Best Laid Plans

by Allison Brennan

  “I’m not,” Barry said. “I’m not used to working with a rookie like you. The last rookie we had on the squad was a guy who never should have been in Violent Crimes. He couldn’t handle half the cases we deal with and had no instincts to speak of—in what he said or did. He left the month before you got here—went into an analysis unit at headquarters, because he should never have been around people—so maybe you’re bearing the brunt of my leftover frustration with him.”

  Lucy didn’t think that was the complete story, but it satisfied her for the time being. She turned her attention to her phone and sent Tia a message.

  Barry pulled up in front of Mona Hill’s apartment building a few minutes later.

  It wasn’t what either of them expected.

  While the neighborhood wasn’t particularly nice, the apartment complex was well maintained. Two brick buildings faced each over a tidy green courtyard. Each building had a main entrance, so no one had a door that went directly outside, which helped with security. There were blinds on the windows, not the sheets or newspaper that were often the décor of necessity in some slums.

  Barry looked at the address again. “Hill is in unit one, the building on the right.”

  They crossed the street and walked through the courtyard. The front door was solid wood with thick, etched glass in the center. Barry rang the bell for Mona Hill’s apartment. Lucy felt eyes on her. She glanced behind her, but didn’t see anyone. All the blinds were closed.

  “What can I do for the FBI today?” A voice came out of the speaker.

  Barry frowned and glanced at Lucy. Obviously there was a camera, and they must look like federal agents on the surface, though Lucy thought they also could have passed for SAPD detectives.

  Barry said, “Mona Hill?”

  “Yes?”

  “Agents Crawford and Kincaid with the FBI. We have a few questions. It won’t take long.”

  “I don’t care to speak to the FBI.”

  “You’re not in any trouble, we just—”

  “I know I’m not in any trouble, sugar,” Mona said.

  “Ma’am, this is an official federal investigation, and if you don’t talk to us here, we’ll need to bring you in for questioning.”

  “Really?” Mona said. “After you just told me I’m not in any trouble?” She laughed. The speaker made her voice sound tinny.

  Barry was tense and muttered something under his breath that Lucy couldn’t make out.

  Lucy said, “Ms. Hill, you know how this works. We can do this dance indefinitely, but in the end, you’ll either talk to us here, or talk to us at FBI headquarters.”

  “That’s not how it works in my world.”

  “Or Agent Crawford and I can make your life miserable. Follow your employees—for lack of a better word—when they go out to work. Arrest them, arrest their clients, cause you a few sleepless nights. Indefinitely. That’s my idea of fun.”

  “You must not have much of a life, Agent Kincaid.” Her words were meant to be insulting, but her tone had changed from playful to all business. “I would then sue you for harassment.”

  “That would cost you time and money before you could get us off your case. Considering evidence that you have information pertinent to our investigation is pretty damn good, we’ll get a warrant and compel you to talk. Or you can talk to us now.”

  Silence. Lucy held her breath, kept her expression blank and her chin up. She felt Mona Hill watching them, though Lucy resisted looking around for the camera.

  “Good luck getting your fucking warrant,” Mona said.

  “Thank you for your time,” Lucy said. “We’ll just wait here and speak to your employees until the warrant comes through.”

  Barry opened his mouth, then didn’t say anything.

  The door buzzed and Lucy pushed it open before Mona changed her mind.

  “Ballsy,” Barry said under his breath.

  Lucy didn’t respond—couldn’t respond—because her heart was pounding. There was something about Mona’s tone that had her on edge.

  The first door on the right opened and Mona stepped out. She closed the door behind her. “That’s far enough, sugar,” she said.

  Lucy had miscalculated. Mona wasn’t scared of them, she was curious. Suspicious. Shrewd. Wanted them to show their hand.

