Velocity (Karen Vail #3)(78)

“Then us,” Vail said. “Set it up. We’ll do the meet.”

Sebastian leaned back in his seat. “That could work, I guess.”

“No,” Yardley said, stepping forward.

Sebastian looked up at the ASAC. “All I gotta do is call my guy, let him know—”

“Absolutely not.”

Vail rose from her seat and faced Yardley, toe to toe. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Yardley, a few inches taller than Vail, stood his ground. “Soon as the doc clears him,” he said calmly, “Sebastian will go. He’s worked too hard, too long, to cultivate his CIs. Especially this one, who’s got reliable roots right into the goddamn cartel. We screw it up, guy so much as smells something bad, we may never find a replacement.”

“I realize Robby’s ‘only’ a task force officer, but he deserves 100 percent effort on our part—all our parts—to get him out of danger.”

“Agent Vail, we don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

Body blow to the gut. Don’t take that shit. “Listen to me,” she said, bringing an index finger up toward his face. “With your help or not, I’m going to find Robby. Dead or alive. We owe that to him. I owe it to him. If my fuckup is responsible for blowing his cover, it’s on me.”

“I understand you don’t like it,” Yardley said, “but this is the way we handle these matters. Soon as we can, Sebastian will meet with the CI with regard to the issues at hand and then we’ll get back to you.”

Yardley started to turn away, but Vail grabbed his forearm. “When?”

He spoke while looking down at her hand. “We’ll do what we can, when we can. But how we do it, and when, and what resources we use to do it, is our business, not yours.” He brought his gaze up to hers. “I know you’re concerned about Hernandez, but there are multiple lives at stake. You think he’s the only asset we have in that organization?”

Vail dropped her hand. She was not prepared for that.

DeSantos was by her side. “Look,” he said, both hands out in front of him, fingers spread, a calming gesture. “I can make some calls. Go over your head. Have one director talk to another director. And get that information. Or I can go to my sources and dig up who this CI is that Sebastian won’t disclose. Either way, we will get what we want. Both ways are messy for you.” He shrugged. “Your choice.”

Yardley looked at DeSantos with a tournament-winning poker face. “Fuck you. And you too, Agent Vail.” He turned to Sebastian. “We’re done here.”

Yardley walked to the door and flung it open. “This is a DEA investigation, Mr. DeSantos. Interfere, and I don’t care what juice you can pour. I’ll make sure it goes sour. So if it’s a pissing contest you want, have at it.”

DeSantos returned his poker face, then he and Vail started for the door—but not before Vail glanced back over her shoulder at Sebastian. He was biting his lower lip and picking at the Powerade label.

Vail had a sharp rebuke for him on the tip of her tongue, but held it. As DeSantos had implied, Sebastian abandoned Robby out of fear for his own life. But it was her fault, not his, that Robby’s life was in danger in the first place. And now it was her responsibility to find him.

Before it was too late.





53


They got into the Corvette and DeSantos gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. “You’re doing your best to make my life difficult, you know that, Karen?”

Vail released her grip on the dashboard. “What?”

“I played our hand and I had nothing.”

“What about ‘I’ll call the director’?”

DeSantos brought the Vette to a screeching halt. “Karen.” He licked his lips, looked off into the distance as he gathered his thoughts. “I can’t call the FBI director every time I can’t get what I want. I don’t even work for him—he’s a . . . let’s just say I’ve got a special relationship with him. Bottom line, I bluffed. Yardley called it. That’s it.”

Vail covered her eyes with a hand. Great. “What about working your resources?”

“My resources, my assets and CIs and everything else I use for terrorism-related intel, is valuable shit. I can’t use it for stuff like this. One life . . . I don’t want this to come out the wrong way. But I deal with threats that involve dignitaries or U.S. congressmen, thousands—sometimes millions—of civilians. I can’t burn though valuable assets for this. I just can’t.”

“Wait a minute. Sebastian said something . . . ” She thought a moment, then said, “He may’ve been trying to tell us something.”

“Yeah. He and Yardley told us to go fuck ourselves.”

“No, no. He said he could call up his CI.”

DeSantos looked at Vail. “His phone records. If we can look through the calls he’s made in the past, what, three months—we may have his CI.”

“We’ll never get access to his records.”

“Legally,” DeSantos said. “We’ll never get his records legally. I’ve got other ways.”

“Ways that won’t burn your assets?”

“Exactly.” He shoved the gearshift into drive and stepped on the accelerator. Vail flew back in her seat. Only this time she didn’t mind. As far as she was concerned, the faster, the better.