Breaking Away (28 page)

“Then whose credentials did he send you?”

“The credentials were bogus,” Barnet said. “We don’t know who those guys were.”

“And the men who were supposed to pick up the stones and the money?”

“There was blood at the scene, but no sign of them. Because of the bullet holes in his car, Carney’s wanted for questioning. The San Diego PD are saying it was a gang-related shooting.”

What kind of fucked-up con was Gilbert running?

“Well, he couldn’t have cleaned up the scene and fled it at the same time. So without all the info Carney sent you, you wouldn’t have a clue about what went down.”

The two remained silent.

“So the only thing you want him for is AWOL.”

“Officially,” Cooper said.

James sat back down.

“And the FBI wants him for assaulting Agent Gilbert,” Barnett added.

And Gilbert would want him dead because he knows too much
. Had he not escaped, the two hit men would have taken him out and they’d never have known what happened.

“There’s the stones he smuggled in and the money he’s confiscated. We’d like to know how he managed that before we charge him.” Barnett smirked.

James’s jaw tightened. This guy just wouldn’t give it up. “He’d worked with Rick Dobson before. He’d have trusted him. And now Dobson is dead. You going to try and pin that on Carney, too?”

Barnett shifted in his seat and looked away.

“If he should contact you again, Captain, we’d appreciate you alerting us.” Agent Cooper rose and placed her card on the desk.

He could see where this was going
. So you can wave your arms around and make him bait. I don’t think so.

“And we’d like copies of the reports you’ve compiled. They might clear Lieutenant Carney of the smuggling charge should it be filed later,” she said, her features impassive.

James rose to see them out. “We’ve run missions against the cartels before, agents. Being SEALs, our anonymity is of the highest importance. If my man’s name is released to these guys, he’ll be as good as dead. So, if you’re planning on using him as a witness—”

“We’re well aware of all this, Captain. We’ll protect his identity, but there are variables out of our control,” Cooper said.

The biggest one was Gilbert. Should the man offer up Carney’s name, the cartel would sick the dogs on him, and he’d be as good as dead. If they could find him. And so far not even the FBI had been able to do that.

And that meant all he could do was wait for Flash to make the first move.

CHAPTER 22

F
lash’s eyes narrowed against the midmorning glare. The sky hung a cloudless pale blue over the distant hills. Joy wore a sweater against the early morning spring chill as she pedaled her Big Wheel around the concrete patio at the back of the house. She rounded the edge of the slab, then disappeared out of sight as she made the circle. It was good she was up racing away on her bike like normal. Hopefully she’d forget the choking experience quicker than he and Sam would. While Sam had still been shaken as they’d waited to see a doctor at the ER, Joy had fallen asleep against his chest. Kids were so resilient. They could be at the brink one minute and taking a nap the next.

He’d seen it with Langley Marks’s kids. A wave of homesickness hit him like a punch. What he’d give to see Lang, Trish and their crew. He’d needed them. They’d been a second family. Travis and ‘Nita had been his first.

He had to get back to his team.
Back to his life.

He turned away from the window to sit down at the cheap prefab computer desk he’d bought to hold his equipment. Flash keyed in the password he needed to access Gilbert’s cell phone information. Since Gilbert hadn’t turned off the GPS function of his smartphone, Flash tracked him to a southeast area of San Diego close to his apartment.

Flash accessed the list of phone numbers Gilbert had dialed. Why didn’t he use a burner phone? Was the man nuts? Or just arrogant? Probably both.

There were no surprises. Filtering through the numbers, he recognized one. There were three calls to Kekoa Velazquez, the man who acted as the go-between for Caesar Vargas. He had no way of listening to the calls. But he could keep a record of when they had gone through. Flash jotted down a couple of unfamiliar phone numbers to trace their user identity.

Next he checked the activity on Gilbert’s home computer. It took nearly an hour to go through the emails and web searches the man had done, as every keystroke was recorded. Flash saved a few of the messages, then closed the spyware program that nestled in the coding of one of the major programs on his computer.

He accessed the video files from the computer he’d set up in the crawlspace above the apartment, used a remote site to save them, then wiped them from the crawlspace computer’s hard drive. After bouncing the feed through several remote sites so it couldn’t be traced, he downloaded them into his computer and fast-forwarded through the boring everyday movements.

At twenty-one hundred hours the day before Gilbert entered his apartment with a woman. Blonde, dressed in dark slacks and blazer and a white blouse with an open-necked collar, she stood surveying the room for a long moment with her hands on her hips, the bulge of her service revolver visible in the shoulder holster beneath her jacket because of her stance. “Damn, Eric. Think you could get anymore electronics in here?”

“I like my creature comforts when I’m home.” Gilbert approached her with a cocky walk that telegraphed his moves before he ever reached her. He cupped the back of her neck and dragged her mouth to his.

Feeling like a voyeur, Flash fast-forwarded the images, while they took each other’s clothes off and grappled.

Why would he put this woman at risk when he was screwing around with a drug cartel?

“Why am I putting Sam and Joy at risk doing the same thing?” he murmured aloud.

