Cold Secrets (Cold Justice Book 7)

by Toni Anderson

  She came back into the room, with damp hair from where she’d washed her face. The skin around her right eye was mottled black.

  There was that goddamn sick feeling in his stomach again. “Let’s get you some ice for that eye.”

  “Seriously?” Her disdain made him wince.

  She’d injured herself when she’d been trying to get away from him, and the shame he felt was very real. But he wasn’t the villain here.

  “What the hell did you expect?”

  Anger seemed to drain out of her, and her bottom lip wobbled. “This. This is exactly what I expected.” She glanced at the bed. “Minus the embarrassing fact that I’d slept with the person who figured it out.” Her chin raised a notch. “How did you, by the way? Figure it out?”

  He hadn’t figured out a damned thing. “Detective Nelson Shaw from the Hong Kong Police Department came into the Boston Field Office to tell us his suspicions about the Dragon Devils. You got lucky. Fuentes and Sloan left the room before he told me a sad story about Yu Chang’s poor dead niece.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “Nelson Shaw lost his father to the Devils.”

  “You know Shaw?”

  “Not personally.” She rubbed at the red marks on her wrists. “I did a lot of research on the organization over the years—”

  “To help them stay one step ahead of the law?”

  “No.” She stared down at the floor, but her tone was anything but meek. “To make sure I stayed one step ahead of them.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Time was up. Five minutes after returning from the murder scene at the hotel, Sloan had been called to the office of the Special Agent in Charge.

  She glanced at the clock above the secretary’s desk. High noon. Seemed appropriate considering she was about to get fired. She rapped on her boss’s office door, a little harder than necessary, but at least she hadn’t kicked it down.

  “Come in.”

  SAC Don Salinger wasn’t a bad guy, but he knew results—or lack thereof—reflected poorly on his evaluation. It was a week since the bombing—an eternity in this kind of investigation. The public expected more, and deserved better. They wanted to feel safe.

  “Carly, this is Supervisory Special Agent Greg Trainer,” Salinger introduced them. “He’s going to be taking over the task force.”

  Trainer was a tall, slender man with stooped shoulders. She’d heard of him. He had a reputation for dogged determination when it came to chasing bad guys, and nitpicky politics in the workplace.

  “You’ve done good work, Sloan,” Trainer told her, reaching out to shake her hand.

  She tried to tell herself he wasn’t being condescending. “I have a good team, but these perps always seem to be a step ahead of us. I think there’s a leak somewhere.”

  “That’s quite an accusation.” Trainer’s pale blue eyes assessed her steadily.

  Maybe her inner crazy was showing. A mass casualty event where you lost three cops and four of your own people, followed by a series of gruesome homicides, would do that to a person.

  “Yeah, well, it’s been a hell of a week.”

  Her boss looked upset by her attitude, but she didn’t care. This would be a black mark in her record regardless of how much she sucked up right now. Frankly, she didn’t have the energy. She was working on maybe eight hours sleep since the day Mia Stromberg had been kidnapped.

  “Is that why you insisted on keeping the fact we have a witness who survived the explosion a secret, even from your own team?” Trainer asked casually.

  Unease trickled down her spine. “I considered it a need-to-know piece of information.” Her eyes flicked to Salinger. She’d only told him after she’d set up the protection detail with the ATF.

  Salinger backed her up. “Considering what happened to every other witness or potential witness we’ve had, it was a sound decision.”

  “Does your husband know?” Trainer asked.

  “No.” Her shoulders pulled back, and her eyes narrowed. “He does not.”

  Trainer settled back against the SAC’s desk. Maybe measuring it up for his next promotion. “For such a key witness she’s given us very little to go on.” He managed to make that sound like that was her fault, too.

  “She’s a sexually abused thirteen-year-old who was held captive for two years and survived a major bombing incident,” Sloan told him bluntly. “She needs time to adjust, and she’ll come into her own as a witness when we actually catch someone she can testify against. We have people working to locate the mother.”

