Nowhere Safe

CHAPTER 3



Current Day

Atlanta, Georgia





Josh could tell by the rigid set of Sabrina Slye’s shoulders that he wasn’t going to like her news.

She wore a sand-colored jacket and skirt that softened the edges of her professional businesswoman façade. But one look in her steel-blue eyes warned that she was just as deadly in that outfit as a wolf in a red cape and hood.

He waited patiently as their waiter served Sabrina’s Boodles on the rocks. Her gaze snapped around, always cognizant of her surroundings just as he was. No observable threat lurked among the chic downtown crowd enjoying a Tuesday night meal at Ray’s In The City.

Sabrina’s favorite restaurant. Not much for socializing these days, she came here only with Josh or Dingo. She must be tired of eating take-out food, because the Slye Temp offices were twenty minutes away, much closer to the Atlanta airport where Josh’s plane had landed an hour ago.

Josh was ready for a new mission. Something with teeth that required more effort than surveillance and electronic tracking.

But even the sensitive jobs were discussed at headquarters.

Not fancy restaurants.

And she hadn’t told him to pack up his cubbyhole in Miami yet. Only that he should fly back to Atlanta for dinner tonight. But she had a brown satchel sitting in front of her that likely held files.

When the waiter walked away, Sabrina got to the point. “I may need you to stay in Miami.”

He stopped tapping his finger against his glass of scotch.

That didn’t sound like screw-his-day news, but his gut was telling him there had to be more.

And these days he paid attention to his gut.

Josh had just endured fourteen weeks behind desks and stuck to computers in Miami, under the guise of being an FBI computer forensics investigator assigned to a compact DEA task force focused on designer drugs. A mole within the DEA had been leaking task force information, so the agency had needed someone for a covert investigation—someone with no internal connections.

Mission accomplished four days ago. Mole identified. Done.

Time to come home. Back to Atlanta where Josh could focus on his real objective–hunting down Len Rikker, a man who had dropped off the face of the earth two years ago. Right after Josh’s team had been burned while trying to save him.

Rikker was their only lead to the person who’d sold them out.

If not for Sabrina’s backup plan–a second chopper on standby–they’d all have died that ill-fated night. He saluted her policy of trusting no one but her own team.

But even her bulletproof strategy and planning hadn’t saved Chelsea.

Don’t go there. Bad enough to relive those scenes any time his eyes closed without going there when he was awake.

He asked, “Is this a corporate job?”

“If it is?”

“Just give me a lobotomy without anesthesia instead.” It’d be less painful.

Corporate protection was Slye Temp’s public face for the thriving elite security agency Sabrina had opened ten months ago, but the contract Josh had just completed in Miami was the real bread and butter of Sabrina’s business. Those contracts were negotiated behind closed doors. A “downstairs” deal.

In the basement where the walls were soundproof.

Sabrina accepted government contracts, like this last one for the DEA, on a case-by-case basis as long as they were not connected to the CIA in any way.

Just mentioning those three letters in sequence brought on her death glare.

Josh had found the task force mole. But corporate security didn’t require his level of expertise. “Send the FNG to Miami.”

Sabrina could hide her reaction any time she wanted, which meant she intended for him to see just how much it pissed her off when he called Ryder Van Dyke the f*cking new guy. “I don’t recall asking your opinion on who to send.”

“What’s the point of bringing him on if he can’t perform?”

“I didn’t say he couldn’t do the work,” she said, irritation crackling through her words.

“But you’re not sending him.”“Didn’t say that either.”

“Then why–”

“Shut up and I’ll tell you.”

He’d heard that plenty of times since they were kids. Josh raised his hands in surrender then dropped them back on the table. Sabrina could send the FNG. Not that Ryder didn’t have skills. He’d been an Army Special Forces sniper, but he was new to the Slye team and Josh didn’t trust new.

Scratch that. He trusted no one except Sabrina, Dingo and the team that had been with them since the UK.

Which was pretty f*cked up, even for someone in his business. But there it was. He worked with that team, or he worked solo, for a reason.

“You with me, Josh?” That was Sabrina’s patient voice, the one she used more often with him these days.

As if she knew the rage lived just barely beneath his skin. Too close. He’d never sleep again without seeing Chelsea’s dead green eyes and never forgive himself for convincing her the Mendelson job would be easy money.

Nothing Sabrina needed to be burdened with. She had a business to run. Josh let out a sigh. He might bitch about it, but they both knew he’d go back to Miami and do whatever she needed. “Why do you need me to stay in Florida?”

