Best Laid Plans(114)
At least on paper.
The group, Texas Land Holding, was simply a pass-through account. Everett would buy and sell land, but the money involved didn’t stay with TLH. It was moved immediately out—and tracking that would be impossible without banking records.
He’d already crossed into too many gray areas, but hacking into a financial institution would be clearly illegal, so he backed off.
Sean looked at the calendar. The last week of March stood out. Nine weeks ago. That was the week of Operation Heatwave, when Brad and Lucy had taken down the Trejo/Sanchez cartel and put themselves on Tobias’s radar.
A whole bunch of transactions had occurred that week and the following week … and then nothing. Millions of dollars in land transactions, all with government land being bought or sold, occurred during a ten-day period, when during the previous seven years there were no more than two regional transactions a quarter.
Hadn’t Lucy mentioned that James Everett had had a falling out with Adeline two months ago? Everett was working with the FBI, but there had been nothing in Agent Dunbar’s statements that said they were investigating Adeline for money laundering.
Except they were investigating her for graft and corruption. They had sensed there was something else, which was why they hadn’t indicted her for the shit she’d already done.
Had they only listened to Harper Worthington when he went to their office last month, he would be alive and the FBI would have had all this information. Some of the smartest financial wizards worked for the FBI—people even better with numbers than Sean, though he wouldn’t admit it. They would have put this together if they only had the right information. But the process of pulling together disparate and seemingly unconnected data—that was not intuitive.
Harper had figured it out because he lived with Adeline and he was a brilliant accountant who specialized in government audits.
Maybe Gary Ackerman, who had some wild conspiracy theories, had told Harper a theory that made sense. Who had reached out to whom?
And, dammit, where did Tobias fit in? The timing of the sales was immediately after Operation Heatwave ended, but what did it mean? How did Adeline connect to Tobias?
Sean saved all the information he had to a flash drive, sent another copy to himself, then sent a copy of the data to a friend of his who happened to be an ASAC in Sacramento. Dean Hooper had once run the white-collar crimes division out of national FBI headquarters. Normally, he’d be the last person Sean would trust, considering Sean’s past criminal activities that might fall under the purview of Hooper, but considering Kane had once saved the life of Dean’s wife, the Rogans had a clean slate with the fed.
Dean—One of my security cases has intersected with one of the FBI’s active investigations. I can’t legally dig any deeper, so I’m sending you what I have. I have clearance from HWI to send all pertinent data to the FBI that will help in the ongoing investigation (I’ll attach it so you have documentation). I don’t know the agent working on your end—Logan Dunbar out of D.C.—and you know how I feel about feds I don’t know.
Look at this—Money Laundering 101? If you need an official report, contact RCK and jump through the hoops.
Best to Sonia.
Sean
He shut everything down. It was after eight, but Gregor Smith was still there. Sean bid him good-bye and walked out. He was about to get into his car when he heard his name.
Sean had his hand on his gun before he recognized Kane’s voice.
“Kane?”
“I would have been here sooner—I heard about the shooting. Why aren’t you sitting on her?”
“Because she’s a trained agent.”
“Bull-f*cking-shit.”
“Juan put Donnelly on her. Get in.” Sean took the driver’s seat and Kane slid in next to him. Sean pulled out.
“Where is she now?” Kane asked.
“She texted me that she was leaving the Worthington house. It’s about twenty minutes outside the city. Why? Is she in immediate danger?”
“I need her to look at the security tapes from the Dallas airport.”
“How did you get them?”
He didn’t answer. Of course he wouldn’t answer.
Sean sent Lucy a message.
When are you coming home?
He said to Kane, “It’s Tobias, isn’t it.”
“He’s good, Sean. He’s damn good. I followed a trail down to McAllen today and it was a f*cking dead end. He knows I’m following him, and tricked me.”
“You’re not easily tricked.”
“I’m never tricked.” He paused. “Rarely. I was real close yesterday before I saw you. He was here, in San Antonio, and my contact had verifiable intel. But when I got to McAllen, it was a trap. Now my contact is dead. They set him up. Tobias knows everything; he has people everywhere. I went through the black box that Trejo kept—there are files missing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Tobias must have pulled them before the kid stole the box.”
“Which means he intentionally left some of the files, like the file on Nicole Rollins.”
“Don’t trust anyone, Sean. The DEA is not clean. There are at least two corrupt cops in SAPD. And I’m beginning to suspect someone in the FBI.”