Cabe’s fingers were warm against her cheek. He’d asked her for a private word, and she’d followed him to Eagle’s med room, where he’d promptly locked the door and pressed her back up against it. Without a doubt, she’d need to fix her lipstick again, but with his erection resting against her thigh, it was hard to focus.
She knew he was grappling with what she was about to do, but she didn’t know how to reassure him without bringing up Jess. And the last thing she needed was to elevate her concern and his stress levels.
“We’ll have every entrance and exit covered. And Buddha and Harley will have two drones with thermal-imaging cameras attached to them. We’ll be able to see who is coming and going. We’ve got eyes on all the major roads out, and we’ve got—”
“Cabe,” she interrupted, putting her hands on his and stilling them. “We’ve got this.”
Cabe sighed and took her hands in his, allowing their fingers to link. Then he looked at her with so many unspoken words in his eyes.
“I mean it,” she repeated firmly. “We’ve thought through every single outcome.”
“I know we have, and I know you do,” he said, finally. “I spent most of the day going through scenarios, and there wasn’t a one that we didn’t have covered. But it’s you, Ames. And I’d be lying if I said I was cool with what you are about to do. Don’t misunderstand me, I have no doubt you can handle this, can handle yourself. But it just … I don’t know. I feel sick down to my boots.”
Amy pressed up onto her toes and pressed her lips gently to his. “I love that you’re concerned about me, Cabe. And I know the kind of man you are. I trust you to get me out of there if shit goes wrong.”
He nodded his head once, then pulled her into a hug she knew she’d feel all evening. She’d wear the strength of it like a shield. Amy could still feel the warmth of his arms after he’d let her go and waited as she fixed her lipstick. Her FBI colleagues’ day passes wouldn’t let them this far back into the building—she knew that much—but certainly there would be Eagle employees milling about when they stepped outside.
But she couldn’t allow herself to worry about that now.
Because now she was headed into an unknown. A place where normal laws and security and rules did not apply.
As they left the room, he squeezed her hand one last time, giving her a feeling of security she’d take with her, giving her a goodbye she could hold onto. Thinking briefly of her final farewell with her mom, she glanced at his shoes. Black sneakers. She’d remember those too.
An hour later, Amy pulled up at the address she’d been given. Sokolov’s home was as imposing as the images they’d studied earlier that day had suggested. “You got this, Ames,” she said to no one in particular, although she smiled when she realized she’d called herself by Cabe’s sweet nickname for her. For some reason it stabilized her, brought her pulse down to some kind of normal.
She parked the car, switched from her driving flats to her heels, and walked up to the huge double door painted an imposing black with ornate gold fixings. It was pulled open by Faulkner Woods, who stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind him.
“Mr. Woods,” she said, caught off guard. “I had no idea you’d be here tonight.”
“Off duty you can call me Faulkner. You’ll get paid the negotiated rate at the end of the evening, and the players often provide tips in the form of chips. The casino will honor them and provide the tips to you on Monday. You’ll just need to come and see me. Your job is simply to keep the game in play. The same rules regarding the fraternization policy at the casino apply, and chances are you won’t be privy to the conversations because they’ll mainly be in Russian.”
“I just need the extra money,” she said. “I don’t need a date,” she added primly.
Woods laughed, a vicious bark. “You’ll do well to remember that being nice to Mr. Sokolov is very good for the casino, and for us.”
“Why is that?” Amy asked.
Woods shook his head. “Don’t worry about that right now. This is a great opportunity for you. There is big money to be made in off-the-books gaming. The visitors you saw come to the rear of the casino the other night, they were high-rolling customers who wanted to hold a private game at the casino. If this goes well, there will be more of these kinds of opportunities for you. Let’s get you inside and set up. They’ll be ready to begin in an hour.”
Amy followed him into Sokolov’s home. A black carpet ran up the large central staircase that dominated the hallway, a sharp contrast to the white walls. A gold chandelier that appeared to be bigger than her kitchen was suspended from the vaulted ceiling. She’d seen the floor plans, as Cabe had walked her through them, but even the outrageously large footprint hadn’t prepared her for the overwhelmingly expensive yet tacky interior.
Two men approached them, neither acknowledging Woods. They were dressed in jeans and almost identical black T-shirts, but it was their features she attempted to memorize. Both had black hair; one was a good few inches taller. Both men had easy-to-distinguish tattoos. One had a series of what looked like paw prints making their way up his forearm. The other had four sets of numbers, all roman numerals.
