…
Stiles wiped his glasses on a clean cotton handkerchief. A navy suit covered his tall, thin frame. The man looked like an accountant, not an FBI agent. “Detective Harper, your disappearing act was a thing of beauty.”
“Thank you,” she acknowledged with a tight smile. Jerry had left the two of them alone as a professional courtesy to the FBI agent. She felt a little like the Lone Ranger, fighting it out on her own. Blake and Logan couldn’t get there in time, the sheriff had given Stiles unfettered access, and she had no idea what was happening back at the house. “What’s your game plan here?”
“You confess.”
“To what?”
“To the murder of Derek Davison. To the murder of Agents Summerfield and Blane. To the murders of Nate’s parents.”
“That’s quite a list.”
“Not finished. You’ve also kidnapped Nate Cisneros.”
“So you’re trying to get me to take the fall for all your sins.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, a fact he tried to cover as he settled his glasses back into place. Why hadn’t she ever noticed his beady little eyes?
“Good luck with that,” she said. Her heart pounded. Stiles hadn’t come alone. He’d brought Sully or Sully’s goons. Mick, Nate, and Peg were in danger. Time was a luxury.
“Save yourself the trouble of denying the charges.” Stiles opened a neat file on the metal desk. “You did a good job hiding the money, but I was finally able to track a large deposit to one of your hidden accounts.”
Her heart thumped. Agent Stiles was a fast-track agent, not because of time in law enforcement, but for his computer and accounting skills. The Bureau needed people to follow the money trail, and people like Stiles fit the bill. The man had the computer skills to falsify accounts. “If there are hidden accounts, you created them.”
He pulled out a pen and clicked it open. He set it on an empty legal pad and turned it to face her. “You can write your confession here.”
She snorted. The man was a computer genius, but he had no experience or training in interrogation. Based on his behavior so far, Dez doubted the man had the necessary skillset to break a suspect. She leaned back and crossed her arms. “No, thanks.”
He ran a trim fingernail across the edge of the legal pad. “I always liked you.” He kept his voice low as he reached over and clicked off the tape recorder. When he spoke, he used the same conversational tone. “Right now, my men have your aunt.”
Dez didn’t blink or give any indication that his threat hit its mark. Maybe the asshole did have training. Just the wrong kind. “How long have you worked for Sully?”
Stiles grinned. “The best way to control the opposition is to lead them.”
No lie. No wonder they’d never gotten close to Sully. The head of the task force fed him information. “Did they teach you that in conspiracy school?”
“This isn’t a conspiracy.”
The sheriff knocked and walked in at the same moment. He brought Stiles a cup of coffee and as he set it down, his gaze flicked to the recorder. “We do things by the book around here. The recorder stays on so we don’t have eighteen minutes of missing conversation. Whatever happens here, we want it to stick.” He nailed Stiles with a glare.
Stiles put his hands up in a placating manner. “I just wanted to give the detective a chance to clarify the situation off the record.”
Dez leaned back, her position belying the fear racing through her pulse like wildfire. “Or he wanted to threaten me. Off the record.”
“Damn.” Jerry glared at Stiles. “That’s the kind of shit I’m talking about. Give her an inch, and her lawyer will have a field day.”
The way he said it stung. Even knowing an arrest warrant had been ignored by his department, Jerry still bought into Stiles’s lies.
Stiles tight smile gave nothing away. “You realize that when we book Detective Harper, it will be our arrest, not yours? This will never be heard in your courts.”
Jerry reached over and flicked the power on the recorder. “It stays on.” He walked out without another word. The second the door closed shut, Stiles turned it off again.
“This is the definition of conspiracy,” she said, rejoining their interrupted conversation. “Two or more people conspiring or in agreement to commit a crime.”
“I’ll be sure to add that to your confession.”
“No way you could make it stick.”
Stiles put his hands together on the desk in front of him. “The money trail leads to you. I leaked enough so your friend Agent Stone is convinced of your guilt.”