“If I put you on this assignment, it’s because you’re still integrated down there.”

So this was the DEA again?

And what’d she mean by “if”?

He was definitely interested now. “When I said why, I meant as in what’s the problem? I handed the DEA Colbert.” Josh mentally fanned through the task force personnel file on the suspected mole. Thin, forty-two, seventeen years with DEA, transferred to Miami five months ago. How’d the DEA screw this up? “Can’t they make him talk? Or...did Colbert escape?”

Wouldn’t that be his luck?

“They didn’t lose Colbert and he did talk. I know you’re bored with the surveillance and computer forensic work. This calls for more than that and the stakes are higher.”

His ears perked up.

What the hell was going on now if the DEA had Colbert in custody? And she’d said if. “What’s your hesitation about me when I’m clearly the best choice at this point?”

She took her time answering. “Because I need someone who can get close to the women surrounding our target.”

That took a strip off his ego. “You don’t think I can do that?”

“At one time, you were the best, but after the UK...” Her voice trailed off. “Look, I’m sorry about Chelsea and I’m tired of tiptoeing around the subject. She’s gone and you’re alive, but you don’t have the passion for this work any more. You just go through the motions, which is fine for surveillance and computer investigations, but not for what we need this time. I’ve dodged putting you back in the position of dealing with female targets of interest, but this can’t be avoided.”

That hit him between the eyes.

Josh sat back and thought on the mundane corporate projects she’d asked him to handle since she’d opened. While she built up her staff, she’d said. Until they had enough trained people in place. He now realized the real reason she’d handed him those jobs. She’d lost faith in him. As bad as it was to live with Chelsea’s death, losing Sabrina’s faith cut even deeper.

He’d never let Sabrina or Dingo down in the past.

But Sabrina was only pointing out the truth. He loved what he did–or he used to–but she was right. His heart hadn’t been in his work for a while and he’d backed away from people, women in particular, since the UK. A team was only as strong as the weakest link.

He would not be that link.

He admitted, “Chelsea was a personal mistake, one I won’t make again. I can do whatever I have to in Miami.”

She didn’t comment.

No surprise. Sabrina was fair, if nothing else, but brutally honest, too. Decisions about assignments shouldn’t be based upon friendship.

Not when lives were at risk in these operations.

He respected that. Respected her.

Sabrina wouldn’t accept words. She took her responsibility for the entire team to heart. She’d been just as loyal and protective of her band of hoodlum kids back when they were running the dark alleys of New York and sleeping away from their group home more often than in it. She, Josh and Dingo were closer than blood siblings, but she owed it to the rest of them to determine if Josh could still do the job. If he couldn’t, he’d no longer have a place on her team.

Sounded cold, but it wasn’t.

And he’d never put her in the position of making that decision. If the team would be better off without him, he’d leave on his own. But he’d rather chop off an arm than walk away from the people he considered his first family.

He moved back to the priority topic. “What happened with Colbert?”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Once the DEA showed Colbert the surveillance tape you took of his covert meeting with Salazar’s contact person, Colbert started talking.”

Salazar had carved a nice niche in the contraband business as the key person for receiving designer drugs from a select group of clients and making the transfer to the groups who got their hands dirty distributing the product. He was a hit-and-run player who was hard to catch, because he would set a meeting with little notice to minimize getting caught with the goods.

Josh asked, “What’d Colbert say?”

“He started talking fast and hard about how he isn’t the mole the DEA’s looking for. Said he’s just a link in the chain between the real mole and Salazar’s drug shipments.”

“And the DEA believed that?”

“Not at first, but they do now.”

Shit. “Why?”

“I saw a video of the interrogation and I’m convinced, too, but it gets stranger. The DEA busted Salazar last night.”

“Him? That fast? Where’d they get intel so quickly?”

Sabrina’s mouth twisted with disgust. “Anonymous tip came in yesterday morning that Salazar would take delivery of a shipment of Spa Zing, right down to the time and location.”

Spa Zing had crept into the United States over the past six months in small amounts. The designer drug had been created to emulate Bath Salts, the street name for a dangerous drug that wasn’t illegal yet, because the Bath Salt packets were labeled “not for human consumption” and sold over the counter in head shops, convenience stores and on the Internet. The white crystalline powder was marketed as a luxury bath product with a chemical makeup that only resembled stimulants such as Cocaine and Methamphetamine.

