The Trap (Agent Dallas 3) (7 page)

On the trip into DC, Dallas counted the driveways and houses between their location and the next main road. Almost as good as an address. But she suspected the bureau wouldn’t raid this place until after they’d made a bust, preferring to catch the members in an act of sabotage. Luke surprised her by talking about Abby most of the way, detailing the blows Abby had taken in her life and how she’d become enslaved to the justice system, owing more money in fines and court fees than she could ever pay.

“If she missed a payment, she was in contempt of court, then they’d arrest her, and she’d lose another job and have no way to pay.” Luke kept his eyes on the dense traffic while he talked. “So they would issue another arrest warrant and citation to appear. Each trip to court added to her debt. It’s such a vicious cycle. A JRN donor finally freed her from it, and Abby dedicated her life to changing the system.”

“I’m proud of her,” Dallas said. “There must be a lot of people out there with the same story.” It seemed like the right thing to say, but she didn’t really know, because she’d never heard this side of the justice system before. Her father had gone to jail when she was young, but it had been about fighting. She didn’t remember him talking about owing the court. When had minor crimes become a financial quicksand for people?

“There are a million people with similar stories,” Luke countered, his voice loud with passion. “One woman spent three months in jail to pay off the fees she incurred after her minor son was arrested for possessing pot. It’s insane!”

Dallas reminded herself not to sympathize with their cause, but those scenarios just seemed wrong—if they were true. “Take the next exit,” she said. “My apartment is in Georgetown.”

In the underground parking lot, Dallas said, “Thanks for the ride. I’ll be back out this afternoon. I have a few things to take care of first.”

Luke shut off the engine. “You can’t bring your car out to the house just yet—for a lot of reasons. So I’ll come in and help you pack.” He opened his door.

Stunned, Dallas climbed from the van, scrambling to regroup. She hated the idea of being trapped out there. “I don’t understand.”

Luke walked around to her, his eyes guarded. “We have protocols, and new members aren’t allowed their own transportation at first. We have to know we can count on you.”

She scoffed. “You think I’m going to cut and run in the middle of the night?”

“Or worse.” His expression was unreadable.

Dallas shook her head. “Whatever you’re thinking, let it go. I’m committed.”

“But for how long?” Still deadpan.

“Until we make progress.” She needed to come up with something better than that.
What were their expectations, anyway?
She opted for humor. “Down the road a few years, if my biological clock starts ticking and I decide to settle down and have a kid, I’ll come tell you I’m leaving.” A dark thought popped into her head. “I do have that option, right?”

A soft smile. “Of course.”

Should she press to bring her car or drop it? She suspected it would be a deal-breaker. “Let’s go pack my stuff.”

Luke stuck by her side as she gathered clothes and personal items. She had enough acting skills to pretend to be nonchalant, but his presence unnerved her. She’d never had a target in her home before. She was always prepared for it though. On every undercover assignment, she mailed a box of personal things to her temporary address, and this time, she’d sent extra clothes as well. But still, the place looked sparse even after living there for months.

Luke eventually commented on it. “You’re the most clutter-free woman I’ve ever known.”

“I’ve heard that before.” Dallas zipped her over-packed suitcase. “There are advantages to non-materialism.”

“I agree. Better mobility, for example.”

“And no dusting.” She grinned and set the suitcase on the floor. “Would you load this for me?” She needed him out of the space long enough to retrieve her other phones.

“What else are you bringing? We can take it all down together.”

He didn’t want to let her out of his sight! Had Aaron’s mention of a federal spy triggered some paranoia? “Not much. Just my laptop and a small bag of stuff in the bathroom.” Dallas stepped toward him, close enough to touch, but without making contact. “I can get the rest of my things when I come back for my car in a week or so, right?”

“Yes.” He leaned in. “We’re alone here, right next to this bed. We should make the most of it.” Luke caressed her ear, a surprisingly sexy gesture.

“That’s really tempting, but I’m not a home wrecker.” Abby wasn’t really her concern. She just wanted to get Luke out of her apartment ASAP. Her case phone was in a safe under the bed, and if it started ringing … No, it was on silent, as always. Wasn’t it?

“Abby and I aren’t married.” Luke pressed his lips against her cheek. “We’re not even serious, just friends with benefits.”

