No Good Deed (8 page)

“You think it’s connected to his assignment in San Antonio.”

“I don’t know,” Rick said. “But very few people knew he was coming back last night. My office. His direct supervisor. You. And his next-door neighbor who was watching his place while he was gone. But Dunbar could have told any number of people, both in San Antonio or here. It wasn’t like he needed to keep the information secret, now that his assignment was over.”

Noah didn’t know Dunbar well—most of their conversations had been over the phone or via encrypted email—but Noah knew he was a diligent, dedicated agent.

Hans said, “Dunbar’s flight arrived at eight thirty last night. He took a taxi from Dulles; the receipt in his pocket says he paid the driver at nine forty-nine—which would have given him enough time to get his bags, hail a cab, and drive home. He came in through the front door and disengaged the alarm. He didn’t reengage it. He put his bag down in the entry at the base of the staircase and went to the kitchen. Took a beer from the refrigerator—it’s all that was in there, which isn’t surprising since he’s been undercover for six months. He opened the beer. Someone shot him twice from behind, once in the back and once in the back of the head, possibly when he was already down.”

“No sign of a struggle?”

“None.”

“And no one heard anything?”

“It smells professional,” Hans said. “Execution.”

Rick said, “Logan and I were supposed to meet at one this afternoon. When he didn’t show up, I called. No answer. I confirmed his flight, and then I called the Alexandria police for a welfare check. They found the body.”

“Anything stolen?”

“Not that any of us can tell. His briefcase is here, but something could have been taken or copied. Noah, I need you to take the lead on this,” Rick said. “We need to know if this was connected to San Antonio as soon as possible. If it’s not, we’ll regroup and look at his old cases and personal life. But it sure as hell wasn’t random.”

“You heard what happened this morning in San Antonio?” Hans asked Noah.

“The escape? Yes.”

“Two dead DEA agents. Dunbar spent the last six months in San Antonio, and there’s a tertiary connection between the escaped felon and Logan Dunbar. Nicole Rollins, the escapee, worked for the same gunrunner that Worthington laundered money for,” Hans said. “Worthington is dead. Dunbar’s murder could be retaliation, payback, or something else.”

Rick said, “While we waited for you, I called SAC Naygrow in the San Antonio office to find out where they are on the investigation and who is point. All agencies are working together, and I found out, without explicitly asking, that Lucy is on the task force. But because of Dunbar’s murder and the escape, Hans is going to San Antonio. He’ll ostensibly profile Nicole Rollins, but he’ll be covertly investigating the leak. While logic suggests there is a mole in the DEA who passed on information to Rollins when she was in prison, we also believe there’s a mole in the FBI.”

“The San Antonio office?”

“Most likely. Kane Rogan contacted me ten days ago and said he believes someone in the FBI is vulnerable, whether because they are the mole or have been compromised in some way we don’t know yet. That’s why I want Hans down there to assess.”

“Rogan,” Noah said flatly.

“You don’t have a problem with that,” Rick said, more as a statement than a question, though the question was there.

“No,” Noah said. He still didn’t understand Rick Stockton’s loyalties to the Rogan family.

Rick clearly didn’t believe him; Noah had never told anyone what happened in Europe with Liam and Eden Rogan. It could be that Rick knew what had happened—he had an uncanny way of gathering information—but Rick had never discussed it with Noah.

That was six years ago, and he hadn’t seen the Rogan twins since.

But Rick would know that while Noah was in the Air Force, he’d crossed paths with Kane Rogan who, Noah felt, envisioned himself as the Guardian Angel—or Avenging Angel—of innocents south of the border. Kane’s team took out guerrilla fighters and cartel leaders, burned cocaine fields, and rescued kidnapped Americans. And on one hand, Noah had a deep respect for what Kane and his ilk did. On the other, he’d seen firsthand in Kane a calm brutality and antipathy for the law that was disturbing. Noah didn’t want to believe that the FBI had a corrupt agent, but just because he didn’t want to believe didn’t mean he wouldn’t believe. And though Noah didn’t know Kane well, if he had information that he felt was viable enough to share with Rick, there was at least a basis for the suspicion.