They patted her down and checked inside her purse. She was relieved that her team had made the decision to send her in without a wire, but was eternally grateful that she had her GPS on her.
“There is a staff area back here,” Woods said, nudging her in the direction of a long hallway. They reached a butler’s pantry where catering staff were busy unwrapping trays of food. “You can leave your belongings over there,” he said, pointing to a bench with coat hooks above it.
Amy removed her jacket and hung up her purse, which contained nothing more than her car keys, lip gloss, and a brand-new phone. Knowing it would take an expert less than a minute to hack her password, the phone was a burner with no contacts in it just in case someone used the opportunity to snoop through her history.
Faulkner tilted his head toward the door, and she followed him through the house.
It was hard to believe that anybody actually lived there. Despite the poor taste, it was immaculate. Not a thing out of place. Faulkner opened a door on the ground floor that led into a large games room. The walls were painted a deep green, and heavy gold damask drapes ran along one wall that, if her memory served her correctly, hid glass doors that led out to the side garden. The musty smell of old cigar smoke filled the air, likely having seeped into the curtains and fabrics. There was a pool table at one end of the room, a bar along one wall, and an impressive full-sized card table at the other end.
Woods’s phone rang. “I’ll go and let the others know you are here.”
Amy walked to the curtains and opened them a little. Small lanterns lit steps down to a rock garden. Cabe was out there in the darkness, and she drew comfort from that.
Sokolov entered the room, and nodded in her direction. “You have a beautiful home, Mr. Sokolov,” she said politely, stepping away from the drapes and leaving them open a fraction. Maybe Cabe’s team could use the gap to get even the smallest look into the room.
“Thank you, Ms. Reynard, and I’m very glad you can join us this evening.” Without any further comment, he turned to the seven other men who had followed him into the room. The first she immediately identified as Ivan Popov, who had disappeared after the fire that had broken out when Cabe and his team had laid siege to the place where Six’s fiancée, Louisa, was being held. She wondered how the team would respond to the positive ID—especially Six, who she had learned had a fiercely protective streak when it came to Louisa.
The trays of chips were under the table, so she crouched down to count them, taking a moment to ensure her composure.
She didn’t know the other six men, but after she stood again, she made a point to study each one.
“Very pretty, Woods,” one of the men said, looking straight at her.
“And a fantastic dealer. I think you’ll be very happy,” Woods said, beaming at her like a proud father—the creepiest thing to happen so far that evening.
There were no introductions, and in many ways, she was treated as if she were invisible. The conversation flitted between Russian and English until Sokolov stood. “Gentlemen, if you would pass your buy-in into the game to Mr. Woods, we can get started.”
The men retrieved envelopes from jackets and pockets and passed them to the end of the table, where Woods stood with a note counter. From her earlier review, it looked as though there was at least one hundred thousand dollars in chips on the trays. Woods ran the stack of notes from the first envelope through the counter and nodded to her, which she took as a signal to provide the first gambler, a short stocky man with thinning black hair, with his chips. They repeated the process seven more times, with Sokolov being the last to receive his chips.
Two men at the end of the table looked at her as they spoke to each other in Russian. One laughed at something the other had said, and they both looked at her chest. Amy resisted the urge to fasten an extra button or pull the gap closed. Instead, she focused on opening the five packets of cards to be used in the first game. “Mr. Woods?” she asked. “Which style of poker are we playing tonight?”
“We could play liquor and poker,” one of the men said—emphasizing the syllables to make it sound like “lick her and poke her”—and the rest of them laughed. She refused to let the men see any response from her. It was an old joke, and she wondered if Sister Whiskey had realized how annoying their album title was when they’d named it.
“Texas hold ’em,” Woods replied, and inwardly she scoffed. Of course, they were playing the most obvious version of the game. “The small blind is a hundred dollars, the big blind two hundred. It will increase to five hundred and a thousand at midnight.”
She shuffled all the packs, asking the men to cut the deck until everyone was satisfied the cards were ready for play. Just as she was about to deal each man one card to decide which player would be the first to lay down a blind, Sokolov put his hand on hers. “Ms. Reynard, please deal to Mr. Yeltsin first.” He nodded in the direction of the man who’d made the liquor and poker joke. It was unconventional, and debatably unfair, but she did as he said. Plus, it kind of served the asshole right.