  Trainer’s brows rose over those pale eyes. “How many agents do you have tracking down the mother and the gambling angle?”

  “Two.” She hadn’t sought approval from Salinger for Chen to get involved, but they’d needed someone with above average computer skills, and FBI agents always worked with a partner in the field.

  The tightening of her boss’s lips told her he wasn’t happy, but he didn’t say anything.

  “How far have they got?” Trainer asked.

  “They’re pursuing an angle, right now.” She resisted the urge to check her watch. Why the hell Lucas Randall felt it was appropriate to take off at this exact point in time she had no idea. She’d expected better from the man.

  “You should have put more agents on that instead of wasting your time searching the port,” Trainer told her.

  Considering how many hours she’d spent searching dank shipping containers, he could shove his opinion. “We had viable information placing them at the port.”

  “That we now know came from one of their associates. It was a decoy, and we fell for it,” Trainer said bitingly.

  She put hands on her hips. “This has been a fast-moving, dynamic investigation. We couldn’t afford to ignore that information. Would you have had every ship sail without being searched?”

  Trainer pursed his lips, and Sloan wished she had the energy to really go after him. Jerk.

  Salinger cut in. “You’ve been reassigned to the Counterterrorism Unit. There’s been a steady increase in underground chatter since the bombing, suggesting certain factions want to exploit our supposed weakness while we’re searching for this Asian gang.”

  It wasn’t exactly a demotion, but being replaced because you didn’t get results sucked. She held her boss’s gaze. “Thank you, sir. Should I stay and update SSA Trainer on the situation here?”

  Salinger shook his head. “I’ve brought him up to speed, and I’m personally assigning Agents Mayfield and Fuentes to his team—I know they’ve been assisting you closely. Take the rest of the day. Get some rest.” He was all benevolence and warmth, and wanted rid of her as fast as possible.

  She nodded to Trainer and turned on her heel. The elevator was full of people who couldn’t meet her gaze. She gritted her teeth and raised her chin. For the best part of two decades, she’d been either in the military or the FBI. She knew how the system worked. Being kicked when you were down was part of the process.

  She grabbed a box from near the photocopier and went into her office. Fuentes and Mayfield both scurried inside after her like a couple of oversized pups.

  “What happened?” Fuentes asked.

  “Is it true? You’re off the case?” Mayfield had a white-knuckle grip on the file she was holding.

  Sloan opened her top drawer. “Yep, I’m off the case, but that’s not exactly news. You two have been assigned to assist the new task force leader, SSA Greg Trainer. He’s out of the New York Field Office.”

  She grabbed a few items, but she wasn’t one for clutter. She packed up some pens and notebooks off her desk, a couple of textbooks on criminal investigation. The photograph of her husband was last, and she placed it carefully in the box. She hoped he was still talking to her after this. He knew her career was important, but he probably wanted a wife he saw once upon a blue moon.

  Mayfield was indignant. “I’m going to send a letter of complaint—”

  “Telling the boss he made the wrong decision?” Sl
oan pulled a face at the young agent. “That’s a dumb move.” Although pushy women tended to get noticed in this kind of environment, so maybe it wasn’t the wrong thing to do. The ones who were quiet and unassuming got walked all over, then sidelined and forgotten. She grinned. No one had ever described her as quiet or unassuming.

  Fuentes scratched his head. “We got a bunch of DNA from the apartment in Cambridge that we are running through CODIS. Place was registered to another company in the Caymans. Forensic accountant says it’s a shell company.”

  “I’m off the case.” Sloan held up her hand. “Tell it to SSA Trainer.”

  She slipped her laptop into its case, wound up the power cord, and stuffed it beside the computer. “There is one thing I need to tell you.” It would be better coming from her. “And I’d appreciate you not sharing this information, or revealing to Trainer that I told you.”

  They both watched her expectantly.

  “That second kid Randall rescued from the brothel?”

  “What about her?” Fuentes asked warily.

