Without a Net (29 page)

He’d worked for at least an hour before the door to the back offices opened with a distinctive whine created by a poorly oiled hinge. By that time, Buck and Cooper were fighting over the best college basketball players for the professional draft.

“Crosica’s coming by six. Greyson’s coming to check the books for this place,” Jackson said.

Ollie didn’t hear Travis, and he tried to tamp down the fear that gathered.

“Where’s Robertson?”

“Behind the bar, cleaning,” Cooper answered.

“You dumbass. You were supposed to keep an eye on him.”

Ollie braced himself for getting jerked to his feet and shoved around. Instead he heard some scuffling and then Travis’s voice.

“He’s mine. You don’t touch him.”

“He’s a liability.”

“Only for someone who doesn’t know the human mind well enough to break one,” Travis said, and then he appeared at the end of the bar. Ollie gave him a smile to reassure him that he was fine. “He’s working. It’s best to keep slaves busy. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Travis leaned against the bar. Because of where he was standing, anyone who wanted back here would have to jump over the serving top or push past Travis.

“You sound like my grandmother,” Cooper said. “So, when can we call this finished? I’ve got to get home.”

“Patience,” Travis advised. “Nothing happens quickly.”

“Greyson should be here in twenty minutes,” Jackson said. “When he gets here, you can take off. We still have actual police work tomorrow, so do me a favor and don’t go out drinking. We don’t need some citizen complaint getting us noticed.”

“It’s not like the lieutenant will write us up,” Cooper said, and he was dangerously close to whining.

“Exactly,” Jackson said darkly. “He won’t write you up, but if you’re a liability, he will find another way to deal with you.”

The room was utterly silent for long seconds.

“That’s a shitty thing to say,” Cooper finally said.

Buck derailed the potential fight with his overly cheery, “So, Travis, what’s your opinion on college ball? Who’s the top pick of the basketball scene right now?”

“Seriously? You care about basketball?” Travis laughed. “
Fútbol.
Now that’s a sport. Have you seen American Midwestern’s center defensive midfielder? He’s a monster.” And with that, Travis and Buck were off on sports talk. It took some time, but Jackson and even Cooper eventually chimed in. Travis never moved from his spot leaning against the bar, and Ollie had the feeling Travis was guarding him. Considering that Ollie had a gun and Travis didn’t, that was ironic.

Right in the middle of an argument about goalies, Jackson cut in with, “Greyson’s here.”

Travis stood. “About time. I’m ready to wrap this up. I don’t particularly like the company around here.”

Ollie reached for the weapon and shifted around so he could stand quickly.

“Personally, I’m looking forward to this partnership,” Jackson said. “I’ve spent fifteen years getting shot at and spit at and cursed while making a fraction of what you were probably getting from Milan. You guys who have the established businesses think you have a right to keep all the action. Time to share a piece of that action.”

That was when chaos broke out.

“What—”

“Take cover!”

“Get the door! Get the door!”

Travis dived behind the counter, and Ollie drew his weapon.

At the same time, Travis pulled a weapon out of his boot. “FBI! Surrender now!” Travis ordered. There was cursing and something crashed, and then Buck came sliding over the top of the bar, hit the back bar shelf, and fell to the floor along with a couple dozen glasses. Travis fired two shots, and then he ducked back behind the bar. Ollie stood and fired a quick shot to make Cooper and Jackson seek cover. At least, that was his intent. As soon as he stood, he made eye contact with Jackson.

“Freeze, you’re under arrest,” Ollie shouted, instinct guiding him more than any conscious thought. Jackson’s body was mostly hidden by an upturned table, but Ollie had a good angle. Time slowed, and Ollie endured each millisecond of action as Jackson turned toward him, his weapon slowly arcing toward Ollie. “Drop it!” Ollie yelled, but his finger was already tightening on the trigger.

Jackson pulled his trigger early, sending a bullet to Ollie’s right, and Ollie fired. His weapon jerked, and Jackson twitched but didn’t seem to react otherwise. But Ollie had seen the red mist spray from Jackson’s chest.

Ollie dropped behind the bar, and several shots slammed into the wood in front of him. No, not wood. Ollie realized the bar front was absorbing far too much of the damage. It was some sort of weapon-grade composite. Travis leaned around the end of the bar and fired again, and then Cooper was cursing.

