At its core, the FBI was a huge bureaucracy.
The Los Angeles FBI office took up the majority of the seventeen-story cement atrocity called the Federal Building, across from the Los Angeles National Cemetery. Special agent in charge of the Mobile Response Team, Mathias Costa, didn’t like the architecture of the DC building that he worked out of now, but compared to LA headquarters, the Hoover Building was a work of art.
After Michael dropped him off, Matt checked in, then was led upstairs for his scheduled meeting with ASAC Rebecca Chavez, George Chandler—the assistant US attorney overseeing the federal aspect of the David Chen investigation—and ASAC Bryce Thornton.
He had been peeved when Thornton hadn’t been demoted after the OPR investigation. The only consolation was that he was given a one-year probation and working directly under Chavez.
Los Angeles was the second-largest FBI office in the country and had their own assistant director in charge. Still, they answered to national headquarters, and while technically Matt was an operational “equal” to SAC Brian Granderson, Granderson deferred to him and made it clear to his staff to cooperate with Matt.
After the Chen hearing was set, Matt had talked to both Rebecca and AUSA Chandler frequently. Matt generally worked well with his colleagues, but because he had made it his mission to ensure that Thornton was under strict supervision, he hadn’t made many friends in LA.
Matt had testified against Thornton at the OPR hearing. When Matt was vetting Kara’s credentials for an investigation he led several months ago, Thornton had lied to him regarding an LA-FBI investigation involving Kara. The OPR investigation was broader than Matt’s accusation—Thornton was accused of leaking to the press the identity of two undercover operatives, resulting in the murder of Kara’s partner. He had been cleared of those charges, but received two weeks’ unpaid leave for his handling of the federal investigation into David Chen, his personal motivation into recommending no prosecution, and his unsanctioned investigation into LAPD Detective Kara Quinn.
That he was still an agent irked Matt. Thornton had formally apologized, but told OPR that Matt had misunderstood him, and that he should have been clearer.
Matt did not misunderstand Thornton, but the panel took him at his word. Thornton admitted he had a personal beef with Kara and that his frustration with her had led to his unprofessional behavior.
Kara didn’t talk about it much, but she had a lot to say about the first run-in she had with Bryce Thornton eleven years ago. While Matt waited for the meeting to begin, he thought about what Kara had told him.
Four months ago, Matt and Kara were at his house in Tucson, celebrating the successful closure of a difficult case. Matt had some loose ends to tie up—and a lot of paperwork—and Kara decided to stay. They’d needed some quality time together, away from work and any distractions.
That evening, they’d gone out with Matt’s best friend, Tim Armstrong, and his wife, Sarah. They’d had a fantastic time, but when they returned to his house, Kara seemed quiet. The recent monsoon had ushered in fresh air to cool the hot night. Despite the late hour, Matt decided to turn on his hot tub and suggested they have a nightcap.
“I don’t have a bathing suit,” she said.
“That didn’t stop you last night in the pool,” he said with a half smile.
“We had sex in the pool. Is that what you want? You could have just asked.”
Her tone more than her words had Matt wary. “I just want to relax.” He grabbed a couple beers from the refrigerator and walked outside. “We don’t have to get in the hot tub. It’s a nice evening.”
She followed him outside, took one look at the frothy bubbles and stripped. Taking a beer from his hand, she eased her naked body into the water.
He did the same, sat on the opposite side. Sipped his beer. Watched Kara, wished he could read her mind. Her head was back, eyes closed; she relaxed before his eyes. He breathed easier.
“Did I do or say anything tonight that upset you?”
“No. Why?”
“We were all having a good time, then you got quiet. Like you were a million miles away.”
She didn’t say anything at first. “You never told me that Thornton went up in front of OPR. Which I guess is the FBI’s version of Internal Affairs?”
“Similar. I thought you knew.”
“How would I know? I wasn’t asked to tell the panel what an asshole he is.”