“She would be upset if we hooked up, and she would likely take it out on me.”

Luke pressed his mouth into hers. The heat was overwhelming, and Dallas almost changed her mind. She hadn’t had sex since she visited Cameron three weeks ago. And if not for Cameron, she would’ve indulged in a few stranger romps by now. Being faithful was new to her, and she didn’t know how she felt about it yet.

Luke reached behind her to unhook her bra. Dallas broke off the kiss long enough to say, “Abby will know, and it could ruin things for the mission.”

He stopped and groaned. “You’re right. I have to break it off with her first. Then give her some time.”

“It’s the right thing to do.” Dallas pulled away. “Why don’t you put the refrigerator food into a sack to take with us, and I’ll grab a few more things. Then we’ll be out of here.”

He grabbed her hands. “I like you even more now for respecting Abby. We’ll be together soon.”

“It’ll be worth waiting for.” If she could hold out. Dallas grabbed her laptop and stuffed it into her shoulder bag, fingers itching to send Drager an email. But she had to be careful. Aaron had said he would monitor her communication, but she didn’t know how or what distance away was secure.

As soon as Luke was out of the room, she dropped to her knees and reached under the bed for her small safe.

“What are you doing?” He called from the doorway.

“Looking for my favorite shirt.” Dallas sprang back up. “I thought I left it on the floor.” Fuck the case phone. She probably wouldn’t be able to use it anyway. Luke and Aaron were both a bit paranoid, and she would be lucky to send any communication at all from the farmhouse. She would ask to stop on the way back, then call Agent Drager on her Tara phone from a bathroom.

Luke gave a small smile. “I thought maybe you were getting out a gun. We don’t allow them in the house.”

“Good policy.” She hated leaving her Kel-Tec too, but the assignment called for it.

A few minutes later, Dallas locked up the apartment, wondering when she’d see it again.

Sunday, Oct. 5, 2:35 p.m.

Detective Jocelyn Larson thumbed through a stack of Judge Bidwell’s court files, looking for violent offenders. The rest of her team was out in the field, interviewing witnesses and tracking down leads, so she was alone in the division, staring at paperwork and going a little stir-crazy. But someone had to stay in the department and take calls, in case another death was reported. She’d had too much alone time lately, and this wasn’t helping. Working the late shift on weekends was always a challenge. It threw her whole body rhythm off, no matter how many times she’d cycled through it. Her desk phone rang, startling her.

“Homicide Unit, Detective Larson.”

“This is Officer Romero. We have a dead woman at a construction site. It looks like she was shot and dumped.”

Jocelyn’s nerves jangled, and she was on her feet. “Give me the location.” The officer recited an address off Central Avenue at the edge of the city boundary near Capitol Heights. “I’ll be there shortly.”

Jocelyn stuffed her laptop into her shoulder bag, grabbed a Mountain Dew from the mini-fridge at the end of the cubicles, and hurried out the back door of the District One building. Off to look at a dead person. Even after thirteen years, it still seemed odd. Outside, a blue-gray haze filled the sky, and the air was moist, as always. But she loved the fall when the temperature was perfect. In the parking lot, she passed rows of white patrol cars before reaching her dark sedan in the corner. The park-like area beyond the fence reminded her that the building used to be a grade school. The brick row-houses across the street reminded her that this was one of the capital’s less affluent neighborhoods. Why the homicide unit for the whole city was stuck in this location was a mystery none of the detectives could solve.

She headed for the passenger’s side of the car out of habit, then stopped midway. Her partner had called in sick, so she would have to drive for once. Typically, three or four members of a homicide team would go out to a crime scene, but this had been a busy weekend for murders, and for the moment, she was on her own.

The address was in a mostly residential area that still had a few patches of woods. Jocelyn pulled down the dead-end street at the edge of a neighborhood and groaned. A commercial construction site with a massive dumpster near the access. Law enforcement vehicles blocked the end, so she parked and climbed out. She passed two patrol cars, an unmarked sedan, an ambulance, and the forensic team’s white van. Most of the responders were standing around, while the technicians gathered evidence. The techs were all civilians now, because the city council had recently decided they would be more objective than law enforcement employees and wouldn’t try to manipulate the evidence—a problem she hadn’t known existed. She was just glad someone else collected the blood, bullets, and bones. At the small-town PD where she’d worked early in her career, she’d had to do damn-near everything herself, including dumpster diving.