But that crap caused dangerous hallucinations when taken internally.

Spa Zing was different from Bath Salts in that it was illegal. The mixture included synthetic Cocaine created in High Vision’s Paris labs that, once combined with the base mixture, produced even worse hallucinations and serious brain damage.

Josh shook his head more to himself than in answer to Sabrina. “Getting a tip that fast and accurate on Salazar is...convenient.” Somebody sold him out. But why?

“Isn’t it though? Once they had Salazar in custody, he offered to trade testimony for a lighter sentence. He confirmed Colbert as the mole.”

“Salazar knew who Colbert was even with a go between? Too easy,” Josh grumbled. Easy equaled suspicious.

Josh had suspected Colbert when he searched the DEA agent’s home computer and found evidence that Colbert was addicted to gambling. That usually meant someone who needed more money than a normal job could bring in. But Josh had paid even more attention when Zane Jackson, a pilot who worked undercover contracts for the DEA, had shown an interest in Colbert.

Four days ago on Friday morning, Josh had followed Colbert to the outskirts of the historic area in older Miami where Colbert parked along the curb as dark closed in. A lanky guy who kept his shoulders hunched and a hoodie covering his head climbed into Colbert’s car, stayed briefly, then climbed out and vanished into the night.

Without backup, Josh couldn’t leave Colbert to follow the contact, not when he had the DEA mole in sight. Two hours later, the raid on Salazar’s operation was a bust. The task force had been ratted out.

A Slye Temp team snatched Colbert and delivered him to the DEA. Case closed. Or so Josh had thought.

He scratched his chin, trying to figure out the game being played. “We have a gifted tip on a bust last night that goes down without a hitch.” He scoffed, making a derogatory noise. “Even the DEA’s going to know that was a set-up meant to convince them the leaks stopped with Colbert. What’d they get in the bust?”

“Not as much as they’d hoped. A few crates of Spa Zing.”

“Who was paying Salazar to distribute the product?”

Her smile turned sarcastic. “You’ll love this. Salazar says he’s been distributing for Colbert since the first of the year. That Colbert offered him a sweet deal, promising to keep the DEA off Salazar’s back. All the drug dealer had to do was handle the logistics.”

“That sounds like they were dealing direct without a go between.” Josh needed a whiteboard to keep up with how this worked. “If that’s the case, the DEA should be able to squeeze Colbert for more. Why’re you shaking your head?”

“They had Salazar look at photos that included Colbert. He never picked him out. They told Salazar that without a positive ID they weren’t going to deal.”

Josh considered the players. “What does Salazar look like?”

“Small guy. Swaggers like an arrogant duck and wears his greasy hair in long dreadlocks. Walking cliché.”

“The guy who met Colbert last Friday night had to go maybe six feet and moved like a shadow. Doesn’t sound like Salazar.”

“And Colbert claimed he never met Salazar, only Salazar’s contact man.”

“Someone’s lying.” Then it hit Josh. “There’s a third person?”

Sabrina nodded. “Someone pretended to be Salazar’s representative when he met with Colbert and the same person pretended to be Colbert when he met with Salazar.”

“That makes no sense. What about the person Colbert claims is the actual mole inside the DEA? How was Colbert contacted and was it male or female?”

“Phone calls. The caller used a mechanical voice distorter so no way for Colbert to even guess at the gender.”

Josh was actually getting keyed up for returning to Miami. “Any chance of tracing that number?”

“Colbert did trace it. A single-use phone. The next time the mechanical voice called, Colbert was given information on a bust and warned about trying to trace any calls.”

“Somebody had access to Colbert’s electronics.” Josh muttered, “We might not get another shot at the mole for a while if he goes underground.”

“Actually the odds are good that we will. Colbert said this mysterious contact man told him there were two more shipments happening soon. Last one was most important.”

Josh scoffed at the stupidity of some people. “What was Colbert thinking? His gambling debts weren’t that much.”

“That’s not why he did it. Colbert has a thirteen-year-old daughter by a woman he never married. The DEA didn’t even know about her. She lives in Portland, Oregon. The baby girl was adopted by a couple, with Colbert’s blessing, after her mother was killed in retaliation for someone Colbert put in prison. The mechanical voice caller warned Colbert against going to get his daughter or sending anyone to protect her, and said if Colbert failed to carry out his orders, a pedophile would be sent to make his daughter pay for Colbert’s failure.”