“Stop firing. I give up. Damn it, I’m wounded here. Stop firing.”

When Travis moved toward the open end of the bar, Ollie stood so he could cover his partner. Jackson was down, his weapon near his hand, but the blood gathering under his body suggested he wasn’t much of a threat. Cooper had stuck both his hands above the table he was using for cover. Both were empty.

“I surrender. Don’t shoot. Damn it, I’m shot.”

“Good,” Travis said, which was exactly what Ollie was thinking. Travis shifted to the right, and Ollie covered the left until Travis could grab Cooper’s wrist and jerk him forward before slamming him face-first to the floor.

Watching Travis cuff Cooper, Ollie started to tremble.

“Hey, it’s me,” Buck said as he rested a hand against Ollie’s shoulder. “Give me the weapon.”

“The second suspect—he’s wounded, but he’s not restrained, and regulations say… Regulations say…” Ollie knew the exact regulation that said he had to cover the suspect and protect his partner’s back, but he couldn’t remember the exact phrase or the policy number.

“I’ve got him,” Buck said softly, and then he was easing Ollie’s fingers off the weapon, prying them loose.

“Buck?” Travis asked once he had Cooper secured. His leg was bleeding pretty badly.

“We’re good,” Buck said. He didn’t say anything else, but from the way he looked at Ollie, he was clearly concerned.

Ollie couldn’t figure out how to answer the unasked question.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ollie sat in the mobile station watching the monitors. Most were turned to news stations that were churning the same half-truths and scant details they’d been airing for the past half hour. So far, all the stations could agree on was that the FBI had arrested a number of police officers in concurrent raids. The two largest operations had gone unnoticed, and Ollie suspected some agent had a hand in that. No one had discovered that one of the raids was on the Happy Whip, and none of the televisions showed the warehouse where Greyson had been holding Darla. Somehow the FBI had given Ollie and Darla privacy by deflecting the media to the station and Greyson’s house.

It turned out that Greyson hadn’t been coming to the club—his second in command, Kemboi, had. And the FBI team had caught Kemboi while waiting to capture whoever showed for the meet. So Greyson’s house had become the favorite target for the cameras.

Tightening his fingers around his coffee cup, Ollie stared at the screens as an agent came into the trailer. The rest of the team had pretty much abandoned it because the action was out there in the club. Jake Allemande had shown up at the same time as the ambulances, and then the local cops had come, only to find themselves disarmed and detained by federal agents, and apparently everyone was having an interesting time trying to sort out the good guys from the bad guys.

And in the middle of all the drama, Travis had vanished. Ollie knew the feds would want him and Travis separated until agents got their statements, but a couple of agents had come in to try to track Travis’s cell phone because he’d disappeared from the entire crime scene. Between then and now, everyone had left Ollie alone.

This new agent stopped at the far chair and leaned on it. “The clothes okay?” he asked. Ollie looked down at the nondescript overalls he’d been offered once Travis had unlocked all the restraints. Honestly, they felt weird.

“I’m fine,” Ollie said. He waited for the agent to ask him something or tell him where he was supposed to go. Instead the guy looked bored. “Any injuries?” Ollie finally asked.

“Not on our side. It looks like Greyson tried to shoot himself in the head, but he must have twitched. He’s still alive to stand trial.”

“Good.” Ollie felt a flash of schadenfreude. The bastard deserved to get shoved in a cage and dragged into court to explain himself.
Asshole.
“Jackson?” Ollie asked.

The agent’s expression turned serious. “He’s still touch and go.”

Ollie nodded. He wished he could regret potentially ending a human life, but even that couldn’t penetrate the fog of lethargy that clung to him.

“Do you need anything?”

“I’m good.”

“Food?” the agent suggested.

Ollie gave him a reassuring smile. “I am fine. I just need downtime. It’s been a hard month.”

“I’ll leave you alone, then.” The agent hesitated as though he expected Ollie to ask him to stay, but Ollie turned his attention back to the muted televisions with the information scrolls on the bottoms showing which arrests the media had uncovered. One anchor was reporting Greyson’s arrest, but most were focusing on the arrests of Huda and eight cops at the station. Apparently the FBI had four different teams they’d sent in simultaneously. It meant that very few of Greyson’s guys had escaped the wide net.