Flash rubbed a hand over his face. Should Gilbert and his pals find him…

When he’d signed the lease with Mrs. Andrews he hadn’t known about Sam and Joy. And now he did. He needed to find some place far, far away from them to rent. But with Sam’s ex-husband hanging like a threat over the two of them, he couldn’t walk away. He had to talk Sam into allowing him to put in an alarm system for her. Then he could at least feel she and Joy were a little safer.

The couple on the screen had progressed to the getting naked phase. Flash placed the cursor on the bar at the bottom of the screen and dragged it forward skipping the sex act. Once the woman was dressed again, he studied her. She stood almost as tall as Gilbert, her body slender and athletic. Since she carried a gun in a shoulder holster, she was probably on the job. Maybe they were just fuck-buddies and not emotionally involved. But since she was involved with Gilbert, she might know what he was up to. He saved the section of video to send to both Captain Jackson and NCIS.

A noise outside drew his attention. He closed the program and went to the window. Sam stood beside her car. She stared at the passenger side of the vehicle with her hand over her mouth. Then she pivoted and bolted back into the house. A few minutes later she returned to the porch, phone in hand.

She sat down on the steps and with her knees curled up against her chest, talking on the phone. When she hung up she laid the phone on the porch next to her and rested her head in her hands.

Her defensive posture screamed
there’s a problem
. “It’s none of your business, Flash. Stay in the apartment,” he murmured to himself. He was getting too involved with Sam and Joy. He needed to distance himself.

He went back to the computer, but the pull of curiosity and concern for Sam kept him returning to the window every few minutes. A police car pulled up the drive and his disquiet kicked up a notch.

He closed the video program, left the apartment and wandered down the stairs. Sam was nowhere in sight and he no longer heard the sound of Joy riding her bike. He meandered up to the car where one of the policemen stood. He recognized Officer Davis as one of the guys who’d responded to her call last time.

His attention swung to the passenger side of the vehicle where the cop stared. Shock held him still for a moment. Gouged into the dark blue paint in big letters stretching across the side of the car was the word ‘whore’.

“Fuck!” The word exploded from him.

“Is there anything you can tell us about this?” Davis’s solemn expression fed Flash’s building rage. “No, but I have the apartment and the garage wired with an alarm, motion sensor lights and cameras. Maybe one of the cameras caught something.”

Davis’s brows rose with interest. “Let’s go see.” He keyed his radio and told his partner where he was going.

Flash led the way up the stairs to the apartment. He sat down at the corner computer desk and called up the video from the cameras on each side of the garage. With a few keystrokes he opened the image from the west side and the video file popped up on his screen. He dragged the bar at the bottom to a time just after they’d returned home. He eased the cursor forward in tiny increments. “Mrs. Cross had to take her daughter to the emergency room last night. She choked on a hot dog and they did x-rays to make sure she didn’t have any remaining obstruction. I drove them to the hospital in her car. She was a little upset.”

“That’s probably an understatement,” the officer said. “She seems very protective of the little girl.”

“Yeah. She was pretty shaken. Her car was in the hospital parking lot until about ten thirty, when the doctor released Joy. I didn’t see any damage then. We drove back and I watched to make sure they got into the house okay, then came on up to my apartment.”

Reaching zero two hundred, movement out of the corner of the screen drew his attention and he allowed the video to play in real time. A shadow crossed in front of the screen followed by a large figure dressed in dark clothing. The motion-activated lights on that side of the house kicked on and the man broke into a run.

Flash ground his teeth. Jesus, he’d walked right onto the property. He must be losing his edge. There was a time when all it would have taken to wake him was the lights coming on. He was going to have to set an alarm to go off when they lit up.

The guy was bundled in a sweatshirt with a hood, wore gloves so even his skin color remained concealed. He ducked to the passenger side of the car and after a few minutes the lights went out. The weak streetlight at the corner of the lot was still on, but the light too dim to catch anything but the man’s occasional movements. When he next appeared from behind the car his face was in shadow and he avoided the drive.

“Shit!” The officer breathed behind his shoulder.

“I’m not done yet,” Flash said.

He took a series of stills of the video and put them up on the screen. Using photo software he infused more light into the image and enlarged it. “He’s wearing a ski mask. Damn it. But he’s got some kind of logo on his hoodie.” He kept tweaking the image over and over until the logo grew more detailed, but remained blurry.

“That’s the Cross Construction logo,” the officer said behind him.

Fuck!
“But it isn’t enough to make an arrest.”

“No. But if you give us a copy of the video and these stills, I’ll take them in and see if our lab can do anything else. You can email them to me.”

“I don’t have a thumb drive to give you but I’ll burn them, just incase.” Flash transferred the video and stills to a CD and handed it to him, then sent the images to the officer’s email address. “I’ll save it in case you need anything else.”

“Thanks. If you could talk Mrs. Cross into a security system like yours, it might help.”

“I tried when I first moved in. She was concerned about the financial aspect. Maybe now she’ll change her mind. I’ll give it another shot. And I’ll urge her to keep her car in the garage at night.”

“That would probably be a good idea.”

He’d be more watchful, too. What the fuck was wrong with him, letting his guard slip so badly? With Gilbert out there and Sam’s ex, he needed to be at DEFCON 1 all the time.

If he could get her ex on tape, then Cross would go back to jail for stalking and would be one less problem for Flash to deal with. “Let’s look at the footage from the south side of the garage facing the road. Just in case.”