A twitch fluttered in her eyelid. Logan Stone was the kind of agent who checked and double-checked his information. He couldn’t be bought, bribed, or compromised, so his word meant something in the Bureau. But he’d told her on the earlier phone call that he was planting that seed with Stiles to give him enough rope to hang himself, but they had to get up here to do it. Right now, she was on her own. Is that why he and Blake were in such an all-fire hurry to make it before the blizzard?
The slight nod held enough pretentious superiority Dez wanted to launch across the desk and take this prick down. Instead, she pushed the pen and notepad back across the desk. “I’ll take my chances.”
“As is your right, but know this. Your aunt can die quickly or slowly.”
For the first time since the man had walked into the room, Dez’s nerves jumped. Aunt Peg didn’t deserve to die.
“It all depends on you.” Stiles shoved the pad back into position in front of her.
…
The jolt shoved Mick off the deputy. Vern rolled and jumped to his feet. Bracing them apart, he aimed the weapon at Mick’s gut. “Get up.”
Pain licked fire up every nerve in Mick’s leg. He kept his eyes on the perp as he climbed slowly to his feet. His leg worked, so the shot couldn’t be too bad. “Deputy Vern, you’re an asshole.”
“An asshole with a gun. Keep your hands where I can see them.” The man wisely kept his distance as he gestured Mick toward the door. “Let’s go get the kid.”
Mick held his hands up while backtracking into the house. The damage to his leg hurt, but the wound felt shallow. He’d had worse. “The kid’s gone. He and Peg hit the road.”
“I don’t think so. We have a spotter out back.”
“They’re long gone. Left this morning.”
Vern pushed Mick in front of him down the stairs to the basement. The exit door that led to the back trapdoor was propped open and a bitter chill snaked through the room. “Nice detail,” Vern said, “but the kid’s still here.” He hollered up the stairs for his backup.
Mick glanced around the room, looking for something to use as an impromptu weapon. A pile of tools on the rusty shelves looked promising. The yellow handled screwdriver wedged in a pile of extension cords caught his attention. If he could distract Vern for a few seconds, he could reach the tool.
“Nathan, I know you’re here,” Vern said. The even tone of voice sounded almost safe.
“Stay put,” Mick ordered. If Vern had to play hide and seek, he’d have to split his focus. Especially since his backup hadn’t come down the stairs.
“Nathan,” Vern’s voice rose. “I’ll kill Mick if you don’t come out.”
“He’s lying. Don’t move.”
Silence breathed in the dim room, filled with tension and threat, but Nate stayed wherever he’d hidden. The longer Mick could keep the kid away from Vern, the better.
“Now, kid.” Vern turned, pointed the gun at Mick’s bleeding thigh, and pulled the trigger. Mick dropped to the ground, no longer able to hold himself up. The pain shot a wicked streak of lightning through every cell in his body. He grabbed his thigh and blood coated his hands in seconds. He was bleeding like a stuck pig.
“Don’t.” Nate kicked out of the dryer legs first. “Don’t kill him.”
Vern smiled and pointed the gun at Mick’s chest.
Chapter Nineteen
“No one will be
lieve I work for Sully.” Dez crossed her arms over her chest. Stiles was the slimiest double agent she’d ever come across.
“Sure they will.” The agent’s reasonable voice matched his bland expression. “Like father like daughter.”
Rage she hadn’t known existed snarled up her throat. How long did she have to carry her father’s weight? And how did this jerk even know about her father? “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The tips of his fingers danced on a stack of files. “I know you joined the force to absolve yourself of his guilt.”
The pulse ticking in her neck jumped. “I did no such thing.”
“Trying to make up for Daddy’s mistakes took you on a collision course with disaster. It’s a sad story,” he said, his brow lifting in mock concern. “You just couldn’t overcome your nature.”
That sounded like a line straight out of an FBI profile. Dez willed the temper down. “What exactly is my nature?”
