Cheating Justice (The Justice Team) (17 page)

After a quick dry-off, Caroline shoved her legs into the yoga pants and T-shirt she’d left on shore and tied her wet hair into a knot. The humiliation of getting caught would not derail her. Not now. They had a case to solve and limited time to do it. Any juvenile jokes Brice might throw at her—men were dumb that way—would have to wait.

Plus, she was way beyond putting up with crap from anyone.

Not waiting for Mitch, she marched to the camper. “What’s up?”

Brice swung around, eyeballed her wet hair and winked. “Too bad about the missing shower, huh?”

“Brice,” she said, “one more snide comment and I will lay you out right here.”

Mitch stepped next to her. “I’d take her word for it.”

“You two think I’m blind? The second you came to my door I knew you were either banging each other or would be soon.”

Caroline closed her eyes, fought the humiliation of failing to hide her feelings for Mitch. “Uh,
Ethan
?”

Brice held open the camper door. “We need to call him back. I wanted us all on the call.”

Inside the camper, the three of them squeezed into the seating area where Brice parked at the small, two-person table while Mitch dropped into one of the two bench seats. Caroline took the opposite seat while Brice dialed Ethan and put the phone on speaker.

“Hey,” Ethan said.

“Hey,” Brice said. “Sorry about that. We’re all here now.”

“My fucking mind is blown right now.”

The gravelly tone in Ethan’s voice, like glass scraping his throat raw, ripped through the phone line. Caroline gave Mitch her
what’s this now
look.

Mitch sat forward. “What happened?”

“I made a few calls. Tommy was part of Operation Bulletproof, and it was indeed, a secret taskforce, very hush, hush. One of the agents in my office is still in contact with one of the taskforce members. He was sent to one of the New York field offices after Tommy died. They wanted that son of a bitch as far from this as possible.”

“Sure seems that way,” Caroline said. “You spoke to him?”

“Yeah, half hour ago. I asked him about Lando. Hold on to your panties, kids, because Lando was Tommy’s
informant
.”

Caroline snapped her gaze to Brice, not really looking at him, but having him directly across from her put him in her sight line. What the hell was going on with this case? Tommy was killed by a gun bought buy a straw buyer who was his
informant
?

Movement from the corner of her eye drew her attention to Mitch. He wrapped his hand around his forehead and squeezed with such force his nail beds filled with color. “Informant for what exactly?”

Good question. Caroline had a few more. First off, if Lando was a known straw buyer and, according to Marty, had been buying excessive quantities of guns, did the taskforce knowingly let those guns walk? All of them?

Couldn’t be.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Ethan let out a long sigh. “With the case sealed and the taskforce members scattered, it’s going to take some time.”

Caroline was still trying to wrap her brain around it, but it made sense. “Tommy knew this guy was buying all these guns legitimately and turning them over to some gun runner, so he didn’t arrest him and turned him into a snitch instead?”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “According to my guy, Tommy and some of the taskforce agents started moaning about the number of guns Lando and a few others were buying. They were told to stand down.”

“Why?”

“No idea. My guy said hundreds, if not thousands of guns walked. Without busting the straw buyers, the taskforce had no way of tracking all of those weapons. It’s a clusterfuck.”

Caroline sat back and stared up at the top of the camper where a streak of dirt ran at least three feet. She needed to back up and start at the beginning. See if she could follow the timeline and understand where it all started. “What was the point of this taskforce?”

“Ha,” Ethan said. “Get this. New Mexico is trying to crack down on gunrunning. What the agent told me is that the taskforce was supposed to follow the guns until they reached whoever the big dog was. Someone higher than Balboa even. The fucking genius who developed this plan didn’t count on losing track of the guns before they reached the big dog.”

Mitch let out a derisive grunt. “That fucking genius happen to belong to the Justice Department? As the parent of ATF, in their infinite wisdom—because hey, we all know government agencies
never
screw up—they approved a plan to allow legally bought weapons to be transferred into the hands of criminals. And agents were forced to let it happen?”