“It’s a bureaucratic process, but it usually works.”
“He’s still a fed.”
“He was suspended without pay for two weeks.”
“That’s what you told Tim.”
“So I did do something that upset you.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t really have anything to do with me.”
“Yes, it does. He violated regulations, including opening an investigation into your actions when there was no federal interest to do so. He misled the AUSA regarding your investigation of Chen. In addition to his suspension, he was placed on a one-year probation. It was serious and he was reprimanded. Getting him fired would have been a lot harder, and there wasn’t enough evidence against him.” He paused, added, “I didn’t have any support from the local office, though they agreed that his personal animosity toward you was problematic.”
She shrugged and didn’t look at him. What was she really thinking? Hadn’t they been through enough that she was comfortable sharing her thoughts and feelings?
“Kara, what is really bothering you?” Matt asked quietly.
Finally, she said, “I was thinking about Colton.”
“Your partner.”
“I know Thornton outed both of us. I’m alive, Colton is dead.”
“I looked hard at that, but there was no evidence that he leaked information to the media. I swear to God, Kara, if I found even a hint that he’d talked to the press, I would have had his head.”
“I believe you. And I get it—no one could prove it, so he gets away with it.”
“It could have been someone else.”
“There’s no one who hates me that much.”
“Chen’s people.”
“Maybe,” she said, but she obviously didn’t believe it.
“You miss him?”
She shrugged. “Don’t be jealous. My relationship with Colton was not traditional.”
He wasn’t jealous; he’d known that she’d been involved, on and off, with her partner. She called it “friends with benefits”—which was what she was trying to make their relationship, but Matt was more traditional than Kara. And he knew there was something more between them than she was willing to recognize—for now.
“I’m not jealous. But answer me honestly. If he hadn’t been killed, would you be with me?”
“And I hadn’t been forced to leave LA? I don’t know.”
At least she was being honest. She was always honest.
Then she continued and said something that surprised him. “Before everything blew up in LA, I was thinking you and I would probably get together down the road. Like I told you when I left Washington, if we both had vacations at the same time, it might be fun to go away and have hot monkey sex for a few days on the beach.”
He grinned. “We’re not on the beach, but the sex has been amazing.”
She nodded, almost absently, and he wondered what she was thinking about again.
“I’m not going to tell you that I would have sought you out or that I was going to be celibate until we got together, because I don’t know. I can’t tell you what I might have done in a situation I didn’t face. Colton and I were just...different. Not only from other people, but each other. He was raised in a perfect middle-class home with two parents who loved him and then he enlisted in the Marines and shit happened. He didn’t talk about it much, but he had his own demons and those I understood. I never had to explain anything to him, he just accepted me for who I was. Now, we didn’t have this great love affair, so get that sour look off your face.”
Matt wanted to say, I accept you for who you are, but instead he said, “I don’t have a sour expression.”
“Colton and I fought, and not in the good way.”
“There’s a good way?”
Now her eyes sparkled. “Yeah, there is. The other day, when you were mad because I let Molina kiss me as part of my cover. That was a good fight, and the makeup sex was amazing. Anyway, you think I take risks? Colton was explosive. You think I walk a fine line? Colton crossed them. Sometimes I did, too, but only if I had to. And honestly, I didn’t have the strength or courage to know how to help Colton in his dark times. I’ll always miss him because he was a big part of my life for so long, and I’m not talking about sex. He was my best friend.”
“I respect that.”
“We’re not going to do this whole past relationships bullshit, are we?”
“No.”
“Because I don’t care who you’ve slept with.”
“Ditto.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I only care if you sleep with anyone other than me while we’re together.”
“We’re together?”
“I know you like this ‘friends with benefits’ thing, and I’m okay with that as long as it’s monogamous. If you want to walk away, just tell me.”
“Okay.”
He believed her. Kara wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t dishonest. Somehow, he felt better about what they had, even if she didn’t want to think it was more than casual.
