Beyond Limits (Tracers #8)(5)
Thirty-seven. Convenience store owner. Father of five.
She’d been so certain he was one of the good guys. How could she have been so wrong? Maybe her SAC was right. Maybe everything that had happened in recent months had taken a toll on her not just physically but mentally, too. Maybe she was losing her edge, losing her judgment. Losing everything that had earned her this job in the first place.
She lifted her gaze to the sky, where the first hint of dawn was peeking over the treetops. A half-moon glowed overhead, reminding her of summer mornings in Virginia, when she’d get up before sunrise to wait by the back door, hoping to intercept her dad as he left on one of his fishing trips. He’d take her along in the skiff and make her bait her own hook and show her how to cast the line so it wouldn’t get tangled in the shallows.
Perkins pulled a notebook from his pocket and started writing. “So, I take it he’s one of yours, then?”
She stood and looked down at the body, and a sudden wave of loneliness swamped her. There was no one to show her how to do anything this morning. And it was going to be a long day.
“Ma’am?”
She looked at him. “Yes, he was one of mine.”
* * *
It was full-on rush hour by the time Elizabeth reached the city, so she crossed Starbucks off her list, although she sorely needed caffeine. Even without the call-out, she’d had a bad night. Most of it had been spent curled on her sofa, flipping channels and determinedly avoiding CNN as she downed chamomile tea, which was supposedly a natural sleep aid. After weeks of drinking the stuff, she’d discovered it worked great when accompanied by Ambien.
She pulled into the bunker-like parking garage and found a space. Flipping down the vanity mirror, she checked for any telltale signs of fogginess. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin sallow. She smoothed her ponytail and fluffed her new bangs. She’d had them cut a few months ago in an effort to hide her scar, but she wasn’t crazy about the look. A little too schoolgirl, which wasn’t helpful. As a five-four blonde, she already had enough trouble getting people to take her seriously.
She flipped up the mirror, disgusted. She had more important things to worry about today than her appearance. Such as her boss’s reaction when he heard about Amato.
Her stomach tightened with nerves as she rode up the elevator. Manuel Amato was just the latest in a string of mistakes she’d made since joining the task force investigating the Saledo cartel. The brutal crime ring was making inroads into Texas and had a hand in everything from drug smuggling to money laundering.
Amato owned a convenience store in Del Rio, across the street from a warehouse that was being used as a drop-off point by sex traffickers. He’d given Elizabeth’s team a tip that had panned out, and since then she’d been cultivating a relationship with him and trying to persuade her SAC to let her use him as an informant. Her boss had resisted. She had persisted. Amato was a family man, a business owner, an upstanding citizen who was active in his church. Most important, he’d wanted to help.
After weeks of dogged efforts, Maxwell had finally given Elizabeth the green light, and she’d paid a visit to Amato to lay out the deal. Since then, she’d been awaiting his call. But that call would never come, because her promising new informant had been murdered while moving a load of coke for Saledo or one of his rivals.
The elevator slid open. Elizabeth made her way toward her cubicle and saw Maxwell talking to a pair of agents outside his office. He’d probably heard by now. Would he dress her down at the staff meeting or call her into his office beforehand?
He spotted her, and the grim look on his face told her he’d received the news. Elizabeth changed course, bracing herself for a blast of criticism as she approached.
“Sir, I need to talk to you about—”
“Save it. You’ve got a visitor.” He tipped his head toward one of the men standing nearby.
“Hello, Elizabeth.”
She blinked at him, taken aback. “Gordon. What—”
“Feel free to use my office,” Maxwell told him, then gave her a sharp nod. “We’ll talk later.”
Gordon watched her, his look unreadable. He was based in Washington, but if he’d spent the morning on an airplane, you’d never know it from his immaculate suit and shiny wingtips. Agents who worked for him sometimes called him “Wall Street,” and she hadn’t figured out whether it was because of his clothes or because his all-business demeanor reminded them of Gordon Gecko.
He gestured toward the empty office. “After you.”
Polite as always. She stepped inside and felt a chill down her spine as the door thudded shut. She glanced through the window into the bullpen and caught the baffled looks of her coworkers, who were obviously wondering why the Bureau’s newly promoted assistant director of counterterrorism wanted to see her.
Gordon tucked his hands into his pockets and stepped past Maxwell’s desk. He had an athletic build, good posture. His salt-and-pepper hair was trimmed short, as she remembered it. Despite the demands of his job, he took care of himself.
He turned to look at her. “How have you been?”
She started to say “Fine” but remembered something else she’d learned about him a year ago. He was a human lie detector.
“Busy,” she said.
He lifted an eyebrow, then turned to study Maxwell’s ego wall, which featured his Princeton diplomas, along with several framed photos of him rubbing elbows with VIPs: the FBI director, a few senators, the Texas governor.