Cold Spite, page 2
part #1 of Cold Justice® - Most Wanted Series
Her eyes widened in horror at the slur. The hell? “He’s twice the man your coonass will ever be.”
He barked out a laugh that held zero humor. “Being called a coonass is a compliment where I come from.”
She tried to pull away, but his grip tightened to bruising pressure.
“Ricky is my boyfriend.” She tried to sound indignant, but she’d be lying if she wasn’t a little disconcerted.
“You don’t need a boyfriend, cher. You need a man.” His fingers inched toward her crotch, and she jerked away and found herself wedged into the corner staring at this dickwad and breathing heavily.
“You heard what he’ll do to you if he finds out you touched me.”
“I’m not scared of Ricky fucking Alonso.”
“I’m not a cheater.” Unlike you. He had a wife and young kid at home. Not to mention the whole smuggling drugs and possibly other things across the border after pledging the oath of allegiance.
His grin was surprisingly attractive but didn’t quite meet those cold eyes. “Come on, Lacey. A little fun can’t hurt anyone.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry for calling you a whore.” His cheek pulled one side of his lips into a practiced smile. “I admit I was jealous. I hated seeing the greasy prick put his hands on you.”
There was nothing greasy or sleazy about FBI Special Agent Casta Demarco, but perhaps she was playing this wrong. They needed to arrest Scanlon on the US side of the border. And a guy like Scanlon would appreciate having his ego stroked.
She bit her lip, let her expression turn uncertain. “Ricky doesn’t like sharing.”
He lowered his voice. “Ricky doesn’t have to know, cher. This can be between you and me. Our little secret.”
The idea turned her already sensitive stomach. The last week or so she hadn’t been able to keep anything down. Nerves at the culmination of a six-month-long undercover operation where she’d played Ricky Alonso’s flaky American girlfriend, crossing the border every weekend to visit a man who’d spent almost a year working his way up to a position of power inside the cartel.
“You think he isn’t banging a local girl when you aren’t in town?” Scanlon gave a loud whoop. “Funny, you don’t look like a dumb blonde.”
She hunched her shoulders and pouted. “He wouldn’t do that to me. He loves me.”
Scanlon shot her an incredulous look. “What does love have to do with anything? Men like to fuck beautiful women. It’s the natural order of things.”
She wondered if he cared how willing those women were. There was something predatory about Joseph Scanlon. The butterfly knife that Cas—Ricky—had slipped into her back pocket pressed into her glute muscle.
“So”—she caught her bottom lip—“you think I’m beautiful?”
His gaze slipped from the heavy traffic to run up her bare legs to settle on her breasts through the flimsy shirt she wore.
“Everyone thinks you’re beautiful.” He stroked a surprisingly gentle finger down the smooth skin of her shin. “So how about I come up for a while after I drop you off? You’ll still have plenty of time to meet your girlfriend.” His warm fist curled tightly around the bones of her ankles, like a manacle.
“What about the merchandise?” She glanced at the border guard booth they were slowly approaching.
“It’ll be fine for half an hour.”
“Half an hour? That’s all you got in you?” She smiled coyly.
He shifted in his seat. “I need to drop the shipment off and get home.”
“To your wife.”
Scanlon grunted.
“She won’t mind you coming up for half an hour?” She shifted in her seat and watched him eye her breasts.
“She won’t mind what she doesn’t know.” He sounded so sure of that. “And ain’t no one stupid enough to steal my truck, but I have a tracker on it, just in case.”
Her eyes widened. “You have a tracker on your own vehicle?”
“Just in case anyone gets any stupid ideas.” Scanlon’s vehicle was next in line at the border control. “Now you keep jiggling those fine titties and smiling with that pretty smile of yours at the nice man, cher.” He pulled on a ball cap that had NAVY in bold type across the front. And she noticed he leaned his elbow on the window, making sure his bone frog tattoo—an unofficial Navy SEAL insignia—was in the border agent’s face.