  Mona was in her mid-thirties with wise eyes and a self-assured confidence that wasn’t just bravado. She was of mixed race, so Lucy couldn’t tell which ethnicity she might identify with, if any—she could have blended with almost any culture with relative ease. Her skin was slightly darker than Lucy’s half-Cuban complexion, but her eyes were green and her hair was a curly light brown. She was alluring and sharp, as if every bone in her body could cut someone in half.

  Lucy wished she could warn Barry that they’d stepped into Mona’s sandbox, and Mona was in charge.

  “Thank you for speaking with us, Ms. Hill,” Barry said.

  “Your girl threatened me,” Mona said, sounding wholly unthreatened. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?” Every word out of her mouth was a contradiction. She damn well knew she had a choice, and her choice was to listen, not speak, unless she wanted to tell them something.

  “It wasn’t a threat, Ms. Hill. We’re looking for a girl named Elise. We heard she works for you.”

  “I don’t know anyone by the name of Elise,” she said.

  She was lying.

  “We know you sent her to meet with at least one of your clients,” Barry said.

  “No, you don’t,” Mona countered. She was answering Barry, but looking straight at Lucy.

  “We’re not here to arrest you for solicitation,” Barry said.

  Mona laughed.

  “But we can make your life difficult if you don’t cooperate.”

  “Sugar, you don’t know the pile of shit you’re stepping in.”

  “Elise is a suspect in a murder investigation,” Barry said, “and I have enough evidence to get a warrant for your phone records, property records, employee records, rental records, and bank records—and whatever else I can think of between here and the AUSA’s office.”

  Mona tightened her jaw but didn’t say a word. That threat seemed to hold a bit of water. She was used to dealing with SAPD and the San Antonio criminal justice system; the federal system was not only different, but carried a mightier hammer.

  Lucy spoke. “We know that Elise is new in town. Why would you protect her?”

  “Who says I am?”

  Mona was good. She didn’t reveal anything in her expression or body language. She was assessing them, but Lucy knew Mona would never give them any information if it didn’t directly benefit her. And Mona didn’t get to where she was by turning on her girls at the first sign of trouble.

  “I’m new in town, too,” Lucy said. “I have no loyalties, no friends, no baggage. I will make it my life’s mission to make your life miserable. Or I can forget you completely.”

  She hoped her expression was as serious as her voice.

  Silence descended in the small entry for a good minute. No one moved.

  “There’s nothing to this story you’re pulling out of thin air,” Mona said. “It’s simple. Last week a girl who called herself Elise asked for some work. She seemed to know the ropes. When one of my regulars got sick, I called her. That’s it.”

  “How many clients did you send her to?” Barry asked.

  “I’m not answering that.”

  “What’s her phone number?” Barry asked.

  Mona rattled off a number and Barry wrote it down.

  “You wouldn’t take a stranger into your operation without vetting her,” Lucy said. “You’re not that stupid. Who referred Elise?”

  Mona laughed humorlessly but didn’t answer.

  “Agent Kincaid asked you a question.”

  “Get a fucking warrant, and I still won’t tell you.”

  “I think you will,” Barry said, irritated.

  No, she wouldn’t. Lucy was certain this wa
s the extent of the information Mona would share. Enough to give them a lead, not enough to put Mona or this Elise in any direct harm from the authorities. In fact, it was too easy. She gave them one thing—a way to track Elise. Why? Why even give them that? She could have lied, said she didn’t have a number. She could have told them to pound sand. But she gave them a lead.

  Mona stared at Barry without blinking. “Arrest me, or leave my property.”

  “We’ll be back,” Barry said. “We have more questions, and like I said, it’ll be here or at headquarters.”

  He turned to the main door and opened it. As he stepped out, Lucy followed. Mona said, “Agent Kincaid?”

  Lucy turned. Mona had a half smile on her lips, but there was nothing friendly about her expression.

  Mona said, “I never forget a face.”

  Lucy’s head spun and if Barry hadn’t touched her arm just then, she might have collapsed. She turned and walked out with tunnel vision. She didn’t really remember how she got to the car, only that she was in the passenger seat sitting on her hands to keep them from shaking.

