Tough Justice: Exposed

Once again Lara felt the weight of her team members’ stares. She’d hoped to come into this new position without dragging any of her past behind her. She’d wanted a clean new start, but that wasn’t going to happen now.

“We have to assume that, with Lara’s photo out there, it’s possible that somebody in the Moretti ring might see it and know that it was Lara who infiltrated them two years ago and brought them down. Now that it’s clear Lara is back in New York, it’s also possible that somebody is looking for revenge.” Victoria looked at Lara. “Maybe it’s time for you to disappear again for a little while, until we see how this all plays out.”

“No.” The single word fired out of Lara like a gunshot. “I’m not hiding any longer. I spent over a year in a safe house, and I’m not going into lockdown now or ever again.” No way. No how. She needed to get her life back on track.

“How high might the risk be to Lara?” Xander asked.

“As I said, with Lara’s help we managed to get Moretti and some of his men behind bars, but we don’t know who might have slipped our noose,” Victoria replied. “And we don’t know how far Moretti’s reach might be beyond his prison walls.”

“I’m not backing down,” Lara said firmly. She’d given up enough of her life because of the monster Moretti. She wasn’t about to sacrifice another piece of her soul to the disgusting man and his powerful ring. She brought him down, and that’s where he’d stay.

She clenched her hands into fists beneath the table. She needed this job. She needed this new position to work out. Her undercover work hadn’t gone as planned. The last thing she wanted was for this new gig not to work, and she’d potentially be relegated to desk duty for the rest of her career.

“I’ve got her back if any threats come her way,” Nick said, his dark eyes unfathomable as he held Lara’s gaze.

“We all have her back,” Mei said. The same sentiment rang out from everyone around the table.

Lara might have been grateful if these weren’t all new teammates, if she’d developed a trust with any of them. But she hadn’t had time to build any confidence in them, and ultimately knew that at this moment, she could only depend on herself.

Victoria looked at her again, a question lingering in her eyes.

“I’m here to stay,” Lara said with a grim firmness, even as her heartbeat accelerated. Although Moretti was in prison, even while she’d spent so much time in the safe house in the darkest, deepest recesses of her mind, she’d always known somehow that it wasn’t finished.

The horrendous nightmares that had plagued her over the past year or so would continue to haunt her, but they were reminders that she’d survived the deadly Moretti web once, and, if necessary, she was determined to again.

She consciously willed the self-doubts away. New job. New start. Moving forward.

“There’s been no indication that the syndicate is even operating anymore,” Cass said. “The FBI has been monitoring the situation since Moretti went to prison. Nothing has come up to even suggest that they’re back in business. That’s why it was approved for Lara to come back to New York and join this task force.”

“Then that’s good news, right?” Mei said. “Maybe with Moretti behind bars the whole operation fell apart.”

“That’s been the general belief of all of the agents who worked the case in Chicago,” Victoria said.

“Maybe Lara’s not in any danger from anyone,” Xander said. “Maybe by cutting off the head of the snake, the rest of the snake died.”

“And I hope it was a slow and painful death,” Lara muttered under her breath. That case had forever changed her. She thought she’d been prepared. All that training...instead the case had destroyed any innocence that she might have had left from her lonely, crappy childhood. It had made it difficult for her to trust anyone and had ripped out a chunk of her heart that she would never get back.

Victoria looked at Lara. “Right now I’d like you and Nick to continue to investigate Dunst and his murder. Talk to his friends or any family he might have. Find out what connection he had to you and why a low-level criminal would warrant a sniper shot between the eyes.”

She turned her focus to encompass the others at the table. “The rest of you will make sure the Moretti ring has been out of business since their boss went to prison. This will give Lara and Nick the freedom to investigate Dunst and close the case quickly. Cass, see if you can get hold of a list of any visitors Moretti has had in the past year and a record of any of his phone calls. If there is no movement, then Lara is safe here in New York working on this team. Also find out if a phone was on Dunst when he was killed.”

“On it,” Cass replied.

Before Victoria could say anything else, Lara’s cell phone rang. “Sorry,” she murmured as she pulled it from a clip on her belt. “It’s an officer from the scene at the hotel earlier,” she said when she saw the caller ID.

She punched it on speaker and set the phone on the tabletop. “Officer Cruz, this is FBI Special Agent Lara Grant.”

“Agent Grant, I just thought I’d call to let you know that we found something odd on Sean Dunst.”

“First, let me ask you a question. Did Dunst have a phone on him when he died?” Lara asked.

“Negative, no phone was found.”

“Then make sure your men do a thorough sweep of the hotel room to see if he left one there,” she said. “Now, what did you find on him?”

“A black ink pad and a wooden stamper.”

Lara frowned and looked around the table at the others. An ink pad? She stared back at the phone. “What did the stamp look like?”

“I just sent you a photo.”

Lara quickly checked. The past collided with the present, creating something close to madness inside Lara’s brain. “Thanks for the info,” she managed to say and then ended the call.