The stern-faced guard checked their docs and, after a perfunctory couple of questions, let them through. She didn’t have to jiggle a damned thing.
“Where’s your apartment?”
“Ricky isn’t going to like it.”
“I got to drop you off, don’t I? Anyway, you leave Ricky to me.”
She gave him the address. She went quiet because that’s how Lacey would react. Lacey Reed would absolutely let this asshole screw her to get him out of her hair. And then beg Ricky for forgiveness if he ever found out. It wasn’t like she had much of a choice, a girl like that. She used her body to get what she wanted. Her power was in the men she manipulated. At least, that was Delilah’s cover. That was Lacey’s backstory. Always fucking the wrong guy. And being screwed over.
Scanlon reached Lacey’s apartment and parked in the shadow of a dying palo verde tree. She went to get out, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her half over the console, mashing her breast with his meaty hand, exposing her nipple to whoever was watching. He kissed her roughly, forcing her to open her mouth. She made herself relax. Prayed no one overreacted.
He started to fumble with the button on her shorts. She jerked away, thinking she might have to pull that butterfly knife on him if she wasn’t careful. Threaten to cut his dick off.
She wiped her throbbing lips and hid her disgust. “Let’s go inside. We don’t want to attract any undue attention, remember?”
Scanlon rolled his shoulders in an arrogant shrug.
She pushed open the door and looked around, the way she would if she was worried about anyone seeing Scanlon enter her apartment.
Her heart beat a little faster as she spotted a guy reclining in his car, wearing sunglasses as he listened to music.
The smell of garbage wafted from a nearby dumpster. She stood in the parking lot and fumbled in her bag for her keys. Scanlon got out of his truck and slammed the door shut.
He came around the back and she turned, dropping the bag and holding up her badge with one hand and Glock 23 with the other.
His wide-eyed surprise was gratifying.
“FBI. Hands on your head.” Her heart was pounding, and acid sat under her breastbone, but her gaze didn’t waver from the hulking Navy SEAL. “I repeat. FBI. Put your hands on the back of your head, Joseph Scanlon, and then down on your knees.”
His lip curled in a sneer. “If you want me on my knees, you need to be on your back, cher.” He lunged for her, and her hesitation to shoot the bastard cost her. He tackled her, knocking the weapon to one side. She dropped her badge and grabbed at the knife Cas had given her as Scanlon slammed her to the ground. The skin of her back grazed and burned against the rough asphalt. His weight crushed her ribs and winded her, but he wasn’t expecting the blade that she pressed against the vulnerable flesh next to his carotid.
He drew his hand back as if to strike her.
“I gave you one free pass.” She locked onto his gaze and let him see the contempt she felt for him as she pressed the steel close enough to sting his skin. “You won’t get another.”
He hesitated and then finally, the sound of footsteps running out of the nearby building assailed their ears.
The agent formerly reclining in his car, stood over them with his gun pointed at Scanlon. “Get off her, you sonofabitch.”
Scanlon reared up onto his knees as members of the Hostage Rescue Team dragged him backwards off of her and cuffed his hands behind his back. She rolled onto her side and climbed unsteadily to her feet, closing the handles of the knife around the blade, and slipping it back into her pocket.
“Your boyfriend isn’t going to be very happy with you, you traitorous bitch.” Scanlon spat out. “Nor the cartel.”
“Oh, that’s rich.” She gave him a feral smile as she picked up her badge and her gun off the ground. There was a scratch on the barrel now which pissed her off. “Break the law, pay the price. Can’t wait to see the look on your wife’s face when she hears how much your marriage vows mean to you.”
His eyes changed then. Filled with a cold hatred that sent a shiver of fear down her spine. “Leave my wife out of this.”
She tried moving her shoulders. The flesh burned, but she didn’t think any bones were broken. “Pretty sure you’re the one who brought her into this, not me. You came on to me, remember?”
