Too Far Gone

by Allison Brennan

  “Robertson went to college with Spade, he’s the CEO of a company—sporting goods, I think—and Spade said he was helping him find gainful employment.”

  “Let’s dig around on him. It can’t be a coincidence that Robertson is meeting with this shady PI at the same time that there’s a possible threat against Jesse Spade.”

  “Maybe the threat isn’t against Jesse,” Dean said.

  “You think it’s Sean?”

  “Sean was followed one night, then Lucy was followed another night. Together they helped take down the Flores cartel. Lucy did the legwork, and Sean brought Spade back to the States to face the charges.”

  “You think that Spade is behind this.”

  “I did exactly what you told me to do last week when Sean first brought this to our attention. I started digging into Carson Spade’s life. I had him in the office. Hovered, made him nervous. On his own he mentioned that he had drinks with an old friend about a job. There was no reason for him to do that.”

  “Except out of guilt. Preemptively, in case we were following him.”

  “Exactly. I pushed a bit, casually, asked who, I didn’t know he had friends in Sacramento. And he mentioned Robertson’s name, said he was here on business, that he used to do a little legal work for him, made a clear point that it was long before he’d started working for Flores.”

  “Get everything you can get without a warrant, and if you think something is there and need the legal cover, get it to me ASAP and I’ll expedite the warrant.”

  “Rick, I think you’re forgetting something.”

  “What?”

  “I’m the ASAC in Sacramento and the local AUSA loves me. I’ll get my own friggin’ warrant.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Kane and Jack had been surveilling Vasquez all Sunday. He and his wife went to church. Hypocrites, Kane thought. He wasn’t much of a churchgoer, but Siobhan was and he respected her faith—and detested anyone who played both sides of the morality coin. After church they went with another couple to brunch at a fancy hotel known for their overpriced meals. Kane couldn’t risk being spotted, so Jack went in and took discreet pictures. Kane wanted to search their car, but they’d used valet parking, which had tight security and cameras everywhere.

  Jack returned. “Best guess, they’ll be here an hour then go home. Now’s our chance.”

  “You can’t be involved with that.” With Jack married to a fed, JT had forbidden him from doing anything overtly illegal.

  “I’ll watch your back.”

  They drove to the Vasquez house. Kane called Sean when he saw the security system, and his brother walked him through how to run the system through an automatic reboot that wouldn’t alert the police. “You have fifteen minutes,” Sean said, “and that’s a hard fifteen minutes. You can’t reboot it twice in a row. If you’re still on the property, the cops will be alerted and the cameras will record.”

  “Can’t you just disable it?”

  “Yes, I can—if I were there. But you can’t. Trust me on this—I know the system.”

  Kane hung up without comment. He did exactly what Sean said, and the red light began to slowly blink—exactly as Sean said it would. He set his watch for fourteen minutes, forty-five seconds.

  Picking the lock on the side door was easy, and Kane was inside.

  The house was cool, almost breezy, a nice reprieve from the humidity outside. He listened for a few seconds, any sound that he might not be alone. Nothing. He searched quickly for Vasquez’s den and found it downstairs—clearly the man’s space with dark colors and the scent of pipe tobacco and Scotch.

  He wished he could have used Sean; though JT’s rule extended to his brother as well, Sean was more willing to break it than Jack. Kane didn’t take a stab at the computer; he wouldn’t know how to easily hack in.

  He focused instead on the desk. There was a pad with phone numbers—he took a picture of the numbers. Easy enough to trace those. Did Vasquez keep most of his incriminating stuff at his strip mall office? That seemed to be more a front and much easier to breach.

  A stack of folders on the corner drew his eye. Kane glanced at them and saw one labeled ROGAN.

  Hot damn.

  He had eight minutes left. He opened the folder and took pictures of all the contents. He didn’t have time to read everything, but he saw a photo of Lucy and Jesse taken outside of St. Catherine’s. That had to have been Friday night before the hit-and-run. It had been printed from a computer. He needed to read all the notes more carefully, but didn’t have time. He glanced at the other folders and didn’t recognize the names, but took photos of the labels.

