Tough Justice: Burned (Part 3 Of 8)

Tough Justice: Burned (Part 3 of 8)

Carol Ericson

TOUGH JUSTICE: Justice is worth every sacrifice.

Episode Three: Burned

What do you do when the mistake from your past returns? Lara Grant is finding out quickly. Two innocent women died because they had her name, all in an attempt to unhinge Lara. But she’s stronger than that. Moretti can play his little games...but he should know Lara only ever plays to win.

Justice is worth every sacrifice.

A brand-new 8-part reading experience starting January 12, 2016!

FBI agent Lara Grant has finally put her life as an undercover operative behind her and started a new assignment in New York City. But her past and present collide and become ever more twisted as a spate of murders sends a message that is cruelly, chillingly personal...

Tough Justice: Exposed (Part 1 of 8) by New York Times bestselling author Carla Cassidy

Tough Justice: Watched (Part 2 of 8) by Tyler Anne Snell

Tough Justice: Burned (Part 3 of 8) by Carol Ericson

Tough Justice: Trapped (Part 4 of 8) by Gail Barrett

Tough Justice: Twisted (Part 5 of 8) by Gail Barrett

Tough Justice: Ambushed (Part 6 of 8) by Carol Ericson

Tough Justice: Betrayed (Part 7 of 8) by Tyler Anne Snell

Tough Justice: Hunted (Part 8 of 8) by New York Times bestselling author Carla Cassidy

CAROL ERICSON is a bestselling, award-winning author of more than forty books. She has an eerie fascination for true crime stories, a love of film noir and a weakness for reality TV, all of which fuel her imagination to create her own tales of murder, mayhem and mystery. To find out more about Carol and her current projects, please visit her website at www.carolericson.com, “where romance flirts with danger.”

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Back Cover Text

About Tough Justice

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

“It’s your boss’s daughter’s name, too, right?”

A chill zipped down Lara’s spine, and she clenched her teeth, refusing to give Moretti the satisfaction of witnessing her fear. Her eyes never leaving Moretti’s, she circled one finger in the air to call the guard.

The door buzzed, and she addressed the guard, his body tense and alert—ready for anything. “Keep him here. I’ll be back in five.”

She had to warn Victoria, had to tell her Moretti knew the name of Victoria’s daughter. Anna was in the city, a sophomore at Columbia, nineteen, just a child. Weren’t they all, all the women he victimized?

As soon as Lara cleared the thick walls of the building, she snatched her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans, almost dropping it on the concrete walkway. With trembling fingers she tapped her phone for Victoria’s number.

Victoria jumped right in before Lara could get out one word. “Are you done interviewing Moretti already?”

Lara closed her eyes and squared her shoulders. “Moretti knows your daughter’s name, Victoria, and he made some kind of veiled threat.”

Victoria gasped, and the uncharacteristic sound from her boss spiked Lara’s fear. “That son of a bitch.”

“Where is she? Where’s Anna?” Lara gripped her phone so tightly, the edges cut into her hand, but she welcomed the discomfort as a way to keep her focused, alert.

“She’s at school, probably in class.” The customary steel had returned to Victoria’s voice. “I’ll text her to hang tight, and I’ll go get her myself. The Bureau can settle Anna in a safe house until we figure out if this threat has any bite to it.”

“Moretti could be bluffing. He’s probably just yanking our chains. He’s good at that.” Lara held her breath. She didn’t know if she was trying to convince Victoria or herself.

Victoria paused and then cleared her throat. “Maybe, but this is my baby girl, and I’m not taking any chances.”

“I understand that.”

“I know you do.” Victoria’s voice recovered its take-charge tone. “See if you can get anything else out of the sneaky bastard...for me.”

“Of course.”

With all her senses on high alert, Lara returned to the visitors room, the heels of her boots tapping on the linoleum as she strode toward Moretti, still sitting with the phone in his hand, his dark eyes glinting with secret amusement.

