Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(169)

“I won’t let that happen.”

He scoffed. “They put a f*cking gun to my head.” His emotional control was unraveling. Tears fell down his face. “And now, now when I go to prison for helping them, someone in there is going to kill me. That’s what they said. Nowhere is safe.”

“Help me understand and I swear I’ll do whatever I can. Is my team compromised?”

Scott appeared confused. “Compromised? What do you mean?”

“Are we in danger?”

He shrugged and receded. “I don’t know.”

I leaned in closer. “Anyone else on the team involved in this? I need to know if we have any others on the camera crew, production, a cop perhaps, working for them. You need to tell me what you know.”

Scott kept shaking his head. “I never saw anyone else.”

“You know all of the ATTF officers,” I said. “You ever see or hear any mention of their names being involved?”

I was sort of relieved to see the shock register on his face. “No.”

“Okay. What were your orders?”

He drew in a breath. “They gave me a number to text. I sent updates with our location. But it’s just been recently. That’s it. I swear.”

It was hard to mask how I felt about being betrayed. One thing was certain. Our television careers just came to an abrupt end.

Thank f*ck for that.

“You went to Newark to get paid, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question. Scott’s shame was obvious.

“Who contacted you, Scott? I want to help you. I do. But you have to tell me.”

Scott nodded at the picture on the desk, pointing to the one with the noticeable limp to his walk that we were unable to identify. “That guy. I don’t know his full name. They call him Switch. I think he’s the one who coordinates everything. He’s a driver too.”

“If I showed you some photos, you think you could pick him out?”

He reluctantly said, “Yeah.”

“Do they have eyes on you?”

Scott shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I didn’t want to use Scott as bait, but it was time to play the players at their own game.





FINDING MILTON CRAWFORD—also known as Switch—wasn’t easy. He moved about a lot, but once we located him, everything fell into place. Still, something gnawed at me. That little niggle of doubt I’d harbored kept worming its way around everything, at the start of every shift.

I had no solid proof, but I couldn’t ignore the facts—no matter how coincidental. This investigation was mine. The blowback from the team could get ugly, but it was a risk I had to take to being thorough.

Ultimately, it was my captain’s decision, and when faced with the knowledge that we’d already been compromised by the film crew, it was easily justifiable.

All of us—every one of us who wore a badge—had taken an oath to protect and serve. Even thinking about the possibility that we had a traitor in our midst made my stomach twist into hateful knots.

I watched the closed-circuit television from an adjoining room as Officer Brian Sidel was questioned by an interrogator from Internal Affairs. They’d connected him to the polygraph machine after he agreed to subject himself to a lie detector test.

I needed irrefutable proof. Did he or did he not have any ties to Vincent and Salvador Mancuso?





SARAH WAS SITTING at the nurses’ station, pale and exhausted. “You look so happy. I’m glad.” Her observation was genuine, though she was breathing hard through her mouth. Her knees were parted while she and her enormous belly molded to the desk chair.

I was. Well, beyond my dad’s dealership getting robbed, being under Adam Trent’s mandated “I’ll drive you to work” orders, and occasionally being home alone, living with him these last few weeks had been beyond blissful. My sister, though, had been sort of avoiding me, making lame excuses for not being able to converse every time I called. Kate had been upset about the robbery, but it was quite obvious that there were other issues affecting her, which I presumed were caused by her current boyfriend.

“You look like you’re in pain.”

“Braxton Hicks,” she muttered, rubbing her lower back.

I leaned onto the counter. “Why are you even here?”

Her pained smile faltered and scrunched. “I have two weeks yet and then…” Another scrunch. “Oh shit, that hurt.”

I’d just worked on a twenty-four-year-old male who’d been on the losing end of a bar fight and yet seeing my friend in distress was making me all sorts of nervous. “I think we should call Obstetrics, get someone to take a look at you.”

Sarah groaned. “I’m not in labor.”

“Then maybe you should go home and rest.”

“Can’t.” She was puffing her words now. “Brett’s in Utah at that seminar. I’d be alone. I’m better off here.” She tried to sit up. “What better place to be than a hospital, right?”

I looped my arm under hers, helping to keep her steady. “Kimberly, help me?”

Kimberly set some things down and rushed over. “What’s going on, preggo?”

Sarah hunched over in pain. Her tight grip was starting to hurt my arm. “Let’s get her over into an exam room.”