Noah realized that Rick was assessing him. “You should tap Lucy to help weed out the traitor,” Noah said.

Hans shook his head. “Lucy would not do well in that role.”

“I’ve worked with her, Hans, I know what she’s capable of. Lying isn’t her strong suit, I grant you, but something like this—when agents are being threatened and killed—she’ll rise to the occasion.”

“I don’t disagree that she could do it, but I don’t know the dynamics of the office. I don’t know what relationships she’s forged and with whom. I don’t want to put her in that position of spying on her colleagues, not unless it’s absolutely necessary. I would rather use Agent Dunning.”

“Dunning?” Noah didn’t know him.

“I’ll fill you in later,” Rick said to Noah. Then to Hans, “You have as much latitude as you need. You speak for me, and I don’t doubt that you’ll find out the truth. If someone in our house is corrupt, your presence will put the fear of God into them—and may force their hand. No paper trail on this—no email or cell phones. If either of you needs anything, call only though a secure line.”

They watched as the coroner’s team wheeled Logan Dunbar’s body out of his townhouse. They collapsed and lifted the gurney to carry it down the stairs, then raised it and rolled the body to the van. Noah stared at the black bag, a cold anger washing over him. He’d been in the air force for ten years and had never lost a man in his unit. But he’d flown back the bodies of other good soldiers, men and women zipped into body bags, dead simply because they were doing their job.

Noah said, “Dunbar was a good agent. He did his job. Now he’s dead. I want to know why and stop these bastards from hurting anyone else.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lucy scoured Nicole’s file, first skimming it, then going back and reading it in greater depth.

Immediately two things became clear: First, Nicole had lied to Lucy about her background. During Operation Heatwave, when Lucy was alone with Nicole, the former fed had said she’d lived in Kansas until she was fourteen and mentioned she had “brothers”—the truth was, she had only one brother, two years older than Nicole and currently in the army. Nicole had only lived in Kansas for fourteen months, when her father had been stationed at Fort Riley, and she’d been five when they moved to Fort Benning in Georgia. When she was nine, her father had left the military after twelve years of service and moved cross-country, to Los Angeles, where he went through the police academy. He’d been killed in the line of duty when Nicole was fifteen.

According to Nicole’s application to the DEA, under the question, “Why are you applying to be a federal agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration?” Nicole had written:

My father was a veteran in the army and then served six years as a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. He was killed in the line of duty during a turf war battle. The only way to stop the violence is to stop these battles, and that starts at the top—which is why I want to be a DEA agent.

Lucy made a note to find out more about the murder of Nicole’s father. Lucy couldn’t reconcile Nicole working for the same sort of people who killed her father. Maybe her betrayal of the DEA had started with avenging her father—if a drug dealer was responsible, she may have wanted access to records that she couldn’t get otherwise. But if that were the case, how did she turn away from revenge to working with the same type of people who’d killed her dad?

The second truth Lucy learned was that Nicole had manipulated her way into the San Antonio DEA field office. She wanted to be here for some reason—why, Lucy had no idea. It took Lucy two passes before she saw the pattern.

Nicole had been recruited into the DEA right out of college, fifteen years ago. She’d been assigned to the Atlanta main office for her first year, then to the smaller Savannah resident office for the second year. After her two-year rookie probation she’d asked to be transferred to Mexico City, but had been denied because she didn’t speak Spanish well enough. She’d been transferred to the Chicago Division, where she took night classes to learn Spanish. Over the next ten years—between the end of her rookie years until she landed in San Antonio three years ago—she’d asked for a total of nine transfers. And while she was only granted two of them, she’d still been moved several times—no office assignment lasted longer than two years.

Until San Antonio.

It seemed odd to Lucy that Nicole had asked to transfer so many times. In both the DEA and the FBI, rookie agents had little to no influence over their initial two-year assignment. Prior to graduation at Quantico, Lucy was asked to list the three offices she wanted to be assigned to. Nothing guaranteed that she would be assigned to one of the three—it depended on many factors. She’d listed two offices in California—both her family and Sean’s family were in California (hers in the south, his in the north)—and Norfolk, because it was in Virginia and only a few hours from where her brothers Dillon and Patrick lived in DC.