She adjusted her suede jacket before taking her seat. She wished she would’ve taken the time to change into something more professional. She needed that extra layer of confidence about now. She’d have to bluff it. She picked up the phone on her side.

“Start talking.” She yanked out the metal chair with a clang that reverberated in the small room, and perched on the edge, hunching forward. “Is Anna a target?”

Moretti chuckled deep in his throat, a dark, rumbling sound that had Lara grinding her back teeth. She didn’t blink one eyelash, holding his stare until he shifted in his seat.

A thrill of triumph zipped through her veins at the petty victory. When dealing with this monster, she had to take what she could get.

“I’ve got a deal for you... Lara.” He studied his fingernails. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

His words seemed to suck all the air out of the room, and her nostrils flared in an attempt to moderate her breathing. A few seconds passed before she thought she could speak without gasping for air.

“What is it you want to know?” Knots formed in her gut, but she allowed one corner of her mouth to lift in a show of bland interest.

“I want to know how the FBI learned about the Moretti syndicate.”

Although she felt like collapsing in relief, Lara released a long measured breath between parted lips.

Moretti, as watchful as a panther in the wild and just as dangerous, studied her mouth through the divider. His own quirked into a tight smile as if he knew his question might not be what she had anticipated...or feared.

Victoria hadn’t expressly forbidden any of the team members from discussing how they’d tightened the noose around the syndicate, so Lara made an executive decision and launched into the explanation.

“Five years ago, the FBI was working on a case of two young women, murdered, shot in the back of the head, execution style.”

Moretti clicked his tongue, but Lara wasn’t buying his sympathy.

She cocked her head. “You’ll never guess what we found tattooed on their hips.”

“Butterflies?” He propped his elbow on the table and balanced his chin on top of his hand. “Hearts?”

“Two Ms, superimposed on each other.” She felt a tingle on her upper-right arm where she’d sported her own tattoo before having it removed. “We didn’t know if the symbol was WM or MW or MM.”

“What a quandary.”

“We ran the symbol through our database of tattoos—the gang-related ones—and we got a hit.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “You got lucky.”

“That same symbol had been tattooed on a couple guys doing time for narcotics distribution. At the time of their booking they didn’t ’fess up to the origin or meaning of the tattoos, but some jailhouse talk netted us an important piece of information. The symbol was widely believed to be linked to the Moretti crime syndicate.”

“Maybe I should look up those two old friends and thank them for their service.” He narrowed his dark eyes, which glittered beneath his half-mast lids.

Goose bumps raced down her arms, and her hand jerked in her lap. Would he really punish those low-level drug dealers for getting arrested with Moretti tattoos and then blabbing about them?

Her gaze locked on his. He would.

The line of her jaw hardened. A couple of low-life drug dealers didn’t concern her. Only Anna concerned her right now.

“You do that. Of course, we’d heard the Moretti name in certain circles.”

“Of course.”

He was interrupting her with his running commentary just to needle her. Just to toy with her. Hell, he might even know this story already. He seemed to know everything else—almost everything.

“We’d heard the name over the years but never had any hard evidence to link the organization to any specific crimes. Then—” she made her fingers into a gun and pointed it at him “—you made a mistake.”

He closed his eyes, and a muscle ticked at the corner of his jaw. “I’ve made a few mistakes, Lara. Tell me about this one.”

“An FBI operative’s sister, who’d gone missing, was found in a Chicago dumpster.” Her bottom lip trembled, and she trapped it between her teeth, grateful Moretti still had his eyes closed.

“Dead, I presume.”

Ignoring his quip, she said, “Guess what we found tattooed on her hip?”

His eyelids flew open, and she recoiled under the intensity of his gaze. “Is this a guessing game? Because if it is, you must think I’m very, very stupid. Do you? Think I’m stupid, Lara?”

She thought he was lethal. Cunning. Forceful. Evil. But stupid? Never in a million years.