After ninety minutes of play that made it crystal clear the men were rich amateurs, they broke for the food that had been laid out for them in the formal dining room. “Mr. Sokolov, if I could trouble you to direct me to the bathroom,” Amy said, deliberately standing by the gap she’d opened in the curtains so that the men watching could see she was still okay.
“Of course, Ms. Reynard. Allow me,” he said offering her his elbow. It became clear that he’d been about to direct her to a powder room on the same floor but the two men who had made lecherous comments had beaten them to it. Sokolov sighed. “There is another.” He pointed to the stairwell. “On the second floor. Turn left at the top, the third door on the right.”
Amy jogged up the stairs, the plush black carpet sinking beneath her feet. Even her heels took on the feel of sneakers. Careful to survey the property as she walked, she looked for cameras. There were motions sensors for the alarm system, the little red dots flashing as she walked by, but no cameras. Sokolov obviously felt his exterior security was enough to keep people away. Walking slowly, she made her way down the hallway, pausing to look into rooms that had doors ajar. A bedroom in a gaudy lilac scheme, a playroom with a huge castle scene painted on the walls. In the midst of preparing, she’d almost forgotten that Sokolov had a wife and two children. She wondered where they were.
The door on the opposite side of the hallway opened into a room that on the floor plan had been described as a den. But the large desk with the monitor and laptop on it said otherwise. The cognac brown leather sofa and chunky glass ashtray on the side table gave the impression it was a man’s office. With a glance over her shoulder to the staircase, Amy stepped inside. An oversized window opened out onto a manicured garden with a large fountain, water pouring from the open mouths of sculpted fish.
The room was dark, the only light coming from the hallway. A pile of papers was neatly stacked on one side, and the laptop was turned off. There was no point in attempting to open it, as she was no password hacker. A floorboard creaked in the hallway and Amy stopped, waiting for a footstep, movement. But none came.
She quickly looked through the papers. A power bill, a cell-phone contract, a marina fee … a marina fee. For a private marina just north of the city, registered to an Ekaterina Petrov.
Two male voices sounded in the hallway. Amy sucked in a breath and, as the voices came closer, crawled beneath the desk. Her heart raced as her temples pulsed. There was no way of explaining why she was hidden where she was if she was found. Her mind went through plausible excuses but it came up blank. She should have stuck with the plan, but if she was lucky enough to make it out of there, they had a lead on a boat.
The door to the den creaked as one of the men pushed it open. He said something to the other in Russian, and both men laughed.
Amy closed her eyes and took a silent breath as the conversation continued, until the voices disappeared in the opposite direction down the hallway. Air escaped Amy in a whoosh. Quietly, she crawled from beneath the desk and tiptoed to the doorway. When she was certain the coast was clear, she hurried into the bathroom on the other side of the hall and locked the door, taking three large gulps of air.
Searching the office had not been a part of the plan, but Cabe had been right when he’d talked about new leads.
It was a rush.
One she realized she loved.
* * *
Cabe threw back the covers of his bed, a bed that felt painfully empty without Amy in it, and wondered whether he was pissed because of that, or still pissed because of her reckless actions ninety hours earlier, or pissed because it was only five a.m. and it felt as though fire ants were crawling up and down his arms.
Much as it had when he’d watched Amy through his binoculars and the scope of his M4 as she’d dealt cards for men he was coming to hate more and more. There was an old lesson about not making war personal, but right now this op felt as personal as it got.
Calming Six down when they’d realized Ivan Popov was in the room had made for a difficult situation. And Cabe never been more ready to pull the trigger than in the moments the two men they now knew as guys who ran Sokolov’s imports and exports had overstepped their boundaries. The way they’d watched Amy when they thought she wasn’t looking sickened Cabe. They found reasons to brush up against her between games. And they’d also followed her upstairs.
Up-fucking-stairs.
He’d felt as though he were having a heart attack as he’d learned there were armed men poised in the doorway to the office.
That was what kept his temper bubbling … a mental replay of Six’s comm message that he had sight of Amy in a room on the second floor. With the curtains open and the light behind her from the hallway, apparently her hair had been unmistakable, so Harley and Lite had kept their weapons trained on the two members of Sokolov’s security team patrolling the grounds in case they looked up and saw her too, while Six kept his weapon trained on the space to left of Amy’s shoulder to take out anyone he needed to.
Which he hadn’t.
But still.
And Cabe had committed the cardinal sin … he’d taken his eye off his own targets to look through his scope at Amy. Even though he was humble enough to admit Six was the superior sniper, he’d felt the need to add his own weapon to those already protecting her.