They’d given her San Antonio.

It was relatively common that, after a two-year rookie period, federal agents were given the option to move to any available position in another regional office. When Sean bought the house, she’d told him she’d most likely be transferred after two years. He didn’t care, he wanted a place that was theirs, and she loved him for it. She loved their home, their neighborhood, and San Antonio had grown on her. She didn’t know if she would request a transfer, though she might not have a choice.

Nicole Rollins had spent two years in the Los Angeles DEA office, and her final request was to be transferred to an opening in Houston. She was there for nine months before she was moved laterally into the San Antonio regional office, which was under the Houston umbrella.

She hadn’t asked to be moved again since she landed here.

Lucy made a list of Nicole’s employment history with the DEA, the names of her direct supervisors in each office, and whether she asked to be transferred to or from any office location. Nicole had never bought a house until arriving in San Antonio.

Three years ago.

Lucy stared at the timeline, her heart racing as she realized that Nicole hadn’t been assigned to San Antonio when she killed the drug dealer.

When they DEA recovered the disk three months ago—thanks to Sean’s brother Kane—Nicole claimed that the cartel had used that disk as leverage over her for the last five years, implying that she’d been forced into working for them. Yet, it was clear, after this well-orchestrated prison break, that there was much more to the story. Nicole wasn’t a timid, fearful federal agent being blackmailed into subservience.

Lucy had assumed the disk had been filmed in San Antonio—Ryan had known about the case—but Nicole was assigned to Los Angeles during that time. If she was in San Antonio five years ago, why? Was she on vacation? On assignment? Who was the man she killed and was there another reason for his murder other than taking his money and drugs?

She closed her eyes and remembered the conversation she’d had with Ryan. It was the disk they’d uncovered that had proven Nicole was a corrupt DEA agent. Ryan said it was from a San Antonio case that was still on the books, unsolved. Nicole had gone into the small electronics repair shop, flashed her badge, and shot the unarmed owner in cold blood. The victim was a known criminal, the shop a link in the chain moving drugs up from Mexico and into the rest of the country.

Lucy needed to see that disk.

“Lucy?”

She jumped up, startled.

Brad stood next to her cubicle. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“I was thinking.”

Brad looked over her extensive notes. “You’ve been busy.”

She glanced at her desk. Sticky notes littered Nicole’s file and her desk. It was already after two in the afternoon. “ASAC Durant gave me Nicole’s file to review.”

Brad frowned. “Sam told me. Not to diminish profiling, but we know who we’re dealing with.”

“We don’t know the half of it, Brad.” She tapped the file. “Nicole asked to be transferred multiple times over ten years, but once she landed in San Antonio, she requested no more transfers. That tells me she wanted to be here. I need the disk that showed her killing the drug dealer—we need to look deeper into that case. Ryan said it happened in San Antonio, but Nicole worked out of the Los Angeles office during that time period.”

“What are you saying? That Ryan lied?”

She was surprised. “No, of course not. I’m saying she was here, that she killed the dealer, and we can confirm through DEA records if she was on duty in LA and if not, what her status was. But was it just the one dealer? Were there more? What was the fallout after his murder? How did the landscape change in San Antonio after he was killed?”

Brad pulled over a chair from another desk and sat down. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Nicole claimed that the disk was being used as leverage by Trejo to force her to work for them. Blackmail.”

“I don’t believe that. Not after today.”

“Maybe she became more ruthless as time went on. Once you kill, it’s easier to kill again.”

“Is it?” she asked, her face blank. Because she had that fear, she’d had it since she first killed a man when she was eighteen, without remorse. The man she’d killed had been a rapist and a murderer—her rapist. But still, she’d killed him in cold blood and felt no guilt.

It wasn’t the last time she’d killed. The second time she’d saved the life of an innocent woman. And then, in Mexico, she’d shot six men. She hadn’t counted them at the time, but when it was over, she just knew. She didn’t know if they all died, but assumed they had from either the injuries she gave them or the lack of medical attention after.