There was nothing quite like the high of nailing something important. And this was big. As soon as she’d heard about those missing women, she realized exactly why she was involved.
So why the hell did it mean so much that Cabe was proud of her? That he was certain she’d made a great impression. Of course she had. And she’d done it all on her own. Pulled up her big-girl panties and made it happen. But there was a look in his eye that she couldn’t quite identify. Recognition for a job well done, pride that she’d pulled it off, maybe, and that damn spark that she’d felt between them from the very first time they’d met.
His proximity on the sofa was driving her just a little bit crazy. He sat with his arms folded across his chest, which made those biceps of his stretch the sleeves of his navy blue polo. The collar was a little rumpled at the back, and she fought the urge to lean in and fix it.
He was close enough that she could smell something clean and fresh, like maybe his shower gel. The size of the goddamn couch was going to be the death of her.
She turned her mind away from how warm his skin would feel if she reached out and touched it and put it back on the case. It had been agreed that a dealer with the background she’d created would prefer to be right in the bustling downtown neighborhood. It also made it easier for her to make it onto someone’s list for abduction. A young girl in a new place without anybody worrying about her would be an easy target.
She’d focus on that, not on the thickness of his thigh muscles and the way the denim he wore hugged them. His knees were close to hers, which made her feel just how she had at age twelve when boyishly handsome Lincoln Stoddard had been assigned to be her lab partner and sat down on the stool next to her.
But Lincoln Stoddard couldn’t hold a candle to the man to her left, and she was spending too much time admiring the reasons why.
“We need to run a search of Eve Canallis. That’s who I’m replacing. I just want to be certain that a disappearance hasn’t taken place a little earlier than the usual pattern.”
Cabe faced her. “Did something tip you off?”
Amy shook her head. “I could be totally wrong, looking for something where there isn’t a problem. But I’d rather be hyper-vigilant than miss something because I wasn’t looking hard enough.”
“Fair enough,” Cabe agreed. “We can sort that out through SDPD, see if she’s been reported missing first. My brother is a detective. I can give him a call.”
“Do you guys have a floor plan for the casino? I can mark up some of the things I’ve already noticed. Where passes are required, security cameras, what offices are where.”
He grinned. “Started the job already?” he asked.
Usually, comments about her work ethic irritated her. Boyfriends in the past had been frustrated by her commitment to her job, but there was no hint of judgment in Cabe’s tone. If anything, there was a hint of admiration. “You know the key to this will be moving quickly.”
Cabe stood. “Let me get my bag out of my truck, and we can go though it together. I’ll give Noah a ring while I’m walking down. Eve Canallis you said, right?”
Amy nodded. “Yes. While you do that, I’m going to get changed out of this,” she said, gesturing up and down at the outfit that felt like it was cutting her intestines in half. She watched him leave and took a deep breath as the door closed behind him. She stood and grabbed the suitcase she knew contained her toiletries and casual clothes and wheeled it into the bedroom. It smacked her ankle has she heaved it onto the bed, making her wince. Between the platform heels and luggage accidents, her feet were never going to forgive her.
Amy caught a glimpse in the mirror opposite the bed and almost didn’t recognize herself. Bright red lipstick had never really been her thing, and she couldn’t wait to take the heavy makeup off. She unzipped the suitcase and rummaged until she found her toiletry bag and headed to the bathroom. It was darker than the bathroom in her own place, dingy even. But if they all worked hard, they could pull the op off quickly and she could be back in her own white bathroom before Christmas. Once her hair was off her face, she washed it clean. Finally, she felt as though her skin could breathe. The scent of her moisturizer made her feel better immediately, as did the quick flick of mascara and a little pink lip gloss.
Amy stared hard at her reflection. What were the chances she’d finally met a man she felt an attraction to, a man who had already shown the capacity to accept her and her job, a man who had already shown a level of personal interest, only for their work to make it difficult to explore things further?
With a sigh, she stripped off her clothes, tossing them into the laundry basket by the closet as she walked through to the bedroom. As she dug around in her case for her white capris, a thought flitted through her brain. They wouldn’t be on the op forever. And perhaps … maybe … there would be an opportunity down the line to date. All she needed to do was resist the urge to rip off that damn fine polo shirt to see exactly what was underneath until they were finished.
She pulled on a black V-neck made from the softest cotton and whipped her hair into a simple fishtail braid. One look in the mirror reassured her that she now looked much more like her usual self. As she walked back to the living room, she heard the door click shut.
“Noah is running a search on Eve Canallis, and I’ve got the floor plans on my laptop,” Cabe said. “But talk to me about money laundering. I want to pick your brain. We’ve been doing research on our end, but from an FBI perspective, how does it really happen? What are we looking for?”
