Stealing Justice (The Justice Team) (3 page)

After following her through farm country the other night, witnessing her evasion skills and sneaking that woman off to who knew where, he had no doubt Sydney was that woman. All he had to do was convince her.

She rose from her chair and marched out of her office. Adjusting the lens on the camera, Grey took a deep breath and brought her office window into focus once more. Where had she disappeared to?

He waited a few minutes.
Must be a bathroom break
. To kill time he fiddled with the scope, took a swig of soda. Five minutes turned into ten. He checked the parking lot just to make sure she hadn’t snuck by him and left. Nope. Her beater car still sat listlessly in the same place. “Come on, Syd. Where are you?”

Behind him, the slightest squeak of a floorboard alerted Grey to a visitor. He froze as cold metal pressed against the back of his skull.

“See anything interesting?” The young female voice was full of snark.

He’d never heard Sydney’s voice, but it had to be her. Soft on the surface with a hard edge underneath, it told him that whatever weapon she held to his head wasn’t just for show. She’d had years of self-defense training and she provided classes for the women at the shelter. She might just be able to kick his ass.

Grey raised his hands. “My name is Justice Greystone. I’m head of a Special Mission Unit for the...” He couldn’t mention the FBI specifically, that was the deal. “…government.”

A Special Mission Unit at the moment that consisted of one man. He turned slowly, inch by slow inch, finally looking a pissed-off Sydney in the eye.

Her weapon? The drab green stapler from her desk.

Boy, Monroe would have given him never-ending hell if his ex-partner had seen this.

In his defense, the stapler had to be from the 1960s and probably weighed enough to give him a concussion.

She glanced at his camera, back to his face. “The government, huh? Which branch?”

How much to tell her? She wouldn’t buy a shitty lie. He reached for his Army training. He’d been SMU, the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment. A.K.A. Delta Force. Or The Unit. What he was doing now wasn’t so different. “A covert branch that carries out high-risk operations.”

“Like the CIA?”

He didn’t answer, let her think what she wanted. There were worse things than being labeled a spook. Traitor came to mind.

Sydney shook her head. “The CIA isn’t allowed to spy on American citizens inside the U.S. So you must be…FBI, right? Where’s your badge?” She eyeballed him. “And why exactly is the Federal Bureau of Intimidation stalking me?”

The speech was in his head, ready to go, but all he could do when he looked in her pretty blue eyes—was that a hint of fear or anger clouding them to a stormy gray?—was tell her the gut truth. “Sydney, I need your help to stop a killer.”

Sydney lowered the stapler, her mind reeling with all the ways this guy could be playing her. “A killer? What the hell are you talking about?”

For a federal agent, his dark hair was a few inches too long, even curling on the ends. His eyes, brown as her coffee, were hard and testified to the fact he’d seen the rough side of life. And lived through it. She could relate.

“Fresh Start,” he said. “The girls. We need to talk about what happens to those who leave here and end up in an escort ring catering to politicians and diplomats. Three of the girls are dead.”

Her shoulders seized into knots. Dead? “They’re not girls. They’re women. And what’s this crap about an escort ring? We run a legit shelter.”

Grey glanced out the window then back to Sydney. “Can we talk about this in your office?”

This guy was plain crazy if he thought she’d take him into the shelter. Wearing that suit, even if he had skipped the tie, he had Fed written all over him and would send some of the more emotionally fragile women into a psychotic break.

“We’ll talk here. Unless I need a lawyer. Then we don’t talk at all.”

He shifted his weight, fingered the camera in his hands. “You’re not under arrest, just so we’re clear.”

“We’re clear. But I’ve been screwed by enough men in my life to have learned when to call in reinforcements. Particularly when I drive through the alley behind this building every morning and I’m suddenly seeing a car I don’t recognize.”

A Challenger that may or may not have been following me two nights ago.
“You could easily be a disgruntled husband looking to take a nine iron to your wife’s skull. Now, either talk or I’m outta here.”

Something changed in his eyes as he studied her, a slight smile touching his lips. “You always carry a stapler as a weapon?”

