But if he didn’t have an iron clad Get Out of Jail Free card, then I could be dragged down with him. Arrested and charged. My life and freedom were riding on the details he wasn’t sharing.
I trusted him. But did I trust him enough to bet everything on blind faith?
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, like he was reading my thoughts. “I can handle it on my own.”
“What happened to we’re a team and we need to be each other’s backup?”
“We can be a team while we investigate,” he said. “And when it gets ugly, then I’ll handle it.”
“You’re gonna face Knox and his security team on your own?”
“We don’t know what we’ll be facing,” he said. “I’ll figure out a plan once we have more information.”
“If your endgame is to eliminate Gerald Knox, why not just assassinate him? Why the dog-and-pony show of digging into the operation?”
His gaze darkened. “Because after the J.R. Simmons fiasco, I learned if you cut off the head of the snake, it grows two or more. Smaller and hungrier. Then they get bigger over time. We need to destroy the whole god-damned thing.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said, holding my gaze. “I’ll figure it out as we go. But I meant what I said—when it gets to the end, I’ll deal with it. You don’t have to be part of it.”
“So, no immunity,” I said, not bothering to soften it. “And you don’t want me to get caught in the blast radius if you go down.”
His jaw flexed. “I never said I was part of anything. Not an agency. Not a deal.”
“Then what is this?
“Revenge.”
I scoffed. “You said you’ve been working on this for a couple of years, and you just made the possible link to Knox. Where does the revenge come in? You want to take down his entire business because his mother had you snatched?”
His face darkened. “We have history.”
“But you don’t know for sure he’s part of the trafficking ring. Try again.”
His jaw tensed. “Knox came onto my radar about fifteen years ago. His daddy was a hard ass, but the son…” He drew in a breath. “Gerald was a spoiled, entitled asshole who thought the world owed him because of who his father was. I heard that when his daddy died, he took over and became ruthless. His father was into gambling and shady business deals, but he was considered a fair man. Then Gerald stepped in. The gambling went by the wayside, and I’d heard rumors Knox Junior was laundering, but I didn’t give it much thought. Not until I saw what your mother had. If he’s laundering at the level your mother’s paperwork hints at, he’s funding something massive. Not just profit—protection. Payoffs, properties, lawyers. The kind of operation you build when you’re running a trafficking network.”
“That still doesn’t explain your history.”
He held my gaze. “About four years ago, he joined forces with a man who was trying to take over my territory.” He took a breath. “I didn’t find out until a couple of years ago, but a trustworthy source confirmed it.” His eyes went flat. “So, now I consider this an opportunity to take what’s his.”
I cocked my head. “An eye for an eye?”
“You could say that.”
“How certain are you that Knox is the trafficker?” I asked. “The laundering is pretty strong evidence, but do we want to put all our eggs in Knox’s basket and focus fully on him?”
His jaw ticked. “Knox fills the whole damn basket.”
I nodded. “Okay. Then we go into this with the presumption Knox is behind it until we find evidence that proves differently.”
He stood and picked up his now empty plate. “Finish up. We’ll leave in a few minutes.”
I watched as he dropped his plate in the sink and stalked out of the room.
This was crazy. I was crazy. It was downright foolish to follow him into this without more information about who he was working with and what they wanted. Or what the consequences would be if he didn’t do exactly what they wanted.
Because the FBI had already screwed him over once.