Amy sat back down on the sofa, and Cabe joined her. He pulled his computer out of his bag and placed it on the low coffee table in front of them. “Okay,” she said, “that’s a long conversation. But basically, it boils down to a couple of things. Casinos in the U.S. that generate over a million in annual gaming revenues are required to report certain currency transactions to help expose money laundering. Basically, any transaction of ten thousand dollars or higher needs to be reported to help FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the U.S. Treasury.”
“That’s different from Title Thirty-One, right?” Cabe asked, referring to the Bank Secrecy Act that was designed to prevent money laundering through the banking industry. He’d obviously already done some research.
“Yeah. This is specifically aimed at large transactions through slot machines and gaming tables. Even automatic change machines. Money launderers have been known to stand in front of those suckers for an hour feeding in ten-dollar bills and converting them to fresh dollar bills—or worse, coins that they then convert back into hundred-dollar bills at the cashier cages.”
Cabe rested his elbows on his knees. “Playing devil’s advocate here, but if all this is supposed to be regulated, how does money laundering still happen?”
Amy lifted her foot and tucked it underneath her opposite knee as she turned to face him. “Within any twenty-four hour period, a person can’t exchange more than ten thousand dollars without filling out a currency transaction report. And if casino staff see individuals changing large sums in a suspicious manner, they are required to complete a report—in our lingo, a FinCEN form 114. But there are four ways around all the security measures, and they rely on the casino being vigilant to spot it.”
“What are they?” Cabe asked.
“The first is structuring. Easy enough. Break the ten thousand into a handful of smaller amounts. Some casinos record transactions above three thousand dollars, just to make sure they don’t see multiple trips from the same person to different cashiers to try to wash through larger amounts.”
“We’d need to find out what Lucky Seven does, right?” Cabe said, making a quick note on his laptop.
“Yeah. It’s on my list to get close to some of the cage staff to ask about the missing women,” Amy said. “The women all share the same locker room, so there is plenty opportunity for that. I’ll see what I can find out for you too.”
Cabe made another note. “I can add it to my list of things to do too. I’ll try each variant. Exchange the ten thousand to see if they follow the basics of the law, then split up some into smaller amounts and see what their cutoff point is. We’re going to need to determine whether the casino is involved, or whether it is specific individuals, as quickly as possible. I’m assuming that with organized crime, this could be happening with or without the casino’s consent—although with Sokolov having been witnessed at the casino, it’s not too much of a stretch to assume Lucky Seven is complicit.”
Amy nodded. “I don’t think we should just look for intel that proves only that, though. We might miss something if we focus on that too hard.”
“Fair point. What is number two?”
“Smurfing.”
Cabe laughed. “For real? What the hell is smurfing? Like the little blue people?”
“Believe it or not, that’s where the term comes from. Smurfs worked like a collective. Smurfing is taking a big transaction and breaking it down across several people, sometimes referred to by casinos as agents.”
“I prefer smurfs,” Cabe said.
This time Amy laughed. “Yeah. Me too. There are, of course, also some legit reasons for breaking down a large transaction. Like a husband and wife who each get chips. He goes to play poker, she goes to blackjack, and they get back together at the end of the night and cash in the chips. Not everyone who splits up transactions is a bad guy.”
“Okay. What’s number three?” Cabe leaned back in the sofa.
“Minimal gaming. Say you have twenty grand you need to get rid of. Maybe they are marked bank notes. You go to a high-value slot machine. Like a thousand-dollars-a-spin kind of machine. You load all the bills in, press the button once, maybe twice, and then cash out. If you win, then yay for you. If you lose, it’s a small loss to get clean cash. Those machines tend to pay out in slot tickets that you take to the cage to get clean bills.”
“And number four?”
“As you said earlier, complicit employees—which may or may not be synonymous with complicit casinos. It’s not unheard of to buy off a cashier, or even plant a cashier. Someone who ignores the smurfing or smaller transactions. Someone who turns a blind eye to the same person returning four times over the course of the day.”
As Cabe made another note, she leaned over to see what he was writing. It brought her close to his shoulder. He turned to look at her. His mouth was close to hers. She noticed his gaze drop to her lips and then immediately back to her eyes. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to read over someone’s shoulder?” His voice had dropped an octave, and it made her shiver.
“I take in details,” she whispered. “It’s what I do.”
He held her gaze for a moment, and at first she thought he was going to kiss her. With a sigh she could feel brush against her skin, he leaned back. “I was making a note to ask one of my team members to play near the slots as opposed to the tables. And to ask one of our tech guys if we can hack the camera feed so we can do our own assessment of who is showing up at the cages and whether any staff are letting the rules slide.” His voice had returned to normal, and the moment passed.