“You think you’re above the law.”
“You did a psych eval on me?” Prick.
“You’ve been in my crosshairs for some time Detective Harper. You and your team of misfits made it easy. You never met a regulation you didn’t break or bend.”
Anger flushed her skin like a fire. The prick could go after her, but he needed to stay away from Blake and Mick. Those men were the best friends she had. As a team, they knew the rules and sometimes even followed them. Their arrest rate was high because the motivation to get drug dealers and killers off the street was off the charts, but she sure as heck didn’t have to prove anything to this loser. Dez tightened her lips.
“The psych profile is quite interesting reading.”
“It’s fiction.” The muscles in her hand flexed around the pen as she gripped it in a tight fist, trying to ground herself and not get sucked into the agent’s game. “I didn’t join to absolve myself. I joined to show my father how it’s done. How a good cop works. I joined to be better than my old man, but that was never the problem. I was better than him from the day I was born.”
“And yet you’ll die much the way he did.”
The acid churching in her stomach climbed up and washed her tongue. Her father had died execution style, two rounds to the back of his skull. Who the hell was Stiles? She’d worked for him for two years, and yet he had no trouble setting her up for a hit squad. “You’re one cool bastard setting up one of your own. Do you really think I’ll sign the confession?”
He nodded with an arrogant twist of his lips.
“So what happens after you convince the world I’m working for Sully? Good luck with that by the way. My guys know better.”
“Your team has zero credibility. Blake Reilly kissed his career good-bye when he took up with the sister of a known mobster. I couldn’t have written the script better. No one will take him seriously even after he dumps Calvetti’s sister. And your friend Mick? The man operates outside the law. No way he shows up as a character witness. Your partners will be too busy putting out fires in their own lives to stand up for a dead dirty cop.”
Claws ripped open her chest. No way was she going down looking like a dirty cop. “That your plan? Shoot me before I have time to clear my record.”
“It worked so well with your father, I figured why not.”
“What did you say?” Dez’s voice rose. Adrenaline demanded an outlet, preferably something that smacked the agent into the nearest wall. The metal clip on the pen drew blood as she tightened her grip.
“Your father was a complete bastard.” The bland smile on his face blended into his dull features. The everyman expression hid absolute evil. “But he wasn’t dirty.”
“What?” The possibilities slammed through her brain. She didn’t want to believe her father wasn’t the complete bastard she’d known him to be. He was an abuser, a narcissist, and a weekend alcoholic. “He was dirty.”
“No.” Stiles lifted a file from the stack, and his beady little eyes gleamed. “I had a file just like this on him. It was easier to frame him, because nobody liked the sanctimonious asshole.”
Dez bunched her legs and launched across the table. The force of impact knocked Stiles back, trapping him between the chair and her body. Slashing the pen like a knife, she cut open the skin on his neck, but not deep enough. Not nearly enough. The loser needed to bleed. He grabbed her arm, holding her rage back. Even at this angle, his upper body strength would overpower her soon. Twisting and yanking her arm at the same time, she broke free. The pen flew across the room, clattering on the hard linoleum floor.
Fire and hatred boiled her blood. The man had set up her father to look dirty. They had lost everything. “My mother killed herself because of what happened, you son of a bitch.” Bracing her legs on either side of his chest, she held him down while punching his face. The recoil jolted up her arm, but she didn’t slow. Dez was still swinging when Jerry pulled her off the agent.
“Knock it off, Detective.” Jerry’s voice held the bite of command, deeper than she’d expected from the normally laid-back sheriff.
The sting in her knuckles turned to spasms. Dez shook out her hand, knocking free of Jerry’s grip.
The agent’s face was scraped, his lip was bloody, and red splotches predicted the bruises he’d wear the next day. He looked like the perfect victim. Damn, he hadn’t fought back. He’d played her, got her to go for his throat, literally, to entrap her.
Jerry reached down and helped the agent to his feet.