  Next he opened the desk drawers. Nothing of interest, though the bottom right drawer was locked.

  Shit. He had six minutes left. He picked the lock—something he was as good at as his baby brother.

  Jackpot. Inside were financial records. There was a wealth of information here, but Kane focused on the most recent folder, pulled it out, and started taking pictures.

  In his ear he heard Jack say, “Three minutes.”

  Shit, he needed more time. He flipped the pages rapidly, took as many pictures as he could, and shoved the folder back. He carefully closed the drawer and heard it automatically click into place.

  As he was walking out, he hesitated and looked at a photograph in a frame on the bookshelf. A much younger Vasquez was in the picture, along with his wife, and four other men and two women. One of the men looked familiar, but Kane didn’t know why—which was odd because he rarely forgot a face.

  “One minute,” Jack said in his ear. “Get out.”

  He took a picture and ran out of the study, down the hall, and out the door he’d come in on.

  His watch beeped. He had fifteen seconds to get to the fence and scale it.

  Running across the front yard of a pricey house in an exclusive neighbor was a recipe for disaster—neighbors noticed that sort of thing.

  In his ear Jack said, “Get the fuck out here, now!”

  But sometimes, you had no choice.

  He sprinted as fast as he could and leapt up the stone column next to the wrought-iron fence. If he slowed down, he wouldn’t make it, so he grabbed the top of the column and pushed off and up with his feet, giving himself the added velocity to push himself over.

  It was still an eight-foot drop to the ground. In the past, he would have been able to land perfectly every single time. But he was crunched on time, and he didn’t plan the roll. He landed on his feet, and his left foot hit something uneven. His ankle rolled and he bit back a stream of obscenities.

  Jack was right there with the car. He leaned over and opened the door. Kane limped into the seat and Jack was pulling away from the curb before Kane closed the door.

  “Fuck.”

  Jack was smiling. “Hospital or home?”

  “Home. It’s not broken. But damn does it hurt.”

  * * *

  While Lucy was inspecting Kane’s ankle to determine if he needed a doctor instead of ice and a wrap, Sean went through Kane’s phone and downloaded all the photos to his computer. First thing he did was look up the two phone numbers that were scrawled on the notepad. Both were burner phones. He was able to trace them to the major retailer where they’d been sold, but it would take more time to narrow the purchase to a specific location and day. Though they were both San Antonio area codes, that didn’t mean much—you could get a burner phone with pretty much any area code. But they were likely bought locally.

  Tracing them would be next to impossible, but they were still operational and could accept text messages. A strategic call or text might get the recipient to respond with identifying information. Something to keep in mind, but still a plan that was dependent on the phone owner to respond.

  He turned his attention to the ROGAN folder contents. His blood boiled when he saw the picture of Lucy and Jesse outside St. Catherine’s. They were getting into the Mustang, and Jesse was in the middle of saying something, his mouth open. />
  He then enlarged and sharpened the photos Kane took so he could more clearly read them.

  The first sheet had personal information about both him and Lucy. Their address. Where Lucy worked. Sean’s affiliation with St. Catherine’s Boys’ Home. That address. The estimated number of boys who lived there. Information about Nate Dunning, that he was on leave after the shooting on Wednesday.

  Wait. How the hell did they know that? The names of the officers or agents who had discharged their weapons was not public information.

  There was another fucking mole.

  The mole couldn’t be in the FBI. Rogan-Caruso-Kincaid had been hired to completely vet and clear each FBI and DEA staff member in San Antonio—agent and civilian—after a corrupt DEA agent had been arrested early last year. One of the people who had been helping the bad guys had been an SAPD officer who was dating an FBI agent and got information through her computer. But SAPD had told the FBI that they’d cleaned house after their mole was uncovered.