“We found—” she slowly sketched the symbol in the air “—the Moretti insignia. By this point I was already prepping to go undercover. Enough was enough. We were going to take you down.”

He smiled, his white teeth flashing against his olive-toned skin. Give him a few more years in the joint, and he’d be as pasty-faced as the rest of them.

“That pretty redhead had bragged about having a sister in the FBI, something she should have kept to herself. There are certain things you should keep to yourself. Don’t you agree, Lara? Certain things should stay private.”

Thinking of Cass’s devastation at the loss of her sister, Lara had the strongest urge to strike out against Moretti’s smug, handsome face.

“The rest is history. Once inside we started delving into your activities and getting a few people to talk.”

“You infiltrated, and you were very good at it. I’ll give you that.” He raised his hand to his face and traced the pad of his thumb along his jawline. “Very dedicated. Very thorough. Very deep infiltration.”

Lara swallowed. “I gave you what you wanted. Now, tell me what I need to know about Anna.”

His dark gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth to her breasts. “You did give me what I wanted.”

She pressed her thighs together, willing the heat flaring in her chest to stop spreading upward.

“The answer is most definitely yes.”

For a second, she’d forgotten the question. “Yes?”

“Your boss’s daughter is a target, a rather special target, in fact.”

“What does that mean?” Lara’s voice was louder than she’d wanted. She had to reel herself back in quickly. “What do you mean by a special target? What do you plan to do to her?”

The guard was already halfway in the visiting room. “Everything okay, ma’am?”

“Everything’s fine.” She waved him off. “I just need a few more minutes.”

Overhearing what she said, Moretti stated, “I don’t.” Moretti stood up and turned to the guard. “It’s time for my hot stone massage, courtesy of the FBI.”

Using her most menacing tone, she told him, “Leave her alone. You’ll never get your hands on Anna. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch?” But she was yelling at Moretti’s back, his broad shoulders stretching the material of his prison-issue jumpsuit almost in defiance of his circumstances.

The wide-eyed guard led Moretti from the room.

Lara sank into the chair, covering her face with both hands. Her false bravado completely gone, leaving a nauseous feeling instead. The man could cause pain and destruction with the snap of his fingers, and a trapped animal could be even more vicious than one in the wild.

She rose to her feet. She had the unpleasant task of updating her boss that Moretti did have Anna in his sights. If she knew Victoria, the woman would be all over this already, securing Anna, protecting her. Maybe she already had Anna on her way to a safe house.

In the bowels of the prison, cell reception was spotty. Lara didn’t want to spend another minute in this room, anyway. She imagined that she could catch the scent of Moretti’s aftershave, even though they’d been separated. It made her nauseous. How’d he get his hands on that expensive stuff in lockdown?

Probably another perk from the FBI for Moretti’s so-called information.

She slipped out of the visitors room, and the guard on the other side of the door accompanied her to the visitor reception area. The security detail in the front checked her bag—as if she’d take anything Moretti gave her—except maybe his balls. She’d take those gladly.

With a smile curling her lips, she pushed out of the building and stood in the courtyard gulping in the fresh air. She needed a shower.

She dug into her jacket pocket to retrieve her cell phone and glanced at two messages waiting for her. One was from her dentist and the other was from... Anna.

Her fingers trembled so much, Lara could barely unlock her phone. Once she did, she sagged against the wall, bracing her hand against the rough stone to stay upright.

She read the text again.

Tell my mom no worries, FBI agents just picked me up to take me to the safe house. I’m in the car now.

The words on the display socked her in the gut.

No way. Victoria would’ve never sent random agents to pick up her only child. She would’ve been there herself, in person, to verify her daughter’s safety. And why was Anna texting her instead of her mother? That made no sense...unless someone else sent that text from Anna’s phone.

She called Victoria again, and the call went straight to voice mail.

Her boots scuffing against the pavement, Lara exited the prison walls and headed to the car.

As she settled against the seat, she tapped the display for Victoria’s name and closed her eyes. Please, answer this time.

