Allison Brennan - Fatal Secrets

“Bring backup, Sonia. You can’t trust him.”

Dean had been so busy working on coordinating DNA testing of Sonia’s rape victim that he didn’t notice it was well after three in the afternoon. He’d talked to Quantico and they would expedite the tests, with results sometime next week. With their current workload, that was the best Dean could hope for. He also contacted local authorities and arranged for some of the evidence to be shipped overnight to Virginia. And when put on hold during numerous calls, he had time to update his charts on Xavier Jones’s businesses.

He was concentrating on an updated printout of his spreadsheet when Sam Callahan escorted Sonia into the small conference room Dean had taken over when he arrived three weeks ago.

“How’s the victim?” Dean asked Sonia after Sam excused himself to finish up paperwork from the warrant last night.

Sonia shook her head. “She’s in bad shape, but alive. She has a chance. Maybe not a good chance, but so far she’s holding her own. I may have to run if the hospital calls. I want to be there when they take the GPS chip out of her neck.”

“Excuse me? GPS chip?”

“Human trafficking has heralded in the twenty-first century with even more innovative ways to keep their victims captive.” She glanced around the conference room, her hazel eyes taking in Dean’s charts, diagrams, and extensive printouts. “This is all Jones?”

“Taxes, corporate filings, Fair Political Practices reports, SEC filings, any public information.”

She flipped through one of Jones’s tax returns, her brow furrowed. “Math isn’t my strength.”

“We all have our talents. Sit down.” He pulled out a chair and she sat heavily. Dean doubted she’d slept since the stakeout. “Where do you want to start?”

“I want to know how you started looking at Jones and why you didn’t notify anyone.”

Dean bristled, but then realized Sonia hadn’t intended to be insulting. “Fair enough. Do you remember a criminal named Thomas Daniels, aka Smitty?”

She arched her narrow brows. “Of course I remember him. The FBI went after him on money laundering and racketeering. He was killed trying to avoid arrest.”

“I’m the one who shot him,” Dean said. His cool tone belied his mixed emotions in being forced to fire on a suspect.

Her expression softened in understanding. “I’m sorry.”

Dean had looked at Sonia’s record, knew she’d used lethal force in the past as well. It wasn’t something to take lightly, and unfortunately the movies often portrayed law enforcement as trigger-happy, gun-wielding vigilantes, when in reality it came down to reluctant but necessary use of force.

“When we went through his records, we put together his money-laundering scheme. Quite brilliant in its simplicity. Understanding the process helped us close other investigations where we didn’t have the evidence because we hadn’t yet caught up to the new systems criminals employed. We’ve been ahead of the curve for a while now-taking down nearly everyone we’ve targeted these past four years. Except Jones. He’s been eluding me for too long.”

“Did Smitty give Jones up?”

“No, he never talked to us. Everything we learned came from his records, which were disorganized. It took over a year of painstakingly analyzing his cryptic notes to discover that Smitty had a business association with Jones. I never figured out it was human trafficking-” He shrugged in frustration. “But we were close. I’d thought prostitution.”

She nodded. “Smitty was a competitor. He specialized in runaways. Jones works with coyotes-human smugglers-south of the border, all the way to South America. But while Jones can bring in more merchandise, his expenses are higher than Smitty’s. He makes his money on volume, while Smitty lured young runaways off the street and then relocated them all over the continent where they couldn’t easily get out if they wanted to. Many of the girls he manipulated had been sexually and physically abused as children and felt they deserved what ever happened to them. Smitty was really good at spotting the damaged teens.”

“You worked on his case, too?” Dean asked, surprised she knew so many details but he hadn’t worked with her on the case.

She shook her head. “He was dead before I transferred to Sacramento, but I knew him as one of the players. Unfortunately, he was out of my squad’s charter. My job has always been international trafficking, and after nine-eleven it’s included a focus on potential terrorist trafficking, specifically disbanding hidden cells throughout the country.”

“But your heart isn’t in it.”

“My heart is with the victims. I’ve done my fair share to prevent terrorism, but it’s hard to focus on that when hundreds of thousands of innocent young people are lured or kidnapped into prostitution or labor camps.”

Dean watched Sonia closely. She was impassioned, but also a realist. There was little they could do to stop these horrendous crimes, but she was determined to do everything possible to thwart their opponents. He admired her drive, her dedication, her passion for her job and the people she helped, as well as the people she put in prison. Sonia wasn’t a woman who would ever stay on the sidelines. Like him, Dean doubted she had much of a life outside the job.

Sonia asked, “What did you find that put Jones on your radar?”

“A thin file. Nothing I could use in court. We originally went after Daniels for racketeering because he was working with major drug smugglers out of Stockton. He was responsible for laundering their money, and had a scam of claiming income from property rentals that didn’t exist. It took time to catch on, but the banks involved alerted us after he changed his deposit habits, and we launched a grand jury investigation to figure out exactly where his money was coming from. It took a few months and physically viewing the properties to realize what his scam was.

“We didn’t go after him right away because we wanted to build a case against the entire organization. Our profilers said he wouldn’t rat anyone out-he was former military and extremely disciplined. So we began surveillance and Jones turned up in one of our photos. Because Jones was a well-known philanthropist, we didn’t make him a priority, but after Daniels was killed, I found a memo that mentioned Jones and a bill of sale for property in Amador County. Nothing on the surface seemed illegal, and after looking into the property we couldn’t find anything wrong with the sale. Callahan went out and interviewed Jones and his answers raised no flags. It went on the back burner until we closed out the Daniels case. But while logging in evidence months later we found another photograph of Daniels, Jones, and some others taken years ago in Mexico-analysts identified the area as Laguna Tres Palos, outside Acapulco. It made Jones’s statement to Callahan that he was only an acquaintance of Thomas Daniels suspect. I started looking closer at Jones’s business-maybe he was now laundering money for drug smugglers since Daniels was gone. I pulled his tax returns and saw that he had ample wealth with no major red flags, but after talking to specialists with the IRS, it seemed that Jones made a lot of money very quickly. He was paying his taxes, but his earnings far exceeded the normal range for companies like his. We looked at his businesses. Everything looked in order … but the association with Daniels bugged me, so I pulled together everything I could get my hands on. When I had the minimum information I needed, I launched the grand jury investigation.”

Dean saw that Sonia was absorbing all the information. “Wow,” she said, eyes wide and sparkling. “And you got a warrant on that? Vague gut instinct?”