  Sean wasn’t surprised they had Nate’s name—any criminal worth their salt would want all of Sean and Lucy’s known associates. But that he was on administrative leave, that wasn’t common knowledge.

  He snapped his fingers. Vasquez. He’d been a cop. He must still have friends. People flapping their fucking lips to a corrupt former cop. But the possibilities were limited to someone involved in the McMahon takedown who had also been been on staff before Vasquez left.

  He sent Nate a text message that he wanted to talk to him in private—sure, he was right down the hall, but he didn’t want to announce what he needed to everyone. He didn’t trust Madison. She seemed to want to make things work, but she’d changed her mind so many times he didn’t trust that she wouldn’t share everything she knew with her husband. She might not be intentionally obstructing him, but if Sean was right and Carson was behind the surveillance and hit-and-run, Sean didn’t want Carson knowing what he was doing.

  He flipped to the next page. It was Sean’s financial statement. It showed that he was cash-poor right now, after putting the cash into Jesse’s trust—which was untouchable by anyone until Jesse was eighteen and had graduated from high school. In the margin someone had done some math and had the number $100,000 circled. Then written down under that was:

  RCK-$1M

  Sean knew exactly what it was. The hundred thou was what he could liquidate in twenty-four hours if he absolutely had to. His net worth was higher, but he wouldn’t be able to sell his property or plane that quickly—and blackmailers would know that. He could, however, get a short-term cash loan on a percentage of his equity fairly quick because of his credit and holdings.

  Every principal—and spouse or child—of RCK had ransom insurance in the amount of one million dollars.

  He rapidly flipped through everything else Kane had found. There were pictures of financial statements from offshore accounts under names Sean had never heard of. But he’d seen enough of these to know they were shell corps and likely where Vasquez was putting his money. Except …

  Sean flipped to the last page. Everything was a little blurry because Kane had been rushing, but as on Sean’s financial statement there were handwritten numbers in the margin.

  “Sean,” Nate said as he entered.

  Sean put up his hand as he flipped back and forth between the last three pages and made his own notes. These numbers were much bigger. They totaled twelve million dollars.

  “Fuck!” he exclaimed.

  Nate closed the door and sat down.

  Sean said, “Vasquez—or rather whoever he’s working for—I think they were planning on grabbing Lucy and Jesse on Friday and ransoming them. I don’t have the money, but they know what RCK holds in ransom insurance. But this—this is twelve million. That’s far more than what RCK insures on us. I think it’s what Carson hid from the feds—either alone, or with Madison’s help.”

  Nate was all business. “They didn’t try to grab Lucy. She said they disappeared quickly.”

  “Because there’s a mole in SAPD. They must have known that they couldn’t get to them before the police arrived. They’d already been dispatched because Lucy was on the phone with the nine-one-one operator.”

  “Another mole at SAPD?”

  “Vasquez knows that you’re on administrative leave. Who else would know? Your FBI office is clean. But the McMahon hostage situation was officially an SAPD operation; FBI was supporting. And yet you were specifically mentioned because you’re my friend.”

  “This is serious.”

  “Damn straight. I can keep Jesse under lock and key, but Lucy? She’s in the middle of this case, she’s not going to step aside, not even if there was a clearer threat. And what if they go after you?”

  “I can take care of myself, and there’s no reason to grab me. I’m not worth as much money. I’m back on duty tomorrow. I’ll have Lucy’s back.”

  “I know, but—” What could he say? He was missing something here. “I’m going to send all this to Dean Hooper. Maybe he’ll recognize these accounts.” He emailed the information to Hooper and then said, “I have to brief everyone, and figure out how to tell Madison. Can you sit on Madison and Jesse while I talk to Lucy, Jack, and Kane and coordinate security?”

  “Of course.”

  Sean’s cell phone rang. It was Dean Hooper.

  Nate left and Sean answered. “Faster than I thought.”

  “What am I looking at?”

  “You’re looking at a ransom worksheet.”

  “You’re only worth a hundred K? That can’t be right.”