Ollie finished his coffee and turned up one of the televisions to listen to the official report of Captain Greyson’s arrest by federal agents. All in all it was probably an hour or so before anyone else tried to disturb his solitude. Someone knocked on the trailer door, and Ollie turned the television down. “Come in.”

When the door opened, Director Sewell stood with the sun at her back so she was in shadow.

Ollie got to his feet. “Director.”

“Take a seat, Detective.” She climbed up the trailer stairs and closed the door behind her. “How are you doing?”

Ollie sank back down into the chair. “Fine, ma’am.”

“Physically, I’m sure that’s true. But I did enough long-term undercover work to know how it gets in your head, and I never got used by someone who failed to tell me I was undercover. Agent Goode has gone to arrest Crosica at his house.”

“I told him not to,” Ollie said, aggravation making him curl his hands into fists.

“Agent Goode sometimes ignores people,” Sewell said drily. She shrugged and sat in one of the other seats, leaving one empty chair between them. “He wants there to be an official record of what Crosica did, even if the charges get dropped. I warned him that if you don’t make a complaint, the arrest won’t stick.”

“I won’t testify against Milan. He was trying to protect someone he loved.”

Sewell sighed. “The human race does some fairly stupid things in the name of love. So I thought we might talk.”

“I am fine,” Ollie assured her. He didn’t need another round of someone trying to make him feel better. “I’m sure you have more important things to do than sit here with me.”

“Yes, but I’m avoiding them. I have a furious police chief and an even angrier mayor to deal with, but if they were stupid enough to promote Greyson, they can wait while I take care of this business. A lot of our case will come down to what you and Agent Goode heard. Some of the people we scooped up, like Detective Kemboi, weren’t even on our radar.”

“Cooper talked about him being dirty,” Ollie said.

Sewell nodded. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. But there’s an issue of credibility here.”

“You don’t think I’m believable?” Ollie sat up, ready to rip into the director for even thinking that.

“No.” She held up her hand. “I think Goode has issues because of what happened in Crosica’s house. I would have advised him to be more careful with his official report—to minimize the damage to his own career and credibility. However, like I said, he doesn’t always listen. That means that a lot of this case is going to come down to your testimony. You’re the only one with legally clean hands here.”

Ollie rubbed his face as the truth of that sank in. He was front and center of the prosecution, and he couldn’t escape that without damaging the DA’s case. There was no way he would let these guys walk. “Okay,” Ollie said slowly. “I can handle that.”

“Certain people seem to have vanished, including Rene Sauvageot, who has an impressive record with SWAT as a sharpshooter.”

Ollie pressed his eyes tightly closed. “Fuck.”

“That was my reaction,” Sewell said sympathetically. “I know you’ve had a hard time, and I’m sure you want to go home, but I need to ask you to stay in FBI custody for now. And while you may not—”

“That’s fine,” Ollie interrupted.

For a second, Sewell stared at him. She paused before she echoed his words with great uncertainty. “That’s fine?”

“If Sauvageot gets in one lucky shot, a lot of people will walk free. None of this will mean anything if we can’t put these guys behind bars.”

Sewell leaned back in her chair and stared at Ollie disbelievingly. “Huh.”

“You expected me to say something else?” Ollie was almost sure he was offended. It was the smart move, and the director seemed to assume Ollie couldn’t see that.

She opened her mouth, closed it, and then cleared her throat. “Honestly? Yes. Goode likes you and is willing to partner with you, and Falkov worried that your judgment might not be reliable in the field. Given those two data points, I had assumed you would be the sort to buck authority.”

“Falkov?”

“Darla,” the director told him. “Special Agent Darla Falkov. She is particularly annoyed by agents who ignore protocol, so I had assumed her concerns over you might have to do with your own willingness to go maverick.”

“Not so much,” he said. He thought about how he’d filed official complaints and then gone to Captain Greyson. That put him on Travis’s radar, which turned out to be a good thing, but it certainly suggested he had too much confidence in his bosses. He’d blame himself for that. Only, most of the time trusting your boss was a good thing. Ollie believed that. He didn’t have a lot of faith to spread around right now, but if he turned into someone who refused to believe in anyone, he’d be miserable. Cops trusted one another. They had to. And right now he had to believe that Director Sewell had his best interests in mind, because Ollie couldn’t think beyond the next thirty seconds. “I have no interest in going lone wolf when there’s a sharpshooter out there looking for me.”