6

Bryce Thornton ranted after Matt left the room. He was livid; Sloane kept quiet, listening intently for anything she might be able to use in her investigation, which was stuck.

“That guy is drunk on power,” Thornton was saying, after hurling several insults at Costa now that he wasn’t able to hear.

“We’ll get through this,” Chavez said. “He’ll only be here for a few days.”

“He has Quinn working for him! She’s a stain on the LAPD and is going to be an embarrassment to Costa, the MRT and the FBI. Don’t say I didn’t warn everyone.”

Chavez glanced around the room, realizing that Thornton’s outburst was now fuel for the rumor mill. She gave Sloane a half smile, then looked pointedly at Thornton and said, “We have more important issues right now, so you need to let it go.”

He watched her with narrowed eyes, then recognized what Chavez had: there were others in the room.

Not for the first time, Sloane wondered what they discussed in private.

The rest of their squad came in for a staff meeting. Thornton ran the meeting efficiently, the SSAs gave status reports, and cases were handed out. Chavez was in white-collar crimes, and they worked primarily fraud and money laundering investigations. Los Angeles and New York were the largest regional offices with multiple SACs, each managing multiple ASACs who each managed multiple squads. The bureaucracy was overwhelming and often redundant.

When Matt Costa approached Sloane two weeks before she graduated from Quantico, she thought she was being tested. It took two conversations with Matt, his boss Assistant Director Tony Greer, and the assistant director of the Los Angeles FBI for her to be comfortable not only with what they asked her to do, but her ability to do it.

She’d never forget how nervous she was when Matt Costa approached her while she was running on the track one afternoon, or how curious she was after he spoke to her. He’d been intimidating, but straightforward.

“On paper, I picked you, but I had to be certain,” he told her.

“Picked me for what, sir?”

“I have to ask you not to repeat this conversation. Whether you accept or not, what I say needs to remain strictly confidential.”

Matt explained that Sloane, a rookie, had no allegiances or loyalties. She could go into the LA office without preconceived notions. Plus, she was an older recruit: she’d gone to college, had twelve years in the Marines, and had both maturity and experience going for her. He’d even gone so far as to speak to her former commanding officer directly.

“Because of your background—family, military and FBI training—coupled with your psych evaluation, you are ideal for this position. It won’t be easy. Not only is it emotionally stressful to go undercover and investigate your colleagues, but you’ll also be a rookie agent and required to do the job. You are intelligent and resourceful, and I’m confident you’ll be able to handle the pressure, but it will still be difficult.”

Spying on your colleagues was never an easy assignment. She’d done it once before, in the Marines, and she vowed never to put herself in that position again.

Yet...there was something deeply immoral about a sworn agent forsaking their duties and obligations for personal gain or vendetta. It grated on her sensibilities as a Marine, as an American, as a law enforcement officer. So after hearing about what they knew and what they suspected, she agreed to report back to Matt Costa and Brian Granderson on not only the actions of Agent Thornton, but everyone else on Chavez’s team.

Part of the problem was that Sloane had to observe and not ask too many questions. What seemed suspicious or unusual might have a logical explanation. So she simply reported what she learned.

It wasn’t enough and she knew it.

Her personal phone vibrated in her suit pocket. She glanced down and saw the message from Brian Granderson.

He’d included an address downtown.

She had nothing new to report and wondered if they were going to pull the plug on their investigation. She hoped not—there was something here, she just hadn’t found it yet. She suspected whatever Thornton was doing involved the LAPD files she’d found on his desk, but there had been no opportunity to return to his office for more information.

When the staff meeting was over, she went to her cubicle and pretended to work. Mostly, she was listening to Thornton complain to Tom about Costa. Finally, they both left. Sloane soon found her chance when Brenda from Accounting came in looking for Thornton. Few people were in the office right now, so Sloane took the initiative.

“Hi, Brenda,” she said, “he left, won’t be back until this afternoon.” She didn’t know that for certain, but he’d turned off his office light, indicating he was leaving the building. If he was going to another office, he always left it on. “Can I help with something?”

“I need him to sign off on these expense reports by Friday. I swear, it’s the twenty-first century but we still have too much paper. You’d think they could have streamlined expense approvals.”

The expense reports were all submitted online, but then Accounting would process them by squad, print a summary report, and each supervisor would sign off. That was done on paper. Redundancy was built into the federal government, and the FBI wasn’t immune to it. Brenda could have sent them interoffice mail, but she was one of the friendliest non-agents on staff and liked delivering files by hand.

“I can put them in his office,” Sloane offered.

“Thanks, sugar. I have three more to drop off, then I have a dentist appointment. I hate the dentist. You have amazing teeth—must have cost you a small fortune.”

“Genetics. My dad has good teeth, too. And I’ve never missed a six-month cleaning.”

“Neither have I, but you wouldn’t know it by the cavities I keep getting.” Brenda smiled and walked away.

Sloane took the files directly to Bryce’s office. She stuck a sticky note on top and scrawled that they needed to be approved by Friday, but held on to them while she looked around his office.

Bryce kept his office tidy, with minimal clutter. Files were aligned neatly on his desk in two piles. She pulled out her phone and quickly took pictures of each stack from several angles so that she could later enlarge the images to read the codes on the labels. Once she had the codes she could look them up in the system to find out what he was working on.

On his notepad was an impression from the last note he wrote. She remembered him folding a piece of paper and putting it inside his jacket pocket when he left. She tore off the top page and put it in her pocket.

Once back at her desk, Sloane made sure she was alone, then held the note at an angle under the light from her phone. Scrawled in Thornton’s sloppy penmanship was Duncan, noon at his club, followed by a phone number and a notation: Mayor wants recent crime stats, talking points, rotary club.

Theodore Duncan was the mayor’s chief of staff. Prior to his probation, Thornton had been a liaison with the mayor’s office. Why he still acted in that capacity was a question above her pay grade, but she made note of it. Granderson would want to know.

Duncan was a member of the Wilshire Country Club; why would Thornton be meeting with him there? It wasn’t unheard of—FBI agents often met with key people in the community in order to maintain relationships, and these included elected officials, banking officials, local law enforcement, large employers, federal contractors, others. But this was written on his notepad, not in his official calendar.

She zoomed in on the photos she’d taken and studied the files. Each file had a code identifying the originating office, the date opened and the assigned squad. The information was available online, but could be printed in any office. One unfamiliar code stood out. She scanned her roster and identified the NOLA office. Odd that Thornton would have a file from Louisiana, unless it was a multistate investigation—but then she would have heard about it during a staff meeting.

She logged in to her computer and looked up the file online. Immediately, she realized that this was a case Matt Costa had worked on. His mobile response team had traveled to St. Augustine after a local detective filed a complaint of graft and corruption and a suspicious in-custody death of his informant. Matt and the bulk of his team had been there for a week and ended up solving multiple homicides.

Why was Thornton interested in this case? Because Matt had investigated it? Or because Kara Quinn had been involved?

She made a note to tell Matt about Thornton’s review of the file. She didn’t know what, if anything, might be important. She would also show him the photos—maybe he would see something she hadn’t.

Her phone beeped—a message from the FBI emergency notification line.