“That’s not true!”
Dean stepped toward him. Carson stepped back. Dean walked him all the way back to the small den. “I’ve had it up to here with you, Spade. You’re already going to prison. You lied to the marshals when you went into witness protection. You lied to the AUSA about your banking accounts, and you lied to me about what you were doing here, in Sacramento, with Jeremy Robertson.”
“This is not happening.” Carson’s voice grew weak.
“It is happening,” Dean said. He pulled an envelope from his breast pocket. “I have the proof. Half a dozen bank accounts under a shell corp. And when I saw these, I thought, This structure looks familiar. Why does it look familiar? Because it’s the same way Carson Spade set up the money-laundering operation for the Flores cartel. And I got a warrant and was able to dig deeper and because this is for a friend of mine, I worked straight through the night and all day and finally traced all of these accounts back to you and Madison.”
“Leave her out of it.”
“That’s sweet, coming from the man who had his own wife kidnapped!”
“I didn’t! Please, I had nothing to do with it.”
“But you’re not surprised that they’re missing,” Dean said, his voice low and angry.
Carson’s mouth opened then closed. He walked to his computer and clicked a button. A disembodied monotone voice spoke.
“I have your wife and kid. You have twenty-four hours to raise twelve million dollars. I will call this time tomorrow with instructions. You know better than to call anyone.”
“You bastard,” Dean said.
Wife and kid. No mention of Sean, and so far, neither RCK nor Lucy had received a ransom demand for Sean. Dean hoped that didn’t mean anything.
Dean called his best cybertech. “I need you at my location with all your equipment to backtrace a VOI and set up a phone trace.”
“No!” Carson said, finally finding his voice. “He’ll kill them.”
To his cybertech, Dean said, “Thanks, Liz.” Then he hung up.
“What are you doing?” Carson demanded. “You’re risking their lives.”
“This is my operation, and you’re going to do everything I say or I will bury you so deep in the system you’ll never see the light of day.”
“You don’t know what’s going on.”
“Don’t I?” He pulled out another piece of paper. “You can thank Sean Rogan for finding this. An account—also under this shell corp—for one million transferred over to Jeremy Robertson. Payment for this kidnapping scheme?”
“I didn’t have my wife kidnapped!”
“You have five seconds to tell me the truth.” Dean paused. “Four. Three. Two.”
“Okay! Fuck, fuck!” Carson paced. “I just wanted Jesse back home. Madison was depressed, she should never have let the kid go visit Rogan. Never! And Rogan turned Jesse against us. And I can prove it—Jesse wants to change his name to Rogan! Madison was in tears when she found out. All I did was give Jeremy a little money to put a scare into Rogan so he’d send Jesse home. No one was supposed to go after Jesse. I love my son. I raised him! I was there for him! If Madison thought Rogan had a dangerous job, then she would insist he send Jesse home.”
Dean believed every word. It sounded like a desperate and stupid plan, with just enough plausibility that someone like Carson would think it might work.
Carson continued his rant. “Rogan has no rights, none! And it would have worked, Madison went there to get him, and I would have gone with her but I couldn’t because of my stupid agreement with your office. Ridiculous! And then … and then Rogan wouldn’t let Madison leave. He manipulated her, brainwashed her that someone was after Jesse, and that he was safer there. Well, that was a lie, wasn’t it? He wasn’t safer there! He was in danger because of Sean Rogan! I will kill him, I swear to the Almighty God, Sean Rogan is a dead man.”
“Threat duly noted,” Dean said.
“I mean—I didn’t mean it like that—”
“Let me tell you what I think. I think that one million dollars is a hefty payment for ‘scaring’ someone, but right in the ballpark of a high-profile hit. Considering that your good ol’ friend Jeremy hired a known fixer and hit man to take care of this project tells me that you had one of two plans: Either you wanted to increase the threat to you so that the marshals would put you back into WITSEC, or you paid to have Sean killed.”
“I would never put my son in danger!”
