He wasn’t being entirely truthful, telling Wilkins that he had no regrets about what had happened three years ago. Of course he did—what he said had been uncalled for. He knew that all of about two seconds after the words had flown out of his mouth.
When he’d found out that he was being transferred back to Chicago, he’d vowed to put everything behind him. Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on running into Cameron Lynde within his first week of being back. Being around her brought back a lot of old memories.
For starters, he still couldn’t forget the way she had refused to look at him the day she told him about the Martino case.
Late that Friday afternoon, three years ago, Cameron had called to say she was coming to his office to speak with him and his partner at the time, Joe Dobbs. When he had heard the knock and seen her standing in his doorway, he’d smiled. Jack distinctly remembered that, probably because of how rare it was that he smiled back in those days—there hadn’t been a lot to be chipper about during the two years he’d worked for Martino. He was still, to put it bluntly, pretty fucked-up from being undercover for so long and having trouble getting back into the routine of normal life. He also wasn’t sleeping at night, and that certainly didn’t help matters.
But as much as he had been finding it difficult to transition back to an office job, there was one part of it he didn’t mind: working with Cameron Lynde. He’d begun to worry, in fact, that he was starting to not mind it a little too much. They’d only ever talked business—the Martino case—yet the couple of times they’d been alone together, he felt some sort of undercurrent between them. He didn’t know how to describe it, except to say that whatever the undercurrent was, it was enough to make him wish he wasn’t still so screwed up.
“Come on in,” Jack had told her.
When Cameron stepped into his office that Friday afternoon, for once she didn’t return his smile.
“Will Agent Dobbs be joining us?” she asked.
“He’s on his way. Why don’t you have a seat while you wait?” Jack gestured to the chairs in front of his desk.
Cameron shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks.”
Over the course of the last month, Jack had gotten to know her well enough to know that she was not fine right then. Something was wrong—she had skipped over the tough-as-nails-but-not-really sarcastic/semi-flirtatious pleasantries he had come to expect and enjoy as part of their usual discourse. Not to mention, she seemed skittish.
He had a bad feeling about this.
“You said you wanted to talk about Martino—is there a problem with the case?” He watched as she hesitated.
Bingo.
Cameron’s eyes shifted to the door. “I think we should wait until Agent Dobbs gets here.” She bit her bottom lip worriedly, and Jack couldn’t decide what was more troubling—her sudden display of vulnerability or the fact that he now couldn’t take his eyes off her lips.
He got up from his desk, walked over, and shut his office door. He stood before her. “Something’s got you upset.”
“Agent Pallas, I think—”
He cut her off. “It’s Jack, okay? I think it’s probably time for us to be on a first-name basis.” When her gaze darted again to his office door, he did something that surprised them both—he reached out and touched her chin gently.
He turned her face to his. “Talk to me, Cameron. Tell me what’s wrong.”
When her incredible aquamarine eyes met his, he felt it—something akin to the jolts of electricity Martino’s men had hit him with during his two days of captivity. Only infinitely more enjoyable.
“Jack,” she whispered. “I’m so sor—”
A knock at the door interrupted them.
Jack and Cameron sprang away from each other as the door to his office opened. Joe walked in, surprised to find them both standing there.
“Oh, hey—sorry I’m late.” He took a seat in one of the chairs in front of Jack’s desk—they had been partners for four years and were comfortable in each other’s offices. He crossed his leg and looked up at Cameron. “Jack said you wanted to talk to us about Martino?”
“I do,” Cameron said. She sounded stiff and nervous again, and oddly focused her attention on Joe. “I wanted to let you know that we’ve made a decision. We won’t be filing charges against Roberto Martino. Or anyone else in his organization, for that matter.”
There was a silence in the room.
Jack broke it. “You can’t be serious.”
Cameron still didn’t look at him. “I realize this isn’t the result either of you expected.”
“What do you mean, you’re not going to file any charges?” Joe asked. He had been the liaison between Jack and the Bureau during the two years Jack had been undercover and knew all the dirt they’d dug up on Martino.
“Our office has decided there isn’t enough evidence to take the case to trial,” Cameron said.
Jack was struggling—hard—to keep his anger in check. “Bullshit. Who made this decision? Was it Briggs?”
Joe stood up from his chair and paced. “That fucking guy. All he cares about is his own reputation,” he said disgustedly.
“I want to talk to him,” Jack demanded.
Cameron finally turned to face him. “There’s no need for that. This . . . is my case. It was my call.”
“Screw that—I don’t believe you.”
Joe glanced over, a cautionary note in his voice. “Jack.”
Cameron remained cool. “I realize how frustrating this—”
Jack took a step toward her. “Frustrating? Frustration doesn’t begin to cover what I’m feeling right now. You’ve read the files—at least I assumed you had until about a minute ago—now I’m not so sure what you or anyone else in the U.S. attorney’s office has been doing. You know who Martino is and the things he’s done. What the hell are you guys thinking?”
“I’m sorry,” she said woodenly. “I know how much you put into this investigation. Unfortunately, there’s nothing more I can tell you.”
