Cheating Justice (The Justice Team) (3 page)

“Kemp told me the White House is buzzing about Executive Privilege being invoked on Tommy’s case. A few hours later, he’s dead. Put two and two together, Caroline. There’s a cover-up in the works and what happened to Tommy is at the heart of it.”

She faced him, still hating that he stood a good six inches taller and managed to make her feel small. She folded her arms and stepped forward, got right into his space. “No.”

“Whatever they’re concocting about Tommy is bullshit.”

“I
don’t
know that.”

“Yeah, you do. When we all worked together, we hung out. You knew him.”

“Not that well.”

He rolled his eyes in that typical
I’m-Mitch-Monroe-and-I’m-bored
way of his. “He was
not
dirty. Whatever he was doing, the government is letting a dead agent take the heat. Why not? He’s dead anyway. Doesn’t matter that he was a decorated officer. The
government
obviously
needs to clean up a mess and—” he inched closer, tilted his head and stared right into her eyes “—I know all about how the government cleans up a mess.”

Back away
. She should, but that would play into what he wanted. He wanted to control this conversation. His looming presence used to be enough that she’d give him that control.

Not this time.

She tilted her head the opposite direction, eased out a half-smile. “Mitch?”

“Yes?”

“Screw you.”

She turned her back to him and scooped up her rifle case. Right now, she needed to walk away and not let him talk her into something that would wreck her career.

“You worked with him. You knew him. Are you going to let them do this? Are
you
going to do this?”

“I didn’t work with him recently. I can’t help you.” She angled around him, bumping him as she walked by. “Goodbye, Mitch.”

“Look into it, Caroline. That’s all I’m asking. Just look into it.”

Chapter Three

At 7:47 the following morning, Caroline dropped into her desk chair, stowed her briefcase under her desk and booted up her laptop. Happy to be back to the normal—and comfortable—tasks of her day, she watched the little hourglass on her screen spin and drummed her thumb on the side of the keyboard.

Mitch Monroe. Total poison. She’d finally—maybe—gotten him out of her system and now he’d returned. Needing something.
Not me
. Something else. Typical.

If she were smart, which her History degree from American University told her she was, she’d ignore him. And his looks. And that wicked sense of humor. All of it. She’d pretend he didn’t exist.

As. If.

Her laptop dinged and she entered her password. A noise from two cubicles over sounded and she scooted her chair along the cheap industrial Berber carpeting to check it out. Beyond the cubicle walls she spotted Ron Mills, a fifteen year veteran she now supervised, getting settled.

“Hey, Ron,” she called.

“You’re back?”

Yes, thank God. “They cleared me last night.”

Before scooting back to her laptop, she glanced right. The ASAC’s office was dark. Perfect. It would give her a few minutes to snoop around about Tommy.

Even if she were ignoring Mitch, she’d been up most of the night obsessing over the possibility that the president, if the White House were subpoenaed, would invoke Executive Privilege on Tommy’s case. God knew there were plenty of reasons politicians did certain things and hid others, but this one surprised her.

Someone knew something they didn’t want the rest of the country to know.

And that was the thing keeping her from ignoring that pain-in-the-ass Monroe.

Back at her computer, she clicked a few times, found the drive she needed and started scrolling. As a relief supervisor, she had access to certain files. Whether she had access to whatever Tommy had been working on, she didn’t know.

She scrolled directories for a few minutes, but found nothing remotely intriguing. Finally, she typed THOMAS NUSCO into the search field and a list—a really long list—of files popped onto her screen. This might take a while.

Twenty minutes later, she’d found a whole lot of nothing regarding Tommy’s current cases. Nothing, as in,
oddly
nothing. Even when cases had been closed, the agents still had access to the files for future reference. In this instance, it was as if everything pertaining to his current assignment had been wiped away. Or hidden.

But there was one more place she could try. She clicked over to the drive and repeated her search.

Bingo. Four files. She clicked on the first one.
Access denied
. Interesting. Second file.
Access denied.

“I see a trend here,” she whispered.

The
bleep-bleep
of her desk phone gave her a start and she laughed at herself. Idiot. She scooped up the phone. “Caroline Foster.”

“Yeah, Caroline. Good morning. It’s Neil from IT. I got a ping on a file you were trying to open.”

What now?
“Hi, Neil. I’m looking for something and accidentally clicked on those files.”

Twice.
She winced. Terrible excuse.

“Okay, well, you don’t have access to those files. They’re classified. You need to speak to Special Agent Donaldson about that.”

Ha. Now that was funny. Somehow, no matter how much she tried to avoid the man, Donaldson always wound up in her orbit. After that fiasco with Mitch, she was damned lucky to still manage getting bumped to a higher pay grade. Although, that was probably more the Assistant Director’s doing than anything else. Despite her young age for FBI management standards, Jeff Klausner knew she was smart, could dig up leads like any twenty-year veteran, and more importantly, could blow open a case.

Donaldson? She didn’t trust him. Although she knew there had been times he’d been backed into a corner with certain cases when he’d been forced to make unpopular decisions, she worried that all he cared about was his career track and his budget. As a relief supervisor, she could empathize. Everyone in management had to make cuts in the budget on a regular basis and reassign agents when necessary to other field offices. And as an agent at times putting her life on the line, she’d always felt he had her back. It was just in the office, surrounded by politics and cutthroat executives, she didn’t trust him.

“Will do, Neil. Thanks for letting me know.”

She dropped the phone into its cradle and laid her head on the desk sending her ponytail swinging. Damned Monroe. Twenty minutes into this covert operation and she’d almost blown it. The man was the worst kind of distraction. Trouble followed him like a horny teenaged girl…

“Foster!”

…
or a pissed off FBI Special Agent in Charge.

