Janie Crouch - Untraceable

Of course, Evan couldn’t throw stones too far while sitting in his glass house. He hadn’t told anybody about the dreams that had been plaguing him for the past year and a half. Hadn’t told anyone about how he sometimes sat in his car in front of Juliet’s house at night, just to make sure she was safe.

In case she needed him to protect her. The way he hadn’t been able to do on that last mission. The way that had haunted him ever since.

So maybe Juliet wasn’t the only one who needed to make forward progress. Baby steps for him, too.

But right now he needed to get ready for his meeting with Vince Cady. He flipped through the files on his desk one more time.

Cady was a vicious bastard. Evan was delighted at the opportunity to slip inside his organization and wreak as much havoc as possible. He was a little mad that arresting Cady wasn’t a priority for this operation, but understood why it wasn’t. Omega always kept the big picture in mind.

A chair creaking at the desk across from his drew Evan’s focus. Sawyer Branson winced a little as he took his arm out of the sling it had resided in for the past few weeks, and stretched it gently. “Ready for everything with Cady tomorrow?” he asked, rotating his shoulder.

Evan closed the files. “Yep. As much as I can be with this sort of thing. How’s the arm?”

His friend grimaced. “Let’s just say I don’t recommend getting shot. Even a flesh wound hurts like hell and takes a long time to heal. But it could’ve been much worse.”

“And with pretty Dr. Megan now working right upstairs, I’ll bet you’re not even itching to get back out in the field.” Evan tried not to snicker as he said it, but wasn’t entirely successful.

Sawyer got that goofy smile at the mention of Megan Fuller, the same smile his brother Cameron got at the mention of his fiancée, Sophia Reardon.

Branson men were falling like flies around here. Evan couldn’t help but grin.

“I’m not rushing the healing process, let’s just say that,” Sawyer said, stretching his arm out again. “Wouldn’t want to have any permanent damage.”

“Well, don’t worry. I’ll handle all the heavy lifting out in the field while you and Cameron play lover boys to your respective ladies.”

Sawyer got serious. “You sure you feel all right about going in with Cady? Cam and I both feel we’ve left you on your own. Especially without Juliet available in this situation.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve been doing most ops on my own for the past year now.”

Neither of them mentioned why. Neither had to.

“Where are you meeting Cady tomorrow?” Sawyer asked after a moment’s pause that held a novel’s worth of unsaid words.

“Undetermined as of yet. I’m going to try to get him somewhere neutral. We’ll see how it plays out.”

“All right.” Sawyer got up and put his arm back into the sling. “Keep us all posted.”

“Yeah, it will be good to have Juliet as team leader on this one. She sees things nobody else does, sometimes.”

Her brother nodded hesitantly. “Yeah, maybe. I hope so.”

“She’ll be fine, Sawyer. Safe here at Omega, as always.”

Sawyer looked as if he might say something else, but didn’t. He just nodded again, then began walking down the hall. “Hey, family barbecue next weekend. My mom says you better be there for this one or she’s coming after you personally,” he called over his shoulder.

“Yeah, okay, tell her I’ll be there unless this case dictates otherwise.” And the case would dictate otherwise; Evan would make sure of that. He loved the Branson family and their get-togethers. But until things were more comfortable between him and Juliet, he wouldn’t be going. Juliet needed to know that her family was hers. Evan would never want to take that from her.

Evan read through the files one more time, familiarizing himself with every part of Vince Cady’s operation. He would never let the drug lord know he had this sort of knowledge, of course. To Cady, Bob Sinclair would be a midlevel criminal: smart, but not too clever; industrious, but still a little lazy. Someone useful and nonthreatening.

Evan could admit it was easier when he’d had Juliet playing his wife. He’d just pretended to be in awe of her and head over heels in love. Nobody had ever had any difficulty buying that cover. Bob and Lisa Sinclair had made a good team. Everybody had accepted that Lisa was the brains of the couple and Bob was willing to do anything she asked. It made them seem appealing and adept, but not threatening.

Not threatening except to Robert Avilo, another midlevel criminal who didn’t like how successful the Sinclairs had become in black-market buying and selling on what he considered to be his turf. In an attempt to get rid of the competition, to scare off the Sinclairs, Avilo had attacked Juliet.

Such a pity Avilo had died a few days after the attack while resisting arrest. An arrest made based on an “anonymous” tip. Evan wished he could’ve killed the bastard himself. But he still took a little comfort knowing the man was dead and that Juliet would never have to see his face again.

And though she never broke cover even when raped by Avilo, Evan and Juliet had completely pulled out of the case after the attack. Juliet had been in the hospital and Evan had refused to leave her side. He had no idea what the word was on the street about why the Sinclairs hadn’t been around for the past year and a half. Their disappearance had been pretty abrupt. But Evan took comfort in knowing that rumors floating about the Sinclairs would not be whispers that they were law enforcement.

Juliet, in her bravery and her silence, had seen to that.

But DS-13, the crime syndicate group, hadn’t had any problems with Bob Sinclair’s sudden reappearance when they’d contacted him last month. Neither had Vince Cady. Evan just hoped it stayed that way tomorrow, but knew he’d have to be ready for some questions.

He dumped onto his desk the contents of a large envelope he’d gotten from his filing cabinet earlier today. It contained items that had belonged to Bob Sinclair, and would help reestablish Evan’s cover. A driver’s license, of course. It had to be a real one that linked back to Bob Sinclair. There were too many online sites that, for a reasonable fee, could let Cady know if an ID was fake. So Bob Sinclair’s license was real, complete with links to several unpaid parking tickets, and even arrests, when Bob had been younger. If a local cop ran his license or social security number—and it wasn’t unreasonable to think that someone of Vince Cady’s criminal caliber would have at least one police officer on his payroll—it would look real.

So would the credit cards in Sinclair’s name, another way a cover could be easily blown if an operative wasn’t careful. In today’s technologically savvy world, credit cards that had never been used, or a social security number that could be traced back only a couple of years, were easily found and red-flagged. Bob Sinclair’s credit cards had purchases and statements dating back ten years. It was some analyst’s job at Omega to make sure all these electronically trackable items looked as real as possible. Whoever that person was did a damn good job.

The other items from the envelope included business cards for exporting companies and banks around the Baltimore and DC area. Even Sinclair’s library card, randomly placed in his wallet. Plus two photographs. The first was of Bob and Lisa’s wedding day. Evan and Juliet had posed outside a church, in wedding garb, hand in hand and smiling. Rice showered them in the picture, the perfect way to make it look as if a large crowd of people surrounded them. In actuality it had just been a few other agents, who had enjoyed pelting them with rice from every angle.