Finally, McGuire broke the silence. “Tessa, you said you had something to tell us. Now’s the time.”
Tessa glanced at Cross, then at the others. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “I do. And it’s not gonna make me popular.”
Cross’s pulse ticked up. “Start talking.”
She took a slow breath. “There was a drug deal, a big one. Rodriguez was stepping up in the cartel and moving more weight. He had a guy in play who was going to take delivery of a tractor-trailer-sized load and sell it up north. Everyone was excited about it. Rodriguez, because he was making moves inside the cartel to go from just being their man in the southeast US to their eastern seaboard manager. The people up north, because they were getting a direct pipeline to the good stuff, and of course, the people south of the border, because the cartel wants to move as much weight as possible.”
“So what happened?” Cross asked. “Did the ATF get the shipment?”
“No,” Tessa shook her head.
“Why the hell not?” Stone demanded.
Tessa bit her lip. “Because I didn’t tell them.”
The room went still.
McGuire narrowed his eyes. “You’re gonna have to do a hell of a lot better than that.”
“I didn’t tell them because I didn’t trust them,” Tessa said flatly. “Over the last six months, I was feeding intel from the inside—small stuff. Test runs, minor drops, anythingthat wouldn’t blow my cover. And every single time I passed something up the chain, it went sideways.”
Cross frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I mean, we lost the targets. Early warnings. Tipped-off suspects. Things that didn’t make sense if the information had remained inside the Bureau.” Her eyes locked onto McGuire’s. “Individually, it could’ve been a mistake. A miscommunication. But together? A pattern emerged. Someone was sabotaging my intel.”
“A mole?” McGuire muttered.
Tessa nodded. “Yeah. That’s the only explanation. Someone inside the ATF—or maybe a joint task force member—is working with Rodriguez’s cartel. I don’t know who. And I couldn’t risk giving them the big one.”
Stone looked skeptical. “So you went rogue?”
“I kept the details to myself. I had a plan. I had some friends—off-grid, reliable. I got them to intercept the shipment. Hide it.” She glanced at each of them. “I thought I had time to sort out who the mole was. I thought I could bring it to my boss before Rodriguez caught wind of me being undercover. It was risky, but a helluva lot better than letting all those drugs hit the streets.”
McGuire crossed his arms. “Clearly, you miscalculated.”
“No shit,” she snapped. “Rodriguez found out way faster than he should’ve. That’s when I knew someone on our side fed him my name. He went from not suspecting me at all to suddenly screaming that I was an undercover bitch cop.” She let out a breath. “I barely got out.”
Cross stared at Tessa. She’d gone pale. He had no doubt she was finally telling the truth, but it was far uglier than he’d imagined. “What did he think when all those deals went slightly awry on his side? That he was just damned lucky?” Cross asked, his voice low.
“That’s the weird part,” Tessa said, and her expression darkened. “He knew that someone was feeding intel to the ATF, but he never suspected it was me. I kept waiting for the ax to fall, for him to make me. But he never did. He started getting paranoid. Kept his inner circle close. But he never acted like he knew who I was.”
“That makes no sense,” Stone said. “A mole inside the ATF would’ve known your name.”
“Exactly.” Tessa leaned forward. “Which means the mole doesn’t know who I am. You see, I’ve been working under deep cover because they’ve lost people before in Rodriguez’s organization. No one had gotten as close to him as me. They were made way earlier and killed.
“This time, it was decided that only my direct boss and his boss would know my identity. Everyone else just knows we had someone embedded. No name. No photos. I don’t even file reports through normal channels. Rodriguez’s guy couldn’t out me, because he didn’t know who to out.”
“Jesus,” Cross muttered. “That’s why you’re still breathing.”
She gave a grim smile. “My luck won’t last forever. Especially now that the drugs are missing and their bosses are breathing down Rodriguez’s neck.”
McGuire paced the room. “So what was your plan? Steal the drugs and then what?”
Tessa frowned. “Okay, I admit I didn’t think it through, but I couldn’t let all those drugs hit the streets, and I didn’t trust my people to stop it. So, I did the next best thing under the circumstances. I reached out to a couple of retired agents, guys that I had trained with. They grabbed the truck before it got to the meet and stashed it away. Then they went to ground in the Bahamas. I thought I had time to figure it out.”
“So, you didn’t have a plan?” McGuire pushed.
Cross didn’t blame him. Drew had been kidnapped by this monster because Tessa took matters into her own hands. He was struggling not to leap off the bed and shake the information out of her.