“Sure there is. You can tell me who the hell Martino paid off in the U.S. attorney’s office to make this miracle happen. If Briggs didn’t make this decision, then . . .” Jack paused to give Cameron a scrutinizing once-over. “What do you think, Joe, should we do a little digging into Ms. Lynde’s accounts? See if she’s had any unusually large deposits lately?”
Cameron walked over and stared him dead in the eyes. “You are way out of line with that, Agent Pallas.”
Joe moved between them. “Okay, I think we all need to take a step back for a moment and cool down.”
Jack ignored him. “I want an explanation,” he said again to Cameron.
She stood her ground, holding his gaze angrily. “Fine. You blew your cover too early. I hope that explanation satisfies you, because it’s the only one I can give you.”
A wave of fury washed over him. And guilt. Her words struck a nerve—although he’d had no choice, he still blamed himself every day for the fact that his cover had been blown.
Jack’s voice was ice-cold. “Get out of my office.”
“I was just leaving,” Cameron said. “But one last thing—if you ever have any concerns about where my loyalties lie, or regarding my dedication to my job, you can just ask me yourself, Agent Pallas. But if you poke around in my bank accounts, you better have either a court order or one hell of a defense attorney.” She nodded at Joe in good-bye. “Agent Dobbs.” Then she turned and left without further word.
Joe watched her go. “I know you’re angry, Jack, and I’m mad as hell, too, but be careful. Cameron Lynde might be new to the office, but she’s still an assistant U.S. attorney. Probably not such a good idea to accuse her of corruption.”
Barely listening, Jack said nothing. All he could think about was one thing.
Two years of his life down the fucking drain.
Joe sprang into action. “All right—I’m going to talk to Davis,” he said, referring to their boss, the special agent in charge. “I’
ll see if I can find out what’s really going on.” He walked over and put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “In the meantime, you need to calm the hell down. Go home, go get drunk, whatever—just get out of this office before you say anything else you’ll regret.”
Jack nodded.
Two years.
In the elevator on his way out, he stared numbly at the doors, wondering if Cameron Lynde had any clue what he’d gone through to get all that evidence that she had just rendered meaningless. Yes, his cover had been blown, but only because—in a move that was two parts plain stupid and one part a piss-fight over jurisdiction—the DEA had sent in their own undercover agent to make contact with Martino. Jack had figured out who the guy was in all of about five seconds. It took Martino ten.
He’d ordered Jack to kill him.
Now Jack had done a lot of not-so-nice things in order to maintain his cover while working for Martino, but up to that point he’d always managed to avoid actually killing anyone. But this time Martino wanted the agent’s body brought back to him—he planned to send a message to the DEA—and no amount of craftiness could get Jack out of having to produce an actual corpse. So he stalled. He was on his way to meet the DEA agent, warn him, and get them both the hell out of Dodge, when Martino’s men grabbed them.
They killed the DEA agent immediately. Martino stuck to his plan and had his men dump the body on the Chicago DEA office’s doorstep that night.
With Jack, he was less forgiving.
Enough said.
On the second day of Jack’s captivity, however, Martino’s men made a fatal mistake.
Actually, it was one man in particular who made the mistake: Vincent, one of Martino’s interrogators, wanted to take his questioning up a notch and decided to untie Jack’s hands. Sure, he immediately re-disabled one of those hands by ramming a nine-inch carving knife all the way through Jack’s forearm, pinning it to the chair. But he momentarily left his other hand free.
For such stupidity, Martino surely would’ve killed Vincent himself. That is, if Jack hadn’t choked the guy with his free hand, slid the knife back out of his forearm, and beaten him to it.
Luckily for Jack, Vincent had been carrying a gun along with his knife. Also lucky for Jack was the fact that he had been trained in Special Forces to skillfully handle a gun with either hand.
These things, however, were not as fortuitous for Martino’s men. True, one of them was lucky enough to shoot Jack in the middle of the gunfight that ensued, but he certainly didn’t live long enough to brag about it.
But unlike his men, Martino himself seemed to have all the luck in the world. Not only was he not among the eight dead bodies FBI backup collected when they finally showed up at the warehouse, but apparently, Lady Luck was smiling down on him a second time when she steered his case into the inexperienced hands of Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde.
Two years of his life down the drain.
Jack didn’t want to believe it. But she said that the decision not to prosecute was hers. And if that was true, then . . . the hell with her.
The elevator hit the ground floor and the doors sprang open. Jack stepped out and was immediately accosted by a throng of reporters. Unfortunately, this was not an unusual occurrence; he unwittingly had become the focus of media attention after the shoot-out at the warehouse—eight dead gangsters tended to pique people’s interests—and ever since, reporters had come calling whenever Martino’s name popped up in the news.
“Agent Pallas! Agent Pallas!” The reporters shouted over each other, trying to get to him.
Jack ignored them and headed toward the front door. The female reporter from the local NBC affiliate, whose interest in him lately seemed to go beyond a mere professional level, fell into stride alongside him with her cameraman in tow.
“Agent Pallas—we just got word about the Martino case. As the FBI agent in charge of the investigation, what do you think about the fact that Roberto Martino will continue to walk the streets of Chicago as a free man?” She shoved her microphone in Jack’s face.
