker like Xavier Jones. Charlie would have been more likely to assassinate Jones than go undercover and work for him simply to gather information.

  And, Sonia reminded herself, Charlie was no longer in law enforcement. But that didn’t mean that an agency wouldn’t hire him freelance, even though he was a volatile maverick.

  “I need to go,” she said, standing.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Riley said.

  She wished she could avoid her brother, at least until she had more information, but he’d hound her until she talked.

  She grabbed her lunch and kissed Andres on the head. “I’ll see you later, okay? Have fun at the ball game.”

  Before the front door shut, Riley asked, “What’s that bastard Cammarata doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “Dammit, I don’t like this. He almost got you killed, Sonia, because he was a selfish, conniving rogue agent. And he was the one who freed Andres? What about his sister? Did he sell her? So he could track down her buyer?”