And
oh-my-god
this guy was good. Total charmer. Then again, she was criminally bad at judging men. That gene had been passed on by her mother and, like her mother, she always got screwed.

And not in a good way.

“Start talking, Fed Boy.”

He smirked. “How about we start with the gir—
women
. I’ll tell you what I know about them and you can fill in the blanks.”

“Give me some names. If I know anything, I’ll tell you. But if I think this is going bad for me, we’re done.”

The smirk stayed in place as if he knew the answer before he asked, “And why would our chat go bad for you?”

Half of what she did for women at the shelter was illegal, but she wasn’t about to feel guilt. If getting women the hell out of Dodge saved their lives, she’d live with bending laws. But if this guy’s Challenger was the same one that was following her the other night, he knew her deal.

Might as well lay it out there. She sighed. “If you’re any good at your job, you’ll have figured out that there are women who come into the shelter and don’t stay very long. I help them with that.”

“With what exactly?”

“I help them survive their asshole husbands and boyfriends who get off on using their fists to make a point.”

He withdrew a set of photos from his jacket and held them in front of her face. Three women stared at her. “Are these women ones you helped
survive?
”

Syd studied the faces of Amanda, LaToya and Kaitlin and her throat constricted.
Damn
. “No. But they were here and I helped them get jobs.” She glanced up at him. “They’re dead? All of them?”

“Murdered. Three women—” he looked Sydney in the eye, his smile gone, “—that you recruited.”

Chapter Four

“And what? You think I killed them?”

The tougher the girl—
woman
—the more he liked her. And Sydney was one tough woman.

Tough, pretty, smart and dangerous with a stapler. She was going to make an excellent undercover operative.

If he could talk her into it.

He knew what it was like to have the world shit on you. To wipe your eyes and keep going. His father, the army, the Bureau…they’d all handed him his ass on a platter, but he kept going. Kept doing what was right, rules and laws be damned. Sydney was the same. If nothing else, he admired her gumption. Another thing they had in common.

He’d seen the flicker of panic, brief as it was, in her eyes. No surprise, considering who he was and what he was laying on her. But behind the panic was the desire to find out the facts and fix the problem. Sydney Banfield didn’t run from a fight. Another admirable trait.

First step, keep her talking. “I didn’t say you murdered them. I’m here because I need info about Amanda, LaToya and Kaitlin.”

She nodded, and being the smart woman she was, took a second to organize her thoughts. “Amanda was sweet. Tough life though. A runaway who came to us after she’d been raped by her boyfriend. LaToya I didn’t know as well. She stayed with us about six weeks and then moved on to an internship in a Senator’s office. Kaitlin was young. Too young to be on the streets.”

“Did Ian Goldberg have any interaction with these women while they were at Fresh Start?”

“Ian? Our lawyer? The only thing he ever does with the women is offer legal counseling if they want it. You think
Ian
killed them?”

Before Grey could say anything in defense, she pointed the stapler at him. “You federal boys are unbelievable. The man gave me a job when I needed one, a meaningful job that helps women who have seen the worst that life offers. They have no money, no homes, no families. Of course you think he’s a murderer. Typical.”

Grey held up his hand. “I’m looking for information. Ian Goldberg helped Amanda, LaToya and Kaitlin get jobs with The Smoking Gun escort service under false names.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Of course she didn’t. “Believe what you want, but bottom line, I’m going to stop this killer, Sydney. The first step is to figure out who’s recruiting the girls. All three passed through Fresh Start before entering a life of stretch limos, personal bodyguards and power-hungry politicians. They passed through
your
shelter. Either you recruited them or someone else did. The question is, are you going to help me nail this killer or continue to let the person responsible poach girls from under your nose?”

Her lips thinned but she lowered the stapler. She chewed the inside of her cheek for a few seconds. Didn’t answer.

She needed time to process the info and decide. Fine. “You filled out the paperwork, ran the background checks and set up the meetings to handle their relocations and job placements. The girls thought they were getting internships with prominent senators. Instead, they ended up as high-priced call girls for The Smoking Gun Escort Service. A few months later, they’re dead. Brutally murdered.”

