Undercover Jeopardy

by Kathleen Tailer

  Daniel stowed his phone. “Justin gave us each cell phones that were supposed be clean right before his death. Everything else was provided by Mr. Westfield.”

  “As long as we’re putting our cards on the table, have you been able to discover who killed Justin?” Bethany asked.

  Daniel was pleased that she had calmed down and was engaged again in the conversation.

  Hooker shook his head. “We’ve discovered where the explosives came from and how they were detonated, but we haven’t been able to tie them to any group or individual yet.”

  “Where did the explosives come from?” Bethany asked.

  “They were stolen from the evidence locker. They were actually logged in as evidence on one of Justin’s old cases.”

  Bethany raised an eyebrow. “Westfield told me he was going to steal the C-4 I requested from the evidence locker too. When I called him on it, he said it was just a slip of the tongue and he was actually going through official channels, but now I’m thinking he really meant it. If you check how much is missing, I’ll bet it lines up with what he gave me, and what was used to kill Justin.” She leaned forward. “Do you know for sure if his death was related to my case, or one of his other cases?” she asked.

  Hooker shrugged. “We honestly don’t know, Agent Walker. It’s still too early in the investigation to know for sure, but you’ve given me some good information to research when I get back to the office.”

  Daniel’s and Bethany’s eyes met. He asked her the silent question, and she agreed by nodding her head. He turned to Agent Hooker. “You should know that Justin told us there was a mole in law enforcement, sir, right before he was killed. He didn’t know who, but he was just starting to investigate it before his death. He thought the mole was somehow connected with the Heritage Guard and Bethany’s case. From what we know now, it looks like Westfield is that mole.”

  Hooker raked his hand through his hair and grimaced. He leaned forward, his body rigid with anger. “You’re telling me this now?”

  “We didn’t know if you were the mole or not,” Bethany said, her tone matter-of-fact.

  Hooker turned and looked her in the eye. “I’m going to forget you said that, Agent.” His voice was low and fuming.

  “Someone tried to kill us yesterday when we got the extra C-4 from Captain Murphy,” Daniel said, pointedly. “A sniper was taking shots at us and we barely escaped. Bethany was also almost killed during the bank robbery, and Justin was killed right after talking to us. It might have been wrong of us to withhold that information, but you have to realize that right now, we’re just not sure whom we can trust. When we couldn’t get hold of you, well, we didn’t know who else to contact within the FBI that we could trust either. Agent Walker has been out in the field for almost a year with Justin and Westfield as her only contacts. We’re taking a big leap of faith by even talking to you now.”

  A moment passed, then another. The room was silent as the FBI boss pondered the situation, his eyes boring into Bethany. “Then I need to bring you in,” Hooker finally replied, taking his eyes from the younger agent’s. “If you’re in that much danger, I can’t continue putting your lives at risk.”

  “No!” Bethany said, her stance adamant. “We’re too close. We’ve been called in this afternoon to help plan Operation Battlefield. This is the culmination of what we’ve been working for during this entire mission. If we stop now, then all of the risk, even Justin’s death, will have been for nothing.”

  Hooker pondered the situation a few moments more, then pulled out a chair and motioned for them to sit, as well. “I admire your passion, but are you sure it’s worth the risk? At this point, Westfield has to suspect that we’re on to him. For all we know, he’s already blown your cover with the Guard and you’ve both got targets on your backs.”

  Bethany and Daniel looked at each other, then answered together.

  “Yes. It’s worth it.”

  “In fact,” Bethany added, “if Westfield did suspect anything, we’d be dead already. Our covers must still be intact.”

  Hooker let a few more minutes pass as he processed all of the information. Finally, he ran his hand through his hair again and sighed. “Okay. Tell me where we are. And don’t leave out a single detail. I’ll be contacting the attorney general’s office later today to make sure they are up to date, as well. I want them ready to issue indictments as soon as we start making arrests.”