  “The one who died?” asked Mayfield.

  “She didn’t die. Randall and I snuck her into a local hospital where she was admitted under a false name. ATF is guarding her.”

  “ATF?” Fuentes sounded like she’d stuck a blade in his back.

  “A personal friend of mine. From my Army days.”

  “You didn’t trust us with this, but you trusted Randall?”

  “It wasn’t personal, Diego. He was there, and we made the joint decision to keep the kid’s survival under wraps.” It wouldn’t be secret for long, and she needed to update Lucas, which would have been a damn sight easier if he’d been in the office. “Once information gets out it becomes something no one can control. Seeing what happened to Susan Thomas, Ray Tan, and Agata Maroulis, I don’t regret it. It was the right decision.”

  Fuentes and Mayfield both looked a little stunned by the turn of events.

  “Is that where Pretty Boy is?” Fuentes asked.

  Sloan laughed. “Pretty Boy?”

  “He’s handsome,” Mayfield agreed. “If I wasn’t engaged…”

  “To an asshole.” Fuentes grouched.

  “Derek isn’t an asshole,” Mayfield defended the guy she’d been dating for just over a year, although Sloan had never warmed to him either. He was Kurt Stromberg’s PA. That connection was how the FBI got called in on the case so quickly.

  “Total asshole,” Fuentes muttered under his breath with a grin.

  Mayfield punched him in the arm, then seemed to remember this situation wasn’t even remotely amusing. She turned to watch Sloan with sad eyes. “Where are you going next?”

  “Home.” Sloan deliberately misunderstood the question. She pulled on her winter coat, grabbed her umbrella from behind the door, shouldered her purse and laptop case, and folded her tactical vest over her arm. She picked up the box. Fuentes went to help, but she jerked away. She didn’t need anyone’s help.

  They followed her out of the office and trailed her to the door of the stairs. Other team members watched silently. Then the elevator opened, and Salinger and Trainer stepped out.

  “Go,” Sloan urged them. “Catch those bastards.” She gave Mayfield a gentle shoulder push. The case was more important than her ego.

  Sloan strode down the stairs to the parking garage and dumped her belongings in the trunk of her car. She waited until she was alone inside her vehicle before calling Brian. The call went to voicemail, and she closed her eyes.

  Her hands shook. It was possible the mayor’s office already knew she’d been replaced, which was a painful thought.

  Maybe he’d given up on her. Maybe he was in freaking Aruba with some leggy blonde, and she didn’t even know.

  Their marriage had been on the rocks for a while now, but she’d consoled herself that at least she had her work. But her marriage suddenly seemed a lot more important than she’d realized. Something worth fighting for. Tears wanted to form, but she didn’t let them. She just hoped this case hadn’t sunk their marriage completely. She dialed Randall, and his cell went to voicemail, too. She left him a message telling him she’d been reassigned and to meet her at the hospital. She tossed her phone on the passenger seat. She didn’t know why people bothered with phones anymore. No one ever picked up.

  Hopefully Randall and Chen would track down Becca’s mother. Hopefully they beat Trainer’s team to the punch although, as the task force leader, he’d get the credit.

  She suspected Randall and Chen were also screwing each other’s brains out. Steam had practically poured off them when they’d looked at one another.

  It had been months since she and her husband had had sex, and the lack of intimacy was helping to drive a wedge between them.

  She caught sight of her reflection in the rearview.

  Holy crap. No one in their right mind would want to have sex with her. She’d seen corpses with more color. She dragged her purse across the seat and applied some foundation and lipstick.

  Frazer had ripped her a new one in the last message he’d left her. Chen was going to be in deep shit if she hadn’t reported in. But Sloan was glad Chen was still working this case. The agent was smart and tenacious—like she’d once prided herself on being.

  Sloan smoothed her lips against each other and checked her teeth. Satisfied, she flicked up the sun visor and started the engine.

