Maybe going to the sheriff’s department wasn’t a good idea. Everything Nick touched turned to blood.
The thought of endangering more people kicked up a thrumming in his temples.
But that was the point of law enforcement; they weren’t ordinary civilians like Dr. Renee Holmes, and the sheriff was the closest. Though he had a niggling suspicion that this situation exceeded the capabilities of the local sheriff, whose biggest problem was probably some meth heads pulling a little B and E in the area.
With Belladonna hot on their heels, and his SOG teammates hours away, the fact that they needed assistance was a dire understatement.
“Are you sure we should still go to the sheriff?” Lori asked as though reading his mind.
The only thing he was certain of was that he had to do everything in his power to keep her alive. “I was wondering the same thing. I don’t think we have much choice.”
If he kept Draper out of the loop and updated Yazzie directly about their new location, Belladonna shouldn’t be able to find them. There was no reason for Belladonna to think that the vet had any clue of their intentions and unfortunately, Renee had probably caught a bullet to the frontal lobe two seconds after she opened the door.
He drove down the dirt path Renee had told them to take in order to stay off main streets and looked for the fork in the road, where they needed to turn.
“Will her mother still help us once she learns we abandoned her daughter, left her to the mercy of assassins?”
“We didn’t abandon her. Though we did leave her. Belladonna had threatened to burn down the clinic if Renee didn’t open the doors. The doctor was hell-bent on ensuring those animals were safe.” Not that he blamed her for following her conscience. Even if it was a reckless decision.
“That may be,” Lori said, “but it doesn’t feel like we made the right choice. I know we couldn’t have fought them off there, but I hate to think about what might have happened to Renee. She was only being a good person, trying to help us.”
There went Lori’s big heart again, worrying more about others than herself. “We made the only choice we could.” He reached over and took her hand.
Her thin, cold fingers closed around his, and the tension in her eased a bit. She rested her head on his shoulder. He pressed his lips to her soft hair.
Knowing how to console a witness and assuage their worries was part of the job, but this was different. Seeing the wave of fear recede from her at his touch filled him with an indescribable warmth.
He didn’t date much. His job kept him so damn busy that it was part of the reason he’d hooked up with Charlie in the first place. She was attractive and it had been convenient for them both, but that train had never left the casual station. He’d had absolutely no affect on her. She’d treated him like a sexual Lego block.
With Lori, there was a bond he couldn’t explain. Maybe it was a result of the time they’d spent together, with him not only attending to all her needs from groceries, to seeing a dentist, to reassurance about the trial, but also caring about her.
Somewhere along the way, he’d grown to need her, too.
His first thought in the morning and his last in the evening were of her. The most beautiful thing in the world was Lori’s smile. He had vivid dreams about her and even more erotic fantasies of her writhing in pleasure beneath him, but what he craved was this closeness.
They hit another bump, jostling the car. He slowed from fifty to forty, working their way from one end of town to the other. The scenic route took longer, but it was smarter to stay off the main thoroughfare. Belladonna might have lookouts posted, waiting to ambush them.
The only problem was this road was narrow and unpaved. If another car came from the opposite direction, he had no idea what he was supposed to do. It wasn’t as if there was enough room to pull over. It was a mystery how the locals managed.
One thing about this back road—it was quiet and removed from the touristy energy of town. It almost made it possible to push from the forefront of his mind that evil wasn’t far behind, circling, poised to strike, to kill the beautiful, warm woman at his side.
That was precisely why he didn’t shove the knowledge away and kept it front and center instead. Belladonna was cunning and sharp as a switchblade. If he let his guard slip, gave that assassin one inch, she’d take a yard and hang Lori with it.
He had to stay vigilant and on point. A single mistake could cost them both their lives.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, sitting up and looking at him. “Do you think the sheriff will help us?”
“Her mother sounds like a Dudley Do-Right. Duty first. If that’s the case, she’ll feel just as obligated to help us and to protect you as Renee did about the animals.”
“I hope so.” She gave him a weak smile.
