“Uh, sure. Am I in trouble? I’m still trying to triangulate that call—”
“You’re not in trouble. What else are you working on right now?”
He perched on the edge of the chair next to Selene. “I’ve still got programs running info on the documented vehicles from the parking garage this morning, but I’m working on a—”
Wesley held up a hand, not needing a rambling explanation, and he knew that was where this was headed. “Hand it off to someone else. I need you to run the financials of Tucker Pankov, Cole Erickson, Paxton Brooks, and Forest Kane.”
“The bombers from this morning?”
Wesley glanced at Selene, then back at the analyst. “I don’t know that they’re what the media are saying. I need all the info you can gather on them. More than the stuff in their files.” He cleared his throat. “I also need you to run the information on five other names. All DEA employees, and I need you to do it covertly. They can’t know we’re looking into them. If they have an offshore account, if they’re having an affair, I want to know about it. Any cases they worked on with Max Southers, flag for me. No detail is too small.”
Elliott nodded slowly. “I might have to break some privacy laws.”
“Do what you have to. I’ll take the heat if it comes down to it, but you know how to cover your tracks.” None of this would be on the record. Wesley just needed info so he could start unraveling this mess.
At that Elliott relaxed and ran a hand over the zigzag pattern of tight, short braids on his head. A Princeton graduate, he was a little eccentric and fit right in with the team Wesley ran. “Am I doing this alone?”
“You want a partner?”
“Depends on how fast you want the info and which group you want me to focus on more.”
That was another thing Wesley liked about the guy. He admitted when he needed assistance. For Elliott it was about getting the job done, not about accolades.
Both groups were important, but Wesley needed the info on the four men who’d taken Karen—and he sure as hell didn’t believe she hadn’t been kidnapped despite what she’d said. “Pull in a partner. Your choice but let me know who and make sure they know this stays between us. You focus on the first four. Time is critical on this. You’ve got one hour to give me a detailed report.”
Elliott was gone in seconds. Before the door had clicked shut behind him, Wesley was calling Ortiz. He had to set up a team long before Pankov and his guys showed up at that warehouse.
“Should I tell Detective Portillo about this?” Selene asked as the phone rang in Wesley’s hand.
Wesley paused, then shook his head. “No. The local PD has Karen’s picture. If someone sees her they’ll contact you. I don’t want to publicly announce she’s with them.” Because if Pankov was telling the truth and he and his guys had been set up by dirty DEA agents, he didn’t want Karen becoming collateral damage.
Chapter 8
Redacted: text that has been removed or obscured from a file before public viewing. Often seen in classified texts.
“Here,” Tucker said, handing Karen the switchblade he’d taken from her that morning.
Surprised, she took it and slid it into her jacket pocket. They were in yet another vehicle, this time a ten-year-old truck with tinted windows. There had been multiple hidden vehicles at that property. “You trust me not to stab you?”
He snorted and shot her a sideways glance. “You could try.” It wasn’t exactly arrogance in his tone, but a certainty of his abilities.
A part of her she didn’t want to acknowledge thought that certainty was sexy. But being aware of Tucker like that seemed insane, even if she knew it was just biological. Still, it was hard to deny he was a very compelling man. “If I hadn’t seen you in action, I might think you were crazy to give me this.”
He was silent a moment, glancing in the rearview mirror as they neared an exit. They’d been driving mostly in silence for the last hour and she could sense the tension rolling off him. “Who’s Clint?” he asked, surprising her.
At the mention of her brother’s name, she stiffened. “How do you know that name?”
“It’s on the blade.”
Of course he would have noticed; she wasn’t thinking. She immediately settled back against the seat. Her brother had had the handle engraved. “Right. Ah, my brother. He died in Afghanistan.”
At that, Tucker looked at her again, this time with compassion in those blue eyes. She was starting to be able to read his expressions, however subtle. While he’d first scared the hell out of her, now that she knew who he really was, it was easier to relax around him.
He was still intense and his big size was a little intimidating, but she wasn’t scared of him anymore. Maybe that made her naive, but he’d gone out of his way to make her feel at ease. And there was that part of her she was trying so hard not to be aware of that was . . . very curious about Tucker in a purely feminine sense.
“I lost a lot of friends over there. I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She nodded, not sure what else to say. Clint had been the only family she had—the only family that mattered anyway—so when she talked about him it tugged open old wounds. Right now she was grateful she had “family” looking for her even if Tucker would be letting her go. With her degree she could have taken any number of jobs, but she’d chosen to work for Wesley because, like her brother, she believed in protecting her country. Today she knew without a doubt that she’d made the best decision because Wesley and her friends were truly more than just coworkers.
“What branch were you in?” It hadn’t been in the file he’d given her. Or maybe it had, but some information had been redacted.
He shot her another one of those sideways glances that told her the answer without him saying a word.
“Marines?”
He was half grinning, the action completely softening his face in a way she hadn’t expected. “You know it.”
“Freaking Marines,” she murmured. She worked with a lot of former military types and she could usually tell which branch they’d been. “Cole was too?”
He nodded. “Yeah. We were in boot camp together.”
“You guys seem close.” She wasn’t ashamed to admit that she was information gathering. After this mess she’d be going through multiple debriefings, so learning as much as she could about these men would be important. But even as she had the thought, she knew she wasn’t just fishing for information. She wanted to know more about Tucker—and she refused to dig deeper on the why.
“He’s like a brother to me.”
“A little like a younger brother, I imagine,” she said.
Tucker steered toward the next exit. She tried not to watch how the muscles in his forearms flexed, but he’d shoved his sleeves up and it was difficult not to notice how very male he was. “Why do you say that?”
“The way they all listened to you.” The other three men in that cabin were clearly just as trained and intimidating, but when Tucker had given an order, they did what he said.
“You shouldn’t jog by yourself so early in the morning,” he said suddenly, clearly deciding to ignore her last statement.
The abrupt change in topic jolted her. “So says my kidnapper.”
“Exactly. The bear spray and knife are good, but it was too damn early for you to be out by yourself.” His frown deepened and he sounded almost protective. “Maybe you should use the gym in your condo instead.”
The protective tone made something feminine in her flare to life, but it also annoyed her. “I live in a safe neighborhood and I’ve never had a problem before. And if it hadn’t been a team of trained professionals, I wouldn’t have been taken. I could have taken on just you with the bear spray.” She didn’t need or want advice from anyone. Not when she’d been taking care of herself for a long damn time. No one without training could have gotten away from him and his team this morning.