  Barry asked, “What happened back there? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Nothing,” Lucy said.

  Everything.

  “Talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  “Hill was just trying to get under your skin. You got us in, that’s the first step. We’ll come back and push harder.” He glanced at Lucy, then turned the ignition and pulled out of the parking space. “I thought you had a thicker skin than this.”

  She straightened her spine. “I’m fine. She just caught me off guard.”

  “We don’t have that luxury,” Barry said. “She’s savvy. She’ll hold us at bay for as long as she can. But we’ll run the phone number, see what we can get. Probably a burner, but it’s a local area code. We might get lucky and track down where it was purchased, see if we can get more info about this girl. It’s nearly five, we need to head back to headquarters.”

  Lucy just wanted to go home.

  Mona Hill couldn’t possibly know about Lucy. Other than Operation Heatwave, she hadn’t been involved in any major cases or investigations in the five months she’d been in San Antonio. Lucy had irritated the woman, so Mona turned around to issue an idle threat. It couldn’t be because she recognized Lucy; it was simply a threat that she’d never forget or forgive the intrusion. At least, that’s what Lucy wanted to believe. It wouldn’t be the first time a suspect had tried to intimidate her.

  Mona had been in the porn industry. Legal porn was big business, but illegal porn was bigger. The chances that Mona knew about or had seen the video of Lucy’s rape eight years ago were slim to none. And while nothing online was ever truly gone, the FBI—and Lucy’s family—had gone to extraordinary lengths to suppress copies of the video. In this day and age, porn was higher quality and far more prevalent, the quantity growing exponentially. On one popular porn site users uploaded more than one thousand new clips daily. The chances that Lucy’s rape video would be readily available—without digging deep for it—were slim to none.

  But in the back of her mind, Lucy’s fear grew. That her past would always be with her, that she’d never be able to escape what she’d done … or what had been done to her.

  * * *

  By the time they got back to FBI headquarters, it was after five. Barry handed Zach the phone number he’d gotten from Mona, and Lucy sat down at her desk. She responded to a bunch of emails so she could leave with a clear plate.

  Barry asked Zach, “Where are we on the tablet Jolene Hayden gave us?”

  “It’s not only password protected, but has a fail-safe. I didn’t want to risk erasing the data, so passed it off to the tech unit. They know it’s a priority.”

  Lucy almost offered Sean’s services to crack it, but decided she wasn’t going to further irritate Barry. They’d been making progress in this partnership until her near panic over Mona’s threat, and she didn’t want to give him any reason to pull her from the case. She thought she’d recovered well, but now he thought she had a thin skin.

  If he only knew just how thick her skin really was.

  Ryan rolled his chair over to Lucy. Their cubicles were kitty-corner from each other. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Donnelly said to say hi.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Physically he seems fine. He said when he gets tired his knee gives out. He’s in physical therapy, but is hoping to be cleared this week.”

  “Desk duty is probably driving him up the wall. What happened out there?”

  “Nasty business. Nine dead. Three with known ties to Sanchez, so it reasons that they either were the remnants of the Trejo/Sanchez enterprise, or the remaining few were trying to rebuild the organization. Could have trampled over someone else’s territory. And remember, Sanchez had been involved in recruiting or killing off smaller gangs. Could easily be old-school retaliation. One shooter was injured, SAPD and the DEA are trying to track him down. It might help ID who targeted the group. But get this—they left the drugs.”

  “That’s … odd.”

  “Understatement. A million dollars in heroin. Who targets a gang and leaves the drugs? It was a hit, pure and simple.”

  Juan’s door opened at the head of the squad room where the agent cubicles were crammed. “Crawford, Kincaid, I need you.”

  Ryan rolled to his desk. “Watch your back, Luce.”

  “You, too.”

  Lucy got up and followed Barry into Juan’s small office. She was surprised to see Sean sitting in one of Juan’s chairs. He winked at her.

  Juan closed the door and sat down. “Barry Crawford, Sean Rogan. Sean has some information that might be pertinent to your investigation.”