  Daniel was relieved. Maybe this man was going to be an ally after all. The three sat, then brought Hooker up to speed on the entire investigation. The situation was coming to a head quickly and they needed him on their side. Daniel just hoped their trust wasn’t misplaced.

  * * *

  Bethany stood, the anger seething inside of her. For the second time today, she was boiling with anger. “Him? You invited him to this meeting?”

  Derek swaggered in and pulled up a chair next to Bethany, his smile more of a smirk. He winked at her and wiggled his shoulders cheekily. “Turns out I’m valuable to the Guard after all.”

  Bishop held up his hands, palms out, almost as if he were apologizing. “Some things are out of my control. I advise you to accept it and move on.”

  “You should be happy.” Derek smirked, ignoring Bishop’s comments. “They let your boyfriend come too.”

  Bethany glanced behind her and caught Daniel’s eye. This was bad. But Derek had a point—it was a bit odd that Daniel had been invited to the meeting. But he had just proven himself at the armored car heist, so his presence wasn’t altogether out of the ordinary. Derek’s situation was a different story. Derek had clearly been thrown out of the Guard. There were only a handful of reasons they would have allowed him to come back, and none of them were good. Were they going to use him as a fall guy? Or had he found out Bethany or Daniel’s true identity and traded that information for a seat at the table? Anxiety burned through her stomach. Derek was staring at her and smiling in a leering way that made her skin crawl. Was he a leech, or did he know she was FBI? Was she blown? She couldn’t think of a single good reason why he had been invited back into the fold, and the situation was extra dangerous now that Westfield’s treachery had been discovered.

  Daniel gave an infinitesimal shrug and she looked away. It was too late now to turn back. She was all in. This was the meeting to plan Operation Battlefield—the one she had been waiting for. When the call had come, she’d answered it with her eyes wide open, ready for the culmination of her last year’s work to finally come to fruition.

  Bishop pulled out some blueprints and unrolled them on the large table that they circled. “As some of you might have guessed, we’re going to bomb AT&T Stadium this coming weekend. Hailey has brought us the C-4, detonators and timers. She’ll be working with Derek, Daniel, Liam and Ethan. After they set all the charges, we’ll have them rigged with timers so they’ll blow at about 1:00 p.m.” He pointed to several places on the blueprints. “We want the charges placed here...here...and here.” He pointed to another section. “And here along this structural beam.” He pulled out some brochures. “There’s a high school band competition going on there this weekend, so unfortunately there will be some collateral damage.”

  Bethany’s eyes widened. “Sounds like there will be quite a lot of lives lost if we blow it in the afternoon. Shouldn’t we aim for a different time when we won’t hurt so many innocent people?”

  Bishop gave her a cold stare as if she was a heretic, and Bethany instantly knew that she had said the wrong thing. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” he growled.

  Bethany narrowed her eyes. A strong offense was always a good defense in her book. “I’m with you, Bishop. You know that. I just don’t like hurting innocent children.”

  Bishop studied her for a moment, as if weighing her answer, then nodded. “I understand, but every decision we make has a reason. Those who made this plan determined that the sacrifice
was necessary for the greater good. I know you have a soft heart. I heard what you did for J.P. at that bank job. But all I can tell you is that this is phase one of the project. All of the pieces have to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, or no one will be able to see the bigger picture come together.”

  “Well, what is the greater good? If this is phase one, what is phase two? I’ve proven my loyalty to the Guard, and I’d like to know the big picture. Can’t you tell us why we’re doing this?”

  Bishop tilted his head. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  She weighed his answer. It wouldn’t do any good to keep pushing, and it might even cause more problems. She decided a strategic retreat was in order. “Alright, Bishop. I trust you, and I trust the leadership,” Bethany agreed. “Please continue.”

  “So what’s my role?” Derek asked a bit too eagerly.

  “You’ve worked with C-4 before, right?” Bishop asked, turning to him.

