Spy Catcher: The J.J. McCall Novels (Books 1-3) (The FBI Espionage Series) (45 page)

Chapter 30

Tuesday Evening—Irving Street

After returning home from a long day of monitoring the dealers finally pushing his product in the streets, Santino hiked up the creaky stairs to his room and noticed a sliver of light shining through a crack in Lana’s bedroom door. Usually, he would respect her privacy and mind his own business. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to ignore the muffled sobs and sporadic sniffles echoing into the hall.

He walked to her door and peered inside, seeing Lana wearing only a pink camisole and cotton shorts, curled up on the bed in the fetal position, clutching a pillow to her chest. The intoxicating scent of lavender drew him inside; the soft sheen of her freshly oiled skin begged for his touch.

He tapped on the door with the knuckle of his middle finger and softly said, “Hey, you! Everything okay in there?”

Her back faced him so she didn’t even notice he’d been standing there, watching over her as if she’d morphed into a helpless child.

Lana didn’t respond or move her position, nor did her sobbing cease. He was a bit stunned by her behavior. She’d always seemed to have the strength of a rock, as if she had it all together. And before his eyes she had crumbled into a remnant of the woman she was only one night ago. He slowly pushed the door open and inched toward her. “It’s me, Santino. Just want to check and make sure you’re okay.”

She remained motionless, except for her stomach which constricted with each sniffle; her body began to tremble with every drop of sorrow released.

A surge of emotion overcame him, one he hadn’t experienced in a long time. Almost instinctively, he wanted to make her pain disappear. As his eyes traveled up the curve of her hip, to the dark strands of hair shrouding her face, easing her suffering became his only concern.

He sat down at her side, afraid his touch might be unwelcome. “Hey. We don’t know each other so well, but I’m here for you…if you ever wanna talk,” Santino said, waiting to see if and how she responded.

Her sniffing subsided but she moved nothing except her hand to wipe her eyes. Santino almost felt suffocated in the silence. Patience had never been his best virtue. He figured if she wanted to say something, she’d have spoken up. He decided to leave her to her tears. “Okay. Well, if you decide you wanna talk, I’ll be in my room.”

He planted his fist against the mattress to brace himself as he stood up when her hand gripped his wrist. He turned back toward her as she slowly spun her body around to face him.

Her glistening eyes were red and puffy and she had cried the make-up from her skin. Yet, she was still a remarkable beauty. The intensity of her baby blues held him spellbound and he knew, now more than ever, he should run before he couldn’t turn back. After all, he’d been in this place before. “Please, don’t go,” she said patting the now empty space beside her. “I need you here.”

She scooted to the opposite side of the bed and pulled him toward her. As he lay next to her, she guided his hand around her waist until he felt the small of her back. Then he tightened his arm around her, drew her close.

She laid her head against his chest and let out a long deep breath. “You ever have one of those days when the light at the end of every tunnel is attached to a train waiting to barrel over you….and all you want to do is
give up
?”

Santino chuckled, not at her, rather in the irony of it all. On his own since his mother kicked him out of the house for dealing drugs and running with gangsters, he’d been living in a continuous state of chaos for so long that he didn’t know people lived any other way. “I think you’ve described every day of my life since I turned 17.” 

“Some days I can’t shake the memory of him…lying in the floor, the life literally blown out of him. You make plans for your life,” she said, her voice vibrating with distress. “Things are supposed to go, you know, according to a plan. Then, in a split second, it dissipates like smoke vanishing into air, and you know in that instant that nothing will ever be good again,” she continued. “With each day that passes, you become consumed with ensuring the person who robbed you of your happiness pays…for the past, for the present, and the future you’ll never have.”

An image of Rosa drifted through his mind. He understood her words in a way that few could. Some actions can never be forgiven. And there are some tragedies inflicted upon us that we are bound by our very nature to avenge.

He glanced down and lifted her chin with his index finger until her eyes, sad and soggy, met his. “My grandmother used to say ‘
Male e bene a fine viene
.”

Lana propped her head up with her hand. “What’s that mean?”

“Evil and good come to an end,” he said, pushing her hair from her face and caressing her cheek. “Everything passes away with time, the positive and the negative. You just gotta live long enough to see it through.”

