Redemption Key (A Dani Britton Thriller) (34 page)

“Put down your weapons.” Ned sounded calm, looking from Oren to the kid, keeping his gun trained on the old man with the shotgun. “Neither one of you is good enough to beat me. I can take you both out with a headshot before either of you gets me in your sights. Don’t test me.”

Oren thought he probably spoke the truth. Oh well.

Dani hefted the stool over Bermingham’s head. “Did you know?”

The Canadian fell back on the ground. “Did I know what?”

“Not you. Mr. Randolph. Did you know what was on that boat?”

It took a second for Oren to realize she was speaking to him, another second to be able to take his eyes off of Ned’s gun. “No. I still don’t know.”

“It’s little kids. They’re selling little kids.”

“He knew,” Bermingham said. “He’s done business with the Wheelers for years.”

“What?! I didn’t know, Dani.” Oren could see in her eyes that she needed to decide if he was telling the truth. The idea that she could doubt him about something like that made him forget about the gun, forget about the bleeding men in front of him. “Jesus, Dani, you think I knew? You think I’d allow that? What kind of man do you think—”

He knew the instant he made his own mistake, letting the gun drop down toward the bar.

Ned’s bullet threw him back against the mirror, glass and liquor exploding out behind him as his head smashed against the shelves. He couldn’t understand why he could see his feet until he realized the shot had blown him back onto the cooler, seating him in a puddle of blood and rum. Then he felt the pain.

He couldn’t hear the screaming for a while. Time got funny, everyone moving but nobody leaving their spot.

Holy shit, it hurt.

Dani almost dropped the stool when Ned shot Mr. Randolph. Choo-Choo flinched and as he’d promised, Ned had his weapon trained on him in no time. She heard Caldwell shouting to his friend but Mr. Randolph didn’t say anything. He just panted, clutching his bloody shoulder, staring wide-eyed at nothing.

“Stop! Stop!” Bermingham held up his hands, screaming at Ned. He pointed to Choo-Choo. “Put your weapon down.”

Dani saw that high color on Choo-Choo’s face. He’d told her the next time he got shot would be the last time. He obviously meant it because he didn’t turn away from Ned.

Bermingham sat back on his elbows, his face sweaty with pain and effort. She knew that leg had to be alive with agony, the twist of his knee getting no relief with his foot nailed to the floor. But he looked at her like he controlled the room, like she was the one trapped. She wanted to kick him.

“Don’t do this, Dani. Put the chair down. Tell your buddy to put down the gun.”

“Fuck you, Bermingham. You have no idea what I can do.”

“Is that right?” He smiled at her. “You think you’re protected? Huh? Let me tell you something. Whoever is pulling your strings, whoever’s keeping your secret, they won’t be able to help you here. If you’re the reason twenty-five stolen kids die on that boat, nobody will be able to protect you.”

“Protect me?” She laughed. “You think someone’s protecting me?”

“I do. I don’t know who they are but they don’t have enough juice for this. Not this.”

Choo-Choo spit on the floor. “Oh look, Dani,” he said with a sneer. “Another big shot on the field. Another all-powerful force. Gee, I hope we don’t get in trouble for this.”

She held her friend’s stare long enough to see he shared her rage. He was willing to go all the way with this. Ned could shoot her or he could shoot Choo-Choo but he couldn’t get them both at once. She reared back with the stool. “You’re nothing but a two-bit child-molesting thug.”

“No, Dani, no!” Bermingham held his hands out to block the blow. “I’m with the FBI. I’m with the FBI!”

“Bullshit!” Mr. Randolph sputtered, making Dani jump. His voice was reedy with pain. “He shot Caldwell. I saw him. He shot him.”

“If I hadn’t, Juan would have done it for me. I grazed him, a flesh wound.” Bermingham looked from Dani to Caldwell. “You think I couldn’t have killed him? I was a foot away. It was the only way to keep him alive.”

Caldwell pounded on the floor with his fist. “It’s true, Dani. It’s true. Bermingham . . . he told me.” He tried to sit up but failed. “He said I’d feel it on the Richter scale. My boss, my SAC, is Tomblin Richter. That’s when I knew. Dani,” his voice trembled. “Don’t.”