Victoria answered halfway through the first ring. “She’s gone, Lara. Someone took my daughter.”

Chapter Two

“What?” Lara’s eyelids flew open. Her fears about the text had just been realized. “You don’t have her?”

“I called and texted her as soon as I got off the phone with you, but she didn’t answer. I thought maybe she was in class and had her phone turned off. I continued to call her as I took a car to campus, fully intending to take her away with me and place her in a safe house—no matter how much she protested.” Victoria’s voice ended on a sob.

“No other agents contacted you?” She told Victoria about the text she’d received from Anna’s phone.

Victoria’s response to that bit of information came fast and hard. “Anna would’ve contacted me, not you, if some agents had picked her up.”

Lara took a deep breath and flattened the emotion out of her own voice. “Are you sure no other agents picked her up?”

If someone had told her a year ago that she’d be soothing Victoria for a change, she would’ve laughed hysterically.

“I’m sure, Lara. After your call, I only notified our task force, and I happened to be the closest one to Columbia. But by the time I got to her philosophy class, she’d left. What did he say? What did that bastard tell you?”

Lara pressed a hand against the butterflies in her belly. “He told me Anna was a target, a special target.”

Victoria growled. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him myself.”

She knew the feeling.

“Did you question anyone in the class?” Lara massaged her right temple. “Did you talk to her friends?”

“I flashed my badge and pulled her professor aside. He could only tell me that a woman entered the classroom, showed him a badge similar to my own and asked to speak to Anna. He pointed her out, and Anna left with the woman.”

“And her friends? Did you see any of her friends?”

“I didn’t recognize anyone in the classroom. I don’t know where she hangs out on campus. I’m back at the office. Where are you? Are you on your way? I need you here, Lara.”

As far as Lara knew, her boss had never needed anyone in her entire life, at least not since her husband died.

“I’m on my way. Take a deep breath, Victoria. We don’t know enough to panic.” She spewed that lie with all the practice she’d cultivated working undercover.

But Victoria wasn’t swallowing any of it.

“He has her, or at least the bastard’s crew has her.”

* * *

Controlled chaos greeted Lara when she slipped inside the taskforce office.

Cass, stationed at a computer, tapped away at the keyboard as if attacking it. Ty on the phone, smiling, charming, cajoling information out of some unsuspecting criminal grunt.

Mei hunched over a laptop, her long, black hair creating a veil around the display. Xander on the phone in the corner, arguing with someone and jabbing the air with his finger.

And Nick. Nick keeping up with Victoria as she paced the room, her usually impeccably styled hair sticking up in all directions, her eye makeup smudged across her face.

Nick met Lara’s gaze as she walked into the office, cocking his head, a quizzical look in his dark eyes.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “What are you doing here? You should be at home taking it easy.”

He patted his arm. “Because of this little scratch? Don’t think so.”

Lara shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it over the back of a chair.

The activity in the room ceased when they realized she was back. Nick tilted his chin toward her. “Did Moretti tell you anything?”

“Only that Anna was a special target.”

The room erupted again in chatter, and the team pummeled her with questions, snatches of words and phrases assaulting her.

“Hold on.” She crossed one index finger over the other, holding them in front of her face. “That’s all I know. That’s all he told me.”

“You were there a long time for that bit of information.” Nick scratched his stubble, and Lara felt the suspicion beneath his words.

“He wanted something in return.”

A muscle jumped in Nick’s jaw. “They always do.”

“Are we still granting that piece of crap favors? I’ve got a better way of getting intel out of him,” Xander added.

Crossing her arms, Lara wandered to the whiteboard that sported a diagram of Moretti’s organization. “He wanted to know how we’d gotten a line on his business, how he got on our radar.”

A soft sigh escaped Cass’s lips. “Did you tell him?”

“I did.” Lara’s gaze darted to Victoria. “We want to get Anna back. That’s all that matters right now. Besides, we’d never made a secret about how we got a bead on Moretti.”