Any hesitation Josh might have had about returning to Miami vanished with that. “Is the girl in protective custody now?”

“Yep.”

“That makes Colbert more than ready to deal.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

Sabrina drew a slow breath. “The DEA decided to transport Colbert from Miami to Virginia today. The transport was attacked. Professional hit team. Everyone died.”

F*ck. “Was the task force informed of Colbert’s arrest?”

She nodded. “This morning. The plan was to get the word out quickly to keep the mole confident, but it backfired. They never expected the hit.”

“This smells a hell of a lot worse than just someone in bed with drug runners. Why kill Colbert if he couldn’t identify the person who called him?” What had Josh missed over the past fourteen weeks? “I’ll have to dig further.”

“You would have found something on this second traitor the first time you went through the task force computers, if there was anything to find. I don’t think the mole is going to leave us an electronic trail. Colbert had been doing his own investigating to find out who put him in this spot. He believed the leaks started when the DEA brought Zane Jackson on board.”

Zane Jackson? That would be supremely f*cked up. Jackson wasn’t technically an agent, but a highly skilled DEA informant with a Special Ops background. A former fighter pilot who had an uncanny sense for strategy and sniffing out leads.

Since no one could know Josh’s true reason for being in Miami or that he’d been the one to get video evidence of Colbert meeting Salazar’s man, Josh had actually suggested that the DEA credit Zane with the lead on Colbert. It had been Zane’s focus on Colbert and questioning Colbert’s activities during meetings that had caused Josh to look closer.

Josh snorted. “Colbert accused Jackson? This from someone guilty of selling DEA information?”

“True, but there’s no honor among thieves and one usually knows another. And Jackson had Black Ops training in the Air Force before he opted out. He’s tight with a couple of the agents on the task force. Plus, he just got the High Vision air cargo contract.”

High Vision was a major pharmaceutical group headquartered in France that had substantial legal holdings in this country. The DEA had been trying to nail High Vision for importing illegal designer drugs for the best part of a year. Josh held up a hand. “I’m not defending the guy, but the DEA wanted him to get those contracts.”

“I know. Just had a lengthy conversation about Jackson with my client this morning. Now that Jackson’s coordinating the schedules for all those airplanes the DEA handed him–two of which I was told handle a volume of High Vision’s legal cargo–he’s become more deeply involved in the High Vision case. That means he’s in the office for most of the planning sessions. Plus, Colbert showed us a cryptic email sent from Jackson’s computer that was highly suspicious.”

That was news. Josh started reconsidering Jackson.

Sabrina finished by saying, “Jackson has opportunity, but we don’t have motive since nothing unusual has shown up in his bank accounts, but he could be keeping it offshore. Or maybe he’s being squeezed by someone else the same way Colbert was.”

She had valid points. Jackson hadn’t flown much lately, not with his wife so close to giving birth. Josh saw the pilot in passing, but Josh hadn’t socialized with any of the task force. No reason to when he could find answers from a distance.

That might be why he’d missed the key traitor.

Not this time.

Sabrina started unwinding the clasp on the satchel, pulled a stack of files out and pushed them across the table to Josh. “Based on what we learned from Colbert, we’re looking at anyone close to Jackson. Wife, sister, friends. Going through the women might be our fastest route.”

“I remember some intel on his wife, Angel. She almost died trying to prove her innocence in a grand theft and was credited with being the reason the FBI caught an international thief. Based on the final report, she sounded pretty courageous.”

“Prior to marrying Jackson, Angel had a prison record for muling drugs, but it was expunged.” Sabrina’s tone made it clear she questioned the expunged record.

Josh frowned. “When you look at it from a different angle it does make you wonder about Jackson’s position and access to agency information.” He sorted through the files. “Getting near Angel will be tough since she’s got one in the oven ready to pop.”

“That alone puts her lower on our list. Jackson would need someone who is mobile at any time. With Colbert gone, Jackson would have to go with someone he could trust. He may have figured out that Colbert was snooping and decided to point attention at him, set up Colbert to get caught.”

Which means Josh had not caught the mole, but had been used by the mole. He shuffled the files. “I heard Jackson’s sister runs some antiques shop in Ft. Lauderdale, but I’ve never seen her around the office. Don’t know how useful she’ll be.”

“You never know,” Sabrina said as Josh opened Patricia “Trish” Jackson’s file. Twenty-four. Average height. Grew up in Houston. He pulled out her photo and paused.