Maybe it was due to extreme sleep-deprivation. Or maybe it was because of the fact that (according to the psychologist he had been ordered to see every week) he had some lingering “rage” issues related to his undercover work and capture. Or maybe, possibly, it had something to do with the fact that he’d been tortured for two days by the guy. But before he realized what he was doing, Jack fired back a reply to the reporter’s question.
“I think the assistant U.S. attorney has her head up her ass, that’s what I think. They should’ve assigned the case to somebody with some fucking balls.”
Every television station in Chicago led off their six o’clock evening news with his tirade.
And then they re-aired it again, on the ten o’clock news. Of course by that point, word had spread to the national correspondents that a Chicago FBI special agent had verbally bitch-slapped an assistant U.S. attorney on live camera, and then his comments were everywhere: CNN, MSNBC, the Today show, Nightline, Larry King Live, and everything in between. Not to mention that the footage earned the dubious distinction of being the most downloaded video on YouTube for the entire week.
Needless to say, Jack’s boss was not pleased.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Davis demanded to know when he hauled Jack into his office the following morning. “You’re the one with your head up your goddamn ass, Pallas, making a comment like that on national television!”
Things pretty much went downhill from there. Some feminist group began making noise in the media, claiming that Jack’s comment about assigning the case to somebody with “balls” was—taken literally—a sexist statement that only a male prosecutor could’ve handled such a tough case.
Which is when the Department of Justice stepped in.
Despite his initial outburst over the situation, Davis worked for two days to appease the DOJ. He emphasized that Jack was Chicago’s most talented and dedicated agent and suggested, in terms of a disciplinary action, that Jack issue a formal apology to Ms. Lynde and the U.S. attorney’s office and be put on six months’ probation. The lawyers at the DOJ said they would take Davis’s recommendation under advisement.
That Monday morning, Jack got into the office early to start working on his apology. He knew he’d been out of line, both with the comments he’d made to the reporter and the things he’d said to Cameron before that. Admittedly, he’d handled the situation poorly. Very poorly. On top of the shock and frustration he’d felt when hearing her news, the fact that he’d come to trust her had only increased his anger. But at this point, he hoped that they could somehow figure out a way to get past the situation and move on.
He had left the door to his office open while he worked, and after a few minutes of staring at a blank computer screen—apologies didn’t exactly come easy to him—he was surprised to hear voices coming from Davis’s office. He’d thought he was the only person in that early.
Davis sounded angry. From across the hall, Jack couldn’t pick up much of the conversation, other than to hear his boss say the words “bullshit” and “overreacting.” Since Jack didn’t hear anyone else speak, he wondered if Davis was on the phone. But regardless of whomever Davis was talking to, Jack had a pretty good idea who he was talking about. He got up from his desk and headed to his door when—
Davis’s office door flew open and Cameron Lynde stepped out.
Catching sight of Jack, she stopped in her tracks. A look crossed her face, one that Jack knew well. Over the years, he’d seen that expression many times when someone saw him approaching.
Caught.
Cameron covered the look quickly, and coolly met his gaze across the hallway. She turned and left, saying nothing.
When Davis stepped out of his office next, he also saw Jack. He shook his head somberly.
That afternoon, the Department of Justice issued an order that Special Agent Jack Pallas be transferred out of Chicago immediately.
Jack had a f
eeling he knew just who he could thank for that.
“WHATEVER YOU’RE THINKING about, you’d probably be better off leaving it in the past.”
Jack glanced over and saw Wilkins staring at him. “I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“Really? ’Cause the car stopped three minutes ago and we’ve just been sitting here in front of this house.”
Jack looked around to get his bearings—shit, they were just sitting there. Nice to see his exceptionally fine-tuned special agent powers of observation were intact. He blamed their witness in the backseat for this. She distracted him. It was time to put an end to that.
He called over his shoulder. “You’re free to go, Ms. Lynde.”
No response.
He turned around.
“She’s out like a light,” Wilkins told him.
“So do something about it.”
Wilkins peered into the rearview mirror. “Yoo-hoo, Cameron—”
“Yoo-hoo? That’s really FBI-ish.”
“Hey, I’m the good cop. I make it work.” Wilkins turned back to the task at hand. “Cameron—we’re here.” He glanced over at Jack, whispering. “Do you think she’d mind if I call her Cameron?”
“Right now I think you could call her anything and get away with it.” He even had a few suggestions on that front.
“Okay, time for plan B,” Wilkins decided. “Someone needs to go back there and wake her up.”
“Sounds good. Hope that works out for you.”
“I meant you.” When Wilkins saw Jack’s expression, he gestured innocently. “Sorry. I have to stay here and man the wheel.”
Grumbling under his breath, Jack opened the car door and stepped out, catching his first good glimpse at Cameron Lynde’s home. Or at least, the place that was supposedly her home.
He stuck his head back into the car. “Are you sure this is the right place?”
“She said 3309 North Henderson. This is 3309 North Henderson,” Wilkins said.
“Yeah, but this is . . .” Jack turned around and tried to decide how best to describe the sight before him.
“One hell of a nice house,” Wilkins said approvingly.