Jacked (70 page)

“My eyes?” He sounded skeptical.

“Yeah. So what I want to know is why you were there. You know, we all make mistakes. It’s okay. It’s in the past. But here and now, it’s time to be honest with yourself, Scott. It’s okay to say ‘hey I messed up,’ and be man enough to make amends and do what’s right.”

I was wearing him down.

“I thought we were friends. Are you hoping that harm comes to me? To Marcus?”

“No, it’s not like that,” he muttered.

“Why don’t you tell me how it is then? How did it start? Did they contact you?”

His head nodded ever so slightly.

“Who contacted you? It’s okay. It’s just you and me here. I know you’re a good guy, Scott. You’re going to film school. Working a full-time job. That’s all very respectable stuff, man. I know how tough it is. That’s how I know you don’t want this burden. Just lay it out. Let me help you.”

Scott’s resolve was wavering.

“I’ve got to tell you—the evidence doesn’t look good. I’m being straight up with you. Conspiracy, aiding and abetting, all make you an accessory to robbery, Scott. Doesn’t matter if you didn’t commit the actual theft; you can still be charged with the crime. These are all felony charges you’re facing. It’s just going to get worse if you don’t start explaining things.”

I gave him dead silence—just a stare. Waiting. First one to speak loses.

“I didn’t go looking for trouble, Adam. All right? They came after me.” Scott dropped his head into his hand.

“It’s okay, dude. I get that you’re scared. I’m right here. Talk to me. Just you or did they go after any of the other crew that you know of? You can tell me. They try to get Ritchie, too?”

He pegged me with an obvious glare. “Ritchie’s uncle is a state cop. They knew that.”

“Who are
they
, Scott?”

He started wringing his hands together.

“They said they’d make me disappear if I didn’t give them what they wanted,” he whispered. “No one would ever find my body.”

“Why do you think they chose you?”

Scott shrugged. “They know we’re filming you. Wherever you are, pretty safe to say the rest of the ATTF are too.”

I tamped back my rising anger. “What were your orders?”

He started to withdraw, shutting me out.

“Scott.”

His head shook more adamantly.

I rolled my chair closer to him.

Eyes filled with fear met mine. “They are going to kill me. You get that? I’m dead.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

He scoffed. “They put a fucking gun to my head.” His emotional control was unraveling. Tears fell down his face. “And now, now when I go to prison for helping them, someone in there is going to kill me. That’s what they said. Nowhere is safe.”

“Help me understand and I swear I’ll do whatever I can. Is my team compromised?”

Scott appeared confused. “Compromised? What do you mean?”

“Are we in danger?”

He shrugged and receded. “I don’t know.”

I leaned in closer. “Anyone else on the team involved in this? I need to know if we have any others on the camera crew, production, a cop perhaps, working for them. You need to tell me what you know.”

Scott kept shaking his head. “I never saw anyone else.”

“You know all of the ATTF officers,” I said. “You ever see or hear any mention of their names being involved?”

I was sort of relieved to see the shock register on his face. “No.”

“Okay. What were your orders?”

He drew in a breath. “They gave me a number to text. I sent updates with our location. But it’s just been recently. That’s it. I swear.”

It was hard to mask how I felt about being betrayed. One thing was certain. Our television careers just came to an abrupt end.

Thank fuck for that.

“You went to Newark to get paid, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question. Scott’s shame was obvious.

“Who contacted you, Scott? I want to help you. I do. But you have to tell me.”

Scott nodded at the picture on the desk, pointing to the one with the noticeable limp to his walk that we were unable to identify. “That guy. I don’t know his full name. They call him Switch. I think he’s the one who coordinates everything. He’s a driver too.”

“If I showed you some photos, you think you could pick him out?”

He reluctantly said, “Yeah.”

“Do they have eyes on you?”

Scott shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I didn’t want to use Scott as bait, but it was time to play the players at their own game.

FINDING MILTON CRAWFORD
—also known as Switch—wasn’t easy. He moved about a lot, but once we located him, everything fell into place. Still, something gnawed at me. That little niggle of doubt I’d harbored kept worming its way around everything, at the start of every shift.

I had no solid proof, but I couldn’t ignore the facts—no matter how coincidental. This investigation was mine. The blowback from the team could get ugly, but it was a risk I had to take to being thorough.

Ultimately, it was my captain’s decision, and when faced with the knowledge that we’d already been compromised by the film crew, it was easily justifiable.

All of us—every one of us who wore a badge—had taken an oath to protect and serve. Even thinking about the possibility that we had a traitor in our midst made my stomach twist into hateful knots.

I watched the closed-circuit television from an adjoining room as Officer Brian Sidel was questioned by an interrogator from Internal Affairs. They’d connected him to the polygraph machine after he agreed to subject himself to a lie detector test.