She glanced down and up again. “Your grandmother sounds like a smart woman,” Lana said. “What other words of wisdom did she leave you with?”

Santino’s eyes roamed the room as he searched his memory for something appropriate to the occasion. “I’ve got one. ‘
A chi non beve birra, Dio neghi anche l'acqua
’ which means, ‘may whoever doesn’t drink beer be denied by God water also.”

Her face scrunched she asked, “What does that mean?”

“I dunno. I think it’s some fancy excuse my Uncle Paulie used to get loaded back in the day,” he said, as they both broke out in laughter. He was happy to see her smile.

“Reminds me of home. Where I’m from, we say, ‘There cannot be too much vodka, there can only be not enough vodka.’”

“Just thinking about this stuff is making me thirsty. I’ve got a couple Heinekens in the fridge and Grey Goose in the freezer. You want some?”

“French vodka, hah! You would be less insulting to offer me a bottle of piss,” she said, tongue only slightly in cheek. “Anyway, I’m not thirsty for anything French or German. I have something Italian in mind.”

“Is ‘at right?”

She gently ran her fingers down his chest and until she reached his waist. Then she tugged on his belt buckle.

Santino purred through his smile. “I like the way you think.”

Chapter 31

Tuesday Night—FBI Headquarters

A hollow silence surrounded J.J. and Tony as they padded along the quiet corridors in the J. Edgar Hoover building. There was no sound except the clack of their heels against the linoleum and the annoying hum of the trash cans wheels. Pounds of exhaustion weighed her body down as she stopped, grasped the nape of her neck, and arched her back into a stretch.

“It’s rough, but at least we’ve got a week,” Tony said.

“At least? These investigations usually take months, sometimes years. You really think we’re going to find an illegal or a mole by next Tuesday…before the Russian National Security Advisor’s trip to Washington?”

“What choice do we have, except to try?” Tony asked. “The current stand-down’s nothing compared to the one we’ll be on during Lebed’s visit. By then this jerk-off will figure out we’re onto ‘em and can use the investigation-free week to cover his ass and maybe even skip the country. That ain’t gonna happen on my watch.” 

“Agreed,” J.J. said. “We’ve got authorization for a full; I hope like hell Sunnie and Walter came up with something. Even one identification based on our initial instructions will help us pin this asshole down sooner than later.”

“Come ‘ere,” Tony eased behind her and gripped her shoulders. “Anybody ever tell you, you work too much?”

“Yes. You. But then you go and set bad examples every day by working as many hours as I do,” she said. “If you think about it, my work-a-holic behavior is really all your fault.” 

“Anybody ever tell you that you talk too much?” he said with a chuckle. He spread his fingers across her shoulders and moved them in a firm circular motion, unbinding the tight muscles in her neck and shoulders.

“Mmm, that feels soooo gooood,” J.J. moaned, her eyes practically rolled in the back of her head. “But, uhh, we shouldn’t be doing this here.”

Tony stopped and leaned around her side until she faced him. “What? You ashamed of me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said, jerking her head back in disbelief. “We mutually agreed to keep the masses out of our business, remember?” She turned to face him, pulling his shirt collar down toward her until his face met hers. “Besides, wouldn’t you like to hurry up and get out of here so you can do that in bed?” She laid a soft, sweet peck on his lips him and continued down the hall.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” he said, smiling as he picked up his pace to keep step with her. Their office was only a few steps away.

When they rounded the corner, J.J. grabbed her badge, swiped it across the infrared light, and punched in her code. She barely got the door open before Sunnie and Walter dashed to greet them at the door. J.J. froze and struggled to stifle a chuckle as she took in the sight of Sunnie standing before her wearing a black headscarf with pink and green hair rollers popping from beneath.

“Really?”

“Hey, at 8 am you get
Gone with the Wind
fabulous. At midnight, you get this,” she said. “Now it’d be great if I could pass on this intel so I can go home and get my beauty rest. Clearly, I need it.”

“No, bella,” Tony said with the flirtatious accent that always made Sunnie melt. “You’re lovely just as you are.”