  “Sure, back in my army days. We used it all the time.”

  Bishop turned to Bethany. “Hailey, show him what you brought.”

  Bethany nodded and pulled out her duffel bag. She had combined all of the supplies into one sack and she opened it now on top of the blueprints for all to see. “I have fifteen bricks, along with the detonators and timers. We should be good to go.” She knew that even though the material was authentic, they would be arresting everyone before the material was actually detonated. Still, a tad of nervousness swept through her. C-4 was dangerous, and no plan, no matter how well thought out, was foolproof.

  Although they had made her leave her phone at the door before this planning session had started, she had a pen in her pocket with an imbedded recording device that was taking down every word. Daniel had a similar device imbedded in his sunglasses in his shirt pocket, just in case her pen device failed. Between the two of them, she knew they would have enough to arrest Liam, Ethan and Derek at a minimum, as well as Bishop. She hoped she could add even more to the count based on Bishop’s cell phone contacts and the transcripts from his conversations, but they’d noticed that he’d been making very few calls lately, so they wondered if he’d somehow figured out his phone had been cloned.

  For the next ten minutes, Liam went through the details of how to handle the C-4 safely and how to actually set the explosives in the various locations around the stadium. They were going to be breaking into teams of two and working in a grid pattern underneath the major support girders. Then they would set the timers and disappear without rendezvousing later so they wouldn’t get caught. After Liam was finished going over the plan, Derek pulled out one of the bricks and acted like he was examining it. “Hey, where did you guys get these? Are you sure it’s good quality? This stuff looks pretty cheap to me.”

  “I have a connection inside the CPD evidence room,” Daniel answered. “It’s good quality, I’m sure of it. For a fee, the evidence clerk was willing to make sure the C-4 was liberated from the shelves.”

  Derek raised an eyebrow. “What about these detonators? These are a special type that are hard to find.”

  Bethany snatched them out of his hand and threw them back in the bag, then zipped it closed. “If you think I’m going to share my sources with the likes of you, you’ve got another think coming,” she said derisively. “All you need to know is that I got them for a good price and they are high quality. I wouldn’t cheat the Guard.”

  Derek obviously didn’t like the insult and stepped closer to Bethany in a threatening stance, but Liam and Ethan both saved Daniel from having to step in once again.

  “Good grief, Derek,” Ethan said tightly. “Can’t you meet once without causing a problem?”

  “Leave her alone,” Liam added.

  Bishop went through the rest of the details, including where they would meet the next morning before heading over to the stadium. Once every detail was explained, Bishop handed each of them one of the packs of money they had taken from the armored car heist.

  “What’s this for?” Liam asked, surprise in his voice. “We don’t expect to be paid for our efforts. We’re doing this for the Guard.”

  “After the stadium is destroyed, you’ll need to lie low for a while. This money should tide you over until you can show your face again.”

  “If we disappear, won’t that make us look suspicious?” Daniel asked.

  “You’re complaining?” Derek sneered. “Take the money and be glad the Guard is taking care of you!”

  “I’m not complaining,” Daniel answered. “I’m just making sure I understand my orders.”

  “Consider it your lifeboat,” Bishop answered. “It’s there if you need it. Hopefully, no one will suspect you and you can go back to work the next day, business as usual. But if problems arise, and you do have a problem and need to disappear, you’ll have this to fall back on. If you don’t end up needing it, you can always donate it back to the Guard after things settle down. We haven’t done anything of this magnitude in quite a long time. We just want to make sure all of our bases are covered.”

  “We’re thankful that you’ve thought of every contingency in your planning, Bishop,” Bethany replied. She put her packet of money in her tote bag. “Hopefully, we won’t need this and we can give it back to the Guard, just like you said.”

  The small group broke up and started to leave.