“This is going to be a long assignment, isn’t it?” Cabe asked, his dark eyes fixed on hers.
Her insides flipped a little as it dawned on her exactly what he meant. He didn’t mean literal days and weeks, he meant moments, time spent together trying to fight whatever it was that was between them.
“Yes.”
* * *
When he was younger, Cabe’s sex life had been fulfilling enough, but none of the women he’d dated had gone on to become longer-lasting relationships. Then he’d met Jess at a charity event, a muddy ten-kilometer obstacle course. They’d been placed on the same four-person team. By kilometer three, her fitness level had impressed him. By kilometer six, it was her endurance. By kilometer eight, it was a motivational speech she’d yelled while halfway up a rope cargo net that had given them all the push they needed to finish first.
It was only when he’d picked her up later for dinner that he noticed how fantastic she looked in her skinny jeans.
After a dinner that had gone on for five hours, he realized that time spent in the company of a smart woman revved his engines. That Jess, and everything she was, did it for him.
He loved intelligent women.
He loved women who knew shit. Random shit. Honestly, they could talk about anything they were passionate and knowledgeable about. Six had always laughed at the way Cabe had found women’s IQs way more interesting than their bra sizes.
But listening to Amy explain money laundering was having the same affect.
When she’d walked in, all red pout and doe eyes, he’d let his prurient fantasies run riot, but he preferred her like this. Soft pink lips on a smart mouth.
And then he’d let his concern slip out: This is going to be a long assignment, isn’t it?
He didn’t mean that literally. The assignment was straightforward. He meant being around her, every day, until it was over. Staring into those blue eyes, holding that gaze, shouldn’t be this easy, should it? It was scary how normal it felt.
“I’m sorry,” Cabe said. “You know what … I should probably go. Coming to your apartment was a bad idea.”
He stood to go, but Amy put her hand on his arm. “Just sit down,” she said quietly. “We should talk. Perhaps talking about this”—she gestured between the two of them—”will help clear the air.”
This was way out of his comfort zone.
Amy looked up at him. “You want a glass of wine?”
Cabe shook his head. “Not sure alcohol is the best idea. Looser inhibitions are the last thing I need.”
“Yeah, well, I need one to tell you what I’m about to.”
He watched as she walked over to the fridge that had been stocked for her. She pulled out the bottle of white and cracked the screw top before grabbing a large glass from the cabinet. “You sure?” she said, holding the glass in his direction.
“I’m sure.”
Amy poured it and took a sip before placing the bottle and glass on the kitchen island. “We have to work together. We have to trust each other. So I’m going to trust you with something I wasn’t going to tell anybody.”
Her tone was not quite sad, more like resigned. He wanted her to trust him. In spite of all his mixed emotions, he deeply did.
“I was sexually harassed before I moved here. By an agent. It’s why I moved.”
“Holy shit, Amy. That’s … that’s fucked up.” He thought about some of the shit Jess had had to deal with as she’d worked her way through the ranks. Men who commented on her body. Men who doubted her capabilities. Men who questioned her commitment. Wives of men questioning whether she would lead their husbands astray.
Amy nodded. “That’s one way of describing it. He was a senior agent on a case I was working who also happened to be married. At first, it was hard to put a finger on what made me feel uncomfortable around him. Sometimes I’d catch him looking at me in the hallway. I don’t know. It just felt creepy.”
Cabe walked toward her and took a seat on the stool on the other side of the island.
Amy took another sip of wine. “It’s always a risk as a woman to call out a man. It’s too easy to be labeled as the one who couldn’t handle herself, the one who couldn’t take a joke. The one who needed others to solve her problems. But that isn’t what stopped me. He didn’t care about the women we were looking for. There were five missing prostitutes and he didn’t feel they were worth our resources. I knew if I reported him, the old boys network would close in and I’d be the one reassigned. And if I left the case, I knew it would turn into a cold case because he really couldn’t give a shit if we found those women. Every night, I’d lie in bed, wondering if he was making anyone else feel the same way he made me feel. But those missing women had no one speaking for them, no one was advocating for them. I couldn’t let them down. So I ignored his stares and just tried to stay out of his way.”
It shouldn’t make him feel warm inside that she was trusting him, but it did. “He didn’t get the message, right?” he asked.
She walked around the counter and sat on the stool next to his. She was close enough that their knees touched. “The first time he brushed his hand across my ass was in a crowded conference room.… ‘Sorry. Too little space for too many people,’ he said as he shrugged. I knew it was deliberate. And I knew I’d get laughed at if I tried to say he’d grabbed my ass in a packed room. So I learned to walk down the opposite side of the room when I saw him coming. I employed the usual girl-code strategies to avoid him. On days we were both in the office, I’d get one of my girlfriends to meet me at my desk to go for lunch. And I know—I even knew then—that I was modifying my behavior to stay away from a predator instead of confronting him, but sometimes that’s the only option women have.”