“Pretty much.”

Mitch slouched back, shaking his head and Caroline, she…she didn’t know what to do. Or say. Thousands of illegal weapons had been unleashed on the general public. Who knew how many people were dead because of it? At least one person.

Tommy.

Kemp might be two.

Buzzing anger slashed at her, making her skin burn. Stay calm. She glanced down at her foot, tapped it one, two, three, four times. All she needed to do was get through this call and then she could spew.

“Okay,” she said. “We need to find out who authorized this plan. Did it come from New Mexico ATF or Justice?”

“Why do we care?” Mitch asked. “Both organizations are responsible, aren’t they? And we still don’t know who actually shot Tommy.”

Caroline met his eyes. “We’ll find him and see justice done, I promise you. It starts with investigating who initiated this operation. I think Tommy is dead because of whatever he was doing on this taskforce. He may have been killed by whomever Lando turned that gun over to, but ATF allowed that gun to walk. We have to make sure ATF—and Justice—are held accountable, because in the end, it’s not just about nailing the bastard who shot Tommy.”

Mitch nodded. “We have to clear his name.”

“And make sure this never happens again.”

Chapter Thirteen

Caroline threw the camper door open and stepped out into the still oppressively hot night air. Needing to walk off some energy, that buzzing anger flick-flick-flicking at her from inside, she marched the length of the camper and turned back.

On her second lap, Mitch appeared in the doorway. “What’s up?”

“I can’t believe it. An agent is dead because ATF let a straw buyer turn over an assault weapon. Isn’t this the thing we’re fighting against? I mean, for God’s sake! How the hell does ATF stand back and let thousands of weapons be turned over to criminals? Thugs?
Murderers
?” She waved her hands. “It’s so stupid. And Donaldson let Tommy walk right into this snake pit.”

“Because he’s a dickweed, Caroline.”

Oh, and here he went on the ‘Donaldson’ bender. Just what she needed. To get him started too. “Mitch! We all know he’s a dickweed. The problem is, he’s always been a dickweed that made sure not to put his agents in obvious danger. He’s a lot of things, but he’s FBI to his bones. I don’t see him sacrificing the lives of his people.”

Mitch shrugged. He was so pigheaded when it came to Donaldson that he refused to acknowledge her point. Fine. He didn’t need to. What did it matter when Tommy was dead? A good agent and his superiors put the weapon that killed him into a murderer’s hands.

Dear God.

She started pacing again. “We need to find out for sure who approved this operation. With all the secrecy, New Mexico ATF could be going rogue here.”

“Don’t tell me, we’re making a list.”

“Damned straight. Think about this. Who’s the federal law enforcement officer in each state?”

Mitch shrugged. “The U.S. Attorney.”

Caroline stopped walking and stared up at Mitch. “Who, in this case, is…?”

For three, maybe four seconds, Mitch stood staring out at the night, and Caroline waited. She knew him. Not just in a carnal way, but in all the ways that count when two people worked a dangerous job together. She’d learned his thought process, the way his mind ticked off ideas and filtered them.
Come on, Mitch, you’ve got this.

In the darkness, with only the interior camper light illuminating him, she saw it, the recognition. That slight widening of his eyes before he snapped his fingers.
There we go.

“Atkinson. Brother to…” he jiggled his fingers.

“Will Atkinson. The ATF agent who visited Marty. His brother is George, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico.”

“The question is, does brother number one, the brother responsible for prosecuting federal cases, the one who can intercept weapons illegally transferred via a straw buyer or are part of a gun trafficking scheme, know that brother number two was strong-arming gun shop owners to let the guns walk?”

Brice appeared behind Mitch and Mitch stepped off the landing. “So, what? Now we have to dig up dirt on a U.S. Attorney?”

Caroline moved around Mitch to Brice. “Is it possible the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico didn’t know about this taskforce? ATF may be under Justice, but they don’t report to the New Mexico U.S. Attorney. He could be in the dark about what his brother, the ATF agent, was doing.”