It clicked. “You wanted Jesse home first, then Sean would be assassinated.”
“No.” But his voice was weak.
“Your plan is a bust, Carson. So you’d better work with me because if Sean, Madison, or Jesse turn up dead, I will prosecute you for murder one, in the state of Texas, with special circumstances, and I will be very happy to watch you fry.”
If Carson could go any more pale he’d be dead.
“I—I—”
“Tell me everything.”
“Why would Jeremy do this? Why?”
“Because there is no honor among thieves. And it’s about fucking time you realized it.”
* * *
An hour later Dean Hooper called Rick Stockton, who brought Lucy Kincaid in on the call. “Lucy, hang in there,” Dean said when she got on the three-way call.
“I am.”
She sounded worried, but strong.
“Carson set everything in motion, just like Sean thought. And I can’t wait until he gets out of this and tells me that he was right, yet again,” Dean said, trying to bring levity to the situation before he dropped the bombshell.
“What did he set in motion, Dean?” Lucy asked.
“His goal was to push Sean into sending Jesse back to Sacramento, either Sean doing it himself or Madison insisting. It didn’t work out like he thought.”
“No shit.”
Dean had never heard Lucy swear. He cleared his throat. “The original plan was to remove Jesse from the situation, then assassinate Sean. One million was paid up front to Jeremy Robertson to accomplish both goals. I have since convinced Carson that after Jeremy accepted the money, he realized that Carson was hiding far more from law enforcement—funds that both Jeremy and Carson knew would negate the plea agreement Carson made with the AUSA. Jeremy is blackmailing Carson into turning over all his other illegal funds for the safe return of his wife and son.”
“He’s going to do it, right? We can go after Robertson later.”
“He wants to do it, but we’re holding off. We have”— he glanced at his watch, which he put on a countdown clock as soon as he timed everything out—“a little less than nineteen hours to put together a rescue plan.”
“But if he pays—”
“If he pays, Madison and Jesse will be released, if we can trust the word of Jeremy Robertson’s hired gun, which I’m skeptical about. But if they are released, Sean will be killed—per the original agreement. If he doesn’t pay, Madison and Jesse will die, and Sean will be freed. Carson wants to pay right now.”
“Of course he does.” Lucy took a deep breath. “But a child’s life is at stake. Sean would never want us to play with his son’s life.”
“We have time,” Dean stressed. “And remember—Jeremy Robertson already reneged on one deal with Spade; he could be blowing smoke up our ass about releasing Madison and Jesse. Rick—what’s the game plan? You’re the boss.”
“We’re looking for Jeremy Robertson now. We confirmed he’s still in San Antonio, but he checked out of his hotel room yesterday—maybe he was worried Carson would talk, or maybe he wanted to distance himself from the kidnapping. We know who Robertson hired to put the plan in motion, a corrupt ex-cop named Bart Vasquez. Problem is, because Vasquez is an ex-cop he still has some friends in blue. We have two unmarked units out in front of his office, but my guess is that he’s in the wind. We’re looking for a place Vasquez controls where he can keep three hostages under wraps. They used three identical vans, which makes tracking them difficult, but we have our best
cybercrimes people on the ground poring over camera footage. When the time comes, we already have a warrant in place—coming out of DC so Vasquez won’t hear about it—to raid his house and office. But that’s last resort—we don’t want to spook him or his people into killing the hostages.”
“How are Jack and Kane?”
“Recuperating. I’ve forbidden them to go out tonight, but I’m not their boss.”
Lucy said quietly, “Kane has a severely sprained ankle, he’s not going anywhere. But Jack will be ready when we have intel.”
“I’m not going to tell you to stand down, Lucy, but—”
“Then don’t say it, Rick. I’m going to get them all back. Safe. Dean, keep your eye on Carson. I don’t trust him. He may release the money just to have Sean killed, since he knows he’s already going to prison.”
“He’s secured and won’t be talking to anyone outside my presence.”