She closed the window on her computer and shoved back from her desk, rolling into the aisle.

Bearing down on her was Donaldson in one of his ugly brown suits. The suit wasn’t the worst of it. He had that pinched look on his face. The one where he scrunched his nose right before he tore into whomever stood in his way.

She popped out of her chair and shoved it back into her cubicle. “Sir?”

He stormed past her and she tugged on her suit jacket. His office assistant, Mary, hustled after him, files in her arms. Mary shot Caroline a
you screwed up
look. “My office. Now,” he shouted.

As much as she didn’t always trust him, Donaldson knew how to be scary and that awarded him a sort of twisted respect Caroline had given up trying to understand.

She trailed behind Mary, the little ducks following along, until they reached his office and Mary set the files on the edge of his desk. “I’ll cancel those appointments for you, sir. Anything else?”

“Get me some coffee.”

Nice guy.

Mary glanced at Caroline. “Would you like some too?”

Valium for me, thanks.
“No, thank you.”

Caroline waited for Mary to exit and faced Donaldson already seated and shuffling through notes. Had he even looked at her yet? She didn’t think so. Why should he? She was simply a subordinate. And clearly, he wasn’t happy with her. “Something wrong, sir?”

His eyes stayed on the papers. “What the hell are you up to this morning, Foster?”

“Sir?”

He slowly lowered the papers in his hands. Too slowly. His fingers tightened, creasing the memos. “Why are you trying to access classified documents on Tommy Nusco?”

Now what?
Crap
. “I was searching for another file on the Burnson case. I clicked on the Nusco files accidentally.”

She had no choice but to go with that excuse after she’d used it on Neil in IT. One lie was bad enough—
thank you, Mitch
—two she’d never remember.

“The Burnson case. Hmm…” He set down the papers, leaned back in his chair. “Seen your pal Monroe lately, Agent Foster? The fugitive wanted for murder?”

Caroline stood stock-still. If she fidgeted, moved an inch, she’d be made. Making direct eye contact, she shook her head. “Mitch Monroe is off the grid. As you know. Why would I have contact with him?”

“He nearly ended your career once. Could still. We clear?”

Okey-dokey. What she had here was one of her bosses letting her know that the files she
accidentally
clicked on were important enough that IT had been directed to alert superiors when unauthorized access was attempted. Those files, whatever they were, hid something. She’d have to write down those file names, see if Mitch could have his buddy Justice Greystone get into them.

“We’re clear, sir. I apologize. Anything else?”

Donaldson shuffled through the stack Mary had left and grabbed a file. “I just came out of a meeting.” He handed her the file. “Deal with this.”

Eyeing him for a second, she took the folder and somehow knew whatever was in there was meant to be a very strong message. One thing about Donaldson, he was consistent. After the Monroe debacle, he’d done the same thing. Like she was a five-year old being put in the Bureau’s version of Special Agent time-out.

She flipped open the file and perused the one-page report. A lead from another office.

But this one wasn’t a meaty one that supervisors, or even relief supervisors like her, would normally be handed. This was a “nothing lead” from the Baltimore field office requesting the D.C. office comb through a dumpster behind a restaurant in Southeast D.C. in search of documentation on a fugitive.

Good. God. He expected her to spend her afternoon sorting through two-day old food and slimy raw meat. Donaldson didn’t just want her busy, he wanted her out-of-the-office busy.

For a nice, long while.

“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.”

“Good. And do it alone. You shouldn’t need help on this.”

Alone. Sorting through a dumpster. It would take hours. Exactly what her boss wanted after she tried to access a classified file.

Damned Mitch Monroe. He’d sucked her in again.

Chapter Four

“Saving the world, Justice?” Mitch sauntered over to where Justice “Grey” Greystone stood in front of a giant bulletin board. His voice echoed slightly in the abandoned army base, HQ for Grey’s covert pursuit team shenanigans.

The stick-in-the-mud former FBI agent stood arrow straight, arms folded across his chest. Mitch could see from the stance that Grey was cataloging snippets of information pinned to the board. “Hard to save the world when my best investigator sleeps in and doesn’t show up for work until…” he glanced at the clock on the wall—an ugly government leftover—“…three in the afternoon.”

The covert pursuit team, nicknamed the Justice Team by Grey’s girlfriend Sydney, was looking into election fraud by a senator.

Election fraud.
Kill me now.
“Just so happens, election fraud is not at the top of my to-be-investigated list at the moment. If you haven’t heard, I’m wanted for murder.”

“We heard.” David Teeg, a computer hacker Grey had blackmailed into assisting the team, stared sullenly at a bank of computer screens in front of him. “I’ve got surveillance footage of you—and about a hundred other people—entering and leaving Rock Creek Park during the one-hour timeframe surrounding Rodgers’ murder, but the murderer could have entered at a different location.”

“You’re investigating Rodgers’ murder?”

The geekhead shrugged without looking at him. His T-shirt—one he’d stolen from Mitch—sported a “Come to the dark side, we have bacon!” saying on it. His jeans were worn worse than Mitch’s, and a pair of headphones hung around the kid’s neck as his hands moved over the keyboard with lightning speed. “Grey said it was important.”

Outside, the October afternoon was moderately warm. Inside the old army base, it was freezing. No heat in the warehouse-like structure. Winter was going to be a bitch.

Better here than in prison.

The Justice Team setup was sketchy. No real oversight, no acknowledgement from the government they served. They investigated cases involving the untouchables—diplomats, elected officials high on the government food chain, judges, etc. Grey didn’t trust many people, and so far, the team consisted of him, Mitch, and Teeg. And due to his fugitive status, Mitch was only a volunteer. No paycheck, no performance review, no paper trail.