I needed irrefutable proof. Did he or did he not have any ties to Vincent and Salvador Mancuso?

SARAH WAS SITTING
at the nurses’ station, pale and exhausted. “You look so happy. I’m glad.” Her observation was genuine, though she was breathing hard through her mouth. Her knees were parted while she and her enormous belly molded to the desk chair.

I was. Well, beyond my dad’s dealership getting robbed, being under Adam Trent’s mandated “I’ll drive you to work” orders, and occasionally being home alone, living with him these last few weeks had been beyond blissful. My sister, though, had been sort of avoiding me, making lame excuses for not being able to converse every time I called. Kate had been upset about the robbery, but it was quite obvious that there were other issues affecting her, which I presumed were caused by her current boyfriend.

“You look like you’re in pain.”

“Braxton Hicks,” she muttered, rubbing her lower back.

I leaned onto the counter. “Why are you even here?”

Her pained smile faltered and scrunched. “I have two weeks yet and then…” Another scrunch. “Oh shit, that hurt.”

I’d just worked on a twenty-four-year-old male who’d been on the losing end of a bar fight and yet seeing my friend in distress was making me all sorts of nervous. “I think we should call Obstetrics, get someone to take a look at you.”

Sarah groaned. “I’m not in labor.”

“Then maybe you should go home and rest.”

“Can’t.” She was puffing her words now. “Brett’s in Utah at that seminar. I’d be alone. I’m better off here.” She tried to sit up. “What better place to be than a hospital, right?”

I looped my arm under hers, helping to keep her steady. “Kimberly, help me?”

Kimberly set some things down and rushed over. “What’s going on, preggo?”

Sarah hunched over in pain. Her tight grip was starting to hurt my arm. “Let’s get her over into an exam room.”

“I’m not in labor,” Sarah insisted, that was until another contraction seized her.

“Humor me. Can we get someone from L&D down here?”

We shuffled Sarah closer to one of the empty bays, but she stopped in the middle of the hall. “Oh shit.”

“Oh shit?” Oh shits were not good sounds.

“I think I just peed myself,” Sarah panted.

After seeing every which way people could lose their dignity and having no threshold for being grossed out anymore, we all looked down her legs.

That was quite a bit of pee. “I think your water just broke.”

Sarah squeezed my arm harder. “No. My water can’t break until Sunday.”

We moved the last twelve feet, getting Sarah situated on a bed.

“Brett’s going to be so pissed.” She groaned while we propped her up, hissing when another contraction hit. “And I peed myself.”

I pulled the privacy curtain over the window and grabbed some exam gloves. “Well, apparently Brett Junior doesn’t care if dad’s home or not. He wants his birthday.” I tried to keep her calm and in good spirits while Kimberly got her vitals.

“You have to stay with me, Erin,” she pleaded. “If I have to deal with Brett’s mom by myself, I’ll go crazy.”

We covered her legs with a fresh sheet and I grabbed shears. No sense trying to save amniotic fluid-soaked scrubs. I sliced up one pant leg, trying to ignore her “crazy” comment while in labor. My fears were unfounded. “I will. I promise.”

Sarah calmed her breathing, thank goodness. She was actually making me nervous. “Officer Hottie won’t mind?”

“Nah, he’s busy catching bad guys.” I purposely left out the details, as I wasn’t even supposed to be aware of them, but Adam and I had made a pact that there would be no more secrets.

I knew every name, every suspect, which made me privy to information I had no business knowing, but how else could we support each other without knowing the full extent of the stress?

We needed full disclosure. It was the only way we’d make it as keeping things bottled up was a recipe for disaster.

Adam also made sure I knew exactly where he was too, most of the time. Over the last few weeks, he and several teams from different units had conducted simultaneous raids, taking out locations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and two places in New York City, seizing almost a million dollars’ worth of stolen cars. Today he was going after the leader. My nerves were shot.

He told me not to worry and that he’d be fine but it didn’t make me worry any less. I knew loving a police officer came with a certain set of understood rules that I had to abide by. He willingly placed himself in danger every time he left the house.

They were rules I was quickly coming to terms with, because loving Adam was no longer an option—it was a fundamental need and vital to the survival of my heart.

This case had him working different hours of night and day. Our paths crossed here and there, and we made the most of our time together: bonding, connecting, wrapped up in each other’s arms, falling deeper in love.

And now, while he was hunting down the mastermind of the operation, I needed to tend to my dear friend who was well on her way in labor.

I DIDN’T KNOW
how Sarah was holding up this long. She’d been in labor for almost ten hours and now her OB was telling her to push. I’d managed to catch a two-hour nap while she continued to dilate, but now that she was in active labor, I was exhausted just standing here, gripping her hand in mine.

Her husband Brett was on his way after managing to get an emergency flight back to Philly, but his indirect stop in Dallas was still two hours out. There was no way he’d make it in time.