And the whole time, Cabe had had to keep his shit together because he hadn’t come clean to the guys about the nature of their relationship. And the guys hadn’t asked. Which meant it was either painfully fucking obvious or they had no clue. He guessed it was the former.
Lifting his arms overhead, he stood and full body stretched before pulling on a pair of shorts. He wandered into the open-plan living space. It had large balcony doors on one end, a bright kitchen on the other, and the comfiest huge sofa they’d been able to find in between. Jess had insisted on a bright kitchen. The day they’d seen this apartment, she’d leapt into his arms before even getting as far as the bedrooms and bathrooms, declaring it was the one.
He popped a capsule into the Keurig and set it to brew.
Once this was all over, he wanted to invite Amy over to stay. He surveyed his place with the eye of a guy bringing his lover home.
He reached into the fridge to grab milk for his coffee and saw the picture of him and Jess from New Year’s Eve a few years before, her holding up a mustache on a stick, him wearing a pair of Elton-John-circa-1970 glasses. Carefully, he pulled the picture off the fridge and put it on the counter before adding milk to his coffee. As he drank, he sifted through the other random things attached to the fridge. The note she’d left him to remind the landlord to fix the balcony door lock, a picture of them at one of the many military balls they’d attended together, one of the few occasions Jess would bother to wear a dress or makeup.
When he was done, there were two piles on the counter. Things to toss, and things to put in a box of memories for now.
Grabbing his cup, he went to the living room and surveyed the mantel over the fireplace. Photographs. More memories. He pulled down the one of them celebrating climbing Mount Fuji, another of them hanging out by the pool at his mom’s place, a third at some restaurant he couldn’t remember where they were both drinking giant margaritas with upturned bottles of Corona in them. One by one, he took them all down. Even, finally, the one of him on one knee before a giant waterfall, Jess grinning as she realized he was proposing. He ran his finger on the glass along her cheek and sighed. “I’m sorry, Jess, but I need to move on.”
Light suddenly flooded the apartment as the sun made its way over the building in front of his. It hit the cleared expanse of the fridge. It felt like a sign. A sign that a couple of months ago he wouldn’t have believed in or perhaps he simply wouldn’t have noticed. “Thank you, Jess,” he said, knowing the love he had felt for her was now something nebulous and nostalgic rather than tangible and real.
An hour later, Cabe arrived at the FBI office with his team. Amy was already seated on the other side of the table, and even though he’d woken up still frustrated by her recklessness, he couldn’t help but smile at her. For a moment, she looked confused, as if she didn’t know what he was doing, and then she smiled back.
“Okay, folks,” Cunningham said once they were all seated. “Who’s going to lead this update?”
Cabe sat forward. “I am.” He nodded toward the screen where Six had launched their presentation.
“We believe we have identified the smurf ring,” he began, before explaining how they’d found their lead and identified two other men who had exhibited similar behavior in the casino. Names, images, histories appeared on the screen, along with copies of the file that would be distributed at the end. “What we haven’t identified is where they are getting the cash, so each member is being trailed until we know their source. Because they only just did a run, we anticipate it being another week before they do another drop. There is only one cashier involved. Whether she has Woods’s approval will be hard to prove, but we know that those transactions appear to be being entered in one lump sum. So unless he isn’t checking his sheets daily, he must be turning a blind eye to it. It’s easier to track her now that we know who she is.”
There were murmured comments, generally of approval.
“I’m going to hand over to Agent Murray to update on the women,” Cabe said.
Amy looked up at him, as if surprised by the chance to lead the update. It was only fair she got the opportunity to lead a part of the meeting.
“With regards to the missing women. We have reason to believe there is an offshore gaming ring that the women are trafficked through,” she said, her voice clear and confident. “First, we have the search history of the latest victim. In all these cases, the victims’ apartments were made to look as though the victim had moved on, taking her most significant possessions. None of these women lived in places with CCTV, so we haven’t found any footage of them leaving. But in this latest case, the victim had left her laptop with a tech friend to remove a virus. We found that she’d been researching international waters gaming rules and methods to combat seasickness. And it appears Woods is grooming the candidates. With me, he’s always made it seem as though what he is setting up is doing me a favor, helping me with my career. That he sees potential in me and wants to help me get ahead.”
Cabe shuddered at the assessment.
“Do you have any idea where this offshore gaming is happening?” Cunningham asked.