She bent her head and leaned forward as one of the techs came to collect her necklace and purse for the camera and mic fitted inside. “I guess she can make up her own mind when she hears the tapes.”
With a roar Scanlon broke free of the men detaining him and charged her again. The tech jumped aside. She feinted left at the last moment, and Scanlon crashed to the hot tarmac. A heavy-set operator placed his boot between the man’s shoulder blades and shifted his weight to keep him there.
Delilah walked over and crouched so she could look directly into Scanlon’s furious face. She shook her head. “I don’t get it. You had everything. Why did you decide to betray your colleagues, your wife, your country?”
“I didn’t betray anyone, bitch.”
“Well, I guess bitch is a step up from whore. And a jury gets to decide the rest.”
“I’m going to make you pay for this.”
“Threatening a Federal Agent? Way to pile on the charges, pal.”
“I’m going to rape you and kill you and laugh while I’m doing it. I’ll smash your skull in so no one can recognize that pretty face of yours.”
She straightened and hooked her hands into the back loops of her jean shorts. “Whatever gets you off in prison. Enjoy because it’s the closest you’re gonna get to touching a woman for the next ten years.” She made light of it even though his threat curled inside her and unexpectedly made fear spurt. She stood back as two HRT operators hauled the disgraced Navy SEAL to his feet and handed him off to NCIS agents, who read him his rights. The FBI had agreed to hand him over to the Navy to prosecute.
She exhaled a long breath as she watched him being led away.
“You okay?” the FBI agent asked as Scanlon was loaded into the back of a black van.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Nothing a shower and gallon of mouthwash won’t cure.”
Her eyes caught on a beaten-up red Camaro as it cruised into the parking lot. Her mouth watered as she watched Cas climb out, those long legs and lean frame looking oh so good. He stared at her for a heated moment with yellow eyes that shone like gold, scanning her for damage which he thankfully couldn’t see. He exchanged a greeting with one of the Hostage Rescue Team operators who he slapped on the back like an old friend.
Her heart sank a little.
He’d applied for HRT and had been accepted into their prestigious trials which started next week. That was partly why they’d made the arrests today. But after nearly twelve long and dangerous months, it was time to pull Cas out from his undercover role. It was affecting him, giving him dark thoughts and self-doubts. Plus, the investigation had run its course.
And now she was going to have to resign herself to a long-distance relationship because there was no way Cas, himself a former Navy SEAL, wouldn’t sail through HRT’s selection process with flying colors.
Her heart clenched and that familiar nausea washed through her because she loved this man so much she wasn’t sure she could stand being so many thousand miles away from him.
She planned to put in for a transfer, but she hadn’t told Cas that yet.
Her father was an Assistant Director in FBI HQ, and she would absolutely, for once, use her connections to get a position commuting distance to Quantico. She didn’t have to see Cas every day or even every week, but as often as they could make it work with busy schedules.
Even if she took a step down on the career ladder it would be worth it. She needed this man in her life. She wanted to spend more than a few stolen weekends with him. She wanted time when they weren’t pretending to be other people. When they weren’t worried one wrong word would get them both killed.
“Agent Quinn.”
She snapped her head to one side to look at the other agent. His tone suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d said her name.
“Yes?”
“Let me give you a ride into the office to get an official statement regarding today’s events and then you can go home and get some rest.”
She nodded and then shot Cas a rueful look as she followed the agent to his car.
Cas would also need to be debriefed. But she’d see him later. They had all the time in the world now.
Chapter Three
After a long day, Cas came out of the interview room. He wanted to find Delilah. Make sure she was okay. Instead, he bumped straight into the Special Agent in Charge of the San Diego Office, Peter Ridgeway. Ridgeway wasn’t his favorite person, but then Cas preferred the people on the ground doing the grunt work rather than the pen pushers and administrators.
Cas was officially based out of the LA office, but he’d barely started work there before being fingered by the undercover division for this assignment. He’d met his own SAC a total of two times and doubted the guy would recognize him in a crowd. Ridgeway though, he liked to keep up with what was going on in the San Diego office and surrounding area.
