“I’m aware,” Force said dryly. “And if one more of you gives me a copy ofMoby-Dick, I’m going to fire you all.”
Well, the guy was searching for a whale that didn’t exist. Lassiter was a serial killer Force had shot and supposedly killed five years ago who maybe, just maybe, was actually alive. Raider thought Force was tilting at windmills, but so long as the guy didn’t get in the way of Raider’s op, he didn’t much care.
Brigid moved silently from the room, and the air somehow grew heavy. Roscoe lifted his head from his bed in the corner, sniffed, and jumped to his feet, following the woman, his tail wagging.
Force stood by the board, his muscled arms crossed, his green eyes shrewd.
Raider studied him. “Why now, Force?” The guy had impeccable timing. “There’s a ticking clock on all that you do.”
Force nodded. “Yeah. The HDD tracked some of Coonan’s money to Thailand, where there are several missing girls.”
Ah, crap. “You think they’re trafficking kids?” Raider grunted.
“Maybe. Gut feeling? Yes. And those kids are somehow being moved right now.” Fury darkened Angus’s gaze.
Raider swallowed. “Then put Brigid on it. Why didn’t you tell her?”
Angus shook his head. “Tell her that her father might be part of a human trafficking ring? Right. For now, you don’t tell her this part of the operation.”
Fair enough. She didn’t need to know that. “Fine.”
Angus’s chin lowered. “What about you? Are you okay with this assignment?”
Raider lifted a shoulder. “Of course.”
A muscle ticked right beneath Force’s jaw. His gaze narrowed, and his hands were steady. Too steady. Had he been dipping into the bottle again?
Raider waited. He’d learned patience at a young age, too young of an age, and he could sit still all day.
Force’s upper lip curved. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
Well, that was ambiguous. Raider kept silent and didn’t avert his gaze.
Force smiled then, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Oh, he was probably good-looking to most women, and most men, but Raider knew a predator on the edge when he saw one. And the former FBI profiler definitely rode a razor these days. “Raider?” Force asked softly. Way too softly. “I can send Wolfe in with her and fire your ass.”
As a threat, it was spot on. Force hadn’t been the best for nothing.
Raider shifted gears and strategies in a nanosecond. “How long have you known?”
Force snorted. “I’m a profiler. Jesus. I knew from day one you shouldn’t be in the HDD’s secret and embarrassing unit.” He gestured around the room, encompassing the old yellowed tiles on the floor and dented panel walls. “Is the story even true?”
Raider thought about forcing a blanch but figured Force would see through it. So he went with the truth instead. “That I slept with a superior’s wife and got my balls busted? Yeah. That’s true.” Of course, he hadn’t known the woman he’d picked up in a bar that night was married to his boss’s boss. But still. He’d never been a guy to pick up a one-night stand, and he deserved a slap-down for doing that, because a government agent, one at his level, had too much to lose. But he’d just lost his partner, and he’d been out drinking, and things had gone from bad to worse. The sex hadn’t even been that good. “But it was just an excuse to get transferred.”
“So you have friends high enough to get you exactly what you want,” Force said, no judgment in his tone.
“Not friends,” Raider returned. He could count his friends on one hand, and most of those had grown up with him in foster care. This team, well now. He was starting to count them, too, and he didn’t need that distraction. Keeping his distance should be second nature to him, especially since he was a much colder bastard now than he’d ever been—and he hadn’t exactly started out warm and fuzzy. “People who want the Coonan family taken down as badly as I do. We saw the opportunity with Brigid and your Deep Ops unit, and we took it.Itook it.” This was on him. Nobody else.
Force yanked out a chair and dropped into it. “I read the report. You were a good handler, and it wasn’t your fault Treeson died.”
Mel Treeson had been a thirty-year-old smartass with a heart of gold, and nobody deserved to die the way he had at the hands of the Coonans. “I washishandler,” Raider repeated. Mel’s death was on him. Life was simple and true. Shitty but simple.
Force sighed. “How long had you worked together?”
“Off and on for about three years and then two years solid on this op, which centered on the Coonans’ drug trade before the patriarch died.” Mel had gone undercover in Boston as an enforcer in the Coonan family organization, and to this day, Raider didn’t know how he’d been found out. “I’ve waited a year to figure out another way in.” He knew all the players, and even though Brigid’s father had supposedly been out for decades, he’d kept feelers out. It had been fortuitous that he’d found out about Brigid—Wait a minute. Raider straightened his already ramrod posture. “You fucker.”
Force’s face split in a smile. “That’s the first time I’ve heard your real voice.”
Ah, shit. His Southern drawl, the one he’d worked so hard to banish, had rolled out with his anger. Raider cleared his throat, sharpening his diction and regaining his necessary and always present control. “You engineered this.” He’d forgotten. In his ego, in this rush to get back to the case and take down the people who’d killed his friend, he’d forgotten what a master manipulator Angus Force really was.