The photo showed a letter M superimposed over an upside down M. She turned to show everyone the image. Everyone except Victoria looked at her expectantly. “That’s the insignia of the Moretti crime organization.” Lara’s voice was flat, not reflecting the raging turmoil that twisted her gut. “Everyone who worked for Moretti or who was trafficked by him had that symbol either tattooed on their arm or someplace else on their body. Dunst was connected to Moretti.”

“Why would low-level Dunst have something like that in his pocket? Did he use it on the little girl?” Ty asked.

“Negative,” Cass replied. “According to the autopsy report Tina had nothing like that on her body when she was found.”

Lara barely heard the conversation of suppositions and possibilities as it swirled around the table. An icy chill had taken over her entire body.

She feared that the ghosts she’d dreamed of chasing her in her nightmares were now very real monsters, and they had finally found her.

Chapter Two

Getting to Brooklyn from Manhattan was a bitch at just after five o’clock in the afternoon, especially if you didn’t take public transportation. Lara rode shotgun in Nick’s company-issued black sedan, and for the first five minutes in the car neither of them spoke.

Lara was still trying to process the shock of the ink pad and stamper found on Dunst, and Nick’s sole concentration was on maneuvering in and around whizzing taxis, belching buses and the honking horns of tourists who had no idea how to drive in the snarl of vehicles at rush hour.

When they hit the Brooklyn Bridge, Nick cast her a sideways glance. “We spent almost an hour this morning talking before you were called away, and you never mentioned that you were instrumental in taking down members of the Moretti crime syndicate?”

There was a tone in his voice that made her believe he might have already pegged her as either being arrogant or secretive. While the first was definitely false, the latter was partly true. She did have secrets that only a handful of people would ever know, but that had nothing to do with her partner relationship with Nick or the job they now worked.

She stared out the passenger window. “It was a tough job, and after that I went into lockdown for a long a time. That was equally tough.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

He cut her another quick glance. “Ah, a woman of mystery.”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just a part of my past I’d rather forget. I deal in the here and now.” It was the only way she could function.

“If we’re going to work well as partners, then we need to trust each other. You can trust me, Lara.”

She turned in her seat to give him her full attention. “Those are just words, Nick. Trust is earned by action, and I don’t know you well enough yet to invest my complete trust in you.”

“I’m an open book. What you see is what you get,” he replied easily.

She eyed the scar on his temple, his sharply defined handsome features and the darkness of his eyes. “Yeah, right,” she said drily.

“Tell me about the team. Since I had to leave unexpectedly, I didn’t really get a chance to get to know them. What I do know is that we were all handpicked for this new unit, and I know both Victoria and Cass from working with them in DC. Tell me what you know about the others,” she said.

“Mei is smart and tough. She also speaks several languages. We were partners a few years back. She’s good. Ty has a ‘particular’ sense of humor, but underneath, he’s solid. He’s divorced and has no children. Xander comes from a wealthy background and has a five-year old daughter, but he’s never married and definitely isn’t afraid to speak his mind. They obviously all have specialties that brought them to Agent Russo’s attention. She handpicked us all for a reason.”

“And what’s your specialty?” Lara asked.

“That’s easy. Definitely my charisma,” he replied with a sexy grin.

She narrowed her eyes at him. She was not amused. “If you’re watching my back, you’d better bring something more than charm to the table,” she retorted.

His smile vanished. “Tell me what you know about Russo. You said you worked for her in DC. What’s her story? What kind of a boss is she?”

“She’s widowed and has a nineteen-year-old daughter. Anna is a sophomore at Columbia, and Victoria is very much a proud mother bear. She’s also very intelligent and can be one tough lady, but she’s fair. She has high standards and expects her agents to produce results.”

“Then we’d better figure all of this mess out. I wouldn’t want to let the boss lady down on our very first assignment.” He paused a moment and then continued, “I hope you aren’t rusty after the year off duty.”

Lara’s back stiffened. He might be hot to look at, but he was definitely treading in total jerk territory. “Don’t worry about me,” she said tersely and turned her attention out the passenger window. “On my worst day I’m still a better agent than most.”

At least that’s what she needed to believe. The Moretti case had shaken her confidence to the core and kept her from sleep on far too many nights.

Cass had pulled up Dunst’s current address, a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The four-story residence had been his childhood home and had been left to him when his parents had died several years prior.

Much work had been done in Bedford-Stuyvesant to clean up the crime and decay in the neighborhoods, but there were still areas where the drug dealers and gangs ruled the streets, and people didn’t leave the relative safety of their homes after dark.

Unfortunately, it was on one of those streets that Dunst had lived. Dunst had died not only with an ink pad and a stamper in his pocket, but also a key ring. The key ring had been delivered to Lara and Nick by an NYPD officer just before they’d left to check out Dunst’s digs.

Dunst’s place was located in the middle of a street of row houses, all of them showing the signs of hopeless neglect and economic hard times.

“It’s hard to believe there are million-dollar homes and condos just a couple of blocks from here,” Nick said as they departed his car.