“Not yet,” Amy answered. “But I found an invoice at Sokolov’s home for a marina.”
“I’ve not had a chance to update Agent Murray, but we connected some of the dots this morning. The invoice she found was in the name of Ekaterina Petrov, which is Sokolov’s mother’s maiden name.”
Amy barely moved, but her eyes met his and positively fucking sparkled. A look that he wanted to put on her face every day if he could. But they hadn’t had conversations that ran that way yet.
Six coughed loudly next to him, snapping his gaze away from Amy.
“We are going in tonight to put surveillance on their boat. Amy’s belief is that the casino chips and cash from the private party at Sokolov’s will now be rotated through the casino by Woods, but we’re awaiting confirmation of that too. Amy and my team have been watching for that. It hasn’t happened through the front of the house, so it can only be happening behind the scenes, which would support our working theory that Woods is more than simply complicit. He’s an active participant in the money laundering. We’re running histories of Woods and Sokolov again to see if we can’t get our arms around the relationship between these two. Something is niggling me about it. How did it start? Who initiated it? What is the power dynamic?”
“We got enough to go now,” one of the agents focused on the enforcement of RICO said. “We have video footage of smurfing, enough to get a warrant and go in and search. Why are we waiting for this?”
“Because,” Amy said, her tone deadly, “there are missing women involved, and if we move on the laundering before we understand where these women are, we’ll never get our leads on them.” She turned to Cunningham. “Let’s follow up on the marina, follow the leads that make us think there is offshore gambling. These two cases are so inextricably linked that we can’t move on one until we are fully ready to move on the other. And we are still a week or two away from what we think will be the next roundup of women. The evidence we have won’t go away, and we have eyes on all the key players. Unless they get spooked, they aren’t going anywhere.”
Cunningham looked at the agent who had spoken and then at Aitken. “I agree with Agent Murray. Patience will be the only thing that gets us all the answers.”
“For what it’s worth,” Cabe said, “Agent Murray has our support on that too. She has done a fantastic job at ingratiating herself into Woods’s and Sokolov’s company. If there is an illegal offshore gaming ring that could possibly be linked to the missing women, we need her to get on the boat.”
Tapping his fingers on the table, Cunningham studied Amy, and she held his gaze.
As if satisfied with what he saw there, Cunningham nodded. “Agreed. Two more weeks, but if anything changes during that time, we reconvene and review. Nobody does anything without my authorization.”
There were a few more discussions before the meeting wrapped up and the room emptied. “We should go,” said Six, looking between Cabe and Amy.
“I just need to talk to Amy real quick. I’ll see you at your truck in five.”
Six nodded and left the two of them to the low hum of the air-conditioning.
“You found the boat?” Amy asked as soon as Six left.
Cabe smiled at her across the table and wondered if he’d always feel the pull to stand next to her, to touch her, to just be with her. “No. You found the boat. I just followed up on your lead. And I need to say something to you that has been festering. Well, two things. As your colleague, it was a ballsy move to go into the office, and it paid off, but it could have gone to shit. Next time, for all of our sakes, let’s talk through all the scenarios ahead of time so we can have your back in a way that’s planned, not on the fly.”
“Fair point and understood,” she said.
“No disagreement?”
Amy shook her head. “You were right. It was reckless. I was only thinking about people who could find me inside the house. I didn’t think of security being able to see in the window, so yes, it was stupid. It could have ruined what we’ve been trying to do.”
Shit. If he wasn’t falling in love with her before, he was now. She hadn’t made any excuses and had stepped up to accept a mistake.
“What was the second?” she asked.
“As your boyfriend, please don’t give me a fucking heart attack like that. I’m growing attached to that pretty face of yours, and I really don’t want it to get damaged. Are we clear? Because next time I’m coming in after you, Ames. Neither hell nor high water will be able to stop me.”
This time she grinned. “Are we going steady, Captain Moss?” she whispered, checking outside the conference room windows for anybody lingering in the hallway.
It turned him on that she’d used his former title, even though he no longer did. “You’d be shocked if you knew my thoughts about you, Agent Murray. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before I can show you.”
“I look forward to the day we are as simple as that. I just … I hate to say we need to keep us a secret. It feels so juvenile. But we do. Just know I’m thinking about you too.”
He knew her other concerns still existed about people finding out about the two of them, and he would do just about anything to protect her from that. So, for now, he’d give her the secrecy she needed.
And he’d wait for the day it was no longer needed.