  “Look at that,” Bethany whispered quietly in Daniel’s ear as they collected their cell phones and guns at the door. Daniel surreptitiously glanced toward Bishop and she hoped he noticed what she had—Bishop had a new cell phone and was making a call from across the room. This one was larger than the old one he had been using and had a dark blue case. No wonder his calls had all but stopped on his old phone.

  SIXTEEN

  “We need to clone that new phone,” she said under her breath as she received her handgun from the man at the door. She kissed Daniel flirtatiously near his ear to cover up what she was saying and gave him a smile and a wink.

  He laughed and kissed her back. “Oh, darling, you’re amazing,” he said out loud. Then quietly for her ears only, he leaned in and said, “Got it, I’ll make a diversion. You do the clone.”

  He stepped away from her and right in the way of Derek, who was swaggering by. “Derek, do you really know how to set a C-4 charge, or are you just filled with hot air?”

  Derek puffed out his chest. “I was a specialist in the army. I served overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom,” he said roughly. “I know more about setting charges than you’ve ever dreamed about.”

  “Can you prove that?” Daniel asked. “I doubt you were even part of that military operation over in Afghanistan.” He took a step closer, getting right up into Derek’s face. “Could you even recognize an Al-Qaeda soldier if you saw one? Do you know what the Taliban is or what they stand for? You’re all about hate, pure and simple. I doubt you actually ever served at all.”

  Derek’s face turned red and spittle spewed from his mouth. “I don’t have to prove anything to you,” he answered hatefully. “You’re just some murdering police scum.” His voice started to rise and Liam and Ethan were suddenly on the scene, trying to calm everyone down. Bethany took the opportunity to take a few steps back and pull out her own phone. A few clicks later, the cloning process had begun.

  “You do if you expect me to be on the same team with you again,” Daniel answered, his voice also rising. “I’m not giving you another opportunity to take a shot at me. I need to know there’s really a good reason to have you on that team and that you really do know what you’re doing. Were you even listening when Liam was going over the details of how to set the charges? I don’t want this mission to fail because of your incompetence.”

  Derek took both hands and pushed Daniel hard. “There’s your reason. Because I say so. Is that good enough for you?”

  Daniel scrambled back and threw a punch, landing his fist hard against Derek�
�s chin. He didn’t have an opening to throw a second blow, because seconds later, Ethan and Liam had gotten between the two and were once again physically holding them apart.

  Bishop was quickly on the scene, as well. His face was serious, and his brow furled. “Are you two going to be able to put aside your differences or not? We’re counting on you two to make this happen. This mission is very important to Operation Battlefield. If we can’t trust you to do your jobs, we’ll have to give them to someone else that we can trust. This isn’t a game for children with attitude that put themselves and their personal agenda before the Guard.”

  Daniel pulled against Liam’s grip, but relaxed once he got the signal from Bethany that the cloning was complete. “It was my fault. I’m sorry. I let my anger get the best of me. It won’t happen again.” Liam released him and he took a step away from Derek, putting his hands up in a motion of surrender. “You can count on me. I’m all in.”

  He took Bethany’s hand, gave her a kiss on the cheek and hugged her close.

  “We’re committed to the cause, Bishop. Both of us,” Bethany reassured him. “And we’ll be there tomorrow morning. You can count on us.” She watched the worry lines slowly disappear from his face.

  “Alright, Hailey. We’re putting a lot of faith in you to get this job done.”

  The two left the building and quickly got into Daniel’s truck and drove away from the warehouse where the meeting had been held.

  Bethany immediately started reading through Bishop’s cloned texts and data as Daniel drove. “Anything interesting on that phone?” Daniel asked.

  She kept scrolling. “He refers to a phase one and phase two a couple of times. It makes me think that the stadium demolition is only part of Operation Battlefield, like he mentioned today, but what could phase two be? And really, what’s the point of killing all of those people at the stadium? I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. There has to be something else going on that we haven’t figured out yet. It has to be a piece of a bigger plan.”