The fork in the road was up ahead. Once they turned, it was less than a ten-minute ride to the sheriff’s dept. He gave her fingers a comforting squeeze and put both hands on the wheel.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket.
Damn it. He should’ve gotten rid of it before they started their backwoods trek to the sheriff’s department.
Nick fished the cell out from his jacket pocket and read the caller ID on the screen. “Draper.” He cursed under his breath, weighing how to respond. Not thirty minutes after the last time they’d spoken, Belladonna had located them and made her move.
Experience, his gut—hell, common sense—told him it wasn’t coincidence.
Draper didn’t have to call Nick to track his phone, but he was going through the trouble of phoning for a reason. What did he want? What new angle was he going to play?
Nick answered. “McKenna.”
“The working group I put together from Intel and IT to figure out how we’ve been breached finally came up with an answer,” Draper said, excitement buzzing in his voice.
Now, that was unexpected and certainly worth taking the call, but could Nick trust anything Draper said?
He hit the speaker icon, letting Lori hear firsthand whatever explanation Draper was going to try to sell him. “Really. What did they find?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” Draper said, and Nick silently agreed that he probably wouldn’t. “Our system has been hacked.”
Talk about throwing him for a loop. Then again, it was the punch you didn’t see coming that knocked you out.
He glanced at Lori. The mix of curiosity and wariness stamped on her face reflected how Nick felt but refused to show.
“Hacked?” Nick asked. “How? Are they sure?”
“They’re certain someone has been fishing around in our system, but they haven’t figured out how yet. No firewalls were breached. Whoever hacked us is smart, masking their point of entry, not staying too long at any given sweep, dipping in and out of the system, extracting data.”
This was a digital world. Every report on Hummingbird was electronic, logged in the database. A breach of their system gave a plausible explanation for how Belladonna would’ve known in advance that they would be at the mall. What time. Which store. Even the entrance and exit they had planned to use had all been spelled out in the reports. Also, when deputies were out in the field on high-priority missions like this one, their cell’s geolocator could be retrieved with a few keystrokes. Anyone with access could’ve tracked him to the veterinary clinic.
All of it was plausible. And convenient.
“Do they know how long we’ve been compromised?” Nick asked, dreading the answer. Hours, days, weeks, a month?
Jeez. The amount of sensitive, confidential information that could’ve been stolen was bone-chilling.
Long-term, this might impact more than Lori.
“They have no idea how long we’ve been exposed yet,” Draper said. “They just discovered it. But once they have an opportunity, they’re going to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb.”
The USMS employed some of the best techies in the business. With such high stakes, they would run this to ground and ascertain their level of exposure. Hopefully, sooner rather than later.
“You said that our firewall wasn’t hacked,” Nick said.
“Right.”
“Doesn’t that mean whoever has been extracting data had internal access?”
Lori paled at his question.
Draper heaved a sigh into the phone. “Unfortunately, yes, it does.”
“Is the person still in the system?”
“IT has closed all network nodes accessible from outside the building. We’ve enacted limited restricted access within the building. If the breach emanated from a computer in this building, IT will find it. I’ve instated a temporary lockdown. No one in or out until each CPU has been checked. But don’t worry. Yazzie and Killinger are en route.”
Nick could practically hear Draper’s wheels spinning through the phone. The challenges had been identified and his boss was working viable solutions, but only half the problem was being addressed.
“What if it wasn’t a computer inside the building that was used to breach us?” Nick asked.
Draper had access to the system from his home. It enabled him to work late, on weekends and to respond to any situation at a moment’s notice.
“Then we may never know who breached us or exactly what data they stole.” Draper’s voice was solemn. “The good news is they no longer have access.”
Good, yeah, but once again, convenient. For Draper.
His boss had a trailblazing record, utterly spotless. Other districts referred to him as Mr. Clean. No matter what trouble or scandal befell an office, Draper saved his own skin and always walked away without a speck on him.
Either Draper was just good at playing the political game and climbing the ladder, or he was as dirty as they came.