She spotted Officer Romero talking to a civilian in front of the nearby recreation center and decided to start there. She knew the officer from a department self-defense class they’d taken together. The woman was a no-nonsense perfectionist, which was probably why she liked her. “What have we got?” she asked, walking up. The center was closed and the parking lot empty. Too bad. It would have been nice to find a few witnesses.

“Detective Larson.” Romero, thirty-something and stocky, excused the passerby and turned to her. “The victim was shot twice in the face, wrapped in plastic, then dumped in that gray bin.” She pointed as she talked. “The project manager stopped by the site earlier to check something and noticed the smell.”

Plastic might keep blood from dripping in the trunk of a car, but it didn’t contain the stink of a decomposing body. “Did you talk to the project manager personally?”

“Yes. Mike Haywood. I took his statement.”

“I assume he wasn’t covered in blood?” She had to ask.

Romero gave her a tight smile. “Haywood was well dressed and seemed genuinely disturbed by his encounter with the corpse.”

“Have the techs found anything?”

“Not that I know.”

“Thanks.” Jocelyn strode toward the metal construction bin, a ten-foot-long box with an open top. Wood scraps and chunks of sheetrock didn’t decay and stink, so it didn’t need to be covered the way garbage did. But if the project manager had smelled the body, it had been here a few days. Two coverall-wearing technicians worked inside the bin, and a third kneeled next to the corpse, which was now on the ground. The white plastic the victim had been wrapped in was still with her body, and the top half was smeared with blood. The technician had cut open the plastic to scrape the fingernails. The victim’s face had been decimated by two bullets, and her blond hair was matted with blood. The black cocktail dress she’d been wearing at the time of her death was still intact. Jocelyn glanced at the victim’s feet. No shoes.

She squatted next to the young male technician and introduced herself. “What can you tell me?”

“She’s been through rigor mortis and is now soft and rotting, so she’s probably been dead at least four days. But the ME will give you a more-accurate time of death.” The tech bagged his scrapings, then reached into a carryall. He handed her a driver’s license inside a zip-lock bag. “Sherry Jones, age thirty-one.”

Jocelyn glanced at the license. In the photo, Jones wore heavy makeup and her white-blond hair had dark roots. She would run the name through the database as soon as she got back in her car.

“Where is her purse? And cell phone?”

He shook his head. “We haven’t found them yet, but they may turn up in the dumpster.”

Damn.
Not having a cell phone was like investigating with one hand tied behind her back. “Any trace evidence on her clothes? Or signs of sexual assault?”

The technician picked up the woman’s arm. “There’s a bruise on her wrist, as if someone restrained her, but I haven’t looked under her clothes.”

“It’s a classy dress.” That bothered her. It didn’t match the heavy makeup and over-blond dye job in the woman’s ID. An upscale call girl? Jocelyn stood and called out to the techs working in the construction bin. “Find anything? Some black pumps? Or bullet casings?” The casings were wishful thinking. The woman had been shot somewhere else and dumped. But where were her shoes?

“Not yet.”

A dead-end case if there ever was one. Jocelyn caught herself grinding her teeth and put in a piece of gum instead. She hurried back to the car, opened her department-issued laptop, and keyed the victim’s name into the criminal database. Victims were rarely saints. Jones’ record popped up, showing she’d been arrested for drugs and prostitution. So she was in the sex trade. Still a victim though. Two shots to the face seemed personal. A pimp, a john, or a boyfriend she’d pissed off. Jocelyn made notes of the woman’s known associates and contact information. While the other members of her team were working to solve the high-profile murder of a retired judge, she would be chatting with prostitutes, pimps, and drug dealers.
The luck of the draw,
she told herself. Not everything was about skin color.

But it was right on course with the twists her life had taken lately. Her son, Kyle—the true love of her life—had left for college shortly before her twenty-five-year marriage had fallen apart. The sudden aloneness was challenging, but she’d finally found an activity to focus on a few nights a week, so she was feeling a little less lost. A rap on her car window startled her, and she looked up. Sergeant Murphy, her supervisor. Surprised to see him, Jocelyn climbed out to get on equal footing.