“According to Cass, he lived here alone and has no family. It would be easy to keep Tina in here and nobody would ever know she was here.” She had to focus on the job and not the fact that her partner apparently already entertained some doubts about her ability.

Lara pulled her gun from her shoulder holster as Nick got out the keys to open the door. Knowing that Dunst had been a drug dealer and criminal, there was no telling who or what they might find inside.

“I should be the one with the gun drawn,” Nick said.

“You have the keys. I have the gun,” Lara replied. If he thought she was going to play a secondary, submissive role to his alpha dog, then he was sadly mistaken. She wouldn’t play secondary to anyone under any circumstances.

Nick knocked on the door first. “Hello? Anyone home?”

Lara shifted her eyes from the door to the houses on each side. A blue curtain moved at one of the side windows on the house on the right.

No sound drifted through Dunst’s door. “FBI. We’re coming in,” Nick yelled. He unlocked the door, and Lara stepped in front of him, the barrel of her gun her lead as she entered a dirty, cluttered living room. Newspapers and magazines nearly hid a worn chocolate-brown sofa, and beer cans and fast food wrappers spilled across the top of the wooden coffee table. An orange crate held on top of it an ancient television that had probably never seen cable service.

“Clear,” she murmured.

Nick moved ahead of her, his gun now filling his hand as he headed for the doorway straight ahead. Lara followed behind him into a kitchen where the small table appeared to sag under the weight of pizza boxes and opened cans. Dirty dishes overflowed from the sink, and the old, cracked linoleum floor was sticky beneath her feet.

“Quite the neat-freak,” Nick said sarcastically.

They continued to clear the entire house. Dunst’s bedroom was easily identifiable. The double bed was unmade and sported gray sheets Lara suspected had at one time been white.

Drug paraphernalia littered the top of the dresser, and the faint scent of marijuana still lingered in the air. They checked drawers and closets, seeking some connection he might have had with Lara or with the Moretti ring at the time it had been operational.

“When I was undercover I met a lot of men who worked for Moretti, but I don’t remember ever seeing Dunst,” Lara said, unable to hide her frustration. “Why did he ask for me to go out on that ledge? Why me specifically?”

“We’ve only just started investigating. Maybe more digging will give us the answers.”

The next bedroom held a single bed and a small chest of drawers. The bedspread was pink, and a doll sat on the pillows, staring at them with big blue unseeing glass eyes. There was also a coloring book and a small box of crayons on a nightstand.

Despite her need to maintain an emotional distance, Lara’s heart cringed as she thought of little Tina locked up in this room for two long weeks before her death. Had she been terrified? How long and how hard had she cried for her mommy and daddy?

“Why did he have to kill her?” She spoke more to herself than to her new partner. “And why didn’t he stamp her?”

“Maybe he thought he could sell her to members of the Moretti syndicate, but found out that he had no takers, that nobody from the organization was working anymore. He couldn’t just let her go. She could have identified him, so he had to kill her,” Nick suggested.

“Maybe, but after Moretti and some of his crew were arrested, several violent gangs tried to take over Moretti’s territory both here and in Chicago. But they all wound up dead or arrested. So, who did Dunst think he could sell her to?”

“Maybe just a local pedophile willing to pay a good price?”

“Then why the Moretti symbol stamp?” Lara asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s check out the rest of the house, and then we can interview some of the neighbors,” Nick replied.

The upper two floors of the brownstone were completely empty except for cobwebs and mouse droppings. “He must have sold or pawned anything of value for his drug habit,” Nick said. They searched everyplace in the house to try to find something that might provide a clue as to Dunst’s reason for asking for Lara or any connection to the supposedly defunct Moretti syndicate. They found nothing.

Hopefully they would learn more by talking to some of the neighbors and people out on the streets. Since it was Friday night, the lowlifes would soon take over the area.

* * *

It was twilight when Nick knocked on the door to the right of Dunst’s place where Lara had earlier seen the curtain move. A middle-aged woman answered the door, and they identified themselves as FBI agents.

“I assume you’re here because of what happened to Sean,” she said as she led them into a spotlessly clean living room where two young boys were playing a video game.

“Gary and Greg, upstairs to the playroom,” she said as she gestured Nick and Lara to a beige-and-brown plaid sofa. After a bit of grumbling, the two kids turned off the video game and headed up the stairs.

“Your name, ma’am?” Nick asked and pulled a small notepad and pen from his shirt pocket.

“Rhoda Watson, and I just have to say that I know it isn’t nice, but I’m not sorry he’s dead,” she said with a raise of her pointed chin. Her cheeks flushed slightly with color. “I’m sorry, but he was a creep and a braggart, always talking about the good old days when he worked for some big crime boss.”

“Moretti?” Lara asked.

Rhoda frowned and nodded her head. “Yeah, I think that’s the one. I don’t know what he was into in his past, but he was nothing but a scuzzy dope dealer, and then there were all those rumors when little Tina Cole was found dead.”

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