And those murders followed a pattern. A pattern Grey had been tracking a year ago, before he shot his career to hell when he got too close to the killer. He’d been the scapegoat of Special Agent in Charge, Harold Donaldson, on The Lion case before this. Monroe—a man Grey would lay down his life for—had crossed a line with his boss that no FBI agent should cross, ending Monroe’s career. Covering for him had ended Grey’s.

A sense of duty and the fight for justice were the only things that had Grey working under Donaldson this time.

For the girls, he told himself as Sydney eyeballed him. He was doing it for them.

Earning back his badge would take a goddamn miracle, but for now, he’d tell Sydney she could either cough up the evidence to reveal Ian Goldberg, attorney at law, as the dickweed he was or go to jail as his accomplice. Goldberg’s pro bono work for the shelter was either incredibly generous or a cover for the girls Ian and Sydney recruited for a prostitution ring.

Goldberg visited the shelter once a week at most and, at least on paper, had no direct contact outside of the shelter with any of the dead women. Sydney on the other hand…

Sydney was their best friend, den mother and sister. If they trusted anyone, it was her.

That meant she was either an accessory or could help Grey untangle the thread that would lead to a murder conviction.

Grey watched Syd closely. Behind her eyes, her brain was cartwheeling. He knew all about the ways she helped certain women disappear from Fresh Start. Had seen it himself two nights ago. She took her job and the shelter’s mission seriously. “It’s okay to take a minute to digest this, Miss Banfield.”

She rubbed her forehead. “I’m confused about the false names. These girls had no one. Literally. No one cared about them. Why would they need false names?”

Grey withdrew a cell phone from his pocket, hit a couple of buttons and showed Sydney the screen. “This was Kaitlin’s false birth certificate. The others also had them. I was hoping
you
could tell me why they needed false names, false identities. Does any of that make sense to you?”

“Fed Boy, none of this makes sense.”

“Friends call me Grey.”

He paused, seeing if she’d accept the name and by extension his invitation to be a friend.

She let him dangle. “Ian told me they left here to be interns for a senator. How the hell did they go from being interns to escorts? And how were they killed? Were they together?”

“The murders happened separately over the past year, but I believe they were all killed by the same man. Same MO. According to the autopsy reports, all were strangled, during or shortly after sex. The suspect is known to be into erotic asphyxiation and he’s not a fan of independent Western women. He likes ’em young, sexy and submissive. In profiler language, he’s a lust killer with a little power seeker mixed in. He kills because sex motivates him, but dominating women is a large part of the package. Amanda and LaToya were killed in their apartments, Kaitlin at a private club.”

“What kind of club? And if you know who the killer is, why don’t you arrest him?”

Here was where things got dicey. The Lion’s heart was as black as his diplomatic passport, but it was that passport that put him out of reach and under the protection of his own government. Not to mention the worthless diplomatic laws of the United States.

But not above justice. Not in Grey’s book.

Now, the escort service was missing another employee, a woman murdered in the privacy of Panthera Leo, Washington’s best-kept dirty secret.

And with all the dirty secrets floating around D.C., that was saying something.

The politicians and diplomats who frequented the private club lived above the law. The club, hidden under the guise of a legitimate place for the president and his cabinet to entertain visiting dignitaries, mocked everything Grey had stood for as a member of the army and the Bureau. Catering to diplomats, it provided all the vices a man might want: top-shelf booze, free-flowing drugs, and beautiful women who didn’t mind losing their clothes for powerful men.

Until this last murder, the killer hadn’t been so stupid—or so bold—as to kill
at
the Panthera. His previous victims had been killed in their luxury apartments, their deaths easier to sweep under the political carpet.

A dead escort, murdered in their midst, hit too close to home. What if the murderer turned on a diplomat or senator next time? And if the press got hold of this...

How much should he reveal about the inner workings of the Panthera Leo? About The Lion? Knowing too much in D.C. was as dangerous as not knowing enough. And regardless of his gut reassuring him Sydney was innocent of recruiting the girls into the service, he still wasn’t sure he could trust her. Was she a partner in Ian’s operation or was she simply his gullible lackey?