  Her career might be in the shitter, but at least they’d managed to salvage two of the most important things from this operation. They’d retrieved Mia Stromberg from her kidnappers without harm, which was the original reason for forming the task force. And they’d rescued Becca from a life of sexual slavery.

  Becca’s freedom was better than a letter of commendation any day of the week. Sloan checked that the way was clear and slid smoothly out of her space. She knew exactly where she needed to be.

  * * *

  “Let’s get this over with.” Ashley didn’t care that she’d slept in her clothes and that her right eye throbbed like a bitch or that she couldn’t see much of anything through it. Everything that had happened was her own fault, her reward for the foolishness of wanting to work for the FBI. For being a liar and a cheat. For trying to make a difference when she should have stayed firmly out of the spotlight.

  She’d never seen herself as naive, but looking back at her career decisions, they stank of foolish idealism and blind optimism.

  Lucas waved her ahead of him, and she walked down a small hallway in the quaint cottage. It was a sweet place if you discounted the proximity to the ocean. She forced the fear out of her mind. Didn’t matter how irrational it was, she’d lived through the worse tsunami in recorded history and wouldn’t apologize for being scared of the ocean’s power.

  She glanced at Lucas. Dark stubble sandpapered his jaw. Tired lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. Shame washed over his features whenever he looked at her.

  The fact he was regretful of what they’d done twisted a knife in her gut. She shouldn’t have touched him, but she’d been falling for him since the moment she’d first seen him.

  I’m not going to tell anyone.

  For his sake, she hoped not. She knew better than to give in to her impulses. It wasn’t a lesson she could have forgotten in this lifetime, but somehow, with Lucas, she’d allowed herself to be blinded by the illusion that she was in control. She’d made all the wrong choices.

  The small sitting room held overstuffed couches and a hearth already set with kindling. Her footsteps slowed. Her time with this man was coming to an end. As painful as the situation was, she wanted to be able to savor these remaining moments alone.

  She touched a photograph of a smiling couple embracing a small child and moved on. What mattered now was persuading these two supposedly intelligent human beings that they needed to let her go. She wasn’t the villain. She hadn’t betrayed anyone. She’d been trying to help. Maybe she deserved to be arrested, but first the FBI needed to catch the Dragon Devils. Her c
ontinued presence in their company put them and everyone they loved at risk. She couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for anyone else’s death.

  It was a situation that would have been helped if she hadn’t seduced Lucas while lying about her identity—except she hadn’t been lying. She was FBI Agent Ashley Chen. She just hadn’t started out that way. God knew who or what she was going to be when this was all over.

  She stopped dead at the threshold of the kitchen, but Lucas gave her a little nudge, and she sank into a chair opposite Alex, who had both her laptops up and running.

  The invasion of privacy hurt. Not that she blamed them for thinking she was a traitor. She knew what this looked like. There was no place for pride after the fall.

  “I’ll give you the password—”

  “I don’t need it.” Parker’s attitude made her want to smack him. She’d attempted to run some background checks on him when they’d first met and had set off traps and alarms at every step. That’s when he’d started to view her with suspicion.

  Parker turned her laptop toward her and sure enough, he’d gotten into her system.

  Her laughter was bereft of mirth. “Does Mallory know you planted a key logger on her? Or was she in on the ploy?”

  All the layers of herself curled over one another into a ball of self-preservation. This was why she didn’t do friendships. It hurt too much when you were betrayed. She glanced at Lucas and knew that behind the blank expression he was thinking the exact same thing.

  Parker turned the machine back toward him. “I got lucky.”

  “Liar. No way you’d have cracked it otherwise. You found out we’d be sharing a room and decided to use the opportunity to do some snooping.”

  He shrugged one shoulder as if this wasn’t her life they were talking about. “If there’d been nothing untoward about your activities you’d never have known, now would you?”

  “Glad to know you’re looking after my constitutional rights.”

  He seemed amused, which pissed her off.

  “Oh, trust me, I get it. It’s all my fault, and I got what I deserved.”