Bermingham looked up at her. “I swear to you, Dani. I’m here with the FBI. Joint task force. We’ve been trying to get Vincente on human trafficking and this was it. We need the Wheelers alive to turn state’s evidence against Vincente. Without them, the case falls apart. We need the Wheelers alive. You already killed Joaquin. Don’t make this any worse.”

Oren blinked sweat out of his eyes, watching Dani holding that heavy stool. Damn, she was strong. Through the pain and shock, he tried to make sense of what was happening. Caldwell said Bermingham and Ned were FBI; Caldwell believed them. That made it true, right?
He could see the doubt all over Dani’s face. He wanted to keep watching, to help somehow, but Oren could feel darkness washing up around the edges of his mind.

Dani should believe Bermingham. Put the chair down. The Canadian seemed to be saying something along those lines. Oren struggled to focus.

“Listen to me, Dani. I’m with the FBI. You know, the good guys.”

Funny, Oren thought before he drifted off, Dani sure looked like she wanted to smash him with that chair.

“You know, the good guys.”

That was the last thing she heard. The adrenaline-and-rage whine in her ears grew deafening and in her mind’s eye she could see how beautiful the heavy wooden chair would look smashing through Bermingham’s pretty, pretty face.

The good guys.

Her muscles sang as she swung the stool back, the air alive with noise and light. Then the chair was gone, her hands were empty. Choo-Choo had yanked the stool out of her hands, grabbing her wrists. Was he speaking? No. He just shook his head.

The men with the guns and body armor were speaking. Flooding the deck. Aiming their guns at her.

Shit.

Dade County Jail, Miami, Florida

Friday, August 23

2:18am, 79° F

“Take the cuffs off of her. She’s not under arrest.”

Dani didn’t bother to thank the officer who uncuffed her. Nobody had spoken a word to her since they’d put her in the holding cell. Bermingham swung on crutches, lowering himself into the chair opposite her at the scarred metal table. He waited until the door closed to speak.

“Talk to me. It’s just us now.”

Dani nodded at the mirrored glass behind him. “Just you and me and the entire police force of the state of Florida.”

“No,” he said. “It’s just us. Cameras are off; the room is empty. I made sure of it.”

“Well aren’t you a big shot? Whoever you are.”

He folded his hands in front of him, looking her straight in the eye. “My name is James Tucker. I’m a senior agent in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

“You’re a Mountie?”

He grinned, those dimples popping out just as deep as she remembered them. “Want me to put on the hat?” She couldn’t help but laugh. It was just too absurd.

“I’ve been undercover as Tucker Bermingham for two years, targeting human trafficking coming up from the Caribbean. We’ve had our eye on Vincente for a long time and finally got him to bite. It wasn’t easy putting this operation together, teaming up with the FBI. It took special permission from the Attorney General. I’m here operating under an MLAT, Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.”

She sighed. “Should I be taking notes?”

“Maybe I should be.” He tapped his fingers on the manila file folder in front of him. “We went through a lot of trouble to set this up. We didn’t know how wide Vincente’s team was on this job. We knew the Wheelers—they were a no-brainer—but we had to be sure how involved your boss was, and his friend, Caldwell. We had to be sure the local office kept him out of the loop. We didn’t want him getting wind of the operation in case he was dirty.”

“Was he?”

“No. We’ve come to believe your boss wasn’t either.”

She smirked. “Shame about having to shoot them.”

“The only thing we couldn’t figure out was you. We had background checks on everyone within twenty miles of Jinky’s. I knew what Oren Randolph’s piss smelled like.”

“Vodka, I’d wager.”

He ignored her. “When I heard Juan Wheeler say your name over the phone, we searched for you too. Danielle Kathleen Britton of Flat Road, Oklahoma. That’s all we got.”

She smiled, hiding her damp palms underneath the table. “Good, clean living.”

“And then the Attorney General of the United States of America called my boss and told us to stop running a background check on you. No reason. No options. We were going into this whole operation with a great big question mark right in the middle of it. Two years of my life, Dani, I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe Simon Vincente. We were this close to getting him. He’s never been this
hands-on in a deal, and he was ours. We could have turned the Wheelers and he would have been ours.”

“And all you had to do was put the lives of twenty-five little kids at risk.”

“Don’t kid yourself.” He leaned across the table into her face. She didn’t back off. “Twenty-five kids is an afternoon to Vincente. He’s got kiddie porn rings on every continent. He sells kids the way Tim Horton’s sells doughnuts. Human life is nothing to him and we could have had him.”