“No outside nodes will be reopened until Hummingbird has testified, the network has been scrubbed and patches installed to prevent this from happening again,” Draper said, giving a textbook answer.
“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full, juggling lots of balls in the air,” Nick said. “The blowback from this breach could be catastrophic.”
“Yeah, well, heavy is the head that wears the crown. My problem and not yours. You worry about keeping Hummingbird alive.”
“That’s getting tough to do with assassins popping up at every turn.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve had more trouble,” Draper said, almost sounding legitimately surprised and rather concerned.
Nick met Lori’s weary eyes before looking back at the road. “As a matter of fact, we have. Assassins found us at the veterinary clinic.”
Draper swore. “Hummingbird is okay, right? You’re both okay?”
“Yes. We are. But sir, I have to go dark until I’ve made contact with Yaz and Killinger. I’ll find an alternate location for the meet and notify them at the last minute.”
“Hold on, McKenna. Don’t be rash. If you’re worried about your calls still being traced, get a burner phone.”
“No. No more phone calls. No more updates.”
“If you go dark and something happens to Hummingbird, after I’m done hanging your butt out to dry, you’re fired.”
Nick’s blood pressure spiked at the threat. “And if I find out that you’re dirty and had anything to do with our breach, you’re dead.”
He ended the call and stopped the car. Removing the battery from the phone, he got out of the vehicle. He dropped the cell and the battery on the ground and stomped both to pieces.
“We’ve got to pick up a burner,” he said, climbing back in, and sped down the road. “I hope they sell flip phones in this small town.”
“Why does it have to be an old-school flip phone?”
“Can’t be traced.”
“Could Draper be responsible for this?”
If Will Draper, the head of the San Diego office, was the source of their breach, it complicated the situation. For starters, Draper had his fingers in everything related to this mission and had both the district attorney and the US attorney’s office on speed dial since the case involved state and federal crimes.
Nick would need irrefutable evidence to get anyone to take the accusation seriously. “I hope not.”
“But you really think it’s possible your boss is the one who has been feeding information to the drug cartel?”
Nick’s scalp prickled. He was aware that the financial firm Lori had worked for, Wallace Capital Management, had been laundering money for dangerous people. Not knowing who WCM’s clients were, he’d assumed the mob or some other organized crime group. “Which cartel?”
“Los Chacales.”
The Jackals.
His gaze snapped to her. “Is that who Belladonna works for? Is that WCM’s biggest client?” The world’s most powerful and violent drug cartel?
“Yes.”
Holy hell.
The deputies assigned to safeguard a witness before a trial weren’t privy to all the details of the case outside what was covered in the news and what was considered essential need-to-know particulars. And Lori wasn’t supposed to discuss the case.
Now he understood how US Attorney Foy was going to leverage this into a platform to run for governor. Drug cartels, especially ones as powerful and brutal as Los Chacales, were considered the largest growing threat to national security.
A win against WCM would also be lauded as a win against the cartel. Talk about putting a feather in Foy’s cap.
“How much of the cartel’s money is being laundered through WCM?” he wondered aloud.
“Close to seventy-five percent.”
Damn. This was insane.
The US attorney’s office should’ve told the Marshals Service that Lori was going to be the biggest target in WITSEC in a decade. Hell, maybe ever.
What if they had informed Draper and that was the reason he had her squirreled away to a remote location three hours from San Diego, where there was zero chance of her being recognized?
But then somehow the cartel had gotten to him. Found out something about him they could use to coerce him, like gambling debts or deviant behavior?
Maybe it was as simple as greed, and they’d offered him more money than he could turn down.
With the breach of their database, anything could’ve been stolen, including the names, new identities and current addresses of all the people in the WITSEC program in the state of California. Not to mention the names and family members of every single deputy marshal and US Marshal in charge of a district office.
Forget about exploiting a person’s financial troubles or hanging deviant behavior over their head. Snatch someone’s kid and then ask that deputy or marshal what they were willing to do to keep their child alive.