Big brown eyes, a dainty version of her brother’s, gazed up at Josh. The photographer had caught her waving at someone. Where Zane Jackson could look at you with deadly intent, nothing in this soft, feminine version held a threat.

Sweet came to mind.

Chelsea had looked sweet the first time, too, and she’d been one hell of an operative. That innocent gaze in the photo stared at him as he slowly closed the file.

He’d rise to the occasion. Shouldn’t be difficult as long as he stuck to his Personal Rule Number One: Never mix business and pleasure.

Of all the rules he’d decimated, he should never have broken that one.

Sabrina continued, “Colbert spent some time shadowing Jackson’s sister after he met her at the holiday office party. He went by her antiques shop, trying to hook up with her, but she gave him the cold shoulder. He suspected Jackson and wanted leverage if he was right, but Colbert said he wouldn’t risk tailing Jackson’s sister after he was warned off tracing the cell phone. Wasn’t worth putting his child at risk. But he considered her movements suspicious and pointed out that she’s the most mobile of Zane’s tight group.”

Josh put the files down. “We need someone to do more than tail Jackson’s sister. Has to be someone who can get very close to her. I’m your guy.”

“I could send Nicholas–”

“Are you serious?” Tell Nicholas Ferrari–the self-proclaimed Italian Stallion–that Josh needed help handling women on an op?

Not in this lifetime.

Sabrina’s eyes could drill through someone when she focused all that visual power at a target, like she was doing now. She said, “This calls for charming women quickly.”

“Now you’re insulting me. Trust me, Nicholas has nothing on me when it comes to women.”

“Really? When was the last time you took anyone to dinner?”

He was not having this conversation with her. “You’re not going there, right? Want me to give you a blow by blow on my last six months?”

She crossed her arms. “Spare me details of your sex life, which I personally think doesn’t have a pulse.”

He reminded himself that she was like a sister to him. You don’t kill sisters no matter how bitchy they get.

At this rate, the conversation would go downhill soon. She was as hardheaded as he was. “I told you. I’ve got this. When I‘m done with Miami, I’ll know everything there is to know about Zane Jackson and the women in his circle. Once I do, we won’t have this conversation again, right?”

Sabrina shrugged, but finally appeared satisfied. “I am sending Ryder down with you.”

“Why?”

“Backup for one thing, since this whole thing has turned ugly, and because you can’t juggle all those women at the same time.”

He ground his teeth and kept his jaws locked. With a product as deadly as Spa Zing coming in and their short timetable, Josh would do the same thing, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept having the FNG tag along.

Sabrina continued, “Colbert believed another Spa Zing shipment could happen this week. The deaths of four teens in the past two weeks have been traced to the last shipment that got through Miami. One girl tried to punch a hole in her throat with a pen, because she thought she was suffocating from roaches trying to climb out. The other deaths were worse.”

Thanks for that visual. “We’ll find the leak.”

“We have to and soon. Our first priority is to stop that next contraband shipment from being distributed, but...” She held back, thinking, then said, “Just as important...we have to capture that mystery guy who you saw meet Colbert.”

“Why’s he so important?”

She lifted a piece of paper from the booth seat. “All we got from Colbert was a description of his contact man, but Salazar worked with an artist to give us a rendering of the person he thought was Colbert. Colbert’s description matches this picture. Neither the DEA nor the FBI could identify him.”

As Josh reached for the photo, Sabrina said, “If what Colbert told us is true, we have a small window of time and one chance at capturing this man.”

Josh turned the paper around to view.

The air between them grew deathly still.

He stared at the face of the man he’d hunted for two years. Len Rikker, the CIA agent whose freedom had been traded for the lives of Sabrina’s team. And Chelsea.

Sabrina‘s eyes locked on Josh, watching for his reaction.

She was right. The stakes were high on this job. She would not send anyone who wasn’t a hundred percent, even someone as personally invested as he was.

Josh shoved his emotions into lockdown, and pulled out the skills he used on undercover ops. He laid the picture on the table, the epitome of calm. No sign of the rage that burned inside him. He kept his voice matter-of-fact and controlled. “Son of a bitch has finally surfaced. I’ll be back in Miami tonight.”

She gave it a beat before nodding. “Call for anything you need. Every resource will be made available.”

“Will do.” And no one would stand in his way.

Sabrina had nothing to worry about when it came to the women on this job.

Josh would seduce Medusa to get his hands on Len Rikker.