  There were only two visitor chairs in Juan’s small office so Lucy leaned against the door. Whatever information Sean had, Barry was the lead detective. He sat in the chair next to Sean and said, “I’m all ears.”

  “I’ve been hired by HWI to run full diagnostics on their network. They have a few small holes, but they’re clean, at least as far as anyone hacking into their system. But I learned that Worthington hadn’t been using his own desk for the last month. He took over another office from an employee who was on maternity leave. He used her computer and phone. He was working on a complex Bureau of Land Management audit that had been flagged by the employee as having problems. I don’t know yet if he found something suspicious in the files—HWI is taking point on the audit. But it was odd that he wouldn’t work from his own office. That’s when I uncovered a bug in his phone.”

  “Corporate espionage? Insider trading? What kind of device?” Barry asked.

  “I don’t know the why, but it’s an extremely sophisticated transmitter. I suspect the relay is outside of the building, a literal phone tap. Which means that whoever is bugging him not only is committing a federal crime, but they probably have people and resources to monitor the tap. It’s only active when there’s a phone conversation, and I checked all HWI phones—only Worthington’s is tapped and the security team found no other bugs in the office. They’re hiring another consultant to sweep their Dallas and Virginia offices as well. But the key point is that the bug is impossible to trace unless it’s actually running.”

  “Did you think about calling us to check for prints?” Barry asked. “Or having us trace the serial number?”

  Sean, to his credit, remained calm. He didn’t like working with the FBI on projects. Even though Lucy was an agent, and Sean had worked with other agents over the years, he still harbored a deep hostility toward law enforcement. But Lucy recognized, particularly since they’d moved to San Antonio, that Sean had learned to temper his distrust.

  “There is no serial number on the outside of the device, which means we’d have to take it apart,” Sean said. “Which I’m more than capable of doing, but wanted to put forth another option that might yield quicker results.”


  “There’s no indication that the bug has anything to do with Worthington’s murder,” Barry said.

  Sean’s jaw tightened. In a calm voice he said, “No, but it’s an outlier in his life. According to his admin, he started acting preoccupied three to four weeks ago. That’s about the time he stopped using his phone. He must have known the bug was there.”

  “Did he tell his staff? His security chief?”

  “No, which is also suspicious. But I’ve been running deep backgrounds on everyone, and nothing has popped. Gregor Smith is more than competent in his field, but I’m digging around in his background as well.”

  “With what authority?” Barry asked.

  “The authority that HWI gave me when they hired me as an independent consultant,” Sean said through clenched teeth.

  Lucy glanced at Juan; he was watching the two of them as if this was some kind of test. And maybe it was—not just for Sean, but for her. She had to stay out of this.

  Juan said, “Sean has an idea to draw them out, but the decision is up to you, Barry.”

  “What’s the idea?” Barry asked Juan.

  Sean answered. “At this point, whoever planted the device knows that Harper knew he was being bugged—Harper’s office extension hasn’t been used in nearly four weeks. They also know that he’s dead, even if they had nothing to do with his murder. I’d like to stage a call to leak specific information, partly true, partly false. I would monitor activity from HWI to see if someone internal is involved; you would monitor the people in Worthington’s private life.”

  Lucy was afraid that Barry would just shut Sean down right there. It was a good idea, but there was no guarantee that it’d yield results.

  Barry asked, “How exactly would you do this without the party involved being suspicious that it was a set up?”

  “Since HWI hired me, it’s reasonable that I would be working from Worthington’s office. It’ll be in the evening, I’ll be running late and call Lucy at home.”

  “And not use your cell phone?”

  “Dead battery. But I don’t think anyone would think about it. The purpose is twofold. One, to get controlled information out there to determine who might be listening, and two, to trace the receiver. The bug is only a transmitter. The tap has to be in one of three places—the phone system in the router building next to the office, the relay station, or the main phone company. If it’s the latter, that means it’s a federal wiretap.”