Ridgeway held out his hand to shake Cas’s. “I wanted to say congratulations. Great work today.”
Cas’s brows hiked. Today? He’d been undercover for nearly a year.
“Both the Policía Federal and Policía Federal Ministerial were very happy with the information we provided. They raided the garage shortly after you left.”
Cas’s mouth tasted of sand. “Did they catch everyone?”
Ridgeway nodded. “They got them all. Ten dead. Four injured. Three arrests. No members of la Guardia Nacional or civilians were hurt. They found nearly three tons of cocaine on the premises and are hailing it as one of the biggest wins against the cartel in years…”
He kept talking, but Cas wasn’t listening.
Sickened, he closed his eyes. Ten dead? And four casualties whose wounds would likely fester in jail until they died.
“Who? Who was wounded?” he interrupted.
Ridgeway blinked, clearly taken aback.
Cas cleared his throat. “I’d like to see a list of the victims from today. Sir,” he added belatedly.
Ridgeway’s lips pursed. “I’ll have someone send it to you.”
Cas nodded. “I appreciate that. Thank you.”
Ridgeway placed his hand on Cas’s left shoulder, and it took everything in him not to violently shake him off. “Anyway, I wanted to extend my personal congratulations on a job well done. There’s a commendation in this for you, mark my words.”
The man’s eyes danced with delight. The deaths were barely a postscript on his conscience.
Cas watched the SAC stride away as if he had somewhere important to be, perhaps a press conference or a meeting with the FBI Director. Cas pulled out his personal cell. There was a missed call from Delilah, and he closed his eyes as more pain piled on.
What he was about to do would break her heart, but it was for the best. She’d find someone else. Someone better suited to the Assistant Director’s daughter—as the man in question had been keen to point out to him before his interview to get into this year’s round of the Hostage Rescue Team’s selection process.
The threat had been explicit, although the man hadn’t uttered the words. Keep seeing Delilah and Cas’s chance of getting into HRT would be zero, zilch.
So, that was his “choice.”
Be with the woman he loved knowing that it was only a matter of time before she realized for herself that their wildly differing backgrounds would never work in the real world. Or get a shot at HRT selection, which had been his dream ever since he’d met a man named Kurt Montana attached to his SEAL team, in a dusty Afghan desert.
The fight for justice, even in a war zone, had appealed to Cas’s innate sense of fairness, his sense of honor, and he’d applied for the FBI from his bunk in Kandahar. But his undercover role with the Mexican cartel hadn’t felt particularly honorable. Even though he knew the evil of the drug trade, had seen friends from his days in the foster system succumb to the lure of chemical oblivion, the stories of hardship and violence of the men he’d met in Mexico resonated. He’d been one bad decision away from that being his life. Instead, he’d been fortunate. Joining the Navy, having the aptitude for the SEALs and then the Bureau. Not everyone was that lucky.
Funny, he’d always thought being lucky would feel good.
Hotness slithered through his gut.
He texted Killion asking for a breakdown of what had happened in Mexico and exactly who’d died. The thought of Pedro and a couple of the others being hurt cut deep. If they were injured, perhaps he could figure out a way to get them treatment, or possibly extradited to the US. Perhaps he could spin it so Pedro could turn state’s evidence in exchange for more information on his brother’s role in the cartel.
His hands shook as he read Killion’s reply. A list of names and photos of the dead. Saliva flooded his mouth as an image of Pedro flashed onto the screen. Blood dribbled out of his mouth, and his eyes were closed.
Bile rose up his throat, but he forced it down. Tears burned at the back of his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them fall, not when today still had more pain in store for him.
He needed to get it over with. Inflict all the punishment in one go and hope to survive the aftermath. He headed outside to the parking lot. He’d handed the Camaro back to the FBI’s carpool and picked up his truck which had been dropped off here by one of his colleagues from the undercover division.
