Panic flooded her eyes again. “You have to have it. To—to carry it. What if?—”
“You’re safe. No one’s coming in here. No one’s going to hurt you. I’m right here. Cole’s outside. The hospital has security guards all over the floor.”
Amelia swallowed, blinking rapidly to keep her tears back. It took a moment, but she nodded as understanding set in. Her ordeal was over.
“I tendered my resignation this morning,” I said gently.
Her eyes went wide as shock gave way to surprise. “What?”
“I went to your apartment to get some reinforcements for you and Joel.” I kissed her forehead. “And then I drove down to Manhattan and handed in my resignation.”
“Are you in trouble again?” she whispered.
I cracked a smile. “Actually, I was offered a promotion. They needed someone to take Sanders’s job since he was arrested while trying to flee the country. I told them where they could shove it.”
I wasn’t sure how much Amelia had retained of what had transpired. She had barely blinked when I’d explained it all to her a few days ago.
For years, Agent James Sanders had kept the FBI off Valentine’s back by dismissing tips as “not our jurisdiction” or “not actionable.” When Agent Sanders was directly tasked with infiltrating and dismantling the Valentine organization, he struck a deal with Valentine. He’d receive incentivizing payments through his brother, Al, who had worked for Valentine longer than I had. Those payments were supposed to be enoughto keep the FBI from bagging anyone in the organization, but Sanders still had to make it look like he was trying his best.
Which was where I came in.
Sanders put me undercover with Valentine’s organization, deep enough that I couldn’t come out without extensive planning. He intercepted all of my reports with their damning evidence that would have put Valentine and every person who worked for him behind bars for life. He replaced them with falsified reports that were just salacious enough to keep me under but were never actionable.
He had made me a lame-duck agent. What he didn’t count on was me keeping my own copies of the reports. And when I went rogue, he tracked me down and then put me on ice with an internal investigation into why I had abandoned my cover to protect Amelia.
Much to his dismay, I was cleared to return to duty.
He thought he was putting me in time-out by giving me desk duty and making me archive old files, when really, he had given me a gold mine.
Sanders set the falsified reports right on my desk, not believing I’d look through them and not knowing I had copies of the truth.
When he told me I had no future in the department, it was because he was trying to scare me away. When he couldn’t get me fired for misconduct, he tried to get me to leave willingly to avoid me uncovering what he had done.
“You came for me,” Amelia said quietly as she curled into my arms, utterly exhausted.
I kissed her temple. “I promised I would. I will always find you.”
She swallowed. “How?”
That was the part we hadn’t covered. The last seventy-two hours had been too raw to bring it up.
I combed her hair back with my fingers. “I figured it out as soon as I saw you run out of the apartment. The stories didn’t match up. Cole lost track of Joel. Sanders said he had Joel, but he was in his office right across from me. I had a feeling you were grabbed in New Haven and were being taken down here. Since I was in New York, I had a three-hour head start.” I smiled into her hair. “And Cole has access to a helicopter. I would’ve been here sooner, but I had to convince the Newark field office to do a raid. I’d given them plenty of tips over the years while I was undercover, so I cashed in every favor I’d ever earned.”
Amelia’s breathing picked up again. I grabbed the brush and started to work my way through her hair again, soothing her spirit.
“The one thing I didn’t count on was the new dealer being a Fed. Cole and I snuck in a back entrance as they were bringing you and Jole in. She clocked me and drew Valentine off you so I could take the shot.” I let out a deep breath. “Not that it matters, since he’s dead, but the reports she had been logging while you and I were in hiding corroborated the copies of mine I had kept hidden.”
Amelia nodded as the haze in her eyes began to return. Still, minutes passed before she spoke again. “Every time I try to sleep, I see it happen. Over and over again. Joel being beaten. Valentine being shot—” Her voice cracked. “I’m terrified to close my eyes.”
“I understand.”
“I’m so tired,” she cried.
“Sleep right here. Nothing will hurt you. Valentine is dead. He can’t hurt you. He can’t hurt Joel. Everyone in that building was arrested. They’re being held without bail. Sanders is in custody. It’s over. Nothing can hurt you.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “P-please don’t l-leave.”
“I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe. You can sleep.” The short, direct statements were what I had been trained to say in moments like this. Moments where someone was too scarred and wounded to rationally process their needs.
