“Do you?”
“Dean,” Sam Callahan interrupted. “Three minutes.”
“We’ll meet at the FBI office at noon,” Dean said. “Okay?”
“We’ll meet at my office at one,” Sonia said. “Full disclosure.”
He extended his hand to seal the agreement and smiled. “My office. One is fine with me. I have too much paper and equipment to transport downtown, and believe me, you’re going to want to take a look at it.”
Her hand was soft and cold, but her grip strong. “Don’t disappoint me.” She reached into her pocket and dropped an extra-strong magnet into his hand, then gestured toward the security cameras around the house. “The security office is in a room off the kitchen. The door is unmarked. If you don’t have a warrant for the tapes, you might want to erase them-though I don’t really care one bit if Jones knows I’m on his ass.”
Sonia didn’t want to walk away, but Hooper’s identity threw her off her game. She hoped she hadn’t given away her surprise when the Fibbie gave his full name.
She had already started down the porch steps when she remembered the reason she was here in the first place. She ran back up the stairs and leaned close to Hooper’s ear. He smelled of expensive cologne and leather. Voice low, she said, “I’m looking for an Hispanic teenager, a thirteen-year-old female. She was kidnapped from Argentina two weeks ago, and I have good reason to believe that Jones knows where she is. If you see or hear anything-”
Sam said, “Sixty seconds.”
Sonia caught Dean’s eye. He’d understood. Motioning for Trace to follow, she ran down the stairs and stayed low to the ground, in the shadows, until she was out of sight.
Everyone in the business for more than a couple years knew Assistant FBI Director Dean Hooper. The FBI’s own Eliot Ness. He’d said her reputation preceded her? She had nothing on Hooper, and under any other circumstances she may have had a fan-girl moment and asked about some of his more interesting cases.
She didn’t like that a fed with such a high rank was on Jones’s ass, because while she wanted to nail him, she needed more than his tenure in prison. She needed information, and her man inside was still working. If Hooper acted too soon, she’d lose names and files and more people-women and children-would disappear or die. What was he doing in the field, anyway? She assumed he worked out of Washington; if he was in Sacramento or San Francisco, she would have known.
Sonia didn’t partner well. She thrived in her authority and command of her office, but trusting a partner only resulted in disaster. She called Trace her partner, but she was technically his supervisor, so she didn’t have to worry about him making decisions without consulting her, or going behind her back to plan an operation that could get agents hurt or worse.
But Dean Hooper had looked her in the eye with a confidence that spoke of unwavering honesty, and she wanted to trust him. She had no choice, really. He’d blindsided her with not only his arrival but his identity. And if Xavier Jones thought that the FBI and ICE had made a major connection in his activities, he’d cut his losses and run.
She’d give Hooper tonight.
Sonia heard her team report that Jones’s black Escalade had pulled to a stop in the driveway. She and Trace sprinted to their original position and she grabbed her field binoculars to observe the scene at the house.
“What’s going on?” Trace asked her.
“A minute.” She watched Dean Hooper on the porch, standing next to Sam Callahan. Dean was an inch shorter, but with a far greater presence, for lack of a better word. She watched as nothing happened for a full minute. Then the driver got out.
Sonia’s mouth went dry. The coffee she’d been drinking all night churned painfully in her gut, and she froze, staring. She had to be wrong. It had been years since she’d seen Charlie Cammarata; how could she instantly recognize him?
As the driver closed his door, she saw part of Charlie’s familiar arm-length tattoo. But her mind filled in the rest of the intricate black cross with vivid, blood-red letters dripping down the center:
Vengeance is mine.
What was the disgraced, renegade ex-ICE agent doing working for a known criminal?
Charlie opened the back door of the Escalade and Xavier Jones, the devil himself, stepped out. Sonia had half a mind to put him in her sights and kill him. That she also wanted to put a bullet in Charlie scared her. She thought she’d gotten over his betrayal. She thought she’d forgiven him.
The urge was short-lived-going to prison wouldn’t help them find Maya or any of the buyers Jones supplied with a steady stream of young foreign women. She needed the bastard alive in order to identify and arrest every damn one of his business associates. She would go through their files one by one and track down every woman they’d sold into sex slavery or forced labor and give them a future. The ones who were still alive.
She watched Jones walk to his front porch, and his confident stride and arrogant half-smile told her Hooper’s arrival wasn’t a surprise. Sonia noted that Charlie acted like a bodyguard, imposing and fearsome. Greg Vega was there, too, and she sighed in relief. She’d been worried about her spy, knowing the huge risk he had taken in contacting her. But he was safe, at least for now. She hoped he had something solid for her so she could get him and his pregnant wife into a safe house.
Charlie glared at the feds while Callahan handed Jones the warrant. Did Callahan or Hooper or any of the other longtime agents recognize him? Probably not. Charlie’s punishment had been swift, and while it hadn’t involved prison time, he’d lost everything. As well he should have. Before his fall from grace, he’d been primarily undercover, and few agents outside of the then-INS knew his name, let alone his face.
Charlie was here because he had his own vendetta against Jones or someone close to Jones, Sonia was certain. Charlie did nothing without revenge as the motive. It didn’t matter if it was his revenge or that of others-at least, that’s how it had been in the past. But now? Sonia didn’t know. She hadn’t seen him in ten years. Was he the feds’ contact? It made sense. How Hooper knew about the travel, when they left the airport. But Sonia didn’t see a man like Charlie Cammarata giving anything to the FBI. He’d never had an ounce of respect for that agency; he’d barely tolerated his own employer.
Dammit, she wished she could hear what they were saying! Sitting on the sidelines was excruciating, almost as painful as giving up control-and to the FBI, no less. She hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake giving Hooper the lead.
“Dammit, Charlie, what are you doing with Jones?” she muttered.
“Who?” Trace asked, looking through his own field goggles. “Who’s Charlie?”
Trace had been in high school when Charlie was fired. He wouldn’t have known him. “Charlie Cammarata,” she said reluctantly. “My partner when I was working out of El Paso.”
She breathed easier when Trace didn’t comment, thinking he didn’t know about what happened. Her relief was short-lived.
“Why is a former INS agent working for Jones?”
Trace sounded like Charlie had gone to the dark side, become one of the bad guys. And while Charlie was no saint, he wasn’t trafficking in humans. “If I had to guess, he’s working a job.”
“For us?”
“No.” For himself.
“We have to report it.”
“I know.”
“I can do it,” he said quietly. “Considering your history with-”
“I’ll do it,” she snapped. Trace didn’t know half the history she had with Charlie Cammarata. Most of the closed-door disciplinary hearing ten years ago with the Office of Professional Responsibility was still classified or sealed, and Sonia would make sure it remained so as long as she breathed.
But Charlie’s involvement with Jones was one big-ass fucking wrench in the works.