“Thank you. But we have to be prepared to release the funds—if there’s a chance we can save Jesse.” There was a hitch to her voice, and Dean knew that this was far harder on her than she let on.
Rick said, “No one is releasing any money to that bastard. We’re going to find them and everyone involved is going down. That’s an order, Kincaid.”
* * *
Lucy hung up and rubbed her eyes. She was sitting at Sean’s desk. The office was a mess, but she’d sorted through the papers. He had been going through the shell corporations plus digging into Jeremy Robertson’s finances. Dean probably knew about but turned a blind eye to Sean’s snooping.
Lucy didn’t know what she would do if Sean didn’t make it out of this. Her greatest fear was losing him. She’d lost people she’d loved before, not least of whom was her nephew Justin. That loss had defined her in so many ways; it had in part made her who she was today. When her brother Patrick was in a coma for nearly two years, she’d feared he would be like that for the rest of his life, neither dead nor alive, just existing. It had tortured her because it was her fault he’d ended up that way. Though intellectually she knew she wasn’t the one who planted the explosives that resulted in the accident, emotionally she blamed herself because Patrick had been looking for her. To save her.
She couldn’t lose the man she loved, the man she expected to live with for the rest of her life. Sean made her whole, he made her a better version of herself. He had confidence in her, faith in her, and he made her laugh. They just hadn’t had enough time! Time to love each other. Time to have fun. Time to grow old and, someday, adopt children to raise and love, children who needed them.
Everyone in the San Antonio FBI office was working on finding Sean, Madison, and Jesse. Everyone. She had to believe in her colleagues.
Jack walked in.
“I told you to sleep,” she said.
Jack lifted her out of the chair and hugged her tightly. She took his love freely. She needed it.
“Sean spent all afternoon in here,” Jack said. “He was working on something. What was it?”
“I think everything Dean told him not to do. These are Robertson’s financial statements, and I don’t quite know what this list means.” She held up a list of names and numbers in Sean’s handwriting
“Can you look at his computer history?”
“No—he doesn’t save history.” But she sat down at Sean’s computer and logged in anyway. “But I can see anything he manually saved. Here—the last file he was looking at was exactly what I thought. Robertson’s banking information.” She frowned.
“What?”
“This—it’s not Robertson’s bank. It’s Bart Vasquez. Shit, Sean’s going to get into deep trouble for this. He downloaded Vasquez’s banking information to his computer.” She almost deleted it, but didn’t. Sean always cleaned up after himself, because he never wanted to put her at risk. But he never let her see him do anything in the gray area—or anything blatantly illegal.
“He must have had a reason.”
“Yeah, he knew that Robertson was working with him. But I don’t see what—oh. This is his business information, not his personal information. Wait, wait, wait…” She scrolled through. “Payroll!”
“Sean was trying to find out who worked for him.”
“This is completely illegal, but—”
“Lucy, just read it. We’ll deal with the fallout when Sean is safe.”
“Vasquez pays via direct deposit into six different personal accounts amounts anywhere from a thousand a week to two thousand a week—numbers to keep well below the IRS threshold. Sean has the list of those names.”
“Let’s go.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Jack. You still look green.”
“I’m not letting you go out there alone, and Nate hasn’t returned.”
“I can call—”
“Dammit, Lucy, I’m going. And I’m calling Nate. I know he wants to find Bandit, but finding Sean is more important.”
“Nate will be here when we need him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The FBI split the list of names Lucy gave them. She didn’t tell anyone where she got them, and hoped she didn’t have to. One of the names was of the man who was currently in surgery, the man Kane had shot in the kitchen. The other five all lived in San Antonio.
They didn’t have the time or manpower to coordinate a simultaneous raid on each of the five unless they spread their people too thin, so each team of four took two names, and Lucy took three that were clustered together.
She had Leo, one of Leo’s best men, Rod Rodriguez, and Jason Lopez, who had been the first to respond to the situation when she called it in. She appreciated his show of support. Jack was with them as well but he was a civilian and not at full strength.