Victoria nodded. “It’s not classified information.”

“And in exchange for that, all he told you was that Anna was a special target?” Mei tossed her long hair over one shoulder. “Generous, isn’t he?”

Ty spread his hands in front of him. “Sounds like he’s playing you, Lara. How can we trust anything this guy says?”

“It’s all we’ve got right now.” Victoria laced her fidgeting fingers in front of her. “He said Anna was a target, and Anna went missing, supposedly going with some agents. If he says she’s a special target, I believe him—on this point, anyway.”

“We need to find out more about these so-called agents,” Nick added. “Columbia is a busy campus. Someone had to have seen something. I think we should all go back and canvas the area, get a roster of students in that class and find out if Anna told one of them something before she split.”

Cass interrupted. “I’m working on that right now, and I think I’d be more useful here in front of my computer than running around Columbia.”

“Mei and I will take one car and hit up the professor.” Ty plucked his jacket from the back of his chair. “Mei still looks like a student herself, so she’ll fit right in.”

“I’m going, too.” Victoria held up her phone. “I’ve been in touch with a couple of Anna’s friends, and I’m going to meet them on campus.”

Xander ran a hand through his blond hair so that it matched Victoria’s errant strands. “C’mon, boss. I’ll drive you over.”

Nick grabbed his leather jacket and eased his wounded arm into the sleeve. “I guess that leaves us, partner.”

“One second.” Lara crossed the room and hovered over Cass’s shoulder. “Can you contact some of those students and set up a meeting for us on campus?”

Cass nodded, never lifting her busy fingers from the keyboard. “I’m on it. Watch your phone for my text message.”

“You’re the best, Cass.” Lara squeezed the other woman’s shoulder before joining Nick at the door.

On the drive over, Nick kept glancing at her profile, until she turned to face him. “What? You’re studying me like I’m a bug under a glass.”

“You look...tense.” He touched her arm.

Even through the thick material of her jacket, she could feel the heat of his touch, soothing her frazzled nerves—but not if he was going to start asking questions about Moretti.

“Aren’t we all tense? We need to find Anna.”

Nick snatched his hand back and gripped the steering wheel. “That man, Moretti, he set you on edge. He always sets you on edge.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a bad guy, Nick. You’ve seen his handiwork.” Her cell buzzed in her hand, and she held it up. “It’s from Cass.”

“Did she set up something for us on campus?” He rolled his shoulders as if trying to release his own tension.

Tapping the display, she said, “We have a meeting outside the bookstore, near Butler Library. She was able to reach three students from that class who might have some information about Anna’s departure from campus. She included a campus map.” She pointed out the car window. “You can head up Broadway to 114th.”

Nick parked the car on the street in a no-parking zone, their government plates ensuring they’d be immune from a ticket. As they walked onto campus side by side, Nick’s hand bumped hers occasionally. All she had to do was grab it and hold on for dear life.

She wanted to, more than anything, but they were two agents, on the job—partners who shared a kiss. A mind-blowing kiss...

Clearing her throat, Lara held her phone in front of her face, looking at the map. “When we get past the library, we turn left.”

They rounded the corner, and Nick pointed to a table. “Let’s hold court there. Do you want a coffee or something?”

“Since we probably have a while before the students show up, I’ll take a coffee—black.”

“I’ll be right back. Hold down the fort.”

Her eyes followed Nick as he ducked into the coffee house. Even in his dark jeans and leather jacket, he looked too mature to be a student. He could pass for a professor of... Not art history. Not philosophy. Journalism? Political science?

Someone coughed, and Lara jerked her head to the side.

Two young women with long, straight hair parted down the middle hovered at her elbow.

The taller one spoke first. “Are you the FBI agent?”

“I am.” Lara glanced at her watch. “That was fast. And your names?”

Cass had texted their names, but Lara always played things close to the vest.

The first speaker said, “I’m Farah Marshall, and this is Jenna Holt.”