“What a douchebag,” Cabe said. “Wasn’t there anyone you could trust? Someone else in the department who could have spoken to him? Someone more senior who might have listened to you?”
Amy shook her head. “You know, I thought through all those options, but they all felt like too much of a risk first to the chance of finding those women, and second, to my career.” She sighed. “And then, at our Christmas party, he cornered me in the hall on my way to the bathroom and asked me whether my breasts were real or fake. I called him on his behavior. Told him to back off. I said it had gone too far and that I was going to report him, but he said there weren’t any witnesses. And, of course, there weren’t. In the end, I stopped going to company events all together because the time I would spend dreading any interaction with the guy far outweighed any enjoyment I got out of actually attending.”
“That’s so awful you had to go through all that. And I’m sorry you had to handle that alone. Is he still with the FBI?”
Amy shook her head. “He got fired.”
Her words sunk in and Cabe smiled. “You called him out? Good for you.”
Amy laughed sardonically. “Sort of. He forced my hand. I got home from work one Friday and had run a bath. I was supposed to go out for drinks with a girlfriend for her birthday. When someone rang the bell, I thought it was Kadia, since we were going to get ready to go out together. Stupidly, I didn’t check the peephole. And it was him. He’d told his wife that he was away working for the weekend, so we could spend time together. I slammed the door and called the police. Then I called my boss. And HR.”
By the way her shoulders slumped forward, and given that she was currently in San Diego instead of Atlanta, he figured that wasn’t the end of the story. “How did you end up here?”
“Well, somewhere between those phone calls and him getting fired, my complaints were challenged, my reputation torn apart. At first I was accused of making it up. That was his immediate defense. He told the police that we were having an affair, and that I had only called the police because I was mad that he wouldn’t leave his wife. Because there were no witnesses to any of his other abusive actions, it was my word against his. Then he had the audacity to claim that I’d promised him sexual favors in return for mentoring and promotion and he’d just gotten carried away.” Amy pursed her mouth and swallowed deeply. She shook her head quickly and pushed her hair over her shoulders. “Anyway,” she said breezily, “back to us working together. I’ll be honest and say I liked you in the bar. I’d seen you with your friends when I walked in. I was mad when you left. Madder still when I saw you again. But now … I’m sad and just a little frustrated because I like who you are, and I don’t think that’s going to go away. But I can’t act on it, no matter how much it might seem like a good idea. I can’t give anyone an opportunity to think I moved here and hooked up with another more senior guy in a different office. I can’t allow my actions now to lead those people back in Atlanta to believe they were right all along. That this is how I operate.”
Unnamed emotions bounced around in Cabe’s mind. It was hard to process them all. Each was like a kernel of corn in a popcorn maker, exploding in front of his eyes but then disappearing into a pile in front of him. She liked him. That was first. She’d been treated badly, and he wanted to kick someone’s ass. Guilt. For being a douchebag when they’d first met. And the same frustration she probably felt at being denied the opportunity of being together. Because of her job, he wasn’t sure there’d ever be a future in it for them.
He considered telling her about Jess and explaining his reasons for having walked away that night. But he wasn’t certain that it wouldn’t come out more like Well, if you don’t want me, I don’t want you either. Which wasn’t what he would mean. After listening to her and getting to know her, not falling fast and deep into a relationship with her felt like the absolute wrong thing to do. But the right thing to do was to respect her wishes, because he understood them as much as they disappointed him.
She placed her hand on top of his and let her fingers fall in between his. He looked down at their tanned hands entwined. The image of their legs tangled in white sheets sprung to mind, but he buried it deep.
He moved his gaze to her eyes, the depth of the blue catching him off guard as it often did. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about where this could go. You’re a pretty awesome woman, Amy, and it’s complete shit what you’ve had to go through. I understand you need some distance from that before you consider anything else.”
Goddamn, the look in her eyes, the heat they held just for him made him want to throw everything he’d just said out of the window and press his lips to hers, but for both of their sakes, he knew he needed to do the opposite. He stood. “I’m gonna go. Not because of the line you just drew underneath this, but because I agree with what you just said.”
“But why go?” she asked. “We could work some more.”
Cabe sighed and gave into the urge to place his palm on her cheek and let his thumb run gently along her lower lip. The sigh she emitted would be, he was sure, the very memory he would jerk off to in the shower later. “We both need this to settle between us,” he said. “And if I don’t leave, we both know I’m going to kiss you.”