The first house was empty. The other two men lived in the same apartment building a mile from the house. While Jason and Rod watched the front, Lucy and Leo went to the first apartment, under the name Bruce Anders. Bruce’s girlfriend answered, insisted he no longer lived there, told them to go to hell and if they didn’t have a warrant they could go fuck themselves.
Lucy looked around the filthy place. “You know, your boyfriend makes a cool thousand a week, but it doesn’t look like he’s sharing any of it with you.”
“Fuck off, bitch.”
She didn’t believe her. Lucy didn’t care, because she didn’t get the sense that the guy was around. The woman slammed the door in her face.
They headed back downstairs. Through the com she heard Rod say, “Thompson is running!”
“Don’t let him get away!” Lucy called and took the stairs double time, running out to the front and following Rodriguez.
Billy Thompson was a younger kid, in his early twenties, who lived in the same large apartment complex as Bruce Anders. He was fast and agile, but he still had to traverse a winding path through the buildings and leap over hedges.
Jason said in her ear, “I’ll cut him off through the back.”
Lucy could run well, but wearing Kevlar slowed her down. She kept up with Rod, though, and they burst out together into the back parking lot just in time to see Jason tackle the kid, slamming his body against a parked car.
“Let me go!” Thompson shouted. “Police brutality!”
“Shut the fuck up,” Jason mumbled, rubbing his jaw from where Thompson nailed him as he flailed about. He rolled him over and handcuffed him, then sat him back up.
Lucy shined her flashlight in his face. “Where did Vasquez take the hostages?”
“Who?”
“I’m not in the mood, Billy.”
“I don’t know whatcha talking about, ma’am.”
“Fuck this,” Lucy said. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through the security feeds at her house. She found one of the vans out front, and there was Billy Thompson leaning out of the driver’s seat. She shoved the phone in his face. “The men who broke into the house to kidnap a man, woman, and child had masks. The drivers did not. You have the right to remain silent, but I swear, if you don’
t tell me what the fuck I want to know, I will forget where I put you for the next ten years.”
No one said anything. Were they surprised by her outburst? She wasn’t. All her rage had been pent up for so long that it was ready to explode.
“I-I-I d-don’t know,” he stuttered. “I-I don’t. I swear. I didn’t drive the van with the cargo.”
That might help. They had tracked the vans to a point after the fact, but lost them. If they could focus resources on one trail, they might find Sean sooner.
“Which van did you drive.”
“Um, it was white.”
Lucy wanted to hit him. She refrained. “They were identical white vans. You left the neighborhood. Were you the van that went north on I-Thirty-Five, south on I-Thirty-Five past I-Ten, or south on I-Thirty-Five then east on I-Ten.”
He looked confused. “I-I don’t know.”
“No one is this stupid, Billy. Which way did you go?”
“S-south. South all the way to the bar on Guadalupe, where we were to meet and get paid.”
“And did you meet and get paid?”
“Y-yes.”
“Which van had the cargo?”
“Am I in trouble?”
“What do you think?”
“I was just a driver!”
“Tell it to your priest. Where was the cargo heading?”
“I don’t know. But they went east on I-Ten. I don’t know where, I swear, they never told any of us, only the driver of that van. And he didn’t meet with us at the bar, he works directly for Mr. Vasquez.”
“What is his name.”
“Then I can go?”
“Sure.”
“Bubba Dobbins.”
“His real name.”
“That is his real name. His mother named him Bubba after her brother. I swear. Now can I go?”
“Absolutely. You can go straight to central booking.”
“But-but-but you said—”
Lucy was already walking away while Jason and Rod read Billy his rights. Leo said, “How did you know you had a photo of him?”
“I didn’t remember the face. But that isn’t a kid who can go into a house in full tactical gear and do what he’s supposed to do, so I made a guess that he was a driver and lucked out.” She looked around. “Where’s Jack?”
Too Far Gone Page 32