Nick bet the answer would be anything.
Draper shared custody of his high-school-age son with his ex-wife. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a skilled assassin to reach out and touch them.
The cartel would go to extraordinary lengths to stop Lori from testifying if it was going to hem up seventy-five percent of their money-laundering operation.
Seventy-five. “How do you know WCM was cleaning seventy-five percent of the cartel’s money?”
Her eyes shifted away a second. “I was the accountant assigned to that client’s portfolio.”
That gave her access to everything the cartel would’ve invested, but something about Lori’s explanation didn’t jibe. “Yeah, okay, but you would only know how much WCM cleaned for them and how much was the firm’s cut. Not what percentage that was of the cartel’s entire bankroll.”
Unless she had information from inside the cartel itself.
If he hadn’t lifted his gaze from the road to glance at her, he might have missed it. Hell, even though he’d seen it, that flash of alarm in her eyes had popped up and vanished so quickly, he doubted his eyesight.
“What are you suggesting?” she asked, reeling away against the passenger door. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m trying to understand because this isn’t adding up.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“How about the truth.” He didn’t think she was lying per se, but she wasn’t being completely forthright. She was hiding something from him. The question was, what?
He was aware she had an immunity deal, but he’d assumed it was to protect her if she had unwittingly done something that she could be charged for later. Now he wasn’t so sure.
“Why do you have an immunity clause in your deal to testify?”
She narrowed her eyes, lifting the wall between them. “Aren’t the specifics of a witness’s deal supposed to be confidential? Not even deputy marshals are supposed to know, right?”
Whoa. Her throwing in his face that she was a witness and he was a deputy hurt worse than a kick to the gut. She was correct and entirely justified if she felt he’d violated her privacy. But the sting of her words told him that he’d lost professional objectivity.
“Yes, it’s supposed to be confidential.” Nick only knew because he’d overheard Draper at the tail end of a conversation with the US attorney’s office. “But answering a question with a question isn’t really giving me an answer.”
Lori shook her head, withdrawing into herself. “I went to the FBI when I didn’t have to. I was doing my civic duty, trying to do the right thing. This is a job for you, but it’s my life that’s being ripped to shreds. Those assassins are hunting me. So why do I feel like I’m the one on trial here?”
Forget a kick to the gut; this was a boot heel to the teeth. “I didn’t mean for you to take it like that.”
“I took it the way you intended, and don’t use that tone with me.”
“What tone?”
“Oh, please.” She waved a hand at him in disgust. “As if you don’t know. It’s one thing to use it while barking out orders to protect me. It’s another thing to unleash it to intimidate me.”
He smothered the frustration simmering inside. Snapping at her wasn’t going to achieve anything.
“Look,” he said, making his tone Charmin-soft, “knowing exactly what we’re dealing with will help me protect you.”
“I found out WCM was laundering money for Los Chacales and went to the FBI. The cartel put a price on my head. Now Belladonna and her merry band of killers are gunning for me. End of story. What more do you need to know to keep me alive?”
He was on her side. The only thing standing between her and a hot slug to the back of the head. Yes, she was an assignment and he was professionally obligated to protect her, but he meant it when he’d told her that he’d rather cut off his right arm than hurt her. He sure as hell would jump in the line of fire and take a bullet for her and that didn’t have a damn thing to do with his job.
If she didn’t have anything to hide, then she wouldn’t be so defensive. Evasive. Throwing out the reminder of her confidentiality clause like a yellow flag on a football play.
“I get that this is personal for your in-laws.” He did his best to bottle his rising anger. “But I need to know if this is also personal for the cartel?”
Lori folded her arms across her chest and straightened. She wasn’t budging.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake,” she said. “I don’t think it gets more personal than that. Do you?”
She did it again. Used a whole lot of words to avoid giving him a straight answer.
He pulled into a spot in front of a mobile phone store down the block from the sheriff’s department and threw the gear into Park. As much as he wanted to continue this discussion, she didn’t give him the chance.
Lori jumped out of the car and slammed the door.