“So, why did you break Bryce Thornton’s nose?” he asked.
She laughed. It sounded so good after their far-too-serious conversation.
He added, “Assaulting a federal agent could have gotten you fired.”
“Hand slapped, then my squad took me out for pizza and beer and gave me a friggin’ tiara.” She looked pointedly at Matt. “He deserved it.”
Matt waited, knowing Kara would tell him in her own time.
She drained her beer and put the bottle down. “I hate working drug cases, but back then I had less than two years on the job, and I’d do anything and everything my boss wanted. Long Beach PD needed an undercover agent—young, female, nonthreatening.” She smiled, pointed at herself. “They had uncovered a drug smuggling operation at the port. The last bust failed to nab everyone. They had the boat, but smugglers can always get more boats. They had one of the dockworkers who had been paid off, but they suspected there was another. The consensus was they’d jumped the gun. They needed the distributor, had no idea who he was. So on the one hand, they got a million bucks worth of oxy off the streets—this was back before fentanyl was big—and put a handful of pricks behind bars, but they didn’t shut down the network and no one was talking. Enter moi.”
Kara got out of the hot tub and walked, naked, into the house; he watched through the window as she retrieved two more beers from the refrigerator and brought them out. His desire for her had grown each day since they met, and he wanted to take her to bed right now. But he also wanted to hear her story, especially while she was so comfortable and relaxed.
“So,” Kara said, slipping back into the water and handing him one of the beers, top already off. “I joined the team that was putting together another operation. I was still new, but had already logged a half dozen undercover ops. After listening to what had gone right and wrong the last time, I made some suggestions. Bold, I know—they could have shut me down, I was practically still a rookie. It was a good team—they listened, agreed. After reading his file and watching him for a few days, I knew Jamal, the driver, wanted out. So we made him a deal. He gets me in, we get him out, wipe his record, clean slate. I went under as his girlfriend. Lived in his house. Played the part.”
“Slept with him?”
“Would you care?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t think that undercover cops, local or federal, should be intimately involved with suspects or informants. Yet...was that a personal or professional opinion?
“I see,” she said.
“It’s not because we’re involved,” he said. “I just want you to be honest with me.”
She smiled slyly, drank, said, “We made out for show, but that’s as far as we took it. Jamal was a good guy, under his bravado and bullshit. One of his friends got him hooked up with the gig after he lost his job as a bartender, then things spiraled from there. He knew it was dangerous—he was working for some serious bad guys with ties to a Mexican cartel. He also knew if he didn’t get out, he’d be dead or in jail.
“Long story short, the night the shipment came in, I was there with Jamal. I’d already gone on a few jobs with him, to show I could be trusted, but this was the big one. Everything had to go right—the Coast Guard had to nab the boat as it left, LBPD had to nab the dockworker who’d been paid off, and I had to stick with Jamal through to the delivery at the distributor. Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone. The thugs that brokered the deal insisted on coming with us, so we couldn’t risk having LBPD follow. Even Jamal didn’t know where he was going until we picked up the junk. But I had a tracker in my bra—couldn’t risk a phone or any visible electronics—and LBPD would be at the house within minutes. My job, once there, was to get Jamal to safety and let LBPD get the bust.
“It didn’t get that far.”
Matt could almost see it before she said it.
“There was a federal investigation,” she continued. “And the fucking feds didn’t clue in the local police department until minutes before the raid—and they called the desk sergeant, not the chief, who knew exactly what we were doing. By the time the chief was told, it was too late to shut anything down. We were in the truck, we had the drugs in the back, I’d activated the tracker, and FBI SWAT moved in under the direction of guess who?”
He didn’t have to guess, so he said nothing.