“I want her arrested,” Stiles said. He scraped together the files that had scattered when she’d attacked. “In here is all the evidence you’ll need. She’s worked with drug dealers for years.”
Jerry looked between the two. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were the bad guy,” he said to Dez.
Wait, what?
“What are you talking about?” Stiles demanded. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I have evidence—”
“I have a recording.”
Stiles grabbed the recorder that had flown across the room when she’d attacked him. “It must have gotten turned off in the scuffle.”
“Which is why I use a backup.” Jerry reached under the table to a small ledge that looked more decorative than functional. It was highly functional. “Dez, sorry to say, I thought I was going to catch you when you thought I turned the device off.”
She grinned when Jerry pulled the recording device he set up before he started interrogating her. She smiled at the smug agent across from her. “Everything we said in the last ten minutes is on the record. You’re toast.”
A deputy entered the room and took Stiles into custody. Read him his rights. Stiles walked out in cuffs, with his head held high like he had something to be proud of.
“We’ll let him stew for awhile,” Jerry said. “Once he figures out we have him dead to rights, he’ll talk. Computer guy like him won’t want to spend time in the general population. He’ll roll on Sully.”
Relief flooded her. She’d been hurt by the sheriff’s supposition that she was guilty, so it was taking a few minutes to process the way he’d turned the table on Stiles. “You did a good job selling it. I thought you were going to let that asshole railroad me.” She shook her head to help refocus her mind. Stiles in custody wasn’t the end of the battle. “Tell me my aunt is okay.”
Jerry nodded tightly. “I sent every spare man I could to the scene. Peg’s fine, but…”
Dread drowned the thrill of punching Stiles’ arrogant face. “What’s wrong?”
“According to reports, there’s blood everywhere. Doug’s bloody and unconscious. Vern’s been stabbed with a screwdriver. He claims Mick clocked him after going after Doug with a bat. Someone destroyed the patrol car’s radio, so they couldn’t call for backup.”
“Mick would defend himself to the death, but there is no way he’d go after a cop unless he had no choice.” The screwdriver and bat sounded like Mick, the king of improvised weaponry, but what was he defending himself from? “How do we find
the truth without identifying the mole?”
Jerry didn’t bother answering. “Ambulances are en route to the scene.”
“Nate?”
“He and Mick are missing. Vern says Mick took the kid as a hostage.”
Maybe we can use the kid as bait. Mick’s words from the first day echoed in her memory.
“No way. Mick would never.”
But in the quiet, still places of her mind, she considered it. Could Mick have taken the kid? Not as a form of protection, but as a way to draw Sully into the open? She wanted so bad for Mick to be the good guy here, but his number one goal from the day they met—from years before that—had been to get revenge on Sully. Mick openly and honestly said that he would do anything to nail Sully for his sins.
Anything, like use a kid?
The vise squeezing her heart dry was as painful as the bruises on her knuckles, but this went deeper than scraped skin. Using that boy was a betrayal of everything they stood for. Her breath caught. Maybe it was just something she stood for. Two nights ago, Mick had said they were different. Could they be this different? The doubts gripping her heart answered yes. Anguish washed through her at the admission.
Mick didn’t think clearly about Patrick Sullivan. She wanted to believe Vern was lying, or at the very least, misinterpreting, but more than that, she wanted to believe Mick would never, under any circumstances, use an innocent. Experience told a different story. Hatred flowed heavy in Mick’s veins. The chance to end Sully might tempt Mick to do something they’d all regret.
Dez leaned against the interrogation table, her energy depleted. Stiles was a cog in the machine. They’d nail him. Evidence against him was solid, but he was a foot soldier, not the general. They were in a larger war with Patrick Sullivan. She’d lost track of what was important while playing mind games with Stiles. If it was the last thing she did, she’d save Nate, even if it put her in opposition to Mick. “I need to see the scene.”
Unstoppable (The Untouchable Series) Page 18