“Seriously? You don’t think one brother knew what the other was doing?”

Mitch shrugged. “Could happen.”

Brice held up his phone. “Let’s ask Ethan. He’s so fired up, he’ll get right on it.”

Behind her, Mitch scraped his sneaker over the ground. “Before we get too deep into that, and discover this guy’s in on it and then we’re blown
—
let’s check him out. Ethan’ll know if he’s a stand-up guy. If he is, maybe Brice and I can talk to him.”

Caroline spun on him. “You’re insane! The second you step into his office, he’ll arrest you.”

“I can talk to him though,” Brice said. “Maybe I call him. Tell him I’m doing a follow-up post for my blog. See if he’ll comment. On or off the record.”

Caroline waved him off. “He won’t comment. I can guarantee that.”

“Yeah, but we may get a feel for what he knows. Or doesn’t know.”

“And,” Mitch said, “we can put some heat on his brother.”

The next morning, Mitch felt like he’d been run over. Twice. By a dump truck. He’d ended up sleeping on the camper floor instead of outside, but he might as well have slept on a bed of rocks. He’d tossed and turned, driven crazy by the ideas spinning in his head, and by the soft, sexy sounds Caroline made in her sleep. If only Brice hadn’t interrupted their late-night swim.

At least there was coffee. Mitch washed his face in the lake and stared out at the water. The previous night’s memories of Caroline naked on the shore made his cock twitch.

She was all business this morning, brushing her hair into a ponytail and making coffee while Brice went into town for food supplies.
Too damn perky.
Even with the perfect opportunity opening up for them, his guess would be she had no interest in picking up where they left off last night.

Nope. First thing on her list today was listening in when Brice called George Atkinson, the New Mexico U.S. Attorney. Mitch didn’t know whether to hope the guy did or didn’t know what his brother had been doing with ATF and the taskforce, but either way, he smelled a rat. A couple of them, in fact.

Tommy was killed with a gun the ATF let walk
. No wonder there was a goddamn cover-up. And there was no freakin’ way he was letting them label Tommy a traitor just so they could save their own asses.

He tamped down the pain and anger, locking them away. His stomach growled. First thing on
his
list? Breakfast. A full stomach would help him focus when Brice made his call. He wished he could be there to study the attorney’s body language, but beggars—or in his case, fugitives—couldn’t be choosers.

After that, Mitch wanted to go back and visit Maria. Even empty, his gut was never wrong, and since yesterday, it had been nagging at him about her. She knew more than she had let on. Good Cop and Bad Cop needed another go at her, especially now that they knew Jesse had been Tommy’s informant. Had Jesse pulled the trigger? He’d bought the gun that killed Tommy, and then disappeared after Tommy’s murder. Odds were, he was either responsible or dead. If he wasn’t the one who set up Tommy, then someone, possibly whoever Jesse was buying for, had discovered Tommy was FBI and that Jesse was feeding him info. In that case, Jesse was either running for his life or had already met his Maker.

Both options sucked.

The sound of the truck returning made Mitch turn. Sure enough, Brice hopped out, arms filled with grocery sacks. He looked as tired and strung out as Mitch felt.

Neither man spoke as they headed into the camper and began unloading the groceries. Caroline moved with her normal energized efficiency, bumping into Mitch more than she avoided him, breaking out donuts and milk.

“No fruit?” she quizzed Brice. “What about yogurt?”

He gave her a tired look. “Really? That’s what you’re worried about this morning?”

She narrowed her eyes, and Mitch thought,
oh shit
, but she held her tongue, and made work of handing Mitch a napkin. She’d definitely requested fruit and yogurt when she’d handed over cash to help with the cost of the food.
She’ll nail him later, just watch.

But maybe she wouldn’t. If Mitch had said that to her, she would have laid him out. Brice didn’t have a history with her, and Caroline, for all her attitude was deep down a team player.