“I’m damn lucky the two assholes in the back didn’t jump out guns blazing, because Jamal and I would be dead. After a few tense minutes, they got out and we all complied with the orders. I was livid. We had a good plan, and the fucking FBI blew it. They separated all of us and lucky me, I got the car with Bryce Thornton. Newly promoted to SSA, this was his first big operation. He was in charge. I immediately told him who I was, out of earshot from the goons. In the back of my mind I was hoping there was some way to salvage the op. He looked me up and down—remember, I dressed the part. Torn jeans, skimpy tank top, dyed my hair black and wore more makeup than I do in a month. He said, ‘I already told you, you have the right to remain silent, so shut the fuck up.’
“At this point, I was worried about Jamal—I didn’t want him to do or say anything around the thugs he planned to betray. I had promised him after tonight he would be free. Thornton got on his radio, barking orders, and I turned to the SWAT guy who was guarding me as we stood next to the SUV. I identified myself, gave my badge number, the name of my supervisor, and told him to take the cuffs off. To his credit, he looked at Thornton and said, ‘Maybe we should confirm.’ Thornton shut him down. I’ll never forget what he said. ‘She’s been fucking Jamal Warner for the last three weeks. She’s been with him on his last two jobs. No way she’s a cop.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘If you are a cop, you won’t be after tonight.’”
Kara drank heavily, said, “I may have said some things that riled him up at that point.”
“We’re trained not to react to verbal attacks,” Matt said.
“You’ve never been verbally attacked by me,” she said, not smiling. “He was angry, and by the time my boss arrived, Thornton wanted to arrest me for assaulting a federal officer. I may have made a comment that it’s not a crime to describe his tiny dick in microscopic detail. They’d already taken Jamal and the others away, and I needed to get Jamal out of this. I had promised.”
Matt knew that Kara internalized all her cases, and her word meant everything to her.
“My boss convinced SWAT to remove the cuffs and ordered me to walk away. I had enough sense to do just that but I didn’t get far. Thornton wasn’t going to honor our deal with Jamal—he was getting charged with a whole series of crimes that we had told him would go away for his cooperation. We had the DA’s office behind us. Thornton said he didn’t have to honor it, and would also be filing a report against me, against Long Beach Police Department, yada, yada. My boss, who was cool as a cucumber until then, told him to go to hell, completely reamed him. I enjoyed watching the tongue-lashing. Probably was smirking. Thornton stormed off and passed me. He said, ‘I will have your badge, and your fuck buddy Jamal Warner will not see the outside of a cage for the next twenty years.’ And then I hit him.”
Matt didn’t say anything for a minute.
Kara finally said, “You think I was wrong.”
“No. I mean, you probably should have restrained yourself, but he clearly had it coming. What happened to Jamal?”
“I almost lost him. Thornton did not back down. I was suspended for three days, told to stay far away from the case or lose my badge. I was young and stupid and thought I couldn’t trust anyone. Long Beach proved me wrong. The chief of police went to bat for Jamal, went all the way to the top, shared intel with the FBI about their operation and recordings Jamal had made, and in the end, if Jamal agreed to testify, they’d put him in WITSEC and he’d have a new life. It wasn’t exactly what we had promised—he had wanted to go home, where he was raised in Houston. But he was alive, and he was free, and ultimately, we put the bad guys in prison. Well, the feds got credit. As a condition of letting Jamal off the hook, the feds took our case. The only consolation was that Bryce Thornton was pulled.”
“And he’s held a grudge ever since.”
“He’s tried to bring me up on charges multiple times over the years. Lex always handled it. It seemed every time I turned around, he had a complaint about me. But I’m serious, Matt. If he had anything to do with outing Colton, I want him for murder.”
“So do I,” Matt said.
She looked surprised when he said it, then she smiled. Put her beer down and crossed over to where he sat on the opposite side of the hot tub. Standing, her breasts were inches from his face. She leaned over, kissed him as she straddled him. He clutched her.
“We should go inside,” he said.
“In a minute or two...” she murmured against his ear. She reached down, felt how hard he was and bit his earlobe. He grabbed her waist and brought her down on him.
Then he was lost inside her.