Her cheeks blushed school-girl red as she looked down at the notebook in her hand. “Okay, Walter ran a query using the NSA’s VECTOR program and the three criteria you gave us—people who regularly entered the conference room during third shift hours, worked in the State Department in 1998, and in the White House from 2006 to the present.” She ripped off the top sheet and handed it to J.J. “Here’s what we’ve come up with so far.”

J.J. grabbed the sheet and held it out so both she and Tony could scan it. “Kendel Phillips, Bryer Scott, Edward Tomlin, and Maddix Cooper. Only four people,” J.J. said.

“At least based on the initial scrub,” Walter piped in. “Sunnie came up with some ideas about how we can drill down a little deeper, but this will get you started.”

“Sweet,” Tony said. “I gotta say, I thought we’d be up to our earlobes in 302s. I won’t say you’ve made our jobs easy, but you sure narrowed down the list.”

Sunnie handed J.J. a stack of thin files. “We don’t have much, but based on the information available, my money’s on Bryer Scott. Former Science and Technology Officer for the CIA and worked at INR,” Sunni said, referring to the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. “He’s also pulled duty as a contracting officer. His last financial report indicates he’s up to his eyeballs in debt. Divorce, wife took half. Yet, somehow he had the money to purchase a Sea Ray.”

“A fish?” J.J. asked.

“Not sting ray, Sea Ray,” Sunnie said. “It’s a boat.”

Walter shook his head. “No, it’s more like a McMansion on water. They can run upward of a half a million.”

“A five-hundred thousand dollar boat? And he’s an FS-what?” J.J. asked, referring to the Foreign Service pay scale.

“If he’s an FS-anything, he shouldn’t make enough money to purchase that boat,” Tony said. “Unless he inherited it from a rich uncle or something.”

“Yeah, or received a payment from Uncle Sasha,” Sunnie added.

“Who are the other two?”

“Edward Tomlin is a former diplomat, defense attaché. He served two tours at the American Embassy in Moscow.”

“CIA?”

“DIA,” Sunnie said. “He’s now serving as one of the President’s key military advisors. His wife’s a foreign national—Ukrainian.”

“Interesting,” J.J. said. “The last one?”

“Maddix Cooper. Ex-Navy. Former CIA and Diplomatic Security. He served as a Security Officer in Moscow, preceded Grayson Chance. He’s now on the White House security detail.”

“Anything interesting on this Cooper guy?” Tony asked.

“Well, Kendel filed a change of marital status form a little over a year ago. Maddix Cooper was the intended spouse. She rescinded it 5 months ago. Guess the wedding’s off. And now they’re stuck working together, too. That’s gotta su—” Sunnie said, shifting her eyes between Tony and J.J. She cleared her throat. “Ahem. I think I need some water.”

Tony tightened his lips. “Or a snack.” 

“Okay,” Walter said. “We’ve done all we can do tonight. I’m heading home and I’ll be at Fort Meade tomorrow. Call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Walter,” Sunnie said. “You were brilliant,” she turned to J.J. and flashed a wide smile. “He’s a smart guy.”

J.J. gave Sunnie the side-eye that said, “Let me find out you’ve got a
thing
for Walter.”

“It really is time for you to get some sleep,” Sunnie said in response to J.J.’s look. “The long work day has officially made you delirious.”     

J.J. laughed. “Get out of here…and thanks for all your hard work. I’ll expect you here looking
Gone with the Wind
fabulous at 9 am”

Sunnie whisked away to her desk, snapped up her jacket and purse, and bounded for the doorway. “If you see me at 9 am, you better go home sick,” she said as she eased out the door. “You’re hallucinating.”

J.J. and Tony both chuckled. Not only was Sunnie pretty sharp, she was good for keeping otherwise heavy nights light.

Tony said, “We’ll call Kendel tomorrow and set up the interviews.”

“Yeah. And to ensure she remains cooperative for as long as possible, we’ll save hers for last.”

“Good thinking,” he replied, looking around the empty office. “Well, we should hit the road. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

J.J. arched her neck to the side and pointed to her shoulder. “That’s the least of your concerns.” She batted her eyes suggestively. “You’ve got to make it through a
long night
first.”

Tony smiled and popped his eyebrows upward. “Have I ever told you I like the way you think?”