  “I put money into trust for Jesse. Cash-poor until I catch up again. I’m not worried about that, but my financial statement was in the same folder as a photo of Lucy and Jesse. I think that the hit-and-run on Friday was a botched kidnapping attempt.”

  “A lot of work for a little money.”

  “RCK has ransom insurance.”

  “Oh. That explains it.”

  “But they were going to ask for twelve million. That’s two million from RCK for Lucy and Jesse, and ten million from those three other accounts. Who the fuck controls them, Dean? That’s who would get the call if they’d been successful.”

  “Well, shit, Rogan, that changes everything. Where did you get this intel?”

  “I didn’t get it.”

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you.”

  “I can’t.” If Dean knew the details, it could compromise future prosecutions.

  If anyone survived targeting his family.

  “Is this related to Robertson?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think it’s connected to Spade.”

  “You’re a smart man, Hooper.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out. Are Jesse and Lucy safe?”

  “Jack, Nate, and I are all here at the house—along with a partly immobile Kane.”

  “What happened to your brother?”

  Kane limped in at that point.

  “He didn’t roll when he leapt off an eight-foot wall. He’s getting stupid in his old age.”

  “Watch it, Little Rogan,” Kane growled. “I’m better half mobile than most people are fully healthy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  As they drove to FBI headquarters in Nate’s truck Monday morning, he came up with half a dozen ways Lucy could avoid telling Rachel about the potential kidnapping threat against her, including reading in Leo Proctor to what had been going on with Jesse this week, but in the end Lucy decided she needed to be completely honest with her boss. She didn’t want to return to the months of distrust that existed between her and Rachel after Lucy lied to her about a family emergency so she could pursue a cold-case investigation in San Diego.

  First thing, before the weekly staff briefing, she went into Rachel’s office and closed the door.

  Rachel looked up. “Lucy. Can this wait for the staff meeting? I’m still putting together my agenda.”

  “I’m sorry, it can’t. It’ll just take a minute.” />
  She motioned for Lucy to sit.

  Lucy had already worked out a cover story with Kane just in case Rachel wanted to verify the information. She certainly couldn’t admit that Kane broke into a man’s house, no matter how dirty Vasquez was.

  “My brother-in-law has been investigating the hit-and-run because he was concerned that it might be related to RCK business, and in the process he uncovered a potential threat against me and Jesse, Sean’s son,” Lucy said before she changed her mind about coming clean with Rachel. “I don’t believe that I’m in any danger to do my job here. Jesse is safe at the house, and now that Nate has been officially cleared he agreed to drive me to and from home until RCK neutralizes the threat.”

  “What kind of threat?”

  “Kane uncovered a photo of Jesse and me that had been taken immediately prior to the hit-and-run, along with documentation that suggested the person who took the photo knew that RCK had ransom insurance.”

  “He should turn all that into our office.”

  “I told him the same thing.” Not really, but Lucy needed to at least pretend she had. “When he told me about it, he’d already sent the information to the assistant director. I’m sorry.”

  “Of course he did.” Rachel frowned. “I don’t like this, Lucy.”

  “I know.”

  “I appreciate you being honest with me about it, however. What Nate does on his own time is his own business. How viable do you consider this threat?”

  “I don’t think I’m the target, I think Jesse is. But I’m taking it seriously.”

  “If you want permission to work at your desk until this is resolved, I can do that.”

  “No, I want to clear the McMahon and Grey cases. Leo and I are really close—we have several leads to follow up.”

  “I read Leo’s report over the weekend. He’s looking at Clarke-Harrison, correct?”

  “Yes. We’re treading carefully, we recognize that they are a multimillion-dollar company with ties to the community, but something odd is going on over there, and Cortland Clarke was less than forthcoming. In addition, we’ve been given the run-around regarding Garrett Harrison. He’s been out of town, but either he’s avoiding our calls or he’s not getting our messages. We asked the New York office to visit him in person about McMahon, and they reported that he wasn’t registered at the hotel that we were given by his company.”